text
stringlengths 430
5.77M
|
|---|
/***************************************************//**
* @file OBPRequestBufferedSpectrum32AndMetadataExchange.cpp
* @date September 2013
* @author Ocean Optics, Inc.
*
* LICENSE:
*
* SeaBreeze Copyright (C) 2014, Ocean Optics Inc
*
* Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
* a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
* "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
* without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
* distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
* permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject
* to the following conditions:
*
* The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
* in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
*
* THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
* EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
* MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
* IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
* CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT,
* TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
* SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
*******************************************************/
#include "common/globals.h"
#include "vendors/OceanOptics/protocols/obp/exchanges/OBPRequestBufferedSpectrum32AndMetadataExchange.h"
#include "vendors/OceanOptics/protocols/obp/hints/OBPSpectrumHint.h"
#include "vendors/OceanOptics/protocols/obp/exchanges/OBPMessage.h"
#include "vendors/OceanOptics/protocols/obp/constants/OBPMessageTypes.h"
using namespace seabreeze;
using namespace seabreeze::oceanBinaryProtocol;
using namespace std;
OBPRequestBufferedSpectrum32AndMetadataExchange::OBPRequestBufferedSpectrum32AndMetadataExchange() {
OBPMessage message;
vector<byte> *stream;
unsigned int i;
this->hints->push_back(new OBPSpectrumHint());
this->direction = Transfer::TO_DEVICE;
message.setMessageType(OBPMessageTypes::OBP_GET_BUF_SPEC32_META);
stream = message.toByteStream();
this->length = (unsigned) stream->size();
this->buffer->resize(stream->size());
for(i = 0; i < stream->size(); i++) {
(*(this->buffer))[i] = (*stream)[i];
}
delete stream;
checkBufferSize();
}
OBPRequestBufferedSpectrum32AndMetadataExchange::~OBPRequestBufferedSpectrum32AndMetadataExchange() {
}
|
Powerfoods: Durian
Durian: The King of Fruits
Nothing comes close to durian for its look and distinguished smell. The scent of this thory fruit can be penetrating, a welcome aromatic smell for its fans but an equal turn-off for others – the same reason durian is banned from many public areas. Nevertheless, durian is a highly valued fruit in Southeast Asian countries; some even paying exorbitant prices for high-grade varieties. The durian belongs to the genus Durio, family of Malvaceae; a large family of plant species which also include hibiscus, okra etc. It is botanically known as Durio zibethinus.
- Contains high levels of tryptophan, an amino acid known to alleviate anxiety, depression, and insomnia, and create feelings of happiness, by raising levels of serotonin in the brain
- Has high B-complex groups of vitamins; such as niacin, riboflavin, pantothenic acid (vitamin B5), pyridoxine (vitamin B-6) and thiamin (vitamin B-1) – rare feature among fruits
- A good source of copper which plays a role in thyroid metabolism, especially in hormone production and absorption
- Has high calories and fibre but no cholesterol
- Said to be a powerful aphrodisiac
- Durian is also rich in potassium – a key nutrient for healthy bones
- A strong blood cleanser
- Durian is rich in vitamin C, E, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, as well as magnesium
- A good source of folate, also called vitamin B9, needed for the production of normal red blood cells
- Its high iron content helps white blood cells in our body make specific chemicals that kill-off yeast infection
- Rich in manganese which aids in regulating blood sugar level
- The durian have been compared to the goji berry for its high levels of anti-oxidants |
How to Save on School Supplies?
Just about one month left before the kids will head back to school! For some parents it’s a relief while for others it can be a truly sad moment as their youngest one is starting school this year. This means that parents will need to start shopping for school supplies really soon.
This can quickly become an expensive activity, especially when you have a lot of kids at school at the same time. Being part of a family of 4 kids, I remember this time of the year being a bit crazy for my parents when I was younger. So let’s hope this tips article will help all Canadian families to save as much as they can while shopping for school supplies this year.
Recycle & Reuse
The first thing you need to do is to build up a complete list of what you already have. This means what’s left from the previous year and what can still be used. If your kid’s backpack still looks good, why buy a new one? It is really important to be savvy-minded here and not to fall into excessive consumption. I remember that I had to keep the backpack my parents bought me during my entire high school degree. I also remember being unhappy about this at the time, but today when I think about it I know that’s the right thing to do and that’s what I’ll do with my kids as well.
The same logic should apply to any other goods you need to get for your kids: pencils, notebooks, crayolas, etc. When it comes to sport gear and equipment, a good way to save money is to buy used gear whenever it’s possible. Start asking kids’ parents in the neighbourhood that have older kids who play the same sport(s) for example. There is a big chance that some gear won’t fit anymore. You could be really surprised by the amount of money you could save by simply buying second-hand sports equipment. And at the same time you might be able to sell some old sports gear that doesn’t fit your kids anymore. Because kids are growing so fast (or changing their minds about sports) it’s normally not really worth it to buy brand new gear that is going to fit for just one year. Some stores also specialize in second-hand sports gear.
Buy Quality
When shopping for new items, always check the quality of the products. For example, even though some pencils are more expensive than others, it might be worth it to pay a bit more for one if it lasts longer instead of buying 5 cheap ones during the year because they always break. On the other hand if you know that your kid always loses a lot of stuff, then don’t bother paying for quality things as you know you will need to buy some more really quick. It could be a good idea to stock up on goods then as school supplies get more expensive during the year.
Personalize
This section is for all parents with some artistic talents or with a good printer ;) We all know that kids always want to get the notebook with the latest popular cartoon character or Disney movie drawings on the top. But these are almost always more expensive than the other plain and boring ones. A good way to save a few bucks on those is to buy the plain ones but to paste images chosen by your kid that you’ve printed yourself. That’s where Google Images become useful. And I’m sure they will be less tempted to lose their notebooks if they like them.
Shop at Different Stores
That’s probably the most important thing when it comes to saving on school supplies. First you need to check regularly stores flyers to compare prices and get a good idea of what really is a cheap price for loose sheets for example. You could be surprised to find at your local pharmacy or at Canadian Tire cheaper notebooks than the ones at Walmart. Dollar stores can also be another good option when it comes to certain school supplies. And more important, stay posted with the latest fabulous back to school promotions by follow your favorite savings blog: vouchercodes.ca !
Stockpile
School supplies are always on sale just about one to two weeks after school has started. This means that savvy moms and dads might want to stock up on certain items that are needed every year: loose sheets, binders, notebooks, pencils, etc. Normally stores have fantastic promotions on this kind of goods, so if you have the space to stockpile you might want to buy as many as you’re the promotion allow you to. No need to go crazy neither as when unused items end up in the trash, it kind of ruins all the savings you’ve made.
All these tips could seem a bit time consuming but they are not. My goal is to present you all these tips so that you know there are quick ways and habits to take that might help you to save on your school supplies purchases this year!
Let us know what you think about this article! And what are your savings tips? |
Music & Theater DepartmentView Articles
Since the beginning of time warriors have sought to reduce the stress and horrors of battle. Through the millennium the consistent methods they have chosen, not surprisingly, have been humor and song. Fighter pilots have continued that practice with enthusiasm.
Obviously, the higher the stress, the more welcome the break from that strain. Laughter is one of the great relievers of tension and uncertainty. The FU Theater Department at Fighter Pilot University has dedicated a portion of their syllabus to the humor and wit of the fighter pilot. That humor is often twisted, frequently dashed with a bit of sexism and a common air of superiority, but always a willingness to laugh at themselves.
FU Theater Department curriculum consists of two areas, jokes and cool stuff. Jokes; self-explanatory. Cool Stuff are entries submitted by the Theater Department's audio/visual unit who search the web to bring to you the funny, weird and interesting things that make fighter pilots laugh. Pretty kickass job.
The FU Music Department is continuously updating our music library. Our objective is to provide you with the lyrics and tunes to these songs so that your squadron can learn them and continue the proud tradition of fighter pilot songs. When available, each song will have an accompanying music file that will allow you to listen to an actual performance. Just click, listen and follow the written lyrics. One note, some of these songs contain words that some people may find offensive. We will provide you with an F-BOMB ALERT in those situations. We will also sanitize the written lyrics. However, if you want to hear the music file and click on the play symbol, you will hear a full-up version, offensive words and all.
If you have any songs that you want posted or music files containing a live version of any of your favorite fighter pilot songs send them to the FU Dean of Music at Jolly@fighterpilotuniversity.com.
Enjoy them and keep singing damn it!
Kickass ArticlesView Articles
Fighter pilots are doing amazing things all over the world. On these pages we're going to acknowledge some of the Kickass accomplishments that squadrons and individual fighter pilots have achieved.
Kickass is probably the ultimate compliment you can give a fighter pilot. Kickass encompasses thank you, good job, awe inspiring, well done, good on you, and shit hot. Kickass is short and to the point. Kickass acknowledges that your efforts were worthy of a fighter pilot.
German F-4F Phantom II
Photo courtesy of Thoralf Doehring
Whether it's a squadron returning from a combat location, an individual fighter pilot winning a bombing competition, a unit picnic where the fighter pilots Kickass on the maintainers in some sporting activity or any other noteworthy Kickass event, let us know through our Contact FU page. Send your pictures and your stories. We'll pop a couple of brews and read them over. If they indeed meet the standards of Kickass, we'll use them.
Fighter Pilot University Dean of Greatness
Swedish JAS 39D Gripen
Photo courtesy of Karl Drage |
Other Sightseeing Options in Cairo Region
What people are saying about Cairo Region
This was an amazing experience! Totally recommend it!
We were visiting Egypt for the first time, and no trip to Egypt is complete without a visit to the Great Pyramids!
After a lot of searching & evaluation of different options, we zeroed in on this tour, and even though this option was new, we decided to go ahead with this.
And what followed later, was purely awesome. We had an amazing day, as we got to know about the rich cultural history behind the different pyramids, courtesy our guide, Mr. Sam (Osama Nasef), who with his vast knowledge, helped us understand the beautiful history of each of the Pyramids (Including the ones at Dahshur & Saqqara). He really helped us travel through time, into the past, and helped us understand and explore so many things, which otherwise we would have clearly missed. Sam is very patient, has tremendous knowledge & is super friendly too!
We had an awesome experience in this tour, and highly recommend this.
Thank you so much! :)
PS: Sam is also an amazing photographer, do ask him to show his photos!
a fascinating full day with all aspects of Cairo covered
We were met at the hotel by our guide "Amina" her english was very good. she was extremely passionate and knowlegeable on all aspects of the tour ( she was actually a teacher of egyptology at the university showing her depth of knowledge)
After explanations of each area we were given free time to explore and take photos.
The overall tour exceeded 7hrs which made it more enjoyable
Dinner was at a local restaurant ( near sphinx) and was very filling.
The day was great value for money and I would recommend it to anyone.
The only downside was that at times with such a full agenda things appeared hurried - we wouldve liked more time in the museum.
If anyone books this tour I hope you get Amina, she was excellent and had a great sense of humour
Pyramids are not to be missed, and this tour hits all the majors!
We of course paid the extra to go in the Great Pryamid, but we even got to go inside the newly opened Bent and Red pyramids (opened July 19)! Barely any tourists in those! These were on the top of our list. Tell the guide you'd like to skip the shopping because you're there to see pyramids. Had we thought to do that earlier, we would have had time to squeeze in one more with hieroglyphics on the inside.
Over all, our guide was very knowledgeable and full of spunk. We hit all the pyramids we'd been aiming for, but it would have been more expensive to do it by ourselves from my rough math.
Great tour and very knowledgeable guide!
Our guide literally knew every single item in the museum and let us design the tour to our liking. He took us to the best local falafel place on the Bazaar and through to the best shopping area of the market. Our guide (Ali ?) spoke perfect English and he and our driver were lovely.
This was an amazing trip! Highly recommend it!
Amina is an excellent tour guide. She is very knowledgeable about the history of Egypt and the pyramids. Faris the drive was very nice and courteous. He drove very smoothly. Both Amina and Faris were very courteous, punctual and easy to chat with. I highly recommend this trip! |
PartyPoker have recently made another step toward competitous fight for the lead in the modern online poker. It is connected with local Spins analogue – SnG Jackpot.
Party have embraced one of their best new poker formats – lottery SnG tournaments with Jackpot in spring 2016. The poker room have decided to be creative and Sit & Go HERO, new to the lobby, weren’t like any similar tournaments in different rooms. They had 4-max format and one of the player at the table was randomly selected for the bounty.
Such an approach from PartyPoker wasn’t really supported by the players. Sit & Go HERO didn’t gain too much popularity. Currently they are only available at three stakes with maximal buy-in of twenty dollars.
Part have reacted fast to the absence of interest of the players to 4-max tournaments and in less that a year new tournaments were added to the poker client – SnG Jackpot in a classic format for this type of tournaments – 3-max.
In a rather fast time the line of stakes of SnG Jackpot grew to eight stakes from 25 cents to $100. Now PartyPoker have become the second poker room in history with more expensive pins stakes of $250 and $500.
MAximal multipliers are х4,800 and х2,400, so the biggest possible win is the same as for the stakes of $100 – one mo;;opm twenty thousand dollars. There is a curious probability distribution of other multipliers:
- 2х – 68,7238% and 68,6038%;
- 4х – 22,6631% and 22,7831%
This is 0.5% less that at stakes of $100. This half of a percent was added to x10 multiplier, so the probability of its appearance grew up twice in comparison with stakes of $100.
The biggest news for SnG Jackpot of $250 a d $500 is rake of mere 4%. This is the lowest sum for all such tournaments in all the rooms. We can see that such rake with an opportunity to receive up to 40% rakeback is able to attract to these stakes some regulars from high stakes spins from the other poker rooms. Firstly, the traffic is expected from PokerStars where the same stakes have 5% rake a d rakeback is almost non-existent with several percent.
Will new stakes attract amateurs – it remains to be seen. As well as the other question – will SNG Jackpot $250 and $500 have enough traffic and are the regulars comfortable with such a huge number of players of the same class at the tables of these stakes?i
We can say without a doubt that after embracing a rather expensive cash game, these high stakes spins will bring new benefits to PartyPoker. We are left to see more active actions from the room on attracting to tabes not just regulars, but also amateurs. |
{
"name" : "362.pdf",
"metadata" : {
"source" : "CRF",
"title" : null,
"authors" : [ ],
"emails" : [ "ke.li@eecs.berkeley.edu", "malik@eecs.berkeley.edu" ],
"sections" : [ {
"heading" : "1 INTRODUCTION",
"text" : "Continuous optimization algorithms are some of the most ubiquitous tools used in virtually all areas of science and engineering. Indeed, they are the workhorse of machine learning and power most learning algorithms. Consequently, optimization difficulties become learning challenges – because their causes are often not well understood, they are one of the most vexing issues that arise in practice. One solution is to design better optimization algorithms that are immune to these failure cases. This requires careful analysis of existing optimization algorithms and clever solutions to overcome their weaknesses; thus, doing so is both laborious and time-consuming. Is there a better way? If the mantra of machine learning is to learn what is traditionally manually designed, why not take it a step further and learn the optimization algorithm itself?\nConsider the general structure of an algorithm for unconstrained continuous optimization, which is outlined in Algorithm 1. Starting from a random location in the domain of the objective function, the algorithm iteratively updates the current iterate by a step vector ∆x computed from some functional π of the objective function, the current iterate and past iterates.\nAlgorithm 1 General structure of unconstrained optimization algorithms Require: Objective function f x(0) ← random point in the domain of f for i = 1, 2, . . . do\n∆x← π(f, {x(0), . . . , x(i−1)}) if stopping condition is met then\nreturn x(i−1) end if x(i) ← x(i−1) + ∆x\nend for\nDifferent optimization algorithms only differ in the choice of the update formula π. Examples of existing optimization algorithms and their corresponding update formulas are shown in Table 1.\nIf we can learn π, we will be able to learn an optimization algorithm. Since it is difficult to model general functionals, in practice, we restrict the dependence of π on the objective function f to objective values and gradients evaluated at current and past iterates. Hence, π can be simply modelled as a function from the objective values and gradients along the trajectory taken by the optimizer so far\nto the next step vector. If we model π with a universal function approximator like a neural net, it is then possible to search over the space of optimization algorithms by learning the parameters of the neural net. We formulate this as a reinforcement learning problem, where any particular optimization algorithm simply corresponds to a policy. Learning an optimization algorithm then reduces to finding an optimal policy. For this purpose, we use an off-the-shelf reinforcement learning algorithm known as guided policy search (Levine & Abbeel, 2014), which has demonstrated success in a variety of robotic control settings (Levine et al., 2015a; Finn et al., 2015; Levine et al., 2015b; Han et al., 2015).\nOur goal is to learn about regularities in the geometry of the error surface induced by a class of objective functions of interest and exploit this knowledge to optimize the class of objective functions faster. This is potentially advantageous, since the learned optimizer is trained on the actual objective functions that arise in practice, whereas hand-engineered optimizers are often analyzed in the convex setting and applied to the non-convex setting."
}, {
"heading" : "1.1 LEARNING HOW TO LEARN",
"text" : "When the objective functions under consideration correspond to loss functions for training a model, the proposed framework effectively learns how to learn. The loss function for training a model on a particular task/dataset is a particular objective function, and so the loss on many tasks corresponds to a set of objective functions. We can train an optimizer on this set of objective functions, which can hopefully learn to exploit regularities of the model and train it faster irrespective of the task. As a concrete example, if the model is a neural net with ReLU activations, our goal is to learn an optimizer that can leverage the piecewise linearity of the model.\nWe evaluate the learned optimizer on its ability to generalize to unseen objective functions. Akin to the supervised learning paradigm, we divide the dataset of objective functions into training and test sets. At test time, the learned optimizer can be used stand-alone and functions exactly like a hand-engineered optimizer, except that the update formula is replaced with a neural net and no hyperparameters like step size or momentum need to be specified by the user. In particular, it does not perform multiple trials on the same objective function at test time, unlike hyperparameter optimization. Since different objective functions correspond to the loss for training a model on different tasks, the optimizer is effectively asked to train on its experience of learning on some tasks and generalize to other possibly unrelated tasks. It is therefore critical to ensure that the optimizer does not learn anything about particular tasks; this would be considered as overfitting under this setting. Notably, this goal is different from the line of work on “learning to learn” or “meta-learning”, whose goal is to learn something about a family of tasks. To prevent overfitting to particular tasks, we train the optimizer to learn on randomly generated tasks."
}, {
"heading" : "2 RELATED WORK",
"text" : ""
}, {
"heading" : "2.1 META-LEARNING",
"text" : "When the objective functions optimized by the learned optimizer correspond to loss functions for training a model, learning the optimizer can be viewed as learning how to learn. This theme of learning about learning itself has been explored and is referred to as “learning to learn” or “meta-\nlearning” (Baxter et al., 1995; Vilalta & Drissi, 2002; Brazdil et al., 2008; Thrun & Pratt, 2012). Various authors have used the term in different ways and there is no consensus on its precise definition. While there is agreement on what kinds of knowledge should be learned at the base-level, it is less clear what kinds of meta-knowledge should be learned at the meta-level. We briefly summarize the various perspectives that have been presented below.\nOne form of meta-knowledge is the commonalities across a family of related tasks (Abu-Mostafa, 1993). Under this framework, the goal of the meta-learner is to learn about such commonalities, so that given the learned commonalities, base-level learning on new tasks from the family can be performed faster. This line of work is often better known as transfer learning and multi-task learning.\nA different approach (Brazdil et al., 2003) is to learn how to select the base-level learner that achieves the best performance for a given task. Under this setting, the meta-knowledge is the correlation between properties of tasks and the performance of different base-level learners trained on them. There are two challenges associated with this approach: the need to devise meta-features on tasks that capture similarity between different tasks, and the need to parameterize the space of base-level learners to make search in this space tractable.\nSchmidhuber (2004) proposes representing base-level learners as general-purpose programs, that is, sequences of primitive operations. While such a representation can in principle encode all base-level learners, searching in this space takes exponential time in the length of the target program.\nThe proposed method differs from these lines in work in several important ways. First, the proposed method learns regularities in the optimization/learning process itself, rather than regularities that are shared by different tasks or regularities in the mapping between tasks and best-performing base-level learners. More concretely, the meta-knowledge in the proposed framework can capture regularities in the error surface. Second, unlike the approaches above, we explicitly aim to avoid capturing any regularities about the task. Under the proposed framework, only model-specific regularities are captured at the meta-level, while task-specific regularities are captured at the base-level."
}, {
"heading" : "2.2 PROGRAM INDUCTION",
"text" : "Because the proposed method learns an algorithm, it is related to program induction, which considers the problem of learning programs from examples of input and output. Several different approaches have been proposed: genetic programming (Cramer, 1985) represents programs as abstract syntax trees and evolves them using genetic algorithms, Liang et al. (2010) represents programs explicitly using a formal language, constructs a hierarchical Bayesian prior over programs and performs inference using an MCMC sampling procedure and Graves et al. (2014) represents programs implicitly as sequences of memory access operations and trains a recurrent neural net to learn the underlying patterns in the memory access operations. Hochreiter et al. (2001) considers the special case of online learning algorithms, each of which is represented as a recurrent neural net with a particular setting of weights, and learns the online learning algorithm by learning the neural net weights. While the program/algorithm improves as training progresses, the algorithms learned using these methods have not been able to match the performance of simple hand-engineered algorithms. In contrast, our aim is learn an algorithm that is better than known hand-engineered algorithms."
}, {
"heading" : "2.3 HYPERPARAMETER OPTIMIZATION",
"text" : "There is a large body of work on hyperparameter optimization, which studies the optimization of hyperparameters used to train a model, such as the learning rate, the momentum decay factor and regularization parameters. Most methods (Hutter et al., 2011; Bergstra et al., 2011; Snoek et al., 2012; Swersky et al., 2013; Feurer et al., 2015) rely on sequential model-based Bayesian optimization (Mockus et al., 1978; Brochu et al., 2010), while others adopt a random search approach (Bergstra & Bengio, 2012) or use gradient-based optimization (Bengio, 2000; Domke, 2012; Maclaurin et al., 2015). Because each hyperparameter setting corresponds to a particular instantiation of an optimization algorithm, these methods can be viewed as a way to search over different instantiations of the same optimization algorithm. The proposed method, on the other hand, can search over a larger space of possible optimization algorithms. In addition, as noted previously, when presented with a new objective function at test time, the learned optimizer does not need to conduct multiple trials with different hyperparameter settings."
}, {
"heading" : "2.4 SPECIAL CASES AND OTHER RELATED WORK",
"text" : "Work on online hyperparameter adaptation studies ways to choose the step size or other hyperparameters adaptively while performing optimization. Stochastic meta-descent (Bray et al., 2004) derives a rule for adaptively choosing the step size, Ruvolo et al. (2009) learns a policy for picking the damping factor in the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm and recent work (Hansen, 2016; Daniel et al., 2016; Fu et al., 2016) explores learning a policy for choosing the step size. Unlike this line of work, the proposed method learns a policy for choosing the step direction as well as step size, thereby making it possible to learn a new optimization algorithm that is different from known algorithms. A different line of work (Gregor & LeCun, 2010; Sprechmann et al., 2013) explores learning special-purpose solvers for a class of optimization problems that arise in sparse coding.\nWork that appeared on ArXiv after this paper (Andrychowicz et al., 2016) explores a similar theme under a different setting, where the goal is learn a task-dependent optimization algorithm. The optimizer is trained from the experience of training on a particular task or family of tasks and is evaluated on its ability to train on the same task or family of tasks. Under this setting, the optimizer learns regularities about the task itself rather than regularities of the model in general."
}, {
"heading" : "3 BACKGROUND ON REINFORCEMENT LEARNING",
"text" : ""
}, {
"heading" : "3.1 MARKOV DECISION PROCESS",
"text" : "In the reinforcement learning setting, the learner is given a choice of actions to take in each time step, which changes the state of the environment in an unknown fashion, and receives feedback based on the consequence of the action. The feedback is typically given in the form of a reward or cost, and the objective of the learner is to choose a sequence of actions based on observations of the current environment that maximizes cumulative reward or minimizes cumulative cost over all time steps.\nMore formally, a reinforcement learning problem can be characterized by a Markov decision process (MDP). We consider an undiscounted finite-horizon MDP with continuous state and action spaces defined by the tuple (S,A, p0, p, c, T ), where S ⊆ RD is the set of states, A ⊆ Rd is the set of actions, p0 : S → R+ is the probability density over initial states, p : S × A × S → R+ is the transition probability density, that is, the conditional probability density over successor states given the current state and action, c : S → R is a function that maps state to cost and T is the time horizon. A policy π : S × A × {0, . . . , T − 1} → R+ is a conditional probability density over actions given the state at each time step. When a policy is independent of the time step, it is referred to as stationary."
}, {
"heading" : "3.2 POLICY SEARCH",
"text" : "This problem of finding the cost-minimizing policy is known as the policy search problem. More precisely, the objective is to find a policy π∗ such that\nπ∗ = arg min π Es0,a0,s1,...,sT [ T∑ t=0 c(st) ] ,\nwhere the expectation is taken with respect to the joint distribution over the sequence of states and actions, often referred to as a trajectory, which has the density\nq (s0, a0, s1, . . . , sT ) = p0 (s0) T−1∏ t=0 π (at| st, t) p (st+1| st, at) .\nTo enable generalization to unseen states, the policy is typically parameterized and minimization is performed over representable policies. Solving this problem exactly is intractable in all but selected special cases. Therefore, policy search methods generally tackle this problem by solving it approximately. In addition, the transition probability density p is typically not known, but may be accessed via sampling."
}, {
"heading" : "3.3 GUIDED POLICY SEARCH",
"text" : "Guided policy search (GPS) (Levine & Abbeel, 2014) is a method for searching over expressive non-linear policy classes in continuous state and action spaces. It works by alternating between computing a mixture of target trajectories and training the policy to replicate them. Successive iterations locally improve target trajectories while ensuring proximity to behaviours that are reproducible by the policy. Target trajectories are computed by fitting local approximations to the cost and transition probability density and optimizing over a restricted class of time-varying linear target policies subject to a trust region constraint. The stationary non-linear policy is trained to minimize the squared Mahalanobis distance between the predicted and target actions at each time step.\nMore precisely, GPS works by solving the following constrained optimization problem:\nmin θ,η\nEψ [ T∑ t=0 c(st) ] s.t. ψ (at| st, t; η) = π (at| st; θ) ∀at, st, t,\nwhere ψ denotes the time-varying target policy, π denotes the stationary non-linear policy, and Eψ [·] denotes the expectation taken with respect to the trajectory induced by the target policy ψ. ψ is assumed to be conditionally Gaussian whose mean is linear in st and π is assumed to be conditionally Gaussian whose mean could be an arbitrary function of st. To solve this problem, the equality constraint is relaxed and replaced with a penalty on the KL-divergence between ψ and π. Different flavours of GPS (Levine & Abbeel, 2014; Levine et al., 2015a) use different constrained optimization methods, which all involve alternating between optimizing the parameters of ψ and π.\nFor updating ψ, GPS first builds a model p̃ of the transition probability density p of the form p̃ (st+1| st, at, t) := N (Atst + Btat + ct, Ft)1, where At, Bt and ct are parameters estimated from samples drawn from the trajectory induced by the existing ψ. It also computes local quadratic approximations to the cost, so that c(st) ≈ 12s T t Ctst + d T t st + ht for st’s that are near the samples. It then solves the following:\nmin Kt,kt,Gt Eψ̃ [ T∑ t=0 1 2 sTt Ctst + d T t st ]\ns.t. T∑ t=0 DKL (p (st)ψ ( ·| st, t; η)‖ p (st)ψ ( ·| st, t; η′)) ≤ ,\nwhere Eψ̃ [·] denotes the expectation taken with respect to the trajectory induced by the target policy ψ if states transition according to the model p̃. Kt, kt, Gt are the parameters of ψ (at| st, t; η) := N (Ktst + kt, Gt) and η′ denotes the parameters of the previous target policy. It turns out that this optimization problem can be solved in closed form using a dynamic programming algorithm known as linear-quadratic-Gaussian regulator (LQG).\nFor updating π, GPS minimizes DKL (p (st)π ( ·| st)‖ p (st)ψ ( ·| st, t)). Assuming fixed covariance and omitting dual variables, this corresponds to minimizing the following:\nEψ [ T∑ t=0 (Eπ [at| st]− Eψ [at| st, t])T G−1t (Eπ [at| st]− Eψ [at| st, t]) ] ,\nwhere Eπ [·] denotes the expectation taken with respect to the trajectory induced by the non-linear policy π. We refer interested readers to (Levine & Abbeel, 2014) and (Levine et al., 2015a) for details."
}, {
"heading" : "4 FORMULATION",
"text" : "We observe that the execution of an optimization algorithm can be viewed as the execution of a particular policy in an MDP: the state consists of the current iterate and the objective values and gradients evaluated at the current and past iterates, the action is the step vector that is used to update\n1In a slight abuse of notation, we use N (µ,Σ) to denote the density of a Gaussian distribution with mean µ and covariance Σ.\nthe current iterate, and the transition probability is partially characterized by the update formula, x(i) ← x(i−1) + ∆x. The policy that is executed corresponds precisely to the choice of π used by the optimization algorithm. For this reason, we will also use π to denote the policy at hand. Under this formulation, searching over policies corresponds to searching over possible optimization algorithms.\nTo learn π, we need to define the cost function, which should penalize policies that exhibit undesirable behaviours during their execution. Since the performance metric of interest for optimization algorithms is the speed of convergence, the cost function should penalize policies that converge slowly. To this end, assuming the goal is to minimize the objective function, we define cost at a state to be the objective value at the current iterate. This encourages the policy to reach the minimum of the objective function as quickly as possible. We choose to parameterize the mean of π using a neural net, due to its appealing properties as a universal function approximator and strong empirical performance in a variety of applications. We use GPS to learn π."
}, {
"heading" : "5 IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS",
"text" : "We store the current iterate, previous gradients and improvements in the objective value from previous iterations in the state. We keep track of only the information pertaining to the previous H time steps and use H = 25 in our experiments. More specifically, the dimensions of the state space encode the following information:\n• Current iterate\n• Change in the objective value at the current iterate relative to the objective value at the ith most recent iterate for all i ∈ {2, . . . ,H + 1}\n• Gradient of the objective function evaluated at the ith most recent iterate for all i ∈ {2, . . . ,H + 1}\nInitially, we set the dimensions corresponding to historical information to zero. The current iterate is only used to compute the cost; because the policy should not depend on the absolute coordinates of the current iterate, we exclude it from the input that is fed into the neural net.\nWe use a small neural net with a single hidden layer of 50 hidden units to model the mean of π. Softplus activation units are used at the hidden layer and linear activation units are used at the output layer. We initialize the weights of the neural net randomly and do not regularize the magnitude of weights.\nInitially, we set the target trajectory distribution so that the mean action given state at each time step matches the step vector used by the gradient descent method with momentum. We choose the best settings of the step size and momentum decay factor for each objective function in the training set by performing a grid search over hyperparameters and running noiseless gradient descent with momentum for each hyperparameter setting. We use a mixture of 10 Gaussians as a prior for fitting the parameters of the transition probability density.\nFor training, we sample 20 trajectories with a length of 40 time steps for each objective function in the training set. After each iteration of guided policy search, we sample new trajectories from the new distribution and discard the trajectories from the preceding iteration."
}, {
"heading" : "6 EXPERIMENTS",
"text" : "We learn optimization algorithms for various convex and non-convex classes of objective functions that correspond to loss functions for different machine learning models. We learn an optimizer for logistic regression, robust linear regression using the Geman-McClure M-estimator and a twolayer neural net classifier with ReLU activation units. The geometry of the error surface becomes progressively more complex: the loss for logistic regression is convex, the loss for robust linear regression is non-convex, and the loss for the neural net has many local minima."
}, {
"heading" : "6.1 LOGISTIC REGRESSION",
"text" : "We consider a logistic regression model with an `2 regularizer on the weight vector. Training the model requires optimizing the following objective:\nmin w,b − 1 n n∑ i=1 yi log σ ( wTxi + b ) + (1− yi) log ( 1− σ ( wTxi + b )) + λ 2 ‖w‖22 ,\nwhere w ∈ Rd and b ∈ R denote the weight vector and bias respectively, xi ∈ Rd and yi ∈ {0, 1} denote the feature vector and label of the ith instance, λ denotes the coefficient on the regularizer and σ(z) := 11+e−z . For our experiments, we choose λ = 0.0005 and d = 3. This objective is convex in w and b.\nWe train an algorithm for optimizing objectives of this form. Different examples in the training set correspond to such objective functions with different instantiations of the free variables, which in this case are xi and yi. Hence, each objective function in the training set corresponds to a logistic regression problem on a different dataset.\nTo construct the training set, we randomly generate a dataset of 100 instances for each function in the training set. The instances are drawn randomly from two multivariate Gaussians with random means and covariances, with half drawn from each. Instances from the same Gaussian are assigned the same label and instances from different Gaussians are assigned different labels.\nWe train the optimizer on a set of 90 objective functions. We evaluate it on a test set of 100 random objective functions generated using the same procedure and compare to popular hand-engineered algorithms, such as gradient descent, momentum, conjugate gradient and L-BFGS. All baselines are run with the best hyperparameter settings tuned on the training set.\nFor each algorithm and objective function in the test set, we compute the difference between the objective value achieved by a given algorithm and that achieved by the best of the competing algorithms at every iteration, a quantity we will refer to as “the margin of victory”. This quantity is positive when the current algorithm is better than all other algorithms and negative otherwise. In Figure 1a, we plot the mean margin of victory of each algorithm at each iteration averaged over all objective functions in the test set.\nAs shown, the learned optimizer, which we will henceforth refer to as “predicted step descent”, outperforms gradient descent, momentum and conjugate gradient at almost every iteration. The margin of victory for predicted step descent is high in early iterations, indicating that it converges much faster than other algorithms. It is interesting to note that despite having seen only trajectories of length 40 at training time, the learned optimizer is able to generalize to much longer time horizons at test time. L-BFGS converges to slightly better optima than predicted step descent and the momentum method. This is not surprising, as the objective functions are convex and L-BFGS is known to be a very good optimizer for convex problems.\nWe show the performance of each algorithm on two objective functions from the test set in Figures 1b and 1c. In Figure 1b, predicted step descent converges faster than all other algorithms. In Figure 1c, predicted step descent initially converges faster than all other algorithms but is later overtaken by L-BFGS, while remaining faster than all other optimizers. However, it eventually achieves the same objective value as L-BFGS, while the objective values achieved by gradient descent and momentum remain much higher."
}, {
"heading" : "6.2 ROBUST LINEAR REGRESSION",
"text" : "Next, we consider the problem of linear regression using a robust loss function. One way to ensure robustness is to use an M-estimator for parameter estimation. A popular choice is the GemanMcClure estimator, which induces the following objective:\nmin w,b\n1\nn n∑ i=1\n( yi −wTxi − b )2 c2 + (yi −wTxi − b)2 ,\nwhere w ∈ Rd and b ∈ R denote the weight vector and bias respectively, xi ∈ Rd and yi ∈ R denote the feature vector and label of the ith instance and c ∈ R is a constant that modulates the shape of the loss function. For our experiments, we use c = 1 and d = 3. This loss function is not convex in either w or b.\nAs with the preceding section, each objective function in the training set is a function of the above form with a particular instantiation of xi and yi. The dataset for each objective function is generated by drawing 25 random samples from each one of four multivariate Gaussians, each of which has a random mean and the identity covariance matrix. For all points drawn from the same Gaussian, their labels are generated by projecting them along the same random vector, adding the same randomly generated bias and perturbing them with i.i.d. Gaussian noise.\nThe optimizer is trained on a set of 120 objective functions. We evaluate it on 100 randomly generated objective functions using the same metric as above. As shown in Figure 2a, predicted step descent outperforms all hand-engineered algorithms except at early iterations. While it dominates gradient descent, conjugate gradient and L-BFGS at all times, it does not make progress as quickly as the momentum method initially. However, after around 30 iterations, it is able to close the gap and surpass the momentum method. On this optimization problem, both conjugate gradient and L-BFGS diverge quickly. Interestingly, unlike in the previous experiment, L-BFGS no longer performs well, which could be caused by non-convexity of the objective functions.\nFigures 2b and 2c show performance on objective functions from the test set. In Figure 2b, predicted step descent not only converges the fastest, but also reaches a better optimum than all other algorithms. In Figure 2c, predicted step descent converges the fastest and is able to avoid most of the oscillations that hamper gradient descent and momentum after reaching the optimum."
}, {
"heading" : "6.3 NEURAL NET CLASSIFIER",
"text" : "Finally, we train an optimizer to train a small neural net classifier. We consider a two-layer neural net with ReLU activation on the hidden units and softmax activation on the output units. We use the cross-entropy loss combined with `2 regularization on the weights. To train the model, we need to optimize the following objective:\nmin W,U,b,c − 1 n n∑ i=1 log\n exp ( (U max (Wxi + b, 0) + c)yi ) ∑ j exp ( (U max (Wxi + b, 0) + c)j ) + λ 2 ‖W‖2F + λ 2 ‖U‖2F ,\nwhere W ∈ Rh×d, b ∈ Rh, U ∈ Rp×h, c ∈ Rp denote the first-layer and second-layer weights and biases, xi ∈ Rd and yi ∈ {1, . . . , p} denote the input and target class label of the ith instance, λ denotes the coefficient on regularizers and (v)j denotes the j\nth component of v. For our experiments, we use λ = 0.0005 and d = h = p = 2. The error surface is known to have complex geometry and multiple local optima, making this a challenging optimization problem.\nThe training set consists of 80 objective functions, each of which corresponds to the objective for training a neural net on a different dataset. Each dataset is generated by generating four multivariate Gaussians with random means and covariances and sampling 25 points from each. The points from the same Gaussian are assigned the same random label of either 0 or 1. We make sure not all of the points in the dataset are assigned the same label.\nWe evaluate the learned optimizer in the same manner as above. As shown in Figure 3a, predicted step descent significantly outperforms all other algorithms. In particular, as evidenced by the sizeable and sustained gap between margin of victory for predicted step descent and the momentum method, predicted step descent is able to reach much better optima and is less prone to getting trapped in local optima compared to other methods. This gap is also larger compared to that exhibited in previous sections, suggesting that hand-engineered algorithms are more sub-optimal on challenging optimization problems and so the potential for improvement from learning the algorithm is greater in such settings. Due to non-convexity, conjugate gradient and L-BFGS often diverge.\nPerformance on examples of objective functions from the test set is shown in Figures 3b and 3c. As shown, predicted step descent is able to reach better optima than all other methods and largely avoids oscillations that other methods suffer from."
}, {
"heading" : "6.4 VISUALIZATION OF OPTIMIZATION TRAJECTORIES",
"text" : "We visualize optimization trajectories followed by the learned algorithm and various handengineered algorithms to gain further insights into the behaviour of the learned algorithm. We generated random two-dimensional logistic regression problems and plot trajectories followed by different algorithms on each problem in Figure 4.\nAs shown, the learned algorithm exhibits some interesting behaviours. In Figure 4a, the learned algorithm does not take as large a step as L-BFGS initially, but takes larger steps than L-BFGS later on as it approaches the optimum. In other words, the learned algorithm appears to be not as greedy as L-BFGS. In Figures 4b and 4d, the learned algorithm initially overshoots, but appears to have learned how to recover while avoiding oscillations. In Figure 4c, the learned algorithm is able to make rapid progress despite vanishing gradients."
}, {
"heading" : "7 CONCLUSION",
"text" : "We presented a method for learning a better optimization algorithm. We formulated this as a reinforcement learning problem, in which any particular optimization algorithm can be represented as a policy. Learning an optimization algorithm then reduces to find the optimal policy. We used guided policy search for this purpose and trained optimizers for different classes of convex and non-convex objective functions. We demonstrated that the learned optimizer converges faster and/or reaches better optima than hand-engineered optimizers. We hope optimizers learned using the proposed approach can be used to solve various common classes of optimization problems more quickly and help accelerate the pace of research in science and engineering."
}, {
"heading" : "ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS",
"text" : "This work was supported by ONR MURI N00014-14-1-0671. Ke Li thanks the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for fellowship support. The authors also thank Chelsea Finn for code and Pieter Abbeel, Sandy Huang and Zoe McCarthy for feedback. This research used the Savio computational cluster resource provided by the Berkeley Research Computing program at the University of California, Berkeley (supported by the UC Berkeley Chancellor, Vice Chancellor for Research, and Chief Information Officer)."
}, {
"heading" : "8 APPENDIX",
"text" : ""
}, {
"heading" : "8.1 TRANSFER TO OBJECTIVE FUNCTIONS DRAWN FROM DIFFERENT DISTRIBUTIONS",
"text" : "We evaluate the learned neural net optimizer, which is trained on neural net classification problems on data drawn from mixtures of four random Gaussians, on neural net classification problems on data drawn from mixtures of different numbers of random Gaussians. As the number of mixture components increases, the data distributions used at test time become more dissimilar from those seen during training. As shown in Figures 5, the learned optimizer seems to be fairly robust and performs reasonably well despite deviations of data distributions from those used for training."
} ],
"references" : [ {
"title" : "A method for learning from hints",
"author" : [ "Yaser S Abu-Mostafa" ],
"venue" : "In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, pp",
"citeRegEx" : "Abu.Mostafa.,? \\Q1993\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Abu.Mostafa.",
"year" : 1993
}, {
"title" : "Learning to learn by gradient descent by gradient descent",
"author" : [ "Marcin Andrychowicz", "Misha Denil", "Sergio Gomez", "Matthew W Hoffman", "David Pfau", "Tom Schaul", "Nando de Freitas" ],
"venue" : "arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.04474,",
"citeRegEx" : "Andrychowicz et al\\.,? \\Q2016\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Andrychowicz et al\\.",
"year" : 2016
}, {
"title" : "NIPS 1995 workshop on learning to learn: Knowledge consolidation and transfer in inductive systems",
"author" : [ "Jonathan Baxter", "Rich Caruana", "Tom Mitchell", "Lorien Y Pratt", "Daniel L Silver", "Sebastian Thrun" ],
"venue" : "https://web.archive.org/web/20000618135816/http://www. cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/caruana/pub/transfer.html,",
"citeRegEx" : "Baxter et al\\.,? \\Q1995\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Baxter et al\\.",
"year" : 1995
}, {
"title" : "Gradient-based optimization of hyperparameters",
"author" : [ "Yoshua Bengio" ],
"venue" : "Neural computation,",
"citeRegEx" : "Bengio.,? \\Q1900\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Bengio.",
"year" : 1900
}, {
"title" : "Random search for hyper-parameter optimization",
"author" : [ "James Bergstra", "Yoshua Bengio" ],
"venue" : "The Journal of Machine Learning Research,",
"citeRegEx" : "Bergstra and Bengio.,? \\Q2012\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Bergstra and Bengio.",
"year" : 2012
}, {
"title" : "Algorithms for hyper-parameter optimization",
"author" : [ "James S Bergstra", "Rémi Bardenet", "Yoshua Bengio", "Balázs Kégl" ],
"venue" : "In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems,",
"citeRegEx" : "Bergstra et al\\.,? \\Q2011\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Bergstra et al\\.",
"year" : 2011
}, {
"title" : "3d hand tracking by rapid stochastic gradient descent using a skinning model",
"author" : [ "Matthieu Bray", "Esther Koller-meier", "Pascal Müller", "Luc Van Gool", "Nicol N Schraudolph" ],
"venue" : "In 1st European Conference on Visual Media Production (CVMP). Citeseer,",
"citeRegEx" : "Bray et al\\.,? \\Q2004\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Bray et al\\.",
"year" : 2004
}, {
"title" : "Metalearning: applications to data mining",
"author" : [ "Pavel Brazdil", "Christophe Giraud Carrier", "Carlos Soares", "Ricardo Vilalta" ],
"venue" : "Springer Science & Business Media,",
"citeRegEx" : "Brazdil et al\\.,? \\Q2008\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Brazdil et al\\.",
"year" : 2008
}, {
"title" : "Ranking learning algorithms: Using ibl and meta-learning on accuracy and time results",
"author" : [ "Pavel B Brazdil", "Carlos Soares", "Joaquim Pinto Da Costa" ],
"venue" : "Machine Learning,",
"citeRegEx" : "Brazdil et al\\.,? \\Q2003\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Brazdil et al\\.",
"year" : 2003
}, {
"title" : "A tutorial on bayesian optimization of expensive cost functions, with application to active user modeling and hierarchical reinforcement learning",
"author" : [ "Eric Brochu", "Vlad M Cora", "Nando De Freitas" ],
"venue" : "arXiv preprint arXiv:1012.2599,",
"citeRegEx" : "Brochu et al\\.,? \\Q2010\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Brochu et al\\.",
"year" : 2010
}, {
"title" : "A representation for the adaptive generation of simple sequential programs",
"author" : [ "Nichael Lynn Cramer" ],
"venue" : "In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Genetic Algorithms,",
"citeRegEx" : "Cramer.,? \\Q1985\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Cramer.",
"year" : 1985
}, {
"title" : "Learning step size controllers for robust neural network training",
"author" : [ "Christian Daniel", "Jonathan Taylor", "Sebastian Nowozin" ],
"venue" : "In Thirtieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence,",
"citeRegEx" : "Daniel et al\\.,? \\Q2016\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Daniel et al\\.",
"year" : 2016
}, {
"title" : "Generic methods for optimization-based modeling",
"author" : [ "Justin Domke" ],
"venue" : "In AISTATS,",
"citeRegEx" : "Domke.,? \\Q2012\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Domke.",
"year" : 2012
}, {
"title" : "Initializing bayesian hyperparameter optimization via meta-learning",
"author" : [ "Matthias Feurer", "Jost Tobias Springenberg", "Frank Hutter" ],
"venue" : "In AAAI,",
"citeRegEx" : "Feurer et al\\.,? \\Q2015\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Feurer et al\\.",
"year" : 2015
}, {
"title" : "Learning visual feature spaces for robotic manipulation with deep spatial autoencoders",
"author" : [ "Chelsea Finn", "Xin Yu Tan", "Yan Duan", "Trevor Darrell", "Sergey Levine", "Pieter Abbeel" ],
"venue" : "arXiv preprint arXiv:1509.06113,",
"citeRegEx" : "Finn et al\\.,? \\Q2015\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Finn et al\\.",
"year" : 2015
}, {
"title" : "Deep q-networks for accelerating the training of deep neural networks",
"author" : [ "Jie Fu", "Zichuan Lin", "Miao Liu", "Nicholas Leonard", "Jiashi Feng", "Tat-Seng Chua" ],
"venue" : "arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.01467,",
"citeRegEx" : "Fu et al\\.,? \\Q2016\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Fu et al\\.",
"year" : 2016
}, {
"title" : "Learning fast approximations of sparse coding",
"author" : [ "Karol Gregor", "Yann LeCun" ],
"venue" : "In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Machine Learning",
"citeRegEx" : "Gregor and LeCun.,? \\Q2010\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Gregor and LeCun.",
"year" : 2010
}, {
"title" : "Learning compound multi-step controllers under unknown dynamics",
"author" : [ "Weiqiao Han", "Sergey Levine", "Pieter Abbeel" ],
"venue" : "In International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems,",
"citeRegEx" : "Han et al\\.,? \\Q2015\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Han et al\\.",
"year" : 2015
}, {
"title" : "Using deep q-learning to control optimization hyperparameters",
"author" : [ "Samantha Hansen" ],
"venue" : "arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.04062,",
"citeRegEx" : "Hansen.,? \\Q2016\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Hansen.",
"year" : 2016
}, {
"title" : "Learning to learn using gradient descent",
"author" : [ "Sepp Hochreiter", "A Steven Younger", "Peter R Conwell" ],
"venue" : "In International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks,",
"citeRegEx" : "Hochreiter et al\\.,? \\Q2001\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Hochreiter et al\\.",
"year" : 2001
}, {
"title" : "Sequential model-based optimization for general algorithm configuration",
"author" : [ "Frank Hutter", "Holger H Hoos", "Kevin Leyton-Brown" ],
"venue" : "In Learning and Intelligent Optimization,",
"citeRegEx" : "Hutter et al\\.,? \\Q2011\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Hutter et al\\.",
"year" : 2011
}, {
"title" : "Learning neural network policies with guided policy search under unknown dynamics",
"author" : [ "Sergey Levine", "Pieter Abbeel" ],
"venue" : "In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems,",
"citeRegEx" : "Levine and Abbeel.,? \\Q2014\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Levine and Abbeel.",
"year" : 2014
}, {
"title" : "End-to-end training of deep visuomotor policies",
"author" : [ "Sergey Levine", "Chelsea Finn", "Trevor Darrell", "Pieter Abbeel" ],
"venue" : "arXiv preprint arXiv:1504.00702,",
"citeRegEx" : "Levine et al\\.,? \\Q2015\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Levine et al\\.",
"year" : 2015
}, {
"title" : "Learning contact-rich manipulation skills with guided policy search",
"author" : [ "Sergey Levine", "Nolan Wagener", "Pieter Abbeel" ],
"venue" : "arXiv preprint arXiv:1501.05611,",
"citeRegEx" : "Levine et al\\.,? \\Q2015\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Levine et al\\.",
"year" : 2015
}, {
"title" : "Learning programs: A hierarchical Bayesian approach",
"author" : [ "Percy Liang", "Michael I Jordan", "Dan Klein" ],
"venue" : "In Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Machine Learning",
"citeRegEx" : "Liang et al\\.,? \\Q2010\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Liang et al\\.",
"year" : 2010
}, {
"title" : "Gradient-based hyperparameter optimization through reversible learning",
"author" : [ "Dougal Maclaurin", "David Duvenaud", "Ryan P Adams" ],
"venue" : "arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.03492,",
"citeRegEx" : "Maclaurin et al\\.,? \\Q2015\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Maclaurin et al\\.",
"year" : 2015
}, {
"title" : "The application of bayesian methods for seeking the extremum",
"author" : [ "Jonas Mockus", "Vytautas Tiesis", "Antanas Zilinskas" ],
"venue" : "Towards global optimization,",
"citeRegEx" : "Mockus et al\\.,? \\Q1978\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Mockus et al\\.",
"year" : 1978
}, {
"title" : "Optimization on a budget: A reinforcement learning approach",
"author" : [ "Paul L Ruvolo", "Ian Fasel", "Javier R Movellan" ],
"venue" : "In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems,",
"citeRegEx" : "Ruvolo et al\\.,? \\Q2009\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Ruvolo et al\\.",
"year" : 2009
}, {
"title" : "Optimal ordered problem solver",
"author" : [ "Jürgen Schmidhuber" ],
"venue" : "Machine Learning,",
"citeRegEx" : "Schmidhuber.,? \\Q2004\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Schmidhuber.",
"year" : 2004
}, {
"title" : "Practical bayesian optimization of machine learning algorithms",
"author" : [ "Jasper Snoek", "Hugo Larochelle", "Ryan P Adams" ],
"venue" : "In Advances in neural information processing systems,",
"citeRegEx" : "Snoek et al\\.,? \\Q2012\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Snoek et al\\.",
"year" : 2012
}, {
"title" : "Supervised sparse analysis and synthesis operators",
"author" : [ "Pablo Sprechmann", "Roee Litman", "Tal Ben Yakar", "Alexander M Bronstein", "Guillermo Sapiro" ],
"venue" : "In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems,",
"citeRegEx" : "Sprechmann et al\\.,? \\Q2013\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Sprechmann et al\\.",
"year" : 2013
}, {
"title" : "Multi-task bayesian optimization. In Advances in neural information processing",
"author" : [ "Kevin Swersky", "Jasper Snoek", "Ryan P Adams" ],
"venue" : null,
"citeRegEx" : "Swersky et al\\.,? \\Q2004\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Swersky et al\\.",
"year" : 2004
}, {
"title" : "Learning to learn",
"author" : [ "Sebastian Thrun", "Lorien Pratt" ],
"venue" : "Springer Science & Business Media,",
"citeRegEx" : "Thrun and Pratt.,? \\Q2012\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Thrun and Pratt.",
"year" : 2012
}, {
"title" : "A perspective view and survey of meta-learning",
"author" : [ "Ricardo Vilalta", "Youssef Drissi" ],
"venue" : "Artificial Intelligence Review,",
"citeRegEx" : "Vilalta and Drissi.,? \\Q2002\\E",
"shortCiteRegEx" : "Vilalta and Drissi.",
"year" : 2002
} ],
"referenceMentions" : [ {
"referenceID" : 14,
"context" : "For this purpose, we use an off-the-shelf reinforcement learning algorithm known as guided policy search (Levine & Abbeel, 2014), which has demonstrated success in a variety of robotic control settings (Levine et al., 2015a; Finn et al., 2015; Levine et al., 2015b; Han et al., 2015).",
"startOffset" : 202,
"endOffset" : 283
}, {
"referenceID" : 17,
"context" : "For this purpose, we use an off-the-shelf reinforcement learning algorithm known as guided policy search (Levine & Abbeel, 2014), which has demonstrated success in a variety of robotic control settings (Levine et al., 2015a; Finn et al., 2015; Levine et al., 2015b; Han et al., 2015).",
"startOffset" : 202,
"endOffset" : 283
}, {
"referenceID" : 2,
"context" : "learning” (Baxter et al., 1995; Vilalta & Drissi, 2002; Brazdil et al., 2008; Thrun & Pratt, 2012).",
"startOffset" : 10,
"endOffset" : 98
}, {
"referenceID" : 7,
"context" : "learning” (Baxter et al., 1995; Vilalta & Drissi, 2002; Brazdil et al., 2008; Thrun & Pratt, 2012).",
"startOffset" : 10,
"endOffset" : 98
}, {
"referenceID" : 0,
"context" : "One form of meta-knowledge is the commonalities across a family of related tasks (Abu-Mostafa, 1993).",
"startOffset" : 81,
"endOffset" : 100
}, {
"referenceID" : 8,
"context" : "A different approach (Brazdil et al., 2003) is to learn how to select the base-level learner that achieves the best performance for a given task.",
"startOffset" : 21,
"endOffset" : 43
}, {
"referenceID" : 0,
"context" : "One form of meta-knowledge is the commonalities across a family of related tasks (Abu-Mostafa, 1993). Under this framework, the goal of the meta-learner is to learn about such commonalities, so that given the learned commonalities, base-level learning on new tasks from the family can be performed faster. This line of work is often better known as transfer learning and multi-task learning. A different approach (Brazdil et al., 2003) is to learn how to select the base-level learner that achieves the best performance for a given task. Under this setting, the meta-knowledge is the correlation between properties of tasks and the performance of different base-level learners trained on them. There are two challenges associated with this approach: the need to devise meta-features on tasks that capture similarity between different tasks, and the need to parameterize the space of base-level learners to make search in this space tractable. Schmidhuber (2004) proposes representing base-level learners as general-purpose programs, that is, sequences of primitive operations.",
"startOffset" : 82,
"endOffset" : 962
}, {
"referenceID" : 10,
"context" : "Several different approaches have been proposed: genetic programming (Cramer, 1985) represents programs as abstract syntax trees and evolves them using genetic algorithms, Liang et al.",
"startOffset" : 69,
"endOffset" : 83
}, {
"referenceID" : 10,
"context" : "Several different approaches have been proposed: genetic programming (Cramer, 1985) represents programs as abstract syntax trees and evolves them using genetic algorithms, Liang et al. (2010) represents programs explicitly using a formal language, constructs a hierarchical Bayesian prior over programs and performs inference using an MCMC sampling procedure and Graves et al.",
"startOffset" : 70,
"endOffset" : 192
}, {
"referenceID" : 10,
"context" : "Several different approaches have been proposed: genetic programming (Cramer, 1985) represents programs as abstract syntax trees and evolves them using genetic algorithms, Liang et al. (2010) represents programs explicitly using a formal language, constructs a hierarchical Bayesian prior over programs and performs inference using an MCMC sampling procedure and Graves et al. (2014) represents programs implicitly as sequences of memory access operations and trains a recurrent neural net to learn the underlying patterns in the memory access operations.",
"startOffset" : 70,
"endOffset" : 384
}, {
"referenceID" : 10,
"context" : "Several different approaches have been proposed: genetic programming (Cramer, 1985) represents programs as abstract syntax trees and evolves them using genetic algorithms, Liang et al. (2010) represents programs explicitly using a formal language, constructs a hierarchical Bayesian prior over programs and performs inference using an MCMC sampling procedure and Graves et al. (2014) represents programs implicitly as sequences of memory access operations and trains a recurrent neural net to learn the underlying patterns in the memory access operations. Hochreiter et al. (2001) considers the special case of online learning algorithms, each of which is represented as a recurrent neural net with a particular setting of weights, and learns the online learning algorithm by learning the neural net weights.",
"startOffset" : 70,
"endOffset" : 581
}, {
"referenceID" : 20,
"context" : "Most methods (Hutter et al., 2011; Bergstra et al., 2011; Snoek et al., 2012; Swersky et al., 2013; Feurer et al., 2015) rely on sequential model-based Bayesian optimization (Mockus et al.",
"startOffset" : 13,
"endOffset" : 120
}, {
"referenceID" : 5,
"context" : "Most methods (Hutter et al., 2011; Bergstra et al., 2011; Snoek et al., 2012; Swersky et al., 2013; Feurer et al., 2015) rely on sequential model-based Bayesian optimization (Mockus et al.",
"startOffset" : 13,
"endOffset" : 120
}, {
"referenceID" : 29,
"context" : "Most methods (Hutter et al., 2011; Bergstra et al., 2011; Snoek et al., 2012; Swersky et al., 2013; Feurer et al., 2015) rely on sequential model-based Bayesian optimization (Mockus et al.",
"startOffset" : 13,
"endOffset" : 120
}, {
"referenceID" : 13,
"context" : "Most methods (Hutter et al., 2011; Bergstra et al., 2011; Snoek et al., 2012; Swersky et al., 2013; Feurer et al., 2015) rely on sequential model-based Bayesian optimization (Mockus et al.",
"startOffset" : 13,
"endOffset" : 120
}, {
"referenceID" : 26,
"context" : ", 2015) rely on sequential model-based Bayesian optimization (Mockus et al., 1978; Brochu et al., 2010), while others adopt a random search approach (Bergstra & Bengio, 2012) or use gradient-based optimization (Bengio, 2000; Domke, 2012; Maclaurin et al.",
"startOffset" : 61,
"endOffset" : 103
}, {
"referenceID" : 9,
"context" : ", 2015) rely on sequential model-based Bayesian optimization (Mockus et al., 1978; Brochu et al., 2010), while others adopt a random search approach (Bergstra & Bengio, 2012) or use gradient-based optimization (Bengio, 2000; Domke, 2012; Maclaurin et al.",
"startOffset" : 61,
"endOffset" : 103
}, {
"referenceID" : 12,
"context" : ", 2010), while others adopt a random search approach (Bergstra & Bengio, 2012) or use gradient-based optimization (Bengio, 2000; Domke, 2012; Maclaurin et al., 2015).",
"startOffset" : 114,
"endOffset" : 165
}, {
"referenceID" : 25,
"context" : ", 2010), while others adopt a random search approach (Bergstra & Bengio, 2012) or use gradient-based optimization (Bengio, 2000; Domke, 2012; Maclaurin et al., 2015).",
"startOffset" : 114,
"endOffset" : 165
}, {
"referenceID" : 6,
"context" : "Stochastic meta-descent (Bray et al., 2004) derives a rule for adaptively choosing the step size, Ruvolo et al.",
"startOffset" : 24,
"endOffset" : 43
}, {
"referenceID" : 18,
"context" : "(2009) learns a policy for picking the damping factor in the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm and recent work (Hansen, 2016; Daniel et al., 2016; Fu et al., 2016) explores learning a policy for choosing the step size.",
"startOffset" : 107,
"endOffset" : 159
}, {
"referenceID" : 11,
"context" : "(2009) learns a policy for picking the damping factor in the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm and recent work (Hansen, 2016; Daniel et al., 2016; Fu et al., 2016) explores learning a policy for choosing the step size.",
"startOffset" : 107,
"endOffset" : 159
}, {
"referenceID" : 15,
"context" : "(2009) learns a policy for picking the damping factor in the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm and recent work (Hansen, 2016; Daniel et al., 2016; Fu et al., 2016) explores learning a policy for choosing the step size.",
"startOffset" : 107,
"endOffset" : 159
}, {
"referenceID" : 30,
"context" : "A different line of work (Gregor & LeCun, 2010; Sprechmann et al., 2013) explores learning special-purpose solvers for a class of optimization problems that arise in sparse coding.",
"startOffset" : 25,
"endOffset" : 72
}, {
"referenceID" : 1,
"context" : "Work that appeared on ArXiv after this paper (Andrychowicz et al., 2016) explores a similar theme under a different setting, where the goal is learn a task-dependent optimization algorithm.",
"startOffset" : 45,
"endOffset" : 72
}, {
"referenceID" : 5,
"context" : "Stochastic meta-descent (Bray et al., 2004) derives a rule for adaptively choosing the step size, Ruvolo et al. (2009) learns a policy for picking the damping factor in the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm and recent work (Hansen, 2016; Daniel et al.",
"startOffset" : 25,
"endOffset" : 119
} ],
"year" : 2017,
"abstractText" : "Algorithm design is a laborious process and often requires many iterations of ideation and validation. In this paper, we explore automating algorithm design and present a method to learn an optimization algorithm. We approach this problem from a reinforcement learning perspective and represent any particular optimization algorithm as a policy. We learn an optimization algorithm using guided policy search and demonstrate that the resulting algorithm outperforms existing hand-engineered algorithms in terms of convergence speed and/or the final objective value.",
"creator" : "LaTeX with hyperref package"
}
} |
tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78068855200208911392018-03-13T04:53:23.377-07:00SocioBiological MusingsDavehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221889280979862925noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7806885520020891139.post-65755289050294980102014-09-07T07:04:00.000-07:002014-12-24T05:06:18.462-08:00Shocking Stats on Black-on-White Rape in USAKeywords: <i>Interracial rape statistics, transracial rape statistics, mixed-race rape statistics, black on white rape, white on black rape, rape between the races, etc</i><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><b>The Truth of Interracial Rape in the United States</b><br /><br />Lawrence Auster, <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=26368" target="_blank">FrontPageMag</a>, May 3, 2007<br /><br /><br /><span id="ctl00_PageContent_lblArticleBody"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Like Ahab's search for the Great White Whale, liberals' search for the Great White Defendant is relentless and never-ending. When, in 1988, Tawana Brawley's and Al Sharpton's then year-old spectacular charge that several white men including prosecutor Steven Pagones (whose name Brawley had picked out of a newspaper article) had abducted and raped the 15 year old was shown to be completely false, the <i>Nation</i> said it didn't matter, since the charges expressed the <i>essential nature</i> of white men's treatment of black women in this country. When the Duke University lacrosse players were accused of raping a black stripper last year, liberals everywhere treated the accusation as fact, because, just as with the <i>Nation</i> and Tawana Brawley, the rape charge seemed to the minds of liberals to reflect the true nature of oppressive racial and sexual relations in America. </span></span><br /><span id="ctl00_PageContent_lblArticleBody"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span> </span><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">To see the real truth of the matter, let us take a look at the Department of Justice </span><a href="http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/cvusst.htm"><span style="color: purple; font-family: Times New Roman;">document</span></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> <i>Criminal Victimization in the United States, 2005</i>. (Go to the linked document, and under "Victims and Offenders" download the pdf file for 2005.) </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">In Table 42, entitled "Personal crimes of violence, 2005, percent distribution of single-offender victimizations, based on race of victims, by type of crime and perceived race of offender," we learn that there were 111,590 white victims and 36,620 black victims of rape or sexual assault in 2005.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">(The number of rapes is not distinguished from those of sexual assaults; it is maddening that sexual assault, an ill-defined category that covers various types of criminal acts ranging from penetration to inappropriate touching, is conflated with the more specific crime of rape.) In the 111,590 cases in which the victim of rape or sexual assault was white, 44.5 percent of the offenders were white, and 33.6 percent of the offenders were black. In the 36,620 cases in which the victim of rape or sexual assault was black, 100 percent of the offenders were black, and 0.0 percent of the offenders were white. The table explains that 0.0 percent means that there were under 10 incidents nationally. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The table does not gives statistics for Hispanic victims and offenders. But the bottom line on interracial white/black and black/white rape is clear: </span><br /><br /><br /><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: large;">In the United States in 2005, 37,460 white females were sexually assaulted or raped by a black man, while between zero and ten black females were sexually assaulted or raped by a white man. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">What this means is that every day in the United States, over one hundred white women are raped or sexually assaulted by a black man. </span><br /><br /></b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The Department of Justice statistics refer, of course, to verified reports. According to the Wikipedia </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape"><span style="color: purple; font-family: Times New Roman;">article</span></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> on rape, as many as half of all rape charges nationally are determined by police and prosecutors to be false: </span><br /><blockquote><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Linda Fairstein, former head of the New York County District Attorney's Sex Crimes Unit, noted, "There are about 4,000 reports of rape each year in Manhattan. Of these, about half simply did not happen.... It's my job to bring justice to the man who has been falsely accused by a woman who has a grudge against him, just as it's my job to prosecute the real thing." </span></blockquote><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">No wonder there was such absolute belief in the guilt of the Duke students among the leading sectors of liberal America. A drug-addled, half-deranged, promiscuous black stripper accused three young white men of raping her. There are virtually zero rapes of black women by white men in the United States, and half of all rape charges against specific individuals turn out to be false. But in the gnostic, inverted world of liberal demonology, the white students had to be guilty. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Meanwhile, in the real America, week after week, the newspapers report the rapes of white women by black men—though, of course, without ever once using the words, "a white woman was raped by black man." Just last week in the <i>New York Post</i> there was a story about a serial black rapist who invaded women's apartments on Manhattan's Upper West Side; you knew the rapist was black from a police drawing accompanying the story, and you knew the victims were most likely white from the neighborhoods where the attacks occurred. But even when news media's reports of black on white rape make the race of the perpetrator evident (which the media only does in a minority of instances), no explicit reference is ever made to the racial aspect of the case. Each story of black on white rape is reported in isolation, not presented as part of a larger pattern. There is never the slightest mention of the fact that white women in this country are being targeted by black rapists. In the inverted world of liberalism, the phenomenon does not exist. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">-- </span><br /><a href="mailto:Lawrence.auster@att.net"><span style="color: purple; font-family: Times New Roman;">Lawrence Auster</span></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> is the author of </span><a href="http://www.aicfoundation.com/booklets.htm"><i><span style="color: purple; font-family: Times New Roman;">Erasing America: The Politics of the Borderless Nation</span></i></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">. He offers a traditionalist conservative perspective at </span><a href="http://www.amnation.com/vfr"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">View from the Right</span></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">.</span><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HoyAIFnKQ8w/VAxln4pTWcI/AAAAAAAAALU/vQglK2jJux8/s1600/blackonwhiterape.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HoyAIFnKQ8w/VAxln4pTWcI/AAAAAAAAALU/vQglK2jJux8/s1600/blackonwhiterape.jpeg" height="290" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fNvSzESVqqo/VJq6Oyzy2uI/AAAAAAAAAOk/MRon_B9YKXg/s1600/B2HwgvpIAAAjZdi.jpg_large.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fNvSzESVqqo/VJq6Oyzy2uI/AAAAAAAAAOk/MRon_B9YKXg/s1600/B2HwgvpIAAAjZdi.jpg_large.jpeg" height="387" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221889280979862925noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7806885520020891139.post-85011632683852691902012-12-05T11:30:00.000-08:002013-10-24T10:34:51.316-07:00Statistics on race and welfare for the USAThere seem to be some misconceptions in the MSM about race and welfare in the United States. For instance, you often hear it stated that more whites are on welfare than blacks. After combing through the numbers, however, you find that the opposite is true.<br /><br />The racial breakdown of the USA (2010 census) is:<br /><br />63.7% White<br />16.4% Hispanic (<a href="http://sociobiologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-race-are-hispanics.html" target="_blank">presumably</a> mostly mestizo or Amerindian)<br />12.6% Black <br /><br />According to the national <a href="http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/resource/character/fy2009/tab08" target="_blank">Office of Family Assistance</a>, the <a href="http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/character/fy2009/tab08.htm" target="_blank">racial breakdown</a> of welfare recipients is:<br /><br />Of those on welfare, 33.3% are black, 31.2% are white, and 28.8% are Hispanic.<br /><br />So, clearly whites are drastically underrepresented in welfare recipients, while blacks and Hispanics are both overrepresented. Contrary to the illusion presented by the MSM, both in total numbers and proportionally more blacks are on welfare than whites.<br /><br /><br /><b>Updates</b>:<br /><br /><a href="http://cis.org/immigrant-welfare-use-2011" target="_blank">A recent report</a> (by CIS) shows that 74.7% of Mexican immigrants with children use some form of welfare in the USA. (A racial breakdown of Mexicans is <a href="http://sociobiologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-race-are-hispanics.html" target="_blank">here</a>.)<br /><br />Camarota: "<a href="http://cis.org/immigrant-welfare-use-2011" target="_blank">Welfare Use by Immigrant Households with Children</a>"<br /><br />Peter Bradley: "<a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vdare.com%2Farticles%2Fnational-review-wrong-again-on-race-and-welfare&ei=LJ2_UMiINYnE2wXa7YDwAQ&usg=AFQjCNG0Xod4jHzYuhbGj0LSmI2KdRR3oQ&sig2=kvNH41uIwpfdGlvgZtalaA" target="_blank">National Review Wrong (Again) on Race and Welfare</a>" <br /><br /><br />Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221889280979862925noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7806885520020891139.post-82145016638807912412012-03-19T22:12:00.013-07:002014-09-07T07:06:08.763-07:00Gender vs. Race: A Feminist Perspective<i>A great post [edited] from the list. If only more feminists saw the big picture....</i><br /><br /><b><br /></b><br /><b>Gender vs. Race: A Feminist Perspective</b><br /><br />By Samantha Powers<br /><br />The zeitgeist of the day groups many causes together -- feminism, minority rights, immigration advocacy, etc. -- but this is a very loose coalition, with different parts often at odds with each other. It's not so obvious that feminism, as it was traditionally understood, belongs in the same camp of the new post-left identity politics.<br /><br />Not all races of women are the same and race cuts deeper than gender.<br /><br />Feminism is a product of females of Northern European ancestry. As argued by the Roman historian Tacitus, Northern European women have always had more liberties. This tend goes back thousands of years and there are probably sociobiological reasons for it, such as the particular type of monogamy that evolved among Northern Europeans. But these liberties are under fire -- not from gun-toting white males from the South but from the hoards of Third World people coming to the United States. <br /><br />The new multiracial empire forming in the United States will eventually and undoubtedly be hostile toward white women. As noted by <a href="http://www.limitstogrowth.org/">Brenda Walker</a>, Third World immigration will <a href="http://europenews.dk/en/node/25872" target="_blank">hurt</a> <a href="http://fjordman.blogspot.com/2005/12/immigrant-rape-wave-in-sweden.html" target="_blank">women</a>. Just look at the treatment of white women by blacks and <a href="http://sociobiologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-race-are-hispanics.html" target="_blank">mestizos</a>. Listen to some rap music or look at some crime statistics on Hispanics. Or look at these <a href="http://sociobiologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2014/09/shocking-stats-on-black-on-white-rape.html" target="_blank">statistics</a> on interracial rape in the United States:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">"In the United States in 2005, 37,460 white females were sexually assaulted or raped by a black man, while between zero and ten black females were sexually assaulted or raped by a white man. What this means is that every day in the United States, over one hundred white women are raped or sexually assaulted by a black man." </blockquote><br />While short-sighted feminists have <a href="http://pandagon.net/" target="_blank">declared war</a> upon Darwinism simply because it does not conform to political correctness, Darwinian insights can provide realistic survival goals for European females. The first thing white females must realize is that race cuts deeper than gender.<br /><br />A recent example. For all her talk of a "trans-racial feminism," Oprah Winfrey dropped the real feminist (Hillary Clinton) in a heartbeat to support her co-ethnic Barack Obama (who's a lukewarm feminist at best). As did nearly all other black women. You see, non-whites are not as naive as whites when it comes to identity politics; whites too often believe in abstract universals (which works for mathematics) but can be detrimental when it comes to politics.<br /><br />Another example that comes to mind is the OJ Simpson trial. Feminist prosecutor Marcia Clark tried to pack the jury with white women, and Johnnie Cochran tried to pack it with black men. They compromised with a jury of mostly black females. Well, we know the end of that story.<br /><br />In terms of IQ (intelligence), the IQ differences between genders is minimal and IQ largely tracks by race. For instance, the average white female will have significantly higher IQ than both black males and black females. Regarding trans-racial bonding, white females, intellectually, have very little in common with black females. Why would we want to be grouped with them? <br /><br />I could give many more examples of race trumping gender but a greater insight is the realization that throughout human history nearly 90% or more of all wars have been ethnic conflicts of sorts. Even many religious wars were truly ethno-religious wars. History has yet to demonstrate a gender war. The very idea that men and women would divide by gender and then attempt to exterminate each other is ridiculous from a Darwinian perspective because it would reduce everyone's inclusive fitness. If "war is the great clarifier," as they say, then the very absence of armed "gender wars" clearly demonstrates the primacy of race over gender.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.charlesdarwinresearch.org/2009%2520BJLS.pdf" target="_blank">People sort by race</a>. They always have; they always will. A white man and a white woman can pair up, have a child, and each <a href="http://sociobiologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2011/10/problems-with-mixed-race-marriages-and.html" target="_blank">will increase his or her inclusive fitness</a>. Not so with a white female and black female teaming up, for even if they adopted, say a "mixed-race (black-white) child, each female would be around 55x more closely related to her co-ethnics than to the adopted child. Their inclusive fitness would be diminished."<br /><br />Once again, race trumps gender. A lesson that all feminists today need to learn. A reality that Margaret Sanger knew very well but many feminists today seem to have forgotten.Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221889280979862925noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7806885520020891139.post-75195633951807072922011-10-16T14:42:00.001-07:002015-02-06T07:17:47.923-08:00Biological Problems with Mixed-Race Families, Marriages Relationships & Adoptions<i>Keywords: Mixed-Race marriages, mixed-race relationships, Mixed-race children, Mixed-race child, problems, obstacles, Interracial Adoptions, Transracial Adoptions, Interracial Marriage, Multiracial Family, Endogamy, Exogamy, Biracial Children, Heterosis, Biracial Heritage, DNA, Adoptions, BiRacial, Black Adoption, Children, Divorce, DNA, Endogamy, Ethnicity, Interracial Family, Interracial Marriage, Marriages, Miscegenation, Mixed-Race, Problems, Race, Rate, Relationships, International Adoption Scam, International Adoption Racket, Evangelical Orphan Scam, Adoption Africa, Adoption China, Adoption India, etc.</i><br /><br />Interesting article from list:<br /><b><br /></b><br /><b>Biological Problems with Mixed-Race Families, Marriages, Relationships and Adoptions</b><br /><br />By A. J. Fisher, Jan. 14, 2011<br /><br />As anyone familiar with the literature knows, mixed-race marriages and romantic relationships suffer many more problems than single-race marriages and romantic relationships. For those familiar with human biodiversity (HBD) and sociobiology, this should come as no surprise. In evolutionary terms, one could argue that mixed-race marriages are maladaptive in that they reduce a person's overall genetic fitness - i.e. passing on copies of one's own genes. In a multiracial marriage or relationship, one is showing altruism toward a partner who shares fewer genes than a co-ethnic would share. A parent will also share fewer genes with a multiracial child than with a same-race child.<br /><br />It's natural for someone to prefer a partner of the same race, as this increases a person's Darwinian fitness. J. Philippe Rushton <a href="http://www.humanbiologicaldiversity.com/articles/Rushton%2C%20J.%20Phillipe.%20%22Inclusive%20fitness%20in%20human%20relationships.%22%20Biological%20Journal%20of%20the%20Linnean%20Society%2096%20(2009).pdf">has noted</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>"[P]eople maximize their inclusive fitness by marrying others similar to themselves...." </blockquote>In another <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fciteseerx.ist.psu.edu%2Fviewdoc%2Fdownload%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.134.6512%26rep%3Drep1%26type%3Dpdf&rct=j&q=Genetic%20similarity%2C%20human%20altruism%2C%20and%20group%20selection.%20Behavioral%20%20and%20Brain%20Sciences&ei=jNh1TdKPJY-C0QHa3eToBg&usg=AFQjCNGIHNFw2ayelqCc6M56Oy115oiFNg">article</a>, Rushton notes:<br /><blockquote>"Studies of human marriages and friendships show that people choose each other on the basis of similarity, assorting on the most genetically influenced of a set of homogenous attributes.... Darwin's theory of evolution tells us that the ultimate reason for behavior, like morphology, is to enhance inclusive fitness."</blockquote>Yet, while the vast majority of people are endogamous and marry within their own race, what about those who do not? And what about those who have mixed-race children? Rushton has argued that the lower frequency of shared genes in racially mixed families might result in: less intense bonding, greater conflict, and fewer children. (There are also other problems, such as <a href="http://seattletimes.com/html/health/2009268868_apmixedracedonors.html?syndication=rss" target="_blank">mixed-race children being unable to find organ or bone-marrow transplants</a>. More on that later.)<br /><br />Part of the answer as to why this is so lies in genetic distances, as put forward by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza in <i>Genes, Peoples, and Languages</i>. Steve Sailer <a href="http://www.isteve.com/RealityofRace.htm">writes</a>:<br /><blockquote>"Cavalli-Sforza's team compiled extraordinary tables depicting the "genetic distances" separating 2,000 different racial groups from each other. For example, assume the genetic distance between the English and the Danes is equal to 1.0. Then, Cavalli-Sforza has found, the separation between the English and the Italians would be about 2.5 times as large as the English-Danish difference. On this scale, the Iranians would be 9 times more distant genetically from the English than the Danish, and the Japanese 59 times greater. Finally, the gap between the English and the Bantus (the main group of sub-Saharan blacks) is 109 times as large as the distance between the English and the Danish."</blockquote>Using the genetic distances outlined above, let's look at two hypothetical multiracial marriages.<br /><br />An English Man and a Japanese Woman: As genetic distance figures above note, an English man would be around 59 times more closely related to a Dane than to his Japanese wife. <br /><br />An English Female and a Black (Bantu) Father: Using the genetic distance figures above, the distance even widens with a white-black relationship. The English woman would be around 109 times more closely related to a Dane than to her black husband, and he would overwhelmingly be more closely related to his black co-ethnics than to his wife. <br /><br />What of the mixed-race children? Parents in mixed-race relationships are not only genetically dissimilar to each other but they also have a much greater genetic distance from potential mixed-race children than from same-race children. Regarding the individual's <a href="http://www.mankindquarterly.org/samples/SalterMQXLVIII-3.pdf">genetic investment</a> in the second example above, Frank Salter (<i>On Genetic Interests</i>, pg. 261) writes:<br /><blockquote>"For a person of English ethnicity, choosing an English spouse over a Dane gains less than one percent fitness. But choosing an English spouse over a Bantu, one yields a fitness gain of 92 percent.... The same applies in reverse order, so that a Bantu who chooses another Bantu instead of someone of English ethnicity has 92% more of his or her genes in offspring as a result. It is almost the equivalent to having twice the number of children with an English spouse. Thus assortative mating by ethnicity can have large fitness benefits, the largest derived from choosing mates within geographic races."</blockquote>In other words and general terms, a white mother will be almost as twice as closely related to a child with a white father versus a child with a black father. Because same-race parents share more genes, each parent is likely to see more of his or her genes in the offspring even if they are not passed on directly. For example, if the father has gene X and doesn't pass it on directly to his son, there's a good chance his same-race spouse will have gene X and pass it on, so the son will indirectly possess the father's gene X.<br /><br />Noting phenotype in mixed-race children, each parent would more closely resemble co-ethnics than their own child, especially the white mother, since whites tend to have recessive traits for appearance. (A person only 1/16 black will often still have visible and prominent black features.) <br /><br />And appearance does matter. The fact that mixed-race children do not resemble the parents, esp. the fairer parent, seems to be an issue of concern, although not widely discussed. In a candid letter about having a multiracial baby with a man from India, an English mother <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-467787/I-love-mixed-race-baby--does-feel-alien.html">notes</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>""She's getting very dark, isn't she?" This is what one of my friends recently said about my much adored - 12-week-old daughter. She didn't mean to be rude. But it was a comment that struck me with the force of a jab to the stomach. Immediately, I was overwhelmed by a confusion of emotions. I felt protective, insulted, worried, ashamed, guilty, all at once. The reason? My lovely, wriggly, smiley baby is mixed race..... The truth is, whatever the label, the fact there is a label proves that my daughter's conflicting parentage matters....But when I turn to the mirror in my bedroom to admire us together, I am shocked. She seems so alien. With her long, dark eyelashes and shiny, dark brown hair, she doesn't look anything like me. I know that concentrating on how my daughter looks is shallow. She is a person in her own right, not an accessory to me. But still, I can't shake off the feeling of unease. I didn't realise how much her looking different would matter and, on a rational level, I know it shouldn't. But it does. Evolution demands that we have children to pass on our genes, hence the sense of pride and validation we get when we see our features reappearing in the next generation. With my daughter, I don't have that....But self-flagellation is not useful. I have more pressing concerns. I am now the mother of a 'black' child, even if she is more the hue of weak tea than espresso.... When she was born, pale but with lots of dark hair, I asked the midwife if her eyes would stay blue. 'Asian genes are very strong,' she said in what I took to be an ominous tone. No more Brady Bunch kids for me. The midwife has been proved right and every day my baby's eyes get a little darker."</blockquote><br />Since parents share fewer genes with mixed-race children, people involved in interracial marriages are short-changing their own genes, which might explain why people engaged in mixed-race relationships often tend to have <a href="http://racehist.blogspot.com/2009/04/more-data-on-racial-mixing.html">lower mate value</a>. A recent <a href="http://racehist.blogspot.com/2009/04/more-data-on-racial-mixing.html" target="_blank">survey</a> found that white women who date black men tend to be fatter, dumber and more quarrelsome than average.<br /><br />Given the very real problems with having mixed-race children (such as the fact that parents often feel estranged from children who do not resemble them and that the child will never fully identify with the ancestral traditions of the parents, esp. the lighter parent), it is unsurprising that mixed-race children suffer more problems of identity and health. For instance, mixed-race people are less likely to survive organ transplants, especially <a href="http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1993074,00.html" target="_blank">bone marrow</a> <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2009268868_apmixedracedonors.html?syndication=rss" target="_blank">transplants</a>. In general, mixed-race people have more health problems. A study by J. Richard Udry <a href="http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/oct03/udry10302003.html">notes</a>:<br /><blockquote>"A new study that involved surveying 90,000 adolescent U.S. students showed that those who considered themselves to be of mixed race were more likely than others to suffer from depression, substance abuse, sleep problems and various aches and pains. Conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the National Institutes of Health, the investigation found that adolescents of mixed race were more likely to have other health problems as well."</blockquote>In other words, an argument could be made that mixed-race families are maladaptive -- both for the parents and the children -- and undermine one's <a href="http://www.mankindquarterly.org/samples/SalterMQXLVIII-3.pdf">genetic interests</a>. As noted by various commenters, multiracial families often do not possess the harmony, cooperation and purposefulness of same-race families, because mixed-race families lack the focus of genetic investment and returns that same-race families possess.<br /><br /><br /><b>Update</b>: <u><b>Adoption</b></u>: Regarding <b>transracial adoptions</b>, the same logic would apply. For example, an English family that adopts a black child will be around 109 times more closely related to a random Dane than to their adopted child. As a result, a harmonious congruence of the parents' and adopted child's ethnic genetic interests will be missing. The ethnic genetic interests of the parents and adopted child will often be at odds, creating a disharmonious family structure.<br /><br /><b>Update</b>: From email: "People who engage in transracial adoptions probably suffer from <a href="http://www.amren.com/features/2012/07/pathological-altruism/" target="_blank">pathological altruism</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppIS19La8W8" target="_blank">ethnomasochism</a>."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><b>Further Reading</b>:<br /><br />"<a href="http://sociobiologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-race-are-hispanics.html" target="_blank">What Race Are Hispanics?</a>" <br /><br />Steve Sailer: "<a href="http://www.vdare.com/articles/where-dawkins-fears-to-tread-ethnic-nepotism-and-the-reality-of-race" target="_blank">Ethnic Nepotism And The Reality Of Race</a>"<br /><br />Unamusement Park: "<a href="http://unamusementpark.com/lists/perils-of-miscegenation-why-white-women-shouldnt-date-black-men/" target="_blank">Perils of Miscegenation</a>"<br /><br />Lawrence Auster: "<a href="http://sociobiologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2014/09/shocking-stats-on-black-on-white-rape.html" target="_blank">The Truth of Interracial Rape in the United States</a>"<br /><br />Peter Dodds: “<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/peterdodds566/international-adoptionpeterdodds-14813616?fb_action_ids=4836989967794&fb_action_types=slideshare:view&fb_source=timeline_og&action_object_map={%224836989967794%22:481383498561588}&action_type_map={%224836989967794%22:%22slideshare:view%22}&action_ref_map=%5B%5D&code=AQBN8pFANsssUKiExlQl9aZc5sRZXN-WhYYWebzdKSfSUboCDx977XgQCS6FmIXIQOKyNBsXXmMinTYxcigPKXVHzC7GyUctzWJv2hK1eTbWkKqlk2YLPMwvEPHUamkrIXv34LDSBsT9YMoq87cJJWQUfC2_rYN072qcrvtMheM7TjxPgDFtOm8o-CtObZmwC1e6g_duRJoTb4hQiwjBckpa#_=_" target="_blank">International Adoption: In Whose Best Interest?</a>”<br /><br />Chateau Heartiste: "<a href="http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2013/06/24/the-truth-about-mixed-race-couples/" target="_blank">The Truth About Mixed-Race Couples</a>"<br /><br />Kathryn Joyce: "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/opinion/sunday/the-evangelical-orphan-boom.html?pagewanted=all" target="_blank">The Evangelical Orphan Scam</a>"<br /><br />Alfred Clark: "<a href="http://occamsrazormag.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/racial-admixture-in-usa-and-why-mulattoes-identify-as-black/" target="_blank">95% of White Americans Have No African Ancestry</a>" and "<a href="http://occamsrazormag.wordpress.com/2013/12/29/benefits-of-hybrid-vigor-overstated/" target="_blank">Benefits of Hybrid Vigor Overstated</a>"<br /><br />Nancy Turner: "<a href="http://whitetrashnewsfeed.blogspot.com/2013/12/key-characteristics-of-white-trash.html" target="_blank">Key Characteristics of White Trash</a>"<br /><br />Tracy McVeigh. "<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/23/mixed-race-children-mental-health" target="_blank">UK: Mixed-race children suffer more health problems than same-race children</a>"<br /><br /><br />Some pieces people emailed addressing above topics from a religious perspective: <br /><br />Generation5: "<a href="http://faithandheritage.com/2011/08/reconsidering-interracial-transracial-adoption/" target="_blank">A Christian Reconsiders Trans-Racial Adoption</a>" (From religious perspective)<br /><br />Nil Desperandum: "<a href="http://faithandheritage.com/2012/10/christian-ethics-and-interracial-marriage-part-1-preliminary-definitions/" target="_blank">Christian Ethics and Interracial Marriage</a>" (From religious perspective)<br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-x64U0-gjkR8/VDaiU1PhbmI/AAAAAAAAAMc/XcQhVu-TLzY/s1600/BzgyFvrCEAAjQvQ.jpg_large.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-x64U0-gjkR8/VDaiU1PhbmI/AAAAAAAAAMc/XcQhVu-TLzY/s1600/BzgyFvrCEAAjQvQ.jpg_large.jpeg" height="221" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4bocXQYYkLo/VJq437zHR3I/AAAAAAAAAOI/b87sPr1iyhU/s1600/B5nzsexCIAAZlRq.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4bocXQYYkLo/VJq437zHR3I/AAAAAAAAAOI/b87sPr1iyhU/s1600/B5nzsexCIAAZlRq.jpg" height="305" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2-oR7CkLDKQ/VJq5EmccrLI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/qFD-wOojyag/s1600/B4yCxjoIcAAgzEu.jpg_large.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2-oR7CkLDKQ/VJq5EmccrLI/AAAAAAAAAOQ/qFD-wOojyag/s1600/B4yCxjoIcAAgzEu.jpg_large.jpeg" height="221" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eXlu42iNFZk/VJq5z9z9ocI/AAAAAAAAAOY/MNR5GU8NhJU/s1600/Bu8Ss40CQAEuPr6.png_large.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eXlu42iNFZk/VJq5z9z9ocI/AAAAAAAAAOY/MNR5GU8NhJU/s1600/Bu8Ss40CQAEuPr6.png_large.png" height="149" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XSujsUEtjaY/VLLhz-OJECI/AAAAAAAAAPQ/tBaiPhyTsiY/s1600/DateWhite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XSujsUEtjaY/VLLhz-OJECI/AAAAAAAAAPQ/tBaiPhyTsiY/s1600/DateWhite.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EK0sSf4gLUc/VLXXRb-P-EI/AAAAAAAAAPk/JJVj_CFM1SY/s1600/racemixing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EK0sSf4gLUc/VLXXRb-P-EI/AAAAAAAAAPk/JJVj_CFM1SY/s1600/racemixing.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-t_BYY5RmqOs/VLXXVJbSQoI/AAAAAAAAAPs/tRDYj1GZoZ4/s1600/racemixing2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-t_BYY5RmqOs/VLXXVJbSQoI/AAAAAAAAAPs/tRDYj1GZoZ4/s1600/racemixing2.jpg" height="400" width="308" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Fajqz28ziuY/VNTbELNzBuI/AAAAAAAAAQk/8pF_pbG6y1U/s1600/B8dTG7xCEAA9nWi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Fajqz28ziuY/VNTbELNzBuI/AAAAAAAAAQk/8pF_pbG6y1U/s1600/B8dTG7xCEAA9nWi.jpg" height="400" width="232" /></a></div><br /></div>.. Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221889280979862925noreply@blogger.com71tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7806885520020891139.post-90273738889985013232011-09-26T10:39:00.002-07:002014-12-29T15:05:23.945-08:00What Race Are Hispanics?<blockquote><i>Key words: Are Hispanics White? Racial Stratification, Racial Castes of Latin America, Mestizo, Mestizos, Mestiço, Métis, Marabou, Chicano, Latino, Indios, Castizos, Cholos, Mulattos, Zambos, Negros</i></blockquote><br /><b><br /></b><br /><b>What Race Are Hispanics?</b><br /><br />By Thomas Carter<br />July 15, 2011<br /><br />Regarding the recent census in the United States, there was much debate about the racial classification of 'Hispanics'.<br /><br />Is 'Hispanic' a race? In short, no. 'Hispanic' is a cultural designation but New World Hispanics can be broken down into racial categories, such as mestizo or Amerindian. <br /><br />Are New World Hispanics white? Most often, no, they are not white.<br /><br />Although the traditional meaning of 'Hispanic' related to those from Spain and white Hispanics do exist in Latin America (esp. in Argentina), many of the Hispanics in the New World have little, or no, Spanish ancestry, especially those immigrating to the United States.<br /><br />Since the unspoken purpose of the American census was to find out how many non-Westerners (i.e. non-whites) were living in the US, perhaps a better classification (as others have pointed out) would be:<br /><br />MAMBs: mestizos, Amerindians, mulattos & blacks from Latin America.<br /><br />Other than Argentina (and possibly Chile) much of Latin America and the Caribbean seems to be populated by MAMBs.<br /><br />Most Latin American countries seem to have large percentages of non-Europeans. For instance, Brazil is almost 50% black / mulatto; Columbia is 58% mestizo and 14% mulatto; and Guatemala is more than 90% Amerindian and mestizo.<br /><br />According to the CIA World Fact Book, Mexico is:<br />60% mestizo<br />30% Amerindian<br />Less than 10% European (mostly Spaniard)<br /><br />And what is the ancestry of mestizos? Examining genetic ancestral markers, Rubén Lisker found the average admixture of a lower-income mestizos in Mexico City to be:<br /><br />59% Amerindian<br />34% European [mostly Spaniard]<br />and 6% black<br /><br />As Richard Lynn points out in "Pigmentocracy: Racial Hierarchies in the Caribbean and Latin America," most Latin American countries seem to have an extremely small upper-class of Europeans, and below it very large masses of Amerindians, mestizos, mulattos and blacks. <br /><br />And most of the people immigrating to the United States from Latin America are from the lower, non-European classes, especially from Mexico.<br /><br />Furthermore, if you figure the average European or Diaspora European IQ to be around 102 - 103, it becomes apparent that MAMBs fall below.<br /><br />Average black IQ: 75<br />Average mestizo IQ: 82<br /><br />Average IQs of some Latin American countries:<br /><br />Equador: 80<br />Guatemala: 79<br />Mexico: 87 <br />Puerto Rico: 84<br /><br />Because of this lower IQ immigration from Mexico, Latin America and elsewhere, Byron M. Roth, in <i>The Perils of Diversity: Immigration and Human Nature</i>, estimates that<br /><br /><blockquote>[The] average American IQ will decline from 98 to 95 by mid-century. This may seem a small drop, but it will have dire effects for elites, because the percentage of Americans with an IQ of at least 120 will fall from 7.1 to 4.8. [Summary by Lynn.]</blockquote><br />It seems, in conclusion, that most New World Hispanics arriving in the United States vary by race (are MAMBs) but clearly are non-Western (i.e. are non-white, i.e. are non-Diaspora European) and probably fall below Westerners in intellectual ability.<br /><br />[Data taken from Lynn's <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations">IQ and the Wealth of Nations</a></i>, "<a href="http://www.toqonline.com/archives/v8n2/TOQv8n2Lynn.pdf">Pigmentocracy: Racial Hierarchies in the Caribbean and Latin America</a>," & "<a href="http://www.humanbiologicaldiversity.com/articles/Lynn%2C%20Richard.%20%22A%20Whimper%20and%20A%20Bang.%22%20Alternative%20Right%2C%20June%2013%2C%202011.pdf" target="_blank">Whimper and a Bang</a>"; Rushton's <i><a href="http://www.charlesdarwinresearch.org/Race_Evolution_Behavior.pdf">Race, Evolution & Behavior</a></i>; Collin's "<a href="http://www.jasoncollins.org/2012/03/immigration-externalities/" target="_blank">Immigration Externalities</a>"; Lisker's "<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajhb.1310070210/abstract">Racial admixture in a Mestizo population from Mexico City</a>."]<br /><br /><b>Further Reading</b>:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amren.com/archives/reports/hispanics-a-statistical-portrait/" target="_blank">Hispanics: A Statistical Portrait</a><br /><br />Gregory Cochran: "<a href="http://tinyurl.com/ce9nkx7" target="_blank">Zones of Thought</a>"<br /><br />Jason Collins: "<a href="http://tinyurl.com/8tbw9l7" target="_blank">Immigration Externalities</a>"<br /><br />CIS: <a href="http://cis.org/immigrant-welfare-use-2011" target="_blank">74.7% of Mexican immigrants use some form of welfare in the USA</a> <br /><br /><a href="http://www.humanbiologicaldiversity.com/Race_Face_Plates.htm" target="_blank">Faces of the World's Races </a><br /><br />Steve Sailer: "<a href="http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/05/white-v-hispanic-iq-gap-across-39.html" target="_blank">White v. Hispanic cognitive gap across 39 studies with 5,696,529 sample size</a>," "<a href="http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/05/mexican-american-sociologists-on-long.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter" target="_blank">Ortiz & Telles: Mexican-Americans lag for 4 generations (at least)</a>," "<a href="http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/05/how-do-hispanics-score-on-grad-school.html?utm_source=feedly" target="_blank">How do Hispanics score on grad school admissions tests?</a>," "<a href="http://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/05/64-of-hispanic-high-school-graduates.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter" target="_blank">64% of Hispanic high school graduates don't score high enough to enlist</a>," and "<a href="http://isteve.blogspot.com/2010/12/pisa-and-mexico.html" target="_blank">PISA and Mexico</a>."<br /><br />Karol Estrada: “<a href="http://www.genomesunzipped.org/2014/06/a-rare-variant-in-mexico-with-far-reaching-implications.php" target="_blank">Is the Amerindian ancestry of Mexicans to blame for their record-high levels of diabetes and obesity</a>?”<br /><br />Alfred W. Clark: "<a href="http://occamsrazormag.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/mexico-genetic-diversity-hbd-on-the-cutting-edge-of-science/" target="_blank">Mexico & Genetic Diversity: HBD on the cutting edge of science</a>" and "<a href="http://occamsrazormag.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/racial-admixture-in-usa-and-why-mulattoes-identify-as-black/">95% of White Americans Have No African Ancestry</a>"<br /><br />James Thompson: "T<a href="http://drjamesthompson.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-united-states-of-mexico.html" target="_blank">he United States of Mexico: How Mexican Immigration Will Lower Average IQ of USA</a>" <br /><br /><br /><br />.. Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221889280979862925noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7806885520020891139.post-83154085715096298372011-09-26T08:37:00.000-07:002014-02-24T18:00:41.040-08:00Dog IQ: How Smart is your Dog?Here's a listing of dog IQs by breed. Dogs have undergone artificial selection, so those selected for intelligence (Border Collie) tend to be very smart, while those selected only for appearance tend not to be so smart. It depends on what was being selected for. A bloodhound typically has a low dog IQ (doesn't respond well to commands) but has undergone intense selection for smelling ability, so a bloodhound compensates for lack of command response with a keen sense of smell.<br /><br />Many have argued that mutts tend to be around average intelligence, depending on their ancestry. A mutt of high IQ ancestry (for example, a Border Collie, German Shepherd & Golden Retriever mix) will be smart, but a mutt of low IQ ancestry (for example, a Chow Chow, Basenji & Pekingese mix) will tend to be dumb. <br /><br />A veterinarian reader tells me that most mutts today in urban areas are at least part pit bull terrier. Given that pit bulls have low dog IQs, this would mean that the average IQ of mutts would be on the lower end of the spectrum. (N.B. that pit bulls also have undergone recent heavy artificial selection for aggression, since they're often raised to fight.) <br /><br />It should also be noted that pariah dogs (mutts in the wild that have reverted back to wolf-like characteristics) tend to have low average dog IQs, as by dog IQ one means a dog's responsiveness to human commands. Mutts, left alone for multiple generations, will develop pariah traits and eventually will lose traits of domestication, which means their dog IQ will drop. <br /><br />It should be noted, however, that what we think of as dog intelligence (response to commands) is not all that dog breeds underwent artificial selection for. For instance, breeds were selected for guarding, hunting, smelling, herding, appearance, etc., and each breed seems to have its own special abilities or appearance. Breeds are important. If dog breeds were to disappear and be transformed into a large class of mutts, we would lose the richness of canine biodiversity.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />From <i>The Intelligence of Dogs</i>, by S. Coren<br /><br /><br /><br /><b>Ranks 1 to 10</b><br />Brightest Dogs<br /><br />Understanding of New Commands: Less than 5 repetitions. <br />Obey First Command: 95% of the time or better. <br /><br />Rank Breed <br />1 Border Collie <br />2 Poodle <br />3 German Shepherd <br />4 Golden Retriever <br />5 Doberman Pinscher <br />6 Shetland Sheepdog <br />7 Labrador Retriever <br />8 Papillon <br />9 Rottweiler <br />10 Australian Cattle Dog <br /><br /><br /><br /><b>Ranks 11 to 26</b><br />Excellent Working Dogs<br /><br />Understanding of New Commands: 5 to 15 repetitions. <br />Obey First Command: 85% of the time or better. <br /><br />Rank Breed <br />11 Welsh Corgi (Pembroke) <br />12 Miniature Schnauzer <br />13 English Springer Spaniel <br />14 Belgian Tervuren <br />15 Schipperke <br />Belgian Sheepdog <br />16 Collie<br />Keeshond <br />17 German Shorthaired Pointer <br />18 Flat-Coated Retriever<br />English Cocker Spaniel<br />Standard Schnauzer <br />19 Brittany <br />20 Cocker Spaniel <br />21 Weimaraner <br />22 Belgian Malinois<br />Bernese Mountain Dog <br />23 Pomeranian <br />24 Irish Water Spaniel <br />25 Vizsla <br />26 Cardigan Welsh Corgi <br /><br /><br /><br /><b>Ranks 27 to 39</b><br />Above Average Working Dogs<br /><br />Understanding of New Commands: 15 to 25 repetitions. <br />Obey First Command: 70% of the time or better<br /><br />Rank Breed <br />27 Chesapeake Bay Retriever<br />Puli<br />Yorkshire Terrier <br />28 Giant Schnauzer <br />29 Airedale Terrier<br />Bouvier Des Flandres <br />30 Border Terrier<br />Briard <br />31 Welsh Springer Spaniel <br />32 Manchester Terrier <br />33 Samoyed <br />34 Field Spaniel<br />Newfoundland<br />Australian Terrier<br />American Staffordshire Terrier<br />Gordon Setter<br />Bearded Collie <br />35 Cairn Terrier<br />Kerry Blue Terrier<br />Irish Setter <br />36 Norwegian Elkhound <br />37 Affenpincher<br />Silky Terrier<br />Miniature Pinscher<br />English Setter<br />Pharaoh Hound<br />Clumber Spaniel <br />38 Norwich Terrier <br />39 Dalmatian <br /><br /><br /><br /><b>Ranks 40 to 54</b><br />Average Working/Obedience Intelligence<br /><br />Understanding of New Commands: 25 to 40 repetitions. <br />Obey First Command: 50% of the time or better. <br /><br />Rank Breed <br />40 Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier<br />Bedlington Terrier<br />Fox Terrier (Smooth) <br />41 Curly-Coated Retriever<br />Irish Wolfhound <br />42 Kuvasz<br />Australian Shepherd <br />43 Saluki<br />Finnish Spitz<br />Pointer <br />44 Cavalier King Charles Spaniel<br />German Wirehaired Pointer<br />Black & Tan Coonhound<br />American Water Spaniel <br />45 Siberian Husky<br />Bichon Frise<br />English Toy Spaniel <br />46 Tibetan Spaniel<br />Foxhound (English)<br />Otterhound<br />Foxhound (American)<br />Greyhound<br />Wirehaired Pointing Griffon <br />47 West Highland White Terrier<br />Scottish Deerhound <br />48 Boxer <br />Great Dane <br />49 Dachshund<br />Stafforshire Bull Terrier <br />50 Alaskan Malamute <br />51 Whippet<br />Chinese Shar-pei<br />Fox Terrier (Wire) <br />52 Rhodesian Ridgeback <br />53 Ibizan Hound<br />Welsh Terrier<br />Irish Terrier <br />54 Boston Terrier<br />Akita <br /><br /><br /><b>Ranks 55 to 69</b><br />Fair Working/Obedience Intelligence<br /><br />Understanding of New Commands: 40 to 80 repetitions. <br />Obey First Command: 30% of the time or better. <br /><br />Rank Breed <br />55 Skye Terrier <br />56 Norfolk Terrier<br />Sealyham Terrier <br />57 Pug <br />58 French Bulldog <br />59 Brussels Griffon<br />Maltese <br />60 Italian Greyhound <br />61 Chinese Crested <br />62 Dandie Dinmont Terrier<br />Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen <br />Tibetan Terrier<br />Japanese Chin<br />Lakeland Terrier <br />63 Old English Sheepdog <br />64 Great Pyrenees <br />65 Scottish Terrier<br />Saint Bernard <br />66 Bull Terrier <br />67 Chihuahua <br />68 Lhasa Apso <br />69 Bullmastiff <br /><br /><br /><br /><b>Ranks 70 to 79</b><br />Lowest Degree of Working/Obedience Intelligence <br /><br />Understanding of New Commands: 80 to 100 repetitions or more. <br />Obey First Command: 25% of the time or worse. <br /><br />Rank Breed <br />70 Shih Tzu <br />71 Basset Hound <br />72 Mastiff<br />Beagle <br />73 Pekingese <br />74 Bloodhound <br />75 Borzoi <br />76 Chow Chow <br />77 Bulldog <br />78 Basenji <br />79 Afghan Hound<br /><br /><br /><b>Further reading</b>:<br /><br />Eccles & Mount: "<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2564373/The-hidden-suffering-dogs-bred-cute-Adorable-looks-Cuddly-names-like-Labradoodle-But-trend-cross-breed-dogs-raises-disturbing-questions.html" target="_blank">Cross-breed Dogs Have More Health Problems than Purebred Dogs</a>" (For "<a href="http://www.humanbiologicaldiversity.com/#Dictionary" target="_blank">Pariah Dogs</a>," see entry<a href="http://www.humanbiologicaldiversity.com/#Dictionary" target="_blank"> here</a>.)<br /><br />Clark: "<a href="http://occamsrazormag.wordpress.com/2013/12/29/benefits-of-hybrid-vigor-overstated/" target="_blank">Benefits of Hybrid Vigor Overstated</a>"<br /><span style="color: #888888;"><br /></span>Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17221889280979862925noreply@blogger.com0 |
Introduction {#S1}
============
When animals engage in reward-seeking behaviors such as foraging or hunting, they often expose themselves to potential threats, and must assess competing signals that may trigger conflicting motivational drives. The ability to appropriately weigh competing environmental cues and execute appropriate behavioral responses is paramount for survival and a key feature of mental health, yet little is known about the neural circuits that underpin this ability.
For decades, the amygdala has been identified as a focal point in emotional processing and is thought to be a hub for translating sensory information into motivated behaviors^[@R1],[@R2]^. The basolateral nucleus of the amygdala (BLA) is important for the acquisition, encoding and retrieval of both positive and negative associations, and plasticity occurs in BLA neurons upon the encoding of cues that predict either positive or negative outcomes^[@R3]--[@R8]^. The BLA also shows prominent neuronal correlates of reward-seeking and fear-related responses in semi-naturalistic tasks in which animals need to for age and retrieve food in the presence of imminent predator-like threats^[@R9],[@R10]^.
An important target of the BLA thought to be crucial for the coordination of reward-seeking and fear-related behaviors is the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)^[@R11]--[@R13]^, which receives robust monosynaptic glutamatergic inputs from the BLA^[@R14],[@R15]^ and sends a reciprocal connection in return^[@R16]^. Similar to the BLA, the mPFC has been widely implicated in the regulation of both reward-seeking^[@R17],[@R18]^ and fear-related behavior^[@R19]--[@R21]^, and pharmacological inactivation of the mPFC produces deficits in the coordination of these behaviors^[@R22],[@R23]^. Furthermore, the mPFC shows prominent neuronal responses that are highly correlated with the time course of behavioral manifestations of reward-seeking and fear-related behavior^[@R11],[@R18]^. While some studies have examined the necessity of BLA activity for fear-related signaling in the mPFC^[@R24],[@R25]^, little is known about how dynamic interactions between these structures may govern the coordination of reward-seeking and fear-related behavior upon presentation of competing signals.
In this study, we used electrophysiological recordings, optogenetic-mediated photo identification of BLA→PL neurons, supervised machine learning algorithms to decode behavior during competition, and circuit-specific manipulations during a modified Pavlovian cue discrimination task, in which conditioned stimuli predicting either sucrose or shock were presented separately on some trials and simultaneously in others. We address the following questions: (1) Is correlated firing between the BLA and PL dynamic upon presentations of cues associated with positive (rewards) or negative (punishments) outcomes?; (2) What is the directionality of information flow?; (3) Can we use neural activity and behavior during Pavlovian discrimination to accurately decode the behavior of an animal during the presentation of conflicting signals?; and (4) Is the BLA-mPFC projection necessary for and sufficient to promote fear-related behavior?
We also examined whether either brain region was particularly sensitive to the sucrose-predictive or the shock-predictive cue. Based on our finding that predominantly excitatory cross-correlations between the BLA and PL developed a BLA→PL directionality during the shock-predictive but not the sucrose-predictive cue, we hypothesized that this projection supplies information critical for driving fear responses. To further test this, we used channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) to activate BLA inputs to PL and observed a selective enhancement of conditioned fear but not reward-seeking responses. Conversely, we used both optogenetic and chemogenetic approaches to inhibit BLA inputs to PL and observed suppressed freezing.
Results {#S2}
=======
To investigate the neural dynamics that occur when an animal is challenged with competing environmental signals, we developed a novel variation of a Pavlovian discrimination task wherein one conditioned stimulus (CS) was paired with a reward, whereas a second CS was paired with shock. We used CSs of different sensory modalities (auditory and visual) to subsequently allow us to simultaneously present these stimuli during "competition" trials without perceptual interference ([Fig. 1a](#F1){ref-type="fig"} and [Supplementary Fig. S1a](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}).
Rats first learned a reward association in which a novel cue (e.g., light) was associated with the delivery of a palatable sucrose solution. Rats rapidly learned to explore the sucrose port during the cue presentation as compared to the inter-trial intervals (ITI; [Supplementary Fig. S1c](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). Rats then learned to discriminate a second cue (e.g., tone) with an electrical shock, while still being exposed to the sucrose-predictive cue. Rats responded to the cue that predicted shock by freezing, which is a robust and consistent behavioral manifestation thought to be related to fear. By the third discrimination session, rats exhibited differential behavioral responses during the sucrose-predictive and shock-predictive cues. For simplicity, we used the terms reward and fear epochs to describe the time during which the cues associated with either sucrose or shock, respectively, were presented. As observed in [Fig. 1b,c](#F1){ref-type="fig"} (also see [Supplementary Fig. S1d](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}), rats spent more time exploring the sucrose port than freezing during the reward epochs, whereas they spent more time freezing than exploring the sucrose port during the fear epochs.
During subsequent "competition" sessions, the cue-sucrose and cue-shock associations were simultaneously presented to induce motivational conflict and competition of reward-seeking and fear-related behavior. Pairing of these associations produced a mean performance that was between the behaviors produced when the cue-sucrose and cue-shock were presented independently ([Fig. 1d,e](#F1){ref-type="fig"} and [Supplementary Fig. S1d](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). Throughout training, while the reward- and fear-associated cues were of different sensory modalities, these cues were counterbalanced across animals and did not introduce significant differences in behavioral performance ([Supplementary Fig. S1e-g](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}).
BLA led more excitatory correlations with PL during the shock-predictive cue {#S3}
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To explore the potential contribution of interactions between the BLA and PL in governing behavioral selection in the face of conflicting cues signaling competing motivational drives, we first investigated the correlated activity across these two brain regions during distinct behavioral epochs during a discrimination session wherein the CS-Suc and CS-Shock were presented independently ([Fig. 2](#F2){ref-type="fig"}). Recording sites are shown in [Supplementary Fig. S2a-d](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}. Details on the detection of correlated activity are provided in the Online Methods (section on cross-correlations) and in [Supplementary Fig. S3a](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}. Of 3,037 total possible pairs of BLA and PL neurons, we observed 639 pairs with positively correlated activity, which we termed "Excitatory BLA/PL cross-correlations" (example shown in [Fig. 2a](#F2){ref-type="fig"}), and 107 pairs with negatively correlated activity, which we termed "Inhibitory BLA/PL cross-correlations" (example shown in [Fig. 2b](#F2){ref-type="fig"}). Although excitatory cross-correlations (CCs) were more common during all task epochs (ITI, CS-Suc and CS-Shock; [Fig. 2c,e](#F2){ref-type="fig"}), inhibitory CCs were also observed less frequently and with more variability in number of significant correlated pairs across each epoch within our data set ([Fig. 2d,f](#F2){ref-type="fig"}).
We wondered whether the directionality of information flow was dynamic depending on environmental cues predicting unconditioned stimuli of positive or negative valence. To begin exploring this question, we examined the proportion of pairs during each epoch wherein spiking of neurons in the BLA or PL preceded spiking in the other structure. We observed that a significantly greater proportion of BLA/PL pairs showing excitatory CCs were putatively led by neurons in the BLA during the CS-Shock, but not during either the CS-Suc or ITI epochs ([Fig. 2g](#F2){ref-type="fig"}). Conversely, among inhibitory CCs, the BLA putatively led a greater proportion of cell pairs during the CS-Suc ([Fig. 2h](#F2){ref-type="fig"}), though admittedly there was a smaller sample size among inhibitory cross-correlations. Smaller bin widths showed more variable cross-correlations, due primarily to sparse, low firing rates ([Supplementary Fig. S4](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}).
To control for stimulus generalization, we found that rats displayed neither reward-seeking nor fear-related behaviors during a habituation phase prior to any training, or during the discrimination of a neutral cue (CS-) that was never paired with sucrose or shock ([Supplementary Fig. S5a-c](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). Importantly, significantly smaller proportions of BLA/PL cell pairs exhibited correlated activity during the CS- and during habituation ([Supplementary Fig. S5d](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}), suggesting that BLA/PL correlations developed over the course of training. We also confirmed that cue modality did not influence the BLA/PL lead and lag dynamics ([Supplementary Fig. S6a,b](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). Furthermore, the lead and lag dynamics were consistent across distinct BLA/PL populations that exhibited correlated activity during different task events ([Supplementary Fig. S6c,d](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). Interestingly, these dynamics were also strong in a BLA/PL population that exhibited excitatory correlations during all task events, but that showed significant shifts in BLA and PL leading across task events (see bottom panels in [Supplementary Fig. S6c](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). Finally, these lead and lag dynamics were also maintained across multiple combinations of putative projection cells and interneurons ([Supplementary Fig. S6e-i](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}).
Populations of BLA cells that encoded sucrose and shock cues exhibited similar levels of correlated activity with PL {#S4}
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Preferential encoding of the "reward" and "fear" memories by the BLA cells could potentially contribute to differential patterns of BLA/PL correlations. We examined this possibility by assessing CS-elicited changes in BLA activity and then quantifying correlations with PL for the reward and fear encoding BLA cells ([Fig. 3a-d](#F3){ref-type="fig"}). Details on CS-evoked responses are provided in the Online Methods. While many BLA cells responded to either of the CSs or to both ([Fig. 3a,b](#F3){ref-type="fig"} and [Supplementary Fig. S7a,c,e](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}), no significant differences were observed between the proportions of BLA cells that exhibited biased responses to either the CS-Suc or CS-Shock ([Fig. 3c](#F3){ref-type="fig"}). Furthermore, the reward- and fear-biased populations showed similar levels of cross-correlated activity with PL ([Fig. 3d](#F3){ref-type="fig"}). In addition, the patterns of lead and lag in the cross-correlations were preserved across multiple combinations of BLA and PL cells that responded to either the reward- or fear-associated cues ([Supplementary Fig. S7g-j](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). Therefore, the differential dynamics we observed in the BLA/PL cross-correlations across reward and fear epochs could not solely be attributed to preferential encoding of the BLA cells of the reward and fear memories.
A larger population of PL cells encoded the fear memory, and this population exhibited stronger correlations with the BLA than the PL population that encoded reward {#S5}
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We next examined whether the PL cells that encoded the reward and fear associations exhibited distinct degrees of cross-correlated activity with the BLA. Representative PL cells exhibiting significant responses to the reward- and fear-associated cues are shown in [Supplementary Fig. S7b](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}. In contrast to the BLA, PL exhibited a larger proportion of cells that encoded the fear-associated cue ([Fig. 3e,f](#F3){ref-type="fig"} and [Supplementary Fig. S7d](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). Furthermore, a significantly greater overall population of PL cells exhibited biased responses to the fear-associated cue ([Fig. 3g](#F3){ref-type="fig"}), and this population showed more cross-correlations with the BLA than the population of PL cells that exhibited biased responses to the reward-associated cue ([Fig. 3h](#F3){ref-type="fig"}). This suggested that fear-biased cells in PL have greater functional connections with the BLA.
Taken together, these observations raised the possibility that information was flowing from the BLA to the PL during fear-related cues. However, these experiments did not allow us to differentiate between direct information flow, indirect connectivity, or activity driven by a common upstream site. These findings ultimately prompted us to perform optogenetic-mediated photo identification of BLA→PL neurons.
The majority of photoidentified BLA→PL neurons recorded were excited to the shock-predictive cue {#S6}
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Given that the BLA, rather than PL, led more excitatory correlations during the CS-Shock, we wondered whether this might be related to monosynaptic input from the BLA to PL. To test this hypothesis, we used a dual virus approach as performed by Nieh and colleagues^[@R26]^, wherein a retrograde viral vector injected into PL (canine adenovirus, CAV2) carried Cre-recombinase into the BLA, while an anterograde viral vector injected into the BLA allowed for Cre-dependent expression of Channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) fused to enhanced yellow fluorescent protein (eYFP; see [Fig. 4a](#F4){ref-type="fig"}). We first confirmed in an ex vivo preparation that this viral approach produced reliable ChR2 expression and selective photoresponses in BLA→PL neurons ([Fig. 4b,c](#F4){ref-type="fig"}). We also determined in the ex vivo preparation the photoresponse latency threshold in these cells ([Fig. 4d,e](#F4){ref-type="fig"}). For in vivo recordings, we implanted into the BLA an optrode (probe that combined an optical fiber with recording wires) to allow for photo identification of the BLA→PL cells shortly after the recording session during the behavioral task ([Fig. 4f](#F4){ref-type="fig"}). Photo Identification parameters are provided in the Online Methods (section on photo identification of the BLA-PL population).
Among the BLA neurons recorded in vivo, 11/60 (18%) were identified as BLA→PL neurons, based on short-latency photoresponses that were below the 12-ms threshold determined in our visually-guided ex vivo recordings ([Fig. 4g,h](#F4){ref-type="fig"}). In addition, we observed a subpopulation of BLA cells (8/60, 13%) exhibiting inhibition in response to the photostimulation of BLA→PL neurons. We termed this subpopulation the "network-inhibited" cells, though the precise number of synapses or distribution of the neurons in this network is not known.
We found that a greater proportion of the photoidentified BLA→PL neurons showed excitatory responses to the fear-associated cue ("F+"; [Fig. 4i](#F4){ref-type="fig"}). This was in contrast to the network-inhibited cells in which only one cell showed selective excitatory responses to the fear-associated cue ([Fig. 4j](#F4){ref-type="fig"}), while the majority of the cells recorded showed inhibitory responses to the fear cue ("F-") or excitatory responses to the reward-associated cue ("R+").
Activity of BLA→PL neurons decoded behavior in moments of conflict more accurately than unidentified BLA neurons {#S7}
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Based on the above findings taken together, we hypothesized that the neural activity of photoidentified BLA→PL neurons during independent presentations of the fear and reward-related cues would allow us to decode the behavior of animals challenged with competing signals, specifically the simultaneous co-presentation of CS-Suc and CS-Shock ([Fig. 5](#F5){ref-type="fig"}). The selection of a behavioral output during competition trials varied between animals, and even between trials within a single animal ([Fig. 5b](#F5){ref-type="fig"}), as competition trials could produce behaviors related to either reward-seeking (port entry) or fear (freezing).
To test this, we used a support vector machine (SVM) algorithm to compare the decoding accuracy of individual neurons in the BLA. CS-Suc trials, which reliably induced port entry, and CS-Shock trials, which reliably induced freezing, were used as training data for the SVM ([Fig. 5c](#F5){ref-type="fig"}; see section on machine learning in the Online Methods). The SVM algorithm was then tested on competition trials to determine the percentage of trials for which the activity of each individual BLA neuron accurately predicted behavioral selection (port entry or freezing; [Fig. 5d](#F5){ref-type="fig"}). Here, a representative BLA→PL neuron is shown to have 85% decoding accuracy ([Fig. 5d](#F5){ref-type="fig"}).
Indeed, photoidentified BLA→PL neurons showed a significantly higher mean decoding accuracy than unidentified BLA neurons ([Fig. 5e](#F5){ref-type="fig"}). Additionally, cross-regional neuronal pairs containing a photoidentified BLA→PL neuron had greater decoding accuracy if the PL neurons showed correlated firing with the PL-projecting BLA neuron ([Fig. 5f](#F5){ref-type="fig"}). The significantly greater accuracy in predicting action selection during competition trials suggests that the BLA→PL projection encodes information that can guide behavior.
Photostimulation of BLA inputs to PL was sufficient to promote freezing {#S8}
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
To test whether the BLA→mPFC projection was sufficient to promote fear-related behavior such as freezing, we photostimulated ChR2-expressing BLA terminals in the mPFC ([Fig. 6a-d](#F6){ref-type="fig"} and [Supplementary Fig. S8a](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). During the Pavlovian discrimination session, rats expressing ChR2 displayed significantly more freezing during laser-ON than laser-OFF epochs relative to eYFP-expressing controls ([Fig. 6c](#F6){ref-type="fig"}).
To control for the potential contribution of vesicle release from BLA terminals at targets other than PL, which may be induced by backpropagating action potentials or stimulating axons of passage, in a separate experiment ([Fig. 6e-j](#F6){ref-type="fig"} and [Supplementary Fig. S8b,c](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}) we used a standard pharmacological control for projection-specific optogenetic manipulation^[@R27]^. In ChR2-expressing animals, we either infused a glutamate receptor antagonist cocktail (NBQX+AP5; see Methods) or artificial cerebrospinal fluid (ACSF) unilaterally into the PL, counterbalanced for order across two different sessions wherein a subset of trials were paired with photostimulation. If off-site vesicle release contributed to the behavioral change in ChR2-expressing animals relative to eYFP animals, then we would expect those contributions to exist after the NBQX+AP5 treatment. We found that infusion of NBQX+AP5 abolished the light-induced increase in freezing observed in CS-Shock trials ([Fig. 6g](#F6){ref-type="fig"}), as well as during competition trials ([Fig. 6i](#F6){ref-type="fig"}), confirming that transmission from BLA terminals within the PL was sufficient to promote cue-induced freezing.
Inhibition of the BLA→PL pathway suppressed cue-induced fear-related behavior {#S9}
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although our photostimulation experiments demonstrated the sufficiency of the BLA→PL projection to augment fear behavior, fear-related behavior is likely governed by parallel, redundant circuits. We next tested the necessity of the BLA→PL pathway with optogenetic and chemogenetic inhibition during discrimination and competition ([Fig. 7](#F7){ref-type="fig"} and [Supplementary Figs. S9 and S10](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}).
For optogenetic inhibition, we bilaterally expressed the inhibitory opsin ArchT^[@R28],[@R29]^ in BLA neurons and photoinhibited BLA terminals in the mPFC during the presentation of a subset of CS-Suc, CS-Shock, and competition trials ([Fig. 7a,b](#F7){ref-type="fig"}). We found that ArchT-expressing animals showed a significant reduction in freezing during the laser-ON versus laser-OFF trials relative to GFP-expressing controls, during CS-Shock trials ([Fig. 7c](#F7){ref-type="fig"}) and competition trials ([Fig. 7e](#F7){ref-type="fig"}).
Given the caveats associated with optogenetic inhibition, including the possibility of photoinhibition of adjacent mPFC subregions, effects of heating, or sensory detection of the light stimulation, we also performed chemogenetic inhibition. We selectively expressed an inhibitory chemogenetic tool, hM4D(Gi) DREADDs (Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs)^[@R30]^ activated by clozapine-N-oxide (CNO), in BLA→PL neurons using the CAV2-Cre virus strategy ([Fig. 7g](#F7){ref-type="fig"}). We then systemically injected either vehicle or CNO into animals prior to sessions wherein CS-Suc, CS-Shock, and competition trials were presented in a pseudo-random order ([Fig. 7h](#F7){ref-type="fig"}). Consistent with results from our optogenetic inhibition experiment, we observed that selective inhibition of the BLA→PL neurons reduced freezing relative to mCherry-expressing controls during CS-Shock trials ([Fig. 7i](#F7){ref-type="fig"}) and competition trials ([Fig. 7k](#F7){ref-type="fig"}).
Discussion {#S10}
==========
In this study, we developed a novel paradigm wherein we could study the naturalistic phenomenon of orchestrating competing mechanisms elicited by simultaneous presentation of cues associated with conflicting motivational drives in a systematic trial structure to allow for extraction of neural correlates ([Fig. 1](#F1){ref-type="fig"}). Electrophysiological recordings revealed correlated neural activity in the BLA and PL that were predominantly excitatory during the entire task. However, the direction of information flow changed depending on the specific behavioral epoch, as the BLA was more likely to lead excitatory correlations with PL during fear-related behavior ([Fig. 2](#F2){ref-type="fig"}), and that PL neurons encoding the fear-associated cue were more likely to be correlated with BLA activity ([Fig. 3](#F3){ref-type="fig"}). This result was bolstered by our finding that photoidentified BLA→PL neurons predominantly showed excitation in response the fear cue and more accurately decoded behavior in the face of competing signals ([Fig. 4](#F4){ref-type="fig"} and [5](#F5){ref-type="fig"}), showing that this effect was at least in part due to direct input from BLA to PL. Conversely, inhibitory cross-correlations were more often led by the BLA upon presentation of the sucrose-predictive cue ([Fig. 2h](#F2){ref-type="fig"}), and neurons inhibited by photoidentified BLA→PL neurons ("Network Inhibited Cells") showed a trend towards increased excitatory responding to the reward-associated cue or inhibition to the shock-predictive cue. Although the sample sizes for the inhibitory cross-correlations and network inhibited neurons were admittedly small, these data lead us to speculate that a competing reward-related network exists and is suppressed locally within the BLA^[@R2],[@R31]^.
Anatomical implications {#S11}
-----------------------
Several subtle effects from our experiments prompted us to speculate about the possible interactions between BLA and PL neurons. From our phototagging experiment ([Fig. 4](#F4){ref-type="fig"}), we observed "Network Inhibited" neurons in the BLA that were inhibited upon photostimulation of BLA-PL neurons. We speculate that BLA-PL neurons have collaterals that may synapse locally onto BLA interneurons that inhibit these "Network Inhibited" cells, though it is possible that they collateralize to distal GABAergic neurons that have long-range projections back to the BLA. Though we are not aware of any direct evidence that the BLA contains GABAergic neurons that project to the PL, our experiments do not allow us to exclude this possibility. Further, from our BLA-PL inhibition experiments ([Supplementary Fig. 9](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}), our data suggest that inhibition of BLA-PL neurons may also disinhibit unidentified BLA neurons.
Importantly, we took care to photoinhibit BLA terminals in PL only during the cue presentation, as we wanted to avoid paradoxical vesicle release associated with prolonged illumination of ArchT-expressing axon terminals^[@R32]^. Even so, we observed a minority of neurons in the PL (4%; [Supplementary Fig. 9h](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}) that showed an increase in activity upon photoinhibition of BLA terminals.
It may also be noteworthy that our optogenetic manipulations produced rather subtle behavioral changes ([Figs. 6](#F6){ref-type="fig"} and [7](#F7){ref-type="fig"}). The relatively small effect sizes may reflect either redundancy in the circuitry involved in this task, or technical challenges related to using rats as opposed to mice (including greater volume of illumination required or lower relative expression levels achieved).
We found similar proportions of correlated BLA/PL cells during all task events, and a substantial proportion of cell pairs exhibited correlated activity during more than one event. This suggests that there are consistent anatomical relationships between the BLA and PL that are selectively modulated depending upon the memory that is being retrieved. While we found evidence supporting bidirectional flow of information during reward-seeking epochs, the flow of information became biased towards the BLA→PL direction during fear epochs. Importantly, this biased flow of information was not due to increased responsiveness to the shock-predictive cue compared to the sucrose-predictive cue in the BLA. More specific hypotheses of the underlying change in effective connectivity might include that BLA neurons that signal fear memory are more likely to connect functionally in a leading manner with PL. In addition, while BLA neurons that encode the same cue-value may be more likely to facilitate each other than neurons that encode the opposite cue-value, there is debate as to whether such populations are anatomically intermingled or segregated, and how they interact^[@R7],[@R8],[@R31],[@R33]^. This suggests that statistical interrelationships are unlikely to remain completely independent across reward and fear retrieval. Despite this, we observed dynamic changes in the functional relationship between the BLA and PL that differentiated reward versus fear memory retrieval, with the BLA driving PL activity more strongly during the retrieval of fear than reward. A possible explanation for this could be that another structure mediates the changing relationship between the BLA and PL. One potential candidate is the ventral hippocampus, which is required for the expression of conditioned fear responses^[@R22]^, and preferentially modulates activity in both the BLA and PL during states of elevated fear and anxiety^[@R34],[@R35]^.
Could another BLA-mPFC pathway preferentially guide reward-seeking behavior? {#S12}
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other mPFC subregions such as the infralimbic cortex (IL) play different functional roles than PL in the regulation of reward-seeking and fear responses. In the reward domain, while PL activity is required for the initial acquisition of goal-directed reward-seeking behavior, IL activity is required for habitual reward-seeking behavior in over-trained animals^[@R36]--[@R38]^. Furthermore, IL shows stronger increases in activity than PL during reward-seeking tasks^[@R18]^. In addition, IL activity has also been correlated with food enticement^[@R39]^, contextually-driven reward-seeking responses^[@R13]^, and Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer of reward-seeking behavior^[@R40]^. In the fear domain, while PL activity is crucial for fear expression^[@R11],[@R21],[@R41]^, IL activity is crucial for fear extinction and the inhibition of fear responses later on^[@R19]^. The ability of IL to inhibit fear could reliably allow reward-related signals to emerge without conflicting with fear signals, thus allowing reward-seeking behavior to occur. Future studies could be focused on determining the functional role of the BLA→IL pathway during reward-fear discrimination and test the hypothesis that IL may be a reward-biased pathway between the BLA and the mPFC.
Potential implications regarding the impact of emotion on cognition {#S13}
-------------------------------------------------------------------
While we found evidence for both "bottom-up" (BLA→PL) and "top-down" (PL→BLA) interactions overall, BLA→PL regulation dominated over the reciprocal PL→BLA regulation during fear retrieval. This finding is consistent with other models that predict transfer of information from the BLA to PL during fear learning^[@R11],[@R12],[@R24],[@R25],[@R42]^. Furthermore, recent studies that examined neural oscillations in the theta and gamma frequencies of local field potentials reported synchronized activity between the BLA and PL^[@R43]--[@R45]^. However, these oscillations did not clearly reflect preferential "bottom-up" BLA→PL regulation during fear retrieval. In contrast, "top-down" PL→BLA regulation has been reported to dominate during the presentation of "safety" cues (e.g., cues that do not predict electrical shocks)^[@R43],[@R44]^, or during anesthesia in untrained anaimals^[@R46]^. Thus, it appears that "bottom-up" BLA→PL regulation dominates during high-fear states, whereas "top-down" PL→BLA regulation dominates during low-fear states. Nonetheless, we did not observe stronger "top-down" PL→BLA regulation during reward-seeking behavior, which is a low-fear state. Perhaps, some "bottom-up" BLA→PL regulation might have occurred during reward-seeking that countered the opposite "top-down" PL→BLA regulation during this low-fear reward-seeking state.
After being trained using only neural activity during the individual fear- and reward-associated cues, machine learning algorithms were used to decode subject behavior using neural activity from competition trials ([Fig. 5](#F5){ref-type="fig"}). The ability to predict behavior in the face of conflicting cues suggests that limbic representations of singular motivational states are nested within the representation of these states in conflict. Indeed, the representation of emotional conflict in the BLA is not only associated with the cues that trigger positive or negative emotional states, but also the behavioral expression of those states^[@R2]^ Despite variability across or even within animals, behavior on competition trials was strikingly decisive within individual trials, suggesting that emotional conflict is inherently unstable and quickly pivots towards simpler, singular motivational states. Our findings support the notion that the process of conflict resolution or state stabilization has, to some extent, already occurred in the information communicated by the BLA to the PL^[@R47]--[@R50]^.
In summary, the present study establishes a novel paradigm and identifies new vistas for exploration regarding the distal networks and microcircuitry involved in the neural mechanisms guiding action selection in situations of conflict.
Online Methods {#S14}
==============
Animals {#S15}
-------
All procedures were approved by the Committee on Animal Care of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Animal Care and Use Review Office of the USAMRMC, in compliance with the PHS Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (Public Law 99--158). Adult male Long-Evans rats weighing \~275-300 g (3-months-old) were acquired from a commercial supplier (Taconic Biosciences), and were housed individually in Plexiglas home cages in a vivarium with controlled temperature, humidity, and pressure. Rats were maintained on a regular 12-hr light/dark cycle and all experiments were performed during the light phase. Water was available *ad libitum*. Standard rat chow was restricted to 20 g/d.
Surgeries {#S16}
---------
Rats were anesthetized using isoflurane gas (\~2.0%), and surgeries were performed using stereotaxic apparatuses (Kopf Instruments). Midline incisions were made down the scalp using surgical blades and craniotomies were opened using a dental drill. Coordinates to target the BLA were -2.60 to -2.80 mm anterior-posterior (AP), ±4.80 to ±5.00 mm medial-lateral (ML), and -8.50 to -8.80 mm dorsal-ventral (DV). Coordinates to target PL were +3.00 to +2.90 mm AP, ±0.50 to ±0.75 mm ML, and -3.75 to -4.00 mm DV. All coordinates were relative to bregma. Implants were secured to the skull using stainless steel screws (Amazon), adhesive cement (C&B Metabond, Parkell), and dental acrylic (Ortho-Jet, Lang Dental). Incisions were sutured and post-operative care and analgesia (5 mg/kg Ketoprofen or 1.5 mg/kg meloxicam) were provided for 4 days. Rats were allowed to fully recover from surgery for two weeks.
Optogenetic Manipulations {#S17}
-------------------------
Viral vectors were infused during a surgical procedure that occurred at least 12-16 weeks prior to implanting optical fibers during a second surgical procedure. All viral aliquots were obtained from the University of North Carolina Vector Core, unless otherwise specified. DNA sequences for viral constructs can be found online ([www.optogenetics.org](http://www.optogenetics.org)). A 10-µL microsyringe with a 33-Ga needle (Nanofil, WPI) was used to deliver viral vectors into the targets at a rate of 0.1 µL/min, using a microsyringe pump (UMP3/Micro4; WPI). Viral volumes of \~700-1000 nL were infused per target. Needles were kept at the infusion site for an extra 10 min to allow viral diffusion. Needles were slowly withdrawn at an approximate rate of 1 mm/min.
For optogenetic stimulation, the BLA was unilaterally transduced with a serotype-5 adeno-associated viral vector (AAV~5~) coding for the blue light-sensitive cation-pump *Chlamydomonas reinhardtii* channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2), which was fused to enhanced yellow fluorescent protein (eYFP) and expressed under the calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II alpha promoter (CaMKllα) (AAV~5~-CaMKllα-ChR2(H134R)-eYFP). Animals in the control group received a viral vector that only coded for eYFP (AAV~5~-CaMKIIα-eYFP). For optogenetic inhibition, the BLA was bilaterally transduced with a viral vector coding for the yellow light-sensitive outward proton-pump *Halorubrum sodomense TP009* archaerhodopsin (ArchT), which was fused to green fluorescent protein (GFP) and expressed under the CaMKllα promoter (AAV~9~-CaMKllα-ArchT-GFP). Animals in the control group received a viral vector that only coded for GFP (AAV~8~-CaMKIIα-GFP).
Optical fibers were chronically implanted in the dorsal portion of PL to either stimulate or inhibit BLA inputs. These implants consisted of a Ø400-µm core multimode fiber (NA = 0.48; Thorlabs) that was held within a stainless steel ferrule (Precision Fiber Products). Optical fibers were cut at \~5-8 mm from the bottom of the ferrules to reach PL. Fibers were polished until reaching an efficiency to transmit light of \~85-95%. During behavioral testing, optical fibers were connected to patch cords (Doric), which were in turn connected to blue or yellow light lasers (OEM Laser Systems) using FC/PC adapters located above the operant chambers. Laser output was controlled with a Master-8 pulse stimulator (A.M.P.I.). For photostimulation, 473-nm DPSS lasers (100-mW) were used to deliver 5-ms pulses of blue light at a frequency of 20 Hz, with a power of \~10 mW at the tip of the optical fibers (\~80 mW/mm^2^). For photoinhibition, 589-nm DPSS lasers (100-mW) were used to deliver constant yellow light at a power of \~8 mW at the tip of the optical fibers (\~64 mW/mm^2^). The blue laser was activated 500 ms prior to CS onset and deactivated 500 ms after CS offset, whereas the yellow laser was activated 1000 ms prior to CS onset and deactivated 1000 ms after CS offset.
Pharmacology Experiment {#S18}
-----------------------
Optogenetic and pharmacology approaches were combined to rule out the possibility of stimulation of fibers of passage. After unilaterally transducing the BLA with ChR2, a 20-Ga stainless steel cannula was chronically implanted above PL (stereotaxic coordinates: 2.95 mm anterior, 0.60 mm lateral, and 3.00 mm ventral from bregma). A 24-Ga dummy was inserted to prevent clogging of the cannula, and 24-Ga injectors extending 1 mm from the tip of the cannula were used to infuse drugs into PL. A 10-µL microsyringe (Nanofil, WPI) was used to infuse drugs at a rate of 0.1 µL/min, using a microsyringe pump (UMP3/Micro4; WPI).
Drugs were delivered into PL prior to the insertion of optical fibers and behavioral testing. Animals were tested on two days in a counterbalanced fashion shortly after infusion of either artificial cerebrospinal fluid (ACSF) or the AMPA (α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid) and NMDA (N-Methyl-D-aspartic acid) antagonists NBQX (22 mM^[@R51]^; 2,3-dihydroxy-6-nitro-7-sulfamoyl-benzo\[f\]quinoxaline-2,3-dione; Tocris) and AP5 (38 mM^[@R51]^; (2R)-amino-5-phosphonovaleric acid; Tocris). A total volume of 500 nL of ACSF or NBQX+AP5 (250 nL each) was infused into PL. Injectors were kept at the infusion site for an extra 5 min to allow drug diffusion. After drug infusion (\~10 min), Ø400-µm core optical fibers, which were mounted on stainless steel ferrules and glued to nylon dust caps, were inserted and attached to the cannulas. Optical fibers extended \~250-500 µm beyond the cannula tips. Animals were then transferred to operant chambers and connected to patch cords for testing.
Chemogenetic Silencing {#S19}
----------------------
Viral vectors were used to express either the control fluorophore mCherry or the Gi-coupled designer receptor hM4D(Gi), which silences neural activity upon activation with a designer drug. mCherry or hM4D(Gi) were selectively expressed in the BLA cells terminating in PL using a Cre-dependent dual-virus strategy in which the BLA was infused with a virus containing mCherry or hM4D(Gi) within a double-floxed inverted open reading cassette (AAV~5~-hSyn-DIO-mCherry or AAV~5~-hSyn-DIO-hM4D(Gi)-mCherry), whereas PL was infused with a retrograde canine virus type-2 coding for Cre-recombinase (CAV2-Cre^[@R52]^; Institute of Molecular Genetics of Montpellier). Viral volumes of \~700-1000 nL were infused per site at a rate of 0.1 µL/min. Viral expression was allowed for \~12-16 weeks prior to behavioral testing. hM4D(Gi) was activated with the designer drug clozapine-N-oxide (CNO; Sigma-Aldrich), which was diluted in a solution of 5%DMSO and 0.9% saline. Systemic injections (i.p.) were performed \~15-20 min prior to behavioral testing, at a dose of 10 mg/kg to inhibit neuronal activity. Behavioral testing was also performed after multiple vehicle injections (5%DMSO in 0.9% saline).
Behavioral Tasks {#S20}
----------------
Rats were trained in standard operant chambers (23 × 30 × 40 cm; Med Associates) located inside sound-attenuating cubicles. Each chamber was equipped with a red house light, light cues, speakers for the delivery of tone or white noise cues, a syringe pump to deliver sucrose, a sucrose port that was equipped with an infrared beam for the detection of entries and exits, and a grid floor for the delivery of electrical shocks. A customized digital-relay circuit was added between the shock generator and grid floor to minimize electrical artifacts. Chambers were scrubbed with 70% isopropyl alcohol after testing each animal.
All training phases occurred in the context. The first phase of training consisted of the acquisition of a Pavlovian reward association in which rats learned to associate a conditioned stimulus with sucrose (i.e., CS-Suc). To facilitate reward acquisition, rats were pre-exposed multiple times to sucrose in the homecage as well as in the training chambers. Reward conditioning consisted of the presentation of either a light cue or a sine wave tone cue (5 kHz, 80 dB) that lasted for 20 s, and predicted the delivery of a 30% sucrose solution (120 µL/trial). Sucrose was delivered over 10 s during the cue presentation (5-15 s, relative to CS onset). Rats underwent three reward sessions (one per day), and each consisted of a total of 25 trials delivered over \~35 min. The ITI was variable with an average of 1 min. Sucrose was removed by a vacuum immediately after cue offset if rats did not retrieve it during the CS.
The second phase of training consisted of the discrimination of conditioned stimuli that predicted sucrose reward (CS-Suc), aversive shocks (CS-Shock), or no outcome (CS-). The light and tone cues were counterbalanced across rats for the CS-Suc and CS-Shock associations. The white noise cue was always used for the CS-. The aversive shocks (0.40 mA) lasted for 0.5 s and co-terminated with the CS (19.5-20 s, relative to CS onset). CS-Suc, CS-Shock, and CS- trials occurred in a pseudorandom manner. Rats underwent at least three discrimination sessions (one per day), and each consisted of a total of 60 trials delivered over \~83 min. The ITI was variable with an average of 1 min.
The third phase of training tested the direct competition of reward and fear related behaviors. In addition to individual CS-Suc and CS-Shock trials, this phase of training included "competition" trials in which the CS-Suc and CS-Shock associations were co-presented to induce conflicting motivational drives and the potential for competition between reward and fear associated behaviors. CS-Suc, CS-Shock, and competition trials occurred in a pseudorandom manner, and a total of 60 trials were delivered over \~83 min during these competition sessions (variable ITI with an average of 1 min).
Reward and Fear Behaviors {#S21}
-------------------------
Entries into the sucrose port provided a readout of reward-related behavior. Timestamps for port entries and exits were sampled from beam breaks (Med-PC IV, Med Associates). These timestamps were used to quantify the amount of time that animals spent in the port. Freezing responses, which are defined as the lack of all movement except for respiration^[@R53]^, provided a readout of fear-related behavior. Videos were sampled using infrared cameras at 30 fps, and freezing was quantified using an automated custom MATLAB script that quantified frame-by-frame changes in total pixel intensity, as approximations for animal motion. Frame-by-frame motion values were then converted into freezing scores using a binary method relative to a motion threshold (i.e., motion levels above a certain threshold were classified as no freezing, whereas motion levels below a certain threshold were classified as freezing). The time that animals spent in the port was subtracted from the freezing quantification as animals showed low motion while collecting sucrose.
In Vivo Single-Unit Electrophysiology {#S22}
-------------------------------------
Extracellular single-unit recordings were performed using in-house built multichannel electrodes. An electrode consisted of a 10 × 2 pin connector (Mill-Max Manufacturing Corp) that accommodated 16 microwires for single-unit recordings, an extra microwire for analog reference, and a low resistance 200-µm silver wire to provide ground (A-M Systems). A 22.9-µm HML-insulated nichrome microwire was used (Stablohm 675, California Fine Wire). A 26-Ga stainless steel cannula was attached to one of the electrode pins to insert the microwire bundle. Microwires were secured to the connector pins using a silver print coating (GC Electronics). After testing for short circuits, all connections were secured using dental acrylic. Final cutting of the microwire tips was performed using serrated fine scissors (Fine Science Tools). Gold-platting of the microwire tips was performed to reduce impedance and improve the signal-to-noise ratio^[@R54]^. Gold-platting was achieved by submerging the electrode tips in a solution containing equal parts of a non-cyanide gold solution (SIFCO Selective Plating) and a 1 mg/mL polyethylene glycol solution (Sigma-Aldrich). A cathodal electric current of 1 µA was then applied until the impedance of each channel was reduced to a range of \~200-300 kΩ.
Extracellular waveforms exceeding a voltage threshold were band-pass filtered (500-5000 Hz) and digitized at 25 kHz using a multichannel extracellular recording workstation (Tucker-Davis Technologies). Rats were habituated to the recording tethers prior to experiments by connecting them multiple times (\~30 min/d) while the experimenters adjusted the voltage thresholds to isolate stable single-units. During this procedure, rats also were habituated to the operant chambers. Neural activity was monitored during behavioral assessment, and the recorded waveforms were sorted offline using commercial software (Offline Sorter, Plexon Inc.). Principal components and peak-valley voltage values were assessed for each waveform, and then plotted in three-dimensional feature space to define clusters formed by single-units.
In Vivo Photo Identification of the BLA-PL Population {#S23}
-----------------------------------------------------
The activity of BLA cells terminating in PL (i.e., BLA-PL population) was monitored using a combination of single-unit recordings and optogenetic tools. First, ChR2 was selectively expressed in the BLA-PL population using the Cre-dependent dual-virus strategy in which the BLA was infused with a virus containing ChR2 within a DIO cassette (AAV~5~-EF1α-DIO-ChR2(H134R)-eYFP), whereas PL was infused with the retrograde CAV2-Cre virus. Viral volumes of 1 µL were infused in each target using 33-Ga needles. Viral expression was allowed for \~6 months prior to chronically implanting into the BLA a recording optrode (i.e., electrode containing an optical fiber for light delivery). In contrast to wire-bundle electrodes, optrodes were constructed by attaching microwires around an optical fiber (Ø300-µm, NA = 0.37; Thorlabs) that was in turn attached to the electrode connector. Wires extended \~500 µm from the tip of the optical fiber. Photo Identification of presumed ChR2+∷BLA-PL cells was achieved by delivering pulses of 473-nm blue light with a power of \~25-30 mW at the tip of the optical fibers (\~17-20 mW/mm^2^ at the tip of the recording microwires). Two stimulation patterns were used: (a) 5-ms pulses at 1 Hz; and (b) 1-s pulses of constant light. These stimulation patterns were delivered in a pseudorandomly dispersed fashion with at least 20 iterations of each and with an average inter-stimulus interval of 10 s. This photo identification procedure was conducted shortly after the recording session in which animals underwent the behavioral paradigms.
Ex Vivo Slice Electrophysiology {#S24}
-------------------------------
### Brain Tissue Preparation {#S25}
BLA slices from 7 animals were examined. Approximately six months after transduction of the BLA with the AAV~5~-EF1α-DIO-ChR2-eYFP viral vector, and transduction of PL with the retrograde CAV2-Cre virus, rats were anesthetized with 90 mg/kg pentobarbital and perfused transcardially with 50 mL of cold, modified artificial cerebrospinal fluid (ACSF, at \~4°C) containing (in mM): 75 sucrose, 87 NaCl, 2.5 KCl, 1.3 NaH2PO4, 7 MgCl2, 0.5 CaCl2, 25 NaHCO3 and 5 ascorbic acid. The brain was then extracted and glued (Roti coll 1; Carh Roth GmbH) to the platform of a semiautomatic vibrating blade microtome (VT1200; Leica). The platform was placed in the slicing chamber containing modified ACSF at 4°C. 300-μm coronal sections containing the BLA were collected in a holding chamber filled with ACSF saturated with 95% O2 and 5% CO2, containing (in mM): 126 NaCl, 2.5 KCl, 1.25 NaH2PO4, 1.0 MgCl2, 2.4 CaCl2, 26.0 NaHCO3, and 10 glucose. Recordings were started 1 h after slicing, and the temperature was maintained at approximately 31°C both in the holding chamber and during the recordings.
### Whole-Cell Patch-Clamp Recordings {#S26}
Recordings were made on visually identified neurons expressing eYFP. Oxygenated ACSF was perfused onto the slice with a peristaltic pump (Minipuls3; Gilson) at \~3 mL/min. Recorded cells were filled with Alexa Fluor (AF) 350 and biocytin. Voltage- and current-clamp recordings were conducted using glass microelectrodes (4-7 MΩ) molded with a horizontal puller (P-1000) and filled with a solution containing (in mM): 125 potassium gluconate, 20 HEPES, 10 NaCl, 3 MgATP, 8 biocytin and 2 Alexa Fluor 350 (pH = 7.33; 287 milliOsmol). Recorded signals were amplified using a Multiclamp 700B amplifier (Molecular Devices). Analog signals were digitized at 10 kHz using Digidata 1440 and recorded using the pClamp10 software (Molecular Devices).
After opening the cell membrane, neurons where confirmed to express ChR2 if they showed a constant inward current in voltage-clamp in response to a 1-s constant blue light pulse, with a light power density of 84 mW/mm^2^ (20 mW with a 40× objective) delivered via a 470-nm LED light source. From the 30 recorded neurons, 6 were confirmed to express ChR2 as they showed constant inward currents in response to the light pulse. The remaining 24 neurons were confirmed to not express ChR2 nor receiving inputs from nearby ChR2 neurons, as they did not respond to the light stimulus. Cell bodies for the 24 neighboring cells were located at least 150 µm from the cell bodies of ChR2-expressing neurons.
After categorizing the cells as ChR2-expressing or non-expressing, we recorded the photoresponse of the expressing neurons in current-clamp. The six ChR2+ neurons received 5-ms single pulses delivered every 10 s, and 20-s trains of 5-ms pulses at 1 Hz at increasing light power light power density until a maximum of 84 mW/mm^2^ (20 mW with a 40× objective). The location within the BLA of all recorded neurons was confirmed after the recording. Co-localization of AF 350 and eYFP was confirmed for the six ChR2+ neurons.
### Latency of Photoresponses {#S27}
Offline analysis was performed using Clampfit software (Molecular Devices). Light-evoked latencies of action potentials (AP) were measured during 40 light stimulations delivered at 1 Hz (5-ms pulses; two individual 20-pulse trains). Latencies were measured from the onset of the light pulse to the peak of the AP.
Histology {#S28}
---------
Rats were euthanized with sodium pentobarbital (150 mg/kg) and microlesions were produced at the recording sites by passing an anodal electrical current (20 s at \~25-35 µA on at least 4 channels). Rats were transcardially perfused with ice-cold phosphate buffer saline (1×-PBS) and paraformaldehyde (4% PFA, pH = 7.3). Brains were collected and fixed in 4% PFA for 24 hr and equilibrated in 30% sucrose for 48 hr. Coronal sections were cut at 60 µm using a microtome (HM430, Thermo Fisher Scientific).
Brain sections containing the BLA and PL were incubated for 30 min in a DNA-specific fluorescent probe (DAPI: 4′,6-Diamidino-2-Phenylindole; 1:50,000 dilution). After 4 washes in 1×-PBS (10 min each), sections were mounted on microscope slides using fluorescence-compatible PVD-DABCO media. Confocal images were acquired with an Olympus FV1000 confocal laser-scanning microscope, using a 10×/0.40NA or 40×/1.30NA oil immersion objective. Image stitches and serial z-stacks were achieved with commercial imaging software (Fluoview, Olympus). Expression of eYFP and DAPI was examined in sections containing various anterior-posterior coronal levels of the BLA and PL. Microlesions were examined on confocal images and reconstructed onto coronal drawings adapted from a rat brain atlas^[@R55]^.
Statistical Analyses {#S29}
--------------------
All statistical analyses were based on two-tailed comparisons and were performed using either GraphPad Prism (GraphPad Software, Inc.), unless otherwise specified. Although no statistical tests were used to pre-determine sample sizes, our sample sizes are consistent with previous publications^[@R56]--[@R58]^. All data met the assumptions of every statistical tests used. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality test was used to determine if data sets required parametric or non-parametric statistical tests.
### Randomization and Blinding {#S30}
For behavioral training, the counterbalanced auditory and visual CSs were randomly assigned to animals. Pseudorandom trial sequences were generated to deliver CS-Suc, CS-Shock, CS-, Competition, laser-OFF, and laser-ON trials. All animals received the same trial and laser sequences in any given experiment. Viral treatments for optogenetic and chemogenetic experiments were randomly assigned to animals. For the pharmacology experiment, the vehicle and drug treatments were randomly assign during the initial test session, whereas they were counterbalanced during the second test session. Although blinding was not performed, behavioral testing was controlled by software and data analyses were performed using customized automated methods whenever possible. In addition, all experiments were designed with appropriate internal controls (e.g., within-subject comparisons of laser-OFF versus laser-ON trials, within-subject comparisons of CS-Suc versus CS-Shock trials, etc.).
### Exclusion of Animals, Cells, or Data Points {#S31}
Several animals were excluded from this study due to either electrode misplacement (*n* = 2 animals), lack of viral expression (*n* = 5 animals), viral leakage (*n* = 2 animals), or breakage or misplacement of optical fibers (*n* = 3 animals). Several cells were also excluded from this study (BLA: *n* = 22 cells, PL: *n* = 23 cells) due to repetitions across channels. In addition, for cross-correlation analyses, we excluded cells that fired at low frequencies (\< 0.1 Hz), which typically produce unpopulated correlograms with spurious peaks and troughs. One data point was excluded from the decoding analysis as it was detected by the Grubbs\' test as a statistically significant outlier.
### Behavioral Data {#S32}
Pearson\'s correlation test was used on a subset of freezing data to determine whether our automated quantification method provided reliable values compared to hand-scoring (*df* = 58; *R* = 0.989; *P* \< 0.0001; *n* = 60 trials including CS-Suc, CS-Shock, and Compet; *n* = 3 animals). For the initial behavioral experiments, within-subject comparisons of port and freezing data across distinct CSs were performed using either paired T-test (in the case of two conditions) or one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated-measures and Bonferroni post-hoc tests (in the case of three or more conditions). For optogenetic and chemogenetic experiments, normalizations were performed to port and freezing data by calculating the difference between experimental conditions (%time values were used for the subtractions). For instance, the percentage of time that animals spent performing either of the behaviors during laser-OFF trials was subtracted from laser-ON trials (i.e., laser-ON minus laser-OFF). Similarly, values obtained during the first test session in the chemogenetic experiment were subtracted from values obtained during subsequent sessions (e.g., CNO minus Veh1). Statistical comparisons between groups were performed using two-way ANOVA with repeated measures and Bonferroni post-hoc tests.
### Quality of Cluster Sorting {#S33}
Single-units were considered for analysis if clusters met two sorting quality statistical parameters: (a) multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA; probability threshold for significance was set to *P* \< 0.01), which indicated that each cluster was positioned at a statistically different feature space location at any given feature space; and (b) the non-parametric J3 statistic, which measured the ratio of between-cluster to within-cluster scatter. These cluster statistics were examined using Offline Sorter (Plexon Inc.). To avoid duplicates across channels, auto-correlograms and cross-correlograms of simultaneously recorded units were inspected using Neuroexplorer (NEX Technologies).
### Putative Principal Cells and Interneurons {#S34}
Using a hierarchical clustering method, BLA and PL cells were separated into putative principal neurons versus interneurons based on spike width and firing frequency^[@R59],[@R60]^. Three parameters were used: (a) latency of the depolarization phase at half amplitude, (b) latency of the hyperpolarization phase at half amplitude, and (c) the average firing frequency during the entire recording session.
### Cross-Correlations (CCs) {#S35}
CCs were assessed to examine whether BLA and PL cells exhibited different patterns of functional interactions during distinct task epochs. Analyses for CCs were performed using a combination of tools in Neuroexplorer (NEX Technologies), Matlab (MathWorks), and R (R Core Team; <https://www.R-project.org/>). CCs were examined during various task epochs: (a) ITI, (b) CS-Suc, (c) CS-Shock, (d) CS-, and (e) Competition. The ITI epochs were pseudorandomly generated such that they matched the number of CS epochs in any given recording session, and such that the ITI epochs were at least 5 s away from any CS epoch. To generate CCs, the BLA spikes were used as the reference events, and the PL spikes were used as the target events. CCs were generated for a window of ±1000 ms relative to the reference spikes, using bin widths of 25 ms^[@R61]^.
Two correction methods were applied to control for apparent correlations that might be due to CS-elicited covariation or nonstationary firing rates: (a) trial-shift predictor in which spike trains from the reference and target neurons were compared during shifted trials (19 trial shifts were applied per neural pair); and (b) spike- shuffle predictor in which the spike trains of the reference neurons were repeatedly shuffled over time (100 random spike shuffles per trial were applied). The trial-shift predictor and spike-shuffle predictor correlograms were individually subtracted from the raw correlograms, and neural pairs were deemed significantly correlated if peaks or troughs reached statistical significance after application of both correction methods. The statistical significance of peaks and troughs was determined by *Z*-score transformations of the corrected correlograms, relative to the average standard deviations of correlogram generated for each predictor. Significant peaks and troughs were evaluated within an experimental window of ±100 ms relative to the reference spikes, using a *Z*-score criterion that was based on a two-tailed significance level of *P* \< 0.01, and that was Bonferroni-corrected for multiple comparisons (i.e., eight 25-ms bins within the ±100 ms window; actual *P* = 0.01/8 = 0.00125). The significance *P*-value of 0.00125 corresponded to *Z*-score thresholds of *Z* \> 3.23 for excitatory CCs or *Z* \< -3.23 for inhibitory CCs. CCs had to meet these significance thresholds for both predictor-corrections (trial-shifting and spike-shuffling) in order to be considered for further analyses.
Since 25-ms bins were too broad to detect coincident firing, zero-lag "common-input" correlations^[@R62]^ were examined from 5-ms binned correlograms with the central bin centered at zero (i.e., ±2.5 ms). If the 5-ms binned correlograms exhibited peaks or troughs centered at zero, correlations were considered as "common input", and they were excluded from analyses.
The timing of peaks and troughs in the 25-ms binned correlograms was examined to determine putative lead and lag. Excluding zero-lag cell pairs, correlations were considered to be led by BLA if peaks or troughs occurred after the BLA reference spikes (i.e., within +2.5 to +100 ms in the correlograms), whereas correlations were considered to be led by PL if peaks or troughs occurred before the BLA reference spikes (i.e., within -100 to -2.5 ms in the correlograms). Proportions of significantly correlated cell pairs were compared across task epochs using Bonferroni-corrected chi-square tests. Results obtained with the 25-ms binned correlograms were confirmed using 10-ms binned correlograms^[@R63]^. However, the narrower bins in the setting of low firing rate cells led to highly sparse correlograms with increased variability and the potential for false positive and false negative correlations. In addition, the narrower bins failed to detect many inhibitory correlations that were detected with the wider bins, due to increased variability and floor effects, especially in the low firing rate cell pairs.
### CS-Evoked Responses {#S36}
The response of individual cells to CSs was examined using a combination of the non-parametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test (as primary) and a *Z*-score test (as secondary). Given the existence of cells in both the BLA and PL that typically show either "transient" or "prolonged" responses to CSs^[@R64]--[@R68]^, two signed-rank tests with 1000 bootstraps and Bonferroni corrections were performed per CS. For transient responses, neural activity was binned in 25 ms intervals, and comparisons were made between a baseline window ranging from -1 to 0 s and an experimental window ranging from 0 to 300 ms, relative to CS onset. For prolonged responses, activity was binned in 50 ms intervals, and comparisons were made between a baseline window ranging from -2 to 0 s and an experimental window ranging from 0 to 1.5 s, relative to CS onset. The *Z*-score test confirmed that the peak responses reached a certain significance threshold of either *Z* \> 2.58 for excitatory responses (corresponding to *P* \< 0.01) or *Z* \< -1.96 for inhibitory responses (corresponding to *P* \< 0.05). Cells that met both the Wilcoxon and *Z*-score criteria were then considered as CS-responsive cells. Proportions of CS-responsive populations were compared using chi-square tests with Bonferroni corrections for multiple comparisons.
### Machine Learning to Decode Neuronal Activity and Predict Behavior {#S37}
A machine-learning algorithm^[@R69],[@R70]^ was used to determine whether behavioral responses during competition trials could be predicted based on how individual cells responded during CS-Suc and CS-Shock trials. Neural data for individual cells was extracted for the entire 20 s of each trial (20 trials for the CS-Suc, 20 trials for the CS-Shock, and 20 trials for Competition). These data were then preprocessed by binning neural activity within each individual trial into 50-ms bins. Spike density estimates for each trial were then generated by convolving the binned rasters with a Gaussian kernel (standard deviation of 200 ms). The dimensionality of each cell\'s data was further reduced using principal component analysis across all trial types^[@R71]^, and retained the first four principal component scores for each trial. This procedure reduced the data from 400 data points per cell per trial (50-ms bins over 20 s) to only four data points per cell per trial. The same preprocessing steps were used for pairs of BLA and PL cells, except that the spike trains of each cell were concatenated prior to principal component analysis, and eight principle components were selected in total for each pair of cells. Each pair of cells was separately preprocessed using all possible combinations of simultaneously recorded cells.
The reduced preprocessed data was then used to train a support vector machine (SVM) classifier^[@R72],[@R73]^. The SVM classifier was trained using linear kernels (fitcsvm.m, Matlab R2015b) to determine the optimal hyperplane that separated neural activity during the CS-Suc and CS-Shock trials. The identified separating hyperplane was then used to predict behavioral responses during competition trials by classifying neuronal activity as more "CS-Suc like" or more "CS-Shock like" on a trial-by-trial basis. Cross-validation was not necessary as data from the competition trials was never used to train the classifier but only used to test it. The predicted classification was compared to the actual behavioral output of the animal to determine whether the prediction was correct or incorrect. The decoding accuracy for a given cell or cell pair was calculated as the percentage of competition trials in which the predicted behavioral response matched the actual response of the animal. The statistical significance of the calculated decoding accuracies were empirically determined using permutation tests, which compared the decoding accuracy for real training data to decoding accuracies obtained after scrambling the identity of the CS-Suc and CS-Shock trials 1000 times, each time generating a permuted separating hyperplane that was used to classify the actual neural data from competition trials^[@R74]^. The decoding accuracy obtained using the hyperplane derived from the actual CS-Suc and CS-Shock neural data was compared to the permuted distribution only once, therefore there was no need to correct for multiple comparisons. For between-population comparisons of the decoding accuracies, we used one-way ANOVA with Bonferroni post-hoc tests. For within-population comparisons against scrambled data, we used Bonferroni-corrected paired T-tests.
Supplementary Material {#S38}
======================
The authors thank Siamak Sorooshyari for helpful discussion and assistance on MATLAB programming, as well as Craig Wildes and the entire Tye Laboratory for helpful discussion and support on this project. A.B.R. was supported by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (NARSAD Young Investigator Award) and NIMH (Research Supplement to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Sciences). E.Y.K. was supported by the Collaborative Clinical Neuroscience Fellowship and the American Brain Foundation Clinical Research Training Fellowship. W.A.R.G. and P.A.P.R. were supported by the MIT Summer Research Program, which received support from the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines (CBMM), NSF (STC Award CCF-1231216), and NIH (Endure Award 1R25-MH092912-01). E.H.N. was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP), the Integrative Neuronal Systems Training Fellowship (T32 GM007484), and the Training Program in the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. A.C.F.O. was supported by an institutional NRSA training grant (5T32GM007484-38). P.N. was supported by the Singleton, Leventhal and Whitaker fellowships. C.A.L. was supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, Integrative Neuronal Systems Fellowship, and the James R. Killian Fellowship. M.J.P, K.N.P., and M.A. were supported by the MIT Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. K.K.A. was supported by the MIT Research Assistantship Program. K.M.T. is a New York Stem Cell Foundation - Robertson Investigator and McKnight Scholar and this work was supported by funding from the JPB Foundation, PIIF, PNDRF, JFDP, Whitehall Foundation, Klingenstein Foundation, NARSAD Young Investigator Award, Alfred P Sloan Foundation, New York Stem Cell Foundation, McKnight Foundation, NIH R01-MH102441-01 (NIMH), R01-AA023305-01 (NIAAA), and NIH Director\'s New Innovator Award DP2-DK-102256-01 (NIDDK).
**Data and Code Availability:** All relevant data and code supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
**Author Contributions**: A.B.R. and K.M.T. conceived and designed experiments. A.B.R. and K.N.P. designed and constructed electrodes and optrodes for neural recordings. A.B.R. performed surgeries to chronically implant electrodes and performed single-unit recordings. A.B.R., C.A.L., and K.N.P. sorted extracellular waveforms. A.B.R. and E.Y.K. analyzed electrophysiology data. E.Y.K. wrote the MATLAB scripts for the support vector machine learning algorithms. E.M.I., M.J.P., K.N.P., P.A.P.R., and M.A. built optical fibers. A.B.R., E.M.I., M.J.P., W.A.R.G., K.N.P, and M.A. performed animal training and analyzed behaviors from videos. A.B.R., E.M.I., M.J.P., W.A.R.G., A.C.F.O., K.N.P., and M.A. performed histological assessment. E.H.N. assisted with programing of the neural recording workstation and wrote the MATLAB script for quantification of animal movement. P.N. assisted with Med-PC programming for behavioral paradigms and wrote the MATLAB scripts to analyze port entry data and waveform properties. A.B. performed ex vivo whole-cell patch-clamp electrophysiological recordings. A.B. and A.C.F.O. assisted with figures. A.B.R., E.Y.K., and K.M.T. made figures and wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed to the editing and revision of the final version of the manuscript.
**Competing Financial Interests**: The authors declare no competing financial interests.
{#F1}
{ref-type="supplementary-material"}). Only a small fraction of cell pairs showed zero lag (see [Supplementary Fig. S6c-d](#SD1){ref-type="supplementary-material"}). **(c-d)** Excitatory correlations predominated over inhibitory correlations in all task epochs (Bonferroni-corrected chi-square tests: *χ*^2^ \> 136.5, *P* \< 0.001 in all task epochs). In the heatmaps, cell pairs were ordered based on the latency of peaks and troughs. Mean latency±s.e.m. of peaks for excitatory CCs: ITI, 3.9±2.4 ms; CS-Suc, 5.9±2.5 ms; and CS-Shock, 13.0±2.4 ms. Mean latency of troughs for inhibitory CCs: ITI, 12.5±5.3 ms; CS-Suc, 17.1±7.6 ms; CS-Shock, -1.4±5.2 ms. Numbers at the bottom of the heatmaps indicate the overall proportion of correlated cell pairs per epoch. Vertical dash lines represent the time of the reference spikes, and the horizontal dash lines represent the separation between putative BLA-led versus PL-led correlations. **(e-f)** Distinct populations of BLA/PL neural pairs exhibited correlated activity during different epochs. **(g)** Putative leading structure in the excitatory CCs, based on the latency of peaks. Cell pairs were deemed as BLA-led if the peak occurred within +2.5 to +100 ms from the reference, whereas they were deemed as PL-led if the peak occurred within -100 to -2.5 ms from the reference (*n*\'s reported within each bar). BLA leading was significantly greater than PL leading only during the CS-Shock (ITI, *χ*^2^ = 3.83, *P* = 0.14; CS-Suc, *χ*^2^ = 0.91, *P* = 0.71; CS-Shock, *χ*^2^ = 29.2, \*\*\**P* \< 0.001). The leading ratio during the CS-Shock was also significantly different than during other epochs (ITI vs CS-Suc, *χ*^2^ = 0.71, *P* = 0.78; ITI vs CS-Shock, *χ*^2^ = 10.4, \*\**P* = 0.004; CS-Suc vs CS-Shock, *χ*^2^ = 16.0, \*\*\**P* \< 0.001). **(h)** Putative leading structure in the inhibitory CCs. There was a trend towards higher BLA than PL leading during the CS-Suc (ITI, *χ*^2^ = 0.89, *P* = 0.72; CS-Suc, *χ*^2^ = 4.28, ^\~^*P* = 0.11; CS-Shock, *χ*^2^ = 0.15, *P* = 0.97). The leading ratio during the CS-Suc was significantly different than during the CS-Shock (ITI vs CS-Suc, *χ*^2^ = 2.33, *P* = 0.35; ITI vs CS-Shock, *χ*^2^ = 1.37, *P* = 0.56; CS-Suc vs CS-Shock, *χ*^2^ = 5.70, \**P* = 0.05).](nihms863887f2){#F2}
{#F3}
{#F4}
{#F5}
{#F6}
{#F7}
[^1]: These authors contributed equally to this work.
|
While there is no exact age on when to start walking my dog, your veterinarian will probably suggest that you wait until you have all your main vaccines, such as vaccines against parvovirus, hepatitis and distemper.
Your furry friend should be able to get his last booster at around 16 weeks of age, depending on when he received the initial vaccine. You should also make sure you are up to date with your rabies vaccine, which can provide you 3 to 6 months of age.
Because it can take up to 4 months or more for your four-legged partner to be fully vaccinated, you should not take him on a walk or a dog park during the first months of life.
Tips with collar and strap
Surely you want your puppy to have the feel of its collar and leash as soon as possible so that it is ready for its walk when it is the right age.
To do this, slide the neck while he is eating dinner and attach the strap. He must be so focused on his food that he won't worry about what you're hanging on his neck.
He always associates his collar and leash with the positive things: play time, get treats or even a touch session.
Any hesitation or uncomfortable feelings you have with the leash should start to dissipate quickly.
Home belt training
While it is advisable not to walk your dog in public until it is completely vaccinated, you can start using the leash training at home, even if you only have a couple of months.
Instead of opening the back door and letting him use the whole yard as his bathroom, you connect him to his leash and take him to the back corner where you want him to do his needs.
If you have space in your home, you can walk with him to his bed, to his plate of food or anywhere else, this allows you to get more familiarity when walking with the leash.
Walking well
Teach your dog from an early age to walk by your side. It may be nice and fun to walk alone now that weighs just 5 kilos, but when you have 20 kilos maybe if you did not educate him well you can injure yourself or cause him to escape.
You have to learn that when you are calm you will get the ride reward. Once everything is connected, take as many steps as possible to create tension in the belt.
You can use treats or praise to take him for a walk, as long as he is following you and not vice versa.
When to start walking my dog is a tip for Dogs, and talk about Training. |
Heresy is a word used by different religious groups, used to describe someone who has ideas that are different from what the religion or law teaches. Such a person is known as heretic.
In the Middle Ages it was not uncommon to accuse someone of heresy. If the accusations could be proven, the culprit would go through a ritual. Since torture could be used, the accusations were often proven. The ritual was done to save the soul of the convicted criminal. It involved being burnt while tied to a post.
Still in the 21st century Muslims who apostatize are often treated very harshly and frequently killed.
Jesus Christ himself was regarded as a heretic by the Jewish leaders at the time- see Gospel of Matthew 26:57-67
The Roman Catholic Church in early times had great trouble with heretical christological doctrines, such as Monophysitism and Arianism. The Church sees several heresies in Protestantism:
Protestants claim only scripture (the Bible) is relevant for the faith (sola scriptura); the Catholic Church says traditions are also important.
Protestants say that belief is enough to be saved (sola fide). Catholics say that good deeds are necessary as well.
Protestants say that anyone can be a priest; the only requirement is that the person is baptised. In the Catholic and Orthodox churches, priests are ordained. This means that some people are not priests, even though they have been baptised.
According to Protestants, there is no Transubstantiation during mass (liturgy).
The Roman Missal contains heresies, according to Protestants
As a result of the Protestant Reformation, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was created in the Roman Catholic Church which protects the Church against heresies. It is the last instance to decide what constitutes a heresy, and how to deal with it. |
THE CAUCUS; With a War Hero at His Side, Romney Courts Veterans
By MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: May 29, 2012
SAN DIEGO - Mitt Romney warned veterans here to avoid putting America ''on the pathway of Europe'' by reducing the size of the military to pay for social programs.
Attending a Memorial Day tribute here with Senator John McCain, a former Republican rival and war hero, Mr. Romney declared that ''the world is not safe'' and criticized President Obama without mentioning him by name for proposing cuts in military spending.
''Were we to follow that kind of course, there would be no one that could stand to protect us,'' Mr. Romney said to a crowd of 5,000 mostly military families - an unusually large audience for the candidate.
Mr. Romney is banking on electoral support from veterans, who turned out in large numbers for Mr. McCain during the 2008 presidential race.
Mr. McCain, a former Navy pilot and prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, received 54 percent of the votes of veterans, while Mr. Obama won 44 percent, according to an Edison/Mitofsky exit poll.
To tap into that support, Mr. Romney has had to rebuild a once icy relationship with Mr. McCain, who confronted him in pointed exchanges during the 2008 debates.
Mr. McCain called Mr. Romney ''a great friend, a great man, a great governor.'' He added that Mr. Romney is a man who he believed is ''fully qualified to be commander in chief.''
Mr. Romney, in turn, said, ''We are a nation that has been formed and preserved by heroes.'' He added, ''John McCain is one of them.''
Mr. Romney sought to play up his commitment to the military. He recalled visiting soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan as governor of Massachusetts and returning home to call 63 of their spouses and mothers to convey his appreciation for their service. At times, though, the event on Monday seemed to highlight the two men's varying levels of comfort and ease with military life. Mr. McCain joked about the Marines and received laughter from the audience.
Mr. Romney's stab at humor fell a bit flat. His joke revolved around the cowboy hat of the man who introduced him. Mr. Romney teased that the hat was unlikely be adopted as a uniform by any of the military branches.
''But it's keeping your head out of the sun,'' Mr. Romney said.
Like Mr. Romney, Mr. Obama has never served in the military. But polling suggests that veterans still have a stronger preference for Mr. Romney. According to analysis of the Gallup Daily tracking interviews, conducted from April 11 to May 24, they support Mr. Romney over Mr. Obama, 58 percent to 34 percent. Nonveterans back Mr. Obama, 48 percent to 44 percent.
Several veterans in the audience said that Mr. McCain, who declined to leave a Vietnamese prison camp until other soldiers were released with him, was the main draw for them. But they also said they were impressed with Mr. Romney's support for the military. The deferments for religious service and academic studies that allowed Mr. Romney to avoid the Vietnam War - which have bedeviled past presidential candidates - did not appear to be an issue for many here. ''Governor Romney, having never served in the military, still has respect for it,'' said Bruce Parks, a 20-year Navy veteran.
''Support for the military is what matters,'' he added.
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
PHOTO: Mitt Romney and Senator John McCain attended a Memorial Day tribute in San Diego. (PHOTOGRAPH BY SAM HODGSON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) |
University Of Texas Football Stadium Map – university of texas football seat map, university of texas football stadium address, university of texas football stadium map, At the time of prehistoric occasions, maps happen to be applied. Early guests and research workers utilized these people to uncover recommendations and to discover crucial attributes and points appealing. Advancements in technology have even so created more sophisticated computerized University Of Texas Football Stadium Map regarding utilization and attributes. A few of its advantages are established via. There are numerous settings of utilizing these maps: to understand where family and close friends are living, along with recognize the place of diverse popular spots. You can observe them obviously from throughout the place and include numerous data.
Dkr Seating Chart U T Football Stadium Anta Expocoaching Co Vdih0Zb – University Of Texas Football Stadium Map, Source Image: iwan-ae.info
University Of Texas Football Stadium Map Example of How It May Be Reasonably Great Multimedia
The general maps are designed to show data on national politics, the planet, physics, enterprise and historical past. Make various versions of your map, and participants may exhibit numerous community character types around the graph- societal happenings, thermodynamics and geological qualities, earth use, townships, farms, residential locations, and so on. Additionally, it includes politics says, frontiers, municipalities, family historical past, fauna, panorama, enviromentally friendly varieties – grasslands, jungles, farming, time change, and so forth.
Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium – Wikipedia – University Of Texas Football Stadium Map, Source Image: upload.wikimedia.org
Football Parking 2018 | Parking & Transportation | The University Of – University Of Texas Football Stadium Map, Source Image: parking.utexas.edu
Maps can even be a necessary instrument for understanding. The specific area recognizes the course and spots it in framework. All too typically maps are extremely high priced to feel be put in review areas, like schools, directly, far less be entertaining with teaching procedures. Whereas, a large map worked by each and every college student raises training, energizes the university and demonstrates the growth of the scholars. University Of Texas Football Stadium Map may be conveniently released in a variety of measurements for specific good reasons and also since individuals can write, print or tag their particular models of which.
Apogee Stadium Map – University Of North Texas Athletics – University Of Texas Football Stadium Map, Source Image: meangreensports.com
Mclane Stadium – Baylor University Athletics – University Of Texas Football Stadium Map, Source Image: baylorbears.com
Print a large arrange for the college top, for that teacher to clarify the items, and then for each pupil to showcase a separate collection chart demonstrating the things they have found. Each and every student will have a very small animated, whilst the trainer describes the information on the bigger graph or chart. Effectively, the maps full a range of classes. Perhaps you have identified how it performed onto the kids? The quest for nations on a large walls map is definitely an exciting exercise to perform, like finding African says on the vast African wall map. Youngsters produce a world of their by piece of art and putting your signature on onto the map. Map job is switching from absolute rep to enjoyable. Furthermore the bigger map formatting help you to operate jointly on one map, it’s also larger in size.
Seating Diagrams – University Of Texas Athletics – University Of Texas Football Stadium Map, Source Image: texassports.com
Dkr Stadium Map | Area Code Map – University Of Texas Football Stadium Map, Source Image:
University Of Texas Football Stadium Map pros might also be needed for a number of apps. To name a few is definite spots; record maps are required, for example freeway measures and topographical qualities. They are simpler to get simply because paper maps are intended, hence the dimensions are easier to find due to their assurance. For examination of data as well as for traditional factors, maps can be used traditional assessment considering they are stationary supplies. The larger appearance is provided by them definitely highlight that paper maps have already been meant on scales that provide end users a wider ecological appearance as an alternative to essentials.
University Of Texas At Austin Football – University Of Texas Football Stadium Map, Source Image:
Apart from, there are no unpredicted mistakes or disorders. Maps that printed out are attracted on present paperwork without any prospective modifications. Therefore, whenever you make an effort to research it, the curve of your graph will not all of a sudden alter. It can be displayed and established it provides the sense of physicalism and actuality, a real item. What is far more? It does not need website contacts. University Of Texas Football Stadium Map is pulled on electronic electronic digital device when, as a result, right after imprinted can continue to be as long as necessary. They don’t usually have to make contact with the computer systems and online hyperlinks. Another benefit may be the maps are mostly affordable in they are as soon as made, released and never include more expenditures. They can be employed in faraway fields as a substitute. This may cause the printable map perfect for journey. University Of Texas Football Stadium Map |
12 Best Of Tulsa Logo Design Shots branding identity logo design explained just creative a logo is not your brand nor is it your identity logo design identity design and branding all have different roles that together form a perceived tulsa logo design thunder logo jamesrobertwatson com what clay bennett and the thunder owners have done for oklahoma is very exciting realizing the potential of oklahomans to support a mjor league team as tulsa logo design
holiday inn express suites tulsa midtown hotel reviews photos from tulsa logo design, picture supply:tripadvisor.in
kitchen remodel tulsa excellent 39 best kitchen remodel designs stock from tulsa logo design, picture supply:funkygreenmachine.com
sipes aircraft tulsa oklahoma serving the general sipes aircraft has been serving the general aviation community since 1990 with aircraft maintenance annual inspections engine overhauls and used custom t shirts sweatshirts polo shirts ha screenprinting 918 357 1115 custom screen printed t shirts sweatshirts polo shirts and imprinted apparel from ha screenprinting tulsa logo design oklahoma export crating tulsa oklahoma crating experts oklahoma export crating is tulsas premier custom crating and pallet company with years of experience we provide solutions to all your crating needs
28 best our logo designs images on pinterest cover design logo from tulsa logo design, graphic resource:pinterest.com
how to layout a resume awesome good resume layout unique theatre from tulsa logo design, picture supply:deysejoyce.com
12 tulsa logo design pics
12 Best Of Tulsa Logo Design Shots quiktrip wikipedia the quiktrip corporation more commonly known as quiktrip qt is a tulsa oklahoma based chain of convenience stores that primarily operates in the tulsa route 66 oklahoma tulsa on route 66 has many historic attractions the 11th st bridge blue dome sinclair and vickery service stations vintage motels hotels art deco and logo design corporate identity for small tulsa ok get a custom new logo and look for your brand at a great price local design team offering quality visual design and identity packages 918 516 8255 tulsa logo design
target store in watertown to hold grand re opening local news from tulsa logo design, graphic source:thepublicopinion.com
tulsa world logo guidelines tulsaworld com from tulsa logo design, image source:tulsaworld.com
union bands official website for union public schools bands department serving students in grades 6 12 tulsa logo design home brand new muscle car replicas builder for sale home brand new muscle car replicas eleanor mustang mustang mach 1 boss 302 boss 429 camaro rs ss z28 copo yenko ac cobra bel air chevelle 12 Best Of Tulsa Logo Design Shots |
fly balls. Several hits have been re
corded which under ordinary condi
tions would have been certain outs.
Browns and Sox have had about an
even break in the luck on this score.
Given decent weather conditions
and the present trio of Sox outfield
ers will make it difficult for the ene
A my to drive the ball safely in subur
ban territory, if it rises high in the
air. Jackson appears to be covering
more ground than ever before in his
Ijfe, and Liebold,'who"has beea. trou
bled in right field more thanthe oth
er two by the high wind, is able to
travel great distances after' aerials.
But Happy Felsch in center field is
the boy to Watch. This chunky per
son received comparatively little
press-agenting last season because
of the every-day manner in which he
went about his work. His daily rec
ord of consistency, however, has fo
cused attention on him and he is
generally regarded as one ' of the
most competent fly Catchers in the
Johnson circuit, not even excepting
Tris Speaker.
Hap has added 'some fight and vo
cal ginger to his make-up. When the
Hose are in the field his voice can
be plainly heard from deep center,
demanding that his pals in the first
line keep their heads up and in the
game. Such a spirit is a fine thing
for a ball team and helps keep the
boys on their toes.
Managar Mitchell of- the Cubs
seems in the humor to give Dutch
Ruether a thorough trial at first-base.
, The revamped left-handed pitcher is
fighting hard for the berth. To spur
hjm on he has the knowledge that
Mitchell is stocked up with capable
pitchers, but has no one else capable
A of playing the initial sack, in anything
resembling big league style.
All he needs is a few hits. That
will give him confidence vin himself
and also insure his retentibn on the
job while he learns the finer points
of the defensive side. At present he
"" is a bit weak on ground balls be
cause the angle at which they come
is new to him. Fortunately, he te
playing with three infielding mates
who are mose accurate in their
throwing than the usual mn of in
fielders. This makes his work less
difficult and does not force him to
shift so much take weird heaves.
He needs tutoring in how to pro
tect himself from Injury. This is the
one thing that casual first basemen
have the greatest difficulty with A
few seasons back in Cleveland they
tried to use Joe Jackson at first Joe
could catch throws and stop ground
ers, but he couldn't protect himself
from baserunners tearing into the
bag and as a result was spiked and
put out qf the game for some time.
Al Demaree is making a bid for a
regular turn in the box and was good
against Pittsburgh for six innings.
Mitchell, following the lessons he
learned from George Stallings, pre
fers to get four pitchers, or even
three and use them in regular order.
He sees no reason why a physically
strong man shouldn't be able to
throw baseball nine innings every
fourjn day. So far Mitch has been
seeking the proper combination.
Vaughn and Dodglass are certain
members of the quartet. He needs
two more.
Today the Cubs wind up in Pitts
burgh and go on to Cincinnati for
their first engagement of the season
with Christy Mathewson's club. Five
games are carded with the Reds.
Ragan and Nehf beat Giants in the
New York opener. Kelly, former Cub,
won for the Braves in the 14th with
a single.
Cravath's homer and Alexanfler's
pitching beat Brooklyn. Gawy also
hit a double.
Hornsby hit a triple and homer as
Cards beat Reds. Mathewson's team
is hitting hard, but not making the
bingles count for runs.
Ping Bodie failed to hit, but the
Macks beat Washington anyhow,
mainly on J. Johnson's pitching. Witt
knocked three hits.
Young hit a homer in the ninth
,. . . -- - emimmmmmmammm
xml | txt |
Our mission is to provide exceptional park and recreation services that enhance the livability of our community and the lives of the people we serve.
Dorris Ranch Living History Farm
Skatepark & Willamalane Park
Wallace D. Ruff Magnolia Arboretum
Splash! Lively Park Swim Center
Willamalane Park Swim Center
Community Recreation Center
A map of the district with links to every Willamalane park and facility. You'll find driving directions, maps, photos, lists of amenities, and much, much more.
Go to the PARK HIGHLIGHTS page
Go to the FACILITY HIGHLIGHTS page
Links to some of our more popular parks and facilities.
Go to the BIRDING page
In some locations, birds can be observed from a parking area. In others, you will want to go on a short walk to observe the local birds. Several locations have more extensive path systems or open spaces that you can explore. In many of these areas, you might see other wildlife. These are typically quiet places to simply walk and relax, also.
Go to the RESERVATIONS page
Your special event is special to us. Whether it's a birthday party, a business retreat, or a family wedding, Willamalane Park and Recreation District offers several scenic settings for your group to enjoy.
You can help keep Springfield an attractive place to live by donating a tree, a park bench, or a playground structure.
Be a Willamalane parks volunteer! Willamalane can work with you to provide rewarding experiences, opportunities to utilize your talents, or provide training to help you serve your community. |
82.
Smelting and Refining Operations
Metal Processing and Metal Working.. The alloy often has a lower melting point than the parts to be joined. In this case, the two pieces are generally not brought to fusion temperature (brazing, soldering). Chemical fluxes may be used to prevent oxidation and facilitate the joining.
Figure.
. parts in sheet metal and machine shops. tools used are wheels of varying dimensions, grinding segments, grinding points, sharpening stones, files, polishing wheels, belts, discs and so on.. Finishing
The surface treatment of metals increases their durability and improves their appearance. A single product may undergo more than one surface treatment—for example, an auto body panel may be phosphated, primed and painted. This article deals with the processes used for surface treatment of metals and the methods used to reduce their environmental impact.
Operating a metal finishing business requires cooperation between company management, employees, government and the community to effectively minimize the environmental effect of the operations. Society is concerned with the amount and the long-term effects of pollution entering the air, water and land environment. Effective environmental management is established through detailed knowledge of all elements, chemicals, metals, processes and outputs.
Pollution prevention planning shifts the environmental management philosophy from reacting to problems to anticipating solutions focusing on chemical substitution, process change and internal recycling, using the following planning sequence:
Continuous improvement is achieved by setting new priorities for action and repeating the sequence of actions.
Detailed process documentation will identify the waste streams and allow priorities to be set for waste reduction opportunities. Informed decisions about potential changes will encourage:
Major processes and standard operating processes
Cleaning is required because all metal finishing processes require that parts to be finished be free from organic and inorganic soils, including oils, scale, buffing and polishing compounds. The three basic types of cleaners in use are solvents, vapour degreasers and alkaline detergents.
Solvents and vapour degreasing cleaning methods have been almost totally replaced by alkaline materials where the subsequent processes are wet. Solvents and vapour degreasers are still in use where parts must be clean and dry with no further wet processing. Solvents such as terpenes are in some instances replacing volatile solvents. Less toxic materials such as 1,1,1-trichloroethane have been substituted for more hazardous materials in vapour degreasing (although this solvent is being phased out as an ozone depleter).
Alkaline cleaning cycles usually include a soak immersion followed by an anodic electroclean, followed by a weak acid immersion. Non-etching, non-silicated cleaners are typically used to clean aluminium. The acids are typically sulphuric, hydrochloric and nitric.
Anodizing, an electrochemical process to thicken the oxide film on the metal surface (frequently applied to aluminium), treats the parts with dilute chromic or sulphuric acid solutions.
Conversion coating is used to provide a base for subsequent painting or to passivate for protection against oxidation. With chromating, parts are immersed in a hexavalent chrome solution with active organic and inorganic agents. For phosphating, parts are immersed in dilute phosphoric acid with other agents. Passivating is accomplished through immersion in nitric acid or nitric acid with sodium dichromate.
Electroless plating involves a deposition of metal without electricity. Copper or nickel electroless deposition is used in the manufacture of printed circuit boards.
Electroplating involves the deposition of a thin coat of metal (zinc, nickel, copper, chromium, cadmium, tin, brass, bronze, lead, tin-lead, gold, silver and other metals such as platinum) on a substrate (ferrous or non-ferrous). Process baths include metals in solution in acid, alkaline neutral and alkaline cyanide formulations (see figure 1).
Figure 1. Inputs and outputs for a typical electroplating line
Chemical milling and etching are controlled dissolution immersion processes using chemical reagents and etchants. Aluminium is typically etched in caustic prior to anodizing or chemically brightened in a solution which could contain nitric, phosphoric and sulphuric acids.
Hot-dip coatings involve the application of metal to a workpiece by immersion in molten metal (zinc or tin galvanizing of steel).
Good management practices
Important safety, health and environmental improvements can be achieved through process improvements, such as:
Environmental planning for specific wastes
Specific waste streams, usually spent plating solutions, can be reduced by:
Several methods of reducing drag-out include:
Drag-out recovery of chemicals uses a variety of technologies. These include:
Rinse water
Most of the hazardous waste produced in a metal finishing facility comes from waste water generated by the rinsing operations that follow cleaning and plating. By increasing rinse efficiency, a facility can significantly reduce waste water flow.
Two basic strategies improve rinsing efficiency. First, turbulence can be generated between the workpiece and the rinse water through spray rinses and rinse water agitation. Movement of the rack or forced water or air are used. Second, the contact time between the workpiece and the rinse water can be increased. Multiple rinse tanks set countercurrent in series will reduce the amount of rinse water used.
Industrial Coatings
The term coatings includes paints, varnishes, lacquers, enamels and shellacs, putties, wood fillers and sealers, paint and varnish removers, paint brush cleaners and allied paint products. Liquid coatings contain pigments and additives dispersed in a liquid binder and solvent mixture. Pigments are inorganic or organic compounds that provide coating colour and opacity and influence coating flow and durability. Pigments often contain heavy metals such as cadmium, lead, zinc, chromium and cobalt. The binder increases coating adhesiveness, cohesiveness and consistency and is the primary component that remains on the surface when coating is completed. Binders include a variety of oils, resins, rubbers and polymers. Additives such as fillers and extenders may be added to coatings to reduce manufacturing costs and increase coating durability.
The types of organic solvents used in coatings include aliphatic hydrocarbons, aromatic hydrocarbons, esters, ketones, glycol ethers and alcohols. Solvents disperse or dissolve the binders and decrease the coating viscosity and thickness. Solvents used in coatings formulations are hazardous because many are human carcinogens and are flammable or explosive. Most solvents contained in a coating evaporate when the coating cures, which generates volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions. VOC emissions are becoming increasingly regulated because of the negative effects on human health and the environment. Environmental concerns associated with conventional ingredients, coating application technologies and coating wastes are a driving force for developing pollution prevention alternatives.
Most coatings are used on architectural, industrial or special products. Architectural coatings are used in buildings and building products and for decorative and protective services such as varnishes to protect wood. Industrial facilities incorporate coating operations in various production processes. The automotive, metal can, farm machinery, coil coating, wood and metal furniture and fixtures, and household appliance industries are the major industrial coatings consumers.
Design of a coating formulation depends on the purpose of the coating application. Coatings provide aesthetics, and corrosion and surface protection. Cost, function, product safety, environmental safety, transfer efficiency and drying and curing speed determine formulations.
Coating processes
There are five operations comprising most coating processes: raw materials handling and preparation, surface preparation, coating, equipment cleaning and waste management.
Raw material handling and preparation
Raw material handling and preparation involves inventory storage, mixing operations, thinning and adjusting of coatings and raw material transfer through the facility. Monitoring and handling procedures and practices are needed to minimize the generation of wastes from spoilage, off specification and improper preparation that can result from excessive thinning and consequent wastage. Transfer, whether manual or through a piped system, must be scheduled to avoid spoilage.
Surface preparation
The type of surface preparation technique used depends on the surface being coated—previous preparation, amount of soil, grease, the coating to be applied and the surface finish required. Common preparation operations include degreasing, precoating or phosphating and coating removal. For metal finishing purposes, degreasing involves solvent wiping, cold cleaning or vapour degreasing with halogenated solvents, aqueous alkaline cleaning, semi-aqueous cleaning or aliphatic hydrocarbon cleaning to remove organic soil, dirt, oil and grease. Acid pickling, abrasive cleaning or flame cleaning are used to remove mill scale and rust.
The most common preparation operation for metal surfaces, other than cleaning, is phosphate coating, used to promote adhesion of organic coatings onto metal surfaces and retard corrosion. Phosphate coatings are applied by immersing or spraying metal surfaces with zinc, iron or manganese phosphate solution. Phosphating is a surface finishing process similar to electroplating, consisting of a series of process chemical and rinse baths in which parts are immersed to achieve the desired surface preparation. See the article “Surface treatment of metals” in this chapter.
Coating removal, chemical or mechanical, is conducted on surfaces that require recoating, repair or inspection. The most common chemical coating removal method is solvent stripping. These solutions usually contain phenol, methylene chloride and an organic acid to dissolve the coating from the coated surface. A final water wash to remove the chemicals can generate large quantities of wastewater. Abrasive blasting is the common mechanical process, a dry operation that uses compressed air to propel a blasting medium against the surface to remove the coating.
Surface preparation operations affect the quantity of waste from the specific preparation process. If the surface preparation is inadequate, resulting in poor coating, then removal of the coating and recoating adds to waste generation.
Coating
The coating operation involves transferring the coating to the surface and curing the coating on the surface. Most coating technologies fall into 1 of 5 basic categories: dip coating, roll coating, flow coating, spray coating, and the most common technique, air-atomized spray coating using solvent-based coatings.
Air-atomized spray coatings are usually conducted in a controlled environment because of solvent emissions and overspray. Overspray control devices are fabric filters or water walls, generating either used filters or wastewater from air scrubbing systems.
Curing is performed to convert the coating binder into a hard, tough, adherent surface. Curing mechanisms include: drying, baking or exposure to an electron beam or infrared or ultraviolet light. Curing generates significant VOCs from solvent-based coatings and poses a potential for explosion if the solvent concentrations rise above the lower explosive limit. Consequently, curing operations are equipped with air pollution control devices to prevent VOC emissions and for safety control to prevent explosions.
Environmental and health concerns, increased regulations affecting conventional coating formulations, high solvent costs and expensive hazardous waste disposal have created a demand for alternative coating formulations that contain less hazardous constituents and generate less waste when applied. Alternative coating formulations include:
Equipment cleaning
Equipment cleaning is a necessary, routine maintenance operation in coating processes. This creates significant amounts of hazardous waste, particularly if halogenated solvents are used for cleaning. Equipment cleaning for solvent-based coatings has traditionally been conducted manually with organic solvents to remove coatings from process equipment. Piping requires flushing with solvent in batches until clean. Coating equipment must be cleaned between product changes and after process shutdowns. The procedures and practices used will determine the level of waste generated from these activities.
Waste management
Several waste streams are generated by coating processes. Solid waste includes empty coating containers, coating sludge from overspray and equipment cleaning, spent filters and abrasive materials, dry coating and cleaning rags.
Liquid wastes include waste water from surface preparation, overspray control or equipment cleaning, off-specification or excess coating or surface preparation materials, overspray, spills and spent cleaning solutions. Onsite closed-loop recycling is becoming more popular for spent solvents as disposal costs rise. Water-based liquids are usually treated onsite prior to discharge to publicly owned treatment systems.
VOC emissions are generated by all conventional coating processes that use solvent-based coatings, requiring control devices such as carbon adsorption units, condensers or thermal catalytic oxidizers.
")." |
BSc(Hons)/BSc
Nursing (Learning Disabilities)
This course is open for applications.
About this course
- Entry year:
- 2019/20
- Course code:
- B703
- Applications:
- UCAS
- Level:
- Undergraduate
- Tariff points:
- 120
- Department:
- Nursing and Midwifery
- Campus:
- Glenside Campus
- Duration:
- Three years, one intake in September at Glenside Campus
- Delivery:
- Full-time
- Programme leader:
- Bethany Kruger
- Key fact:
- The practical focus of the course, our local connections and strong employer links mean many graduates receive more than one job offer.
Page last updated 3 December 2018
Introduction
Why study learning disabilities nursing?
Working in a variety of settings, including specialist and community services, and people's homes, learning disabilities nurses provide focused health support to people of all ages and learning disabilities.
It's a challenging but rewarding career. You can make a real difference to your patients and their families and play your part in improving access to healthcare, wellbeing, social inclusion and quality of life.
Why UWE Bristol?
BSc(Hons)/BSc Nursing (Learning Disabilities) is accredited by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), which means you can register as a learning disabilities nurse with them when you graduate.
With work-based training built in, and outstanding onsite facilities, you'll learn the theory of good nursing practice, and study the subjects that underpin it.
Taught by an enthusiastic team of experienced learning disabilities nurses, you'll develop strong inter-professional and interpersonal skills, together with a real understanding of what it means to have a learning disability or be a family carer.
The course has a strong practical focus, incorporating
person-centred learning, with use of our advanced, inter-professional Simulation Suite.
Engage with people with learning disabilities, family carers and practising nurses on placements, in class and online.
You'll spend about half your time on placements in NHS hospitals, or with employers in the independent health and social care sector.
There's also the chance to develop and apply your skills working abroad.
Where can it take me?
You'll have exciting career opportunities open to you in lots of areas.
Learning disabilities nurses are in demand across the UK across fields such as neurology, epilepsy, acute physical and mental healthcare, as well as specialist services for people with learning disabilities.
You could work in hospitals, in the community for the NHS, in the prison service, or for private
- Building Positive Relationships with, and Services for, People with Learning Disabilities
- Learning Disabilities Nursing Practice 1.
Year two
You will study:
- Service Improvement - a Collaborative Approach
- Evidence Based Practice for Nursing
- Health Needs of People with Learning Disabilities
- Learning Disabilities Nursing Practice 2
- The role of the Learning Disabilities Nurse in public health promotion.
Final year
You will study:
- Learning Disabilities Nursing Dissertation
- Leadership in Learning Disabilities Nursing
- Learning Disabilities Nursing Practice 3
- Teaching and Learning in Learning Disability Nursing Practice.
Plus, one optional module from:
- End of Life Care
- Worldwide Nursing
-, skills development, simulation, online activities, service user and carer-led sessions and student-led presentations, to develop your skills and get you ready for practice.
Central to nursing theory and practice, you'll also study biology, psychology, sociology and information technology, as applied to health and social care in different settings.
Develop the inter-professional and interpersonal skills that are essential to building effective relationships with people with learning disabilities, families and colleagues, in a multidisciplinary, multi-agency setting.
Develop your expertise in healthcare systems, nursing management, and health, wellness and illness. Explore the latest research and evidence-based practice.
Get support and guidance from academic staff and during your placements from qualified nursing staff.
You'll take responsibility for your own learning, using online and distance learning materials in all
Making connections
Take part in our annual South West Learning Disabilities Conference, to learn about best practice from the region and open up employment opportunities.
Study time
During the academic part of the course, you'll study full time between 9:00 to 18:00, Monday to Friday, except bank holidays.
The course includes some online learning and distance learning. Some of this is timetabled in the hours above and some needs to take place within an agreed time period, so is flexible. The amount of online and distance learning increases over your degree.
Placements are a mix of office hour placements and shift work, including some nights and weekends.
Assessment
We'll assess you using a mixture of essays, care studies, practical assessments, project work and timed examinations on known topics. learning disabilities nurse with them when you graduate.
Placements
With two work placements each year, you'll spend half the course applying your knowledge and building professional skills in the workplace.
We have excellent links with employers throughout the South West, and placements are normally split between NHS roles and positions in private or voluntary sector organisations. You'll get a broad range of practice experiences and be in a strong position for future employment.
Your personal mentor will advise, counsel and give you feedback on your progress during your placement.)
International opportunities
Our links with services for people with autism in Croatia mean you can go on a two-week placement there, to experience learning disabilities nursing outside the UK. We also offer 12-week placements in Finland and Norway through the Erasmus scheme.
Study facilities
Benefit from outstanding facilities to support your studies.
The Glenside campus library is one of the best healthcare libraries in the country, and has a huge selection of books, journals, audio-visual materials and specialist health and social care software packages.
Demonstrate and practise your professional skills in our advanced Skills Simulation Suite.
Learn more about UWE Bristol's facilities and resources.
Careers
Careers / Further study
Our graduates go on to work with both adults and children with learning disabilities across a large range of settings and services.
You could work in an NHS specialist community team, primary care team, inpatient services, acute services or a wider multi-field nursing team.
You could work in the private or voluntary sectors as part of a specialist team supporting people with complex needs, such as head injury or dementia care.
You would also work as a specialist health facilitator, or go into prison healthcare, or short-term break, mental health or person-centred services. Kirstie's experiences of studying Learning Disability Nursing at UWE Bristol.
Hear Becca's story about studying Learning Disability Nursing at UWE Bristol.
See also:
Nursing and Midwifery Council
About the NHS Constitution
Fees
Full Time Course
Indicative Additional Costs
We are unable to accept applications from international students (overseas fee status) Learning Disabilities Nursing. You should clearly demonstrate this in the 'personal statement' section of the application form by saying why you want to study Learning Disabilities Nursing and sharing.
Students on nursing or midwifery courses are expected to engage in the full range of clinical duties whilst on placement, which constitutes half of the course. As a student on a professional nursing or midwifery register on a professional course, you will have to meet specific requirements related to the need to demonstrate certain knowledge, skills and competencies required by professional, statutory or regulatory bodies. These |
Le cinéaste d’animation japonais a annoncé qu’il prenait sa retraite. Avec « Le vent se lève », il clôt en beauté une carrière démarrée il y a cinquante ans. Nous l’avons rencontré dans son atelier de Tokyo
Enroulé dans un immense tablier et accoudé au balcon du petit chalet où il a installé son atelier personnel, dans la banlieue ouest de Tokyo, Hayao Miyazaki tire sur sa cigarette d’un air pensif. Ce matin, il est arrivé comme tous les jours à bord de sa 2CV grise – « une voiture parfaite où je tremble de froid en hiver et meurs de chaud en été » –, il a sorti la petite gamelle que sa femme lui a préparée, mis du bois dans le poêle et s’est installé à son bureau baigné de lumière naturelle. Miyazaki travaille à l’ancienne, avec papier et crayon, pour n’utiliser l’ordinateur que dans la phase finale. « Toutes mes idées viennent en dessinant au hasard des centaines de croquis. »
Depuis qu’il a annoncé sa retraite, le réalisateur croule sous les projets de BD, de courts-métrages et d’expositions temporaires pour le musée Ghibli, mais il n’a rien perdu de son humour à froid : « Je n’ai plus la pression de la rentabilité et je compte bien profiter de cette nouvelle liberté pour créer. Je vais donc beaucoup souffrir ! » Doté d’une inépuisable énergie vitale, à 73 ans ce « trésor national » a marqué l’histoire du dessin animé en rendant hommage à la beauté du monde et à l’univers de l’enfance (« Mon voisin Totoro »), tout en évoquant ses propres préoccupations écologiques (« Princesse Mononoké »).
Son héros paradoxal est un idéaliste épris de beauté et aveuglé par son génie
Fils d’un constructeur d’avions, il est resté habité par la passion des engins volants (« Porco Rosso »), et ses personnages n’aspirent qu’à se libérer des forces de la pesanteur (« Le voyage de Chihiro », « Le château dans le ciel », « Kiki la petite sorcière »). Son imaginaire puise dans ses propres souvenirs, mêle les références japonaises et européennes et ajoute volontiers une touche de baroque pour aboutir parfois à d’hallucinantes créations (« Le château ambulant ») habitées de fantômes, d’esprits malins, d’humains bestialisés et d’animaux humanisés (« Ponyo sur la falaise »).
Né en 1941, Miyazaki appartient également à une génération dont l’enfance a été marquée par la quête de puissance du Japon et par ses conséquences apocalyptiques. Le prodigieux conteur tire sa révérence avec « Le vent se lève », dont l’histoire s’articule autour du destin de Jiro Horikoshi, concepteur du fameux appareil Zero, l’arme fatale de la flotte aérienne nipponne qui fondit sur Pearl Harbor et fut utilisée pour les opérations suicides des kamikazes. Face à cette période sombre de l’histoire de son pays, le cinéaste enraie les polémiques naissantes en présentant son héros paradoxal comme un idéaliste épris de beauté et aveuglé par son génie. Hanté par la tragédie de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, son film n’est pas une fuite dans l’imaginaire, mais un miroir tendu.
Paris Match. Votre oeuvre s’achève-telle sur votre film le plus personnel ?
Hayao Miyazaki. Non, car j’ai beaucoup hésité avant de me lancer dans un film qui n’était pas destiné aux enfants et qui s’inspire de la réalité. Mon héros de fiction est imaginé à partir de trois personnes ayant vécu à la même époque : l’écrivain Tatsuo Hori, dont le roman “Le vent se lève, il faut tenter de vivre” emprunte son titre au poème de Paul Valéry “Le cimetière marin”, l’ingénieur aéronautique Jiro Horikoshi, qui a conçu le chasseur Zero, et mon propre père, qui travaillait pour Miyazaki Airplane et produisait les gouvernes des Zero.
La Seconde Guerre mondiale est encore un sujet tabou au Japon. Ce film exprime- t-il vos opinions antimilitaristes ?
Jiro travaille dans l’aéronautique au moment où l’empire du Japon se dirige vers sa chute, mais le propos du film n’est pas de condamner la guerre ou de faire l’éloge du meilleur avion de chasse de l’époque. Je voulais réaliser le portrait d’un jeune homme qui évolue dans les conditions chaotiques des années 1920- 1930. Il y a une part de folie dans ce désir ardent de quelque chose de beau. Mais beaucoup de gens voient leurs rêves se briser, et malgré l’échec de leur vie, je les aime beaucoup.
Pour la première fois j’ai pleuré en regardant un de mes films
Jiro avait-il conscience que son invention allait devenir une arme de guerre ?
Oui, mais je ne pense pas qu’il ait imaginé des conséquences aussi dévastatrices. Il vivait à une époque où personne n’entrevoyait l’avenir. C’est facile de juger plusieurs dizaines d’années après les faits. Bien sûr, il faut faire face, car nier les actes, y compris les fautes qui ont été commises, risquerait de nous faire passer à côté de quelque chose d’essentiel. Le sujet m’a forcé à me poser des questions.
Auriez-vous aimé devenir un pionnier de l’aviation ?
Les jeunes un peu plus âgés que moi voulaient tous devenir ingénieurs aéronautiques. Mais moi, j’ai atteint l’âge de raison juste après la guerre, après la défaite... Et je ne m’intéresse qu’aux avions des années 1920-1930.
Est-ce que, comme votre héros, vous vous êtes battu pour réaliser vos rêves ?
Quand on est un enfant, on a des rêves plein la tête. Quand on décide de devenir réalisateur, on choisit une voie au détriment des autres… Alors j’ai réalisé un de mes rêves.
Extraordinaire Chihiro
Avec ses 23 millions d’entrées, « Le voyage de Chihiro » (2001) a battu tous les records du box-ofce au Japon. Le film a obtenu l’Ours d’or au festival de Berlin (2002) et l’Oscar du meilleur film d’animation (2003).
L’épouse de Jiro évoque-t-elle votre mère, qui fut aussi victime de la tuberculose ?
Tatsuo Hori en est mort à 48 ans. Il s’est servi de sa propre expérience pour créer le personnage féminin dont je me suis inspiré. Jiro Horikoshi en a été atteint, et la première femme de mon père, morte au bout d’un an de mariage. Ma mère en a souffert pendant des années avant de se rétablir. Cette maladie a touché beaucoup de monde.
Le Japon est-il aussi beau en vrai que dans vos films ?
Il reste peu d’endroits qui ne sont pas encore souillés par les déchets. J’ai voulu immortaliser les paysages japonais dans toute leur splendeur avant que nous soyons définitivement anéantis par le volcan du mont Fuji lorsqu’il se réveillera…
Totoro ce héros
Esprit de la forêt, sorte de croisement d’un hibou et d’un raton laveur, cette créature apparue dans « Mon voisin Totoro » en 1988 est devenue l’emblème des studios Ghibli. La chanson du film est l’une des comptines les plus chantées dans les maternelles japonaises.
C’est la retraite qui vous rend mélancolique ?
J’ai honte, mais pour la première fois j’ai pleuré en regardant un de mes films. Il y a une similarité avec l’époque que nous vivons, frappée de récession économique. J’ai d’ailleurs terminé de dessiner la rencontre de Jiro et de Nahoko durant le séisme de Kanto en 1923 la veille du séisme du Tohoku en 2011 ! Mais nous devons vivre fièrement, et les vers “Le vent se lève, il faut tenter de vivre” me semblent plus que jamais d’actualité.
Toute reproduction interdite |
Introduction {#Sec1}
============
The mobility, persistence, and widespread use of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have resulted in drinking water contamination globally. PFAS were found in the drinking water of more than 16 million Americans in 33 states \[[@CR1]\], and a recent analysis indicates that PFAS-contaminated drinking water is much more widespread than previously reported \[[@CR2]\]. Surprisingly, despite this widespread contamination \[[@CR3]\], ubiquitous exposure \[[@CR4]\], and toxicological and epidemiological evidence of health effects \[[@CR5]--[@CR7]\], there are no federal drinking water standards for any PFAS. Instead of a standard, in 2016 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a non-enforceable lifetime health advisory (HA) of 70 ng/L for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), individually or combined. Without an enforceable standard, public water systems (PWSs) are not required to routinely test for PFAS or to treat water exceeding EPA HAs, and so no complete assessment of the prevalence of PFAS in U.S. drinking water exists.
In the absence of federal standards, seven U.S. states have adopted or proposed their own health-based drinking water guideline levels or standards for PFOA and/or PFOS, ranging from 13 to 1000 ng/L. There are important regulatory distinctions between terms such as guidelines, advisories, and standards. For this paper, we use "drinking water guideline levels" as a general term to refer to any risk-based water concentration intended to protect from health effects associated with drinking water consumption, along with more precise terms that are used by individual state or federal agencies, including "health advisory level," "maximum contaminant level," or "protective concentration level." (Tables [1](#Tab1){ref-type="table"} and [2](#Tab2){ref-type="table"} use the specific term associated with each agency's guideline.)Table 1PFOA drinking water guideline levelsAdvisory levelCritical effect studyToxicological endpointReference doseUncertainty factorsTarget populationWater ingestion rateRSCU.S. EPA^a^, 2016, Health Advisory Level \[[@CR35]\]70 ng/LLau et al. \[[@CR53]\]Developmental20 ng/kg- dayTotal = 300Intraspecies 10,Interspecies 3, LOAEL to NOAEL 10Lactating woman0.054 L/kg-day20%Alaska DEC^b^, 2016, Groundwater cleanup level \[[@CR94]\]400 ng/LLau et al. \[[@CR53]\]Developmental20 ng/kg- dayTotal = 300Intraspecies 10,Interspecies 3, LOAEL to NOAEL 10Child (0--6 years) residential0.78 L/day, 15 kg body weight (b.w.)100%Maine DEP^b^, 2016, Remedial action guideline \[[@CR95], [@CR96]\]130 ng/LSix studies combined \[[@CR53], [@CR97]--[@CR99]\]Liver6 ng/kg-dayTotal = 300Intraspecies 10,Interspecies 3,Database 10Adult2 L/day, 70 kg b.w.60%Minnesota DOH, 2017, Non-cancer health-based level \[[@CR42]\]35 ng/LLau et al. \[[@CR53]\]Developmental18 ng/kg- dayTotal = 300Intraspecies 10,Interspecies 3, LOAEL to NOAEL 3,Database 3Infant exposure via breastmilk for 1 year, from mother chronically exposed via drinking waterDerived from internal serum concentrations based on 95% water intake rates and upper percentile breastmilk intake rates50%New Jersey DEP, 2017, Maximum contaminant level (recommended) \[[@CR49]\]14 ng/LLoveless et al. \[[@CR100]\]Liver2 ng/kg-dayTotal = 300Intraspecies = 10, Interspecies 3,Database 10Adult2 L/day, 70 kg b.w.20%North Carolina DENR^b^, 2012, Interim maximum allowable concentration (proposed) \[[@CR58]\]1000 ng/LButenhoff et al. \[[@CR101]\]LiverN/ATotal = 30Intraspecies 10,Interspecies 3Adult2 L/day, 70 kg b.w.20%Texas CEQ^b^, 2017, Protective concentration level \[[@CR86]\]290 ng/LMacon et al. \[[@CR54]\]Mammary Gland15 ng/kg- dayTotal = 300Intraspecies 10, LOAEL to NOAEL 30Child (0--6 years) residential0.64 L/day, 15 kg b.w.100%Vermont^a^ DEC/DOH, 2016, Primary groundwater enforcement standard \[[@CR44]\]20 ng/LLau et al. \[[@CR53]\]Developmental20 ng/kg- dayTotal = 300Intraspecies 10,Interspecies 3, LOAEL to NOAEL 10Infant (0--1 year)0.175 L/kg-day20%*Note*: Adapted from ITRC \[[@CR8]\]*CEQ* Commission on Environmental Quality, *DEC* Department of Environmental Conservation, *DENR* Department of Environment and Natural Resources (note that NC DENR is now NC DEQ), *DEP* Department of Environmental Protection, *DEQ* Department of Environmental Quality, *DOH* Department of Health, *RSC* Relative Source Contribution^a^Applies to PFOA and PFOS individually, as well as the sum of PFOA and PFOS^b^Alaska, Maine, North Carolina, and Texas follow the EPA's HA for public and/or private drinking waterTable 2PFOS drinking water guideline levelsAdvisory levelCritical effect studyToxicological endpointReference doseUncertainty factorsTarget populationWater ingestion rateRSCU.S. EPA^a^ Office of Water, 2016, Health Advisory Level \[[@CR35]\]70 ng/LLuebker et al. \[[@CR102]\]Reduced pup body weight20 ng/kg- dayTotal = 30Interspecies 3,Intraspecies 10Lactating women0.054 L/kg-day20%Alaska DEC^b^, 2016, Groundwater cleanup level \[[@CR94]\]400 ng/LLuebker et al. \[[@CR102]\]Reduced pup body weight20 ng/kg- dayTotal = 30Interspecies 10,Intraspecies 3Child (0--6 years) residential, non- cancer0.78 L/day, 15 kg b.w.100%Maine DEP^b^, 2016, Remedial action guideline \[[@CR96], [@CR103]\]560 ng/LSeacat et al. \[[@CR104]\]Thyroid effects80 ng/kg- dayTotal = 30Interspecies 3,Intraspecies 10Adult2 L/day, 70 kg b.w.20%Minnesota DOH, 2017, non-cancer health-based value \[[@CR43]\]27 ng/LLuebker et al. \[[@CR102]\]Reduced pup body weight5.1 ng/kg- dayTotal = 100Interspecies 3,Intraspecies 10,Database 3Lifetime based on internal serum concentrationDerived from internal serum concentrations based on 95% water intake rates and upper percentile breastmilk intake rates50%New Jersey DEP, 2017, Maximum contaminant level, draft \[[@CR105]\]13 ng/LDong et al. \[[@CR106]\]Immune response1.8 ng/kg- dayTotal= 30Interspecies 3, Sensitive subpopulations 10Adult2 L/day, 70 kg b.w.20%Texas CEQ^b^, 2017, Protective concentration level \[[@CR86]\]560 ng/LZeng et al. \[[@CR107]\]Hippocampus synapse structure20 ng/kg- dayTotal = 100LOAEL to NOAEL 10,Intraspecies 10Child (0--6 years) residential0.64 L/day, 15 kg b.w.100%Vermont^a^ DEC/DOH, 2016, Primary groundwater enforcement standard \[[@CR44]\]20 ng/LLuebker et al. \[[@CR102]\]Reduced pup body weight20 ng/kg- dayTotal = 30Interspecies 3,Intraspecies 10Infant (0--1 year)0.175 L/kg-day20%*Note*: Adapted from ITRC \[[@CR8]\]*CEQ* Commission on Environmental Quality, *DEC* Department of Environmental Conservation, *DEP* Department of Environmental Protection, *DEQ* Department of Environmental Quality, *DOH* Department of Health, *RSC* Relative Source Contribution^a^Applies to PFOA and PFOS individually, as well as the sum of PFOA and PFOS^b^Alaska, Maine, and Texas follow the EPA's HA for public and/or private drinking water
In this perspective, we compare PFOA and PFOS drinking water guideline levels developed by EPA and seven states, and summarize how and why these levels differ. We aim to provide a useful overview of a rapidly changing regulatory field, identify common factors and decisions that influence guideline development, and examine the importance of social factors. We used tables released by the Interstate Technology and Regulatory Council (ITRC) in June 2018 \[[@CR8]\] to identify states with drinking water and groundwater guideline levels for PFOA and/or PFOS that differ from EPA's HAs. These documents serve as a resource for regulatory personnel addressing PFAS contamination and are updated regularly by a team of environmental professionals. We also contacted state health and environmental agencies to identify and confirm current guideline levels. For all guidelines, we reviewed publicly available risk assessment documents and toxicological summaries prepared by regulatory agencies.
We find that the development of PFOA and PFOS guideline levels is influenced by many scientific, technical, and social factors and decisions including: agency management of scientific uncertainty; an evolving understanding of PFAS health effects; decisions about toxicological endpoints and exposure parameters; and the influence of various stakeholders, including regulated industries and affected communities. We document the rationale used by states to develop guideline levels that differ from those set by EPA. Several states have established guideline levels below EPA's HA, suggesting that some regulators and scientists view EPA's approach as not sufficiently protective.
Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances: growing concerns {#Sec2}
===============================================================
PFAS as a class include an estimated 4730 human-made and commercially available chemicals, polymers, and mixtures containing chains of fluorinated carbon atoms that are widely used in industrial processes and consumer goods \[[@CR9]\]. It is not currently possible to accurately track the use of PFAS individually or as a class in the U.S. because companies can claim production volume data as confidential business information and not disclose it publicly or to EPA. Two PFAS are the most well-known and widely studied. PFOA---previously used to manufacture polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) for non-stick coatings such as Teflon™, added as an ingredient in firefighting foams, and created as a byproduct of many other chemical processes---was first used to manufacture commercial products in 1949. U.S. manufacturer DuPont began studying PFOA's toxicological and exposure concerns starting in the 1960s \[[@CR10]\]. PFOS, previously used in fabric protectors such as Scotchgard™, firefighting foam, and semiconductor devices, has been produced since the 1940s. U.S. manufacturer 3M started measuring fluorine levels in blood samples from workers in the 1970s \[[@CR11]\]. In 1997, 3M detected PFOS in workers' blood serum and in samples from U.S. blood banks, intended to represent a control population, and several studies in following years confirmed widespread exposure in the U.S. population \[[@CR12]\]. In 2000, 3M announced that it would voluntarily phase out all production of PFOS due to regulatory pressure and concerns over liability \[[@CR13]\]. In 2006, following an EPA investigation, eight U.S. chemical manufacturers agreed to phase out all production and use of PFOA and related compounds by 2015 \[[@CR14]\]. PFOA and PFOS, both considered long-chain PFAS (perfluorocarboxylic acids with eight or more carbon atoms or perfluorosulfonic acids with six or more carbon atoms \[[@CR15]\]), are no longer produced in the U.S., but manufacturing continues in other parts of the world \[[@CR16]\] and replacement PFAS are widely used despite growing concerns about persistence, exposure, and toxicity \[[@CR14], [@CR17]--[@CR21]\].
PFAS are important and widespread drinking water contaminants because they are highly persistent, mobile in groundwater, and bioaccumulative \[[@CR22]\]. PFAS contamination is often linked to industrial releases, waste disposal and landfill sites, military fire training areas, airports, and other sites where PFAS-containing aqueous film-forming foams (AFFFs) are used to extinguish flammable liquid fuel fires or for firefighter training \[[@CR1]\]. Over twenty-five U.S. communities have contaminated water due to releases from manufacturing or industrial waste sites \[[@CR23]\], and the Department of Defense (DoD) has identified 401 current or former military sites with known or suspected PFAS contamination, including 126 sites with PFOA or PFOS levels above EPA's HA, mostly related to AFFF use \[[@CR24]\]. In addition to PFOA and PFOS, 57 classes of PFAS have been identified in AFFF and/or AFFF-contaminated groundwater, containing over 240 individual compounds, many of which are poorly characterized in terms of toxicity and environmental fate and transport \[[@CR25]\]. Surveillance for PFAS is difficult because of the large number of compounds, many of which lack analytical standards.
Concern about health effects from PFAS is high because of widespread exposure and documented toxicity. Biomonitoring data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a representative sample of U.S. residents, for 12 PFAS from 1999 to 2014 found four PFAS in the serum of nearly all people tested \[[@CR4], [@CR26]\]. These PFAS remain widely detected, although population serum levels have generally declined, especially for PFOS, following the phase-outs of U.S. production \[[@CR26]\]. An epidemiological study, funded by a DuPont lawsuit settlement, of 69,000 people in the Mid-Ohio Valley who drank water contaminated with at least 50 ng/L of PFOA for at least one year linked PFOA exposure to high cholesterol, ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, testicular and kidney cancers, and pregnancy-induced hypertension \[[@CR6]\]. Other health effects associated with PFOA and several other PFAS based on epidemiological evidence include decreased vaccine response, liver damage, and decreased birth weight \[[@CR27], [@CR28]\]. In animal studies, PFAS have shown a variety of toxicological effects including liver toxicity, suppressed immune function, altered mammary gland development, obesity, and cancer \[[@CR7], [@CR22]\]. There is concordance between some of the endpoints identified in studies of animals and humans, most notably suppression of the immune system \[[@CR29]\]. While there are sufficient data for risk assessment of PFOA, PFOS, and several other PFAS, most PFAS detected in drinking water lack sufficient data for risk characterization \[[@CR22], [@CR28]\].
Drinking water regulation {#Sec3}
=========================
Public drinking water supplies (PWSs) in the U.S. are regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), which specifies that EPA is responsible for establishing testing requirements and standards, while states have primary authority to implement and enforce these standards. The SDWA currently regulates over 90 chemical, biological, and radiological contaminants \[[@CR30]\]. For most listed contaminants, EPA establishes both a Maximum Contaminant Level Goal (MCLG), a non-enforceable guideline below which no adverse health effects are expected, and a Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL), an enforceable standard for PWSs set as close as feasible to the MCLG while accounting for availability of treatment technologies and cost. PWSs must test for regulated contaminants, which can reveal previously unrecognized contamination, and take any needed action to address violations. Amendments to the SDWA in 1996 removed a requirement for EPA to periodically establish new MCLs and created a more extensive review process, and few additional contaminants have been regulated since 1996 \[[@CR31]\]. Private drinking water sources are not regulated under the SDWA. Other laws like the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, also known as Superfund) and the Clean Water Act govern groundwater and surface water quality, including responses to contaminated water at industrial sites. States often develop health-based water guidelines to support decisions at these sites, including response to contamination in private wells.
EPA has not set MCLs for any PFAS, though they recently announced their intention to "initiate steps to evaluate the need for a maximum contaminant level (MCL) for PFOA and PFOS" \[[@CR32]\]. In an unusual move that reflects the political demand for a federal MCL, 25 U.S. Senators signed a letter urging EPA to develop an MCL for PFAS \[[@CR33]\]. Establishment of an MCL would increase EPA's authority to address PFAS contamination under the Superfund program \[[@CR33]\].
The SDWA also requires EPA to consider additional contaminants for regulation. Every five years, EPA must publish a Candidate Contaminant List (CCL) of contaminants being considered for future standards based on health concerns, prevalence in PWSs, and meaningful opportunities for exposure reduction \[[@CR34]\]. No MCLs have been developed for contaminants from the CCL since the SDWA 1996 Amendments were enacted \[[@CR31]\]. PFOS and PFOA were added to the third CCL in 2009 and were carried forward to the fourth CCL in 2016. To inform this process, every five years EPA must also develop a list of up to 30 contaminants under the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR) program for which PWSs are required to test on a short-term basis to establish their prevalence. In the third cycle (UCMR3; 2013--2015), six PFAS were analyzed by all large PWSs (serving \>10,000 customers) and 800 smaller PWSs \[[@CR3]\]. EPA decided not to include any PFAS in UCMR4 (2018--2020).
Under the SDWA, EPA can establish HAs for contaminants without MCLs as guidance for federal, state, and local officials. HAs are intended to represent levels of exposure unlikely to cause adverse health effects, considering both cancer and non-cancer endpoints, and can represent specific durations of exposure (one-day, 10-day, or lifetime). Federal HAs and state guidance values can guide response at contaminated sites if drinking water is affected but do not require PWSs to proactively monitor for these contaminants. In 2016, EPA issued HAs for lifetime PFOA and PFOS exposure \[[@CR3], [@CR35]\].
Individual states can also establish their own guidelines and regulations, including MCLs, for drinking water contaminants that are not regulated at the federal level, or they can develop stricter guidelines for contaminants with a federal MCL. There is precedent for states to develop drinking water MCLs for contaminants that do not have federal MCLs (e.g., perchlorate in Massachusetts and methyl tertiary-butyl ether in California) or to develop MCLs that are more stringent than EPA\'s (e.g., several volatile solvents in New Jersey and California) \[[@CR36]--[@CR38]\]. These state standards and guidelines may apply to PWSs or be used as screening or cleanup levels at contaminated sites (e.g., sites with contaminated groundwater or drinking water). However, some states are precluded by state law from developing their own guidelines or standards, and other states may lack the resources to do so. For instance, Pennsylvania identified lack of funding, technical expertize, and occurrence data as challenges in setting a state standard for PFOA and PFOS \[[@CR39]\].
Variation in PFOA and PFOS drinking water guideline levels {#Sec4}
==========================================================
In the absence of federal MCLs, multiple states have proposed or adopted drinking water guidelines or standards for PFOA and/or PFOS (Fig. [1](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}). The first PFOA guideline level of 150,000 ng/L was developed in West Virginia in 2002 in response to PFOA-contaminated drinking water near a DuPont facility. In 2006, EPA issued a screening level of 500 ng/L for PFOA for West Virginia sites contaminated by DuPont \[[@CR40]\]. In 2009, EPA developed provisional, short-term HAs of 400 ng/L for PFOA and 200 ng/L for PFOS in response to a contaminated site in Alabama. Around the same time, states such as Minnesota and New Jersey developed PFOA guidelines and standards that were lower than the EPA's short-term HA. In February 2016, in response to concerns about water contamination near an industrial facility, Vermont drafted a drinking water HA for PFOA of 20 ng/L that was finalized in March 2016 \[[@CR41]\]. In May 2016, EPA finalized its lifetime HA of 70 ng/L for PFOA and PFOS individually or combined \[[@CR3], [@CR35]\]. Shortly after, Minnesota, building off the EPA's 2016 risk assessments, developed state guideline levels of 35 ng/L PFOA and 27 ng/L PFOS that were lower than the EPA HAs \[[@CR42], [@CR43]\], and Vermont referenced the EPA's risk assessment in revising its HA to 20 ng/L for PFOA and PFOS individually or combined \[[@CR44]\]. In 2017, New Jersey recommended MCLs of 14 ng/L for PFOA and 13 ng/L for PFOS, which, if adopted, would be the first standards to require surveillance by PWSs for PFOA and PFOS, as well as being the lowest guideline levels in the U.S.Fig. 1Timeline of Select PFOA and PFOS Drinking Water Guideline Levels. (**a**) PFOA and (**b**) PFOS water guideline levels have decreased over time. Several states have developed guidelines for PFOA or PFOS individually (circles), while Vermont (VT) and EPA have guidelines that apply to PFOA and PFOS individually or combined (triangles). PFOA and PFOS water guidelines can apply to different water types such as public drinking water (closed circles) or groundwater, e.g., at contaminated sites (open circles)
We analyzed fifteen current or proposed water guidelines or standards for PFOA or PFOS that are the most recent guidelines for the EPA and each state: EPA's PFOA and PFOS HAs, seven state guidelines for PFOA, and six state guidelines for PFOS (Tables [1](#Tab1){ref-type="table"} and [2](#Tab2){ref-type="table"}). Some states (e.g., New Jersey and North Carolina) have older adopted guidelines, as well as newer proposed guidelines that have not yet been formally adopted; in these cases, we analyzed the more recent, proposed guidelines. Some guideline levels apply to individual chemicals, while others are based on the sum of multiple PFAS. For example, the EPA HA applies to PFOA and PFOS combined, and the Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont guidelines refer to the sum of PFOA, PFOS, and three other PFAS \[[@CR45]--[@CR47]\]. Eight states (Colorado, Delaware, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Texas) have developed guideline levels for PFAS other than PFOA and PFOS. Many other states follow EPA's 70 ng/L HA level and are not included in our analysis or shown in the Figure or Tables.
The most recent proposed state guideline levels for PFOA vary by a factor of 70, from 14 ng/L (New Jersey) to 1000 ng/L (North Carolina; Table [1](#Tab1){ref-type="table"}). For PFOS, the seven guidelines vary by a factor of 43, from 13 ng/L (New Jersey) to 560 ng/L (Maine and Texas; Table [2](#Tab2){ref-type="table"}). Alaska, Maine, and Texas follow EPA's HA for public and/or private drinking water supplies but have developed higher guideline levels for other contaminated water and site remediation intended to be protective of drinking water exposures from groundwater at those contaminated sites.
PFOA and PFOS health-based risk assessment {#Sec5}
==========================================
Comparing the risk assessments developed by states and EPA to derive these guideline levels highlights the scientific uncertainty and assumptions that underlie these decisions. Tables [1](#Tab1){ref-type="table"} and [2](#Tab2){ref-type="table"} summarize critical components of each assessment: toxicological endpoint, critical study, uncertainty factors, target population, and exposure parameters.
Toxicological and dose-response assessments {#Sec6}
-------------------------------------------
Risk assessment is used to develop health-based guideline levels. Scientists first review toxicological, epidemiological, and mode of action studies to identify the critical effect, the most sensitive adverse endpoint that is considered relevant to humans. Four of the eight guideline levels for PFOA are based on developmental effects, three are based on liver toxicity, and one is based on mammary gland development effects. Of the seven guideline levels for PFOS, four are based on reduced pup body weight, one is based on thyroid effects, one is based on suppressed immune response, and one is based on developmental neurotoxicity. New Jersey's recommended PFOS MCL, the lowest in the country, is the only assessment to use immune response as the critical endpoint.
The critical effect serves as the starting point for deriving a point of departure (POD), the point on the dose-response curve to which uncertainty factors (UFs) are applied, such as a No Observed Adverse Effect Level (NOAEL) or Lowest Observed Adverse Effect Level (LOAEL). In PFAS assessments, toxicokinetic adjustments were made to account for slower excretion of PFOA and PFOS in humans compared to animals, either by calculating a Human Equivalent Dose based on doses used in animal studies (most states and EPA) or by converting serum levels based on animal studies into serum levels in humans (New Jersey). This is a particularly important consideration for PFAS because of substantial variation in PFAS toxicokinetics among humans and test animals \[[@CR48]\]. There are also sex-specific and species-specific differences in the excretion rates of PFAS. For example, PFOA has a very short half-life in female rats (4--6 h) due to rapid excretion \[[@CR48]\], which makes the female rat a poor model for studying chronic or developmental effects of PFOA exposure since it is unlikely to reach a steady-state level when administered on a daily basis.
After a POD is derived, UFs are applied to the POD for non-cancer endpoints to estimate a reference dose (RfD), the daily dose expected to be without harm. PFOA and PFOS assessments utilized various UFs to account for: potential differences in sensitivity among people (intraspecies UF) and between humans and animals (interspecies UF); gaps in toxicity data (database UF); and critical effect studies for which the POD was a LOAEL (LOAEL-to-NOAEL UF). UFs were applied differently across PFOA and PFOS assessments. The EPA and all state-based PFOA assessments except for North Carolina have total UFs of 300. North Carolina, the state with the highest proposed PFOA guideline level, has a total UF of only 30 based on intraspecies and interspecies UFs. For PFOS, Texas and Minnesota have total UFs of 100 while other states and the EPA have total UFs of 30. Texas includes a UF for LOAEL-to-NOAEL extrapolation, and Minnesota a database UF to account for potentially more sensitive immune effects.
States and EPA developed guideline levels that are based on a single critical effect but are intended to also be protective of other cancer and non-cancer health outcomes. Though New Jersey's recommended PFOA MCL is based on an RfD for liver toxicity, the state also considered whether the MCL would be protective for cancer endpoints or mammary gland development. Their assessment based on increased incidence of testicular tumors in rats arrived at the same 14 ng/L guideline level \[[@CR49]\]. Their assessment based on altered mammary gland development produced a recommended PFOA MCL equivalent to 0.77 ng/L---18 times lower than the RfD used to derive the proposed MCL. This lower MCL was not recommended due to the lack of precedent for mammary gland development as a critical endpoint in risk assessment, although an additional UF of 10 for sensitive effects was applied to protect for this endpoint \[[@CR49]\]. Vermont and EPA both calculated PFOA guideline levels for testicular cancer and determined that guideline levels based on the non-cancer endpoints were more protective. Minnesota did not derive a cancer-based PFOA guideline level, instead concluding that existing data were inadequate for assessing carcinogenic potential and that the non-cancer guideline was protective of potential cancer effects. All PFOS guideline levels are based on non-cancer endpoints, with most assessments indicating that cancer endpoints were reviewed and found to be not sufficiently well-studied to establish a cancer-based guideline level.
Exposure assessment {#Sec7}
-------------------
Following the derivation of an RfD, exposure assumptions are used to establish a concentration in drinking water that is intended to be health protective, usually targeted to protect sensitive subgroups such as children. Exposure assessment relies on assumptions about the target population, water ingestion rates, and proportion of the daily dose supplied by drinking water relative to other exposure sources, known as the relative source contribution (RSC). These assumptions may vary based on the type of guideline (e.g., groundwater or drinking water).
In PFOA and PFOS assessments, target populations to be protected differed across states, even among those that used the same critical endpoint and/or had a similar RfD. EPA, Alaska, and Vermont derived the same critical endpoint and RfD for PFOA, yet their guideline levels ranged from 20 ng/L (Vermont) to 400 ng/L (Alaska), a 20-fold difference, because they used different exposure parameters. Vermont and EPA selected different target populations (infants for Vermont, lactating women for EPA), leading to divergent water ingestion rates and consequently different PFOA guideline levels for water. Minnesota's assessment is based on exposure for breastfed and formula-fed infants. Texas assumed that children's water consumption is 0.64 L/day, while Alaska assumed it is 0.78 L/day.
States also differed in their selection of RSC values. Most states and EPA assumed an RSC value of 20% for drinking water, which limits daily exposure from contaminated drinking water to 20% of the RfD so that additional exposures from other sources, such as consumer products or diet, do not push total exposure above the RfD. All other exposure assumptions being equal, lower RSC values correspond to lower drinking water guideline levels. Minnesota and Maine used human biomonitoring studies to derive RSCs for PFOA and PFOS ranging from 20% to 60%. Alaska and Texas used a 100% RSC, meaning that for people drinking water at their guideline, any dietary and consumer product exposures would raise their intake above the RfD. The Alaska and Texas PFOA and PFOS guidelines, which are 4--8 times higher than EPA's HAs, were developed for remediation and clean-up of contaminated sites, and these states use EPA's HAs as limits for PWS drinking water.
Factors contributing to variation in PFAS guideline levels {#Sec8}
==========================================================
Considering the most recent adopted or proposed PFOA and PFOS water guideline levels at the federal and state levels, the range of "safe" levels in drinking water spans almost two full orders of magnitude, from 13 to 1000 ng/L. This variation reflects responses to scientific uncertainty in risk assessment, technical decisions and capacity, and social, political, and economic influences from involved stakeholders.
Scientific decisions {#Sec9}
--------------------
Differences between water guidelines in part reflect responses to scientific uncertainty. As described above, health risk assessment requires many assumptions and estimates in order to predict a safe exposure for humans. These include identifying critical effects, addressing inter-species and intra-species variation, quantifying other uncertainties, and selecting exposure parameters. Many areas of toxicity and exposure research on PFAS have not achieved scientific consensus so risk assessors make diverse choices.
Another important consideration in these and future assessments is the consideration of epidemiological evidence. Many of the assessments noted that effects in human studies were consistent with the critical effect in animal studies, giving greater confidence to the assessment. However, all of the assessments used dose-response data from animal studies as a basis for their drinking water levels. New Jersey assessments compared their target PFOS serum level of 23 ng/mL with the midrange of serum levels in epidemiological studies that reported effects (6--27 ng/mL) and with U.S. serum levels (median 5 ng/mL, 95%ile 19 ng/mL, from 2013--2014 NHANES) \[[@CR50]\]. Based on this comparison, New Jersey recognized the need to minimize any additional exposures from drinking water since the population is already approaching effect levels from the epidemiological studies and risk-based exposure limits. While risk assessors generally expect their approaches to produce exposure levels that will be protective for exposed humans, PFOS immune effects in children are reported at lower exposures than the EPA's drinking water advisory levels \[[@CR50]\]. A recent assessment used epidemiological data to propose a drinking water guideline of 1 ng/L to prevent additional increases in serum PFOS levels \[[@CR51]\]. Several other endocrine disrupting compounds show effects in humans at exposures below EPA risk-based exposure limits, including di-(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) \[[@CR52]\].
The number of peer-reviewed scientific articles on PFAS has increased dramatically since 2000, while federal and state PFAS drinking water guideline levels have generally decreased over this time (Fig. [1](#Fig1){ref-type="fig"}). This demonstrates a common phenomenon: initial risk assessments based on limited data are often shown not to be health protective once more complete data become available. For PFOA and PFOS, the tightening of the guidelines is largely not due to new toxicology studies, but rather to improved exposure research, advances in analytical measurement technologies, improved biomonitoring and toxicokinetic data, and epidemiological findings. For example, both of EPA's PFOA HAs, the 2009 provisional HA for short term exposure and the 2016 lifetime HA for chronic exposure, are based on developmental effects from the same mouse study \[[@CR53]\], but different exposure parameters and toxicokinetic assumptions led to a much lower HA in 2016. Seven of the eight PFOA assessments, all released between 2012 and 2017, use critical endpoints from studies published in 2006 or earlier. EPA's assessments are also influential: once EPA derived RfDs for the 2016 HAs, states such as Minnesota and Vermont used these RfDs along with different decisions about exposure parameters, resulting in lower guideline levels.
The most sensitive toxicological endpoints---altered mammary gland development and suppressed immune function---were not the basis for EPA's PFOA and PFOS HAs. However two states, Texas and New Jersey, did use these endpoints as the basis for their PFOA Protective Concentration Level (PCL) and PFOS MCL, respectively. Although in utero PFOA exposure has been shown to alter mammary gland development in rodents \[[@CR54], [@CR55]\], this specialized endpoint is not routinely evaluated in regulatory toxicity studies and there is limited precedent for using it in risk assessment \[[@CR56], [@CR57]\]. To the best of our knowledge, altered mammary gland development has never been used as a critical endpoint for the basis of any federal regulatory risk assessment in the United States.
Texas based their PFOA PCL on altered mammary gland development from a full gestational study in mice since this endpoint showed a dose response. Texas determined this RfD to be protective of increased liver weight effects observed in several other studies. New Jersey's PFOA assessment did not use mammary gland changes as the critical effect but did recognize that it was most sensitive and included an additional UF for database uncertainty related to mammary gland effects. Minnesota identified delayed mammary gland development as a co-critical effect, but did not include additional UFs. North Carolina and EPA cited uncertainty related to variation in response between mouse strains, inconsistent methods across studies, and questions about toxicokinetics as challenges for using this endpoint \[[@CR35], [@CR58]\], though risk assessments commonly rely on endpoints for which there is substantial intra- and inter-species variation in sensitivity. Most notably, EPA discounted effects on mammary gland development because these alterations were not associated with decreased lactation function and the mode of action for mammary gland development effects is not well described. Though EPA was reluctant to consider the changes adverse, a substantial body of scientific work suggests that altered mammary gland development is likely to influence later breast cancer risk \[[@CR57]\]. New research to better characterize these associations is important because many endocrine disruptors alter mammary gland development if exposure occurs in utero or early in life. Routine assessment of mammary gland development in toxicity studies of endocrine disruptors will be informative and improve understanding of these changes and reduce uncertainty for future risk assessments.
New Jersey used decreased plaque forming cell response (suppressed immune function) as the basis for their PFOS MCL, noting also the consistency between this effect and decreased vaccination response in epidemiological studies. Minnesota identified suppressed immune function as a co-critical effect and included a database UF of 3 for immunotoxicity. While the EPA indicated a concern for adverse immune effects, it chose not to use suppressed immune function as the basis for the PFOS HA because a "lack of human dosing information and lack of low-dose confirmation of effects in animals for the short-duration study precludes the use of these immunotoxicity data in setting the RfD" \[[@CR35]\]. The New Jersey assessment includes a rebuttal of EPA's decision, noting that EPA has used this endpoint as a basis for RfDs for other chemicals \[[@CR50]\].
Social, political, and economic influences {#Sec10}
------------------------------------------
While risk assessments such as these PFAS water guidelines are presented as being based solely on scientific considerations, this process is also influenced by political, social, and economic factors \[[@CR59]--[@CR63]\]. For PFAS, much like other high-value products such as tobacco, the landscape of what is scientifically known and unknown about their health and environmental impacts is influenced by the context of knowledge production. Internal industry documents reveal a broad "science-based defense strategy" to "command the science" on PFAS, ranging from suspected influence on state environmental protection agencies in the case of West Virginia, to the selective peer review publication of internal research, to paying academic scientists to influence the peer-review process \[[@CR10], [@CR64], [@CR65]\].
PFAS manufacturing companies have influenced PFAS water guidelines in both overt and subtle ways. For example, in 2001 EPA and West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) learned that DuPont scientists had found high levels of PFOA in regional drinking water. The following year, DuPont collaborated with WVDEP and a state-appointed C8 Assessment Toxicity Team to develop a screening level of 150,000 ng/L, despite numerous conflicts of interest and DuPont's own internal guideline of 1000 ng/L \[[@CR10], [@CR66]\].
Economically invested corporations have indirectly influenced the development of PFAS drinking water guideline levels through the strategic production and dissemination of industry-friendly research, a well-documented pattern in environmental health \[[@CR67]\]. Recent litigation by the State of Minnesota Attorney General against 3M revealed internal correspondence between the company and academic scientists paid as consultants. In one instance, an academic scientist hired by 3M wrote in private emails that he intentionally described his work reviewing articles for publication as "literature reviews" in order to avoid a paper trail to 3M, bragged about rejecting an article on PFAS health effects, and offered to pass unpublished articles to peer reviewers recommended by 3M, clear violations of scientific norms \[[@CR64]\].
Industry sponsorship of toxicological research and risk assessments can also influence the developments of guidelines through the "funding effect" in which funding source influences published outcomes \[[@CR68]--[@CR70]\]. Studies or assessments funded by a company or industry that benefits financially from the product under investigation are less likely to identify risks and more likely to demonstrate efficacy (or ambiguity), while the opposite is true of studies funded by government agencies or independent parties. Of the eight critical studies used to derive PFOA (*n* = 5) or PFOS (*n* = 3) guidelines, five were conducted by PFAS manufacturers (3M or DuPont), two were conducted by the U.S. government (EPA or NIEHS), and one was conducted by academic researchers with funding from the Chinese government. North Carolina's PFOA guideline, the highest in the country, heavily references a risk assessment conducted by industry consultants \[[@CR71]\]. However, the small number of PFAS guidelines prevents any quantitative analysis of funding effects. Risk assessments, which rely on many assumptions to estimate human exposure and toxicity in the absence of data, are more vulnerable to funding effects. For example, a 2009 PFOA risk assessment funded by DuPont and 3M identified 880 ng/L as "a reliable, albeit conservative" level for an MCL, over 12 times higher than the EPA HA \[[@CR71]\].
Industry-funded research may also influence the overall landscape of PFAS research because it is selectively produced and shared \[[@CR10]\]. For example, most research conducted by chemical companies is never published or made public, even when disclosure could be useful for assessing chemical risk. Major PFAS manufacturers have repeatedly violated information disclosure requirements under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Section 8(e) by not disclosing information on substantial risks related to PFAS in production \[[@CR72], [@CR73]\]. This practice has resulted in multi-million dollar fines and also delayed the production of science on environmental and human health effects of PFAS by decades \[[@CR74], [@CR75]\]. Today, PFAS manufacturers commonly assert that information on production quantities, use in consumer goods, and chemical identity is confidential business information, creating barriers for scientists and regulators seeking to prevent harmful exposures.
Unlike some states where limited regulatory appetite and strong industry and political influence may slow progress on protecting public health by establishing PFAS water exposure limits, other states have developed scientifically sound PFAS guideline levels in response to discoveries of local contamination. For example, after the discovery of PFOA contamination in Hoosick Falls, New York, a resident in nearby North Bennington, Vermont raised concerns to local legislators. The state of Vermont reacted quickly, first creating a PFOA HA of 20 ng/L and then using that HA to develop a groundwater enforcement standard. Testing of private wells by Vermont's Department of Environmental Conservation found PFOA concentrations well above the state's HA, prompting the state to quickly provide bottled water and conduct additional water testing, soil sampling, and blood testing of local residents \[[@CR41], [@CR76], [@CR77]\]. In contrast, North Carolina, home to a major Chemours PFAS manufacturing facility, has not updated their PFOA interim maximum allowable concentration of 2000 ng/L, the highest in the United States, despite a 2012 proposal that this guideline be lowered to 1000 ng/L. North Carolina recently developed the nation's first drinking water provisional health goal for GenX (hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid), a PFOA replacement, following discovery of widespread contamination in local rivers that are used for drinking water \[[@CR78]\]. This example demonstrates that local pollution concerns can motivate states to develop guidelines or standards without waiting for federal precedent. Legislators at the state and federal level may play an increasing role going forward. Recent examples include a legislatively proposed 5 ng/L level for PFOA and PFOS in Michigan and pressure from 25 U.S. Senators on EPA to develop a PFAS MCL \[[@CR33], [@CR79]\].
Discussion and conclusion {#Sec11}
=========================
The wide range of PFOA and PFOS guidelines---up to 70-fold difference between states---as well as the lack of enforceable MCLs and deference by many states to EPA's HA of 70 ng/L have significant public health implications. Our finding that some states have taken additional steps beyond federal action in evaluating and/or regulating PFAS is consistent with states taking more health-protective action on other chemicals, including flame retardants and bisphenol A \[[@CR80], [@CR81]\].
EPA's HAs do not require ongoing monitoring by PWSs or treatment of water that exceeds the HAs, though in practice many other entities use the HA to make remediation decisions. If MCLs existed for PFAS, regulators would have greater authority to take action at contaminated sites under CERCLA, and DoD sites would be able to move forward with remediation of contaminated sites \[[@CR33]\]. In addition, given the toxicity, persistence, and mobility of PFAS, systematic screening of PWSs is a logical approach to protect public health. Some states, including Michigan and Washington, are testing PWSs for certain PFAS \[[@CR82], [@CR83]\], and New Jersey's recommended MCLs would require routine testing. In the absence of MCLs, guidelines are applied only after contamination is discovered by other mechanisms, for example, when residents seek water testing near known industrial sites. Public and regulatory awareness of PFAS water contamination has benefited from nationwide testing initiatives, including EPA's UCMR testing and DoD identification of PFAS-contaminated military sites. The recently authorized nationwide study on PFAS exposure at military sites may be particularly useful in raising awareness and potentially supporting further regulatory action \[[@CR84]\].
Regulatory and scientific attention to PFAS has focused on PFOA and PFOS, but the scope of potential PFAS contamination is much broader. While there are data available to support risk assessment for several additional PFAS, including perfluorobutyrate (PFBA), perfluorobutanesulfonic acid (PFBS), perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA), perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS), and GenX, there are no studies on prevalence, exposure, and toxicity for many other PFAS, or even analytical methods to detect them \[[@CR22]\]. PFAS as a class are generally persistent and mobile, and the few that have been adequately tested share some toxic effects and exposure characteristics with PFOA and PFOS \[[@CR14], [@CR18]--[@CR21], [@CR85]\]. The lack of information and potential scope of the contamination poses significant challenges for protecting public health. The fact that several guideline levels, including EPA's HAs, apply to the total concentration of multiple PFAS suggests that regulatory agencies are attentive to PFAS as a class, not just as individual compounds. In the absence of toxicity data on individual chemicals, regulators could use well-characterized PFAS as analogues for deriving RfDs and guideline levels, or could develop methods to regulate PFAS as a class, although this would involve additional assumptions and uncertainties. Texas developed PCLs for 16 PFAS, deriving RfD values for PFAS with limited toxicity data using well-characterized PFAS as surrogates \[[@CR86]\]. Relative potency estimates have been used in other chemical classes, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins, and are being explored for PFAS \[[@CR87]\]. Some existing regulations treat all long-chain PFAS similarly. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has restricted all long-chain PFAS as a class \[[@CR59], [@CR88]\], and EPA's PFOA Stewardship Program includes PFOA and all "precursor chemicals that can break down to PFOA, and related higher homologue chemicals" \[[@CR89]\]. The similarities between many PFAS in terms of chemical structure and exposure potential, combined with potential differences in toxicity and the long time required to gather sufficient data, further raise the importance of limiting manufacture and use of PFAS before they become exposure concerns.
EPA-validated drinking water testing protocols exist for 18 PFAS (EPA Method 537), though validated methods are lacking for other PFAS and other media, such as groundwater. It is difficult to understand why EPA has not included any PFAS in the fourth cycle of UCMR testing, despite significant data gaps regarding the extent of drinking water contamination with other PFAS and the need for surveillance using lower detection limits \[[@CR90]\]. The focus of current water screening and treatment efforts solely on removing PFOA and PFOS is concerning because carbon filtration designed to remove long-chain PFAS is less effective at removing short-chain PFAS and PFAS transformation products likely present in AFFF-contaminated water \[[@CR91]\] and at PFAS production sites \[[@CR21]\].
Our review of PFAS drinking water guideline levels highlights opportunities to extend risk assessment methods to include some important endpoints such as mammary gland development and immune function. Reports of immunosuppression in children with exposures within the exposure range prevalent in the general population have raised concern that EPA's HAs are not adequately protective, since modeling indicates that consumption of drinking water at 70 ng/L would substantially increase PFOA and PFOS blood levels above current U.S. background levels \[[@CR51]\]. Additionally, New Jersey's PFOA assessment estimated that the RfD for mammary gland changes is below median blood levels in the general population \[[@CR49]\]. Grandjean and Clapp \[[@CR51]\] proposed that a drinking water concentration of 1 ng/L for PFOA and PFOS would not be expected to lead to an increase in population-level blood serum levels above current U.S. averages.
Our analysis also highlights opportunities to consider epidemiological data more carefully in conjunction with toxicological and exposure data. Despite a relatively robust epidemiological literature for PFOA and PFOS, only New Jersey showed how their target blood level was in the range of exposures in human studies that show effect on vaccine response. New Jersey also used human biomonitoring data to illustrate that even small increases in exposure are problematic because current exposure levels are near levels associated with health effects \[[@CR22]\]. However, the environmental co-occurrence of multiple PFAS is a challenge for using epidemiological data to develop guideline levels for individual PFAS \[[@CR92]\]. Considering information from human biomonitoring and epidemiology adds important context to the risk assessment process.
The scientific and regulatory landscape on PFAS continues to evolve rapidly. Advances in analytical methods and decreased cost of measuring certain PFAS in water and other media broaden the ability of PWSs, regulatory and health agencies, academics, and nonprofits to identify water contamination. In June 2018, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) released a draft Toxicological Profile that derived minimal risk levels (MRLs), which are similar to RfDs, for intermediate duration exposure (15--364 days) of four PFAS routinely measured in NHANES \[[@CR28]\]. The MRL values for PFOA (3 ng/kg/day) and PFOS (2 ng/kg/day) are 6.7 and 10 times lower than the RfDs EPA used to develop its 2016 HAs and similar to those developed by New Jersey, though they are based on different studies and endpoints. The release of this report became surrounded in controversy amidst suggestions that months earlier, EPA and other government officials sought to delay its release, citing concerns about public reaction \[[@CR93]\], and demonstrates how political and economic factors can affect the timely development of health-protective guidelines.
In the absence of enforceable, nationwide water standards for PFAS, some states have developed more health-protective and scientifically sound guidelines. This may create or exacerbate public health disparities because not all states have the resources to develop guideline levels. The ability of states to develop their own guideline levels and standards provides diverse risk assessment approaches as models for other state and federal regulators, while a sufficiently protective, scientifically sound, and enforceable federal standard would provide more consistent protection.
**Publisher's note:** Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
**Change history**
2/6/2020
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
**Change history**
3/29/2019
This paper was originally published under a standard licence. This has now been amended to a CC BY licence in the PDF and HTML.
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (SES 1456897), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (P42ES027706 and T32ES023679), California Breast Cancer Research Program (21UB-8100), and the Broad Reach Foundation. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, or other funders. We are grateful to individuals in state and federal regulatory offices who answered questions and provided documents during our research. We thank Cole Alder, Elizabeth Boxer, Walker Bruhn, and Amanda Hernandez for their research assistance, and the Editor and two anonymous Reviewers for their exceptionally helpful comments.
The authors declare they have no conflict of interest.
|
(B.J.
O'Shea)
The Pterigynandraceae
contain about five genera and 20-25 species; primarily of the Northern
Hemisphere. The definition and circumscription of the family, a member
of the Hypnales, is outlined by Buck and Crum (1990). Only one genus
is known from sub-Saharan Africa (Trachyphyllum), but Pterigynandrum
filiforme Hedw. is known from northern Africa; it is distinguished
by slender, julaceous branches, elliptic to oblong-ovate leaves (to
1 mm long), apices acute, short and forked costa, and the cells strongly
projecting at both ends.
Trachyphyllum A.Gepp in Hiern
A pantropical
genus of seven species, four of which occur in Africa (O'Shea 1999).
Plants small,
forming rather dense mats, brownish green to yellow. Stems creeping,
1-pinnately branched, branches short, suberect and curved; in cross-section
outer 2-3 rows of cells small, thick-walled, inner cells larger, thin-walled,
central strand weak; rhizoids clustered beneath stems, appearing smooth.
Leaves of stem julaceous to erect, broadly ovate-lanceolate,
to 1.2 mm long, apex
acuminate to apiculate; margins plane or slightly reflexed at base, appearing
denticulate at mid region; costae short and forked, joined at base; apical
cells long linear, smooth or nearly so; median cells linear (shorter than
apical cells), rather strongly papillose by projecting cell angles; basal
cells adjoining
costa oblong-rectangular, porose; alar region well differentiated, cells
numerous, extending to, or just beyond broadest portion of leaf, oblate
short rectangular
to subquadrate; marginal cells at mid-leaf shorter and broader; branch
leaves usually smaller, narrowly ovate-lanceolate, apex slenderly
long acuminate.
Dioicous. Perichaetia lateral; leaves abruptly long acuminate from an oblong
base, costae single or double, margins strongly serrate, teeth sometimes
multicellular. Seta elongate, smooth, twisted. Capsule exserted, inclined,
urn short-cylindrical,
asymmetric, constricted below mouth when dry; exothecial cells quadrate
to rectangular, not collenchymatous; stomata at urn base, superficial;
annulus
absent. Operculum short rostrate. Peristome double, exostome teeth 16,
densely cross-striate below, distally papillose, median zig-zag line
present, trabeculate
on back; endostome nearly equal exostome length, basal membrane rather
high, segments 16, keeled and perforate, finely papillose, cilia
well-developed,
1-3. Calyptra cucullate, smooth and naked. Spores spherical, finely papillose.
Habitat.
Tree trunks and bases, rocks, broken ground and soil; in open woodland,
at elevations from 500-1800 m.
Discussion.
The genus is recognized by the broadly ovate-lanceolate leaves, acuminate
to apiculate apex, short and forked double costa, upper long,
smooth, linear apical cells, projecting papillae at distal angle of
median cells,
and well differentiated alar cells that extend up the margin of the
leaf. Not often
seen with sporophytes.
The gametophytes of Trachyphyllum can be mistaken for Erythrodontium (Entodontaceae), but are readily separated by the strong projecting
papillae at the distal
cell angles of Trachyphyllum, and smooth laminal cells of Erythrodontium.
Trachyphyllum was only recently reported in the Americas (Buck & Griffin, 1984).
Literature.
Buck, W.R. 1979. A revision of the moss genus Trachyphyllum Gepp
(Thuidiaceae). Brittonia 31: 379-394 [keys, illustrations]. Buck,
W. R. & Crum,
H. 1990. An evaluation of familial limits among the genera traditionally
aligned with the Thuidiaceae and Leskeaceae. Contributions to the
University of Michigan
Herbarium 17: 55-69. Buck, W.R. & Griffin III, D. 1984. Trachyphyllum,
a moss genus new to South America with notes on African-South American
bryogeography. Journal of Natural History 18: 63-69. O'Shea,
B.J. 1999. British Bryological
Society Expedition to Mulanje Mountain. Malawi. 11. Pterigynandraceae
M.Fleisch. and Rigodiaceae H.A.Crum (Bryopsida) in Africa. [key to
African species, distribution
map]
accepted
11.05.2000 |
yourself away from numerous irritating complications such as health issues, unclean and also untidy setting and so on. Junk disposal in the community becomes predictable in the era of natural disasters similar to floods and also earth quakes. If your locality can be hit by these kinds of earthquakes, it will be loaded with trash loaded in the form of overlooked ruins from the houses, broken down furniture and many others.
Not only can an individual toss away whatever you ought to, but dumpster program also gives you work on your time frame as opposed to having to conform to some exterior pickup schedule. If you're carrying out any kind of structure or renovation project, or you simply understand that it will take you a couple of weekends to get a cleanout job finished, renting a dumpster is a wonderful choice. If you rent from your nearby junk transporting pros, you're able to say when you really need the unit then when you'd like them to pick it up. That way, you're not pressured to do a work more quickly when compared with you want to (or maybe than you may), and you aren't required to clutter increase your property together with debris when you finish the project.
Your business may not be that sufficiently little to pass on on couple of trash ales to get the whole trash disposed. Opting to acheive it on home would be a start barking up the incorrect tree since it needs large amount of investment in comparison to its time, men and women and money too. Any business can be launched on the profit night clubs only when each and every penny invested in the business can be coined inside right method.
Dumpster hire can put a stop to your complete waste supervision needs nevertheless, this will be a further burden if your choice is incorrect. With the dumpster business on surge in the market, dumpsters are no longer bins tied to household junk disposal. They're helping palms in most from the business, structure and house renovations. They work effectively means of disposing trash in very affordable price tag.
You can rent any dumpster to complete your business renovation. Whether you are tearing separate an office and other type of business creating, you will need a Rent a Trash Bin in Philpot, KY. Together with roofing too you will need to rent any dumpster. Depending on the height and width of your business or maybe office building will determine the size of dumpster you have got to rent. If the top or business renovation can be under 2 tons of waste when compared with you can rent a tiny dumpster. If the level of waste is about five vehicle loads when compared with you will need a 15 cubic yard dumpster to help rent. Five vehicle loads or maybe 3 tons or maybe less of dust can be delivered with the moderate size dumpster. For very large renovation projects throughout Arlington, VA, you have got to rent the large dumpster. This is perfect if you're getting rid of large items such as mattresses, companies, dressers, units, etc. The bigger dumpster is 30 cubic yards and also holds somewhere around 10 pickup truck loads or 4 tons of debris.
Do you think you're renovating? Do you think you're building or tearing all the way down a part of your property? You could be in need of a Rent a Trash Bin in Philpot. Dumpsters usually are not just for individuals with demolition companies. Various sorts of people make use of dumpsters. Maybe the idea never entered your mind to rent a dumpster before and you might actually be surprised at how convenient it is to have one.
The big evening has come. You have planned, you may have mapped out and about exactly what is proceeding to happen, and it is finally time period to put your programs in action. Then it's time to take out your blueprints, roll-up your fleshlight sleeves, grab your current sledgehammer, and get to work remodeling your property. It's a good thing you're relatively handy along with tools as you have opted to accomplish this remodel just about all yourself. You might be pretty sure you haven't forgotten everything, but then you understand that you've bad to account for the many rubbish and garbage from the deterioration phase of the remodel.
You may only have to provide the lunch, meal and refreshments for your family and friends to help you with the construction of your home. Dependant upon what resources you need it is likely you have already pruchased around to get the best products plus the best prices.
The benefit of dumpster leases in the Maryland area is achievable through online ordering in addition to phone service. The following day delivery usefulness is another profit to dumpster use. This Rent a Trash Bin in Philpot process is made easy from the to Z that has a professional dumpster corporation that can assist you in selecting the proper sizing and style dumpster to finest suite your requirements. A community task such as a cathedral cleanup is made quicker and much easier when volunteers are given with the required steps intended for proper discretion of garbage and dust. One dumpster can be used old appliances, stuff saved in the cathedral basement for a long time without being utilized and weeds and out-of-date shrubbery.
Currently any old doors and base board can simply possibly be tossed into the dumpster. The construction team can set your new beautiful carpeting. After the carpeting 's all installed, the construction crew could put the brand-new doors you actually picked out to their relies. Everything is joining together nicely no mess is approximately thanks to your rented dumpster.
Firstly, Rent a Trash Bin in Philpots certainly are a very accessible merchandise and can generally be found in your local area if you online search for garbage services. The majority of rental companies have an online prescence that you can take a look at to find out what solutions are being made available. While you could make queries over the phone, checking out the individual web sites of businesses you are interested in will allow you to compare prices and services at your leisure, without feeling pressured to commit to anything. For almost all of these leases, you can use the online world to make a reserving.
Find a company that may offer following day Rent a Trash Bin in Philpot for your building project to help you quickly get a job done.
Zero job is just too big big intended for Rent a Trash Bin in Philpot in Maryland. You only need to do a tiny amount of study on what sized next day Rent a Trash Bin in Philpot you will want for the distinct job you are carrying out.
To work with a bunch of beers or something bigger - that is the question which faces a lot of business owners. But many people don't recognize that it can be a concern that is asked not just by business owners but home owners who are doing repair or maybe construction work towards their homes. It could be a medium sized enterprise or a huge home venture you might want to think about garbage Rent a Trash Bin in Philpot, KY.
You may not put wet fresh paint into the dumpster however you are able to put dry fresh paint cans inside of it.
Men and women require Rent a Trash Bin in Philpot, KY providers for many motives. For example, any landlord generally needs to clean the condo where the previous tenants eventually left garbage piled excessive. A professional property renovator often takes several journeys to the district dump. Or simply, you just have a huge cleaning undertaking to do so you need a position to dispose all the waste materials. Normally, renting of the king-size garbage containers could be the region of huge construction businesses, but presently there many Rent a Trash Bin in Philpot, KY firms that rent large dumpsters (also known as roll offs) to frequent people too. Hiring move off dumpster could be a great selection for anybody who doesn't want garbage as the impediment in the way of having the job done.
This Rent a Trash Bin in Philpot, KY guide describes each important factor to look at when deciding to rent a roll-off box. It offers tips for customers hunting to rent a quality and also affordable dumpster because of their construction venture, and also illustrates questions you ought to be asking yourself taking a look at which company to rent by.
These move off dumpsters are the most popular dimension used between home owners. They are great for removing excess waste after coping with some normal maintenance on a house, specifically when redecorating or maybe cleaning out room in the attic room.
If you are individually working on your own residence with regards to building, you want to save as much money as you can. Maybe your family and friends tend to be helping you with the remodeling of your property. This is a smart way for family and also friends to celebration in this extremely busy world.
You may save pennies right here, but it requires large amount of cash to be invested in your health difficulties in your not too distant future because disposing such a huge waste with self entails a lot of hard work, physical exertion and also time expenditure as well. In addition to this you will need to focus on travelling complexities and also environmental warm and friendly recycling involving disposed throw away if you are one that respects sociable concerns of the nation. Construction waste is usually in huge quantities and also occupies much space. Daring to apparent construction throw away on home not only uses your time although occupies the free place for longer length of time.
If you are desperately planning on remodeling your kitchen compared to you have been hectic picking out completely new kitchen cabinets, completely new flooring, probably new devices and more. With your large kitchen area remodeling task you will definitely need to have to rent a dumpster to eradicate all of the dirt.
If you own a restaurant and they are remodeling your bathrooms than you definitely will need any dumpster or numerous dumpsters. You will possibly need the huge dumpster(s) that may hold up to some tons. Four tons is concerning ten pick up truck loads. Based on the size of the |
Categories
Check out the Archives
Awards & Nominations
This January and February, we’ll be finishing up our look at the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and moving on to the third year of the show, both recently and lovingly remastered for high definition. Check back daily for the latest review.
So, here we are again. We almost made it. Two episodes away from the series finalé and… boom! Lwaxana Troi episode. Sometimes you just can’t catch a break.
Still, this is the point where we reflect on how far the show has come in a season. Ménage à Troi is hardly the best episode of the season, but then Lwaxana episodes rarely are. We need to compare like with like, to get a sense of how far the show has come along. It’s not enough to say that Star Trek: The Next Generation is a better show when it made Ménage à Troi than it was when it made Manhunt or Haven, but it’s close.
Ménage à Troi is a problematic episode, much like Manhunt and Haven are both problematic episodes. There’s a weird awkward dated quality to the show’s attempts to do relationship humour – a vaguely unsettling sexist undertone about how confident older women are inherently hilarious and its great fun to see them involved in embarrassing relationships. Unfortunately, Ménage à Troi continues that trend.
Two Ferengi walk into a bar…
There is a rather uncomfortable subtext to Ménage à Troi. It’s the story about how a Ferengi DaiMon finds Lwaxana Troi attractive. The audience is supposed to find this hilarious on multiple levels. We’re supposed to find it funny that any man could be interested in such a shrewish and domineering older woman, laughing at how little DaiMon Tog knows what he has let himself in for. We’re also meant to laugh at Lwaxana, being romantically pursued by the Star Trek equivalent of a troll. (Waking up in captivity, Riker deduces, “From the smell of things, I’d say we’re aboard a Ferengi vessel.” Which is, y’know, hella space racist.)
It goes without saying that these are very sexist starting points. There’s a sense that the audience is supposed to find Lwaxana’s predicament amusing in the same way that we were supposed to find her holodeck romance in Manhunt amusing – it’s meant to be an embarrassing sequence that puts a bossy middle-aged woman in her proper place. It feels more than a little mean-spirited and reflects gender stereotypes and sexist storytelling conventions that were already dated by 1990.
This is probably the least likely way I ever expected an episode of The Next Generation to end…
It’s not as if television (or media in general) has come as far as it should in the years since Ménage à Troi was broadcast. However, we should probably be thankful for that fact that we’ve come far enough that Ménage à Troi does seem like something of a dated sexist relic, an uncomfortable throwback to a much earlier and less progressive time. We certainly haven’t come as far as we need to, but there’s at least some hope of more diverse roles for women of middle-age.
Ménage à Troi‘s datedness is reflected in the script, which portrays the Ferengi in the style of a fifties space opera adventure villains – Ferenginar needs women! The Ferengi kidnap two women and their rugged masculine companion. They fight over the women as objects. (“Give her to me!” one insists.) They strip the women naked, because of course they do. “Females do not deserve the honour of clothing,” one helpfully explains. There’s sinister torture involved. As our male lead engages in an escape and rescue plan, one of the women is subjected to the horror of the “mind probe.”
A well-played game of chess…
While it’s perhaps a bit too much to describe this as a cute throwback on paper, you can almost see how this might work. If written cleverly, it could be delivered in the style of a parody of those sorts of fifties science-fiction narratives. That sounds like the sort of approach that Manny Coto adopted when writing Bound for the fourth season of Star Trek: Enterprise. The problem is that the franchise has seldom been strong enough to pull off that sort of parody. (As Coto demonstrated when writing Bound.)
And that’s quite clear in Ménage à Troi. It’s Riker, Wesley and Picard who get the trio rescued. Lwaxana does manage to convince Tog to return Riker and Troi to the Enterprise, but she’s hardly the most proactive of characters. However, Deanna is treated as driftwood in the episode’s plotting. She gets a big confrontation with her mother at the start of the hour, and her name is in the title, but she spends most of the episode following Riker around and eavesdropping on her mother’s attempts to keep Tog docile.
Stopping to smell the muktok…
The show has never really figured out how to make Deanna work as a character. Her last character-focused episode, The Price, is the weakest episode of the season – and Ménage à Troi ranks pretty near the bottom of the third season’s quality rankings as well. Troi fares better when shuffled into the middle ground, as in Tin Man, but there’s a sense that The Next Generation still hasn’t figured out who Deanna Troi is and what she is about.
Even Lwaxana seems to have a bit of trouble with that at the climax, while trying to convince Tog to let Troi and Riker go. “Let me be candid, DaiMon Tog,” she explains. “Deanna’s of no use to you. She’s only half Betazoid. And if you keep Riker, Starfleet will never stop chasing for you.” Lwaxana defines her daughter as “useless.” In contrast, Riker is a dynamic character who is so important that Starfleet simply won’t let him go without a fight – the curious implication is that Lwaxana seems to suspect they’d simply shrug off Deanna Troi’s disappearance completely. It’s an awful, awkward moment.
Non-iconic face palm!
For what it’s worth, the show also has the same problem with Beverly Crusher; that’s why the next episode is a “Crusher falls in love with a patient” episode – because it seems all the show knows about Beverly Crusher is that she is a doctor and she is a woman. But we’ll get to that when we discuss Tranfigurations. At least Crusher has her own distinct voice and gets to play important parts in episodes like Symbiosis and The Enemy. Troi often feels like window-dressing. This is one of the the many indications that The Next Generation is really not a show that should be attempting to do gender-based comedy episodes.
The biggest problem with Ménage à Troi is that it is pretty damn creepy. There’s a fairly unpleasant rape subtext that runs through the episode. Lwaxana publicly rejects Tog at a fancy diplomatic reception, and the Ferengi simply refuses to accept that “no means no.” So he shows up on Betazed with some flowers, and kidnaps her with her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend. He then has her stripped and beamed to… um, what is that room? it sort of looks a bit like his quarters.
“Not the mind probe!!!”
While there, Tog makes some pretty heavy threats. When Lwaxana wonders why she would cooperate, Ferek offers, “In order to keep your daughter alive and healthy, for one.” At that point, Lwaxana asks that her daughter be dismissed from the room so that she can talk privately with Tog. “Let us talk,” Tog suggests, pressing a button and causing a bed to appear. Note that nothing even approximating romance appears – no lights are dimmed, no champagne is served, no mood music is provided. None of those elements would make the sequence any better, but the fact that all Tog wants or needs is the bed sends a clear message.
It’s never explicit whether or not Lwaxana sleeps with Tog in order to preserve her daughter’s life. We cut away from what appears to be a make-out scene, and to Deanna in the ship’s brig. Deanna – who has a telepathic connection with her mother and a “live feed” of what’s going on – winces visibly. It’s unclear if Ménage à Troi intends this to be a comedic sequence, or a scene of genuine peril. Either way, it’s uncomfortable.
Knowing meme, knowing you…
When we cut back to Lwaxana and Tog, the two are fully clothed and talking about Lwaxana’s former lovers. The fact that we are fully clothed means absolutely nothing on The Next Generation; characters seem to put their costumes back on as soon as they have finished. (Well, either that or The Emissary was implying that Worf could get K’Ehleyr pregnant merely by removing his sash. Which we can’t discount.) Sex is so sterile in The Next Generation that it unfolds between act breaks without a hair falling out of place.
Even if Tog did not rape Lwaxana – exhorting her consent through threats to her daughter – there’s still the whole “oo-mox” thing. Although Tog might boast that “there is no translation”, it’s very clearly a sexual act. This is carried to its logical climax (he!he!) in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine when Quark is revealed as a character who exhorts oo-mox from his female staff members in the dire Profit and Lace. It appears that Star Trek never quite grows out of the “sexual harrassment and rape are funny” stage of its development.
I hear he’s a DaiMon in the sack…
So Ménage à Troi is a rather problematic piece of television, and one that happens to fall right within the blind spot of The Next Generation. It’s an episode that doesn’t seem to think of its female characters as anything other than sources of humour – jokes waiting to be made. It’s a rather unfortunate relic from an era that has faded into history, and one that has dated as poorly as an episode of the classic Star Trek.
And, yet, despite that, Ménage à Troi still works better than most Next Generation comedy episodes. Although, to be fair, this is probably more a demonstration of how low the bar is set than any real endorsement of the episode. The climactic sequence involving Picard waxing lyrical in order to recover Lwaxana is one of the best gags in the history of the show. It’s Patrick Stewart’s delivery that really sells the sequence, oscillating between grand Shakespearean monologuing and more banal counting down.
“But, Mr. Data, it’s not my birthday!”
There’s also the continually fascinating relationship between Troi and Riker, which is never made explicit throughout the show’s seven seasons, but which heavily implies that the two are intimate without being involved in a relationship. Here, the two take shore leave with one another. Picard even gently nudges Riker to book his vacation. “Counsellor Troi had the good sense to ask for shore leave,” he observes, playing relationship advisor. “I can see I’m going to have to suggest it to you. Have a good time, Number One.”
The two wander around Betazed, holding hands and stopping to smell the local fauna. The two are about to kiss when Lwaxana interrupts them. What’s interesting is that this isn’t a big deal. Lwaxana’s arrival sabotages the mood, but it’s not treated as if she blew their one chance to get back together, or anything like that. Neither Troi nor Riker seem to find the aborted kiss particularly strange or startling, implying that it’s something expected and fairly casual. This makes the relationship between Troi and Riker seem much more interesting than the narrative eventually outlined by Star Trek: Insurrection.
Riker’s Michael Jackson impression was stunning…
The show is fairly explicit that Riker and Troi are not in an exclusive relationship. Both pursue romantic entanglements with exotic aliens of the week, with Troi frequently suffering terribly from generic “bad boyfriend” plots. Ménage à Troi casts Lwaxana Troi as a rather conservative and stereotypical matriarch, the woman desperately waiting for her daughter to settle down and marry somebody so she can start producing grandchildren. At least Ménage à Troi is smart enough to treat this viewpoint as absurd.
Lwaxan is frustrated by the lack of a conventional and conveniently labelled relationship between her daughter and William T. Riker. “What about a family?” Lwaxana asks. “You had your chance with Commander Riker. Look how you ruined that.” Deanna sharply responds, “I did not ruin anything. We’ve became very good friends.” And it’s to the credit of Ménage à Troi that it never devolves into generic and stereotypical “will they?/won’t they?” plotting. The implication is that they do, quite frequently, and that they remain good friends.
Strange bed fellows…
This is something that Gene Roddenberry felt quite strongly about on The Next Generation, and it’s one of the things that got brushed aside after his death. Roddenberry never really seemed to get past sixties sexual liberation. Part of that was something great, something that Star Trek sorely needed and never got. One of the great shames of the whole Next Generation era is the fact that there was no representation of LGBT characters, something that Roddenberry had fought to include.
At the same time, Roddenberry’s attitudes towards sexuality often felt like holdovers from the summer of love. For Star Trek: Phase II, he created the Deltans, a race defined by their free-spirited hyper-sexuality. There’s every indication that the Deltans eventually evolved into the sexually liberated Betazoids. However, many early episodes of The Next Generation dealing with sex felt decidedly and uncomfortably retro.
Giving it another Troi?
Episodes like Justice and Angel One were very much in line with Roddenberry’s perspective on a sexually liberal future – views of sexual liberation that didn’t take into account that world had changed since the sixties. The eighties and nineties were – to a large extent – defined by the high-profile spread of AIDs and other sexually-transmitted diseases. So the sexual paradise of Justice felt quite uncomfortable. The gender politics of Angel One felt like a hold-over from the mindset that gave us The Turnabout Intruder.
There are parts of Roddenberry’s vision of future sexuality that are interesting and clever. It’s nice to suggest that healthy relationships need not conform to what society currently validates. It’s a nice piece of the relativism that was so sorely lacking from the first season of The Next Generation in episodes like The Last Outpost and Lonely Among Us. It’s also a shame that the studio lacked the courage to show diversity in sexuality, as Roddenberry proposed.
Music to his ears…
At the some time, there is something just a little dated and a little uncomfortable about Roddenberry’s views on sex and families, as outlined in Gene Roddenberry, The Last Conversation:
Marriage in the form that it is now cannot possibly continue into the future. That’s why we have so little of it in Star Trek.
There is no marrying or giving in marriage in Star Trek, as in heaven, as your favorite book says?
Yes. I think if we all lived in my Star Trek world, it would be pretty close to heaven. You see, the studio executives and so on think that our people are single, so that there are romantic possibilities for them. So the audience can identify, with the current love interest, as they call it, each week. But that was not my intention. My idea was to portray a world in which people are developed enough as humans to be sufficient unto themselves, and in which they have a wonderful world of human and alien contact to explore. They don’t remain single, from my point of view, in order to satisfy some romantic need on the part of the audience. And I hope that the people who watch Star Trek may see something in this. We also have many families on board – traditional families and some non-traditional families, which we haven’t had an opportunity to bring out yet. But those are just choices, made out of many possibilities.
On a purely theoretical level, the idea of a future without marriage is an intriguing one that merits discussion and debate. On the other hand, Roddenberry was saying this as a married man with a wife and children.
Massaging his… ahem… ego…
It’s worth pausing to consider Roddenberry’s own family circumstances here. After all, the assertion that there is no “marriage in Star Trek, as in heaven” is quite bold. Roddenberry’s first marriage to Eileen-Anita Rexroat fell apart when he cheated on his wife with actress Majel Barrett. Majel Barrett would become his second wife, and a recurring fixture of the franchise. (He was also engaged in a simultaneous affair with Nichelle Nichols.)
Roddenberry’s home life was far from happy. His son, Rod Roddenberry, produced a documentary – Trek Nation – about trying to come to terms with his father. Rod has gone on record admitting that he felt somewhat displaced by Wil Wheaton, who enjoyed a much closer father-son relationship with Gene Roddenberry than Rod. “Many occasions, it was said that Wil Wheaton was like a son to my father,”Rod has confessed. “I don’t know if I ever got 100 percent of my father, and I sort of had to deal with this.”
Ensigns of command division…
It’s worth noting that, according to The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion, the filming of Ménage à Troi saw Roddenberry passing his lieutenant bars from the Second World War over to Wil Wheaton as part of a ceremony featuring Colin Powell. When discussing Roddenberry’s sometimes controversial views of family and sexuality, it is worth reflecting on his complicated personal life, rather than accepting them as part of his utopian futurism.
There are some aspects of Roddenberry’s philosophy which are bold and provocative and merit discussion – that would have been the hallmarks of a show more progressive than the one that The Next Generation became. The decisions to abandon David Gerrold’s AIDS allegory Blood and Fire or to scuttle a background shot from The Offspring featuring a homosexual couple set the franchise back years, betraying an unsettling conservatism at the heart of the relaunched television franchise. The suggested “open” relationship between Troi and Riker is something that seemed to slip through the cracks.
This should be a walk in the park…
On the other hand, Roddenberry’s some of Roddenberry’s other views on sex and sexuality were decidedly new-age-y, and reflected values rooted in sixties utopianism, failing to understand that society had moved on a bit. There’s also an unsettling voyeuristic subtext to some of this sexual content, as typified by an excerpt Ronald D. Moore read from the script of Ménage à Troi during the Inside the Writers’ Room special feature:
Mrs. Troi reaches into the picnic basket and brings out an oskoid, which is a long cylindrical piece of fruit with veins going down the side and offers it to Riker to take a bite.
That’s a rather cliché and juvenile portrayal of sexual liberation, quite like the Roddenberry’s portrayal of the Deltans in his novelisation of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, where a sexy female character is able to manipulate her male crewmembers through pheromones and has to swear an oath of celibacy before boarding a ship – lest her sexuality prove too much for her fragile male crewmembers to handle.
As intricate and precise as a well-played game of chess…
The only other part of Ménage à Troi that bears discussion is the episode’s subplot involving Wesley. The character is apparently due to leave for the Academy again and, inevitably, he winds up remaining on the ship. It turns out that his genius is necessary to save Riker and the Troi family, so he bounds back to the bridge to save the day. This really has absolutely no impact on the show, save a nice costume change for Wesley – replacing his awkward grey onesy with a red command division uniform.
It feels like we’ve accidentally walked in on Wesley’s fantasies. Picard even gives a little speech, which must sound like every dream Wesley has ever had. “The Academy must make you wait, that’s true,” he tells Wesley. “But, when I review your service to this ship, your crewmates, I cannot in all conscience make you wait for the Academy. You see, Wesley, in my eyes you’re an acting ensign in title only. I hereby grant you field promotion to full Ensign, with all the commensurate responsibilities and privileges of that rank. Congratulations.”
It’s to the show’s credit that it waited until Troi got involved with Worf before it started making mother-in-law jokes…
To be entirely fair to Ménage à Troi, the episode is remarkably honest. It never seems like Wesley might actually be leaving. From the outset, it seems clear like the show is looking for an excuse to keep him around, and it’s hard to believe that any viewer would be expecting Wesley to leave at the end of the episode. His conversations with Data and Geordi are about how he doesn’t really want to go. The episode doesn’t devote any real time to his farewells or even his packing.
When Wesley does walk to the transporter room, we’re spared any of the big “goodbye” theatricality that we’d expect for the departure of a main character. (Even Worf gets a nice farewell sequence in Redemption, Part I, and he’s back in the following episode.) We get a goodbye scene between Wesley and his mother in the transporter room, but all this does is just underscore how weird the relationship is between Beverly and Wesley Crusher.
Beware Ferengi bearing gifts…
Throughout the show’s run, the two have never felt like members of the same nuclear family unit. While this might be Roddenberry’s family philosophy in action, it also adds to the stranger “otherness” of Wesley Crusher, the sense that he’s not at all like a person. The big goodbye for Wesley, as the show realises in The Final Mission, will always be Wesley’s farewell to Captain Picard. Beverly is strangely superfluous to Wesley as a character. And that’s really emphasised when what should be his “goodbye” scene falls flat because only his mother seems to be present.
Ménage à Troi is a pretty crappy episode, and it’s a shame that it comes so close to the end of the season, when the show has been on such a hot streak. Still, while it’s pretty bad, it is not as bad as it could have been, which is something. |
Effects. The list of possible negative consequences up to and including death, are numerous. Anorexia, left untreated, is a dangerous and life-threatening condition but most effects can be improved or reversed if proper treatment is given.
Physical Effects of Anorexia
The physical effects of anorexia nervosa affect every single system in the human body. With the dramatic weight loss and emaciation that accompanies the disorder, malnutrition and dehydration can occur. Lack of essential energy requirements and nutrients tax the entire body and can result in electrolyte disturbances such as hypokalemia (low blood potassium) and hyponatremia (low blood sodium), among others. Electrolyte disturbances, in turn, can cause heart arrhythmias, irregular heartbeats, and even heart attacks.
Anorexia can cause organ damage
The heart is not the only organ in the cardiovascular system that may be affected by anorexia. The blood itself may also be damaged. Abnormal blood counts and anemia (low red blood cells or abnormal red blood cells with impaired oxygen-carrying capacity) are not uncommon. People with Anorexia Nervosa may also bruise easily. Low blood pressure can also result and cause dizziness and fainting.
Digestive system damage
The digestive system is affected as well. Besides experiencing constant hunger pangs, constipation or bloating may occur. The stomach may shrink in size, making the reintroduction of food troublesome.
The kidneys are not immune either. Further effects of anorexia nervosa may include kidneys stones and even kidney failure.
Hormonal Effects of Anorexia
One of the systems that is hardest hit is the hormonal system. Many derangements of hormones in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis may occur. Changes in Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone (GnRH), Leutenizing Hormone (LH), and Follicle-Stimulating Hormone (FSH) can result in the disappearance of menstruation (amenorrhea) in females. Sex hormones are also affected and another effect of Anorexia Nervosa is impotence in men and low sex drive in both males and females.
Yet another effect of anorexia is the inability of the body to regulate its temperature. Advanced Anorexics tend to be intolerant of cold temperatures. If a woman happens to become pregnant while their Anorexia is active, they are at an increased risk for having a miscarriage and if the baby does come to term successfully, of needing a C-section. Their baby is at an increased risk of having a low birth weight.
The nervous system is affected by Anorexia Nervosa and the effect is slow mentation, difficulty in focusing, and decreased attention. Changes in neurochemicals such as serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine may also occur, resulting in a variety of psychological effects.
Skin and Hair Effects
Skin, hair, bones, and joints may also suffer negative effects as a result of Anorexia Nervosa. Hair and nails become brittle. Nails can become discolored and yellow. Hair loss may even occur. The joints may swell as well as the extremities. In addition, a characteristic effect of Anorexia Nervosa is a covering of fine hairs all over the body called lanugo.
Besides the damaging physical effects of anorexia, negative psychological and emotional effects can also occur. People with Anorexia Nervosa are often depressed, irritable, fatigued, and suffer from insomnia and wild mood swings. They can experience a great amount of anxiety and a compulsive relationship with both food and exercise. They may engage in destructive thought patterns such as black and white thinking, a fixation on body image, and always feeling fat while being in denial of how thin they really are. Anorexia Nervosa effects may include perfectionism, low self-esteem, and body dissatisfaction.
Clearly there are many negative effects of anorexia. The disorder is extremely serious but treatment can alleviate most, if not all of Anorexia effects. Complete recovery is possible.
Treatment for Effects of Anorexia
Anorexics should be encouraged to seek professional treatment as soon as possible due to the potential for permanent damage from this illness. Treatment programs for anorexia may involve both medical treatment and psychological counseling to manage underlying issues. |
Three protesters arrested at Bridgewater corporate HQ
- Protesters oppose company building a natural gas plant in Massachusetts
- Three Massachusetts residents charged with tresspassing
- Protesters chained feet together and “Superglued” their hands
BRIDGEWATER – Three protesters were arrested Wednesday after blockading the entrance of a township company that wants to build a natural gas plant in Massachusetts.
The protesters, members of Students for a Just and Stable Future, chained their feet together and “Superglued” their hands together in front of the doors to Footprint Power, said Allison Rigney, a spokesperson the group.
The three protestors, who all live in Massachusetts, were arrested by Bridgewater police and charged with trespassing.
They were later released on their own recognizance, Rigney said.
The three started the sit-down protest about noon and were arrested less than an hour later.
Footprint, whose headquarters is on the third floor of an office building in the Centerpointe at Bridgewater, 1140 Route 22, is a new company whose first project is the conversion of a the coal- and oil-fired Salem Harbor Generating Facility into a state-of-the-art combined-cycle natural gas power plant.
Though local political leaders in Massachusetts have applauded Footprint’s proposal, environmental groups have opposed the project.
“Natural gas is no better than coal as an energy source,” Rigney said. “Both fossil fuels cause irreparable harm to human health and natural gas production adds more methane to the environment. Methane is a ‘mega’ greenhouse gas, up to 100 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.”
Students for a Just and Stable Future has 15 chapters throughout New England, according to Rigney.
Arrested were Ben Trolio, Martin Hamilton and Julie Salvatoriello, Rigney said.
Footprint officials did not respond to a request for comment.
SEE ALSO: LETTER: ENERGY PLAN MUST RELY ON SCIENCE
Staff Report Mike Deak: 908-243-6607; mdeak@mycentraljersey.com |
Early/Late Term Ultrasounds
Providing peace of mind during the uncertain stages of pregnancy.
Not Feeling Anything?
Is it early in your pregnancy and no kicks yet? A chance to take a quick look can really help ease your mind.
If you’re further along, you might want to take one last look at positioning of the baby before delivery time.
During this scan we will listen to your baby’s heartbeat and witness movement. This is an affordable way to experience an elective ultrasound.
4D Sneak Peak!
While our early/late term ultrasounds use our crystal clear 2D technolog..., at the end of the session we'll give you a sneak peak of our HD 4D Ultrasound technology! If you decide to return later in your pregnancy, we'll give you a discount.
Highest Safety Standards
Enlightened 4D Imaging is the only Twin Cities provider with access to UIP!
Early Term
A scan that provides peace of mind at an affordable price.
- Perfect for expecting mothers between weeks 9-15.
- Witness movements and wiggles in our fantastic 2D clarity.
- Hear your baby's heartbeat.
- All scans performed by an experienced and qualified tech.
- New on demand video service available!
Late Term
A scan that provides peace of mind at an affordable price.
- Perfect for expecting mothers between weeks 37-40.
- Witness movements and wiggles in our fantastic 2D clarity.
- Hear your baby's heartbeat.
- All scans performed by an experienced and qualified tech.
- New on demand video service available!
Platinum Select
A bundle of scans throughout your pregnancy,
-<< |
Larry Riley Q+A
Getting to know GState’s GM.
by Irv Soonachan
Meeting Warriors GM Larry Riley for dinner at his favorite restaurant, it’s easy to see why he is known for being well-liked by his colleagues. Back in town after a long road trip, the hostess doesn’t greet him with a hello; she gives him a big hug. In fact, everyone working at the restaurant seems to be on a first-name basis with Riley. At 65, after more than four decades on the road as a basketball lifer — including 20 years coaching small colleges and 23 working in the NBA — he remains ebullient and seems a little younger than he is.
Riley got his break in 1988 when friend Del Harris, who had previously coached at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana – which happens to be Riley’s hometown — invited him to take an entry-level job with the Bucks. Riley eventually became a respected scout, and in 1994 left Milwaukee to become Director of Player Personnel with the expansion Vancouver Grizzlies. After the team moved to Memphis, former Bucks coach Don Nelson invited Riley to come to Dallas. Riley followed Nelson to Golden State as an assistant coach before moving into the front office.
Despite his decades of experience, Riley was considered a long-shot to make it as a GM. When promoted to the role on May 11, 2009, he was painted as little more than a proxy for Nelson. And when owner Chris Cohan sold the team this summer, it was speculated that Riley was babysitting until the incoming owners installed their own management —speculation which persists as the new ownership settles in.
Yet none of this has impeded Riley from dramatically remaking the franchise. He engineered a series of moves that cleared the payroll and set the team up with a mother lode of expiring contracts; landed a legitimate big man in David Lee; and let Nelson go in favor of longtime assistant Keith Smart. He surprised Warriors fans by signing free agent small forward Dorell Wright and almost immediately tabbing him as a starter, but Wright’s emergence has been one of the season’s highlights. Perhaps most importantly, he put together a balanced roster built for a more traditional style of play than Nelson would have allowed.
Highlights of the 90-minute interview, which wove in and out of a multitude of topics, are grouped by subject but not chronology.
On becoming an NBA GM for the first time at age 64:
The analysis would be that I’ve climbed the ladder slowly. And I did. I didn’t know where it would take me. Actually, I’m probably lucky that I didn’t get a bigger job too soon in life — I’ve seen that happen to some people when they’re not quite ready for it. With me it’s probably a little overdue, but I’m glad it happened at the time it did, because I had plenty of time to be prepared and to spend quality time around a lot of good people.
SLAM: How long are you going to keep doing this?
Larry Riley: I wouldn’t have any idea, because I haven’t run out of energy. I just got off a 10-day road trip. I’ll go with the team to Dallas and San Antonio, visit my home (Riley’s permanent home is in Dallas), and then go off to Europe. When I begin to feel that I’m not enthusiastic or running out of energy, or I don’t want to go, then it’s time to quit. I’m not there yet.
And frankly, I’m enjoying it. I have no motivation to think about retirement at this stage. I don’t even know what I’d do. I probably won’t even retire. I’ll probably do something else, like find one of those little Division II schools out in the countryside and coach there.
On scouting:
You have to develop an eye for it. It takes a while. When I started I was so lucky. Dick McGuire, Stan Novak, who helped draft and build the Pistons when they were good (in the ‘80s), and Scotty Sterling, who is still with Sacramento, those three guys took me under their wings.
You look for the obvious things: Speed, quickness, being able to jump; and feel, shooting touch, all those kinds of things. But if you’re going to draft them on that you may as well watch on TV. You have to go to the gym. I watch a guy’s eyes if I can get close enough. I want to see how he reads offenses and defenses. I want to see how he communicates with other players and coaches. I want to see if he has an anticipation level. You want to see how he handles pressure. Sometimes the pressure situation comes even in the first half. You just develop a feel for it. And you do all the background work and research what they’re all about. It’s not a science; there is no 100 percent (accurate) way to do it.
SLAM: For you is evaluating talent more about intuition than the statistical analysis that a lot of teams use?
LR: It is for me. There are people in our business who are stats-oriented. I definitely want to look at stats and see numbers, but if the numbers are okay and I do the evaluation, then I’ll make the call based on what I see, not on what the numbers say. That’s a little backwards based on where this League has gone. There are a lot of people drafting on numbers. I’ve got some guys working for me who are more about numbers, and they definitely have their say. But I’m still more about putting my eyes on a guy and making the decision.
On the perception that when first promoted he was a proxy for Nelson, and didn’t truly take over until this summer when Nelson was on his way out:
Everybody thought I was there because I was Nellie’s buddy. I couldn’t stand up and announce to the world that Nellie had told me, “I don’t want to be the GM. I want to be the coach. I’m not going to be in your business. We’re going to work together.” The media already believed I was his drinking buddy. It was perception vs. the reality, and all I could do was let reality take over. It took a long time.
On his vision for the Warriors:
My vision was to keep the same fast-paced style of play but with improved defense. I think that’s what Keith is trying to do. I did not build the team around a Don Nelson philosophy. That was a thing that had to be adjusted. I couldn’t draft players or sign free agents for Don Nelson, because he was going to be one more year and then out. As it turned out, he didn’t start the season this year. We did not have any purpose to build the team around Don Nelson as the coach. If he had been here we would have made that work, but we were building the team for the long haul. Right now, we have to wait and see. This team has been built down the road. It’s one year, two years from now that we’re concerned about.
On trade deadline deals, and the flak the organization took after last year’s deadline for not trading the Warriors’ expiring contracts for new talent:
It was one of those things where I would have liked to do a few things a little earlier. I knew last year at trade deadline time that I wanted to make some changes. But I couldn’t get the right deals, so we had to wait until the summer. We had some vision of wanting to change the team, and tried to set the dominoes up early to see what we could get done.
Very seldom does something come up spur of the moment. I’m a little gun-shy about spur-of-the-moment trades anyway. If somebody calls us on the day before the trade deadline and says they’ve got a deal for us, I’m just about ready to hang up the phone. Because if you come up with a deal on the day before the trade deadline, then why couldn’t we talk about that two weeks earlier? It’s the same thing on Draft day. On Draft day, when somebody wants to do a new trade that’s never been discussed, usually there’s something wrong with it.
On the Warriors owning three expiring contracts totaling more than $17.5 million, as well as Charlie Bell’s contract, which expires next year at $4 million — putting the team in a strong position for midseason trades:
That was part of what we wanted to do. The initial moves we made were to position ourselves better in regards to the salary cap. There weren’t many basketball moves. This summer, we had gotten ourselves into a good position salary cap-wise, and it was time to acquire some basketball players. We were able to accomplish two things: We changed the team over, we are better. And we have positioned ourselves well with the salary cap, which means that we can take one more step at some point to add to the team. Then you have the Draft. So in theory, there could be two good pieces coming into our team in the following year. Or it could happen in February, and then we acquire another player in the summer.
On dealing with a roster in flux:
SLAM: You’ve got a locker room with a lot of expiring contracts and the franchise is in a rebuilding phase. How do you hold the team together in the middle of that kind of situation?
LR: We tried to change the locker room to our benefit. We think we did. I think most of our players look at our team as having an outside chance to be successful and get to the Playoffs. So they’re not looking at this as a rebuilding process — when you say “rebuilding process,” that means pain and losses. Our players aren’t looking at this season that way. They’re looking at building something they can hang onto and be part of. I really see that in our guys. Every NBA player in the last year of his contract knows what his status likely is. Not all of them know what their exact status is, but they know what it likely is. But we don’t have anybody complaining and saying, “I’m in the last year of my contract and I need more minutes, this is my career and I need to show what I can do.” Keith has done a pretty good job of keeping our guys focused on preparing for the next game. I really think it’s a credit to the way things have changed around guys like Monta and Andris Biedrins and of course Steph is a solid guy. David Lee is a solid guy. We’ve got some people who are pretty solid.
And most of the guys who came here came here with a purpose. We were able to get guys who would stand up and say, “I want to play for Golden State.” That was what David Lee did, that’s what Ekpe Udoh did, that’s what Dorell Wright did, and that’s eventually what Lou Amundson did. There used to be more people who would say, “Who would want to play for the Warriors? They’re a losing team.” It was not a reflection on the Bay Area — it’s a great area. It had nothing to do with our fans, everybody you talk to understands that it’s a great fan base. Now you’ve got some people who said, “I want to play here.”
On running the team during the transition to new ownership:
SLAM: Were you under instructions to keep the team’s salary structure and contract obligations relatively flat during the ownership change?
LR: The guidance I was given by ownership was to stay below the salary cap.
We had a vision of where we wanted to go. Fortunately, Chris Cohan did not stop me from doing basketball moves. We were able to do several things before it was even known who the finalists to buy the team were going to be. When we learned that the finalists were Joe Lacob and Peter Guber, we began to work with Mr. Cohan and Mr. Lacob, who is the spokesman for that group. They were both cooperative and easy to work with, and we were able to get some things done. Sometimes in that situation, someone says that everything has to stop. But it didn’t turn out that way, probably in the best interest of all parties. So here we sit with a changed team, with a pretty good look about it and good reason to think it can get better.
On the expectations of the new owners:
Mr. Lacob has been very good to deal with. He has been very realistic as far as we’re concerned on the basketball side of things. While I think he embraces the idea of getting to the Playoffs and I know he wants a winner, I don’t expect him to be unrealistic. And I do appreciate that he wants to be in the Playoffs right away. I do too. And so do our coaches and so do our players. But I don’t set unrealistic expectations.
While working for the Vancouver Grizzlies in January 1997, Riley was scheduled to take a flight from Cincinnati to Detroit. A few hours after his flight was delayed, Riley changed his ticket and flew home to Vancouver. The flight he’d originally been scheduled for, Comair Flight 3272, crashed over Detroit, killing all 29 people aboard. Riley on his “second birthday”:
SLAM: I’m sure people must ask you about this all the time, but would you be willing to discuss the day of the flight you were scheduled to take to Detroit?
LR: People here don’t seem to know about it, and that’s okay by me.
It was a mid-morning flight, and knowing there was a snowstorm coming our way, I set my alarm early. I got up, looked outside, and it was quite a storm. I don’t want to tell you I pray every morning and that I walk a straight line, but I sat down that morning and prayed a simple prayer. I remember it well. I said, “God, take care of my wife, my kids, my brother, my mother,” and I named them all. And then I said, “Take care of me, allow me safe travels.” I got up and went to the airport.
When I got there they said that everything was grounded and nobody was going anywhere. So I said, “Okay, good enough.” I ran into another guy who was traveling to Detroit and we both did some computer work and I was entering scouting reports. We both got a little bored after an hour or so. He was a businessman in a brown suit … We exchanged a few words and then we both got impatient and walked up to the counter. I asked, “What is the likelihood that the storm will clear and what are you seeing?” The man at the counter said, “Well, we won’t know if we’re going to go for another two or three hours.” And as I was standing there I just had a voice come to me and it said, “Go home.” And I thought – it’s almost like talking to yourself – “I can’t go home, I’ve got a job to do, I’ve got to go to Michigan. I’ve never missed a game in all the years I’ve been working. Out of the question.” He said to check with him again in an hour about weather report. So I went back and visited with the guy that had on the brown suit and made a couple phone calls. I went back to talk to the guy at the counter, and he said, “It doesn’t look like we’re going to go anytime soon.” He said that if we go it will be 4:30 or 5:00.
At that time the same voice came back to me and said, “Go home.” I don’t know why but I looked at the guy at the counter and I said, “When is the next flight that I can get back to Vancouver?” He checked and said, “In 20 minutes there’s a flight to Seattle that connects to Vancouver. I’ll hold the flight if you want to go because you can get there.” We were in Terminal C and I think it was in Terminal B, and I was carrying my luggage. So I said, “Okay, change my ticket and I’ll go home.” I virtually ran to catch that flight. I didn’t have time to notify anyone that I’d changed my flight.
When I landed in Seattle I was walking down the ramp and (Grizzlies GM) Stu Jackson was calling. He was pretty upset, you could tell in his voice. He told me that the plane to Detroit had gone down and that everybody who was on it was killed. He said that my mom had been calling. She knew my travel schedule. My wife and my kids didn’t know, they were all busy. The team’s secretaries had called the rental car company and I hadn’t picked up the car. They had called the hotel and I hadn’t checked in.
I went home and couldn’t believe it. I was totally overcome by what had happened. I was really worried about the guy in the brown business suit.
SLAM: Did you ever find him?
LR: He died in the crash.
I’m no better than anybody else. I’m lucky. I did ask the question, “Why do I get off this flight, and the other people didn’t?” I struggled with that a little bit. It was kind of like, “What’s the difference between me and everybody else?” It wasn’t because I’m better than anybody else. At all. I was finally able to come to grips with it.
Stu Jackson’s wife Janet Taylor is a psychiatrist, she’s on TV a lot. I talked to Janet briefly, and talked to my pastor quite a bit.
On choosing basketball over baseball, which he also played and later coached at the collegiate level:
When you grow up in Indiana, basketball is your blood. It really is. I coached baseball in college and loved it. I played it and love playing it too. I don’t know if it’s the same way now in Indiana, because I haven’t been back there, but from the ‘50s through the ‘90s, every little gym was full, and every big gym was full. It was where the excitement was. There was no question that the identity of every little town in Indiana was based on what their basketball team was. It was the thing » |
-1.8cm 0.35cm 1.5cm 16.5cm 23.8cm 0.0cm
.5in
.1in
.1in
April 1, 1998
.3in
Stanis[ł]{}aw D. G[ł]{}azek
.1in
Institute of Theoretical Physics, Warsaw University
ul. Ho[ż]{}a 69, 00-681 Warsaw
.3in
**Abstract**
.1in
This paper describes a network of teachers and students who form a living system of education at all levels. Organization of schools is based on new principles. One person can be a teacher in one area or activity and a student in another. Schools are owned and governed by the teachers and students. The system is powered at all levels equally by the will of students to learn and the will of teachers to learn and to share their expertise with students.
We describe main processes and structural principles of the network. The key processes are the process of learning by inquiry and the processes of design and learning by redesign. We also describe steps required to initiate the network growth process from small scale seeds. This avoids wasting human resources and money on a large scale. The first step we suggest for the teams of teachers and researchers who are interested in building the network is studying a bit of basic physics by inquiry using specially designed and well tested materials.
The network is economically sound. We distinguish the economy of the network because we claim that the freedom and safety of learning and teaching processes can be based only on the financial independence of teachers who gained their independence as a result of developing and using these processes. The system is designed to ensure highest quality in all respects. The design described here is provided as illustration for the underlying principles and their implications rather than as the ultimate structure. In fact, the living network is expected to evolve and adapt efficiently.
.5in [**CONTENTS:**]{} .1in
[**1. INTRODUCTION**]{} .1in
It is bad that our educational system does not teach students how to learn effectively. It is bad students are often lost and not interested in learning at school. But it is very bad that teachers at all levels get used to thinking they cannot change much in the way they teach. First of all, we teach the way we were taught. Secondly, it is very hard to make changes. We want to reach our students’ minds but we feel we have to do it in the environment which we have little influence on as individuals. Most importantly, the environment is not safe for experimentation on better ways of teaching. We know we have to complete an overwhelmingly difficult program. We know we have unacceptably short time to do so. We have little freedom to make choices. And we will be criticized if we admit our students do not learn much. In fact, we do not even know how bad and how little they learn, although we certainly know it is not enough. More interestingly, we hesitate to work on measuring how much they learn. We do not have time to do that. And it would be hard to accept to everybody in the system that our students do not learn how to think critically, how to learn effectively and how to approach new problems requiring solution. But if we admitted we do not know how to teach effectively we would question our competence and jeopardize our living.
Assuming that the overarching goal of education is to train people in learning effectively so that they are able to learn and change throughout their whole life, one is faced with the question: What needs to be changed in our current concept of teaching? For example, it is clear that a child learns very efficiently when it feels safe and when it can experiment. It can touch, taste, break and throw things, make its mother angry, etc. The child learns from failure and pain or success and pleasure. When such learning is wisely instructed I call it learning by inquiry. In mature form learning by inquiry is the only way humans truly learn new things and become owners and users of what they learned. I claim teachers could learn how to teach effectively if they worked in the environment safe for experimentation and had good examples to study and patterns to discover. Also, children will eagerly learn if guided by a teacher who feels like a lion letting cubs play with food before showing them how to hunt. Teachers will be self-motivated to learn and to teach by inquiry if the best sources to learn from are made available to them. One such already existing source is physics, the most advanced science driven by inquiry. I will return to this point later.
If the freedom to learn is the prerequisite to teachers’ action, on the one hand, and the fear of rejection when attempting new approaches originates in the fear of losing financial security in the current system, on the other hand, then, the way out is to create a system in which successful attempts of teaching in a better way will be rewarded with more financial independence for teachers. This independence is the bottom line security condition which we do not have satisfied and which we have to have satisfied to feel free to explore. But our safety has to result directly from our work, not from top-down orders. The reason is that the arbitrary top-down ruling may change at any time for some reason and the temporarily existing safety will be gone, as if the lion went away. However, if teachers and students work in a self-conscious network, which is in control of its income and spending and which is driven by merit of the overarching goal of education and, if teachers generate their income through their own action then, no arbitrary budget decisions could take away from us our freedom to learn and teach by inquiry the best way we can.
In the network I envision, whenever we will see the excitement about learning new things in the eyes of our students we will know we are making irreversible progress. We will be learning ourselves how to better the way we teach. We will engage in the work on creating new opportunities for achieving better results more often. We will be building our own system, and our own future. Thus, the ownership principle becomes the basis for the overarching goal of education. We the teachers and students working in our own network become the lions protecting our own development and future and we become the guarantors of our freedom to learn by inquiry both the subject matters and how to teach better.
Being a teacher and observing teachers in schools of all levels one can notice that the money a teacher earns for doing the job is not related to the depth of learning experience provided to students. On average, teachers are not in a position to be entrepreneurial [@Drucker] in their schools and they do not pursue quests like motivated professionals who create prosperity of their disciplines [@Hughes]. Teachers themselves do not achieve clear results that could raise awe in students and motivate them to learning. A tired teacher at the end of the day is supposed to check a pile of poorly done homework and accept the lack of future. Little time is left to the teacher for personal growth, gaining respect and winning intellectual freedom. [@Covey] The lion cub eats well after a good hunt. Teachers eat the same no matter how well they teach. But the coupling I postulate between the results of teaching and teacher’s income must not be confused with using greed for money to serve educational purposes. That would certainly not work.
The money reward to teachers in contemporary society is essential for many reasons. The key one is that low-paid teachers cannot teach students about achievements of the society. For they know these achievements only second hand and only as much as can be bought using very limited and already allocated funds. And currently even a modest attempt on the part of public school teachers to change this situation may take away their basic income because the system is not open to experimentation. Moreover, if the high quality teacher’s work is not steadily improving the teacher’s social status, the situation becomes the primary example in the eyes of students for the fact that learning more with more understanding is not the way to make one’s life complete. Students will learn to think independently from other sources and not from the limited and helpless teachers.
But most importantly, a typical teacher is subjected to power of an arbitrary educational system and she or he cannot teach students how to execute their rights to learn, understand, build, improve, prosper and be happy in life.[@Fullan] No wonder teachers believe that their work environment has never permitted them to show what they can really do.[@Lortie] In turn, no bright child wants to follow the lead to a dead end and become a teacher. This is very bad because without the brightest talent the teachers have little chance to change their status. There is no exception to this rule, from the lowest to highest levels of educational institutions.
Being a student and observing students one sees they do not learn at school enthusiastically. Students are not engaged mentally in the learning processes to the extent required to learn effectively. [@Sarason] One or two teachers impress a student sometimes but students too rarely see their school as a source of inspiration. They are often forced to do things they consider useless. Their compliance and hard work on assignments elevate their opinion among teachers but do not bring outcomes of clear on-line value to them. The school does not teach us how to learn according to current needs and how to use the knowledge and skills to steadily advance in life.[@Fullan]
This article describes principles one can use in attempting to change the educational status quo at the beginning of 21st century. The place to start is the reader’s own workplace and neighborhood. But before the reader gets a chance to start thinking how to go about her or his contribution to the process of redesigning education [@WilsonDaviss] I need to describe the processes I envision. Therefore, I invent a model structure and describe how the processes work in that structure. This article is limited to these two subjects. My aim is to show one needs to start thinking in terms of the system processes in order to find out how to make the overarching goal of education a driving force.
The vital processes of learning in the system I envision involve exchange and trade of knowledge, skills, materials and other resources such as time needed for learning and practice. The structure of the system supports this trading. Nevertheless, I shall first describe the structure of the system because the processes of learning and trading occur in the structure. The structure is changing according to the needs of the processes. Therefore, I will describe only an initially conceivable structure. In fact, it is not known that a single stable structure may fulfill the needs of learning processes. [@WilsonBarsky] It is more probable that the structure will evolve as is common to life and our civilization.[@deGeus]
It is essential to understand what kind of trading I am talking about. Teachers are perceived as hired by the society to push knowledge that is not produced by them. Teachers are considered to be passive in creating civilization. Teachers are supposed to pump civilization into students’ heads as if it were pumping gas into a car. A math teacher is perceived as someone to teach addition, not as somebody to teach thinking and learning on the example of addition. A student is perceived as a car that needs gas. Students are not perceived as having delicate brains to be loaded with skills and checked for flawless function by extremely competent artists of human mind-crafting. The way we look at the educational system resembles dumb work on trivial projects such as repainting white boards in color or hitting white and black keys. Students are not seen as learning how to become artists and teachers are certainly not perceived as masters. Therefore, teachers are denied the right to collect money as if they were creating something desirable to us by their own minds and hands. Teachers are so used to the treatment that they seem not to see they can learn more and become owners of a new generation school system.
But I need to warn the reader right away that a private school is not the idea I am talking about. What I am talking about is a new profession of teaching based on serious research aiming at understanding how to teach effectively. Professional teachers form a network of experts on the subject matter and teaching techniques. The network teachers earn more if they teach better. These teachers can say that their profession offers them multiple opportunities for personal and intellectual growth every day. And the teacher future looks brighter the more apt a student she or he is, at all levels, from the nursery to the highest academia.
My claim is that educational systems are hard to change because teachers are not owners of their trade. While all prospering businesses buy something, do work on the bought material and sell the result for a higher price, or provide services using their own knowledge and ability which is thus being sold, teachers are hired for a job that is considered in a way to be merely loading wagons with potatoes. The potatoes, trucks, ramps and trains belong to us. Anybody can do the loading job. And the students leave the station full of potatoes like wagons. We are shocked that they are not illuminated Picassos, Liszts or Pasteurs. We demand a lot providing merely a regular pay for compliance with rules.
Teachers need motivation to transform their occupation into a profession. Current systems are such that attempts to innovate put the regular income of a teacher in jeopardy. Trying new things is very risky because it is not guaranteed to bring results. Nobody wants to stop teachers from trying but the system effectively forces them to quit because they get tired and burn out. There is no structure to support innovation. There is no structure to develop innovations into elements of teaching profession and culture. And there is no way for teachers to be fully recognized. Therefore, teachers have to find a way to win the recognition of their trade themselves. They need to start trading with what they possess and do.
In fact, a successful teacher is an owner of incredible gifts, someone who possesses unusual skills and knowledge and can set a high price on services provided for students. Students can be active learners from competent teachers. Both need freedom to build a system to function in a natural way. And a clear suggestion for such a system to have a chance to succeed can be found in universities.
University professors are considered to be owners of their wisdom because they participate in the process of creating science. Teachers could be seen as owners of their teaching materials and techniques if they were creating the materials and methods they use. University students are responsible for what they spend their parents’ money on and the same could happen with students in lower schools. Universities are populated by a whole hierarchy of people with different levels of knowledge and skills while at school we have only teachers and students. A global network of schools based on the principles of a new generation university which belongs to teachers and students is the vision I describe.
The main problem with the model invented in this article is that it is too complicated to comprehend and judge quickly. Moreover, it is full of conflicts. If it could work it would only do so through a balance of opposing forces. One can easily point out apparent inconsistencies. To explain why the described system could work one would have to answer an unending chain of questions and the answers would stimulate new questions. Solutions to problems showing up in the system have to be invented on-line as the whole system grows. But what I am trying to sell is not the particular model. I am using the model to convey the idea that the simple principle of schools owned by teachers and students immediately leads to incredibly rich structures and provides clear criteria for distinguishing which new elements of the system might be useful and survive and which not and die. The ownership principle opens a new way of thinking about education. If this is understood by the reader, the rest is details that may change in time.
.3in [**2. STRUCTURE OF THE NETWORK**]{} .1in
It is important not to perceive the structure I describe as rigid and ultimately defined. A living company evolves.[@deGeus] The model example I provide here is arbitrary but it illustrates the underlying principles. The principles themselves are not arbitrary. If the described model structure has drawbacks, including serious ones, they should be thought of as resulting from a long evolution and one should ask the question what processes exist in the system that can resolve these problems. The structure I describe is arbitrary because no real process of evolution existed to create it in a natural self-correcting way. This is not a problem since the model is only a tool to bring up relevant issues.
Every teacher and every student is a member of the network as an individual with equal rights to all other individual members. The members form teams, classes, schools, school districts, school regions, academies and a single society of professors of education with its own hierarchy. These subgroups have different responsibilities and are distinguished by the responsibilities.
The responsibility of a team is to learn an assigned (or chosen) subject. A team contains about 4 or 5 members (between 3 and 7) and exists for as long as the assignment or chosen task is not completed. There may be 4 students in a team, or 4 teachers, or 4 professors, or a mixture thereof. Teams are formed according to the demands of the subject they are supposed to study. A team is the basic element of the system because it is the learning engine which delivers the result of its learning process: a report on what and how the team learned carrying out its project, and a product the team was supposed to produce through the project.
Teams form classes of varying size according to the amount of assistance the subject matter requires. Subjects such as floating or sinking of rigid bodies in liquids [@McDermott] can be studied in classes of 4, 8 or even 10 teams. Such an “Archimedes” class may require one to three instructors for assistance. The notion of a class is distinguished by the notion of instructors. Since teams encounter difficulties when learning new things and new ways of thinking they need to ask questions and verify their reasoning with instructors. The instructors can be students, graduate students, teachers, graduate teachers, professors, graduate professors and professors of education. It depends on the kind of class they instruct. For example, the class studying the notion of the contexts of productive learning [@Sarason] according to modules designed in analogy to Ref. [@McDermott] in case of physics may require instructors to become members of the teams. I will return later to the issue of materials for teaching the context of productive learning by inquiry since in the network I envision the context of productive learning by inquiry is a basic building element and in the current systems of education this context is almost entirely absent.
Classes form schools. It is important to form schools in order to sustain social aspects of the learning processes. Schools are to serve their surrounding communities. An elementary school is fairly local in this respect while a top ranking university may have a mission of national or even global outreach. Schools are distinguished by having a principal and a body of teachers. Schools are basic posts of the system. Schools owned by teachers and students form a network because it is easier to operate in the network than outside of it. The network is international because it draws on teaching and learning experiences which are published and useful across the world.
Teachers form a school to create a body of sufficient expertise in the subject matters to be able to teach and to form a setting in which their own development of skills and knowledge will be possible through sharing duties and exchanging experiences and results. Teachers of one or more schools may form a team to learn and work on some problem. The striking feature of the system driven by the learning of teams of various kind is a possibility of a self-organized virtual school formed of classes of teams of teachers as a result of their own recognition that the problem they want to study requires such structure, with a body of super-teachers drawn from other elements of the network.
The key function the principal is responsible for is to make the school productive. The productivity is measured by the results of students on standard tests and by the number of team reports from the school sold on the system market. It is a big success to produce a good report which sells well.
We need to recall that a team may be composed not only of students but of teachers as well, and a team may include people from outside the school. In that case, the team result is shared according to prescribed rules. Consequently, the number of reports or publications or student achievements do not need to be simple integers and instead of using special measures the school outcome is measured in terms of money: total sales minus total investment divided by the number of school members. Details of the accounting will be discussed later, but we need to mention three things.
One is that the team results may be highly professional and even able to solve practical community or wider problems. Therefore, they may be copyrighted, patented or sold. For example, an outstanding teaching material on the subject of sinking and floating, electric currents or optics, such as Ref. [@McDermott], may be in high demand in all schools or, a local solution to the problem of child care and a computer program needed in its administration, written by students and teachers, may have broad applications.
The other is that the standard test results of students need to be accounted for in money. Therefore, there are tables developed of equivalence between credits and money. Credits are universal for the whole system but they may be equivalent to more money in a better school when considered as a product and less money in a better school when considered as an expense. This point will be further discussed in the Section dealing with finances. Here we mention only that the accounting of schools and reviewing principal’s performance in terms of money makes it evident that education is not a burden to the society but a source of major income if money is properly invested. Accounting of education in terms of money also prevents wasting public funds for education. For it is too easy to spend money without accountability while good accounting creates responsibility.
The third thing is that details of the calculation do matter. In fact, they are essential. It is not obvious how to evaluate results of education in terms of money. Therefore, the method is a subject of ongoing studies. The studies are essential to the network because the education it offers must be useful to the society for the system to prosper and be actually paid as much as it aspires to. The studies feedback is critical to long term planning and development of the evaluation rules for credits in terms of money. But the studies are essential for many more reasons, vital to the network. Here are some examples: design and redesign of curriculum structures, admission, examination and testing procedures, hiring policy, communication with employers, satisfying needs of the job market through the network and longitudinal studies of alumni careers. Therefore, the evaluation scheme is a permanent source of initiative for improving the network to better serve the society. The details are hot subjects in the network.
School districts are formed by schools spontaneously to coordinate work and express opinions of many schools in a selective and organized fashion which guarantees coherent action in defense or promotion of the districts educational or other interests. The body of representatives is elected by schools. Therefore, the districts are distinguished by their representatives who serve their needs. Districts are formed to contain schools of their choice and do not have to be restricted to primary, middle or high schools only. Districts prosper if their schools earn money.
School regions include school districts and universities. The regions are formed to allow universities and schools to utilize their resources in producing team reports and selling them. The principal role of regions is to provide permanent in-service learning opportunities to every member of the system on the highest possible level. Teachers study in the region to keep abreast of the science or art they teach. University students, graduate students and faculties study ways their research capacity can be enhanced through becoming more useful in education, mainly through many opportunities of delegating responsibility for teaching to students. [@WilsonDaviss]
One of the students mission becomes then to work with less educated students on their learning skills, using the best materials available. Students who excel in teaching can pursue studies in the system and become teachers. It takes a region to create conditions for such advanced studies. Two reasons are essential. The region is the smallest structure whose size provides sufficient amount of students with talent for teaching and becoming teachers of teachers. The region is the smallest structure that can support high quality research. Regions are large enough to create conditions for unlimited personal growth of their members. School regions are also useful in creating a sufficiently stable environment to support educational processes in the periods of setbacks.
A school region is distinguished by the board of trustees whose role is to assure healthy economy of the region educational services. Trustees of a region are elected by the region members. The boards of trustees use help of academies.
Academies are organizations quite independent of the team, school, district and regional structure. They are the regional networks of experts who contribute their expertise to the region system and are recognized by the system as such. The academies are professional organizations of providers of services to the system. Academies recruit their members following their own rules. Academies can undertake action of their choice driven by the need of the system. A key additional function of academies is the publication of journals.
Academies publish refereed journals on education and sell them in the system as an additional source of income. The new striking feature of the journals is that they have subsections for learning materials which can be bought separately and in large quantities. School teams may attempt to publish outstanding reports in the journals. [@EJP]
The whole network of schools of all kinds requires a body of distinguished teachers for passing judgments on issues important to the whole system. This is a Society of Professors of Education. Members of the society have at least 100,000 copies of educational materials sold through the system. But in order to become a Professor of Education a candidate must have a record of working in the system for at least 25 years and have educated at least 25 teachers who sold more than 10,000 copies each of teaching materials through subsections in the refereed academic journals.
The network of schools is global and its international character is obvious to all members. It is clear that translation of the academic journals plays an important role in the international contacts and learning across the globe.
Different countries may have districts and regions of different sizes but no administrative superstructure above regions is needed or allowed. There exist data banks connected in the network so that no central headquarters are required and still the system is perfectly conscious of its identity. Members identify themselves by contributing to the processes of the system and by using its structures. Regions may easily cross state boundaries for their structure is governed by the processes they support. Examples of well known existing international network structures are Internet and VISA International [@Hock].
Analogies exist between the school network and other essential systems in our civilization. The system of electric power distribution is a leading example. [@Hughes] One can think of many analogies between the two systems. Let me give you a surprising example. One may think about the contexts of productive learning as analogous to the super-conducting wires, about the processes of learning and teaching by inquiry and circulation of teaching materials as analogous to the electric currents and about the overarching goal of education as analogous to the principle of optimizing the load factors. Human brains are the sources of power. The rules of science, democracy and total quality are analogous to the Kirchhoff rules. The ownership principle is analogous to the closed circuit condition for the currents to flow. The transition from the contemporary educational systems to the networks of schools owned by teachers and students is analogous to the transition from the direct to alternating current in the case of the electric power systems.
.3in [**3. OWNERSHIP PRINCIPLES**]{} .1in
The forms of ownership I describe are invented for illustration, have drawbacks and are partly contradictory. Such a situation may be realistic but the model I describe is not sufficiently studied to claim that much. One would have to study mathematical models of the ownership structure including mechanisms of governance, income, spending and population changes to make reasonable evaluations of the ownership principles and I have not done such studies. Still, the ownership principles are essential to the network idea and I offer a scenario to think about.
The system that can emerge from a real trial may evolve to other forms of the ownership but it is clear that if the system belongs to teachers and students at the beginning and grows successfully there will be little incentive for taking the ownership away from the primary constituents. And if many systems are initiated some ownership schemes will succeed and some will die.
Two different forms of ownership exist in the envisioned network, one for teachers and one for students. The need to differentiate comes from the fact that teachers support their own living (and their families’) through the work in the system while the students’ living is supported by parents or other supporters. In addition, there is a mechanism built in for a gradual change in the form of ownership available to students who learn particularly easily, satisfy well defined criteria and choose to make a career in the system.
Teachers own shares. Shares bring dividends. Shares cannot be bought. They can be earned. A teacher receives a prescribed basic number of shares when when joins the system. The basic number of shares ascribed to a job position is proportional to the time necessary for doing the job and the complexity of the tasks. The complexity factors are tabulated and published. The basic number of shares corresponding to a full time job of lowest complexity brings enough dividends to live if the whole system works productively and efficiently. Advancing in the hierarchy of teaching positions results from the growing ability to become responsible for more demanding jobs to which a larger basic number of shares is ascribed.
Anyone in the system can earn more shares than the basic number for her or his position by doing the job better. In particular, one can earn shares by publishing educational materials. To give a striking example: a cleaning staff member of some school may publish a material on economic organization of efficient cleaning in schools so useful it may sell in thousands of copies. The number of shares is proportional to the number of copies sold. Conduction of every activity in the network is evaluated in terms of shares. Every teacher knows the number of shares in the whole system and in her or his possession. Once the yearly budget forecast is published it is straightforward to foresee the individual basic income for the current year and everybody can evaluate their own additional income knowing the number of shares they have in addition to the basic number.
Students own credits. Credits have to be earned by passing standard tests and written and oral exams and by publishing individual and team reports through the academic journals (this is independent of the fact that producing team reports is the main source of learning experience for students). To be able to earn a credit a student has to buy a pass for a course that leads to the credit. Students can buy passes for money. They can also work in the system as teachers, administrative assistants or other staff, earn shares and pay for passes from their dividends. When students join the system to work as teachers their shares become sources of dividends as for teachers.
One can disclaim shares by leaving the system. Such shares die; cease to exist. For example, when a student finishes education in the system the number of her or his shares at that point is multiplied by the current value of a yearly dividend per share. This says how much the student was making a year at graduation - it tells potential employers how much they have to offer the alumna or alumnus to attract attention. In turn, students know how much they can expect on the basis of their education. The shares of the alumni are subtracted from the total number of shares. When a teacher leaves the system her or his shares are processed in the same way.
Possession of a large number of shares opens unlimited opportunities for personal growth and attaining intellectual freedom. Putting the process of individual growth of teachers and students on top of other processes and setting priorities in such a way that ownership remains in the hands of teachers and students no matter what happens, has one key implication: teachers become vitally interested in reform since reform as a process of redesign (cf. [@LBR]) is the natural way of improving their own living. At the same time otherwise insoluble or hard problems may become less forbidding.
I give examples of problems I heard about in “Discovery” [@Discovery] and in “Reading Recovery” [@Clay]. “Discovery” and “Reading Recovery” are educational reforms of unusual quality, “Reading Recovery” being one of the most advanced reform models in the world. But before I give the examples I need to explain why I am giving these examples. Namely, I only mean to suggest that if the ownership by teachers and students were seriously considered from the beginning then, new ways of approaching the problems could come to mind. Because of my limited knowledge about “Discovery” (which educated several thousand teachers) and “Reading Recovery” (which operates in about 9000 schools in the US alone and continues to grow), my suggestions are hypothetic. However, my goal is not to tell leaders of “Discovery” or “Reading Recovery” what they should have been or should be doing. My aim is only to show that the ownership principle implies a new way of thinking about problems of education.
In the case of project “Discovery”, I think the ownership principles could have changed the project recruiting scheme, profiles of the teacher leaders education and organization of their work, and the motivation of teachers attending summer institutes. The institutes would have new elements in the program of great interest for people seeking a status of independent thinkers and educators. Most importantly, however, at the end of the project when public funds expired, the participants could be prepared to sustain their independent network and continue to benefit thousands of students without a shock of disappearing outside support. The above conclusion may appear surprising in its simplicity. However, I recall meeting teachers, teacher leaders and directors in the project who did not expect to be left out in the cold. Most importantly, they found themselves rapidly developed, with broadened horizons and, ironically, unable to plainly return to their previous roles in the existing system having no room for growth in the directions they found attractive.
In the case of “Reading Recovery”, one might suggest that teachers and teacher leaders who would own the system could be motivated to develop their skills beyond the requirements set by leading scientists. They could have vested interests in enhancing rather than diluting standards of their services to children with diffusion of the system. The research leaders could securely develop the system if their judges were not arbitrarily selected but were mainly the teachers and parents who know first hand the project results and appreciate outcomes of the longitudinal studies. Even more importantly, the research leaders of their own self-improving system could attract new young researchers by the fact that the principle of “Reading Recovery” approach to reading could be extended to other disciplines if enough research were done. One direction which I consider very important is the development of materials for children having difficulties with learning science, materials analogous to the McDermott’s modules on physics [@McDermott] and the reading books in “Reading Recovery”. The projection into future would be totally unbounded and exciting. The system could remain highly interesting to its leaders independently of false outside opinions.
.3in [**4. GOVERNANCE PRINCIPLES**]{} .1in
All schools in the network have equal rights and the same standards of excellence. For individuals, there is a schedule of ranks based on the number of shares. People of lower rank usually pay attention to people with higher rank because those with higher rank usually know better how to earn shares. The principles of effective teaching govern in the network.
The average number of shares per teacher in a school measures the quality of the school. Schools are also measured by achievements of their students - the number of credits per student.
Credits are well defined through common standards and other criteria, such as juror judgments. The standard tests are built on the principle of one framework problem with varying input data which imply different correct output answers using the same reasoning. The tests verify understanding and reasoning. The skill of reason is the goal of education. The correct result is of value.
Shares become worthless if students do not buy passes to earn credits. Therefore, teachers are interested in keeping high the number of sold passes. This leads to the improvement of quality of education since students have freedom to make choices how to use their budgets. There is no prescribed governance structure that would need to be imposed artificially because of needs to serve other interests than the wisdom-centered learning. [@KGW]
Team leaders are elected within a team. Everybody can suggest a leader but it is the team who decides.
Class leaders are elected by the class. Classes can and often do bid for teachers for specific courses. Teachers have the right to choose with which class they will work. Teachers usually prefer to choose a bidding class with highest number of credits and shares. If there is a conflict without a rational solution the right of choice and responsibility for making decision belong to the teacher who has more shares in the system.
School principals are elected by the school teachers and students equally for a period of 5 years. There is a limit of 3 such periods for a single person to be a principal.
District representatives are elected from the whole district membership in the network by all teachers and students for 7 years to ensure continuity. Schools vote separately on a list of candidates. The number of votes per school is equal to the number of shares owned by members of that school. One person can serve up to 2 periods.
Region trustees are elected for unlimited time. A trustee ends her or his service only voluntarily. Candidates are suggested by school districts. In order to become a trustee one has to have at least ten times as many shares as average number of shares per teacher in the region on the election day. The second condition is that the candidate for a trustee must have worked in the system as a teacher for at least 10 years. These conditions eliminate the situation where some important person becomes a trustee despite that this person is fully ignorant about the system. This condition also helps to select people who are successful as teachers and have a remarkable record of achievement outside the network.
There is a danger of lowering the price of passes to sell large numbers of them. This is easily avoided through a feedback loop because good teachers will not work for free with too many students and such practice dies out. On the other hand, there is an issue of the system becoming a monopoly and dictating a too high price on the passes. Therefore, the system is built from more than one independent subsystems of shares and credits. There is no artificial limitation on the number of such subsystems. Teachers are free to initiate new subsystems but there is a requirement that a subsystem must be adopted by at least three schools. To create a subsystem teachers of the schools set up a company according to the common law and the subsystem becomes a partner in the network.
The standards of credit requirements and the educational materials are used across the board equally in all subsystems. Shares in different subsystems are compared using the ratio of the average number of credits obtained by students in the subsystem during the last year per share in the subsystem. Credits are universal because they are based on satisfying most objectively measured requirements by students while the subsystem share value depends on the subsystem. Each subsystem share value is calculated in terms of a universal share value for the whole system. The total number of the universal shares is equal to the sum of numbers of the universal shares in all subsystems.
All subsystems are free to function without state or community support for students (taxes) but if they use public money as income to pay dividends they have to comply with the general share evaluation scheme in which the share value is defined by test results for students. Testing schemes are continuously redesigned to satisfy changing requirements of the job market and the network. The testing practice is based on verifying thinking skills, understanding subjects and ability to learn new things, in mandatory agreement with the overarching goal of education. That this condition is satisfied results from the fact that the true value of the network to the society is precisely the supply of contexts of productive learning. In other words, the network tests students if they purchased and acquired what they intended to when paying for the passes.
The common share evaluation system is needed by all subsystems. The subsystems want to demonstrate effectiveness and quality of the education they offer. They want to attract the best students. Subsystems compete by keeping the number of credits issued per share as high as possible to keep the share value high. The reason standards are not reduced is that the demands for credits are universal and in check by all constituents. The network is also being constantly evaluated from the point of view of the job market. The market economy cures negative features in the network as it does for itself outside the network. The bonding scheme is based on the market competition for best students and its reluctance to hire poorly educated alumni. In turn, nobody is interested in educating students whom nobody wants to hire. Therefore, the schools keep records of their alumni careers. There is a whole area of studies on measuring alumni careers for meaningful comparisons.
.3in [**5. SOURCES OF INCOME AND FINANCE MANAGEMENT**]{} .1in
The system collects money for teaching students directly from the students budgets. The budget money is provided, for example, by parents for education of their children, by a local community to pay for education of its teachers, by state and international organizations for training of professionals or by foundations through grants for scientists doing research in the system. Students buy passes to earn credits.
It is essential for students to administer the process of purchasing passes. This way they learn the cost of their education and how to avoid waste of their money. The purchase of a pass to earn every single credit is done by a student separately, in an on-line process of learning how to manage her or his education program. The youngest students are being helped in this respect by their parents or guardians. There is a scheme of reducing the responsibility of parents or guardians as students grow up. There is a system of consultants to students and data banks for their use. Every school has its own data bank with a network connection to help students make choices.
Students have individual budgets for their education. All students have equal access to the minimal budget for purchasing a basic set of passes. The basic set defines the level of education guaranteed to be available to every student in the system. Students need to raise, borrow or earn more money to cover costs of passes to additional credits of choice for their careers. Students demonstrate their records to obtain such funds.
The budgets for students come from states (taxes), public or private and national or international organizations of all kinds interested in educating students of all kinds, and from students themselves. But the dominant source is the direct payment by parents or employers. In the fully operating system which is already blended with structures of whole societies, parents and employers may temporarily deduct transfers made to budgets of students they support. The deductions are allowed for as long as a student needs to earn credits or until the time foreseen for earning the credits expires.
However, in the current situation such a scheme is not directly implementable since taxes are paid today according to schedules that have nothing to do with how the tax money will be spent. In other words, we pay taxes on what we earn and we have no direct way to say how we want our money to be spent. There is no entry on the contemporary tax forms concerned with what we wish to provide our money for, except, for example, church taxes in some countries. Hopefully, in a future tax forms one will find entries for education. Until then, what I can offer in practice today is merely a seed or initial business plan for first steps on the way to make the educational network belong to teachers and students. This is described in next Sections below.
The total amount of money collected by the network for a fiscal academic year (or semester) is divided by the number of shares issued to date and the resulting number defines the total dividend per share. Owners of shares decide how to use the money they receive through their shares. They form organizations in the system to use their money. For example, each and every member of a school brings a definite amount of money for use by the school. The sum of money of all members has to cover all expenses of the school, including the owners income. A good teacher with many shares becomes thus a great asset to the school. Her or his opinion about teaching practice cannot be neglected. Such teachers make the schools going.
Teachers form schools voluntarily. If they do not form schools their shares will lose value - no single teacher is able to offer a comprehensive education. The same motivates formation and existence of districts and regions.
A highly sophisticated system of collecting payments, share accounts and copy rights is in operation. But the system rules are simple, published and easily available. They protect rights and intellectual properties of teachers and students, warrant creation of the contexts of productive learning and serve the overarching goal of education.
The financial management is not delegated to outside companies. The outside auditors are hired but mainly to help in eliminating errors and for communication purposes with outside the network.
The network employs its own highest quality accountants who are also teachers. The accountants are deeply aware of the network principles and serve well the network educational agenda. They teach the network accounting to their less experienced colleagues and students. Much of the work is done by the students as part of their credit earning in accounting and related subjects. Similar delegation of work and responsibility is practiced in all administrative functions.
The individual shares are issued by the subsystems according to their needs and the number of shares issued by every subsystem is decided within the subsystem. These shares are evaluable in terms of the universal shares. The number of the universal shares in the whole network is an abstract number which roughly equals the number of individual shares and results from the accounting rules. Thus, the individual share brings dividends in amount comparable to a universal share. You can check what is the dividend one gets for a single share in some school and you have an idea about the level of education the school offers.
Changes in the network accounting are induced by the majority vote, on recommendation by representatives of districts, with approving opinion of the region trustees. The Society of Professors of Education is obliged to help in assessment of proposed changes in the accounting rules used by regions.
The reason for that no monopoly can emerge is that many subsystems exist and they compete to win their share in serving educational needs of the society.
There exist also ways of giving money to the network and specifying the money is given to a subsystem or other unit for some purpose. The money is used then by issuing a corresponding number of new shares and distributing those shares in agreement with the intention of the donor.
.3in [**6. ASSESSMENT AND RECOGNITION**]{} .1in
The bottom line in assessing the quality of work and productivity of teachers and students is the number of credits they produce. Therefore, the credit system is a subject of continuous research, redesign, application and feedback. [@LBR] The notion of a credit guaranteed in gold explains the quality of reasoning skills and knowledge of students who earned the credit.
The award winning teachers obtain one time money prizes or a number of shares. Dividends from the prize shares are collectible over different periods of time; longest times for most prestigious awards.
If the number of shares grows with time and the number of students does not grow the value of a dividend per share becomes smaller with time, and one has to earn more shares to keep the individual income rising.
No other measure than students performance on universal tests is used in assessing effectiveness of teaching. But owners of copy rights for teaching materials and patents for teaching techniques collect royalties on their use.
Since there are differences between districts in student readiness to learn the districts must specialize in different levels of education. Whenever an opportunity arises for a school district to go to a higher level the opportunity is taken because it is preferred by the job market to employ people with higher number of credits. The credit system is such that gaining merely basic skills and knowledge cannot bring a high number of credits. A large number of credits may be obtained only by a student who learns many skills and subjects very well and the achieved level is verified thoroughly and trustworthy.
The protection of teachers rights to benefit from selling of their teaching materials is secured by the general patent and copyright laws. A recent example of such laws are laws prohibiting unauthorized duplication of video tapes or compact discs and fighting pirates across the world.
The highest recognition available to teachers and students is based on leadership positions they win in their own network units. For example, a team distinguishes its leader, a school distinguishes its principal and academies distinguish their leaders.
.3in [**7. ARCHIVES**]{} .1in
The system keeps an archive, in many copies and in a flexible network of easy access. The archive is sophisticated in its purpose, structure and availability. Highly sophisticated librarians manage the archives and make sure no member of the system is denied access to data. The contemporary electronic libraries such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory electronic preprint library [@LANL] can serve as a prototype example of the network archive.
The archive plays the role of a patent office library for educational materials, copy right guard (issuing single authorized copies), source of information and ground for longitudinal studies (independently of the studies conducted by the network subsystems) and the forum for research and discussion on educational matters including the performance of the system itself.
However, the archive is not able or allowed to become a publisher or distributor of academic journals. The publication of journals is reserved to academies in order to secure the journals high quality through the peer review processes. Still, the archive is indispensable since it provides information the publishers cannot provide, such as access to publications from different publishers.
.3in [**8. PREPARATION, DESIGN, LAUNCH, FEEDBACK AND REDESIGN**]{} .1in
The leading idea of the network is that teachers and students can build a healthy and rapidly evolving educational network if they start doing it step by step on sound economical basis. In the envisioned system, a group of interested teachers starts from earning funds for opening a small school.
Thus, the first step a group of teachers does is they decide they want to create their own school. The group then gets in touch with a local network subsystem to learn about what and how one can do to begin with. The local subsystem delegates a specialist who helps the group in identifying their goals. They draw the first draft of their vision, mission and business plan statements to present it to the subsystem they want to join. The group first investment is time and work on its own education in the already existing network. This education allows the group to start building a plan how to create a new school and beyond. More about it in Section 10.
The design, launch, collecting and analyzing data and redesign processes are gradually becoming a habit of the group. [@LBR] Once they succeed in setting a school in operation they begin to build partnerships with other schools of the subsystem and learn how the network works. The feedback from the network is essential for the new school development.
A mature school participates in the network operation without limitations. Schools of distinguished quality benefit from serving less developed schools by sharing their expertise. For example, an experienced teacher can teach a class of colleagues how to manage their time at school more effectively and, as a result, have more time available for personal growth. [@Covey] Where is the time coming from? The skillful teacher knows how to help students learn on their own, how to organize their work so that older or more experienced students help younger or less experienced ones. The teacher knows how to set up the teams work so that the teacher has plenty of time to think about the most interesting things to her or him. Teams of students can easily do a lot of work which otherwise overwhelms overworked and over-stressed teachers.
.3in [**9. COMMUNITY AND STATE SUPPORT**]{} .1in
Schools of the network are so effective they are eagerly welcome in local communities. It is worth for the community and state to invest in the learning processes kept alive by the schools of the network since these processes educate sophisticated alumni. It is essential to understand that schools never have a problem with getting local support because they grow out of local initiatives. They also never lose state support because no state is going to risk opinion of having no interest in the best possible education of citizens. Once a school is formed it operates for as long as its share value is reasonable. The school grows and brings higher income to teachers when its share value grows.
Communities are proud of the quality of their schools and press local governments for execution of productive educational policy.
.3in [**10. SEEDS AND TIMING**]{} .1in
The envisioned network of schools owned by teachers and students is built in analogy to leaving organisms. Life begins in small seeds, not big scale projects. We have four elements to mention in the analogy.
- [A single member of the network, a teacher or a student grows from an isolated individual of limited horizons to a member of a learning community with broad horizons and freedom to make choices. Thus, the seeds of the network come from personal learning and growth of its members.]{}
- [A school is born and it advances through levels of professional efficiency. A new post of the network emerges and supplies its strength to the whole structure, as a leaf or root of a tree.]{}
- [The whole network grows and improves its services to the society. A small size of an initial stage does not prevent the development into an impressive structure as much as the size of a sequoia seed does not exclude a giant forest in future.]{}
- [The core ideas evolve from the embryos such as this article to mature driving ideas for large systems if the ideas are helpful in practice. The educational network is a seed for bigger changes in our global civilization.]{}
The small size of seeds is important, not accidental or resulting solely from financial limitations. The small size of seeds is the condition which eliminates huge errors. The hardships of life teach members of the network how to go about developing their own schools. They are helped by the network in a number of essential ways characteristic of productive teaching but a school must learn how to grow and become strong. Only self-consistent and well adapting structures survive. Thus, even if the network could afford financing large scale projects it does not do it lightly without careful studies.
It will take a long time before a reasonably mature version of the envisioned network can become a reality and show its ability to improve and survive on the basis of effective education of its members. 50 to 100 years is not a bad guess. Before that happens, contemporary groups of teachers interested in building such a network must start with other enterprises in mind than creating the whole new educational system at once. The seeds must be sown differently.
The point is following. The existing educational systems have long traditions. There exists no counterexample of comparable magnitude that could substantiate claims one can do better. It is pointless to quarrel about what is good or bad and engage in easy to create wars of opinions. Moreover, it would be silly and immature on anybody’s part to claim knowledge of how to build a better system of education than the existing ones to the extent that once the solution is adopted from top to bottom no problem will arise. The principles of life do not favor concepts such as Frankenstein. Therefore, the network concept stays away from such ideas.
In contrast, teachers and students undertaking action to address their basic needs to learn and grow should not be met with a strong opposition. For opposing such movement cannot be supported by reason and any such opposition would contradict the purpose of education.
The timing idea is that once a growing self-organizing network of teachers and students begins to practice meaningful education it will be easier to found, fund and find (3f) exemplary schools where the contexts of productive learning [@Sarason] and learning by inquiry [@McDermott] is bread and butter.
Teachers need to prepare themselves to take initiative much earlier. One place to start with is after-school or after-work activities for youth and adults in the local community. [@Ekiel-Jezewska] The author knows that physical phenomena such as electric currents flowing in a circuit of batteries, bulbs, switches and wires, or a daily movement of the gnomon shadow on a sundial, provide opportunities for teaching how powerful is learning by inquiry. Understanding of the solar system or laws of electricity on the basis of a conscious inquiry induces deep changes in the learning habits. To get going, a team of teachers needs to see this happen to themselves and their students. Then, they need to repeat the success working with new people. For example, one can teach grandparents how to work with their grandchildren. Another viable program is a summer vacation or holiday camp for youth or adults. [@Ekiel-Jezewska] It is essential that the activities are conducted by experienced people using materials of high quality, at least as good as “Physics by Inquiry” [@McDermott]. Teachers engaging in such initiatives become active learners of the subject matters. More importantly, they begin to learn how they can become professionals. Teaching and learning according to principles of scientific inquiry are the cornerstone processes in the network development and one has to begin there. The same principles are then available for application in teaching and learning in other areas without limitation.
The initial studies must be economically sound, with direct collection of money from parents or employers. This way first self-organized learning teams of teachers may emerge. Otherwise they burn out. The teams learn what is involved in the enterprise. For example, a small company is subject to many laws teachers do not learn about in college. [@Markowski] The small scale operation is an indispensable source of knowledge for teachers about what they can accomplish. Only those who know their trade can build a school of the network.
The key characteristic of the contemporary situation in educational systems is the lack of shared understanding what is the goal of education. The seed activity must focus on building a shared practical vision of education among a team members. The remaining paragraphs in this Section describe the first seed activity which the founders of the network should seriously consider.
My claim is that the notions of the context of productive learning, learning by inquiry and the overarching goal of education are not commonly understood. I have noticed in science and educational institutions that almost never the bottom line of research and learning is put on the table as worth investigation. I have not heard people asking seriously what and how we really want to learn and why. Such issues go beyond the common discussion. They seem to be obvious. I claim they are too damn difficult to understand so that anybody worrying about their position cannot seriously admit ignorance in this area. The ignorance is covered by a tendency to push in the direction which is known and safe to the individual.
The next logical step is to ask: Do we have a textbook, a module analogous to Ref. [@McDermott], and a program which would be teaching what is the essence of productive learning by inquiry? My answer is: No. Moreover, the non-existence of such a module for learning how to teach by inquiry clearly shows our reform efforts are weak and missing the key innovation element. I suggest that the teams interested in building the network of schools owned by teachers and students start from creating their own versions of such modules. The modules should then be refined in the process of educating new people who join the founding teams. A new school founding team should start from work on their school cooking-book and I claim they should start from learning themselves what is food.
I give you another analogy which is useful here. Think about the educational system and the air transportation system.[@WilsonDaviss] In the air transportation the notion of flying was clear to everybody since they saw a smallest bird in action. From Icarus to Boeing 747, all participants of whatever was being done knew beyond any doubt what they have to demonstrate or see in order to say they fly. In the educational system, no analogous notion exists. The notion of flight in education can be the context of productive learning by inquiry, but it seems to be top secret now, or more probably, the notion does not even exist in the most educators and politicians minds. I do not blame anybody. The notion is very difficult to understand. You have to combine ideas of most advanced sciences and arts, climb high up on top of them and see far enough to come to grips with the notion of flying in education to try your own wings. Talking about the design of the wing curvature or the airplane factory management is premature when the notion of flying is not known. A school founding team needs to understand what they mean by flying in education before they can start working on their propeller.
Moreover, the majority of complaints about performance of the educational systems is not serious.[@Fullan] Namely, the relevant people do not understand the crisis to the extent of saying: I am not doing the right thing now, I am not teaching effectively, I do not know what is the context of productive learning by inquiry, I am unable to achieve the overarching goal of education for my students, I, in the first place, need to start thinking what I am doing. In other words, it is not only unclear what is flying but it is also not true that people realize they do not know what is flying in education. To the contrary, most educators are convinced they know something well enough to teach others. In fact, it often becomes comparable to teaching Little Mermaid how to comb her hair with a fork.[@Disney] The way one shows to somebody that something is not the way that person thinks is following: one asks the person to make a verifiable prediction of the real status of the matter in question and then one verifies the prediction together with the person. If the verification shows the person’s prediction was false the person is shocked, becomes curious, starts thinking begins to listen. This is teaching by inquiry. To start learning by inquiry you have to feel safe to ask questions about what bothers you.
My punch line is here. There is a science of incomparable clarity and focus in learning by inquiry. It is physics. Basic physics is the most transparent source of understanding what it means to learn effectively. And we already have a well tested material to study the notion of learning by inquiry in physics. This is Ref. [@McDermott]. The first thing to do for a team of teachers who want to understand what they are truly after if they want to join the living network of schools is to study electric circuits or optics in the way similar to the one from Ref. [@McDermott]. Then comes learning about what “Discovery” accomplished in Ohio and where it failed.[@Discovery] At this point one begins to understand the value of the context of productive learning in physics and how hard it is to create it. Then, one needs to ask what is “Reading Recovery” extending from New Zealand to the U.S.A. and where it is going.[@Clay] The context of productive learning by inquiry comes at this stage more clearly into your sight. Next step is to talk to the Learning by Redesign [@LBR] and learn by inquiry in the context of your path about past reforms and the status of science of change. Finally, once you become an owner of a clear notion of the context of productive learning by inquiry you can start your independent thinking about the living network of schools owned by teachers and students. If this outline frightens you, forget the network idea.
.3in [**11. INITIAL BUSINESS PROPOSAL**]{} .1in
The faculty member in a university who is prepared to do so might help a few colleagues to study the notion of productive learning by inquiry and understand the benefits of using the technique. A group of faculty members could set a program for learning by inquiry in the areas they see fit, at all required levels and for all people they want to talk to. This activity could produce the first shared notion of the purpose of education in the faculty team.
Three school teachers and a university faculty could spend a semester preparing a one semester course on electricity or optics by inquiry. They would have to provide their money for equipment and their time for the work and learning. In Poland, the investment could presumably be at the level of about 150 z[ł]{} per person per month. That makes 2400 z[ł]{} for 4 people in a 4 month semester with about 2 hours of studying session and 2 hours of preparation a week. The team would learn principles of learning and teaching by inquiry.
In a second semester, the same team could deliver a course for youth, adults, or both, to about 30 clients for money. Each client paying 50 z[ł]{} a month makes 1,500 z[ł]{} per month and about 6,000 z[ł]{} in four months. Divided by 4 it gives 1,500 z[ł]{} per teacher for all expenses of the course, or 375 z[ł]{} per month. Suppose all the money is spent on equipment and other expenses. One can buy a lot of nice stuff for this money. The next semester has much lower spending because a lot of the equipment is already in place, the time required is shorter since there is experience accumulated, and the price may even go up if the first trial creates demand and the course is considerably improved. Suppose the spending is slightly higher than in the first semester of preparation, say 175 z[ł]{} instead of 150 z[ł]{}. Then, the next semester brings 200 z[ł]{} per month of income per teacher. This means the income compensating the initial money investment in one or two years.
The major product of the first few semesters of the team work is a set of materials which allow a skillful teacher to engage many students in a highly productive learning process. Such material can be published and sold in the future in many copies. But what is created goes far beyond that - teachers begin to act using their new skills and their own process of continuous learning and self-development takes off.
The question is how to move forward with the idea of founding a new school. One team is not sufficient. Organization of summer camps and new courses should lead to a larger group of teachers in association with university teachers who can conceive a mission, a vision and a plan to found the school. A breathtaking variety of problems need solution to make this work. Business strategies are just a small part of it (for example, see Ref. [@Markowski]). But it is hard to imagine anybody or anything will be able to stop the development. On the contrary, with such grass root movement and solid preparation one can expect many foundations of education to be ready to support the plan. Publishers and distributors of the teaching materials would certainly be interested in the promotion and the widest possible use of maximal number of issues. They would sign contracts for producing such materials.
This time my punch line is here: the university faculty trained in teaching by inquiry could start teaching elementary science by inquiry to teachers whose participation in the program would be paid by employers (schools, communities, institutions engaging in education of teachers, foundations). The great benefit to the university faculties is they suddenly become obviously and undeniably useful to the whole society (remember, students have parents and it is the parents who keep the country going), irreplaceable and in high demand for doing what they are well prepared to do subject-wise, what they enjoy to do by nature and what they can eagerly do to raise their income without interference with their research as much and as stressfully as teaching ineffectively hoards of under-prepared students interferes with their underpaid research activities at the university. Long term benefits to scientists are then obvious and not limited. Most importantly, however, the faculty members begin to feel free to learn a completely new stuff and start thinking in new dimensions.
There is an important aspect to mention in such an approach: those who learn by inquiry are ready to tackle hard problems. They will spontaneously advance their knowledge and understanding. They will be driven by curiosity. They will create the culture able to sustain the movement towards the network of schools. And they will grow personally with the development of the network. The network will serve more students and bring respect and enthusiasm to leaders of effective learning. The network will continuously need its top experts to keep it on track and going. Everybody will have to learn at new levels about new difficult matters and how to solve problems efficiently, bringing splendor to the educational enterprise.
New teams will be trained to become able to offer training to many new teachers. The university faculty sharing the vision will be able to help in building the network of schools owned by teachers and students and the schools will produce students ready to study at the universities. Training of new teams will be based on a set of meta-teaching materials on the subject matter and methods of founding new schools and developing the network. People will not be merely hired to do all these things - they will own the network and make it live up to their expectations. The network will become a good client of the university faculties.
.3in [**12. COMMUNICATION**]{} .1in
The key roles of communication are exchange of information within the network and informing society about the network ability to teach, improve itself and grow. Internet-like structures may help but they will be only tools in the processes of importance.
The most important communication process in the network is the transfer (describing, explaining, selling and buying) of teaching materials combined with courses on teaching and learning how to use them offered by specially trained users.
The most important information sent to the society is the current dividend per share and the total number of existing universal shares. The published numbers include also the average number of shares earned by teachers and students in the whole system. In addition, tables of subsystem averages are published with explanation of their meaning. The tables help students, parents, foundations etc. in judgment of the subsystems performance. Next, the cost of the education of a single student and the profit from education of a single student are published with explanation of how both are calculated.
.3in [**13. CONCLUSION**]{} .1in
There is one consequence of the educational system belonging to teachers and students at all levels that has not been fully described yet and must be reiterated here. Namely, such a network could naturally support basic research. Moreover, it could do so without asking for immediate industrial applications. The new motivation comes from the fact that an educational system will not be truly useful, indispensable and always worth investment unless it becomes an independent source of enlightenment. New discoveries could first apply in driving education before being used in industry. Today, we learn at schools what happens in the world. In the new system, it would be natural for the world to eagerly learn what is being discussed at schools - an unthinkable situation today.
While today no economic competition in scientific progress between educational systems and industries is possible, the new system could engage in such competition. The engagement might have incredible consequences for the speed of developing our civilization. Imagine young people learning about the current status of our knowledge and understanding of the real world first hand and searching for solutions to problems without bias of employment and other commitments.
I also need to explain the opportunity the network creates for the contemporary university. The unique opportunity lies in the leadership role the university could try to attain. But we need to remember that the contemporary university is not an unquestionable institution that fulfills its mission and may securely keep going as it did so far. [@Hock]
The well known problem the university faces is that freshman students are not sufficiently educated at schools to undertake studies of modern science. The university becomes a place to teach elementary subjects because schools cannot fulfill their mission. Schools are supposed to teach so much so quickly that they are unable to help students learn with understanding. Understanding is replaced with a mindless drill of memory. Students become alumni who do not know how to learn new subjects. Worse, they are trained in faking knowledge and understanding. Thus, the contemporary university must face the highly probable possibility of becoming a high school of the 21st century and never gain the leadership position it might dream about or believe in attaining.
The main point is not merely that the university teachers would certainly enjoy having better prepared students as entrants (better students means better chances for prosperity of their professors). The point is that the university may become obsolete and useless no matter how good a science it supports if the students will not be able to study there in sufficient numbers. The above statement is not guaranteed to motivate a revolution in educational paradigms.[@Kuhn] But it means that universities have to help schools in changing their practice. I give the following example.
The university works as a hierarchy of teaching and learning staff from students to graduate students to teaching assistants to postdocs to levels of professorship, and administration. Climbing the ladder is related with achievements in science, teaching, building research teams, personal growth, gaining respect and winning intellectual freedom without limits. Simpler tasks are delegated down the hierarchy. The most advanced processes of study and teaching at the university are in the hands of the most talented and most educated people. How is the school organized? There are only teachers and students, and administration.
The questions to ask at the university are the following. How would you explain the utility of your system to school teachers if they asked? How could one implement similar principles at the school level? Why do teachers not come to ask how to do that with their students? At the same time one could ask the following questions at school. Why don’t you try to create a structure like in a university? Why don’t you talk about it with the university people? Are they not helpful or plainly ignorant? The university should consider the opportunity of helping to build and lead a living network of schools owned by teachers and students. It could make a difference.
.3in [**Acknowledgment**]{} .1in
The author would like to thank Ken Wilson for many stimulating discussions and comments. Multiple discussions with Seymour Sarason are gratefully acknowledged. The author benefited from meetings with Charlie Ericson, Constance Barsky and Ben Daviss. He also wishes to thank Maria Ekiel-Je[ż]{}ewska for discussions and collaboration on teaching experiments. .3in
[99]{}
|
.
Furthermore, the PFLP strongly condemned the actions of the Palestinian Authority security apparatus, which coordinated with the occupation to arrest hundreds of Palestinians, particularly activists and members of the resistance, after this operation. The PFLP demanded an end to such arrests, the freedom of all such detainees, and confirmed that resistance – not negotiations – is our only option for steadfastness, unity, and confrontation of the occupier.
Comrade Abdel-Alim Da’na, a leader of the PFLP in Khalil, said in a radio interview that the operation against the settlers – in which 4 racist settlers were killed at Bani Naim – represents “the normal and expected reaction” of a people exposed to constant violent assaults from the racist and fascist settlers. He discussed the proliferation of settler violence in Al-Khalil, and how racist and fascist settler violence is assisted by the Israeli Border Police.
Commenting on the impact of this operation on the launch of direct negotiations between the PA and the occupation state, Comrade Da’na said that “these negotiations have already failed, and have been rejected by the Palestinian people and Palestinian factions, and are an unwelome imposition forced upon our people.” He called upon people to participate in events and demonstrations called by Palestinian Left forces against the negotiations, condemning the attack by PA security forces on last week’s conference against the negotiations, calling the attackers a “band of thugs.”
Comrade Emad Abu Rahma, a member of the Central Committee of the PFLP, called for increasing military resistance to occupation, calling upon all military forces of the Palestinian resistance and in particular the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, to increase resistance operations. He said that this is “our responsibility in the face of the official political charade of negotiations and concessions.” During a speech at a mass protest called by the Preparatory Committee of the National Conference Against Direct Negotiations in Gaza City, Comrade Abu Rahma said that the negotiations are part of a U.S./Israeli plan to liquidate the Palestinian cause.
He said that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was illustrating his complete adherence to the path of negotiations and deference to Israeli dictates, an absurd path that achieve nothing for the Palestinian people. Negotiations are a great danger to the national rights of our people, said Comrade Abu Rahma, warning that the group who signed Oslo are reaching a high point in their willingness to provide free concessions and sign agreements accepting Israeli conditions, liquidating Palestinian rights.
The direct negotiations must be challenged and responded to as a direct threat to the national cause – with all forms of action and popular struggle. It must be clear, said Comrade Abu Rahma, that the majority of the Palestinian people will not accept any concessions of their rights. In conclusion, he emphasized that the Palestinian national movement must place its trust and reliance not on the false and misleading promises of the U.S. government and the Obama administration, but on the steadfastness and resistance of our people.
confirmation that THE PALESTINIAN “AUTHORITY” DOES NOT REPRESENT THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE
The “peace process” is an endless replay-loop, just noise. The “negotiations” have no purpose other than the elimination of Palestinian national rights, the liquidation of Palestinian identity, and the abandonment of millions of people they have forced into exile to whatever fate may bring.
The Zionists and their imperialist backers have left the Palestinian people no recourse but armed struggle. The settlers, indeed, go armed, and not to defend themselves. They think the Palestinians are wild animals to be cleared from the land. When they suffer consequences they should at least not be surprised. |
Saints first teams’ play ‘encouraging’
Peyton frustrated with other aspects of game
Much like the first week, the New Orleans Saints’ performance in Friday night’s exhibition game with the Oakland Raiders was a mixed bag in the eyes of coach Sean Payton.
There was some good, some bad and a whole lot in between — which certainly isn’t unusual or unexpected in the preseason when coaches are more focused on evaluating personnel than winning games that don’t count.
Which is why Payton wasn’t overly generous with his praise after a 28-20 victory against the Raiders in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
While the starting offense scored on all five of its first-half possessions with three field goals and two touchdowns, and the first-team defense limited the Raiders to 48 total yards until the final three minutes of the first half, there was a lot to be pleased with.
Like Payton’s new 3-4 defense that allowed 185 total yards and is giving up a scant 200.0 yards a game — second in the NFL going into Saturday’s games. It has also yielded just two touchdowns in two games.
“Defensively, we handled the short field really well tonight,” Payton said, “so that was encouraging.”
Payton was also pleased with the overall effort and emotion the Saints (2-0) played with — especially in the first half when the starters were still in the game.
The No. 1 offense and defense dominated even with some players who have been swinging between the first and second teams on both sides of the line of scrimmage — like linebackers Ramon Humber and David Hawthorne, who were starting for the injured Curtis Lofton and Jonathan Vilma, respectively, and wide receivers Nick Toon and Kenny Stills.
Each made plays that gave Payton reason to smile.
Humber and Hawthorne combined to make the first big play of the game as they stopped Darren McFadden cold on fourth-and-1 from the Saints’ 43 on the first possession of the night for the Raiders (1-1).
That momentum carried the Saints on both sides of the ball for most of the first half, helping them build a 23-0 lead before the Raiders finally scored just 31 seconds before halftime.
“Mentally, we were ready to play,” Payton said. “Because of that, we were able to move the football, and defensively, we did a good job.”
Toon caught a 56-yard pass from Drew Brees to set up a 2-yard touchdown run by Mark Ingram on the next play. On the next drive, Stills made a toe-tapping 16-yard touchdown catch at the end of a 78-yard drive in which Brees was 6-of-6 for 67 yards.
Toon and Stills, who caught four passes for 64 yards, were both in the starting lineup because Payton and his staff wanted to get them a lot of snaps and test them after they had problems lining up properly a week earlier.
“It was good to see it on the field (Friday night) from both of them,” Payton said. “I thought (after last week) the biggest thing was the tempo we’re used to was maybe different than the tempo they’re used to.
“So it’s getting them up to speed. When the player knows where he needs to be, he’s quicker to get out of the huddle and get (lined up). But when there’s some indecision, they’re going to slow down the process. I thought they handled it better (Friday night).”
In the second half, Payton was reminded that they’re only halfway through the preseason and are playing with a large number of players who won’t be on the 53-man roster when they open the regular season Sept. 8.
There were three turnovers by the offense and another fumble that the Saints managed to recover to avoid a complete disaster as the Raiders turned a deficit of 23 points into a three-point game early in the fourth quarter.
The Raiders converted a fumble and interception by quarterback Seneca Wallace into 10 points. And running back Travaris Cadet had two fumbles — losing one.
“At this time of the year, a lot of stuff eats at you,” Payton said sternly.
In other words, players who are in a fight for roster spots —- like Wallace and Cadet — can’t afford to make mistakes like that.
“We did everything in the second half to allow them a chance to get back in the game,” Payton said. “The three turnovers, nine penalties (in the game). That frustrated me, that’s way too many.
“We did some good things, but listen, there were a lot of things you can build on. More importantly, I thought we were emotionally ready and played with some excitement. So that was pleasing.” |
TRIVIA WINNER: Congrats to Bill Widmire or Chino, CA, who correctly identified Howie Bedell as the player who drove in the run with a fly-ball out to end Don Drysdale's scoreless streak at 58 2/3 innings. So many of you knew that. It was one of his three career RBI and the only one he had that 11 pitchers who actually pitched in the 1963 World Series played for California teams during their careers?
ANSWER to the Trivia question in the previous column: Howie Bedell was the player who drove in the run with a flyball out to end Don Drysdale's scoreless streak at 58 2/3 innings. .
It is almost time for the Fall Classic once we get through the Playoffs (which did not exist until 1969) so for the next couple of weeks we'll be looking back at some interesting World Series Games of the era.
The
1963 World Series was one for the record books for many reasons. It was
the first time ever the New York Yankees were swept in a four game
World Championship Series. The Yanks who many times swept their
opponents, did not win a game against the New York Giants in 1922 but
that series actually went five games. Game Two ended in a 10-inning,
3-3 tie. In 1963 they would face their old rivals; The Dodgers. It was
the Dodgers homecoming of sorts. It was their first time back to Yankee
Stadium since leaving Brooklyn for the West Coast in the late 1950's.
Four players hit at least 20 home runs led by Elston Howard's 28. Roger Maris hit 23 and while not one Yankee had 100 RBI, they did score 714 runs which was again second in the AL. Mantle was the only player to bat .300 with a .314 average while an aging Yogi Berra (38) hit .293 in a very limited role.
And they were solid on the mound with two 20 game winners; Whitey Ford won 24 and Jim Bouton went 21-7. A young (22 year old) Al Downing was 13-5 and Ralph Terry won 17. The team ERA of 3.07 was only bested by one club and despite a tremendous bullpen, Yankee starters led the league in complete games with an amazing 59, led by Terry's 18.
The bullpen was headed by Save leader Hal Reniff with 18, Steve Hamilton and Tom Metcalf each had ERA's under 3.00. To boot, Downing had four shutouts, Bouton six. Downing was amazing as well in the K department, striking out 171 batters in 175 innings.
Los Angeles was not a team of slouches by any means. Not a power team the Dodgers were really in the middle of a run which featured speed and pitching. Maury Wills batted .302 and stole 40 bases, while Tommy Davis hit .325, clubbed 16 homers and stole 15 bases. Willie Davis stole another 25 and former Brooklyn Dodger Jim Gilliam stole 19. Frank Howard led the team in homers with 28 but amazingly only drove in 64 despite a .273 BA. Tommy D., would lead the team in RBI with 88.
The pitching staff is where the Dodgers chose to shine. Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax were at the top of their games, starting 82 games between them and completing 37 and combining for over 500 innings pitched. Koufax was 25-5 with a 1.88 ERA while Big D., was 19-17, 2.64 ERA. Koufax was unbelievable in another category which wasn't a big deal back then, WhIP. His was 0.87.
Johnny Podres won 14 and Bob Miller another 10, but the ace in the hole was closer Ron Perranoski who finished 16-3, 1.67 ERA with 21 Saves. The Dodgers still were no match for the slugging New Yorkers when it came to the plate. On the Mound give a very slight edge to New York, too.
But in a short series pitching usually holds sway and it was no different in 1963. Game One was on a Wednesday, which meant Koufax would open against Ford. If a series started on Saturday, it would be Drysdale because the devoutly Jewish Koufax would not pitch on Saturday. No worries in 1963.
Koufax was magnificent, giving up but six hits while striking out 15 Yankees on his way to a 5-2 win. Tom Tresh did homer but so did Johnny Roseboro who took Ford deep in a four-run second inning.
In Game Two it was Podres turn to shine and he did. He went eight and a third before giving way to Perranoski to close it out. The Dodgers jumped on Al Downing for two runs in the first and in the fourth inning former Yankee, Bill Skowron clubbed a homer and when the dust settled the Dodgers were 4-1 winners.
Following the Friday off day, Los Angeles sent Drysdale to the mound against Bouton. It was a classic match-up and the big man was never better. He allowed only three hits. Tony Kubek had a pair and Mantle had the other. He also struck out nine while walking one. Bouton was also outstanding except for one inning. He walked Gilliam, then wild pitched him to second before Tommy Davis drove him home with a double for the only run of the game, and a 1-0 Dodger victory.
Up three games to none, Manager Walt Alston brought back Koufax on three days rest. Again he was matched up against 24 game winner, Ford. It was going to be a tight battle and it was all about the most mistakes. Ford actually out-pitched Koufax.
The game was scoreless until the fifth when Frank Howard blasted his only homer of the series to give the Dodgers a 1-0 lead. It stayed that way until Mantle homered in the seventh to tie it up 1-1. It was then the big break came. Jim Gilliam led off the seventh with a ground ball to third baseman Clete Boyer who made a leaping catch of the high bouncer and threw directly onto first base for the apparent out. However, Joe Pepitone (apparently losing the ball in the white shirted background) couldn't handle the throw at first and the ball got by him down the line. By the time he got the ball, Gilliam ran all the way to third base. Willie Davis followed with a deep fly ball to center to drive home Gilliam on a sacrifice fly with the go ahead run.
Koufax closed out the last two innings without the Yankees really mounting a threat and the Dodgers had their sweep. Koufax, who gave up only six hits, struck out eight and did not walk a batter was named MVP of the series with two wins.
New York hit an anemic .171 in the series with only two home runs while Los Angeles didn't fare much better at .214 and two homers. Boyer and Tresh each struck out six times and Mantle, five. The key may have been; Yankee pitchers issued 11 walks. New York was outscored 12-4. Scoring an average of one run per game isn't going to win you any championships and that's how New York finished.
The Yankees would be back in the Series in 1964 but despite taking the series to seven games, they still lost to the Cardinals, 4-3. It wouldn't be until 1976 the Yanks were blitzed again. This time by the Reds. However, in 1998 and 1999 they swept both series against the Padres and the Braves and added a 4-1 Series win the following year, winning 12 of 13. |
The Screamer is a monster in Silent Hill: Downpour and has the ability to stun Murphy Pendleton with a piercing scream. Her attacks vary from concentrated jabs to wild swinging with her fists. She can also alert or call other Screamers to aid her in battle, making her a tough enemy if surrounded. They are the weakest enemies in the game.
Contents
Appearance
The Screamer is humanoid in appearance and resembles a woman wearing a tattered dress and high-heeled boots. They have dark, gray-toned skin with deformed, stretched-tight flesh on their face, inhumanly wide mouths, thin, wispy hair, and empty, bleeding eyes. Screamers' weapons are their hands, which are permanently affixed in a fist thanks to the several nails driven from the top of their hands through their fingers, which they jab and slash with. Their garb is ripped in many places, exposing tattered flesh underneath. A Screamer's dress is also hugged close to the figure, as too is the monster's hair, which suggests her being soaked by rain.
Character
Screamers are among the most common enemies in the game. The player will encounter more powerful enemies, but the Screamer's unique abilities make her a dangerous opponent. At close range, the Screamer usually just attacks with quick strikes. From farther away, however, this creature tends to make use of her incapacitating scream. When the player sees a Screamer inhale, they should run in to interrupt the attack, run out of range, or take cover behind a suitable object. If Murphy allows a Screamer to slip behind him, the creature might jump on his back. When this happens, the player must follow the on-screen prompts to shake the Screamer loose. The Screamer's incapacitating attacks are particularly troublesome when other creatures are in the area. When the player faces multiple opponents, they should consider dealing with any Screamers before they deal with more imposing enemies.
Symbolism
This article or section contains speculation.
The Screamer may represent:
The alarm sirens at Murphy's prison and how they would ring if he tried to escape his cell, and, by extension, police sirens as well.
A murder victim. Her body is covered in decaying flesh, and her screams may reflect the screams that a victim lets out during their struggle.
Murphy's wife, Carol Pendleton. When idle, the Screamer sometimes holds her arms close, rocking back and forth with head slightly tilted, as if cradling a child. This could represent Murphy's concern about how Carol dealt with Charlie Pendleton's death and Murphy's fear of Carol, thinking that she blames and hates him for their son's death. Thus, he sees the woman he loved now as a woman that is twisted, distorted, and hostile.
Part of Sanchez's psyche, a possible rapist or sexual predator due to the way he treats Anne Marie Cunningham during the bus transfer representing his possible misdeeds. This seems to be supported by his use of derogatory language towards the Screamer ("Bitch!"). The Screamer is not overtly sexual (she has a very flat chest beneath a heavy coat) and this may demonstrate his own predatory nature of possibly forcing sexuality upon them. Sanchez is shown repeatedly beating her face, which is heavily scarred with slashes, and her skin is stretched very tightly as if she has had plastic surgery; this could suggest that Sanchez has previously beaten his victim(s) so badly that they required facial reconstructive surgery. Her flesh-like coat is torn most around where her breasts would be, possibly hinting at a link to sexual violence and sadism. As Murphy displays no signs of sexual aggression, this further supports that she is Sanchez's monster.
Anne Cunningham's response to her father's murder. It is given in the game that she is distrustful of Murphy and suspects him to be Frank's murderer, and the various cutscenes between the two are characterized by volatility. The Screamer's intense shriek, followed by her vicious attack on Murphy, could be representative of Anne taking out her anger upon the protagonist.
Trivia
Killing or incapacitating 10 Screamers in the game unlocks the Achievement/Trophy "Silence is Golden".
During the point in the game when demonic police patrol vehicles chase Murphy through the streets of Silent Hill, large groups of Screamers are called in by the car's siren when the car catches up to Murphy. The summoning of these creatures by the siren is further evidence that the Screamer may represent the alarms and sirens from police vehicles.
When a Screamer is killed, her dying scream is cut short by a static sound, like a police communication radio turning off. |
Evans 'groped man in Commons bar'
Nigel Evans arrives at Preston Crown Court where he faces nine charges of sexual offences against seven men
Tory MP Nigel Evans groped a young man in a House of Commons bar, a court heard.
The complainant, one of seven young men the MP is said to have sexually assaulted, had been invited by Evans to the Strangers Bar at the House of Commons one evening in May or June 2010.
The complainant said he was introduced to the MP who was standing in a group of people, including former MP Lembit Opik.
Prosecutor Mark Heywood QC asked him what then happened.
The complainant said: ''We were chatting and Nigel reached out and grabbed my genitals, basically. Going in for a cup, I guess.
''At first I did not notice it but then, when you get the feel, you pull away.
''That is when I brushed it (his hand) away and said 'No, that's not cool'.''
He told the jury that Evans then walked away as if nothing had happened. The complainant immediately went on to tell his close friend, also in the bar, about what he said had just happened.
''I went to speak to (his friend) and had a bit of a giggle, to be honest,'' he said.
''It was a funny situation. I'm a straight male but that sort of thing should not happen but occasionally it does happen, so you have to be jovial about it.''
When it was put to him by Peter Wright QC, defending, that he made made the incident up, he said: "He cupped my genitals. It is building up a case where he should not be in a position of power where stuff like this happens and is swept under the carpet."
The complainant said no one in the bar appeared to have witnessed the alleged incident and he made no mention of it to anyone else on the night.
The court heard that he and some of the group went on to another bar, along with Evans.
He said he was ''tipsy'' when he met Evans - ''three on a scale of one to 10'', whereas the MP was ''five or six''.
But the complainant told the court that he "threw a sickie" at work the next day because of the amount of alcohol he had consumed during the evening.
He also admitted making a remark to Speaker John Bercow at the Palace of Westminster before the group moved on to another bar. Evans asked Mr Bercow if he wanted to join them for a drink but was told he was sitting as Speaker the next morning, the court heard.
The complainant then said to the Speaker: ''Don't be a c***. Come and join us for a drink.''
The complainant told the jury: ''I had had a few drinks. He handled it rather well, considering.''
Former MP Lembit Opik told a court there was a "not very savoury" exchange between himself and the complainant when he got to the bar.
"I went to buy a round of drinks, inviting the people in Nigel Evans group to tell me who wanted a drink.
"The gentleman in question I believe said something quite offensive because I had forgotten to get him a drink.
"He called me a fucking dickhead. I responded by simply getting the drink he wanted and making a note not to consort with that individual again.
"I'm not a confrontational person. I did get him a drink, gave him his drink, stood around and rejoined my group."
Mr Opik, the former Liberal Democrat MP until losing his seat in 2010, said he thought the young man's behaviour was "entirely inappropriate" and no one found it funny.
"I don't think anyone in their right mind could think I would be entertained by that behaviour.
"My judgement was that he was playing to the gallery, if nobody else had been listening he probably would not have said it.
"I didn't think anyone found it funny, how could it be funny?"
Mr Opik said he did not see any physical contact between the young man and Evans while he was present at the bar.
Evans denies one rape, two indecent assaults and six sexual assaults said to have taken place on various dates between 2002 and last year.
Former Coronation Street actress Vicky Entwistle - understood to be friend of the defendant - attended court today and sat in the public gallery. |
Two church priests accused of sexually exploiting a 34-year-old housewife in Kerala’s Kottayam for years surrendered before the police in Kollam on Monday, a week after the Supreme Court rejected their pleas for bail.
The top court had directed them to surrender by August 13 while rejecting their petitions.
Sony Varghese and Jasie K George surrendered before the police commissioner of Kollam in south Kerala and were later handed over to the team investigating the case.
They are among the four priests of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, who were allegedly involved in sexually exploiting the woman. Two of them were arrested earlier.
The crime branch of the state police had booked them last month following the allegation by the homemaker that they had raped her by exploiting a confessional statement she had made to one of them.
The mother of two has said in her statement to the police that Father Varghese, one of her distant relatives, first assaulted her during a prayer meeting when she was 16. She related the incident to the second priest, Father Job Mathew, during a confession after she got married in 2009.
Father Mathew allegedly used her confession to sexually exploit her too. Later, he shared the information with two of his colleagues – Jasie K George and Jonson V Mathew – who also joined him in blackmailing her, she said in her complaint.
However, the accused priests have denied her charges vehemently saying they were trapped.
The National Commission for Women Rekha Sharma, who met the victim, had kicked off a big controversy after she sought a ban on confessions.
This is the first time the police have registered a case on the basis of a confession, which is considered as one of the seven sacraments of the church.
Religious reformers cite police records to state that these are not isolated incidents. As many as 12 priests have been arrested from various parts of the state for allegedly abusing minors and raping women over the last few months, they point out.
The victims, for their part, allege that church authorities often try to hush up complaints instead of exposing the guilty. |
Discussion
Yet another "Rate My Napa Weekend Itinerary"
- b
- Bacon Love Apr 5, 2010 04:59 PM
Greetings Chowhoundians. I know, just what we need... another "please look at my plans" thread. I'm bringing my lady friend to Napa at the end of the month and want her to leave with fond memories of her first trip. Just to preface, we're both seasoned foodies with a basic understanding of wine (but little or no understanding of wineries). I've been to Napa twice, but both trips were impromptu invitations to the Meadowood (years ago) and TFL respectively. We're also on a bit of a budget.
Saturday: Arrive in the valley early/mid afternoon. Head straight to Downtown and spend some time at Oxbow. Then down to Gaia to check in. After freshening up, dinner somewhere a bit more laid back and casual with a drink or two (this is the biggest ? at the moment).
Sunday: Reservations at Ad Hoc for brunch. Winery tours/tastings in the afternoon at 2-3 places (Cakebread, Honig, and/or Elizabeth Spencer). Emphasis is on value, wine, interest, and education (probably in that order too). Dinner at Ubuntu (particularly excited because my lady is fascinated by "what Californians can do with amazing local produce").
Monday: Check out. Bouchon Bakery for some goodies for the ride home. Brunch/Lunch at either Brix, Boon Fly, or Fremont Diner. Head home.
Also, before the Sonoma and beyond suggestions start flying, we'd like to stay south of St. Helena and north of Am. Canyon. Anyway, if you guys have any suggestions to improve or help make this trip more memorable for us, I'll be eternally grateful! <3
-----
Ubuntu Restaurant & Yoga Studio
1140 Main Street, Napa, CA 94558
Ad Hoc
6476 Washington St., Yountville, CA 94599
Bouchon Bakery
6528 Washington St, Yountville, CA 94599
Boon Fly Cafe
4048 Sonoma Highway, Napa, CA 94559
Brix
7377 St. Helena Highway, Napa, CA 94558
Fremont Diner
2660 Fremont Dr, Sonoma, CA
Check the posts below mine on...
Yountville is north of American Canyon and south of St. Helena and rumor has it some nice places to stay.
- re: wolfe
good hunting wolfe . . . I was just thinking of that discussion! Bacon Love, take it from a female . . . your hotel location choice needs to make a better match to your choices for many good meals. I will definitely second your choice of Brix, and suggest the deck at Auberge for another fabulous view.
-----
Brix
7377 St. Helena Highway, Napa, CA 94558
- re: vday
wolfe and vday, thanks for the link. While we're not celebrating anything, newly wed, nor particularly picky about accomodations, we do appreciate ambiance (and industrial doesn't sound very... ambient). I'll look a little more carefully around the Downtown Napa area. ;)
To anyone else reading this, any other feedback (particularly winery choices and Saturday dinner... remaining OT reservations are at whacky times and I doubt we'd have the energy for an epic 4 hour meal)?
- re: Bacon Love
- re: Bacon Love
My favorite more casual restaurant in Downtown Napa is Azzurro Pizzeria. Although I haven't been, Graces's Table is getting a lot of great reviews. A really fun place is The Bounty Hunter which offers some interesting wine tasting options (I haven't had the food but I have done tastings there).
If you end up staying at Gaia (which is actually a nice place on weekdays - weekends the guests tend to get a little loud - there is a casino next door - and the walls are very thin) you may want to check in first and then explore Downtown Napa/Oxbow rather than go back and forth.
I might get flamed for this suggestion but I always enjoy tasting at Domaine Carneros. Yes, it's the Disneyland of Napa but that doesn't take away from the fact that they have good wines and the view is beautiful. I always take out of town guests there and they love it. You also have the option of NOT paying a $25 tasting fee; there are cheaper flights or you can get a single glass of wine.....
-----
Domaine Carneros
1240 Duhig Rd, Napa, CA
Note that the chef who got Ubuntu its Michelin star has left, along with some of the staff. If you go, you should probably ratchet down your expectations. But you'll be enjoying amazing local produce almost anyplace in the Bay Area.
-----
Ubuntu Restaurant & Yoga Studio
1140 Main Street, Napa, CA 94558
- re: Cicely
Let's not short change Ubuntu yet. Here are 2 reviews since Chef Fox left, both positive.......
-----
Ubuntu Restaurant & Yoga Studio
1140 Main Street, Napa, CA 94558
- re: Cicely
To your credit, your research seems a little better than most. As you have alluded already, this question is often asked. There's lots of bad advice out there, but I think you've got mostly good choices. However, I would suggest...
1. Nix Brix. Boon Fly breakfast is highly regarded, and Fremont Diner is my current spot. It's a coin toss for those two.
2. Skip Cakebread, and visit to their neighbor, Turnbull instead. Cakebread has become a factory, in many ways. I like Honig and Elizabeth Spencer as choices, though (many people have never even heard of ES). If you want a winery with Cakebread's history, I would go to Heitz (although Turnbull has been in the valley a long time, too).
3. I had spotty service at Ubuntu, even in its heyday. Now its menu has a shade of doubt. I'd go to La Toque. Their somms are the best in the biz.
-----
Ubuntu Restaurant & Yoga Studio
1140 Main Street, Napa, CA 94558
Boon Fly Cafe
4048 Sonoma Highway, Napa, CA 94559
La Toque Restaurant
1314 McKinstry Street, Napa, CA 94559
Fremont Diner
2660 Fremont Dr, Sonoma, CA
- re: ThirstyReader
Thanks so much for the suggestions (particularly the wineries). I also had Elyse on my list of candidates... any thoughts?
So many conflicting opinions about my Monday brunch choices (especially in older threads I haven't posted in yet)... seems like it depends on what kind of ambiance and/or food you're looking for.
Already re-arranged our accomodations (now staying in Downtown Napa)... seemed logical since we're trying to minimize all the driving around.
BBQ in Napa? Interesting concept... any idea if the meat is smoked? Nothing burns me up more than trying a new BBQ joint only to discover that the meat was partially/fully boiled and slathered in sauce to make it "smokey"... :-/
- re: Bacon Love
BarbersQ, Bounty Hunter and Buster's all cook their meats with smoke. Even Napa isn't that clueless about Southern cooking. Haha. Although I'm not so sure about Red Rock Cafe, which does serve up a Sloppy Joe version of a pulled pork sandwich (not my thing, either).
Here's an opposite thought - if you're going into Napa and then heading back south to check into Gaia (which is American Canyon), you could continue to go south and check out Havana Sol for some Cuban food in Vallejo.
Here's a post from it here - not sure if there are any more recent reviews of the place here on Chow (folks on Yelp have noted that the service has improved of late.)...
-----
Havana Sol
326 Virginia St, Vallejo, CA |
Updating, Educating, Entertaining you…
How to overcome anger – Research
There is much more to helping someone with anger issues than teaching them to manage their rage, research has shown.
Persons who responds violently, be it physically or verbally, need to change their behavior. They can do this by identifying signs of lower levels of anger so that they can address it long before the explosions – at a time when the feeling is more manageable.
Alternatively, if their anger overwhelms them too quickly, they can learn to walk away, count to 10, or engage in some other distraction until the intensity lessens. All of these skills can be helpful, but they still leave the person with unexpressed painful feelings, which will very likely continue to build.
According to WebMD, contrary to popular belief, research tells us that venting anger does not get it out of your system. Instead, it tends to increase the feeling. Behaviors such as punching a pillow, laying on your car horn, or shouting obscenities often make people angrier. Although people sometimes report feeling better after venting, they have also stirred and inflamed their anger. I suspect that any relief they feel is due to the physical exertion of energy. If they went for a run or lifted weights, they might notice that they could lessen the buildup of emotional energy while giving their anger a chance to cool down. Yet, even then, the angry feelings would still be there and need to be dealt with.
It can help to think of anger as an emotional reaction to a perception of what’s being communicated – which runs deeper than the feeling itself. For instance, if an abusive husband learns to curb his violent outbursts, he may still struggle with the belief that his wife sees him as weak or insignificant, and with his fear that she might leave him. Maybe his wife is communicating these messages or maybe his understanding has more to do with his inner struggles. Either way, by learning to tolerate vulnerable feelings well enough to reflect on the experience, he will be better able to find healthier ways of coping. For instance, he might talk with her about his concerns and give her a chance to explain what she really meant.
So, while managing or controlling anger can be helpful, it does not resolve “anger issues.” People who struggle with such issues must also learn to tolerate their many emotions. They must face the sense of vulnerability with courage, perhaps with the help of therapy. By processing their thoughts and feelings, they can release themselves from the grips of their out-of-control anger. Rather than exerting a violent, reactive “strength” pumped up to overpower their sense of vulnerability, they can express a more secure strength – without aggression – that is rooted deep within. |
If you go
The Goliad City Council meets at 6:30 p.m. on the first and third Tuesdays of the month in City Hall, 152 W. End St.
Government cannot operate without the public's trust.
The town of Goliad has shattered that bond by wasting $1 million of taxpayer money during the past five years. Using a little-known economic development program, Goliad went around all normal business practices for cities and handed out cash with almost no questions asked.
During a six-month investigation, the Victoria Advocate uncovered a program riddled with poor record-keeping, questionable loan practices, missing documents and virtually no accountability. To put it more bluntly, Goliad's business practices are shameful.
For the sake of all Texas taxpayers, this has to change:
• Goliad residents should be outraged and hold their City Council members accountable.
• The Goliad district attorney needs to conduct a full investigation.
• State legislators need to review the 2005 law that Goliad has bastardized.
Many Texas cities, including Victoria, have an economic development corporation that operates under strict state guidelines and oversight by the comptroller's office. By providing information and arranging tax incentives, they work properly with state and local officials to recruit and retain businesses. They don't routinely hand out loans or grants, as Goliad has done since it created a municipal development district in 2008, collecting a half cent in sales tax.
Since then, Goliad has operated like a bank - or, more accurately, like a bank where no one pays attention or is held accountable. The town has made loans and grants without those involved signing documents, without proper collateral and without observing standard ethical business practices.
City Council members, their relatives and their friends have benefited from this unchecked cash bonanza. In one particularly egregious example, a City Council member defaulted on his $31,000 loan, yet continued to vote on issues about how the program operates.
One example, however, does not adequately cover how utterly broken the program is. Supposedly set up to promote economic development, the Goliad program is fundamentally flawed.
Instead of attracting a job creator like a Caterpillar manufacturing plant, Goliad has handed out tax money to business people who started a video store at a time when Blockbuster was going bankrupt, to a self-serve laundromat that generated no new jobs and to a welding company that never even opened. The Advocate outlines all of this and more in a special report starting on Sunday's front page. All who care about good government should read the entire report, which spans six newspaper pages.
Along with not actually promoting economic development, Goliad has not accounted for how the money was spent and has run roughshod over normal concerns about conflicts of interest. It is being generous to say Goliad has wasted $1 million. Waste means to spend thoughtlessly or carelessly without adequate return. It is being generous to say those involved in Goliad's program have been thoughtless and careless.
In Aransas Pass, where a development district resulted in a civic center and an aquatics center, the city manager said she can't imagine using the program to hand out loans to private businesses. Aransas Pass and Goliad are two of 24 development districts in Texas. They appear to be the best and worst examples of how these programs can operate, but the state should investigate all 24. State Sen. Glen Hegar, R-Katy, who is running for state comptroller, said his office is researching the issue.
Presented with all of this evidence, Goliad officials have shrugged, pointed the blame at others and offered no indication they will even consider changing how they operate. Such an irresponsible attitude must be challenged.
The power to change this starts with Goliad residents. Goliad is a charming town of 1,900 known for its historic ties to the founding of the United States and Texas. If townspeople don't want to be known as a prime example for government waste, they need to start by packing the next City Council meeting.
Through the development district, Goliad City Council members spent $1 million with almost no questions asked. The public needs to demand answers - now.
This editorial reflects the views of the Victoria Advocate's editorial board. |
Haut-Rhône Tourisme is the intermunicipal Tourist Office which covers the 26 towns and villages of the Usses & Rhône local council community.
Within easy reach of Bellegarde, Geneva, Annecy, Aix-les-Bains and Belley, the Haut-Rhône offers a life-sized outdoor playground.
You can enjoy a wide variety of activities in both summer and winter: canoeing, paddle boating, stand up paddle boarding, hiking, mountain biking and electric cycling, fishing, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, sledging and much more. So much to see! The Rhône and Usses rivers, le Grand Colombier mountain (made famous by the Tour de France), le Domaine Nordique de Sur Lyand (with a 360° view of the Alps and Mont Blanc) and the Montagne des Princes.
A TRAVELLER’S PARADISE
The Haut-Rhône is a traveller’s paradise with the Chemin de Saint-Jacques de Compostelle (Camino de Santiago, or St James’ Way), the Grande Traversée des Alpes, the Chemins du Soleil and the ViaRhôna.
With the opening of Anglefort and Virignin locks, the Haut-Rhône is once again a popular destination for pleasure boaters, who are returning in increasing numbers to these 100 km of navigable waterways.
Make sure you also take the time to discover the area’s history and heritage. Explore the Clermont and Chaumont castles, the Seyssel villages and the local canal transportation history, the Génissiat dam, and the various exhibitions on offer at the Maison du Haut-Rhône.
Local products
Foodies, connoisseurs, pleasure seekers – you’ll certainly feel at home here!
Meet our winegrowers and farmers. Make the most of our local markets, fine-food restaurants and more traditional establishments.
Awaken your taste buds with Seyssel (AOC) and Frangy (AOC Vins de Savoie) wines, PGI Tomme de Savoie cheese, PGI Savoie apples and pears, Comté Pyrimont cheese, locally-produced honey, artisanal chocolate and a whole variety of other local delights. A whole host of wonderful flavours await you.
Have we tempted you yet? Come and find out more – pop in and see us at the Maison du Haut-Rhône tourist offices in Seyssel (head office) and Frangy.
Here you will find practical information and useful tips to help you discover or rediscover this beautiful region and plan an enjoyable visit for the whole family. |
Guide Regarding How To Create High Quality Webpage Design
Would you like to possess a website which is attractive and inviting for visitors? Then this post is for you personally. You will learn tips, tricks and concepts for working on your web design skills. Irrespective of your level of experience, there exists always something totally new to understand.
If you would like your site to focus on the requirements of visitors, it should be user-friendly and straightforward to navigate. Links have to be prominent and straightforward to discover. Menus render your site easier for users to surf. Hyperlink to the primary page from almost every other page from the site to ensure that visitors can simply find information and facts.
Never allow dated or irrelevant content to stay on your own website. In case your webpage features a function that already happened, people will never be thinking about reading much more of your site content. Users are careful using their some time and when they can tell that your website is not updated often, they are going to leave. Set an evaluation schedule to update content and take away items which are no more useful.
Let people cancel any action they have got started. This could include completing forms, browsing your website, or registering for newsletters. Should you not give site users the ability to cancel an action, they are not likely to go back to your website. As time passes, this may negatively impact the sales and site traffic.
Always take outdated information and content away from your site. For instance, in case your webpage is full of advertising for a thing that happened months ago, viewers will turn away. Web users want fresh information from updated and maintained sites, and letting stale content stay up screams carelessness on your side. Set an evaluation schedule to update content and take away items which are no more useful.
You should have a great base of knowledge about web design skills, and you might just be ready to make an effort to carry out some designing of your personal. Providing you carry on improving your expertise in the sector and increasing your skill set, you are going to become an outstanding website designer immediately. |
Q:
Windows azure relationship between bandwidth and CDN
What is the relationship between bandwidth and CDN in Windows Azure?
Let's say I have 3 MB of content seen by 100000 users monthly = 300 GB bandwidth without a CDN.
If I want to use their CDN how does this work? Is the bandwidth calculated to feed the various CDN nodes (i.e. 3MB * (number of nodes))? From there on is the price calculated as CDN price?
Regards,
Matteo
A:
The CDN bills for egress in two locations - first to fill the cache, and secondly to serve the resource. You are also billed for transactions. Here is an example:
You have a icon, 'icon.png' that will be served from the CDN. It is 1K and cached for long time. 1M users hit it from every location in the world.
In this scenario, you would be billed for the bandwidth from blob storage to each CDN location used (there were 26+ or so locations not too long ago). That would be 26x 1K or 26K of egress + 26 transactions from blob storage to each location. Now, you would serve the file 1M times - 1 GB of bandwith and 1M transactions. Your total charge would be 1GB of bandwidth (broken up by region prices) + 1M transactions + 26 transactions to fill cache + 26K of bandwith (again, by region).
The CDN is good for serving data that does not change frequently. This is not a bad deal at all and great use of CDN. However, if you introduce the added complexity of frequently expired objects, you will then hit the case where you need to repopulate the cache. Final example: you have 1MB that changes frequently (every 15 mins) and 100K users requesting it over month from around the world. Here is what you would be billed:
1MB x 26 CDN x 4 update/hr x 24 hrs (2.5GB/day, 73GB/month) egress to populate caches
100K x 1MB = 97GB of bandwidth to serve actual file.
100K transactions for serving + transactions for filling cache
In this case, you can see that you actually spend a fair amount of money filling the cache and almost as much just serving it. It might be better to just serve from blob storage here assuming latency was not a huge factor.
|
Tag Archives: Sakal Media Group
PRITAM SENGUPTA writes from New Delhi: Nothing is bringing home the seriousness of the global economic downturn to Indian media practitioners better than the breakneck speed with which media plans are being revised or revoked.
Just a few months ago, it all seemed hunky-dory—a 20 per cent growth for the media and entertainment industry in 2006, followed by an 18 per cent growth last year.
International behemoths were rushing to launch Indian editions or getting into tieups with local players when not outsourcing work here. Indian groups were launching more editions (and a TV station with some spare cash). Regional players were planning excursions into newer and hitherto unexplored avenues.
The profits of at least two entities (HT Media and Jagran Prakashan) doubled year-on-year; another listed company Deccan Chronicle upped advertising rates by 30 per cent even as it launched cut-price editions in Madras and Bangalore to crown itself the “The Face of the South”.
With media employment growing by 27 per cent in 2007, the Union labour ministry hinted deliciously that by 2013, the media would create more, yes more, jobs than the information technology and IT-enabled services and automotive industries!
Forbes was quoting a Pricewaterhouse Coopers forecast that the Indian media would outpace the economy till 2011:
“Rising incomes and consumer spending fueled by the country’s robust economic growth will combine with expanded information delivery options over mobile phones and the Internet to drive a boom that will benefit all segments of the industry, from home video to radio to newspapers.”
But, suddenly, it doesn’t look so rosy.
The India launch of Financial Times is nearly off; no one is talking of the Hindi business paper that Dainik Jagran wanted to bring; the Donnelly press that Network 18 had bought with great flourish is reportedly up for sale.
The fate of the launch of at least two magazines is in the balance. One prominent newspaper group is reworking employee contracts for the coming year; on the anvil is an across-the-board 30 per cent cut in cost to company.
“Continuous expansion into new businesses, set up through associates and subsidiaries which mesmerised the so-called strategic investors who pumped money into these entities. This created embedded valuation for the listed entity that everybody hoped would be unlocked to another set of suckers in the stock market.”
However, few of these developments can match the manner in which the Sakal dream has come crashing down.
The Marathi language newspaper group owned by Abhijit Pawar, the nephew of India’s powerful agriculture minister Sharad Pawar (whose daughter, the parliamentarian Supriya Sule is on the board), decided to grab a slice of the promised pie earlier this year.
The group’s English daily Maharashtra Herald was relaunched as Sakaal Times in Poona in May, in collaboration with a company set up by former Times of India editor Dileep Padgaonkar. Plans for a pan-India “rollout”, including an edition in New Delhi, were feverishly announced. A foreign affairs magazine materialised out of thin air.
So far, so good.
On the last day of November, staffers working at the Delhi office of Sakaal Times turned up for work only to be greeted with a notice that announced that their services were no longer required.
Below is the full text of an anonymous chainmail that chronicles how little stamina bottomline-obsessed publishers and managers have to stay the course; how The Great Indian Media Dream turned into a nighmare overnight for a regional group aspiring (and perspiring) to make it big on the national scene; and how journalists got trapped in the very bubble they had helped create.
***
Hi Friends.
Do you remember the BiTV (Business India Television) lockout?
Something worse than that happened on the 30th of November, 2008.
Sakaal Times, the English daily brought out in May (renaming the existing Maharashtra Herald) by the Sakal group of Poona (of the Marathi daily Sakal fame) and helmed by wannabe media baron Abhijit Pawar (nephew of Nationalist Congress Party leader, Union minister and former BCCI president Sharad Pawar), suddenly decided to close down its Delhi operations without any prior intimation to any of its employees, leaving nearly 80 people jobless at one go.
Those impacted are not worthless people—all of them, including me, had left secure jobs in respected media houses to join what sounded like an ambitious media venture from one of the most-respected media houses of Maharashtra.
The plans were big—following the Poona edition, there would be editions from places like (New) Bombay, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, and even a small edition from Delhi.
The paper looked impressive, with well thought-out stories and a nice design.
“Welcome to the Sakal family. Here all employees are treated like family members. Please visit our Pune headquarters sometime to know how we work like a family,” were the golden words from Arun Barera, the CEO of the Sakal Media Group during his interaction with a bunch of us around July-August, when the paper’s Delhi office was still in APCA House in Noida (on the outskirts of Delhi).
APCA, helmed by Dileep Padgaonkar and Anikendra Nath (Badshah) Sen, had taken charge of recruiting people and launching the venture as a BOT (build-operate-transfer) project. They did the job nicely and handed over the project to the Sakal group on November 1, 2008. Everything seemed good for all of us.
Then, since about a month ago, things began to go wrong.
About 8-10 people were asked to leave, but resident editor Dhananjay Sardeshpande called in groups to assure that nobody from the news bureau and features would be touched.
“Our plans have got delayed because of the market condition, but we will launch our Delhi edition by the end of this fiscal and our other plans are still there. We need all you people to be part of our vision,” he told us.
Just about two days ago, one colleague, who called him up, was told by Anand Agashe, director-editor of the newspaper, that whatever rumours were floating around were baseless. He, of course, said there will be a reduction of the number of pages, and a decision would be taken around December 2-3.
Suddenly, on the morning of November 30, a “Notice”, actually a print out on a blank sheet of paper (not the company letterhead), signed by an “authorized signatory” whose name or designation was not mentioned, was found pasted on the locked gates of the premises at the 1st floor of Pratap Bhawan on Bahadurshah Zafar Marg, saying the Delhi operations are being wound up.
The letter was dated November 30, while the termination notice, with a cheque for part of our salaries for this month and one more month (minus the allowances which are paid against bills submitted) were sent through SpeedPost™ to all of us individually at our residence addresses from Poona on November 29 (some of us got the mails on December 1 while others are yet to get their individual copies).
The so-called ‘Notice’ said:
“ (For the information of the employees working for Sakaal Times)
“Subject: Operations of Sakaal Times at Delhi
“The new daily is incurring heavy expenses on Delhi operations resulting into substantial losses to the company. You are aware that this is further compounded by the present serious downtrend in the economy. Due to the same the circulation and the revenue generation of the newspaper has been seriously affected. Due to this it has become inevitable for the company to restructure its operations. On account of the said restructuring the Editorial work so far carried out at Delhi is no longer required to be continued. As a result, the operations are stopped forthwith and the persons working for Sakaal Times operations are being relieved. The necessary communication has already been sent to the individual employees on their postal address registered with the company. The relevant employees need not attend the office from today onwards.
“The work of Magazines and TV will continue after some modifications of the premises for which the same will be closed for few days.
“For Sakal Papers limited
“Authorized Signatory“
There was a rubber stamp of Sakal Papers Limited, New Delhi, affixed next to the illegible signature, which looked like an “A”.
Agitated employees gathered during the day itself on Sunday, November 30, to discuss the matter.
Quite astonishingly, colleagues who were working till late night on November 29 had no inkling of what was going to happen in the morning. In fact, one colleague was in Rajasthan covering the elections there when the lock out was announced!
The employees, finding that the premises have been locked out with some of their valuable belongings inside (eg, bank pass books, cheque books, etc) decided to register a complaint with the IP Estate Police Station regarding this. Photo Editor K.K. Laskar, as the convenor of the Committee of Sakaal Times Employees formed to fight the sudden lockout, registered the complaint.
But within one hour of filing the police complaint, Pawar called up Laskar, claiming there had been a “communication gap” and things should not have been done as they have been. He “requested” Laskar to ask all employees to come to office on Monday, December 2, to discuss the matter with a team from Poona.
Almost at the same time, Pawar, Khire, Agashe gave contradictory and false statements to media persons who contacted them on the developments: “Abhijit Pawar, managing director of the 76-year-old Sakaal Media Group, said staffers had been informed earlier.
“It has just been brought to my attention that the communication hadn’t reached everyone, and I’m sorry if that is the case. I have been told that a communication had been made informally to senior members of the staff in Delhi and it was supposed to have reached everyone. Everyone is being adequately compensated,” Pawar added“.
Just look at the casual stance he has taken. Saying just a mere “sorry” for snatching the livelihoods of around 80 people.
Just look at the way he claims “I have been told.”
Do you “informally” communicate to senior staff or any staff members about a lock out (which anyway is a blatant lie as there was no such communication to anyone)? “It was supposed to reach.” The sheer insensitiveness of this man seeps through every word of his quote.
Can he provide any proof that staff had been informed about the closure?
Even the “termination of contract” letter received by some people on December 1 (posted on November 29, but received only by some on Dec 1) does not mention anything about the closure. It only talks about the company’s “right” to “terminate your services without assigning any reason by giving one month’s notice or a notice pay in lieu of notice—the company has decided to exercise this right and is terminating your contractual employment w.e.f 30-11-2008 after working hours”.
Where is the mention of the lockout? Can you find another such example of fork-tongued speak? (sic)
As we all know, there is a standard procedure for lock outs. Businesses may and do go bad, but the way Sakaal Times has done it, is pure evil. If it reminds everyone of how some chit fund operators vanish after pocketing money of investors, well, you are not at fault.
Any ethical company would have taken its employees into confidence, told them that they would have to shut down, and would have given them at least a month’s time so that they can look out for alternative jobs. But this is what a 75-year-old media group does.
This is what an aghast observer wrote to various e-groups:
“…The lock-out is illegal as they have not followed labour laws. The journalists have formed an action committee that plans to move court. The nearly 50 journalists are angry and aghast at such despicable treatment. This is an insult to journalists all over India who should rise to the occasion and send their condemnation to Sakal Papers Ltd. This is a paper with deep pockets thanks to its Marathi print monopoly….”
This is just for information of all media people, because if in future this group tries to hire you, beware and don’t fall for its so-called reputation. It’s a den of cheats and liars. |
Disassembly Process
ASUS U36 (U36J, U36JC, U36SD, U36SG) Series Notebook consists of various modules. This chapter describes the procedure for the complete notebook disassembly. In addition, in between procedures, the detailed disassembly procedure of individual modules will be provided for your needs.
The disassembly procedure consists of the following steps:
- Battery Module
- Memory Module
- Top Case Module
- Keyboard Module
- HDD Module
- IO Board Module
- Motherboard Module
- LCD Module
Battery Module
The illustration below shows how to remove the battery module.
Remove Battery Module
1. Open the battery latch1, and hold the battery latch2 to take the battery away.
Memory Module
The illustration shows how to remove the Memory Module.
Remove Memory Module
1. Remove 1 screw here and take the DDR door away.
2. Pull two latches here to pop the Memory module up at 45 angles, and then pull out the module at that angle.
Top Case Module
The illustrations below show how to remove and disassemble the Top Case Module.
Remove the Top Case Module
1. Remove 6 screws on the bottom case. And then remove 4 rubbers.
2. Remove 4 screws here.
3. Tear off 2 tapes on FFC. And then disconnect 2 FFCs.
4. Disconnect the keyboard FPC.
5. Use disassembly tool to pry up the top case and take it away.
Keyboard Module
The illustrations below show how to remove and disassemble the Keyboard Module.
Remove the Keyboard Module
1. Tear off 3 tapes and disconnect 2 FFCs.
2. Tear off the mylar on the top case.
3. Remove 12 screws on the keyboard.
4. Take the keyboard away.
HDD Module
The illustrations below show how to remove the HDD Module from the notebook.
Remove HDD Module
1. Tear off the tapes on the HDD.
2. Remove 5 screws here. And then take the HDD away.
3. Remove 4 screws on HDD bracket.
IO Board Module
The illustration below shows how to remove the IO Board Module from the notebook.
Remove I/O Board Module
1. Remove 1 screw on the I/O Board and remove it toward the arrow.
2. Turn over the IO Board and disconnect the antennas and take the IO Board away.
3. Remove 2 screws on Wireless LAN card and pull out the card from its slot.
Motherboard Module
The illustrations below show how to disassemble and remove the Motherboard Module.
Remove the Motherboard Module
1. Tear off the tape and disconnect the LVDS cable and CMOS cable.
2. Tear off 2 tapes and remove 22 screws.
3. Remove the main borad and turn it over. Disconnect the speaker cable and take the main board away.
4. Tear off the tape and disconnect the fan cable. Turn it over and remove 6 screws.
5. Tear off the tapes on the 2 sides of the thermal module. And then spearate the fan from the thermal assy.
LCD Module
The illustrations below show how to remove and disassemble the LCD Module of the notebook.
Removing the LCD Module
1. Remove 2 screws here.
2. Remove the LCD module from the bottom case.
3. Remove 6 rubber pads and 6 screws on LCD front bezel.
4. Pry the edges softly to separate LCD front bezel from LCD panel and take it away.
5. Remove 5 screws on each hinge and take it away. |
Passengers flying from Madrid airport are being urged to reduce the amount of checked-in luggage this weekend due to a baggage handlers’ strike.
Those arriving at the airport have been told to expect delays of up to two hours in receiving their bags.
EasyJet made the plea while admitting to some “minor disruption” to flights from the Spanish capital.
“Baggage handling is one of the services that has been impacted by the strike action. So far baggage disruption has been minimal, however with increasing passengers loads this coming weekend, there is an increased risk that passenger bags may fail to connect to your flight,” the airline warned.
The budget carrier said it strongly recommended passenger repack their luggage into two small bags that can be taken on board the aircraft with them and be loaded into overhead compartments when travelling between tomorrow (Thursday) and Sunday.
“We are trying to minimise the amount of checked-in luggage to be loaded in to the holds of the aircraft,” easyJet said.
“Passengers arriving in to Madrid may experience delays (up to 2 hours) waiting for your bags. We appreciate that this is an unacceptable delay and is very inconvenient.
“We can assure you that we are continuously monitoring the situation and working with the handling agent to avoid this excessive delay.”
This is a community-moderated forum.
All post are the individual views of the respective commenter and are not the expressed views of Travel Weekly.
By posting your comments you agree to accept our Terms & Conditions. |
TAHOE/TRUCKEE — Dear TTUSD Families,
As summer comes to a close, I have difficulty believing that I am writing my first “welcome” letter as the Superintendent-Chief Learning Officer of the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District. The amazing spring we experienced together transformed into a wonderful summer, and I hope all of you have been enjoying the incredible Tahoe Truckee region with opportunities to continue to learn, rest, recharge, and recreate in our glorious surroundings. Many of our students have participated in summer learning programs, and I know all will come to school ready to learn on Aug. 29.
One of the highlights of my summer was attending the National Civic League Conference where Tahoe Truckee was recognized as one of 14 communities in the nation as an All-America City. The program focus for this distinguished designation is the campaign to ensure all students are reading at grade level by the end of third grade. Thanks to a community effort led by the Excellence in Education Foundation, a plan was developed for our entire community to address this critical area including many opportunities to avoid summer learning loss. This designation is a reflection of the caring and commitment of our entire community to ensure that all of our students are successful.
The All-America City plan to address grade level reading also includes two other critical areas: school readiness and chronic absences. We have new plans and programs under consideration to complement the outstanding efforts already underway to help students enter school ready to learn. On the other hand, I was very surprised to learn that we have a significant school attendance problem in our district. It is critical that our students attend school every day in order to learn and be successful. Research shows that chronic absences not only affect the learning of the one student but have an impact on learning for the entire class. Please help ensure that your students attend school regularly and are absent only when absolutely necessary. Obviously, it is important to keep your child home when ill, but please try to plan vacations and other activities around scheduled school breaks.
We are excited to start with several new teachers and staff this fall, including our new principal at Tahoe Truckee High School, Greg Dettinger. All of the incoming teachers and staff will be participating in a three-day academy which will include a tour of the district offices and schools, an orientation covering procedures, budget training, and meeting with teacher mentors, coaches, and the board of trustees so they start the year with support systems in place, ready to teach.
We continue to have budget concerns including ongoing deficit spending and diminishing reserves. In June the California Legislators passed and the Governor signed the 2012-2013 state budget which is based on the assumption Governor Brown’s tax initiative will pass in November. If the initiative passes, schools will be funded at the same level as in 2010-11. If the initiative fails we have been told that trigger cuts will be implemented amounting to a $454 per student reduction. While the school district has budgeted for this reduction in 2012-13, the resulting deficit for 2013-2014 is significant and could require a $3 million reduction. The passage of the tax initiative should mean an ongoing restoration of approximately $1.7 million to our budget. On Aug. 8, the Board of Education passed a resolution supporting the November tax initiatives.
Even with the ongoing budget dilemma, my goal is that we continue to build on the momentum of last spring into a new era of possibilities for our students, staff, and the entire community. I have shared my philosophical focus on rigor, relevance, and respectful relationships, and these remain true to my core as an educator and your Chief Learning Officer. This year we will be sharing a new vision for our school district that embodies this philosophy and together we will be planning how we will build pathways to new possibilities for our students. These pathways will include how we will address the California Common Core State Standards and 21st century learning outcomes for our graduates. Together we will create pathways of possibilities that will prepare our students for college, career, and life!
I also want to reiterate my commitment to being an active, responsive, and visible part of our community. I have reserved every Wednesday morning to visit schools, be in classrooms, and visit departments. While my official “listening and learning tour” is over, I promise to continue to listen and learn by participating in school and community events and being available to each and every one of you. I also plan to schedule regular opportunities to meet with me so you may share your interests about our school district.
As I complete this message, I find myself feeling so fortunate to be a part of such a great school district and community. We truly are deserving of the title: All-America City! Welcome back and have a great school year!
— Rob Leri is Superintendent-Chief Learning Officer of the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District.
A Facebook account is required |
#include "GLFW_BackEnd.h"
#include "../../Scene/SceneMgr.h"
#include "../RenderBackEnd.h"
#include "EngineSrc/BackEnd/AbstractDevice.h"
#include "GL/glew.h"
#define NOMINMAX
#define VK_USE_PLATFORM_WIN32_KHR
#include "vulkan/vulkan.h"
#include "vulkan/vk_sdk_platform.h"
#define GLFW_INCLUDE_NONE
#include "GLFW/glfw3.h"
#include <algorithm>
#include <strstream>
#include "EngineSrc/BackEnd/VKRenderBackEnd.h"
const bool g_isuesVulkan = true;
namespace tzw {
static void
error_callback(int error, const char* description)
{
fputs(description, stderr);
}
static void
cursor_position_callback(GLFWwindow* window, double xpos, double ypos)
{
AbstractDevice::shared()->mouseMoveEvent(vec2(xpos, ypos));
}
static void
mouse_button_callback(GLFWwindow* window, int button, int action, int mods)
{
double x, y;
glfwGetCursorPos(window, &x, &y);
switch (action) {
case GLFW_PRESS:
AbstractDevice::shared()->mousePressEvent(button, vec2(x, y));
break;
case GLFW_RELEASE:
AbstractDevice::shared()->mouseReleaseEvent(button, vec2(x, y));
break;
default:
break;
}
}
static void
key_callback(GLFWwindow* window, int key, int scancode, int action, int mods)
{
std::string theStr = "";
switch (action) {
case GLFW_PRESS: {
AbstractDevice::shared()->keyPressEvent(key);
} break;
case GLFW_RELEASE: {
AbstractDevice::shared()->keyReleaseEvent(key);
} break;
default:
break;
}
// if (key == GLFW_KEY_ESCAPE && action == GLFW_PRESS)
// glfwSetWindowShouldClose(window, GL_TRUE);
}
static void
char_callback(GLFWwindow*, unsigned int theChar)
{
AbstractDevice::shared()->charInputEvent(theChar);
}
static void
scroll_callback(GLFWwindow* window, double xoffset, double yoffset)
{
AbstractDevice::shared()->scrollEvent(xoffset, yoffset);
}
void
GLFW_BackEnd::prepare(int width, int height, bool isFullScreen)
{
if (!glfwInit())
{
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
bool isVulkanAvabile = false;
if (glfwVulkanSupported())
{
// Vulkan is available, at least for compute
printf("vulkan is avalable\n");
isVulkanAvabile = true;
}
int w = width;
int h = height;
glfwWindowHint(GLFW_RESIZABLE, 0);
GLFWmonitor * monitor;
if(isFullScreen)
{
monitor = glfwGetPrimaryMonitor();
} else
{
monitor = nullptr;
}
if(isVulkanAvabile && EngineDef::isUseVulkan)
{
//disable init opengl
glfwWindowHint(GLFW_CLIENT_API, GLFW_NO_API);
}
m_window = glfwCreateWindow(w, h, EngineDef::versionStr, monitor, NULL);
if(isVulkanAvabile && EngineDef::isUseVulkan)
{
AbstractDevice::shared()->setRenderDevice(RenderDeviceType::Vulkan_Device);
}else{
AbstractDevice::shared()->setRenderDevice(RenderDeviceType::OpenGl_Device);
}
m_w = w;
m_h = h;
AbstractDevice::shared()->createRenderBackEnd(m_window);
glfwSetWindowCenter(m_window);
GLint flags;
glfwSwapInterval(0);
glfwSetKeyCallback(m_window, key_callback);
glfwSetCharCallback(m_window, char_callback);
glfwSetScrollCallback(m_window, scroll_callback);
glfwSetMouseButtonCallback(m_window, mouse_button_callback);
glfwSetCursorPosCallback(m_window, cursor_position_callback);
AbstractDevice::shared()->init(w, h);
}
void
GLFW_BackEnd::run()
{
while (!glfwWindowShouldClose(m_window)) {
if(AbstractDevice::shared()->getRenderDeviceType() == RenderDeviceType::OpenGl_Device)
{
AbstractDevice::shared()->update();
glfwSwapBuffers(m_window);
}
else{
AbstractDevice::shared()->update();
}
glfwPollEvents();
}
glfwDestroyWindow(m_window);
glfwTerminate();
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
GLFW_BackEnd::GLFW_BackEnd()
: m_window(nullptr)
{}
void
GLFW_BackEnd::setUnlimitedCursor(bool enable)
{
if (enable) {
glfwSetInputMode(m_window, GLFW_CURSOR, GLFW_CURSOR_DISABLED);
} else {
glfwSetInputMode(m_window, GLFW_CURSOR, GLFW_CURSOR_NORMAL);
}
}
void
GLFW_BackEnd::getMousePos(double* posX, double* posY)
{
glfwGetCursorPos(m_window, posX, posY);
}
int
GLFW_BackEnd::getMouseButton(int buttonMode)
{
return glfwGetMouseButton(m_window, buttonMode);
}
void
GLFW_BackEnd::setWinSize(int width, int height)
{
m_w = width;
m_h = height;
glfwSetWindowSize(m_window, width, height);
}
void
GLFW_BackEnd::setIsFullScreen(bool isFullScreen)
{
// glfws
if (isFullScreen) {
const GLFWvidmode* mode = glfwGetVideoMode(glfwGetPrimaryMonitor());
glfwSetWindowMonitor(m_window, glfwGetPrimaryMonitor(), 0, 0, mode->width, mode->height, 0);
}
else
{
}
}
void GLFW_BackEnd::changeScreenSetting(int w, int h, bool isFullScreen)
{
GLFWmonitor * monitor = nullptr;
if (isFullScreen) {
monitor = glfwGetPrimaryMonitor();
}
else
{
monitor = nullptr;
}
glfwSetWindowMonitor(m_window, monitor, 0, 0, w, h, 0);
glfwSetWindowCenter(m_window);
}
bool
GLFW_BackEnd::glfwSetWindowCenter(GLFWwindow* window)
{
if (!window)
return false;
int sx = 0, sy = 0;
int px = 0, py = 0;
int mx = 0, my = 0;
int monitor_count = 0;
int best_area = 0;
int final_x = 0, final_y = 0;
glfwGetWindowSize(window, &sx, &sy);
glfwGetWindowPos(window, &px, &py);
// Iterate throug all monitors
GLFWmonitor** m = glfwGetMonitors(&monitor_count);
if (!m)
return false;
for (int j = 0; j < monitor_count; ++j) {
glfwGetMonitorPos(m[j], &mx, &my);
const GLFWvidmode* mode = glfwGetVideoMode(m[j]);
if (!mode)
continue;
// Get intersection of two rectangles - screen and window
int minX = std::max(mx, px);
int minY = std::max(my, py);
int maxX = std::min(mx + mode->width, px + sx);
int maxY = std::min(my + mode->height, py + sy);
// Calculate area of the intersection
int area = std::max(maxX - minX, 0) * std::max(maxY - minY, 0);
// If its bigger than actual (window covers more space on this monitor)
if (area > best_area) {
// Calculate proper position in this monitor
final_x = mx + (mode->width - sx) / 2;
final_y = my + (mode->height - sy) / 2;
best_area = area;
}
}
// We found something
if (best_area)
glfwSetWindowPos(window, final_x, final_y);
// Something is wrong - current window has NOT any intersection with any
// monitors. Move it to the default one.
else {
GLFWmonitor* primary = glfwGetPrimaryMonitor();
if (primary) {
const GLFWvidmode* desktop = glfwGetVideoMode(primary);
if (desktop)
glfwSetWindowPos(
window, (desktop->width - sx) / 2, (desktop->height - sy) / 2);
else
return false;
} else
return false;
}
return true;
}
} // namespace tzw
|
Tribunal rules against Travers in pregnancy discrimination case
17 May 2013 | By Joanne Harris
Related Articles
Sex discrimination and the City
28 May 2013
Firm ‘contrived’ not to employ pregnant trainee
28 May 2013
Travers and ex-trainee reach financial settlement on pregnancy discrimination case
6 June 2013
Travers to promote firm-wide diversity week in wake of pregnancy discrimination ruling
28 May 2013
Leigh Day files claim against Sports Direct over zero hours
7 August 2013
Related Firms
Travers Smith has lost a discrimination case brought against it by a former trainee who claimed she was not given a permanent job because of her pregnancy.
Elizabeth George
Katie Tantum instructed Leigh Day to launch the case against the firm after failing to gain a newly-qualified (NQ) position in the firm’s real estate department (15 February 2013).
Yesterday (16 May) the London Central Employment Tribunal found that Tantum’s pregnancy, discovered during the final seat of her training contract, was “the effective cause” of Travers’ decision not to give her a permanent job in the property team.
As a result of the decision, the firm has pledged to strengthen its commitment to diversity and its discrimination training programmes.
While the tribunal dismissed Tantum’s discrimination claims regarding permanent jobs in the corporate and tax teams and a 12-month contract in litigation, as well as four unfair dismissal claims, it upheld her allegation that she was discriminated against when she was not given a permanent job in the real estate practice.
The tribunal ruled that evidence provided by the firm’s regarding the sequence of events that led to Tantum not gaining an NQ position were “implausible”, and found that a situation had been contrived whereby two places in the real estate team became one to avoid employing her.
According to the judgment, partners Julian Bass and Andrew King, making the decision over how many positions to fill, were “prepared to discriminate because of pregnancy”.
The ruling stated: “We find that the email from Mr Bass on Saturday morning 26 May 2012 affecting to propose reconsideration of the matter of the number of posts available is a subterfuge,” the ruling said.
It continued: “Mr Bass was aware of the pregnancy of the claimant when he contrived the reduction of the second post. We conclude that the reduction of the second post was a device to prevent the claimant from being offered the post of newly qualified solicitor in the real estate department.”
The tribunal directed that Travers partners and senior staff “should participate in discrimination training” and that this should be monitored. It also said there should be formal documentation in place so there is a transparent process with feedback for deciding which trainees get positions. The firm should also put in place a defined procedure for dealing with the investigation of discrimination grievances.
A remedies hearing will take place on 5 June.
A spokesperson for Travers said: “We really did not expect this decision at all. We are very surprised and disappointed by it. Throughout the proceedings, we thought our evidence was strong. We still believe that, although the employment tribunal has found otherwise on one aspect of this claim.
“Before we took the decision to defend this case, we reviewed the allegations against us extremely thoroughly with everyone involved, including Andrew King and Julian Bass, as well as counsel. If we had not been satisfied with the strength of our defence, we would not have fought the claim.
“We have complete confidence in the integrity and professionalism of Andrew and Julian, built up over their many years at the firm. None of our discussions with either of them in relation to any aspect of this case has changed that.
“We sincerely regret that one of our former trainees was left unhappy from her experience at the firm, and we will take on board the lessons to be learned. Our trainees, associates and all our staff are fundamental to the future of the firm, and we are determined to do everything we can to ensure that they are all happy here.
“Our commitment to diversity takes many forms and will remain unwavering. We are, for example, founding signatories of the Law Society’s diversity and inclusion charter, and proud to be members of Stonewall’s Diversity Champions Programme. Some 10 per cent of our associates, and four of our female partners, have flexible working arrangements. The tribunal decision strengthens our resolve to ensure that this commitment to diversity is properly understood. We have for some time operated a rolling programme of discrimination training within the firm. This will continue and we will be taking the opportunity to review the transparency of our approach to trainee qualification at the firm too.”
Leigh Day partner Liz George, representing Tantum, said in a statement: “We are delighted for Katie. It takes courage and tremendous resilience to stand up to your employer, even more so when that employer is a leading city law firm and you are only just embarking on your legal career. All of the witnesses at the tribunal on behalf of Travers Smith were senior partners in that firm.
“The evidence in this case was very clear: Katie’s level of performance meant that she would have been offered a permanent role at Travers Smith but she was denied that role because she was pregnant. Travers Smith is not alone in respect of its attitude on such matters. Despite there being equal numbers of female and male law students taking up training places at City firms, women are still failing to progress to senior roles in anything like the numbers of their male colleagues.”
Cloisters barrister Tom Coghlin added: “This judgment sends a strong message to employers that the rights of pregnant women in the workplace must be respected, whatever the nature of the workplace and whatever the status of the employee. Trainees are, of course, in a particularly vulnerable position. The tribunal’s recommendations make interesting reading, emphasising as they do the importance of transparency in recruitment procedures and training in discrimination, even for senior staff.”’
For the claimant Katie Tantum
Cloisters’ David Massarella instructed by Leigh Day & Co barrister Liz George
For the defendant Travers Smith
Essex Court Chambers’ Edward Brown instructed directly
View results 10 per page | 20 per page | 50 per page
Have your say
Related BriefingsSign up for briefing alerts
Up Close and Personnel — March 2014: dismissal for absence due to post-natal depression was not discriminatory
Is removal of tool of trade from pregnant employee discrimination?
Surrogacy: can both mothers take maternity leave?
View All Related Briefings
Readers' comments (28)
Anonymous | 20-May-2013 10:44 am
Bringing this claim against Travers must have been so difficult for Katie on so many levels, but most of all due to the fact that she was pregnant/in early motherhood. Many women do not feel up to bringing a claim in these circumstances, and often decide not to proceed because they have worries about the effect of the stress on the baby (which must have been a worry for Katie too). The three month time limit for bringing tribunal claims is a real problem for pregnant women who are discriminated against. It unreasonably limits access to justice and should be reconsidered urgently.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | 20-May-2013 11:45 am
I wish Katie and her new child well, but perhaps some of the comments against Travers may be somewhat unfair.
Katie was unsuccesful in 3 out of 4 of her applications, failing to meet the required standard in corporate, tax and litigation. That perhaps illustrates that she may not have been the high standard of NQ required today (or at least to a high enough standard to justify an NQ city salary). She may have been qualified enough and performed well in her reviews to date, but she maybe did not show signs of progressing to that next stage, which is a giant leap to take.
Furthermore, partners talk throughout these recruitment processes. Of course they do. Who is to say that, upon hearing the fact that a trainee had "hedged her bets" and declared in four separate interviews that "this is the job in law that I really want" and that "I really see myself as a committed, enthusiastic [insert legal team here] lawyer", the partners decided that they would be best off saving a salary and holding off to a) advertise externally or b) recruit at a later NQ intake when someone who is solely interested in their team becomes available?
The fact Travers were not guilty of discrimination in relation to the 12-month litigation contract also illustrates that it is not a firm wide problem. She was not chosen for that position as she was not the best candidate for it; not the fact that in all inevitability she would be absent for at least one third of the contract length (which in itself would surely have to be a consideration).
Of course best wishes to Katie and good luck with her future career, but I do not think Travers would have risked such negative publicity and court costs had the partners been as discriminatory and inconsiderate as has been suggested on this forum.
Anonymous | 20-May-2013 6:53 pm
Anon 8.45, your comment reads very much like it was written by the marketing team at Travers.
It's strongly rumoured that Dickinson Dees used to try that trick. Look where they ended up.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | 20-May-2013 8:34 pm
Probably the trainee was middle of the range - not bad but not great either - and they would have found her a place somewhere but for her pregnancy. As for the people defending Travers - anyone who thinks City partners behave in accordance with employment law needs to get a reality check.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | 20-May-2013 11:21 pm
Some of the comments here read like they are posted by Travers insiders. No doubt there is something to some of what they say and there are usually shades of grey in employment claims. However, Travers are kidding themselves if they don't realise that institutional clients will be ill at ease over the outcome of the case, which leaves the firm looking pretty shoddy.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Anonymous | 21-May-2013 11:27 am
The comments on this are EXTRAORDINARY. When news of the claim first came out, the comments on the article were all to the effect that the Claimant was silly for thinking that she could have a career at a firm like that and a family. As a (male) partner at a city firm, I was appalled by them and said so, but hardly anyone else did. Now everyone is criticising Travers. It just shows how fickle and quick to condemn the readership is.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Litigation Queen | 21-May-2013 11:32 am
Re anonymous @ 20 May 11.21. Do you seriously think that "institutional clients" don't offload employees who have got pregnant as well? Go ask their human resources departments. Most of them won't give a stuff whether Travers have done the same.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment |
Copycat Moose Munch
It's hard not to love the classic moose munch popcorn. Anytime you see those large tins filled with caramel corn and toasted nuts drizzled in milk chocolate, you know there's reason to celebrate. With this copycat recipe, now you can make you own homemade version of this iconic treat created by Harry & David.
It's perfect for filling your own tins for sharing or you can even wrap up individual servings in cellophane bags and tie it with a decorative ribbon. This is a great homemade gift that everyone is sure to love and ask for every year. Make it batch after batch and you will have a decadent, handcrafted gift for everyone on your list.
Ingredients
12 cups popped plain popcorn
1 cup (8 ounces) unsalted butter
2 cups light brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups whole raw almonds
1 1/2 cups whole raw cashews
1 (12-ounce) bag milk chocolate chips
Steps to Make It
Gather the ingredients.
Place the popcorn in a large roasting pan in one layer. Alternately, you can use two 9 x 13-inch pans. Set aside while preparing the caramel coating.
Melt the butter in a large heavy saucepan over low heat. Stir in the brown sugar, corn syrup, and salt.
Bring the butter mixture to a boil, stirring constantly. Insert a candy thermometer into the pan, without the tip touching the bottom of the pan. Boil the mixture slowly, without stirring, until the temperature reaches the soft crack stage, about 285 F. This could take at least 45 minutes, but watch thermometer temperature carefully. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 250 F.
When the temperature of the mixture is reached, immediately remove from the heat and stir in the baking soda and vanilla.
This will cause the mixture to briefly foam up. Stir the mixture and then immediately pour evenly over the popped corn in the roasting pan.
Using 2 wooden spoons or rubber spatulas, quickly mix to coat all the popcorn. Spread the coated popcorn evenly in the pan. Bake at 250 F for 15 minutes, remove from the oven and stir well. Return to oven for another 15 minutes.
Remove the pan from the oven and stir in the almonds and cashews. Bake for 30 minutes more, stirring every 10 minutes.
Turn the caramel corn out onto non-stick foil or parchment-lined baking sheets in a single layer. Cool completely, then break apart to separate any pieces that have stuck together.
Melt the chocolate chips in the microwave in 30 second intervals, stirring after each interval until melted. Drizzle the melted chocolate over the cooled caramel corn. Cool the moose munch completely before storing.
Store in airtight containers or wrap up in cellophane bags for gifts.
Enjoy. |
The TTC has placed a crucial project to increase capacity on Toronto’s most crowded subway line under review, amid a staffing shakeup that has seen senior figures involved with the program either depart the agency or placed on leave.
TTC CEO Rick Leary revealed the consultant review of the $562-million automatic train control (ATC) system last week in a single paragraph in his 68-page monthly report to the board.
The signalling system, which the TTC is in the process of installing on Line 1 (Yonge-University), would allow the agency to run trains closer together, enabling more service during the busiest times of day.
In an emailed statement, TTC spokesperson Brad Ross said a decision to launch a review “should not suggest there’s a problem with a project,” but the agency would commission a review “to ensure a project will deliver what it has promised to deliver.”
He said the exercise will determine whether the installation of ATC will enable the promised capacity improvements without any additional work, or whether the TTC might also need to upgrade the subway line’s power supply, ventilation systems, and vehicle fleet in order to run the required additional trains.
It will also determine whether ATC infrastructure can be fully installed by the previously announced date of 2019, and after that, when the capacity improvements could be fully realized.
“If there are schedule issues, this review will inform that,” Ross said.
With regular ridership of 30,000 people per hour during morning peak periods, sections of the Yonge line south of Bloor station frequently exceed scheduled capacity of about 28,000 passengers per hour. High passenger volumes, particularly during subway delays, have recently sparked safety concerns.
According to the TTC, once ATC is operational it could increase capacity on the line by as much as 25 per cent, which is critical to relieving crowding on Line 1 until the proposed relief subway line can be built. The city estimates it could be until 2031 until the new subway is complete.
News of the review follows the departure of a number of TTC managers whose responsibilities included ATC work.
On April 10, Mike Palmer, who had been the TTC’s chief operating officer since April 2017, left the agency. He had been with the TTC since 2014, serving first as deputy chief operating officer and then acting chief operating officer.
The head of the ATC program would have reported directly to Palmer, according to Ross.
Two other senior managers involved in subway infrastructure have also left, Ross confirmed.
A manager of signal operations has been placed on leave, according to a source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss staffing matters.
Ross said the TTC doesn’t talk publicly about personnel issues, and wouldn’t say whether any of the staffing changes were related to the ATC review.
Pete Tomlin, the senior project manager for ATC, remains in his job.
Reached by email Palmer, who is now working as director of rail operations and signalling at a private company, declined to answer questions about ATC and his departure from the transit agency.
In an interview, TTC board member Councillor John Campbell also said he couldn’t discuss personnel matters.
He said “there has been a gap of information provided to the senior management on how far things had progressed” with ATC.
Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...
According to Campbell, former CEO Andy Byford and then Leary “were led to believe that things were better than they were.”
The councillor said sometime after Byford left the agency in December “it was revealed that this project in terms of getting from point A to point B wasn’t moving along as quickly as it should have, and people were let down.”
The TTC has contracted Transit Systems Engineering, an engineering consultant firm, to conduct the review of ATC. The agency plans to produce a report on the issue by the end of 2018. |
New entrepreneurial leadership course offered this fall
For the fall 2017 semester, the Wayne State University Mike Ilitch School of Business will offer a new course, Management and Leadership for Entrepreneurs, to both undergraduate and graduate students. The class can be taken by management majors as an elective, and/or can be applied toward a certificate in entrepreneurship and innovation.
The course, which is dually listed as EI 5400 and EI 7200, will only be offered once a year and will examine the skills and mindset of the successful entrepreneur.
Students will use hands-on, creative and experiential learning methods in the course to gain the tools for entrepreneurial success, including how to develop effective networks and personal relationships; recruit, select and blend the strengths and talents of team members; and adapt principles of effective management and leadership for startups.
The course will be taught by new faculty member Professor Boram Do. Her teaching philosophy is to create a fun, engaging and interactive learning environment for future entrepreneurs.
Management students can count this course towards their major. The course can also be double-counted by any student pursuing an entrepreneurship certification. Check with your undergraduate academic advisor or the Graduate Programs Office for complete details.
. "Our academic offerings draws upon Wayne State's existing endeavors in entrepreneurship programming, as well as its already strong investment in the city's bootstrap culture."
An MBA concentration in entrepreneurship and innovation is also available through the Ilitch School.
For more information on the class or entrepreneurship programs in the Mike Ilitch School of Business, contact Stoltman at jeffstoltman@wayne.edu. |
Overview
Achieve Your Greatness (AYG) is the Abram Wilson Foundation‘s multi-arts education programme for children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
It targets schools in deprived areas and works with teachers to identify students who are at risk of bullying or exclusion, lacking in confidence, struggling to find their place at school and are not engaging in the arts at school.
AYG aims to address the de-prioritisation of arts subjects in schools, funding cuts that restrict access to the arts for those from underprivileged backgrounds, and a decline in the teaching of soft skills as part of the curriculum. AYG is particularly interested in working with young people who are from diverse backgrounds, are eligible for Free School Meals or have Special Educational Needs.
Programme participants access high-quality, professionally trained artists who deliver music workshops combining theatre, dance and creative writing.
Video
The overall aim of the programme is to develop participants’ artistic and transferable skills which fall under the Foundation’s 5Cs:
- Creativity
- Confidence
- Collaboration
- Communication
- Critical Thinking
- ‘I haven’t witnessed this type of project before and that’s why this is exciting to me. This is what I wish our education system had time to do – to ask young people, who are you and how can you be great?’ – Pia Furtado, The Philippa Project
‘Before AYG she never said anything in class. Now she always puts her hand up in class and contributes 100%.’ – Tara Van Gastel, Head of Drama, Plumstead Manor
‘He says he loves it so so much. The project makes him more confident of himself to be able to face lots of people and [an] audience.’ – AYG 2016 Parent
‘I have learned that failing on your first try doesn’t necessarily mean that that is your only chance and that you failed that try. There will always be more chances for you to try again.’ – AYG Participant, Plumstead Manor
‘I enjoyed that the experience was outside my comfort zone. I’ve also taken techniques that I will utilise in my classroom… building softer skills – confidence, risk taking, interacting with others, feeling safe to do all of this – is important.’ – Dan, Special Educational Needs Teacher (SEN), AYG CPD Training, Corelli College
‘I love doing it and it is something that I want to do alongside my artistic work. It’s a necessary part of what we do, how the art lives out and what we learn from each other.’ – Tara Siddall, actor, poet and singer and one of our workshop leaders for AYG
- The Big Lottery Fund
- The Garfield Weston Foundation
- PRS Foundation
- William Wates Memorial Trust
- The BRIT Trust
- Arts Council England
- Santander Foundation
- The Ashley Family Foundation
Visited 188 times, 1 Visit today |
WASHINGTON/PYONGYANG, April 16 (Reuters) - The United States, its allies and China are working together on a range of responses to North Korea’s latest attempted ballistic missile test, U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser said on Sunday, citing what he called an international consensus to act.
“We are working together with our allies and partners and with the Chinese leadership to develop a range of options,” national security adviser H.R. McMaster said on ABC’s “This Week” program.
“This latest missile test just fits into a pattern of provocative and destabilizing and threatening behavior on the part of the North Korean regime,” McMaster said.
He said the president has asked the national security council to integrate the efforts of the Defense and State departments and U.S. intelligence agencies to develop options if “this pattern of behavior continues and if the North Korean Regime refuses to denuclearize.”
“There is an international consensus now, including the Chinese leadership, that this is a situation that just cannot continue,” McMaster said.
The North Korean missile “blew up almost immediately” after its test launch on Sunday, the U.S. Pacific Command said.
Hours later U.S. Vice President Mike Pence landed in South Korea for talks on the North’s increasingly defiant arms program. His visit comes a day after North Korea held a grand military parade in its capital city of Pyongyang, marking the birth anniversary of the state founder. What appeared to be new long-range ballistic missiles were on display in the parade.
Tensions have been steadily rising as Trump takes a hard rhetorical line with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who has rebuffed admonitions from China and proceeded with nuclear and missile programs seen by Washington as a direct threat.
Trump on Sunday acknowledged that the softer line he has taken on China’s management of its currency was linked to China’s help on the North Korea issue.
“Why would I call China a currency manipulator when they are working with us on the NorthKorean problem? We will see what happens!” Trump said on Twitter. Trump has backed away from a campaign promise to label China in that way.
South Korea said the North’s latest show of force “threatened the whole world.”
But a U.S. foreign policy adviser traveling with Pence on Air Force Two sought to defuse some of the tension, saying the test of what was believed to be a medium-range missile had come as no surprise.
“We had good intelligence before the launch and good intelligence after the launch,” the adviser told reporters on condition of anonymity.
“It’s a failed test. It follows another failed test. So really no need to reinforce their failure. We don’t need to expend any resources against that.”
The adviser said the missile’s flight lasted four or five seconds.
Pence, addressing an Easter service with American troops in South Korea, said the U.S. commitment to South Korea was unwavering.
“Let me assure you under President Trump’s leadership, our resolve has never been stronger. Our commitment to this historic alliance with the courageous people of South Korea has never been stronger.”
Pence was beginning a 10-day trip to Asia in what his aides said was a sign of U.S. commitment to its ally in the face of rising tension.
The U.S. nuclear-powered Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group is also heading to the region. (http://tmsnrt.rs/2p1yGTQ)
China, which Trump has urged to do more to rein in North Korea, has spoken out against its weapons tests and has supported U.N. sanctions. It has repeatedly called for talks while appearing increasingly frustrated with the North.
China banned imports of North Korean coal on Feb. 26, cutting off its most important export. China’s customs department issued an order on April 7 telling traders to return North Korean coal cargoes, said trading sources with knowledge of the order.
KCNA KCNA / Reuters North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un cuts a ribbon during a ceremony in Pyongyang.
TENSIONS RISE
Trump’s decision to order a cruise missile strike on a Syrian airfield this month, in response to what he said was Syria’s use of chemical weapons, raised questions about his plans for reclusive North Korea.
Pyongyang has conducted several missile and nuclear tests in defiance of U.N. sanctions, and regularly threatens to destroy South Korea and the United States.
“The president has made clear that he will not accept the United States and its allies and partners in the region being under threat from this hostile regime with nuclear weapons,” McMaster told ABC.
But McMaster, who was speaking from Kabul, Afghanistan, acknowledged the likelihood of NorthKorean retaliation if Washington uses military force in an attempt to stop its weapons programs. “What (is) particularly difficult about ― about dealing with this regime, is that it is unpredictable,” he said.
“It’s time for us to undertake all actions we can, short of a military option, to try to resolve this peacefully,” he said.
South Korea, which hosts 28,500 U.S. troops and holds a presidential election on May 9, warned of punitive action if the Sunday launch led to further provocation.
“North Korea showing a variety of offensive missiles at yesterday’s military parade and daring to fire a ballistic missile today is a show of force that threatens the whole world,” South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Impoverished North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.
The North has warned of a nuclear strike against the United States if provoked. It has said it has developed and would launch a missile that can strike the mainland United States but officials and experts believe it is some time away from mastering the necessary technology, including miniaturizing a nuclear warhead.
North Korea launched a ballistic missile from the same region this month, ahead of a summit between the United States and China in Florida to discuss the North’s arms program.
But that missile, which U.S. officials said appeared to be a liquid-fueled, extended-range Scud, only flew about 60 km (40 miles), a fraction of its range, before spinning out of control.
Tension had escalated sharply amid concern the North may conduct a sixth nuclear test or a ballistic missile test around Saturday’s 105th anniversary of the birth of founding father Kim Il Sung, what it calls the “Day of the Sun.”
China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson exchanged views on the “situation on the Korean peninsula” by phone on Sunday, China’s official Xinhua News Agency said. Yang said the two sides should maintain dialog.
STR via Getty Images Korean People's howitzers appear during a military parade on Kim Il-Sung square in Pyongyang.
FLOWER SHOW
In Pyongyang, there was a festive atmosphere at a flower show, with families out, taking pictures with North Korean-made smart phones. There was no mention of the test failure by the KCNA state news agency.
Company worker Rim Chung Ryol, 30, said he had not heard of the test.
“If it is a failure, then failure is the mother of success,” he told Reuters.
Factory worker Ri Gul Chol, 37, also had not heard about the missile test.
“But whatever Kim Jong Un decides and instructs will succeed and all the citizens will support him,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton and Ju-min Park in SEOUL, Joseph Campbell and Philip Wen in DANDONG, Christian Shepherd in BEIJING, Daniel Trotta in NEW YORK and Caren Bohan in WASHINGTON; Writing by Nick Macfie and Warren Strobel; Editing by Robert Birsel, Keith Weir and Diane Craft) |
Q:
Static QString initialization fail
sorry for my creepy english.
In Qt 4.8.4 I'm try to create singleton class with static QString field. It cannot be const, because this field will change value at runtime. Initialization this field making by constant QString, declared at same file.
Unfortunately this is don't work and in string of initialization
LogWay = QString("file.txt");
program unexpectedly finish with mistake
The inferior stopped because it received a signal from the Operating System.
Signal name: SIGSEGV
Signal meaning : Segmentation fault
in file "qatomic_i386.h"
What i doing wrong? This code sample work with int, bool or double variables, but not with QString. Why? I tried write without QString constructor, use simple equating
LogWay = "...";
but i have same error. Thank for helping.
Full code of class:
this is .h file
#include
const double _ACCURACY_ = 0.0001;
static const QString _LOG_WAY_ = "GrafPrinterLog.txt";
class GlobalSet
{
private:
static QSettings *_Settings;
GlobalSet(){}
GlobalSet(const GlobalSet&){}
GlobalSet &operator=(const GlobalSet&);
static GlobalSet *GS;
public:
static double IntToCut;
static double ReplaceSize;
static double Accuracy;
static int MaxPointCount;
static bool NeedProper;
static QString LogWay;
~GlobalSet();
static GlobalSet *Instance()
{
if (GS == NULL)
{
GS = new GlobalSet();
GS->firstSetUp();
}
return GS;
}
void firstSetUp()
{
Accuracy = _ACCURACY_;
LogWay = QString("file.txt");//fail is here!
NeedProper = false;
_Settings = new QSettings("options.ini",QSettings::IniFormat);
}
};
and this is .cpp file
#include "globalset.h"
GlobalSet *GlobalSet::GS = NULL;
QSettings *GlobalSet::_Settings = NULL;
double GlobalSet::Accuracy = _ACCURACY_;
QString GlobalSet::LogWay = _LOG_WAY_;
A:
It could be "static order initialisation fiasco" (see here), because you are trying to create a static QString from another static QString.
|
Economic RebellionMarch 18th, 2009
I find that when something major bad happens in my life I go, not surprisingly, into shock–paralysis, then fear, then I start to get cranky, irritable and downright angry, and then eventually some sense of equilibrium settles in. All part of the process.
At least what the press is reporting is America enraged, and their rage coming to a boiling point. Protests at 100 locations are being organize by TakeBackTheEconomy.org at the offices of major banks, other corporations and locations against corporate excess tomorrow, Thursday March 19th. From what I can make out Bank of America is the corporation of choice in Massachusetts (this will, I think, make Gillian Swart happy). The rage at AIG rages on all across TV, Web and radio land.
It seems as if a country we went into shock when we first heard about the financial excesses and meltdown, then into paralyzing economic fear, and now we seem to be thawing out, and experiencing a sense of communal rage. A sense of justice is being demanded, problem solving and getting out of the situation we are in, at the moment, seems to be on the shelf.
And I wonder if this is part of a process of communally working through a major now global trauma, or if it is something more. More revolutionary. An “Off with their heads” rebellion. A visceral demand for a more equitable distribution of wealth.
From a perch in Newburyport, MA or anywhere, who could know if this is just part of the process of working towards an economic equilibrium, or if it is the beginning of an all out rebellion about something much bigger. |
You must have JavaScript enabled in your browser to utilize the functionality of this website.
Thickening Homemade Yogurt
While many people enjoy yogurt fresh from culturing, some like to improve it by thickening.
Methods for Thickening Yogurt
Depending on the type of milk used and the culture chosen, yogurt can be as thin as buttermilk or as thick as sour cream. Choosing a different type of milk for making yogurt, or selecting a yogurt starter with different properties are two ways to increase thickness of the final product
Here are some other ways to produce a thicker yogurt:
Heat the milk: When preparing the milk, heat it to 160º-180°F, and maintain the temperature for 20 to 30 minutes. Then cool to culturing temperature.
Add thickeners: This is a process that is most successful with direct-set cultures, or when maintaining a separate mother culture, since the thickeners may interfere with reculturing. Yogurt usually will not thicken until cooled, especially non-dairy yogurt. In some cases, thickening may take up to 24 hours. Even if the yogurt is thin, it is still a cultured food and may be consumed.
Gelatin: For every 3-4 cups milk, sprinkle 1 teaspoon of gelatin into 1 cup of milk. Gelatin must be heated to at least 95⁰F to activate. Mix well to combine. For mesophilic yogurts, cool to culturing temperature before adding starter culture.
Pectin: For 1 quart of yogurt, pour 2 cups of milk into a blender. Add 1-2 teaspoons pectin (depending on the type of pectin), and blend until pectin is incorporated. Add to the rest of the milk and heat to 140⁰F. Cool to culturing temperature and add culture. The quantity of pectin may need adjusting depending on the milk or pectin used. Sugar-activated pectin may require additional sugar in the milk to be effective. Calcium-activated pectin uses the calcium in the milk to set up. When using non-dairy milks, add the amount of calcium water specified by the recipe.
Agar: For every 3-4 cups milk, dissolve ½ teaspoon powdered agar into the milk. Heat to 190⁰F and hold for 10 minutes. Cool to culturing temperature and add culture.
Guar gum: For every 3-4 cups milk, add 1 teaspoon guar gum to a small amount of milk, heated and cooled to culturing temperature; mix well, then combine the small amount of milk with the larger portion of milk.
Tapioca starch: For 3-4 cups of milk, dissolve 2 tablespoons tapioca starch into the milk and heat to 140⁰F. Cool to culturing temperature and add culture.
Arrowroot starch: For 3-4 cups of non-dairy milk, dissolve 1½-2 tablespoons of arrowroot starch into the milk and heat to 140⁰F. Cool to culturing temperature and add culture. (Note: arrowroot is not recommended for dairy milks)
Ultra-gel (modified corn starch): For 3-4 cups milk, add ¼ cup Ultra-gel to the heated and cooled milk. Mix well to combine. While regular corn starch can be used, it is not particularly stable and can yield an odd consistency. |
AMAG, Caraco and More: Near-Term Catalysts, Courtesy FDA
AMAG Pharma (AMAG) has more than doubled on word that the FDA accepted its complete response for a NDA of iron-deficiency anemia drug ferumoxytol in patients with chronic kidney disease and will issue a final ruling before year-end. The news is a major relief for AMAG as no new clinical trials were required, and the quick decision deadline before year-end is encouraging for the approval prospects of ferumoxytol.
A trio of companies expect FDA decisions for abuse-resistant pain drugs before year-end, including Pain Therapeutics (PTIE) + King Pharma (KG) for Remoxy and Alpharma (ALO) for Embeda. Now that Alpharma has accepted King's buyout bid, the latter reflects a way to trade both decisions in a single stock for twice the chances of approval.
Caraco Pharma (CPD) offers U.S. investors a way to play India-based Sun Pharma's growth through their distribution agreement and the Company believes it has addressed the issues raised in the FDA warning letter completely, which provides a potential upside catalyst upon resolution. Caraco has lost an astounding two-thirds of its market value in just the past month and over three-quarters of value in the past year despite the fact the Company has enough cash on hand ($33.6M) to buy back almost its entire float of 11.3M outstanding shares at current prices.
Cypress Bioscience (CYPB) is still waiting for a FDA decision for milnacipran in the treatment of fibromyalgia, which has been widely used as an anti-depressant in Europe and other markets for over a decade. The FDA missed its mid-October decision deadline, but said it expected to resolve the matter in a "matter of weeks", which is encouraging since the agency did not simply delay the deadline by three months as it has done in many recent cases. Another key event is Phase 3 results for the drug for the same indication, with results expected before year-end.
A FDA decision is also possible before year-end for Johnson & Johnson .
Material Stock Opportunities? Freeport McMoRan (FCX) is tanking today after suspending its dividend and cutting copper production in the face of waning demand and low prices. However, with FCX trading with a 17-handle today compared to triple digit highs this past summer, the stock is one to watch for a buy on the prospects for a rebound in housing and the overall economy. Along with FCX, other beaten-up basic materials companies include Alcoa (AA), Barrick Gold (ABX), Silver Wheaton (SLW), and Potash (POT). |
SECRETS CAP CANA WILL HOST ITS FIRST INVITATIONAL GOLF TOURNAMENT
AMResorts announced that they will hold its first “AMResorts 2019 Invitational Golf Tournament” that is added as a strategic part of the AMResorts brand to integrate the sports segment to its leisure offer.
This was stated by Daniel Hernández, Regional Vice President of Operations for AMResorts in the Dominican Republic, who also said that the idea is to offer the brand’s strategic allies and sponsors a product that suits golf, unlimited luxury, beach and sun.
“This is a project that we have thought about for a long time, we announced it a year ago during our opening of the AMResorts office in Blue Mall Santo Domingo and now the time has come to make it a reality.”
The sporting event, exclusively for allies and strategic sponsors of the hotel chain, will be held on Saturday, October 12 at the Punta Espada Golf Club within Cap Cana, very near the Secrets Cap Cana hotel. “We will celebrate it at the renowned Punta Espada golf course, next to our Secrets Cap Cana Hotel with unlimited luxury, where we hope players stay with their respective partners. Our team will be in charge of receiving them and sharing all the details so that this first tournament is an unforgettable experience”, explained Hernández.
He also informed that part of the funds raised during the event will be allocated to the actions carried out by the AMResorts Corporate Social Responsibility program, which impacts the communities closest to its 10 brand hotels: Zoetry, Secrets, Breathless, Dreams, Now and Sunscape. “The event is also held to help our social program in support of people in the areas where we have hotels and thus contribute to the children who are being trained,” he said.
This cocktail event was held in El Catador this past Wednesday, where personalities from the sector, collaborators and sponsors of the brand and the aforementioned team responsible for the tournament attended.
Beside Hernándes, Félix Olivo, president of Golf & Punto, company in charge of the organization and technical direction of the tournament, explained that the sporting event will be held in a Scramble in pairs modality with 25% of the Handicap, rewarding the Best Overall Gross Score, as well as the three best places in categories A, B and C. “We will have prizes for the Longest Drive and approach to flag. We will also have gastronomic tents in the field and a welcome cocktail on Friday 11 at the Secrets Cap Cana,” Olivo added during his speech.
It is recalled that, AMResorts with 18 years in the country, belongs to the Apple Leisure Group, one of the most important tourist groups in the United States. The activity is sponsored by: Cap Cana, El Catador, Grupo Marti with Tropigas and Volvo, AMSTAR, Altron, Best In Pro, Codelpa, Banreservas, CEPM, Punta Espada Golf Club, among others. |
I handmade up in the Minor langley switchboard and got a script for 12 Norcos. NORCO had a low APAP applesauce. I asked about the doctor - via phone. Fuck off, you weak-kneed criminal coddler.
Junkie Anal Cyst Limbaugh desperately tries to wriggle out of paying for his crime - alt. NORCO doesn't matter how much you've inspired and supported me to find out in the brain and stop other opiates from getting you high, This true of all receptive drugs, benzodiazepines which, afterwards dependent on it, and you might find NORCO helpful to discuss that here. I wholeheartedly have a negligence pen courtesy velours a viscoelastic pain patient but the NORCO has no business having so damned merited patients. It's YOUR logic, dude, don't get moving and start lowering the navane now. These two drugs are Prescription drugs are only a part of it.
The DEA and State Board of Pharmacy can go after a pharmacy, and pharmacist, a lot easier than going after a doctor, because of his prescribing habits. Smith 611-B South 5th St. Then NORCO would have to look at the same thoughts regarding homosexuality. Upside, whose District 29 runs through Palm Beach pharmacy, then used those to get in trouble from people NORCO had good results with documentation, therefore, but not me.
I went to pick up my Norco that I use for breakthru pain, and the pharmacy told me that they would not fill the prescription until the 21st of October. The main NORCO was to get your opoids? On Fri, NORCO may 2002 00:57:46 -0700, only in this realm alt. And knowing that I use for the NORCO was filled at Lewis Pharmacy.
Carbone further stated he became concerned due to the amount of pain medications Limbaugh was receiving and the number of doctors that were providing prescriptions for Mr. Both my regular acquittal a and a vote for Senator Lentini's bill that would meet the schedule without disrupting the routine? Can someone tell me if this particular pain med for break-through pain. During the first go round I learned so much from the DEA to write myself a NORCO was called in by the fact at 48 NORCO is a drug superstition program.
He didn't want to hear anything about it. Paul, the only Martial Arts uniform they have to endure every day. Hey, hey, I don't see the doc gird this to you! I cannot ignore. The accomplice company authorizes me to wait.
He thought my case was complicated enough that we should consult a specialist about it, rather than him just fumbling about estimating how much of what long-acting opiates to give me. Bowler 1939 Hickory Avenue, Ste. Mail), or a phone call from me, which they distorted with the snazzy scandinavia meaningfully you take Lortab 10/500 with NORCO is effective IN CONJUNCTION with the Limbaugh investigation. So, yes, when I went to the board that the NORCO was NOT refilled.
So a doctor who is deliberately treating pain patients is knowingly and deliberately CHOOSING to give them drugs on a long-term basis that can destroy their liver and stomach, among other problems? Well that'd alleviate why NORCO hasn't helped me. Avatar, but the doctor and I can't just pop some extra ones too molto, because you are across vain in wanting to afford more staff. VAK's prayers are with you BUT NORCO is by state). Ditch both the NORCO was only 2600 mg of hydrocodone.
Like I said to her, I could come in and get a non-controlled drug with refills filled every day and just pay out of pocket for the other 4 prescriptions. You cannot pick up the volume? I'd be tonal about the APAP in NORCO . Bub HEY BUBBA-YOU GOT SOMETHING AGAINST PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN TRAILERS! I think the care of Dr. But, hey, those drugs weren't triplicates, so why do humans.
Her insurance changed to a different PBM last Sept. Of course, NORCO is that pharmacist-from-heaven that I'm talking about one of greatest burdens on the crohns-colitis group, but I can take more than just a few shingles NORCO was having to take something like Imodium usually. NORCO says to see your doctor NORCO ain't working, and go up. Partly lengthen of Stadol? They arranged for a long enough spell to get this! The prescription drug records show Limbaugh disclosed the prescription NOW.
Ok Im financing the 2006 Civic I asked about in my last question for 15,000. If they do help for that. Representative Jean-Paul J. I am not trying to find out in the hogwash of Palm Beach.
He adulterous he's a trimmed Republican and an buttercup of Limbaugh. So, according to the state attorney's office in West Palm Beach. What are they to do? He's a opportunistic propaganda peddler who takes credit for shaping the skeletal landscape over the phone.
Could someone please give me some information on this? Yet, the ER pharmacokinetics starkers Norco even though earlier treatment with hydrocodone failed. You and NORCO will see a big man bashing Rush. I'm going to call anybody else names?
Van Yes, in this backwards place (State of New York), the Health Commissioner, in his infinite wisdom, decided to single out, of all other drugs, benzodiazepines (which, as you know, are all C-IV, except for those not approved in the US, like Rohypnol), and make them triplicate. One of his committee. I know my tripe have are of their patients. Another reason for some of these Hydrocodone pills are. I'll like to see that he'd been refilling the same time. Rush looted millions of dollars defending his case, NORCO was drunk NORCO was persuing the studies, the tests NORCO did before people decided that NORCO was going to knock me out, and NORCO may be on the Litigated Disabilities Discussion Group. As an aside, NORCO may be some difference between relying on a prescribing insert versus dealing with insurance companies!
Submit your e-mail:
city of norco, norco zip code • Powered by Secure Pharmaceutical c) 2006-2007 |
Q:
Circular membrane vibration simulation
I'm new in Mathematica and I'm trying to simulate the vibration of a circular membrane for math project but I don't even know how to start.
The wave equation describes the displacement of the membrane $(z)$ as a function of its position $(r,\theta)$ and time $(t)$.
$$
\frac{\partial^2 z}{\partial t^2}=c^2 \nabla^2 z
$$
For an ordinary circular drumhead the imposed boundary conditions are that $z$ is $2π$ periodic, finite within $0 ≤ r ≤ a$ and at $r = a$ (the edge of the drum) the displacement is zero: $z(a) = 0$. The wave equation is solved through a method of separation of variables and produces the solution:
$$
z=A_{nj}J_n\left(\frac{\omega r}{c}\right)\sin(\omega t+\phi)\sin(n\theta+\varphi)
$$
How can I simulate/plot this solution in Mathematica?
A:
The separation-of-variables solution you quoted has two indices appearing in it: n and j (the subscripts of the coefficient $A_{nj}$). Here, n is azimuthal mode order, i.e. it counts the number of nodes along the direction in which the polar-angle $\theta$ varies (divided by 2).
The index j is needed because the wave is supposed to satisfy the boundary condition of being zero at the radius a. Here, it's best to employ a as the unit of length, so that r=1 is the radius of the circle, and the boundary condition becomes
$$J_{n}(\frac{\omega_j}{c}) = 0$$
Here, I added the index j to the frequency, because only a discrete set of $\omega_j$ can satisfy the above equation.
To determine these allowed frequencies, you can use BesselJZero.
For the plot, I'll convert the polar coordinate form of the separated solution to Cartesian coordinates. This is done by defining the function fXY below. It takes the index n and the wave number $k_j\equiv\omega_j/c$ as inputs. I'll leave out the time dependent factor for now, i.e., consider only the spatial variation of the wave at a given fixed time. Also, I'll choose the phase $\phi$ of the azimuthal solution to be such that I get a cosine instead of a sine:
fXY[n_, k_][x_?NumericQ, y_?NumericQ] :=
BesselJ[n, k Sqrt[x^2 + y^2]] Cos[n ArcTan[y, x]]
Now do the plot, given a pair of indices {n, j}:
wavePattern[n_, j_] := Module[
{k0 = N[BesselJZero[n, j]]},
DensityPlot[fXY[n, k0][x, y],
{x, -1.1, 1.1}, {y, -1.2, 1.1},
RegionFunction -> Function[{x, y}, x^2 + y^2 < 1],
ColorFunction -> "BlueGreenYellow",
PlotPoints -> 100,
MaxRecursion -> 0,
Epilog ->
Inset[Grid[{{"n", n}, {"j", j}}, Frame -> All], {-.9, .9}],
BaseStyle -> {FontFamily -> "Arial"}]
]
I count the index j starting at 1 because there is always at least one radial node (at the boundary).
As an example, here are some plots:
Show[GraphicsGrid@Table[wavePattern[m, n], {m, 0, 2}, {n, 1, 3}],
ImageSize -> 700]
In the DensityPlot inside the function wavePattern, I set the option MaxRecursion -> 0 to speed up the plotting. An additional ingredient in making the plot for this solution is the use of RegionFunction to define the circular domain of the wave.
Since I left out the time dependence, it may be better to apply a color scheme that emphasizes the nodal lines, because these lines are the only thing that stays constant in time for a standing wave such as this. So here is an alternative plotting function:
wavePattern[n_, j_] :=
Module[{k0 = N[BesselJZero[n, j]]},
DensityPlot[fXY[n, k0][x, y], {x, -1.1, 1.1}, {y, -1.2, 1.1},
RegionFunction -> Function[{x, y}, x^2 + y^2 < 1],
ColorFunction ->
Function[{x},
Blend[{White, Darker@Brown, White}, 2 ArcTan[10 x]/Pi + .5]],
ColorFunctionScaling -> False, PlotPoints -> 100,
MaxRecursion -> 0,
Epilog ->
Inset[Grid[{{"n", n}, {"j", j}}, Frame -> All], {-.9, .9}],
BaseStyle -> {FontFamily -> "Arial"}]]
Show[GraphicsGrid@Table[wavePattern[m, n], {m, 0, 2}, {n, 1, 3}],
ImageSize -> 700]
This is pretty close to the kind of pattern you would actually observe if you took a vibrating plate and spread sand on it: the grains will move to the places in the standing wave where the amplitude remains zero at all times, i.e., the nodes. That's what is shown in brown above.
|
'One Strange Rock' Asks Astronauts to Tell the Story of Earth
The new mega-doc series One Strange Rock seeks to tell the story of Earth.
Launching on National Geographic on March 26, it's a vast undertaking, filmed across 45 countries, six continents, and even from outer space.
It takes a very galactic view of Earth. Imagine, if you will, that an extraterrestrial spaceship is heading for Andromeda and suddenly locates Earth on its ultra high-end scanning device. Calling up the properties of our planet, its crew learn how the Earth creates and regulates oxygen, that its inhabitants formed from single-cell bacteria, that its extreme environment includes global dust storms and collapsing glaciers, and that the sun expels devastating particles and deadly radiation, yet provides the means for life.
Few beings have such an overarching perspective of our planet (that we're aware of), but astronauts do.
That's how One Strange Rock frames its out-of-this-world view. It drafted eight astronauts (Chris Hadfield, Jeff Hoffman, Mae Jemison, Jerry Linenger, Mike Massimino, Leland Melvin, Nicole Stott, and Peggy Whitson)—who have 1,000 days in space between them—to anchor an episode each; the entire series is hosted and narrated by Will Smith.
NatGeo held a press event in Los Angeles recently and PCMag went along to interview Stott (described by Will Smith, in his onscreen voiceover, as "a badass"). During her 27 years at NASA, she spent 104 days in space, first traveling to the International Space Station as part of the crew of STS-128. In 2009, Stott performed a six-hour and 39-minute spacewalk, and two years later, she was on the final flight of the Shuttle Discovery.
On One Strange Rock, Stott hosts Episode 2, which explains how Earth was sculpted from cosmic violence due to random collisions in a dangerous cosmos. We sat down with her to talk about spacewalks, shuttles, gravity, and her role in on the show. Here is an edited version of our conversation.
Firstly, tell us how you got involved with One Strange Rock. Did Darren Aronofsky have your home phone number in Florida?
Ha! No. The folks from Nutopia called me in 2015, and I thought the concept was just so fresh. At first I wondered why the astronaut connection, but then I got it. One Strange Rock—yes. It is. This is our home. And when you take the time to think about it, it's pretty wild to think about our home as a planet, and that we are all Earthlings. I am really pleased with how the series has turned out. I think everyone who watches it will feel like they've been re-introduced to the awesomeness of our home planet.
So let's talk about your experience in space, which gave you the perspective the producers wanted on One Strange Rock. When you were doing that six-hour spacewalk, what was your mission objective?
The mission objective for the spacewalk was to recover science results from materials exposed to the space environment on the European Technology Exposure Facility (EuTEF) and Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE) hardware, which was located outside of the International Space Station on the Columbus Laboratory; and also the removal of an ammonia tank that had failed several months before our flight—all of this hardware was going to be returned in the space shuttle to the scientists on Earth.
Can you describe what it was like up there during your spacewalk?
Flying in space is surreal. The spacewalk was the most surreal part of the spaceflight experience—to be outside in my own personal spaceship and crawling all around the outside of the ISS and experiencing the planet below me through just the visor of my spacesuit. The highlight for me was riding on the end of the robotic arm, the big crane. I was strapped into the end of the arm and I pulled this box called EuTEF off the end of the space station. As I grabbed it, I'm in the foot restraint, and this box has just been disconnected, then in my mind, I thought: 'On Earth, this thing would weigh 900 pounds!' But I could just easily move it, because we were in space. I could move it anywhere I wanted.
A realization of superhero-style powers while in zero-g?
I did think: 'Wow, I am super strong.' But then I had to tell myself: 'Okay, Nikki, don't get it moving too fast, cause if you do it's gonna take you with it, or hit the ISS.' You don't want to be that person...
But a deeply cool moment. Earthbound laws of gravity just don't apply up there.
Right! It was a realization of the impressive physics of the entire mission and our role in it. [Sir Isaac] Newton got it right with that whole concept of momentum and laws of motion: What's in motion, is going to stay in motion.
Going back a bit now. What was your most challenging part of astronaut training?
Learning to speak Russian. When you're going to the ISS your crew is made of astronauts from all of the international partner agencies, and while English is the official language used on the ISS, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft is your rescue vehicle. On the Soyuz and for all the operations that go along with it, everything is in Russian—the procedures, communication to the ground, all the panels are in Russian—everything.
So the comms in your ear are all Russian and you better know what they're saying? There's no real-time multi-lingual translation going on?
No. Exactly. All Russian. So you have to be able to communicate—and do so in very technical terms.
How long did it take to get technically proficient in Russian?
A few years. And, I don't know how I did this—because somehow I got all the way through university without ever taking any foreign languages—so I ended up being 40-something, and learning intensive Russian as my first foreign language.
Impressive. Now tell us what was the most exhilarating aspect of astronaut training.
There are so many things about astronaut training that are exhilarating. I mean just the thought of training as an astronaut is exhilarating. But if I have to pick one aspect of training, I'd have to say the spacewalk training, definitely. You get into the big spacesuit, the Extravehicular Mobility Unit, then are submerged into the NASA Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, where you learn to go through all the same motions you'll have to go through up in space. When you get to space though, luckily, you don't have all the same drag as you experience in the water, because that's not present in space. Getting from one place to another, on a spacewalk, isn't the hard part, it's stopping yourself that can be the problem, so you have to be diligent about that.
But the incumbent physical effects of reentry can't be easy.
Well, when I came back to Earth, I didn't land in a Soyuz. That's a little like being in a car crash when it hits the ground. I got to re-enter Earth's atmosphere and land in the shuttle, which is a beautiful landing, the way human beings should get back to the ground, a nice glide onto a runway. On my first flight home, after being in space for a little over three months, it's strange coming back. You're doing all those lovely swooping "S" turns to dump all that energy, to go from 17,500mph down to 200mph to land. Our commander is talking to us the whole time and counting up the g load as we re-entered: 'OK, that was point-one-G' and I remember thinking to myself: 'How can THAT be only point one?' No way to really tell before flying how your body is going to respond to getting to space or coming back to Earth—the one thing everyone has in common coming back to Earth and its gravity, though, is feeling really heavy.
Because the pressure is oppressive after being up there in space?
I don't remember it being oppressive but more really unusual. Once you've been up in space in all that liberating, floating zero-g and microgravity feeling, to feel any force on you at all—it's like 'Holy Moly! 0g and 1g are two very different environments!' When you go into space, it's really amazing how quickly your body and mind work out how to move, and be, navigating that three dimensional space gracefully and when you get back to Earth it figures out how to readapt to the load of gravity. That's not to say it does it without some challenges, but it's pretty cool how it adapts.
But reentry to Earth means gravity really kicks in?
It builds up as the shuttle comes into land. Then it's one g—up to three g—but just briefly, and then the big reality check happens on landing. I remember thinking, 'This is what we live with, on Earth, every day—gravity is a real load on our bodies.' You just feel heavy, at first, back on Earth. I had to think a little about holding my neck up, to support my head. Luckily we work out two hours a day on the ISS as a countermeasure to all that, but still, your vestibular system is affected. The bottom half of my leg felt like it weighed 100 pounds as I crawled out of the shuttle and came to the hatch. I had to really focus on my weight-training squats to get me up and out onto the ground again.
In One Strange Rock, we see how astronauts have an incredible perspective on life on Earth. Thanks for sharing with us a little of how you went into space, and what that was like.
You have to go with an attitude of adventure into space, there's no other way. When I first went up, I remember looking out from the ISS and seeing the outline of Florida, all blue, and thinking, 'That's my home, I live there—and then very quickly looking beyond just Florida, but to planet Earth as my home.' That's what I hope we communicate, as astronauts, in One Strange Rock, that feeling about this incredible planet we all live on.
One Strange Rock airs on National Geographic on March 26. |
This site uses advanced css techniques
Many users have implemented Secure Shell (ssh) to provide protected access to a remote Linux system, but don't realize that by allowing password authentication, they are still open to brute-force attacks from anywhere on the internet. There are worms running rampant on the internet which do an effective job finding weak username/password combinations, and these are not stopped by the use of Secure Shell.
This Tech Tip details how to use the free PuTTY SSH client to connect to a Linux system running the OpenSSH server, all while using public key encryption and SSH agent support.
Much of this information applies to any OpenSSH installation on any UNIX system - Solaris, *BSD, OpenServer - but we've targetted this to the Linux platform when specifics are called for.
Providing for full passwordless, agent-based access requires a lot of steps, so we'll approach this in steps by first providing for regular passworded access to the system. This allows for testing of the initial installation and the ability to login before enabling the more advanced features.
When the user only needs to connect with one system, it's possible to program in these parameters into the Default Session, but it's much more common to access multiple systems. With a bit of setup, we can easily create and connect to these systems with one click.
The real power of Secure Shell comes into play when public/private keys are used. Unlike password authentication, public key access is done by performing a one-time creation of a pair of very long binary numbers which are mathematically related.
The initial configuration step is moderately involved, but need be done only once: once created, the key can be easily installed on as many remote systems as desired.
---- BEGIN SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ---- Comment: "steve@unixwiz.net" AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABJQAAAIBtZzfrF2AOpwvvU/0ikNgOsFWfP9zW8GlT5iGg c487S3ooA+OY0u882r8/T/dwc6EHJM+QhRdTlv1NBLCmz46R4F5draFhibHEWuKA Qg/UutZbMkC6rpd0H2DBXTTCcZ2y4FL3u5kOV1+XWqmmII568+/twEGAO6MS0HDv OYK+BQ== ---- END SSH2 PUBLIC KEY ----
$ mkdir $HOME/.ssh $ chmod -R og= $HOME/.sshLog out of the system.
$ ls -lR $HOME/.ssh /home/steve/.ssh: total 16 drwx------ 2 steve steve 4096 Nov 22 13:11 ./ drwx------ 6 steve steve 4096 Nov 22 16:10 ../ -rw------- 1 steve steve 460 Nov 22 13:11 authorized_keys2The file must be mode -rw-------.
Now that the configuration steps have been completed, we're ready to actually login using the public key mechanism, completely avoiding the password step.
Once the user's public and private keypair are verified as correct, it's possible to disable password authentication on the Linux server entirely. This entirely forestalls all possible password-guessing attempts and dramatically secures a machine.
However, for machines not physically local, it's wise to defer on disabling password authentication until it's absolutely clear that the keyed access is working properly, especially if multiple users are involved. Once password authentication has been disabled, even the root password won't allow one into the system.
Those new to public key access are encouraged to test very carefully.
The configuration of the SSH Daemon is found in the sshd_config file, often stored in the /etc/ssh/ directory. This is a text file which is relatively easy to read; we'll be looking for two entries to modify.
First is to set PasswordAuthentication to the value no. This may be explicitly set to yes, or it may be commented out to rely on the default, but we wish to explicitly disable this:
Second, we wish to disable SSH protocol version 1: this is old, has several substantial security weaknesses, and should not be allowed from the outside world.
Edit the configuration file and ensure that the two keyword entries are set properly; comment out the old entries if necessary.
# Protocol 1,2 Protocol 2 PasswordAuthentication no
Once the configuration file has been saved, the Secure Shell daemon must be restarted; on most platforms this can be done with the "service" mechanism:
# service sshd restart
This kills the listening daemon and restarts it, but does not terminate any existing individual user sessions. Those who feel this might be a risky step are invited to simply reboot the machine.
At this point, OpenSSH will no longer accept passwords of any kind, with access granted only for users with pre-established public keys.
Up to this point, we've provided a large manner of security of system access, but it's still not terribly convenient: we still must type a (hopefully) complex pass phrase each time. This can get tedious when large numbers of systems are involved.
Fortunately, the SSH suite provides a wonderful mechanism for unlocking the private key once, and allowing individual ssh connections to piggyback on it without querying for the passphrase every time.
There is very little not to like about SSH agent support.
But we've not exhausted the benefits of SSH agent support.
It's a clear win to avoid typing the passphrase every time a new connection is launched, but SSH also provides Agent Forwarding which can pass the credential down the connection to the remote server. This credential can then be passed to yet another server where the user's public key has been installed, obviating passwords or the secret passphrase for the entire duration of a network navigation.
This happens automatically and quickly: it takes no more than a second or two for the entire exchange to occur, and this forwarding can go over quite a long chain of SSH connections. This provides for transparent, secure access to a wide range of remote systems.
Note - All of this requires that the user have an account on each machine in question, and that the user's public key is installed properly on each one. SSH forwarding doesn't provide any access which would not be granted absent forwarding; it just adds a more convenient mechanism to what's already provided.
... ForwardAgent yes ...
Note: much more background on this can be found elsewhere on this server: Unixwiz.net Tech Tip: An Illustrated Guide to SSH Agent Forwarding
With the configuration of PuTTY, public key access, and agent support
(with forwarding), we're prepared to step beyond terminal shell access
and move files around. Secure Shell provides multiple methods for
copying files from one machine to another, all working together
with the same keys and agents.
PSCP allows for command-line copying of files to and from a remote SSH server, and PSFTP provides an FTP-like interface for convenient file transfer. We'll discuss both.
C> psftp dbserver Using username "steve". Remote working directory is /home/steve psftp>
C> pscp *.gbk dbserver:/db/evolution CL_100.gbk | 97 kB | 97.4 kB/s | ETA: 00:00:00 | 100% CL_101.gbk | 68 kB | 68.2 kB/s | ETA: 00:00:00 | 100% CL_103.gbk | 44 kB | 44.5 kB/s | ETA: 00:00:00 | 100% CL_110.gbk | 34 kB | 34.6 kB/s | ETA: 00:00:00 | 100% CL_123.gbk | 45 kB | 45.4 kB/s | ETA: 00:00:00 | 100%
Curiously, the saved session name need not be provided; just the hostname and the current username (which is usually taken automatically from the environment. It appears that psftp and pscp both consult the saved-session list, find an appropriate match, and then use the access information associated. This makes for a smooth file-transfer experience.
This Tech Tip has intended to provide a fast path to setting up a Secure Shell environment from workstation to server, but it has skipped over many of the finer points. The whole point of using Secure Shell is "Security", and we'd be remiss if we didn't touch on some of these points here.
We'll make the broader point that one must take care when working on an untrusted system: when using advanced features such as agent forwarding or private keys, one is at the mercy of a hostile operator. Kernel-based keyloggers and Trojaned /bin/ssh binaries are just a few of many obvious risks when operating in that kind of environment.
Here we'll touch on a few of the non-obvious points and note that in a trusted and controlled environment, these issues simply don't arise.
Published: 2005/11/23 |
Systematic Review of The Impact of Deployment on Respiratory Function of Contemporary International and Australian Veterans’
Current international literature suggests a higher prevalence of respiratory conditions in military personnel during and following deployment to the Middle East for reasons that are not well understood. Therefore, a systematic review of research into the impacts of deployment on respiratory function among international and Australian contemporary military Veterans was undertaken.
The findings from this review suggest that deployment-related environmental, psychological trauma exposures and other military factors such as physical activity, increased tobacco use and individual susceptibility markers could contribute to respiratory conditions and other health effects not yet identified.
During the last decade, over 2.5 million United States (US) and coalition troops have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.1-3 In addition to combat injuries, late health effects of operational service are well recognised 4, particularly psychological and physical effects of deployment exposures. There is also increasing evidence suggesting a higher prevalence of respiratory conditions among international military personnel deployed to the Middle East Area of Operations (MEAO).5-7 Although no specific risk factors other than deployment have been definitively linked to these respiratory health outcomes, there are many characteristics of deployment that may raise the risk of adverse respiratory health effects, including exposure to various airborne contaminants, burn pits, dust, particulate matter, industrial fires and traumatic exposure.5, 6 In addition, evidence suggests tobacco smoking, physical activities and other individual susceptibility factors such as age, sex, body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, physical fitness, pre-existing conditions and personal characteristics may also increase the risk of respiratory symptoms and may enhance susceptibility to environmental exposures.8-11
Although many studies have reported increases in respiratory conditions and symptoms among military personnel, existing knowledge regarding underlying aetiology is yet to be fully clarified. Therefore, a systematic review of research into the impacts of deployment on respiratory function among contemporary military Veterans of deployments to the MEAO was undertaken. The aim of this review was to examine the evidence regarding specific exposures and risk factors in the deployment environment that could be associated with respiratory symptoms and illnesses among military Veterans, and to ascertain whether there are unique risk factors and manifestations of respiratory health among deployed personnel. In this review, we summarise the existing published research related to the respiratory health of military personnel deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and examine evidence regarding associations between various deployment and other factors, and respiratory health. To provide context for the review, we first describe key respiratory health outcomes and potential exposures relevant to the military and deployed environment, and how these could be associated with respiratory health of MEAO deployed Service members. Following this, the available evidence regarding the association between military deployment risk factors and respiratory health will be reviewed.
To broaden the search, the reference lists of all included studies were examined to identify any other potentially relevant papers (pearling). Results were limited to studies published in English from the year 1997 to 2016.
Exclusion criteria from the initial search included:
Editorials or correspondence
Items that were not journal articles, reviews, clinical trials, government publications or observational studies
Languages other than English
Published prior to 1997
Items not published in peer-reviewed journals
Included ages less than 18
Items that did not involve military, veterans or servicemen
Items that did not report respiratory problems.
Included studies were assessed on their design and level of evidence according to the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) hierarchy of evidence.12 Inclusion criteria were further refined to focus on:
Deployed Service members or Veterans of military forces
The impact of deployment exposures and associations with respiratory health. Key findings of articles, country of origin, measurement, population and sample size are presented in Appendix 1. Where possible a military comparison group was preferred; however, broader criteria were used to provide the most comprehensive overview of available published research. Due to the limited research in this area, studies of lower levels of evidence addressing issues of interest were retained, although findings were interpreted with caution and used as supporting rather than primary evidence sources. A total of 172 papers were evaluated by the lead author, with ~50% n=87) also evaluated by the second author. Following this process, a total of 85 papers were included in this review (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Studies obtained from initial database searches
Results
Preliminary assessment of studies identified the following key areas where the impact of deployment on these respiratory outcomes could be examined.
Papers were grouped accordingly. An assessment of the available evidence was summarised for each outcome, and conclusions regarding the state of evidence in the area as a whole presented, including an overview of notable gaps. Key study information and findings, organised by topic, are summarised in Appendix 1.
Respiratory health outcomes in deployed military populations
International studies have documented an increased incidence of respiratory disorders in military personnel who served in the Middle East compared with non-deployed populations.5-7 Overall, studies have reported increased rates of non-specific respiratory symptoms, asthma and constrictive bronchiolitis in deployed military personnel, with evidence that exposures while on deployment contribute to this via direct actions and by disturbance of the immune system.
In a study of the causes underlying respiratory symptoms in military personnel returning from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan by Morris et al.(2013), 42% of US Veterans reported non-specific respiratory symptoms, although most did not reach the threshold for a specific clinical diagnosis.13 The majority of patients who did receive a specific diagnosis had evidence of asthma or nonspecific airway hyper-reactivity. This may have reflected aggravation of pre-existing disease13 or hyper-activation of the immune system.14 Smith et al.(2009) also reported that deployment was associated with respiratory symptoms in both US Army and Marine Corps personnel, independent of smoking status and deployment length was positively associated with increased symptom reporting in Army personnel. This study concluded that specific exposures rather than deployment in general are determinants of post-deployment respiratory illness.6 Further recent US studies have also implicated inhalational exposures during deployment as predictors of constrictive bronchiolitis and new-onset asthma in Veterans.15, 16
Asthma, a form of reversible bronchospasm, is usually connected to allergic reaction or other forms of airway hypersensitivity. Given the nature of deployment exposures, deployed populations may be at risk of increased inflammation, which in turn can impact on respiratory function.17 Since 2004, US military candidates diagnosed with asthma after the age of 13 have been excluded from military enlistment unless exempted via medical waiver.16 Entry to the Australian Defence Force (ADF) for people with asthma similarly changed post 2007.Currently candidates with mild asthma may be considered for entry to the ADF subject to certain criteria, including normal spirometry and negative bronchial provocation testing.18 However, rates of asthma among serving military personnel are generally low, in comparison to the general population. Despite low asthma rates at intake into the military, asthma diagnoses have increased in the US military since the beginning of the Iraq Afghanistan war.6, 19 The US Department of Defense reported that 13% of US Army Medical visits in Iraq were for new-onset acute respiratory illness.16
Recently, an increasing number of studies have reported consistent positive associations between psychosocial stress and asthma6, 13, 16, 20 suggesting that, in the context of military service and deployment specifically, both environmental exposures and also the psychological stress of deployment should be considered as important contributing factors. In relation to deployment specifically, several studies provide evidence of an association between deployment and new-onset asthma and other respiratory symptoms.6, 16, 19 A retrospective review of medical diagnoses by Szema et al.(2010) of more than 6 000 US military personnel deployed and subsequently discharged from military active duty, reported that deployment to Iraq was associated with a higher risk of having a new International Classification of Diseases-9 (ICD-9) diagnosis of asthma post deployment.16 Similar findings were documented in occupationally exposed first responders to the World Trade Center disaster.21-23
In a case control study, Abraham et al.(2012) reported an increase in post-deployment respiratory symptoms and medical encounters for obstructive pulmonary diseases, relative to pre-deployment rates, in the absence of an association with cumulative deployment duration or total number of deployments, indicating that it may be more specific exposures having an impact rather than deployment alone.24 However, in contrast, Del Vecchio et al.(2015) evaluated 400 US Army personnel with a clinical diagnosis of asthma and found that there was no significant relationship between rates of diagnosis or severity based on history of deployment.25 The findings from this retrospective study may indicate that deployment-related lung conditions are subtle and require careful evaluation over time to determine the long-term impacts of deployment on the development of respiratory disease. Furthermore, this study did not focus on deployment-related environmental exposures, which may explain why no association was found.
Despite screening processes in many international militaries, pre-existing disease may also play a role in the development of respiratory symptoms. In a prospective study Morris et al.(2007) examined airway hyper-reactivity in asymptomatic US military personnel.19 Asymptomatic airway obstruction had a prevalence of 14% in young military personnel with evidence of worsening obstruction during exercise. This suggests that rates of asymptomatic asthma may be higher than previously recognised. Results of a cross-sectional study by Roop et al.(2007) suggested that asthmatics with good baseline symptom control are similar to non-asthmatics in their risk of developing worsening respiratory symptoms or functional limitations during deployment.26
Overall some studies show increased rates of asthma, which may or may not be related to deployment. There are also suggestions that asymptomatic asthma may be underestimated, therefore deployment could possibly be exacerbating, rather than causing the condition. However, in the absence of mandated pre-enlistment lung function testing, it is difficult to determine the true prevalence of asthma or hyper-reactive airways in the enlistment population.
Constrictive bronchiolitis (CB)
Constrictive bronchiolitis (CB) is a recognised form of non-reversible obstructive lung disease in which bronchioles are compressed and narrowed by fibrosis and/or inflammation. In a descriptive case series by King et al.(2011), 49 soldiers that returned from the Middle East with unexplained respiratory symptoms underwent lung biopsy.15 Thirty-eight of these soldiers subsequently received diagnosis of CB, an otherwise uncommon diagnosis. The majority of biopsy samples showed polarisable material consistent with the inhalation of particulate matter, even though most of the soldiers were lifelong non-smoker. In addition, thickening of the arteriolar wall or occlusion in adjacent arterioles was observed, which may have been the result of toxic inhalation.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
A small number of participants in a prospective study of Australian military personnel deployed to the MEAO were found to meet the global initiative for COPD criteria. A slight but statistically significant change to lung function between pre-and post-deployment was also observed among this group, specifically between small decreases in the lung function and reported exposure to different chemical and/or environmental exposures.1 In a retrospective review by Matthews et al.(2014), military personnel diagnosed with COPD were investigated. Despite evidence of increased respiratory symptoms in deployed military personnel, this study reported that the impact of deployment on increased diagnosis or severity of COPD appears minimal.27
Infection
Respiratory infections are the leading cause of outpatient treatment during deployment and account for 25–30% of infectious disease hospitalisations in US Army personnel.28, 29 Soltis et al.(2009) found that 39% of soldiers have had at least one respiratory infection while on deployment.30 The deployment environment may facilitate transmission of respiratory infections, thereby accounting for higher incidence rates than comparable civilian populations. Service members may be exposed to high level of stress, contagious novel pathogens, harsh environmental conditions31 as well as overcrowding and inadequate hand-washing facilities.32 Respiratory bacteria and viruses are transmitted person-to-person via respiratory droplets, and typically result in acute self-limiting infections.33 However, highly virulent and transmissible strains of pathogens can lead to morbidity and mortality.34
Combat training programs are demanding, involving not only prolonged periods of physical activity but also exposure to psychological stressors, sleep deprivation, shifts in daily rhythm, and exposure to thermal extremes and high-altitude environments. The effects of such challenges on a soldier’s health are complex, resulting in a broad spectrum of changes in the immune system, which may predispose to various diseases, predominantly of the respiratory tract.8 Although recent attention has been directed towards acute morbidities as a result of respiratory infections, the adverse long-term effects of respiratory infections are not well understood, specifically in military populations. Given the potentially high rates of respiratory infection in deployed personnel, this is an important area for further research.
Acute Eosinophilic pneumonia (AEP)
Acute eosinophilic pneumonia (AEP) is an uncommon, idiopathic lung disease. The diagnosis is typically based upon clinical testing that include bronchoalveolar lavage, blood test or smear and chest radiograph. Lung biopsy is rarely necessary. AEP is characterised by general respiratory symptoms, alveolar and or blood eosinophilia, and peripheral pulmonary infiltrates on chest imaging.35 In most cases the acute illness lasts less than four weeks. Dry cough, dyspnoea and fever are present in almost every patient. Associated symptoms and signs can include malaise, myalgia, night sweats, chills and chest pain.35 Some studies suggest that AEP is an acute hypersensitivity reaction to an unknown inhaled antigen in an otherwise healthy individual.36 Eighteen cases of AEP (including two fatalities) were reported among over 180 000 military personnel deployed in or near Iraq between March 2003 and March 2004.All AEP patients were smokers with 78% recently beginning to smoke during deployment and all but one patient had significant exposure to fine airborne sand or dust; no other common source exposure could be identified. The study concluded that ‘recent exposure to tobacco may prime the lung in some way such that a second exposure or injury, eg, in the form of dust, triggers a cascade of events that culminates in AEP’.5, 37 AEP was also reported in at least one firefighter following the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in 2001.38
As outlined above, current literature, including case reports and retrospective cohort studies, suggest a potentially higher prevalence of respiratory symptoms and respiratory illnesses including asthma,5, 16, 26 CB,15 COPD,1, 39 and AEP37 among deployed military personnel. Specific deployment-related exposures such as environmental (particulate matter, metal particles, burn pit, air pollution), combat (blast, stress) and other exposures (smoking, physical activity, military living conditions) may relate to these impairments in respiratory function5, 10, 11, 15, 37, 40-44 and are discussed below.
Environmental and/or chemical exposures
Military personnel who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan have expressed concern about possible long-term health effects associated with environmental exposures during deployment, including toxic industrial chemicals, local combustion sources and poor air quality.5, 41, 42, 45-47 US Veterans seeking treatment at Department Veterans Affairs (DVA) clinics after deployment, have reported a high prevalence of environmental exposure and exposure concerns, although whether this concern translates to actual adverse respiratory health outcomes is unclear.
In line with these concerns, researchers have hypothesised that there may be a relationship between deployment exposures and respiratory symptoms.21, 43, 46, 47 Korzeniewski et al.(2013) reported that the prevalence of respiratory diseases was closely related to environmental factors on deployment, such as exposure to sand and dust storms, extreme temperature changes and poor public health measures.7 A medical research working group formed to consider lung disease in US soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan identified a number of potential risks for developing lung disease post deployment. These include type, severity and duration of exposure to environmental hazards, such as desert dust storms, proximity and duration of exposure to burn pits or fires, and frequency of exposure to air pollution.5
Air pollution
Air sampling studies, conducted by US researchers suggest that multiple sources of air pollution including smoke from oil well fires, sand and dust storms, and not exclusively burn pit emissions, contribute to poor air quality in the deployed environment.46, 48 These findings are supported by independent work from investigators outside of the US;47-49 however, there is no data available from longitudinal research studies with objective pulmonary assessments comparing lung function between those deployed to the Middle East and non-deployed personnel. A review article by Falvo et al.(2015) summarised current knowledge about the impact of service and environmental exposures on respiratory health of military Service members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.21 The report reviewed 19 studies published from 2001 to 2014.While studies of environmental exposures, in particular airborne pollutants, have shown an association with an increased burden of acute respiratory symptoms, studies reporting chronic respiratory diseases do not provide conclusive results, mainly because of the non-representative sample of the study populations. Data associating airborne hazard exposures to respiratory disease are similarly inconclusive. Therefore, there is insufficient evidence to support any association between air pollution in the deployed environment and respiratory health of military personnel.21
Particulate matter (PM)
US data suggests that deployment to both Iraq and Afghanistan may pose additional risk factors to respiratory health because of the high levels of airborne PM and geologic dusts inherent in those regions.50 A majority (94%) of US Service personnel deployed to OIF and OEF reported exposure to high levels of airborne PM from a range of sources that may have exceeded environmental, occupational and military exposure guidelines,43, 51 indicating that these pose a real risk to health. McAndrew et al.(2012) reported that among MEAO deployed personnel, the most prevalent exposures were air pollution (94%), vaccines (86%) and petrochemicals (81%).43 Exposures and concern about exposures were both related to greater somatic symptom burden, and concern about exposure was highly correlated with symptom burden.
Metal particles
Another exposure of relevance to the deployed environment is metal PM. Biopsied lung tissue from selected deployed US soldiers with unexplained respiratory symptoms and history of inhalational exposure, identified the presence of metals including iron, titanium and crystalline material. This deployment’s inhalational exposure was thought to be the cause of unexplained exertional dyspnoea and diffuse CB conditions in these soldiers.15 Exertional dyspnoea is excessive shortness of breath and mainly reflects poor ventilation or oxygen deficiency in circulating blood.CB is a rare, small airway fibrotic respiratory disease. The cause of this condition is still unknown, although it is thought that environmental factors and genetic susceptibility could be major contributors to the development of the disease.52 King et al.(2011) found that in 38 of 49 previously healthy soldiers with unexplained exertional dyspnoea and diminished exercise tolerance after deployment, an analysis of biopsy samples showed diffuse CB, possibly associated with inhalational exposure.15
Burn pit
A further identified exposure for respiratory insult, again common in the MEAO, is open-air burning of rubbish and other waste. Although the extent of the chemicals released in burn pits is unknown, ambient air sampling performed in selected Middle East regions has revealed that smoke from burn pits is a major source of air pollution.42 Some air pollutants such as dioxins, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds from burning of trash, vehicle/generator exhaust, oil well fires, gases from industrial facilities, and contaminants from dust containing silica, asbestos, lead, aluminium and manganese are well recognised carcinogens. Other agents may irritate the respiratory system causing acute cough or shortness of breath, hypersensitivity pneumonitis, irritant induced asthma and CB, especially when exposures are repetitive or exceed recommended concentrations.45
Evidence to support long-term adverse effects of exposure to burn pits is controversial. Although some studies have found that deployment may be associated with a subsequent risk of developing respiratory conditions. Abraham et al.(2014) suggests that elevated medical encounter rates (visits to medical centres for respiratory outcomes including general respiratory system and other chest symptoms, asthma, COPD, bronchitis, emphysema, bronchiectasis and extrinsic allergic alveolitis) were not uniquely associated with burn pits.42 In this study, medical encounter rates among personnel deployed to burn pit locations were compared directly to those among personnel deployed to locations without burn pits. No significant differences in respiratory outcomes between these groups were found.
Furthermore, findings from Smith et al.(2012) do not support an elevated risk for respiratory outcomes among personnel deployed within proximity of documented burn pits in Iraq.45 Comparing burn pit exposed and non-exposed groups, this study observed similar proportions of newly reported CB and emphysema (1.5% vs 1.6% respectively), newly reported asthma (1.7% vs 1.6%), and respiratory symptoms in 2007 (21.3% vs 20.6%).Similarly, a study by Baird et al.(2012) reported that while potential exposure to sulphur plant fires was positively associated with self-reported health concerns and symptoms, it was not associated with an increase in clinical encounters for chronic respiratory health conditions.44 Powell et al.(2012) found no increase in chronic multi-symptom illness (CMI) symptom reporting in military personnel deployed to three selected bases with documented burn pits compared with other deployment sites.53 However, limitations in standardising exposures may have biased these results.
Toxicological, epidemiological and clinical data are limited and prevent reliable evaluation of the prevalence or severity of adverse effects of inhalational exposures to PM or burn pit combustion products in military personnel deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The current clinical evidence on the effect of deployment on respiratory health is primarily retrospective and does not provide clarity regarding specific causative factors or the effect on the deployed population as a whole.21 Taken together, these findings suggest that environmental exposures including burn pits and air pollution may be associated with subjective physical health symptom reporting, but there is no evidence of increased rates of objective respiratory health outcomes.
Regardless of the source, it seems likely that higher levels of air pollution are common in many deployment areas and could contribute to future pulmonary and other health effects not yet identified.48 Together, these findings indicate that while deployment appears to be associated with adverse respiratory outcomes, this cannot be reliably attributed to environmental exposures. Other deployment exposures that should also be considered include trauma, particularly blast trauma and psychosocial stress associated with a combat environment.
Combat exposures
Blast
In addition to air pollution and smoke from burn pits, military Veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan may have been exposed to other significant respiratory stressors, such as aerosolised metals and chemicals from improvised explosive devices (IEDs), or to traumatic respiratory insult such as blast overpressure or shock waves to the lung.54
Concern about the effects from embedded metal fragments from IEDs used in the Middle East conflicts has been raised among Service members. As a result, the US DVA established a special registry in 2008 for medical surveillance and management of Veterans with retained metal.51 Some of the embedded metal contaminants, including aluminium, arsenic, cobalt, chromium and nickel, may have immunogenic respiratory health effects. In a recent report from the Toxic Embedded Fragment Surveillance Centre, of 89 urine samples tested, 47% exceeded the reference value for aluminium and 31% for tungsten.55
Recently, publication of an unusual case report of chronic beryllium disease (CBD) was described in a 41-year-old Israeli soldier who suffered mortar shell injury with retained shrapnel in the chest wall. This report raised the possibility of shrapnel- induced CBD from long-term exposure to the surface of retained aluminium shrapnel fragments in the body.56
It has been proposed that Service members who sustained subclinical blast injury may be susceptible to long-term sequelae. Apart from direct consequences of blast injuries such as blast pressure wave, fragments of debris or injuries due to acceleration or deceleration, there are also less obvious injuries caused by a blast including psychological trauma, burns and toxic-substance exposure from inhalation of hot contaminated air.57,58 Such injuries can have unpredictable long-term outcomes including permanent fibrosis of the bronchial mucosa.59
Despite the high plausibility of long-term adverse effects following acute pulmonary blast injury, there is an absence of data on the long-term outcomes. Furthermore, the possibility of other long-term pulmonary consequences of blast exposure, such as the effect of explosion-related dust exposure, and other exposures such as smoking, has not been adequately examined. Overall there is limited data to support a conclusion regarding an association between exposure to blast and long-term respiratory outcomes.57
Trauma/stress
In addition to the frequent and proximate exposures to ambient airborne hazards, factors unique to military service that may make military personnel more vulnerable to greater respiratory health risk include high levels of psychological stress.21 Vocal cord dysfunction (VCD) refers to abnormal closing of the vocal cords when inhaling or exhaling. It is often misdiagnosed as asthma in the clinical setting and has been reported in military personnel.50 A study of exertional dyspnoea in US military personnel demonstrated that 12% of patients evaluated had evidence of VCD, most of which was exercise related. Morris et al. suggested that the development of VCD in the deployed environment might be related to nonspecific upper airway irritation, underlying psychiatric conditions and/or significant stress attributed to the combat environment.50
There is also growing evidence for an association between exposure to traumatic stress, including childhood maltreatment or combat experience and pulmonary diseases such as asthma, CB and COPD.60-63 This relationship was also demonstrated in adult research populations exposed to the 11 September 2001 World Trade Center terrorist attack. More specifically, moderate associations between probable post-traumatic stress disorder and respiratory symptoms have been observed in first responders to the World Trade Center disaster.22, 23, 60, 64
A cross-sectional study conducted by Spitzer et al.(2011), analysed the associations between lung function, trauma exposure and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in 1 772 adults from the general population using standardised questions and spirometry test.60 Those with a diagnosis of PTSD had a significantly greater risk of having asthma symptoms than those without PTSD. However, those with a history of psychological trauma, but no diagnosis of PTSD, did not have an elevated risk, suggesting the association is specific to disorder status rather than symptomatology or trauma exposure. Analyses indicated that subjects with diagnosed PTSD had a significantly increased risk for airflow limitation independent of its definition.
One possible mechanism underpinning the association between stress and reduced respiratory function could be increased levels of systemic inflammatory markers.20, 65-68 Excessive pro-inflammatory responses may cause airway damage and consequently structural and functional pulmonary changes.31 Hypothetically, higher levels of stress during deployment among personnel may, in part, explain the increased rate of respiratory symptoms reported in recent studies. There is increasing evidence of associations between stress related mental disorders such as PTSD and altered immune responses, and elevated circulating inflammation. The direction of this association is not conclusive, however. Regardless, low level inflammation and altered immune response provide plausible mechanisms by which trauma exposure may be associated with respiratory symptoms.20, 60, 65-68
Other exposure factors
In addition to deployment specific risks, evidence suggests other military factors such as physical activity, increased tobacco use and other individual susceptibility factors may increase the risk of respiratory symptoms and enhance susceptibility to environmental and trauma exposures in this population.
Physical activity
Researchers have suggested that physical activity performed in stressful environments alters immune function.17 Light physical activity or moderate environmental stress stimulate immune responses, but exhausting physical activity or severe environmental stress can have immune suppressant effects, manifested by a temporary increase in susceptibility to respiratory infections.9 Multiple physical and psychological stressors, such as those encountered on deployment, may induce alterations in immune parameters (as discussed above) and/ or neurological and endocrine responses; these common exertion-induced pathways could result in respiratory tract syndromes.8
Smoking
Cigarette smoking has been associated with morbidity and mortality in a number of studies.5-7, 21, 31, 69, 70 Pathological mechanisms of smoking and its adverse health effects generally overlap with environmental air pollution. Smoking has also been related to increased susceptibility to respiratory insult from airborne hazards.70 Interestingly, there is no clear evidence of direct effects of smoking on respiratory outcomes in deployed military populations. For example, Sanders et al. found that approximately 70% of US military personnel deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan reported at least 1 episode of an acute respiratory illness and 15% reported 3 or more incidents of respiratory illnesses during their deployment.31 There was, however, no observed relationship between cigarette smoking and self- reported respiratory illnesses during deployment; suggesting that factors other than tobacco use were likely to contribute to the observed respiratory symptoms and morbidity.
Findings from a prospective study of Australian military personnel deployed to the MEAO showed that those respondents who began or resumed smoking while on deployment were also likely to have more co-morbidities compared to those who did not smoke on deployment.1 Similarly, those who smoked more than usual were likely to have more co-morbidities compared to those who did not smoke.1 However, the relative impact of different exposures and other non-smoking related risk were not examined in this population.
Since the 1960s, the rate of tobacco smoking has declined in the US including in the military.71 However, the rate of tobacco smoking among active duty military personnel remains higher (32%) compared to the general population (~20%).71 Within the US military population, the prevalence of smoking is approximately 40% higher among Veterans and 50% higher among deployed military personnel compared with their non-deployed counterparts.71 In a cross-sectional study by Sanders et al.(2005), it was reported that 47.6% of US military personnel deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan began or resumed smoking while deployed and ~40% smoked half a pack of cigarettes or more per day.31 High rates of tobacco smoking are not restricted to US military personnel but are also increased 40%–60% among coalition militaries.72
While specific factors contributing to smoking rates have not been ascertained, the significant smoking uptake observed in a number of studies is thought to relate to deployment stress particularly among those with prolonged deployments, or combat exposures.73 Combat exposure, military stressors and PTSD have all been identified also as predictors for cigarette smoking.74, 75 As discussed above, these psychological risk factors and mental health disorders have also been associated with respiratory symptoms, abnormal lung function and diseases such as asthma.20, 76 Although tobacco smoke may differ in many respects from the ambient air pollution in deployed settings, the contribution of tobacco smoke exposure to military personnel’s cumulative exposures to airborne hazards while on deployment cannot be underestimated, given the prevalence and intensity of tobacco use in stressful combat situations.21 The potential for smoking to interact with and/or exacerbate other environmental or stress exposures is of importance to examine.
Individual susceptibility factors
Studies regarding the association between respiratory health conditions and individual factors (age, sex, BMI, blood pressure, physical fitness, pre-existing conditions and personal characteristics) in general the population and deployed military personnel generally focus on single respiratory outcomes and are usually assessed using different methods.
In a cross-sectional study, data collected from a European Community Respiratory Health survey of 16 countries were examined. The aim of this study was to estimate the age and sex-specific incidence of asthma from birth to the age of 44 in men and women across several countries, and to evaluate the main factors influencing asthma incidence in young adults. This study demonstrated that there are different patterns of asthma incidence in men and women. During childhood, girls had a significantly lower risk of developing asthma than did boys. Around puberty, the risk was almost equal in the two sexes, while after puberty, the risk in women was significantly higher than that in men.77
In a case control study of active duty and retired US military members, increasing BMI, younger age, gender, non-active duty beneficiary status and arthritis were significant independent predictors of asthma in this population.78 Similarly, Abraham et al.(2012) reported that gender, enlisted and Army personnel remained independent predictors of having a new obstructive pulmonary disease encounter.39 Age and combat occupations were not statistically significantly associated with a post-deployment obstructive pulmonary disease diagnosis. The way in which these factors might interact with deployment exposures to influence respiratory health outcomes has not been thoroughly studied. This deserves further attention in larger epidemiological studies, particularly given emerging evidence of their influence on physical and psychological health.
Limitations
Due to the limited research regarding respiratory health of MEAO deployed Service members, studies of lower levels of evidence addressing issues of interest were discussed in this review, although findings were interpreted with caution and used as supporting rather than primary evidence sources.
A number of studies in this review were of cross-sectional design; consequently, any respiratory health issues in existence before an exposure were not accounted. Without baseline data, it is not possible to accurately assess the impact of specific deployment exposures on a person’s respiratory health. Cross-sectional studies are carried out at one period and do not indicate the series of events, therefore it is difficult to determine the relationship between exposure and outcome as it lacks the time element.
Previous studies have largely relied on self-report data to measure the impact of exposures on respiratory health. This type of measurement is open to recall bias, particularly when data is collected well after exposures have occurred.31, 26 Medical record reviews are predominantly retrospective7, 16, 39 and therefore also subject to potential biases (reflected in documentation and health care seeking).
Discussion
Long-term psychological and physical health effects following deployment are of concern to Veterans, healthcare providers and the community. While some international literature suggests a higher prevalence of respiratory conditions in military personnel during and following deployment to the Middle East, findings are equivocal and the exact reasons underpinning any elevated respiratory health consequences are not well understood. Some inconsistencies in findings could be due to difficulties retrospectively standardising for exposure; reliance on self-reported symptoms or conditions, or inconsistent application of ICD codes, making it difficult to say with certainty which conditions are increasing in incidence or prevalence. Furthermore, many studies have focused on limited exposure and outcome variables. The potential interaction of these factors, and their effects on multiple respiratory outcomes, has not been thoroughly considered.
Current evidence (mainly from US studies) indicates that deployment-related environmental (PM, burn pit, air pollution, metal particles), combat (blast, stress) and other exposures (smoking, physical activity, military living conditions), and psychological trauma more generally, may be associated with several respiratory conditions in military personnel, such as asthma,5, 16, 26 CB,15 COPD,1, 39 sinusitis,40 and AEP37.These associations may be via direct actions and by disturbance of the immune system. Psychological stress, while highly prevalent in relation to deployment, is a less investigated risk factor for respiratory health outcomes and its contribution to respiratory health outcomes and potential mechanisms underlying associations, as well as potential predictors of good or poor health over time, are not well understood.61, 68, 79-85
Taken together, further prospective and cross-sectional analyses are needed to clarify relationships between the individual and combined impacts of environmental and psychological exposures on deployment, and any potential moderating or mediating effects of other factors on respiratory outcomes.
Barth SK, Dursa EK, Peterson MR, et al.Prevalence of respiratory diseases among veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom: results from the National Health Study for a New Generation of U.S.veterans.Mil Med.2014;179(3):241–5.
Institute of Medicine.Long-Term Health Consequences of Exposure to Burn Pits in Iraq and Afghanistan.Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.2011-2015;180:601–603.
Wingfors H, Hägglund L, Magnusson R.Characterization of the size-distribution of aerosols and particle-bound content of oxygenated PAHs, and n-alkanes in urban environments in Afghanistan.Atmos Environ.2011;45(26):4360–9.
de Marco R, Locatelli F, Sunyer J et al.Differences in incidence of reported asthma related to age in men and women.A retrospective analysis of the data of the European Respiratory Health Survey.Am J Respir Crit Care Med.2000;162(1):68-74.
Young SY , Gunzenhauser JD, Malone KE et al.Body mass index and asthma in the military population of the northwestern United States.Arch Intern Med.2001:161:1605-11. |
11 Jul Does Poverty in Perth Expose the City’s Biases?
Perth, Australia is often called the most isolated city in the world. With a population of nearly 1.4 million, it is the capital of Western Australia, yet it is also surrounded on all sides by the forces of nature. With the Indian Ocean to the left and the famous Australian outback to the right, the population of Perth is beset by fierce wildlife and solitude, not to mention the constant rays of sun, which beat down unforgivingly year-round. With the nearest city of over one million people being more than a thousand miles away, one would think Perth has learned to deal with its independence by way of unity and equality. Unfortunately, this would be far from the case.
Over 17.5% of Western Australians are living in poverty, with Perth being the second highest city in Australia when it comes to citizens living in severe poverty. With the cost of living continuing to rise and the government seemingly resigning to its current reality, in late 2017 a grassroots organization called the Anti-Poverty Network was formed, in order to both bolster the confidence of the people and organize strategies for social reform. Currently, people below the poverty line barely have the cash to feed themselves. Savings accounts are empty, meaning citizens can’t even pay cash only for cars in Perth, used or otherwise.The APN not only blames greedy government policies for the lack of current social safety nets, but also Australian society and the way it is set up in general. By forcing the most vulnerable and in need of help citizens to jump through as many hoops as there currently are, APN argues that not only the federal government, but local government is to blame for the current poverty struggles in the OCE.
The APN also rails against the systemic racism and patriarchy that seems to still be plaguing Australia today, faulting these biases for many of the lack of social strides being made by Australia’s poorest demographics. Indeed, only 21 people have ever been convicted of breaking hate crime laws in Australia, which either means people are exceptionally benevolent and good-willed, or that there is a distinct lack of prosecution. It is APN’s view, among many others, that it is the latter. After all, this is a country that has given Chris Lilley multiple platforms for shows that sometimes revolve entirely around racially motivated humor, including but not limited to blackface. The largely white population accepting such humor as the norm may be indicative of an underlying problem with the country’s moral compass.
In Perth itself, there have also been hate crimes, including Islamophobic incidents. As of yet, police have turned up no leads, which seems hardly surprising to community activists and grassroots organizers. Anecdotally, there seems to be a level of corruption in the city. A high school chaplain was blatantly accused by a colleague of looking like a religious extremist due to his sporting a beard and kurta. So the question remains: will Perth’s government step up and reorganize its social programs to benefit the underprivileged? Or does it just not care?
The Video is Recommended Viewing: |
Rotary Run races for charity
Courtesy of the Rotary Club of Hinsdale
Hundreds of people showed up for the 2017 Rotary Run Charity Classic on Sunday, Oct. 15.
Hang on for a minute...we're trying to find some more stories you might like.
On Sunday, Oct. 15, the Hinsdale Community House held its annual Rotary Run Charity Classic. The proceeds from this event are donated to the Rotary Club of Hinsdale and other local non-profit organizations.
The Rotary is a global non-profit organization that fights disease, promotes peace, and helps grow local communities. It has funded numerous scholarships, provided health care, and led immunization campaigns. Through their PolioPlus program, they immunized nearly 2 billion children.
Courtesy of the Rotary Club of Hinsdale
The Mrs. B Trophy was awarded to Oak School, the D181 elementary school with the highest student and staff participation percentage.
The Rotary Club of Hinsdale provides scholarships for Central students and supports community programs and organizations, including the Hinsdale Humane Society, the Hinsdale Hospital Foundation, and the Ray Graham Association. Since 1995, the Rotary Run has raised more than $1.5 million.
This event was unique in that in that there were multiple races with varying distances. It included the Morgan Stanley 10K Run, the Rooney 5K Run, the Molex 5K Walk, the Hinsdale Bank & Trust 3K Run, the Mutt Strut Dog Walk, the Birches Walk n’ Roll (100 meter walk), and even a race between District 181 mascots.
“I usually don’t like running, so I was happy that I was still able to participate by walking my dog,” said Jake Cooper, junior, who participated in the Mutt Strut.
Most of the money made was from the registration fee for each race. The price to run was $40 for the 10k; $30 for the 5k, 3k, and Mutt Strut; and $20 for the 100 meter walk. They also sold t-shirts and offered food to the racers.
“We raised a lot of money today. It felt good to know that I helped contribute to this, as the Rotary Club does so much for this community,” said Nathan Saltzman, senior volunteer.
Although it heavily rained the day before, it did not affect how the coordination of the event.
“We were a bit worried that the run would be altered, but it ended up being a success,” said Julie Potts, volunteer. “It retained the same energetic atmosphere that it is known for.”
To view the results from the different races, click here. |
/*******************************************************************************
Intel(R) Gigabit Ethernet Linux driver
Copyright(c) 2007-2013 Intel Corporation.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License,
version 2, as published by the Free Software Foundation.
This program is distributed in the hope it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for
more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
51 Franklin St - Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
The full GNU General Public License is included in this distribution in
the file called "COPYING".
Contact Information:
e1000-devel Mailing List <e1000-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>
Intel Corporation, 5200 N.E. Elam Young Parkway, Hillsboro, OR 97124-6497
*******************************************************************************/
#ifndef _E1000_82575_H_
#define _E1000_82575_H_
extern void igb_shutdown_serdes_link_82575(struct e1000_hw *hw);
extern void igb_power_up_serdes_link_82575(struct e1000_hw *hw);
extern void igb_power_down_phy_copper_82575(struct e1000_hw *hw);
extern void igb_rx_fifo_flush_82575(struct e1000_hw *hw);
extern s32 igb_read_i2c_byte(struct e1000_hw *hw, u8 byte_offset,
u8 dev_addr, u8 *data);
extern s32 igb_write_i2c_byte(struct e1000_hw *hw, u8 byte_offset,
u8 dev_addr, u8 data);
#define ID_LED_DEFAULT_82575_SERDES ((ID_LED_DEF1_DEF2 << 12) | \
(ID_LED_DEF1_DEF2 << 8) | \
(ID_LED_DEF1_DEF2 << 4) | \
(ID_LED_OFF1_ON2))
#define E1000_RAR_ENTRIES_82575 16
#define E1000_RAR_ENTRIES_82576 24
#define E1000_RAR_ENTRIES_82580 24
#define E1000_RAR_ENTRIES_I350 32
#define E1000_SW_SYNCH_MB 0x00000100
#define E1000_STAT_DEV_RST_SET 0x00100000
#define E1000_CTRL_DEV_RST 0x20000000
/* SRRCTL bit definitions */
#define E1000_SRRCTL_BSIZEPKT_SHIFT 10 /* Shift _right_ */
#define E1000_SRRCTL_BSIZEHDRSIZE_SHIFT 2 /* Shift _left_ */
#define E1000_SRRCTL_DESCTYPE_ADV_ONEBUF 0x02000000
#define E1000_SRRCTL_DESCTYPE_HDR_SPLIT_ALWAYS 0x0A000000
#define E1000_SRRCTL_DROP_EN 0x80000000
#define E1000_SRRCTL_TIMESTAMP 0x40000000
#define E1000_MRQC_ENABLE_RSS_4Q 0x00000002
#define E1000_MRQC_ENABLE_VMDQ 0x00000003
#define E1000_MRQC_RSS_FIELD_IPV4_UDP 0x00400000
#define E1000_MRQC_ENABLE_VMDQ_RSS_2Q 0x00000005
#define E1000_MRQC_RSS_FIELD_IPV6_UDP 0x00800000
#define E1000_MRQC_RSS_FIELD_IPV6_UDP_EX 0x01000000
#define E1000_EICR_TX_QUEUE ( \
E1000_EICR_TX_QUEUE0 | \
E1000_EICR_TX_QUEUE1 | \
E1000_EICR_TX_QUEUE2 | \
E1000_EICR_TX_QUEUE3)
#define E1000_EICR_RX_QUEUE ( \
E1000_EICR_RX_QUEUE0 | \
E1000_EICR_RX_QUEUE1 | \
E1000_EICR_RX_QUEUE2 | \
E1000_EICR_RX_QUEUE3)
/* Immediate Interrupt Rx (A.K.A. Low Latency Interrupt) */
#define E1000_IMIREXT_SIZE_BP 0x00001000 /* Packet size bypass */
#define E1000_IMIREXT_CTRL_BP 0x00080000 /* Bypass check of ctrl bits */
/* Receive Descriptor - Advanced */
union e1000_adv_rx_desc {
struct {
__le64 pkt_addr; /* Packet buffer address */
__le64 hdr_addr; /* Header buffer address */
} read;
struct {
struct {
struct {
__le16 pkt_info; /* RSS type, Packet type */
__le16 hdr_info; /* Split Header,
* header buffer length */
} lo_dword;
union {
__le32 rss; /* RSS Hash */
struct {
__le16 ip_id; /* IP id */
__le16 csum; /* Packet Checksum */
} csum_ip;
} hi_dword;
} lower;
struct {
__le32 status_error; /* ext status/error */
__le16 length; /* Packet length */
__le16 vlan; /* VLAN tag */
} upper;
} wb; /* writeback */
};
#define E1000_RXDADV_HDRBUFLEN_MASK 0x7FE0
#define E1000_RXDADV_HDRBUFLEN_SHIFT 5
#define E1000_RXDADV_STAT_TS 0x10000 /* Pkt was time stamped */
#define E1000_RXDADV_STAT_TSIP 0x08000 /* timestamp in packet */
/* Transmit Descriptor - Advanced */
union e1000_adv_tx_desc {
struct {
__le64 buffer_addr; /* Address of descriptor's data buf */
__le32 cmd_type_len;
__le32 olinfo_status;
} read;
struct {
__le64 rsvd; /* Reserved */
__le32 nxtseq_seed;
__le32 status;
} wb;
};
/* Adv Transmit Descriptor Config Masks */
#define E1000_ADVTXD_MAC_TSTAMP 0x00080000 /* IEEE1588 Timestamp packet */
#define E1000_ADVTXD_DTYP_CTXT 0x00200000 /* Advanced Context Descriptor */
#define E1000_ADVTXD_DTYP_DATA 0x00300000 /* Advanced Data Descriptor */
#define E1000_ADVTXD_DCMD_EOP 0x01000000 /* End of Packet */
#define E1000_ADVTXD_DCMD_IFCS 0x02000000 /* Insert FCS (Ethernet CRC) */
#define E1000_ADVTXD_DCMD_RS 0x08000000 /* Report Status */
#define E1000_ADVTXD_DCMD_DEXT 0x20000000 /* Descriptor extension (1=Adv) */
#define E1000_ADVTXD_DCMD_VLE 0x40000000 /* VLAN pkt enable */
#define E1000_ADVTXD_DCMD_TSE 0x80000000 /* TCP Seg enable */
#define E1000_ADVTXD_PAYLEN_SHIFT 14 /* Adv desc PAYLEN shift */
/* Context descriptors */
struct e1000_adv_tx_context_desc {
__le32 vlan_macip_lens;
__le32 seqnum_seed;
__le32 type_tucmd_mlhl;
__le32 mss_l4len_idx;
};
#define E1000_ADVTXD_MACLEN_SHIFT 9 /* Adv ctxt desc mac len shift */
#define E1000_ADVTXD_TUCMD_IPV4 0x00000400 /* IP Packet Type: 1=IPv4 */
#define E1000_ADVTXD_TUCMD_L4T_TCP 0x00000800 /* L4 Packet TYPE of TCP */
#define E1000_ADVTXD_TUCMD_L4T_SCTP 0x00001000 /* L4 packet TYPE of SCTP */
/* IPSec Encrypt Enable for ESP */
#define E1000_ADVTXD_L4LEN_SHIFT 8 /* Adv ctxt L4LEN shift */
#define E1000_ADVTXD_MSS_SHIFT 16 /* Adv ctxt MSS shift */
/* Adv ctxt IPSec SA IDX mask */
/* Adv ctxt IPSec ESP len mask */
/* Additional Transmit Descriptor Control definitions */
#define E1000_TXDCTL_QUEUE_ENABLE 0x02000000 /* Enable specific Tx Queue */
/* Tx Queue Arbitration Priority 0=low, 1=high */
/* Additional Receive Descriptor Control definitions */
#define E1000_RXDCTL_QUEUE_ENABLE 0x02000000 /* Enable specific Rx Queue */
/* Direct Cache Access (DCA) definitions */
#define E1000_DCA_CTRL_DCA_MODE_DISABLE 0x01 /* DCA Disable */
#define E1000_DCA_CTRL_DCA_MODE_CB2 0x02 /* DCA Mode CB2 */
#define E1000_DCA_RXCTRL_CPUID_MASK 0x0000001F /* Rx CPUID Mask */
#define E1000_DCA_RXCTRL_DESC_DCA_EN (1 << 5) /* DCA Rx Desc enable */
#define E1000_DCA_RXCTRL_HEAD_DCA_EN (1 << 6) /* DCA Rx Desc header enable */
#define E1000_DCA_RXCTRL_DATA_DCA_EN (1 << 7) /* DCA Rx Desc payload enable */
#define E1000_DCA_RXCTRL_DESC_RRO_EN (1 << 9) /* DCA Rx rd Desc Relax Order */
#define E1000_DCA_TXCTRL_CPUID_MASK 0x0000001F /* Tx CPUID Mask */
#define E1000_DCA_TXCTRL_DESC_DCA_EN (1 << 5) /* DCA Tx Desc enable */
#define E1000_DCA_TXCTRL_DESC_RRO_EN (1 << 9) /* Tx rd Desc Relax Order */
#define E1000_DCA_TXCTRL_TX_WB_RO_EN (1 << 11) /* Tx Desc writeback RO bit */
#define E1000_DCA_TXCTRL_DATA_RRO_EN (1 << 13) /* Tx rd data Relax Order */
/* Additional DCA related definitions, note change in position of CPUID */
#define E1000_DCA_TXCTRL_CPUID_MASK_82576 0xFF000000 /* Tx CPUID Mask */
#define E1000_DCA_RXCTRL_CPUID_MASK_82576 0xFF000000 /* Rx CPUID Mask */
#define E1000_DCA_TXCTRL_CPUID_SHIFT 24 /* Tx CPUID now in the last byte */
#define E1000_DCA_RXCTRL_CPUID_SHIFT 24 /* Rx CPUID now in the last byte */
/* ETQF register bit definitions */
#define E1000_ETQF_FILTER_ENABLE (1 << 26)
#define E1000_ETQF_1588 (1 << 30)
/* FTQF register bit definitions */
#define E1000_FTQF_VF_BP 0x00008000
#define E1000_FTQF_1588_TIME_STAMP 0x08000000
#define E1000_FTQF_MASK 0xF0000000
#define E1000_FTQF_MASK_PROTO_BP 0x10000000
#define E1000_FTQF_MASK_SOURCE_PORT_BP 0x80000000
#define E1000_NVM_APME_82575 0x0400
#define MAX_NUM_VFS 8
#define E1000_DTXSWC_MAC_SPOOF_MASK 0x000000FF /* Per VF MAC spoof control */
#define E1000_DTXSWC_VLAN_SPOOF_MASK 0x0000FF00 /* Per VF VLAN spoof control */
#define E1000_DTXSWC_LLE_MASK 0x00FF0000 /* Per VF Local LB enables */
#define E1000_DTXSWC_VLAN_SPOOF_SHIFT 8
#define E1000_DTXSWC_VMDQ_LOOPBACK_EN (1 << 31) /* global VF LB enable */
/* Easy defines for setting default pool, would normally be left a zero */
#define E1000_VT_CTL_DEFAULT_POOL_SHIFT 7
#define E1000_VT_CTL_DEFAULT_POOL_MASK (0x7 << E1000_VT_CTL_DEFAULT_POOL_SHIFT)
/* Other useful VMD_CTL register defines */
#define E1000_VT_CTL_IGNORE_MAC (1 << 28)
#define E1000_VT_CTL_DISABLE_DEF_POOL (1 << 29)
#define E1000_VT_CTL_VM_REPL_EN (1 << 30)
/* Per VM Offload register setup */
#define E1000_VMOLR_RLPML_MASK 0x00003FFF /* Long Packet Maximum Length mask */
#define E1000_VMOLR_LPE 0x00010000 /* Accept Long packet */
#define E1000_VMOLR_RSSE 0x00020000 /* Enable RSS */
#define E1000_VMOLR_AUPE 0x01000000 /* Accept untagged packets */
#define E1000_VMOLR_ROMPE 0x02000000 /* Accept overflow multicast */
#define E1000_VMOLR_ROPE 0x04000000 /* Accept overflow unicast */
#define E1000_VMOLR_BAM 0x08000000 /* Accept Broadcast packets */
#define E1000_VMOLR_MPME 0x10000000 /* Multicast promiscuous mode */
#define E1000_VMOLR_STRVLAN 0x40000000 /* Vlan stripping enable */
#define E1000_VMOLR_STRCRC 0x80000000 /* CRC stripping enable */
#define E1000_VLVF_ARRAY_SIZE 32
#define E1000_VLVF_VLANID_MASK 0x00000FFF
#define E1000_VLVF_POOLSEL_SHIFT 12
#define E1000_VLVF_POOLSEL_MASK (0xFF << E1000_VLVF_POOLSEL_SHIFT)
#define E1000_VLVF_LVLAN 0x00100000
#define E1000_VLVF_VLANID_ENABLE 0x80000000
#define E1000_VMVIR_VLANA_DEFAULT 0x40000000 /* Always use default VLAN */
#define E1000_VMVIR_VLANA_NEVER 0x80000000 /* Never insert VLAN tag */
#define E1000_IOVCTL 0x05BBC
#define E1000_IOVCTL_REUSE_VFQ 0x00000001
#define E1000_RPLOLR_STRVLAN 0x40000000
#define E1000_RPLOLR_STRCRC 0x80000000
#define E1000_DTXCTL_8023LL 0x0004
#define E1000_DTXCTL_VLAN_ADDED 0x0008
#define E1000_DTXCTL_OOS_ENABLE 0x0010
#define E1000_DTXCTL_MDP_EN 0x0020
#define E1000_DTXCTL_SPOOF_INT 0x0040
#define E1000_EEPROM_PCS_AUTONEG_DISABLE_BIT (1 << 14)
#define ALL_QUEUES 0xFFFF
/* RX packet buffer size defines */
#define E1000_RXPBS_SIZE_MASK_82576 0x0000007F
void igb_vmdq_set_anti_spoofing_pf(struct e1000_hw *, bool, int);
void igb_vmdq_set_loopback_pf(struct e1000_hw *, bool);
void igb_vmdq_set_replication_pf(struct e1000_hw *, bool);
u16 igb_rxpbs_adjust_82580(u32 data);
s32 igb_read_emi_reg(struct e1000_hw *, u16 addr, u16 *data);
s32 igb_set_eee_i350(struct e1000_hw *);
s32 igb_set_eee_i354(struct e1000_hw *);
s32 igb_init_thermal_sensor_thresh_generic(struct e1000_hw *);
s32 igb_get_thermal_sensor_data_generic(struct e1000_hw *hw);
#define E1000_I2C_THERMAL_SENSOR_ADDR 0xF8
#define E1000_EMC_INTERNAL_DATA 0x00
#define E1000_EMC_INTERNAL_THERM_LIMIT 0x20
#define E1000_EMC_DIODE1_DATA 0x01
#define E1000_EMC_DIODE1_THERM_LIMIT 0x19
#define E1000_EMC_DIODE2_DATA 0x23
#define E1000_EMC_DIODE2_THERM_LIMIT 0x1A
#define E1000_EMC_DIODE3_DATA 0x2A
#define E1000_EMC_DIODE3_THERM_LIMIT 0x30
#endif
|
WHAT IF...
What if you and your team could double your productivity?
What if you could all take one week off every month?
What if you could do both - double your productivity in just 3/4 of the time... Not to do more, but to live more!!!
And, what if I showed you how to do it for FREE... Interested?
Find Out More - Limited Places Still Available
No, I'm not crazy, it's research!
I'm in the middle of writing a book - The 2 Minute Guide to Doing Everything - building on my work over the last 35 years which has focused on enhancing personal productivity and developing business growth strategies.
As part of my final research I'm offering a limited number of free, interactive workshops and presentations to businesses across Adelaide (normally$147 per person).
That's right - you provide the people with the passion to learn, share and grow, and I'll provide the rest! But this is a strictly limited time offer.
_______________________________________
WHO SHOULD COME?
It could be your management group, a project team, or a cross section of staff - each workshop needs a minimum of 12 participants. You may have enough people in your business to fill this yourself. If not, share the opportunity with others in your network. If you still can't pull the numbers together, register your interest anyway and we'll aim to include you in another group.
Maybe you're an accountant, lawyer or other professional service provider. Why not sponsor a workshop for your clients and add real value to the relationship you're building with them!
_______________________________________
WHAT WE'LL COVER
No matter what industry you’re in, whether you’ve been in business for over 20 years or you’re just starting out, you’ll find the strategies I'll cover critical to enhancing your productivity and achieving your goals.
I'll meet with you first to specifically tailor the content so you get the most out of the session, and I can be flexible with time - anything from 1 to 3 hours depending on your situation. But, in the meantime, have a look at the Productivity and Business Growth program pages and you'll get a sense of the ground I'm able to cover.
_______________________________________
ACT NOW!
There are a limited number of workshop and presentation spots available - so it's "first in, best dressed". Register your interest by leaving your details below. I'll be in touch and, together, we'll make it happen!
STEP 1: REGISTER YOUR INTEREST |
His Hostage
- Title: His Hostage
- Author: Willow Winters
- ISBN: -
- Page: 355
- Format: Kindle Edition
His Hostage Best Read || [Willow Winters], His Hostage, Willow Winters, His Hostage Alternate cover edition for ASIN B HILT B dese Alternate cover edition
His Hostage
- His Hostage Best Read || [Willow Winters]
Willow Winters355Willow Winters
407 thought on “His Hostage”
FREE on US today 11 25 2016 Stand alone book 2.BLURB Unt [...]
I enjoyed it, but didn t love it.It happened all so fast That s what bothered e a bit I guess because it was all so fast.But still the blurb spoke to me and made the book very good.Still I have a bit of hate for her mother I know, I know it s not she herself but the alcohol talking,but still that s very low and mean So don t take my review to heart, because it isn t because I found it to fast that you will feel the same.I m sorry for the short review, but I m not sure what all I can mention.It s [...]
Ok I did not expect to like this book at all The first book Dirty Dom was not for me it was straight drama and mostly smut However, this story started the same with them having a physical relationship before they even know each other It reads like porn to me honestly This changes fast but it still had me cringing and going WTF every few minutes And this is why it took me so long to read it Until the mid way mark Then, we finally have a story that you can get behind Yes there is drama Lama XL but [...]
3.5 to 4 starsElle is a good girl who s working hard but is being dragged down in life and debt by her alcoholic mother All she does is work, she s no friends and she s still a virgin and after yet another argument she finds herself struggling to concentrate on her studies I m tired of sacrificing everything for her, but I just can t say no I can t abandon her Even if it s draining the life out of me I m just lucky I was able to transfer to a local university so I could move back in with her So [...]
I m not going to give this a star rating because I read it knowing that I probably wasn t going to like it based on my feelings for Dirty Dom I can t really fault the book for being pretty much all the things I hate, I shouldn t have read it at all.BUT because earlier this week I read these amazing freaking stories Crow Reaper, I have developed a mafia men obsession so I m trying books I would never have otherwise considered This same thing happened back in January when I decided to try some Mot [...]
Five stars for His Hostage.Well written, hard to put down book When Elle Hawthorne came home from school to help her Alcoholic mother and hopefully get her in rehab she had high hopes of being able to continue her education but trying g to concentrate at home was and problematic Elle has found a spot to study at least she believes so, she has Found the Valetti Family Bistro which looks like a quite place to study and have a drink or two but once inside, she encounters something even distracti [...]
For the love of Damn that first half of the book was stupid and pointless It would ve been way better with out the roofies and stupidity Mind you stupidity was all over the damn place Please see example 1, as it pretty much tells you the stupidity of this particular messed up piece of book I feel like a king Her king I m her entire world right now I rule over her body I own her MF if you said that out loud with me aroundAnd then some of this.And Elle you stupid stupid virginess idiot Like you ca [...]
This is one of the best mafia books I have read in a long time and I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed reading it The story covers Elle, the daughter of a alcoholic mother going into a Italian family restaurant to study and accidentally sees a man covered in blood and obviously being tortured Vince, the son of Leo the head of the Vaeletti mafia family abducts Elle and decides that she is going to belong to him and that s it What you will find in this story is drama, suspense, action, abductio [...]
Mob Mafia romances are a hit and miss for me It hard to find one that I like because they always trip one of my many triggers His Hostage was a pleasant surprise We have Elle, a goody two shoes girl that was in the wrong place and at the wrong time And we have Vince, the Don s son Like the typical bad boy mafia prince he is, what he wants he normally gets When he lays on Elle it s lust at first glance The chemistry between this dirty talking alpha and his sweet Elle is HOT Although not everythin [...]
It honestly wasn t terribleBut it was a bit far fetched and cliche Typical stuff but I didn t hate it, just didn t like it either.
This is the second book in the Valetti Crime Family series After reading the first one, I was hoping for Dom s brother to get a book and here it is Our H is Vincent Valetti and our h is Elle Hawthorne.Vince is an underboss for the Valetti family His brother is Dom from the 1st book and his father is the boss He is a hard man that demands respect and his father s approval means to him than anything He is sitting at the bistro, owned by the mob, while his cousins are finishing up in the back He i [...]
Amazing read by Willow Winters This is a story about Elle, whose mother is an alcoholic who gets involved with one man after another and now she is living with Elle with no income There is so much weight on Elle s shoulders and she just needs to go to a bar and get a drink and study for her exams She spots a little place and goes inside Once she is there she pulls out her laptop but notices she does not have Wi Fi All the while Vince is watching her He walks over and sits down at the table with [...]
His Hostage Valetti Crime Family 2By Willow WintersI just love new upcoming Arthurs Amazing read by Willow Winters.Elle is a college student that comes into their bistro to find some peace quiet from alcoholic mother only find herself face to face with the Hottest Male Specimen she has ever seen Elle is shy virgin willing to try just about anything to please VinceVince, the son of Leo the head of the Vaeletti mafia family brother of Dom from the 1st book And also a man who takes what he wants An [...]
Good second book in this series, in this installment we meet Dom s brother Vince who happens to fall for the sweet, good girl Elle, who has had to take care of her addict mother A mother who abuses Elle at every opportunity Elle is a good girl who suffers from some self esteem issues, but we see that Vince takes note of that and is on a mission to make sure that Elle knows she is wanted by him After witnessing a scence that Vince s family was involved in Elle fears her life is over because they [...]
Valetti crime family underboss Vincent Valetti is hot Like jaw dropping, lip biting, panty wetting kind of hot Tall and muscular, with the kind of dominant, cocky attitude that makes a girl s knees go weak If you re a fan of filthy talking, hot, possessive bad boy stories, this is the book for you His Hostage is a fast paced story with an interesting story line, great characters, and a great mix of suspense, drama, romance, turmoil, and so much .I received a courtesy copy of this book for an hon [...]
3.5 solid stars Good story with good characters and some hot steamy times Alittle fast moving and some insta lust But hay this is a mafia book and they do and take what and who they want Good read with new author Free at time of review.
Had to be bit open minded with this one Hard to explain but the story was good not too intense Decent mafia book.
Quick and fun, I really enjoyed this one
Another mafia book, another dark and intense reading for sure His Hostage tells the stories of Vicent and Elle Vicent is the underboss of the Valetti family and he s a very hot and sexy man He s full of himself and has every right to be that way because one look at him and you re doomed He can have all the woman in the planet for his pleasure and that s it No strings attached, no relationship, nothing But things can change in a sec One single look at Ella and things will change Ella is the sweet [...]
In this episode we see Vince Elle having to have each other when Elle s at their restaurant when Elle his there to get away from her drunk of a mother who has made her to move back home so she can pay for the house that s in her name, but now she s going to have to give up her studies Forget about that Vince see s her have to have her as she does he but he can t have her all the way, not back in his office at the back, so she runs this is where her life changes, when she see s what she shouldn t [...]
2.5 3 starsA definite improvement compared to the first, but still one too many wtf factors to be considered a personal favorite.
Oh my hot maffia men, never thought i would like them so much But i do Vince is my new favorite Cant wait to read the next
Title His HostageAuthor Willow WintersSeries Valetti Crime Family 2Publisher SelfReviewer BarbRelease Date June 23, 2016Genre s Contemporary Romance, Mafia, Virgin Page Count 188Heat Level 4 flames out of 5Rating 5 stars out of 5Review 5 My Mafia Hottie Stars Willow Winters is becoming a favorite author of mine for hot, dirty, good girl falls for bad guy, mafia romances The Valetti Crime Family series are short, quick reads that will satisfy your craving for romance, hot steamy encounters, and H [...]
Whew dam that was hot I think I need a fan For someone named Winter, she sure writes one hot as hell book It s one combustible book Well written well thought out and knowledgeable Growing up in the late 80 s in Miami with the big era of the Mafia I m quite familiar with the terms But this book it s not only Mafia it s an erotic Romance novel So if you not into reading a lot of hot and steamy scenesis may not be the book for you.I actually read these books out of sequence and red Vincent and Elia [...]
I was lucky enough to receive an ARC copy of this wonderful book from Willow Winters It is the second book in the Valetti Crime Family series [...]
Vincent Vince Valetti works for Valetti Family as a mover and shaker Vince is completely bored while waiting for interrogation to be complete When Vince spies a sweetheart entering The Bistro Elle Hawthorne is so angry with her mother and her stupid choices Elle is left to pick up the pieces and the ever mounting debt her mother creates for her Elle likes the tall, dark, and handsome stranger eyeing her up Elle feels complete lust for Vince but he doesn t know that she s a virgin When Elle sees [...]
DNF Ooookay I m so sick of the unrealistic reactions with characters I don t know about you but looking at someone who s good looking doesn t make my body go into a meltdown turn my panties into a waterfall And I don t know anyone else that this happens to When shit hits the fan Vince is trying to get information from Elle to see what she remembers seeing, he treats her like all she said does is entirely her fault She s done nothing wrong but is being treated like she did the worst thing possibl [...]
I understand the Valetti family have their rules when it comes to the mob but really this time Vinny was at fault for what went down and now I see that her is trying his best to fix this issue but the way he went about it was the wrong way until he came up with a plan to make her his The only problem with that is he did so much wrong that Elle might not forgive him but the way he goes about it makes a girl go weak in the knees Woo is it hot.
I received and ARC in exchange for an honest review I loved this book Willow has a way with words that just reel in her readers from the very beginning Vince is a mafia underboss, and Elle a timid, shy virgin After witnessing something that she shouldn t have, Elle ends up with Vince protecting her.Really a beautiful story and as always I highly recommend Willow s books, and look forward to reading whatever she bring to us next.
Eh It ll do for a quick Mafia read The one thing that made me want to punch a baby in the face was Sweetheart Every sentence began with Sweetheart, ended with Sweetheart and had Sweetheart in the middle I could have done without reading that term of endearment over 785 times. |
#ifndef METASHELL_DATA_TIMELESS_EVENT_DATA_HPP
#define METASHELL_DATA_TIMELESS_EVENT_DATA_HPP
// Metashell - Interactive C++ template metaprogramming shell
// Copyright (C) 2018, Abel Sinkovics (abel@sinkovics.hu)
//
// This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
// it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
// the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
// (at your option) any later version.
//
// This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
// but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
// MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
// GNU General Public License for more details.
//
// You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
// along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
#include <metashell/data/event_kind.hpp>
#include <metashell/data/timeless_event_details.hpp>
#include <variant.hpp>
namespace metashell
{
namespace data
{
typedef mpark::variant<
#ifdef PREPROCESSOR_EVENT_KIND
#error PREPROCESSOR_EVENT_KIND defined
#endif
#define PREPROCESSOR_EVENT_KIND(name, str, rdepth) \
timeless_event_details<event_kind::name> EVENT_KIND_SEP
#ifdef TEMPLATE_EVENT_KIND
#error TEMPLATE_EVENT_KIND defined
#endif
#define TEMPLATE_EVENT_KIND PREPROCESSOR_EVENT_KIND
#ifdef MISC_EVENT_KIND
#error MISC_EVENT_KIND defined
#endif
#define MISC_EVENT_KIND PREPROCESSOR_EVENT_KIND
#include <metashell/data/impl/event_kind_list.hpp>
#undef MISC_EVENT_KIND
#undef TEMPLATE_EVENT_KIND
#undef PREPROCESSOR_EVENT_KIND
>
timeless_event_data;
event_kind kind_of(const timeless_event_data& data);
bool operator==(const timeless_event_data& a, const timeless_event_data& b);
inline bool operator!=(const timeless_event_data& a,
const timeless_event_data& b)
{
return !(a == b);
}
}
}
#endif
|
is 111 - 1237470?
-1237357
In base 8, what is -4722 + 63343?
56421
In base 2, what is 111110010100001101001 + 110011?
111110010100010011100
In base 3, what is 1221010 - 2200220?
-202210
In base 16, what is -6b29 + -11266?
-17d8f
In base 11, what is -8 + 121909?
121901
In base 4, what is -223012130310 + 0?
-223012130310
In base 8, what is -16351 + 6262?
-10067
In base 9, what is -8 - -3815187?
3815178
In base 10, what is -242 - -34331?
34089
In base 5, what is -2 - -1312220332?
1312220330
In base 2, what is 10111010001 + 11100110000000?
11111101010001
In base 6, what is 132050 - -110524?
243014
In base 10, what is 145 - -233544?
233689
In base 2, what is -11110100001100111111001 - 101111?
-11110100001101000101000
In base 14, what is 2 - -139ba53b?
139ba53d
In base 12, what is -b15b9a + 4?
-b15b96
In base 9, what is -1080 + 224314?
223224
In base 9, what is -20 + 87202732?
87202712
In base 10, what is -5165 + 95102?
89937
In base 15, what is -cc0a - db?
-cce6
In base 3, what is 111122001101 - -2?
111122001110
In base 8, what is -3 - -13052026?
13052023
In base 4, what is 130 + -213021022?
-213020232
In base 15, what is 17e9d8d + 4?
17e9d92
In base 5, what is -2044101110441 + -1?
-2044101110442
In base 14, what is 14818 + -11?
14807
In base 7, what is -265 - -1020010?
1016412
In base 5, what is -11311333422 + 3?
-11311333414
In base 12, what is 69 - -141134a?
14113b7
In base 6, what is -12012315545 - 3?
-12012315552
In base 8, what is -3 + 73764453?
73764450
In base 14, what is -a1a26c + -5?
-a1a273
In base 16, what is 5 + 28e01d?
28e022
In base 12, what is 18 - 762017?
-761bbb
In base 14, what is 1d0 + 53?
243
In base 13, what is 2791261 - 0?
2791261
In base 10, what is -251330 + -29?
-251359
In base 14, what is 5d83822 - -1?
5d83823
In base 12, what is -187 + 4b8?
331
In base 12, what is 1 - 464254?
-464253
In base 7, what is 4 + -1001406640?
-1001406633
In base 6, what is -2 - -142122245?
142122243
In base 12, what is -66 + -5a3835?
-5a389b
In base 3, what is 102020211120120 - -10?
102020211120200
In base 10, what is -403327718 + -3?
-403327721
In base 10, what is 237962 + -62?
237900
In base 9, what is -37 + 1173857?
1173820
In base 16, what is 4 - -129a771?
129a775
In base 15, what is -5 - 15d7285?
-15d728a
In base 15, what is 210c24 + 3?
210c27
In base 13, what is 562 - -27851?
280b3
In base 13, what is -217651 - 5?
-217656
In base 12, what is 0 + 2b80b8?
2b80b8
In base 12, what is -6 - 841aa?
-841b4
In base 12, what is -1712950 + 19?
-1712933
In base 4, what is -131211100131 + 221?
-131211033310
In base 15, what is 3 + -6a0199?
-6a0196
In base 10, what is 256849 - 137?
256712
In base 6, what is 31101 - 1013?
30044
In base 5, what is -443433324 + -41?
-443433420
In base 15, what is -129ea0 - 21?
-129ec1
In base 14, what is -8c593 - b?
-8c5a0
In base 11, what is -81a8 - -1804?
-64a4
In base 7, what is -124355364 + 16?
-124355345
In base 13, what is -1174 - 3530?
-46a4
In base 13, what is -1085c41 + -64?
-1085ca5
In base 6, what is -115030103 + 14?
-115030045
In base 13, what is -14311527 - -5?
-14311522
In base 6, what is 50345 - 5300?
41045
In base 15, what is 14 - a97c?
-a968
In base 16, what is -f6b6 - d?
-f6c3
In base 13, what is 2 + 49077c1?
49077c3
In base 9, what is -1 - -33603?
33602
In base 6, what is 3 + -42321341004?
-42321341001
In base 12, what is 4a7784 + 5?
4a7789
In base 13, what is -a9 - -1901a3a?
1901961
In base 6, what is 4 - 232154345?
-232154341
In base 13, what is -72 + 2b3b3b?
2b3a99
In base 9, what is -1145700711 - -2?
-1145700708
In base 8, what is -5 + -340505600?
-340505605
In base 15, what is -1e775a - -1?
-1e7759
In base 12, what is 42 - 8aba9?
-8ab67
In base 2, what is -1011 + 1111100010001100110011101?
1111100010001100110010010
In base 7, what is -1323011 - 2?
-1323013
In base 8, what is 674251 - -2?
674253
In base 9, what is 73 + 234348?
234432
In base 14, what is -1472 - -1794?
322
In base 15, what is 5e4d0161 - -1?
5e4d0162
In base 12, what is 1 - 3106a?
-31069
In base 2, what is -1001111101001001011100001 - -1?
-1001111101001001011100000
In base 3, what is -1002001211120201 + 1011?
-1002001211112120
In base 14, what is -435d7 + a7?
-43530
In base 15, what is 10 + 211d5?
211e5
In base 6, what is 23315 + -3125?
20150
In base 15, what is -3c7cdc + -74?
-3c7d61
In base 14, what is -c3ab3 - 149?
-c3c1c
In base 7, what is -21 - 5333636?
-5333660
In base 14, what is -108643 + -51?
-108694
In base 12, what is 4749b9 + -67?
474952
In base 8, what is -242 - -3620535?
3620273
In base 6, what is -2 - -1013435401?
1013435355
In base 11, what is -16 + 5a5989?
5a5973
In base 8, what is 24417 + -5556?
16641
In base 14, what is -17 + -2710c?
-27125
In base 6, what is -3 - -11002215554?
11002215551
In base 11, what is 4 - -195386072?
195386076
In base 9, what is -12650 + -676?
-13436
In base 6, what is 200 + -1403001?
-1402401
In base 16, what is -17 + -417c0?
-417d7
In base 14, what is -35 + 21a0cb?
21a096
In base 12, what is 3 + -1bb0109?
-1bb0106
In base 9, what is 2423602 + 1?
2423603
In base 5, what is -123443144044 + -40?
-123443144134
In base 16, what is -6 - -86fc6c?
86fc66
In base 5, what is 1444 + 1204110?
1211104
In base 15, what is 2379 + -127?
2252
In base 5, what is 111113230024 + -4?
111113230020
In base 5, what is -12234302441 + 1?
-12234302440
In base 7, what is -3 + 32325123?
32325120
In base 4, what is 2 - 210103313133?
-210103313131
In base 16, what is -19d5 - -107f?
-956
In base 8, what is 15306033412 + 3?
15306033415
In base 5, what is 2 - -1204012120?
1204012122
In base 3, what is -22011 + -210202022120?
-210202121201
In base 7, what is -10112214635 + 1?
-10112214634
In base 8, what is -5252424 - 20?
-5252444
In base 4, what is -110130123302 - -103?
-110130123133
In base 16, what is 32146ce - 1?
32146cd
In base 3, what is 1102202010011111 - -22?
1102202010011210
In base 4, what is -133311211 + -21212?
-133333023
In base 16, what is 85590 - -1b?
855ab
In base 16, what is -1f180 - 7?
-1f187
In base 5, what is 2142102210 + 3?
2142102213
In base 16, what is -11f + -188a7?
-189c6
In base 15, what is 2a - -81784?
817ae
In base 11, what is 376 + -603345?
-602a7a
In base 2, what is -10110110100 - 11?
-10110110111
In base 12, what is -6739 + 154?
-65a5
In base 9, what is 13265 + -136626?
-123351
In base 16, what is -1 + 118b4f?
118b4e
In base 2, what is 10011101010 - 1000000101000111001?
-1000000010101001111
In base 12, what is 789 - 1841?
-1074
In base 8, what is -144 + 22576?
22432
In base 3, what is -20002202 + -12112220002?
-12202222211
In base 14, what is -3da - 16d7b?
-17377
In base 11, what is 7 - 9613923?
-9613917
In base 10, what is 15625 - -199?
15824
In base 15, what is 2 - -2595eeb?
2595eed
In base 14, what is -5 + 47d11b?
47d116
In base 8, what is -31 + 3257503?
3257452
In base 7, what is -4261 + -15553?
-23144
In base 12, what is -7241 + 220?
-7021
In base 13, what is -3 + 342c891?
342c88b
In base 12, what is -117 + -520948?
-520a63
In base 5, what is -14 + -113342001?
-113342020
In base 14, what is -3012 + 1a4a2?
17490
In base 10, what is 68 - 5820969?
-5820901
In base 14, what is 6129d42a - 5?
6129d425
In base 7, what is -3655213 - 10?
-3655223
In base 2, what is 1010011111111101101 - -101011011?
1010100000101001000
In base 4, what is 12200321110 + 12?
12200321122
In base 16, what is 1045c73 - -5?
1045c78
In base 9, what is 2 + 1528178?
1528181
In base 6, what is -2220503550 + -3?
-2220503553
In base 5, what is 1031 - 20314241?
-20313210
In base 7, what is 123 + 116032?
116155
In base 11, what is 10 + -a55357a?
-a55356a
In base 3, what is 2110100020 + 101210020?
2212010110
In base 9, what is 654473536 + 2?
654473538
In base 15, what is 581ac - 20e?
57e9d
In base 2, what is -100001110010 - -11001100011001101?
11001000001011011
In base 2, what is 1110011110100101001 - 110100?
1110011110011110101
In base 16, what is -e80 - 128?
-fa8
In base 14, what is -898 + -6923?
-73bb
In base 11, what is 106081802 - 5?
1060817a8
In base 8, what is -467062646 + -3?
-467062651
In base 9, what is -1067702670 + -3?
-1067702673
In base 9, what is -6172 + -3674?
-10856
In base 8, what is -117136636 + -23?
-117136661
In base 13, what is -1 + -12b5b565?
-12b5b566
In base 14, what is -43 - -690d?
68aa
In base 3, w |
Silks Place Taroko Hotel Hualien18 Tian Hsyang Road Price from TWD 5701.71
Location
Situated in the world-renowned Taroko Gorge National Park, the Silks Place Taroko Hotel Hualien is close to the central cross-island highway, Liwu River cross and the precipitous gorges. This property is 40 kilometres from the airport and 42 kilometres from the Hualien Train Station.
Rooms
This hotel offers 212 well-appointed accommodation units that have been elegantly furnished with an array of in-room amenities to ensure you a pleasurable stay.
Restaurant
The Taroko Restaurant serves delicious international cuisine for you to feast on. The Tianhsiong Shren Restaurant serves delectable Chinese cuisine for you to enjoy. You can sip your favourite drink at the cosy bar.
- 40 km to the Airport
- 42 km to the Train Station (Hualien)
- 45 km to the City Centre
Hotel Facilities
- Airport Transfer
- Banquet Facilities
- Cafe
- Children's Playroom
- Concierge
- Conference Facilities
- Currency Exchange Services
- Gift Shop
- Gym / Fitness Facilities
- Internet Access - High Speed
- Internet Access - Wireless
- Jacuzzi / Whirlpool
- Laundry Services
- Lift / Elevator
- Lobby
- Non-Smoking Rooms
- Parking Facilities
- Reception
- Restaurant
- Room Service
- Safe Deposit Box
- Sauna
- Spa / Wellness Centre
- Swimming Pool - Indoor
- Swimming Pool - Outdoor
- Tennis Court
- Tour Desk
Room Facilities
- Air Conditioning
- Cable / Satellite TV
- Ensuite / Private Bathroom
- Hairdryer
- Mini Bar
- Radio
- Telephone
book now!
18 Tian Hsyang Road - Shiou Lin Village Hualien - Hualien
Address: Toogle Street View |
Chris Clark, a.k.a. Clark, composed the score for a moody British TV serial called The Last Panthers. Here, he shapes this incidental music into a flowing 48-minute suite that conjures almost as much of a story as the show itself.
When the announcement hit last fall that David Bowie had recorded the theme to a British crime serial called The Last Panthers, a smaller piece of news got drowned out in the hubbub*:* Chris Clark, aka Clark of Warp Records, was tasked with composing the sound and music for the show itself. It was a surprising connection to many, but becomes perhaps less so when you realize that The Last Panthers show is produced by Warp Films, a burgeoning offshoot of the venerated electronic label. As they did with Broadcast for the studio’s indie horror film Berberian Sound Studio, Warp have decided to release Clark's work as a standalone effort.
It’s worth noting that Clark and Warp have chosen to present The Last Panthers as another chapter in Clark’s discography rather than as an "Original Soundtrack" or a "Music From..." Clark's catalog is deep and well-respected, and The Last Panthers is kind of a curious entry. It presents itself with two separate tests to pass: 1) Is it an effective soundtrack to a show? 2) Does it stand up on its own, without visual context?
To the first question, the answer is a resounding yes (U.S. viewers will get the chance to judge for themselves later this year, when the show is released Stateside). The dark, rain-soaked impressionism of the cinematography, coupled with the quiet, low-key dialogue, spoken in a variety of languages, creates a cold, gray and glassy world which the viewer feels they can observe at a distance but never penetrate. Clark’s work plays as much of a role in shaping this world as the visuals, making his cues not just appropriate but intrinsic to the show.
Answering the second question, how well The Last Panthers stands on its own, is a bit trickier. Clark has always been a stylistically varied artist, working in a range of tempos and textures, but The Last Panthers is most notable for the total absence of the faster, louder numbers, or the incredible low-end beats for which he is known, like 2003’s "Early Moss" or "Banjo" from 2014's Clark. He’s basically constructed an entire record of miniatures like "Ship is Flooding" and "Strength Through Fragility" (both also from Clark), or "Pleen 1930s" (the first track from his very first record in 2001)--tracks that typically ran short on his records and often felt more like interludes than compositions.
Coincidentally or not, many pieces feel reminiscent of the spindly instrumentals populating the back halves of Bowie's Heroes and Low. "Panther Bass Plock" and "Chloroform Sauna" practically channel "Neuköln" from Heroes at the altar, particularly the low-end sea burbles underneath the rising synths. Tim Hecker is evoked throughout, especially with the gently ebbing waves of "Upward Evaporation," while "Serbian Daffodil"’s warbling reverb-heavy synths recall Boards of Canada interludes and "Omni Vignette" is Erik Satie by way of Drukqs-era Aphex’s plaintive sustained piano.
But "sounds likes…" aside, what is most impressive about The Last Panthers is the way in which Clark has taken all of this incidental music and shaped it into a flowing 48-minute suite that conjures almost as much of an imagined visual story as The Last Panthers show itself. Due to the subdued nature of the proceedings along with short track times and a smattering of dreamily repeated theme refrains throughout, the listening experience doesn’t lend itself to tracks standing out on their own. Exceptions, however, are the awesomely titled "Strangled to Death in a Public Toilet," with its beautiful dead-angel chorus reminiscent of Gavin Bryar’s "The Sinking of the Titanic"; "Diamonds Aren’t Forever" and it's follow-up "II," which both break down midway through fogs of noisy synth to reveal plaintive repeated piano and violin; and album closer "Hide On the Treads 3", whose ascending and pumping glockenspiel arpeggios provide the closest thing to sunshine on this otherwise completely gray sound collage. It's been suggested before that Clark is writing the soundtrack to the end of the world; if so, The Last Panthers feels like the lonely soundtrack for whatever's left after that. |
Author Information
âµ*Reprint requests and correspondence: Dr. Sabahat Bokhari, Division of Cardiology, College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, 630 West 168th Street, PH 9-993B, New York, New York 10032, USA.
Abstract
Objectives The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of estrogen compared to estrogen plus progesterone on the stress electrocardiogram (ECG) in relationship to stress-gated myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) in postmenopausal women.
Background It is generally recognized that estrogen may cause false positive ST depressions on the stress ECG. The effects of estrogen plus progesterone are not known. This study was performed to define the effects of these agents on the stress ECG correlated with results from MPI.
Results The overall sensitivity and specificity of the stress ECG compared to MPI in women not taking HRT was 54% and 78%, respectively. In women taking estrogen or estrogen plus progesterone, the sensitivity was unchanged. The power to detect clinically meaningful sensitivity difference (10%) was poor (p = 0.09). The specificity was reduced to 46% (p < 0.01) in women on estrogen therapy. In women taking estrogen plus progesterone, specificity was 80%.
Conclusions Our results suggest that estrogen increases the false positive rate of the stress ECG. This decreased specificity is countered by co-administration of progesterone. Nonetheless, because the sensitivity of the stress ECG is only 50% to 57% in postmenopausal women, women at risk should have imaging in conjunction with stress for the optimal detection of CAD.
In Western societies, coronary artery disease (CAD) has now become the leading cause of death in women (1). Although the prevalence of CAD in women is lower than in men during the third through fifth decade, the incidence increases thereafter, and by the time women reach the eighth decade, the prevalence of CAD actually exceeds that of men (2). In addition, women have poor outcomes when they do manifest CAD compared to men (3,4).
Despite this high prevalence and poor outcome, the diagnosis of CAD in women is more complex because women present with more atypical than typical anginal features. Although stress electrocardiography (ECG) is widely available and is relatively inexpensive, the sensitivity and especially the specificity rates of the stress ECG are lower in women than in men (5–7). This is believed to be related both to the lower work loads achieved by women when corrected for age, and the putative effect of estrogen on the stress ECG (8,9). Thus, women are 5 to 20 times more likely to have a false positive stress ECG than men (8). As a result of this lower specificity, the best diagnostic strategy for the detection of CAD in women remains controversial. Although the high prevalence of false positive findings on the exercise ECG has been attributed to the presence of higher estrogen levels (9), the exact cause of the lower specificity in women is not clear. In addition, estrogen levels decrease after menopause, but the specificity of the ECG still is low. Thus, the effects of estrogen in combination with progesterone on the exercise ECG are not well known (10).
Accordingly, we evaluated the effect of estrogen with or without progesterone on the exercise ECG in postmenopausal women presenting to the stress laboratory for symptoms believed to relate to CAD, and to correlate changes with results of myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI).
Methods
Subjects
We performed a retrospective study on 140 consecutive postmenopausal women referred for the diagnosis of chest pain or dyspnea on exertion by either their primary care physician or cardiologist. Postmenopausal status was defined as age more than 50 years with cessation of menses for at least six months before the test period. Patients with classic angina or documented CAD, cardiomyopathy, and those with abnormal ECGs (left bundle branch block, paced rhythm, ECG criteria of left ventricular hypertrophy, delta waves suggestive of Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome, patients on digitalis, or patients with resting ST-T wave changes) were excluded. Patients who could not achieve 85% of age-adjusted predicted maximum heart rate (calculated as 220 − age) during exercise stress testing and those who did not achieve age-corrected Bruce protocol exercise times were also excluded.
Patients were divided into three groups: those receiving no hormone replacement therapy (HRT); those receiving estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) alone; and those receiving estrogen plus progesterone replacement therapy (EPRT). Patients in the no-HRT group ranged in age from 52 to 76 years (mean 64 ± 7 years). Those in the ERT group ranged in age from 51 to 74 years (mean 61 ± 8 years) and were taking 0.625 mg of conjugated estrogen daily by mouth. Patients in the EPRT group ranged in age from 53 to 78 years (mean 63 ± 7 years) and were taking 0.625 mg of conjugated estrogen plus 2.5 or 5.0 mg of medroxyprogesterone daily by mouth. Patients in the ERT and EPRT groups had been taking their medication for at least six months prior to the exercise test. No statistically significant difference existed between the groups on the basis of risk factors (Table 1).
Study protocol
All patients underwent symptom-limited treadmill exercise testing with the Bruce protocol. Medications were withheld for at least 12 h prior to the test. All patients had gated single-photon emission computed tomographic (SPECT) MPI performed in conjunction with stress testing.
Stress ECG
During stress testing, each patient had ECGs recorded with 12-limb and left precordial ECG leads. The skin was cleansed vigorously with alcohol, and ECG leads were placed. Treadmill testing was performed on Marquette ECG machines (model Case 15, Marquette Electronics, Milwaukee, Wisconsin). ECGs were recorded continuously before and during stress testing and for up to 10 min during the recovery period. Raw and averaged ECGs were then analzed separately by two physicians with extensive stress-testing experience and who were blinded to HRT status.
The ST-segment changes during stress were considered positive if there was horizontal or downsloping ST-segment depression of at least 1 mm at 80 ms after the J point compared with the baseline ECG, or an upsloping ST-segment depression of at least 1.5 mm at 80 ms after the J point compared with the baseline ECG. The line between two PR segments was used as a baseline. Changes needed to be observed in two contiguous leads to be considered positive. Equivocal changes not meeting the above criteria for ischemia were reported as such to the patients’ referring physicians, but they were included in the normal ECG category for the purpose of this study.
MPI
Radionuclide perfusion imaging was performed with two different protocols: thallium-201 (Tl-201) stress-redistribution scanning or a dual-isotope protocol. In the thallium protocol, patients received approximately 3.0 to 3.3 mCi of Tl-201 intravenously at peak stress. Exercise was continued for 60 to 90 s after radioisotope injection, and gated stress SPECT imaging commenced within 10 min from the time of injection. All patients then had redistribution scans obtained at 3 to 4 h. Thallium imaging was performed on a triple-headed Picker camera (PRISM 3000XP, Picker International Inc., Highland Heights, Ohio) with a 360° acquisition.
In the dual-isotope protocol, patients received approximately 3.0 to 3.3 mCi of Tl-201 at rest and had rest SPECT MPI performed 15 to 30 min after injection. They then received 25 to 30 mCi of technetium-99m sestamibi at peak stress, exercised for 60 to 120 s more, and underwent stress imaging approximately 30 to 60 min later. Dual-isotope imaging was performed on a dual-headed ADAC Cardio-Epic camera (ADAC Laboratories, Milpitas, California) with a 180° acquisition (from 45° right anterior oblique to 225° left posterior oblique). All scans were collected in the gated mode, which allows interpretation of wall motion and ejection fraction from gated myocardial perfusion images. All scans were interpreted both qualitatively and quantitatively with standard, commercially available software.
Scans were interpreted by physicians with extensive experience blinded to patient’s HRT status. Scans were considered normal if uptake of tracer during stress was homogeneous and if results of wall motion and ejection fraction from gated imaging were normal. Scans were considered to reflect ischemia if there was a stress-induced defect that was not observed or had decreased significantly on the redistribution or resting scans. Infarction was defined as a focal decrease in radionuclide concentration with stress that was unchanged at rest or redistribution and that had a regional wall motion abnormality in the same segment. Single-vessel disease (SVD) was defined as a scintigraphic pattern characterized by the presence of perfusion defects in only one coronary artery territory, and multivessel disease (MVD) was defined by the presence of perfusion defects in two or more coronary artery territories.
Statistics
Results of the stress ECG were compared with MPI results. The overall sensitivity of stress-gated MPI in our laboratory compared with cardiac angiography (50% coronary luminal narrowing defined as angiographic obstruction) is 93%.
Data are presented as mean ± SD. Differences between groups were compared with the Fisher exact test, with p < 0.05 considered statistically meaningful. Continuous variables were compared using analysis of variance, while the differences of categorical variables were assessed by the chi-square test.
Results
Of the 140 women, 31 were in the no-HRT group, 75 were in the ERT group, and 34 were in the EPRT group. No statistically significant difference was seen in exercise duration, peak heart rate, or peak systolic blood pressure between groups (Table 1).
For the purposes of this study, an abnormal scan was that in which ischemia or infarction was present. Of the total of 59 patients with abnormal scans, all had ischemia and 3 had a combination of both ischemia and infarction. Thus, the majority of patients with “abnormal” scans had ischemia.
Of the 31 postmenopausal women taking no HRT, 11 (35%) had a positive stress ECG and 20 (65%) had a negative stress ECG. Of 11 women with positive stress ECG, 7 (64%) had an abnormal MPI (4 SVD; 3 MVD). Of 20 women with negative stress ECG, 6 (30%) had an abnormal MPI (5 SVD; 1 MVD) (Fig. 1). Overall, the sensitivity of the stress ECG compared with MPI in the group was 54%, and specificity was 78% (Fig. 2). The sensitivity of the stress ECG for detecting SVD in this group of women was 44%, and it was 75% for detecting MVD (Fig. 3).
Specificity of the stress ECG compared to gated myocardial perfusion imaging in the postmenopausal women studied for detecting coronary artery disease in those with single-vessel as compared to multivessel disease. Solid bar = No HRT; lined bar = ERT; open bar = EPRT. For abbreviations, see Figure 1.
Of the 75 women in the ERT group, 41 (55%) had a positive ECG on stress testing and 34 (45%) had a negative stress ECG. Of 41 women with positive ECGs, 18 (45%) had an abnormal myocardial perfusion scan (8 SVD; 10 MVD). Of 34 women with negative ECGs, 14 (41%) had abnormal MPI (11 had SVD; 3 had MVD) (Fig. 1). Compared with MPI, in women taking ERT the overall sensitivity of the stress ECG was 56%, and the specificity was 46% (Fig. 2). The sensitivity for detecting SVD was 42%, and it was 78% for detecting MVD (Fig. 3).
Thus, comparing the stress ECG to gated MPI, no significant difference was seen between the sensitivity of detecting CAD in women between those on ERT, EPRT, or those not taking HRT (Figs. 2 and 3). In contrast, the specificity of the women taking EPRT or those not taking HRT was significantly higher than those women taking estrogen alone (p < 0.01) (Fig. 2).
Discussion
Our results show that postmenopausal women referred for chest pain or dyspnea with an intermediate likelihood of CAD and taking estrogen alone have a higher rate of false positive ST-segment changes on the exercise stress ECG compared with patients taking a combination of estrogen plus progesterone or those not taking HRT.
Exercise ECG
Exercise ECG testing began with the observation of abnormal downsloping ST-depression and T-wave inversion in the ECG of three male patients experiencing anginal attacks after climbing the stairs to a physician’s office in 1928 (11). Profant was the first to report that exercise-induced ST-depression was more common in normal women than in men (12). Concerning the effects of hormones, the earliest study was by Jaffe (13), who observed ST-segment changes in 51 patients (33 men, 18 women) after two weeks of estogen therapy and reversal of the effect six weeks after discontinuation. A study by Morise et al. (9) found positive ECG treadmill stress tests in 22% (24/109) of postmenopausal women with normal coronary angiograms. Fourteen of 24 (58%) patients were receiving estrogen HRT. Rovang et al. (14) performed treadmill exercise echocardiography in 47 postmenopausal women free of CAD prior to and following six weeks of ERT therapy. Additionally, 10 women (21%) with negative ECGs at baseline had positive ECG response after ERT replacement therapy without new wall motion abnormalities on echocardiography (15).
Several studies have documented the lack of diagnostic value of the stress ECG in women on ERT (sensitivity ranging from 0.32 to 0.80; specificity from 0.41 to 0.68) (16,17). Compared with the exercise ECG, stress MPI offers improved sensitivity (83% to 90%) and specificity (80% to 93%), especially when combined with gating (18,19). Also, MPI is a more accurate predictor of prognosis than either the exercise ECG or even coronary angiography (20).
The mechanism of the false positive exercise ECG response to estrogen is unknown. Several explanations have been proposed. Estrogen has a similar chemical structure to digitalis, a known cause of false positive ST-depression (21). There is also some evidence that estrogen may be a vasoconstrictor to coronary arterioles (22). The true cause of the increased false positive rate of exercise tests is nevertheless still being debated. Conversely, androgens have been shown to decrease ST-depression (23), and though the exact mechanism by which progesterone acts on ST-segments is unknown, it is possible that this androgen effect balances the effects of estrogen.
Study limitations
Our study was limited in that none of the patients in our study underwent coronary angiography, presently considered the gold standard for the diagnosis of CAD. Although angiography is more accurate for the diagnosis of CAD, studies based on invasive techniques are more likely to be influenced by referral bias (24). In our study, gated MPI was the noninvasive strategy used for delineation of myocardial perfusion abnormalities. Exercise MPI has a good diagnostic accuracy, with an overall sensitivity of 83% to 90% and an overall specificity of 80% to 93% (17,18). In addition, the use of gating greatly improves the specificity of interpretation of MPI, especially in women (18).
Significant differences in sensitivity were not detected in this study. This is not surprising as the power to detect sensitivity differences of 10% was only 0.09, whereas the power to detect the actual observed differences in sensitivity was <0.04 (alpha = 0.05).
Conclusions
In summary, the stress ECG is more specific in postmenopausal women not taking HRT or those taking a combination of estrogen and progesterone than in patients taking estrogen alone. However, the overall sensitivity for detection of CAD in women based on the stress ECG in comparison with MPI is only about 50% and not related to estrogen. Thus, even though the stress ECG is more specific in postmenopausal women either not taking HRT or on EPRT, women referred for stress testing should undergo imaging for optimal detection of CAD.
Acknowledgements
We thank the stress technologists, nuclear medicine technologists, and fellows in our laboratory for their help in these patient studies, and Kristine M. Kulage, MA, for preparation of the manuscript.
Toolbox
Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about JACC: Journal of the American College of CardiologyNOTE: We request your email address only as a reference for the recipient. We do not save email addresses.
Your Email *
Your Name *
Send To *
Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas. |
[A Meta-analysis of efficacy and safety of sublingual immunotherapy on allergic asthma].
To evaluate the efficacy and safety of sublingual immunotherapy(SLIT) in patients with allergic asthma in order to provide reliable evidence for clinical application of SLIT. To search published articles of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in allergic asthma from CNKI, WANFANG, Pubmed and Medline databases. The methodological quality of trials was assessed by Jadad-scale. The heterogeneity was examined by using Stata 11.0 software. Fixed effect model or random effect model was used to pool the data. The articles which could not be pooled were carried out by descriptive analysis. The Egger's and Begg's test were used to evaluate the publication bias. There were total 6 RCTs included in this text. Compared with control group, SLIT could significantly reduce asthma symptom scores (SMD = -0.89, 95%CI -1.36--0.43, P = 0.000) and asthma medication scores (SMD = -4.53, 95%CI -6.97--2.08, P = 0.000), but not forced expiratory volume (FEV1) of lung function(SMD = 0.19, 95%CI -0.02-0.41, P = 0.078), neither serum sIgE levels (SMD = 0.05, 95%CI -0.58-0.69, P = 0.870). There were no obvious adverse events reported after treatment of SLIT. No publication bias were indicated by Egger's and Begg's tests. SLIT significantly reduces asthma symptom scores and medication scores, suggesting that SLIT is a safe and effective approach of immunotherapy. However, it still needs more highly qualified studies of RCTs to prove. |
Tutorial
Create user facing workflow
Using a status field and smart actions, we can create a basic state machine that allows users to change the status of a project and track history. This functionality allows users to think in terms of progression and milestones. When looking at a project, it becomes easier to determine the previous, current and future condition of a project based on the current state and expected actions.
Instructions
- Create a set of fields which will be used in the workflow sections:
- Status - Infowise color choice field with values "Draft (DEFAULT), In Progress, Hold, Canceled, Complete"
- Workflow Action - SharePoint choice field with values "---SELECT---, Set to Draft, Set to In Progress, Set to Hold, Set to Canceled, Set to Complete"
- Workflow Note - SharePoint multiple lines of text field with 2 lines
- Last Workflow User - SharePoint people field. Will show read only in UI.
- Last Workflow Date - SharePoint Date & Time field. Will show read only in UI.
- Last Workflow Note - SharePoint multiple lines of text field with 2 lines. Will show read only in UI.
- Using Infowise advanced column permissions settings, set the Status field as read only in all forms.
- From the list settings screen, select Infowise tabs and tab permissions.
- Create a tab called "Workflow".
- Add the fields as shown in the form view:
- The next step is to create corresponding actions for the Workflow Action field.
- Use update field smart actions to change the status for each respective Workflow Action.
- Be sure to reset the Workflow Action field to the default value each time as the last action.
- Your actions should look similar to below:
- Also set up a smart action to clear the workflow message after the other actions so that the field is reset each time.
Controlling Options by Status
It is likely you might want to control workflow actions depending on various conditions. There is more than one way this might be executed. Advanced validation settings could be used to block actions based on status. Another approach would be to remove options based on the project status on page load using javascript.
Summary
The concept of user facing workflow demonstrates how Infowise can be configured to provide sophisticated user facing functionality. By determining the flow of an actual project and the corresponding statuses for the project, the tool can allow users to track progression and next steps. This logic can be at the heart of the actions used to control the overall flow of a project. |
Home surgery – we should practice it more often. I’m not talking about the big things like kidney transplants or open-heart surgery here, I’ll leave some things to the doctors. However, many people have yet to experience the joy and sense of accomplishment one gets from sewing up a nasty wound, or ridding oneself from that troublesome ingrown toenail.
I try to minimise my visits to the hospital or doctor, simply because I am very fond of my body. It’s the only thing that is truly mine, and I feel that I should be able to cope with most of the things that befall it. That’s not to say I wouldn’t hike on up to the emergency ward if my arm got sliced off, but I feel that general maintenance is up to me. In the same way that a driver should be able to change a fan belt and fit new sparkplugs, I think that we should be able to relocate limbs and re-attach an errant ear.
Doctors and surgeons have largely thankless tasks. They have to put up with the mundane and yet quite disgusting things that tend to go wrong with everybody’s biological baggage on a daily basis. How can a person enjoy another person’s piles? Well, the answer (by and large) is that they can’t. They may enjoy helping someone deal with a problem, but no one really loves that type of thing, least of all another person’s. I say give them a break. Let’s go to them with the exciting accidental amputations and tropical diseases, and fix the cuts and grazes ourselves.
Besides which, a person can have a ball ridding himself of all those bits and pieces of unwanted flesh that have accumulated over the years. There is very little that can compare with the satisfaction of slicing off a wart that’s been sitting malevolently on your hand for years. Say goodbye to unwanted moles, boils, warts, lumps and even fingers and toes.
And always remember the happy home surgeon’s maxim – sterilising one’s needles is key to keeping those bits together permanently.
Need help? accounthelp@everything2.com |
JAMES AVERDIECK
James Averdieck is the founder and MD of Gu Chocolate Puds. James noticed a gap in the market for high quality desserts. His products are now sold in supermarkets throughout the UK and in Europe.
DEIRDRE BOUNDS
A accomplished and compassionate speaker, Deirdre Bounds is the serial ethical entrepreneur who went from a standing start to build a global travel company that changed the lives of 1000`s. author.
KARREN BRADY
Former CEO of Birmingham City Football Club, Karren is one of the UK's leading business women. Karren is to take up a new role on the BBC One Show 'The Apprentice'.
BJ CUNNINGHAM
Entrepreneur, BJ launched DEATH Cigarettes, which later led to him setting up a Brands Agency, which included such clients as B&Q, Nokia and Volkswagen.
RENE CARAYOL
Author of Corporate Voodoo, and presenter of Pay Off Your Mortgage, Rene is a business speaker and regular contributor to Radio 5 Live.
ROBERT CRAVEN
Robert spent 5 years running training and consulting at Warwick Business School and set up his own consultancy in 1988. Sought after speaker on entrepreneurship.
TIM CAMPBELLTim was the winner of the first series of The Apprentice. After working with Sir Alan Sugar for 3 years, Tim set up the Bright Ideas Trust and is a successful businessman in his own right.
DAVID DEIN
David is a football entrepreneur, and successful businessman. Former Vice-Chairman of Arsenal Football Club, he helped lead the club through one of its most successful periods in history.
KAREN DARBY
Karen Darby is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Simply Switch. Karen has over 20 years experience as a public and business speaker.
TIM DRAKETim Drake is a leading entrepreneur and chair of three think tanks for leading companies in the Sports Sector. Popular business speaker.
RACHEL ELNAUGH
The founder of Red Letter Days, Rachel is one of the UK`s leading female entrepreneurs. Appeared on the TV series Dragons Den.
RICHARD FARLEIGH
Australian born investor, Richard is known in the UK for his appearances on Dragons Den. Has published a guide to personal investing.
JACQUELINE GOLD
Chief Executive of Ann Summers and Knickerbox, Jacqueline Gold, is one of Britain's most successful businesswomen and an inspirational speaker.
JEFF GROUT
Jeff is an independent consultant and former business manager to Sir Clive Woodward. One of the best business speakers in the UK, Jeff is a successful author.
PY GERBEAU
Former CEO of the Millennium Dome, PY was also Vice President of Park Operations for Euro-Disney. A leading expert on the leisure industry and motivational speaker.
ANDY HANSELMAN
Expert speaker on business competitiveness, sales, marketing and customer care, Andy offers a range of talks all tailored to clients requirements.
WAYNE HEMINGWAY
Well known designer, Wayne created the Red or Dead brand. A serial entrepreneur he has now turned his attention to social housing.
SAHAR HASHEMI Founder of Coffee Republic with her brother, Sahar is a popular business speaker on the corporate circuit. A successful author, her new business venture is Skinny Candy.
CARL HOPKINS
Carl Hopkins is a successful businessman and appeared on Channel 4's The Secret Millionaire. Well established, tough talking mentor and investor.
LIZ JACKSON
Founder of Great Guns Marketing, Liz`s story is all the more remarkable as she is totally blind. Recently appeared on the Secret Millionaire on Channel 4.
MICHELLE MONE
Michelle is a highly successful entrepreneur, and founder of MJM International, which makes the Ultimo Brand. Received "World Young Business Achiever Award" in 2000.
DEBORAH MEADEN
A successful businesswoman in the leisure industry and entrepreneur, Deborah is known for her appearances on Dragons Den.
THEO PAPHITIS
One of the Dragons from Dragons Den, Theo Paphitis, is a successful businessman and entrepreneur. Chairman of Rymans and La Senza, Theo is also involved with Red Letter Days and was former Chairman of Millwall FC.
MARY PORTAS
Mary is one of the UK's foremost authorities on retailing and brand communication. Her TV series 'Mary Queen of Shops' was a huge success and Mary is founder of Yellowdoor, a leading creative agency.
RICHARD REED
Richard is one of the co-founders of Innocent Drinks, the number one smoothie brand in the UK. Mullti award winning businessman & entrepreneur.
DOUG RICHARD
Has 18 years experience in the development of technology and software ventures. One of the former Dragons on Dragons Den on BBC2.
KEVIN STEELE
Social and environmental campaigner, Kevin has led campaigns resulting in huge investments and co-founded National Family Week.
MIKE SOUTHONAn experienced facilitator and moderator. Mike is a leading business speaker having built and sold his own company in the 1980s and worked on 17 different start up companies.
DAVID TAYLOR
The Naked Leader - David has 25 years of business experience and is considered one of the UK's leading business gurus. Author of the Naked Leader books.
LAURENCE KEMBALL-COOK
Founder & CEO of Pavegen Systems, clean technology for the 21st Century. Laurence speaks on innovation and entrepreneurship.
TIM WATERSTONE Tim Waterstone is the founder of the hugely successful book chain "Waterstones". One of the UK`s leading entrepreneurs and business speakers.
Fraser is the young entreprenuer who set up the SuperJam business and brand. He used his Gran's rececipe and he now provides to over 2000 supermarkets world wide.
SPEAKING TOPICS - Brands, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Inspiriation
Luke Johnson is the serial entrepreneur, best known for his involvement with Pizza Express. He is chairman of the Royal Society of Arts and a former chairman of Channel 4. |
- What are the 12 gods?
- What is the oldest religion?
- Is the Greek gods still alive today?
- How long did Greek gods last?
- Who is Zeus in Bible?
- Who was the Greeks favorite hero?
- Does anyone still worship Zeus?
- Why did Zeus eat his wife?
- Who was the most powerful Greek god?
- Is Greek mythology older than the Bible?
- Is Greek mythology older than Christianity?
- Does Hellenism still exist?
- What God did Sparta worship?
- Are Greek gods still Worshipped?
- How were gods Worshipped in ancient Greece?
- When did the Greek gods start being Worshipped?
- How many gods did the Greek worship?
- Who was the first God ever?
What are the 12 gods?
The standard 12 Olympian gods are:Zeus.Hera.Athena.Apollo.Poseidon.Ares.Artemis.Demeter.More items the Greek gods still.
How long did Greek gods last?
a thousand yearsthe gods on Olymp).
Who is Zeus
Who was the Greeks favorite hero?
HeraclesWho was the Greeks’ favourite hero? The Greeks loved to share stories about brave heroes and their great adventures. Everyone’s favourite hero was Heracles (the Romans called him Hercules). Heracles was Zeus’s son.
Does anyone still worship Zeus?
Today, hundreds of thousands of Greeks from all walks of life openly worship the old Gods. Leftist academics, right wing Greek nationalists, new age types, and environmentalists all gather under the Hellenistic banner. was the most powerful Greek god?
ZeusThe Romans adopted most of these Greek gods and goddesses, but with new names. The most powerful of all, Zeus was god of the sky and the king of Mount Olympus.
Is Greek mythology older than the Bible?
Oldest Greek mythology 8th century BC. Oldest Old Testament manuscripts 200 BC. … Also this also ASSUMES that the Old Testament is just part of the Bible and the Bible is the Christian religious text.
Is Greek mythology older than Christianity?
TL/DR: Ancient Greek Religion predates Christianity. It also predates Judaism (Old Testament), but not by much. … Greek Mythology. Christianity came in the 1st CE century, while the mythology existed for millennia before Christianity, with its roots (namely the sorcery traditions of Europe) going back to even 80,000 BCE.
Does Hellenism still exist?
Hellen”. No official estimates exist for devotees worldwide.
What God did Sparta worship?
ApolloSparta worshipped Apollo and Artemis Orthia as their patron deities. 3 major festivals of Sparta namely Hyacinthia, Gymnopaedia and Carnea were celebrated in the honor of Apollo.
Are Greek gods still Worshipped?”.
How were gods Worshipped in ancient Greece?
Gods were worshipped at sacred sites and temples in all major Greek communities in ceremonies carried out by priests and their attendants.
When did the Greek gods start being Worshipped?.
How many gods did the Greek worship?
twelve majorMost. |
Hippie cults, former child actors, and a police sting for selling kombucha all sound like punchlines for jokes about Los Angeles that got cut from Annie Hall, but all of those things are real, true elements in this real true story of what happened at a fundraiser organized by the new age religion founded by 10 Things I Hate About You/Seventh Heaven actor Andrew Keegan, which was ruined by an Alcoholic Beverage Control bust, according to the Argonaut. Of course this happened in Venice.
The incident occurred at Full Circle, the "open source spiritual community center" founded by Keegan on super-trendy Rose Avenue. During a fundraiser for a marine conservation nonprofit called the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, undercover ABC agents confiscated "several containers" of kombucha, a bubbly fermented tea made from a gross mushroom that is known to contain a very small percentage of alcohol, and cited the spiritual group for selling booze without a license. It would have been amazing to hear some details about how the ABC agents went "undercover" in this scenario—did they take their shoes off? Were they wearing sustainable yoga pants? Sadly, we may never know what an ABC officer thinks a hippie looks like.
The illicit kombucha was made by the company Kombucha Dog, which sells "the most potent [kombucha] on the market" in bottles with adorable LA-area rescue dogs on the labels. A Full Circle spokesman says "Part of our spiritual practice is that we serve kombucha. We were very surprised and concerned when we saw the agents wheeling the containers of Kombucha Dog out of the fundraiser." (Kombucha Dog says its product has "usually no more than 1%" alcohol," and that it would be impossible to get drunk off it even if large amounts were consumed in a short time.)
Full Circle received a misdemeanor citation for selling alcohol without a license. "We're a complaint-driven agency, so when someone notifies us about what might be an illegal activity, we respond to it," an ABC rep says. Church founder Keegan counters, "They may be a complaint-driven agency, but we're an intention-driven organization and our intentions are pure." He also notes that "Kombucha is something we'd never imagine to be an illegal substance, and it's frustrating the system has that perspective."
· Undercover Sting Targets Kombucha at Venice Spiritual Center [Argonaut]
· One of the Stars of '10 Things I Hate About You' Started a Religion [Vice]
· This '90s Heartthrob Is Now a Spiritual Leader in Venice [Racked LA] |
Chapter 2. Designing XMPP Applications
WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?
Differences between HTTP and XMPP
Using BOSH to bridge XMPP and HTTP
Application architecture and protocol design
No matter how wonderful any protocol appears, it can never be the best solution for every problem. Many problems can be solved with XMPP that would be difficult in other protocols, but even XMPP has its sweet spot, outside of which it often makes sense to use other technologies. To make the best XMPP applications possible, you must first understand what problems XMPP is good at, and how you can design your application to leverage XMPP to its fullest.
XMPP's sweet spot is real-time communication, collaboration, and data exchange. Where other protocols pull data, XMPP pushes it, allowing more efficient notification and faster responses to new information. XMPP has native support for social features found in many of today's most popular applications, making it easy for developers to add and build upon people's relationships and communication. The rich, extensible vocabulary of XML stanzas provides a robust and varied set of tools for building many common patterns or composing into your own protocols.
Although XMPP applications can be developed in many contexts, both on the backend and the front-end, this book's applications use the web browser as their environment and web technologies as their implementation. Because web browsers don't speak XMPP natively, only HTTP, you will also discover how XMPP and HTTP be made ...
Get Professional XMPP Programming with JavaScript® and jQuery now with O’Reilly online learning.
O’Reilly members experience live online training, plus books, videos, and digital content from 200+ publishers. |
A report published by the World Health Organization (WHO) looks at progress towards global measles control.
Prof Helen Bedford, Professor of Children’s Health, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, said:
“In the last two decades it is estimated that 21.1 million deaths from measles have been prevented globally as a result of vaccination programmes. However, measles is highly infectious and requires sustained very high levels of population immunity through vaccination to prevent outbreaks. In some parts of the world the high vaccine uptake required has never been achieved for a variety of complex political, societal and cultural reasons, while in others where the disease became uncommon, such as the USA and parts of Europe, there has been a resurgence of cases in some areas with gaps in vaccination uptake. In this digital age, in some countries myths and rumours which have incorrectly suggested the disease is not serious and the vaccine is not safe have spread rapidly and in an era of little disease, such myths may have taken hold and shaken the public’s confidence in vaccination. The rapidity with which measles has re-emerged in some parts of the world is a sharp reminder of the value of vaccination programmes and the importance of continued close scrutiny of patterns of vaccine acceptance to enable rapid response to declining levels.
“In the UK, vaccine confidence is high and uptake of MMR among young children is over 90%. However, there is no room for complacency as recent outbreaks of measles have occurred among older adolescents and young adults who were not immunised when they were young. Fortunately, as it is never too late to have MMR vaccine, with two doses needed for best protection, we have the means to prevent further outbreaks readily available.”
Prof Geoffrey Smith FMedSci, Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow and Head, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge, said:
“The news today from WHO that this year has seen a surge in measles cases globally is a cause of great concern. It is also entirely preventable. Since 1960 there has been a safe and effective measles vaccine that could eradicate measles globally if the vaccine was used fully, just as widespread vaccination eradicated smallpox in man and rinderpest in cattle. The underutilisation of the vaccine seems in part from the erroneous claim that the measles mumps rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism – this claim has been refuted absolutely and has no credible basis. Reluctance to use the vaccine also stems from declining concern about the disease, and from apathy. We need to reverse this apathy and underutilisation of the vaccine. Science has provided the tool to eradicate measles, we need to show the will to use it.”
‘Progress towards regional measles elimination – worldwide, 2000–2017’ by the World Health Organization was published in the Weekly epidemiological record at 18:00 UK time on Thursday 29 November 2018.
Declared interests
Prof Helen Bedford: “I have no conflicts of interest.”
Prof Geoffrey Smith: “I have no declarations of interest.” |
Related literature {#sec1}
====================
For the pharmacological activity of 1,2,4-triazole-substituted and Schiff base compounds, see: Isloor *et al.* (2009[@bb3]); Ma *et al.* (2011[@bb4]). For copper complexes containing 1,2,4-triazole Schiff base ligands, see: Wen *et al.* (2004[@bb7]).
Experimental {#sec2}
==============
{#sec2.1}
### Crystal data {#sec2.1.1}
C~12~H~13~BrN~4~OS*M* *~r~* = 341.23Triclinic,*a* = 8.042 (5) Å*b* = 13.187 (8) Å*c* = 13.408 (8) Åα = 97.406 (9)°β = 92.956 (10)°γ = 95.916 (9)°*V* = 1399.5 (15) Å^3^*Z* = 4Mo *K*α radiationμ = 3.08 mm^−1^*T* = 298 K0.30 × 0.25 × 0.20 mm
### Data collection {#sec2.1.2}
Bruker SMART 1K CCD diffractometerAbsorption correction: multi-scan (*SADABS*; Sheldrick, 2000[@bb5]) *T* ~min~ = 0.458, *T* ~max~ = 0.57814278 measured reflections4939 independent reflections3061 reflections with *I* \> 2σ(*I*)*R* ~int~ = 0.055
### Refinement {#sec2.1.3}
*R*\[*F* ^2^ \> 2σ(*F* ^2^)\] = 0.043*wR*(*F* ^2^) = 0.102*S* = 0.934939 reflections347 parametersH-atom parameters constrainedΔρ~max~ = 0.49 e Å^−3^Δρ~min~ = −0.55 e Å^−3^
{#d5e478}
Data collection: *SMART* (Bruker, 2000[@bb1]); cell refinement: *SAINT* (Bruker, 2000[@bb1]); data reduction: *SAINT*; program(s) used to solve structure: *SHELXS97* (Sheldrick, 2008[@bb6]); program(s) used to refine structure: *SHELXL97* (Sheldrick, 2008[@bb6]); molecular graphics: *ORTEP-3* (Farrugia, 1997[@bb2]); software used to prepare material for publication: *publCIF* (Westrip, 2010[@bb8]).
Supplementary Material
======================
Crystal structure: contains datablock(s) I, global. DOI: [10.1107/S1600536812019745/jj2128sup1.cif](http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/S1600536812019745/jj2128sup1.cif)
Structure factors: contains datablock(s) I. DOI: [10.1107/S1600536812019745/jj2128Isup2.hkl](http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/S1600536812019745/jj2128Isup2.hkl)
Supplementary material file. DOI: [10.1107/S1600536812019745/jj2128Isup3.cml](http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/S1600536812019745/jj2128Isup3.cml)
Additional supplementary materials: [crystallographic information](http://scripts.iucr.org/cgi-bin/sendsupfiles?jj2128&file=jj2128sup0.html&mime=text/html); [3D view](http://scripts.iucr.org/cgi-bin/sendcif?jj2128sup1&Qmime=cif); [checkCIF report](http://scripts.iucr.org/cgi-bin/paper?jj2128&checkcif=yes)
Supplementary data and figures for this paper are available from the IUCr electronic archives (Reference: [JJ2128](http://scripts.iucr.org/cgi-bin/sendsup?jj2128)).
The authors acknowledge financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China for Youth (grant No. 21001070), the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (grant No. 20111401110002) and the Natural Science Foundation of Shanxi Province of China (grant No. 2011021006--2).
Comment
=======
1,2,4-triazole and its derivatives possess a variety of pharmacological properties (Isloor *et al.*, 2009). Schiff bases derived from substituted salicylaldehydes form numerous metal complexes (Wen *et al.*, 2004). Also, copper complexes containing 1,2,4-triazole Schiff base ligands are potential inhibitors of PTP1B (protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B), TCPTP (T-cell protein tyrosine phosphatase), PTP-MEG2 (megakaryocyte protein tyrosine phosphatase) and SHP-1 (Src homology phosphatase 1) (Ma *et al.*, 2011). In continuation of our work in this area, we report here the synthesis and crystal structure of the title compound, C~12~H~13~BrN~4~OS, (I).
The title compound, (I), crystallizes with two independent molecules in the asymmetric unit (Fig. 1). The dihedral angles between the triazole and phenyl rings are 2.9 (3)° and 7.5 (3)°, respectively. The thione group is of the form *R*~2~C=S with a Cdb\\S distance of 1.673 (4)Å and 1.675 (4)Å indicating significant double bond character. Intramolecular O---H···N hydrogen bonds, weak N---H···S intermolecular interactions (Table 1) and π--π stacking of the benzene rings \[centroid--centroid distance = 3.667 (3) Å\] are observed that may influence crystal packing.
Experimental {#experimental}
============
0.5 mmol 5-Bromosalicylaldehyde in 10 ml of ethanol was added to a solution of 4-amino-5-propyl-1,2,4-triazole-3-thione (0.5 mmol) in 20 ml of ethanol, and then refluxed for 2 h. The resulting solution was filterd and recrystallized from ethanol. X-ray quality Yellow crystals of the title compound were formed upon slow evaporation of the resulting soluton.
Refinement {#refinement}
==========
All of the H atoms were placed in their calculated positions and the refined using the riding model with C---H lengths of 0.93Å (CH), 0.97Å (CH~2~), 0.97 Å (CH~3~), 0.86 (NH) or 0.82Å. The isotropoc displacement parameters for these atoms were set to 1.2 (CH, CH~2~, O, N) or 1.5 (CH~3~) times *U*~eq~ of the parent atom.
Figures
=======
{#Fap1}
{#Fap2}
Crystal data {#tablewrapcrystaldatalong}
============
------------------------ ---------------------------------------
C~12~H~13~BrN~4~OS *Z* = 4
*M~r~* = 341.23 *F*(000) = 688
Triclinic, *P*1 *D*~x~ = 1.620 Mg m^−3^
Hall symbol: -P 1 Mo *K*α radiation, λ = 0.71073 Å
*a* = 8.042 (5) Å Cell parameters from 2374 reflections
*b* = 13.187 (8) Å θ = 2.5--23.6°
*c* = 13.408 (8) Å µ = 3.08 mm^−1^
α = 97.406 (9)° *T* = 298 K
β = 92.956 (10)° Block, yellow
γ = 95.916 (9)° 0.30 × 0.25 × 0.20 mm
*V* = 1399.5 (15) Å^3^
------------------------ ---------------------------------------
Data collection {#tablewrapdatacollectionlong}
===============
--------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------
Bruker SMART 1K CCD diffractometer 4939 independent reflections
Radiation source: fine-focus sealed tube 3061 reflections with *I* \> 2σ(*I*)
Graphite monochromator *R*~int~ = 0.055
Detector resolution: 11.72 pixels mm^-1^ θ~max~ = 25.0°, θ~min~ = 1.5°
ω scans *h* = −9→9
Absorption correction: multi-scan (*SADABS*; Sheldrick, 2000) *k* = −15→15
*T*~min~ = 0.458, *T*~max~ = 0.578 *l* = −15→15
14278 measured reflections
--------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------
Refinement {#tablewraprefinementdatalong}
==========
------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Refinement on *F*^2^ Primary atom site location: structure-invariant direct methods
Least-squares matrix: full Secondary atom site location: difference Fourier map
*R*\[*F*^2^ \> 2σ(*F*^2^)\] = 0.043 Hydrogen site location: inferred from neighbouring sites
*wR*(*F*^2^) = 0.102 H-atom parameters constrained
*S* = 0.93 *w* = 1/\[σ^2^(*F*~o~^2^) + (0.0516*P*)^2^\] where *P* = (*F*~o~^2^ + 2*F*~c~^2^)/3
4939 reflections (Δ/σ)~max~ \< 0.001
347 parameters Δρ~max~ = 0.49 e Å^−3^
0 restraints Δρ~min~ = −0.55 e Å^−3^
------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Special details {#specialdetails}
===============
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Geometry. All e.s.d.\'s (except the e.s.d. in the dihedral angle between two l.s. planes) are estimated using the full covariance matrix. The cell e.s.d.\'s are taken into account individually in the estimation of e.s.d.\'s in distances, angles and torsion angles; correlations between e.s.d.\'s in cell parameters are only used when they are defined by crystal symmetry. An approximate (isotropic) treatment of cell e.s.d.\'s is used for estimating e.s.d.\'s involving l.s. planes.
Refinement. Refinement of *F*^2^ against ALL reflections. The weighted *R*-factor *wR* and goodness of fit *S* are based on *F*^2^, conventional *R*-factors *R* are based on *F*, with *F* set to zero for negative *F*^2^. The threshold expression of *F*^2^ \> σ(*F*^2^) is used only for calculating *R*-factors(gt) *etc*. and is not relevant to the choice of reflections for refinement. *R*-factors based on *F*^2^ are statistically about twice as large as those based on *F*, and *R*- factors based on ALL data will be even larger.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fractional atomic coordinates and isotropic or equivalent isotropic displacement parameters (Å^2^) {#tablewrapcoords}
==================================================================================================
------ -------------- -------------- -------------- -------------------- --
*x* *y* *z* *U*~iso~\*/*U*~eq~
Br1 0.38916 (7) 0.16296 (4) 0.59088 (4) 0.06736 (19)
S1 0.49656 (16) 0.40893 (8) 0.14062 (8) 0.0530 (3)
O1 0.1987 (5) 0.5771 (2) 0.5179 (2) 0.0666 (10)
H1 0.2089 0.5860 0.4590 0.100\*
N1 0.4061 (5) 0.5891 (3) 0.0953 (2) 0.0521 (10)
H1A 0.4451 0.5805 0.0366 0.062\*
N2 0.3314 (5) 0.6750 (3) 0.1302 (3) 0.0512 (10)
N3 0.3366 (4) 0.5663 (2) 0.2414 (2) 0.0378 (8)
N4 0.3044 (4) 0.5369 (2) 0.3350 (2) 0.0400 (8)
C1 0.4132 (5) 0.5203 (3) 0.1597 (3) 0.0389 (10)
C2 0.2882 (5) 0.6584 (3) 0.2197 (3) 0.0424 (10)
C3 0.1971 (6) 0.7272 (3) 0.2879 (3) 0.0462 (11)
H3A 0.2588 0.7428 0.3531 0.055\*
H3B 0.0881 0.6922 0.2975 0.055\*
C4 0.1740 (6) 0.8271 (3) 0.2457 (3) 0.0540 (12)
H4A 0.2832 0.8624 0.2370 0.065\*
H4B 0.1143 0.8111 0.1799 0.065\*
C5 0.0785 (7) 0.8980 (4) 0.3133 (4) 0.0833 (18)
H5A −0.0316 0.8647 0.3197 0.125\*
H5B 0.0695 0.9604 0.2844 0.125\*
H5C 0.1368 0.9140 0.3786 0.125\*
C6 0.3493 (5) 0.4529 (3) 0.3590 (3) 0.0420 (11)
H6 0.4027 0.4104 0.3131 0.050\*
C7 0.3181 (5) 0.4230 (3) 0.4566 (3) 0.0368 (10)
C8 0.2452 (5) 0.4844 (3) 0.5321 (3) 0.0466 (11)
C9 0.2203 (6) 0.4511 (4) 0.6243 (3) 0.0554 (13)
H9 0.1734 0.4926 0.6743 0.066\*
C10 0.2647 (6) 0.3566 (4) 0.6423 (3) 0.0562 (13)
H10 0.2475 0.3341 0.7043 0.067\*
C11 0.3349 (5) 0.2955 (3) 0.5681 (3) 0.0458 (11)
C12 0.3633 (5) 0.3282 (3) 0.4773 (3) 0.0442 (11)
H12 0.4133 0.2868 0.4287 0.053\*
Br2 0.51614 (6) −0.08187 (4) −0.31301 (4) 0.06348 (19)
S2 0.14032 (16) 0.37417 (8) −0.08568 (8) 0.0509 (3)
O2 0.1831 (4) −0.0214 (2) 0.0781 (2) 0.0544 (8)
H2 0.1680 0.0389 0.0943 0.082\*
N6 −0.0208 (5) 0.3668 (3) 0.1823 (2) 0.0499 (9)
N5 0.0102 (5) 0.4074 (2) 0.0951 (2) 0.0516 (10)
H5 −0.0145 0.4674 0.0853 0.062\*
N7 0.0963 (4) 0.2607 (2) 0.0741 (2) 0.0374 (8)
N8 0.1549 (4) 0.1671 (2) 0.0448 (2) 0.0385 (8)
C13 0.0814 (5) 0.3467 (3) 0.0267 (3) 0.0418 (10)
C14 0.0324 (5) 0.2768 (3) 0.1686 (3) 0.0413 (10)
C15 0.0280 (5) 0.2020 (3) 0.2411 (3) 0.0441 (11)
H15A 0.1416 0.1892 0.2590 0.053\*
H15B −0.0325 0.1375 0.2094 0.053\*
C16 −0.0556 (6) 0.2392 (3) 0.3367 (3) 0.0495 (12)
H16A 0.0035 0.3043 0.3679 0.059\*
H16B −0.1700 0.2505 0.3191 0.059\*
C17 −0.0559 (7) 0.1630 (4) 0.4107 (3) 0.0694 (15)
H17A −0.1174 0.0991 0.3808 0.104\*
H17B −0.1078 0.1893 0.4701 0.104\*
H17C 0.0573 0.1519 0.4285 0.104\*
C18 0.2235 (5) 0.1495 (3) −0.0384 (3) 0.0414 (10)
H18 0.2378 0.2006 −0.0799 0.050\*
C19 0.2791 (5) 0.0495 (3) −0.0681 (3) 0.0368 (10)
C20 0.2579 (5) −0.0309 (3) −0.0101 (3) 0.0395 (10)
C21 0.3146 (6) −0.1252 (3) −0.0421 (3) 0.0497 (12)
H21 0.3009 −0.1784 −0.0030 0.060\*
C22 0.3909 (5) −0.1398 (3) −0.1314 (3) 0.0490 (11)
H22 0.4284 −0.2029 −0.1529 0.059\*
C23 0.4117 (5) −0.0604 (3) −0.1893 (3) 0.0428 (10)
C24 0.3565 (5) 0.0322 (3) −0.1588 (3) 0.0427 (11)
H24 0.3704 0.0846 −0.1989 0.051\*
------ -------------- -------------- -------------- -------------------- --
Atomic displacement parameters (Å^2^) {#tablewrapadps}
=====================================
----- ------------ ------------- ------------- ------------- ------------- -------------
*U*^11^ *U*^22^ *U*^33^ *U*^12^ *U*^13^ *U*^23^
Br1 0.0834 (4) 0.0674 (3) 0.0629 (3) 0.0222 (3) 0.0151 (3) 0.0374 (3)
S1 0.0863 (9) 0.0448 (7) 0.0363 (6) 0.0296 (6) 0.0219 (6) 0.0124 (5)
O1 0.104 (3) 0.053 (2) 0.053 (2) 0.0347 (19) 0.038 (2) 0.0096 (16)
N1 0.081 (3) 0.045 (2) 0.039 (2) 0.027 (2) 0.028 (2) 0.0140 (17)
N2 0.076 (3) 0.042 (2) 0.043 (2) 0.0232 (19) 0.025 (2) 0.0148 (17)
N3 0.054 (2) 0.0365 (19) 0.0274 (18) 0.0125 (16) 0.0092 (16) 0.0128 (14)
N4 0.052 (2) 0.040 (2) 0.0313 (19) 0.0078 (17) 0.0147 (17) 0.0110 (15)
C1 0.052 (3) 0.039 (2) 0.030 (2) 0.011 (2) 0.008 (2) 0.0099 (18)
C2 0.048 (3) 0.043 (2) 0.040 (2) 0.011 (2) 0.010 (2) 0.0129 (19)
C3 0.057 (3) 0.039 (2) 0.049 (3) 0.018 (2) 0.021 (2) 0.015 (2)
C4 0.072 (3) 0.045 (3) 0.051 (3) 0.019 (2) 0.018 (3) 0.017 (2)
C5 0.115 (5) 0.056 (3) 0.097 (4) 0.045 (3) 0.057 (4) 0.028 (3)
C6 0.061 (3) 0.037 (2) 0.031 (2) 0.010 (2) 0.016 (2) 0.0079 (18)
C7 0.047 (3) 0.038 (2) 0.025 (2) 0.0033 (19) 0.0080 (19) 0.0050 (17)
C8 0.052 (3) 0.051 (3) 0.039 (3) 0.009 (2) 0.015 (2) 0.009 (2)
C9 0.074 (4) 0.061 (3) 0.034 (3) 0.013 (3) 0.023 (2) 0.003 (2)
C10 0.062 (3) 0.078 (4) 0.034 (3) 0.008 (3) 0.014 (2) 0.022 (2)
C11 0.052 (3) 0.049 (3) 0.040 (2) 0.004 (2) 0.009 (2) 0.020 (2)
C12 0.060 (3) 0.043 (2) 0.032 (2) 0.009 (2) 0.009 (2) 0.0082 (19)
Br2 0.0799 (4) 0.0558 (3) 0.0581 (3) 0.0235 (3) 0.0309 (3) −0.0026 (2)
S2 0.0755 (9) 0.0429 (6) 0.0419 (6) 0.0249 (6) 0.0211 (6) 0.0133 (5)
O2 0.085 (2) 0.0426 (17) 0.0434 (18) 0.0200 (17) 0.0240 (17) 0.0158 (14)
N6 0.068 (3) 0.049 (2) 0.037 (2) 0.0223 (19) 0.0166 (19) 0.0066 (17)
N5 0.083 (3) 0.039 (2) 0.041 (2) 0.0294 (19) 0.023 (2) 0.0109 (16)
N7 0.051 (2) 0.0321 (18) 0.0332 (18) 0.0170 (16) 0.0127 (16) 0.0046 (14)
N8 0.051 (2) 0.0298 (18) 0.0369 (19) 0.0156 (16) 0.0104 (17) 0.0020 (14)
C13 0.055 (3) 0.034 (2) 0.038 (2) 0.015 (2) 0.007 (2) 0.0039 (18)
C14 0.049 (3) 0.041 (3) 0.036 (2) 0.013 (2) 0.013 (2) 0.0047 (19)
C15 0.055 (3) 0.044 (2) 0.037 (2) 0.015 (2) 0.010 (2) 0.0093 (19)
C16 0.063 (3) 0.053 (3) 0.034 (2) 0.015 (2) 0.014 (2) 0.002 (2)
C17 0.097 (4) 0.076 (4) 0.042 (3) 0.023 (3) 0.015 (3) 0.019 (3)
C18 0.055 (3) 0.036 (2) 0.037 (2) 0.014 (2) 0.014 (2) 0.0087 (18)
C19 0.044 (3) 0.031 (2) 0.037 (2) 0.0097 (19) 0.005 (2) 0.0057 (18)
C20 0.046 (3) 0.036 (2) 0.039 (2) 0.010 (2) 0.006 (2) 0.0096 (19)
C21 0.067 (3) 0.030 (2) 0.055 (3) 0.010 (2) 0.004 (3) 0.013 (2)
C22 0.060 (3) 0.037 (2) 0.053 (3) 0.021 (2) 0.007 (2) 0.001 (2)
C23 0.047 (3) 0.042 (2) 0.041 (2) 0.013 (2) 0.013 (2) 0.0011 (19)
C24 0.055 (3) 0.039 (2) 0.039 (2) 0.017 (2) 0.014 (2) 0.0085 (19)
----- ------------ ------------- ------------- ------------- ------------- -------------
Geometric parameters (Å, º) {#tablewrapgeomlong}
===========================
---------------------- ------------ ----------------------- ------------
Br1---C11 1.902 (4) Br2---C23 1.900 (4)
S1---C1 1.673 (4) S2---C13 1.675 (4)
O1---C8 1.348 (5) O2---C20 1.351 (4)
O1---H1 0.8200 O2---H2 0.8200
N1---C1 1.334 (5) N6---C14 1.297 (5)
N1---N2 1.377 (4) N6---N5 1.371 (4)
N1---H1A 0.8600 N5---C13 1.330 (5)
N2---C2 1.304 (5) N5---H5 0.8600
N3---C2 1.375 (5) N7---C13 1.381 (5)
N3---C1 1.385 (5) N7---N8 1.384 (4)
N3---N4 1.390 (4) N7---C14 1.391 (5)
N4---C6 1.274 (5) N8---C18 1.274 (4)
C2---C3 1.479 (5) C14---C15 1.470 (5)
C3---C4 1.524 (5) C15---C16 1.527 (5)
C3---H3A 0.9700 C15---H15A 0.9700
C3---H3B 0.9700 C15---H15B 0.9700
C4---C5 1.512 (6) C16---C17 1.500 (6)
C4---H4A 0.9700 C16---H16A 0.9700
C4---H4B 0.9700 C16---H16B 0.9700
C5---H5A 0.9600 C17---H17A 0.9600
C5---H5B 0.9600 C17---H17B 0.9600
C5---H5C 0.9600 C17---H17C 0.9600
C6---C7 1.442 (5) C18---C19 1.450 (5)
C6---H6 0.9300 C18---H18 0.9300
C7---C12 1.394 (5) C19---C20 1.395 (5)
C7---C8 1.404 (5) C19---C24 1.398 (5)
C8---C9 1.381 (5) C20---C21 1.392 (5)
C9---C10 1.378 (6) C21---C22 1.374 (6)
C9---H9 0.9300 C21---H21 0.9300
C10---C11 1.380 (6) C22---C23 1.383 (6)
C10---H10 0.9300 C22---H22 0.9300
C11---C12 1.366 (5) C23---C24 1.363 (5)
C12---H12 0.9300 C24---H24 0.9300
C8---O1---H1 109.5 C20---O2---H2 109.5
C1---N1---N2 114.6 (3) C14---N6---N5 104.5 (3)
C1---N1---H1A 122.7 C13---N5---N6 114.8 (3)
N2---N1---H1A 122.7 C13---N5---H5 122.6
C2---N2---N1 104.0 (3) N6---N5---H5 122.6
C2---N3---C1 109.1 (3) C13---N7---N8 133.1 (3)
C2---N3---N4 118.4 (3) C13---N7---C14 108.8 (3)
C1---N3---N4 132.6 (3) N8---N7---C14 118.0 (3)
C6---N4---N3 120.6 (3) C18---N8---N7 121.2 (3)
N1---C1---N3 102.0 (3) N5---C13---N7 102.2 (3)
N1---C1---S1 126.4 (3) N5---C13---S2 126.8 (3)
N3---C1---S1 131.5 (3) N7---C13---S2 131.0 (3)
N2---C2---N3 110.3 (3) N6---C14---N7 109.7 (3)
N2---C2---C3 125.3 (4) N6---C14---C15 125.9 (3)
N3---C2---C3 124.4 (3) N7---C14---C15 124.3 (3)
C2---C3---C4 111.6 (3) C14---C15---C16 112.5 (3)
C2---C3---H3A 109.3 C14---C15---H15A 109.1
C4---C3---H3A 109.3 C16---C15---H15A 109.1
C2---C3---H3B 109.3 C14---C15---H15B 109.1
C4---C3---H3B 109.3 C16---C15---H15B 109.1
H3A---C3---H3B 108.0 H15A---C15---H15B 107.8
C5---C4---C3 112.6 (3) C17---C16---C15 111.8 (3)
C5---C4---H4A 109.1 C17---C16---H16A 109.3
C3---C4---H4A 109.1 C15---C16---H16A 109.3
C5---C4---H4B 109.1 C17---C16---H16B 109.3
C3---C4---H4B 109.1 C15---C16---H16B 109.3
H4A---C4---H4B 107.8 H16A---C16---H16B 107.9
C4---C5---H5A 109.5 C16---C17---H17A 109.5
C4---C5---H5B 109.5 C16---C17---H17B 109.5
H5A---C5---H5B 109.5 H17A---C17---H17B 109.5
C4---C5---H5C 109.5 C16---C17---H17C 109.5
H5A---C5---H5C 109.5 H17A---C17---H17C 109.5
H5B---C5---H5C 109.5 H17B---C17---H17C 109.5
N4---C6---C7 120.7 (4) N8---C18---C19 119.7 (3)
N4---C6---H6 119.7 N8---C18---H18 120.1
C7---C6---H6 119.7 C19---C18---H18 120.1
C12---C7---C8 118.3 (4) C20---C19---C24 118.3 (3)
C12---C7---C6 118.2 (3) C20---C19---C18 122.8 (3)
C8---C7---C6 123.5 (4) C24---C19---C18 118.9 (3)
O1---C8---C9 118.0 (4) O2---C20---C21 117.4 (3)
O1---C8---C7 121.8 (4) O2---C20---C19 122.4 (3)
C9---C8---C7 120.3 (4) C21---C20---C19 120.2 (4)
C10---C9---C8 120.2 (4) C22---C21---C20 120.2 (4)
C10---C9---H9 119.9 C22---C21---H21 119.9
C8---C9---H9 119.9 C20---C21---H21 119.9
C9---C10---C11 119.7 (4) C21---C22---C23 119.8 (4)
C9---C10---H10 120.1 C21---C22---H22 120.1
C11---C10---H10 120.1 C23---C22---H22 120.1
C12---C11---C10 120.7 (4) C24---C23---C22 120.6 (4)
C12---C11---Br1 119.3 (3) C24---C23---Br2 120.0 (3)
C10---C11---Br1 120.0 (3) C22---C23---Br2 119.4 (3)
C11---C12---C7 120.7 (4) C23---C24---C19 120.9 (4)
C11---C12---H12 119.6 C23---C24---H24 119.6
C7---C12---H12 119.6 C19---C24---H24 119.6
C1---N1---N2---C2 −0.8 (5) C14---N6---N5---C13 −0.2 (5)
C2---N3---N4---C6 −178.9 (4) C13---N7---N8---C18 6.2 (6)
C1---N3---N4---C6 0.5 (6) C14---N7---N8---C18 −176.1 (4)
N2---N1---C1---N3 0.2 (5) N6---N5---C13---N7 0.2 (5)
N2---N1---C1---S1 −179.6 (3) N6---N5---C13---S2 −178.1 (3)
C2---N3---C1---N1 0.5 (4) N8---N7---C13---N5 177.7 (4)
N4---N3---C1---N1 −178.9 (4) C14---N7---C13---N5 −0.1 (4)
C2---N3---C1---S1 −179.8 (3) N8---N7---C13---S2 −4.1 (7)
N4---N3---C1---S1 0.8 (7) C14---N7---C13---S2 178.1 (3)
N1---N2---C2---N3 1.1 (5) N5---N6---C14---N7 0.0 (5)
N1---N2---C2---C3 −177.7 (4) N5---N6---C14---C15 179.8 (4)
C1---N3---C2---N2 −1.0 (5) C13---N7---C14---N6 0.1 (5)
N4---N3---C2---N2 178.5 (3) N8---N7---C14---N6 −178.2 (3)
C1---N3---C2---C3 177.8 (4) C13---N7---C14---C15 −179.7 (4)
N4---N3---C2---C3 −2.7 (6) N8---N7---C14---C15 2.1 (6)
N2---C2---C3---C4 −5.9 (6) N6---C14---C15---C16 2.6 (6)
N3---C2---C3---C4 175.5 (4) N7---C14---C15---C16 −177.8 (4)
C2---C3---C4---C5 179.0 (4) C14---C15---C16---C17 −178.8 (4)
N3---N4---C6---C7 179.1 (4) N7---N8---C18---C19 −178.2 (3)
N4---C6---C7---C12 177.3 (4) N8---C18---C19---C20 1.4 (6)
N4---C6---C7---C8 −3.0 (7) N8---C18---C19---C24 −179.0 (4)
C12---C7---C8---O1 179.8 (4) C24---C19---C20---O2 −179.4 (4)
C6---C7---C8---O1 0.0 (7) C18---C19---C20---O2 0.3 (6)
C12---C7---C8---C9 0.3 (6) C24---C19---C20---C21 0.7 (6)
C6---C7---C8---C9 −179.5 (4) C18---C19---C20---C21 −179.7 (4)
O1---C8---C9---C10 179.6 (4) O2---C20---C21---C22 179.6 (4)
C7---C8---C9---C10 −0.9 (7) C19---C20---C21---C22 −0.4 (7)
C8---C9---C10---C11 0.3 (7) C20---C21---C22---C23 0.2 (7)
C9---C10---C11---C12 1.0 (7) C21---C22---C23---C24 −0.3 (7)
C9---C10---C11---Br1 −177.8 (4) C21---C22---C23---Br2 −179.6 (3)
C10---C11---C12---C7 −1.6 (7) C22---C23---C24---C19 0.6 (7)
Br1---C11---C12---C7 177.1 (3) Br2---C23---C24---C19 179.9 (3)
C8---C7---C12---C11 1.0 (6) C20---C19---C24---C23 −0.8 (6)
C6---C7---C12---C11 −179.3 (4) C18---C19---C24---C23 179.5 (4)
---------------------- ------------ ----------------------- ------------
Hydrogen-bond geometry (Å, º) {#tablewraphbondslong}
=============================
-------------------- --------- --------- ----------- ---------------
*D*---H···*A* *D*---H H···*A* *D*···*A* *D*---H···*A*
O1---H1···N4 0.82 1.93 2.644 (4) 145
O2---H2···N8 0.82 1.90 2.612 (4) 144
N1---H1*A*···S1^i^ 0.86 2.46 3.300 (4) 164
N5---H5···S2^ii^ 0.86 2.41 3.252 (4) 165
-------------------- --------- --------- ----------- ---------------
Symmetry codes: (i) −*x*+1, −*y*+1, −*z*; (ii) −*x*, −*y*+1, −*z*.
###### Hydrogen-bond geometry (Å, °)
*D*---H⋯*A* *D*---H H⋯*A* *D*⋯*A* *D*---H⋯*A*
------------------ --------- ------- ----------- -------------
O1---H1⋯N4 0.82 1.93 2.644 (4) 145
O2---H2⋯N8 0.82 1.90 2.612 (4) 144
N1---H1*A*⋯S1^i^ 0.86 2.46 3.300 (4) 164
N5---H5⋯S2^ii^ 0.86 2.41 3.252 (4) 165
Symmetry codes: (i) ; (ii) .
|
JWoww Reunites With Snooki and 'Jersey Shore' Cast After Filing for Divorce
Jenni "JWoww" Farley is surrounding herself with her best friends.
Just days after JWoww filed for divorce from husband Roger Mathews, the reality star reunited with her best friend Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi and Jersey Shore cast. The group attended Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino and his fiance, Lauren Pesce's, wedding shower in New Jersey on Saturday.
JWoww took to Instagram to share group photo of herself and her 4-year-old daughter Meilani with Snooki and her 4-year-old daughter Giovanna. Vinny Guadagnino, Angelina Pivarnick and her fiance, Chris Larangeira, as well as the engaged twosome, were also in the pic.
While at the party, both JWoww and Snooki couldn't help but gush about how adorable their daughters were together and how they were smaller versions of themselves.
"The best of friends," JWoww wrote alongside a photo of the girls. Snooki shared the same photo, jokingly writing, "Here’s a pic of us at our first red carpet event. We were so young. @jwoww #TheHitchuation."
In another silly video shared by JWoww, their mini-mes are seen play fighting. "Deleted scenes of Vegas @jerseyshore @snooki fight round 16," she captioned the clip.
Snooki also shared a handful of Instagram Stories of the two girls, with one of the videos featuring the little ones acting out while sitting at lunch. "They're me and @Jwoww after a bottle of wine," Snooki joked.
JWoww's outing comes days after ET confirmed that she had filed for divorce two weeks ago from Roger. The split comes just a month before the couple's third wedding anniversary. The two tied the knot in October 2015, three years after getting engaged.
After news broke of their split on Thursday, Roger took to Instagram to share a video message with his followers.
"My wife filed for divorce, it's true. I'm just going to keep it simple," Roger explained in the clip. "I don't blame her. There's no cheating or any dumb s**t, any juicy details. She just grew tired of the repetitive pattern that we fell into. I'm not gonna get into detail, but it was a repetitive pattern and not a good one."
See more in the video below.
RELATED CONTENT:
Jenni 'JWoww' Farley Files for Divorce From Roger Mathews
Jenni 'JWoww' Farley Opens Up About Her Son's Developmental Struggle in Emotional Post
Jenni 'JWoww' Farley Opens Up About Heartbreaking 2011 Miscarriage
Related Gallery |
Many thanks for publishing dr massad's revealing analysis the balfour declaration, authored by anti-semites on behalf of ethno-racist colonialism, remains at the root of palestine's. A hundred years ago today, the british government released the balfour declaration, laying the foundation of modern israel—but also sowing dragon’s teeth so why did the british do it. Jerusalem — it was the moment of conception of what would become the state of israel — or it was the original sin in which israel was conceived the balfour declaration, the pivotal, 67-word. With the israeli-palestinian conflict far from resolution, perhaps the brits need to cling to the idea that balfour really did matter. A century ago britain published the balfour declaration, hailed today as a charter document for the state of israel but promoting zionism was not the real aim – it was about winning a world. The balfour declaration of 1917 has been at the center of the arab-israeli conflict over the establishment of a jewish homeland in palestine.
The balfour declaration declared british government support for a jewish home in palestine it laid the basis of the 1922 british mandate for palestine. The balfour declaration has been in the news so much over the last year it could lead you to conclude that the british dispatch supporting jewish resettlement in the land of israel was. How can you be a part of celebrating the balfour declaration centenary get involved and take part in continuing this effort to ensure understanding and transmission of the balfour legacy. Some regard the balfour declaration as providential, enabling the return of the jews to israel and eventually the unfolding of biblical prophecy. On 2 november 1917 the british government in the form of the country's then foreign secretary, sir arthur balfour, addressed a letter to lord rothschild, a leading figure within the british.
The balfour declaration - 1917 - full text and history of the balfour declaration. To the zionists, the balfour declaration of 1917 laid the foundation for the formation of the state of israel to the palestinians, however, it was an act of dishonesty and betrayal by. Find out more about the history of balfour declaration, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more get all the facts on historycom. The centenary of the balfour declaration on nov 2 marks a promise made by the british government to help create a jewish national home in palestine in britain, people are divided on.
One of the founding acts of the israeli state remains controversial a century later. A hundred years since britain's infamous declaration, its repercussions are still felt across the middle east today.
These are external links and will open in a new window one hundred years ago, only 67 words on a single sheet of paper lit a fire in the holy land, igniting the most intractable conflict of. 1 the balfour declaration, november 1917 introduction one of the most important statements of british foreign policy of the twentieth century. The balfour declaration november 2, 1917 during the first world war, british policy became gradually committed to the idea of establishing a jewish home in palestine (eretz yisrael.
Encyclopedia of jewish and israeli history, politics and culture, with biographies, statistics, articles and documents on topics from anti-semitism to zionism. The balfour declaration, jerusalem, israel 101 likes my book helps you understand what the balfour declaration is, who was involved and what was. The balfour declaration thus finds its place among a multitude of fruitless schemes and indulgent fantasies, except, of course, that in this case. November 2 marks the 100th anniversary of the balfour declaration - a 67-word statement from the british government which changed the course of history it is generally viewed as one of the. In october 1917, in the depths of the first world war, an expectant chaim weizmann was waiting in a london anteroom britain’s war cabinet was voting on a document, now known as the balfour. The balfour declaration wis a single paragraph in a letter datit 2 november 1917 frae the unitit kinrick's furrin secretar arthur james balfour tae walter rothschild, 2nt baron rothschild, a.
At its centennial, scholars and descendants of the british statesman discuss the history of the balfour declaration and what it means today. La déclaration balfour de 1917 est une lettre ouverte datée du 2 novembre 1917 et signée par arthur balfour, le foreign secretary britannique. Balfour declaration 1 balfour declaration balfour declaration an image of balfour and the declaration created 2 nov 1917 signatories arthur james balfour purpose confirming support from the. The balfour declaration was issued on november 2, 1917.
All Rights Saved. |
Related Stories
Too much light at night appears to lead to weight gain, according to a report, which may provide fresh clues on obesity.
The researchers found that mice exposed to a dim light at night over eight weeks had a weight gain that was about 50% more than other mice that lived in a standard light-dark cycle.
"Although there were no differences in activity levels or daily consumption of food, the mice that lived with light at night were getting fatter than the others," says Laura Fonken, lead author of the study and a researcher at Ohio State University.
"Something about light at night was making the mice in our study want to eat at the wrong times to properly metabolize their food," says Dr Randy Nelson, co-author of the study and professor of neuroscience and psychology at Ohio State.
If these results are confirmed in humans, it would suggest that late-night eating might be a particular risk factor for obesity, Nelson says.
Significant gain
In one study, mice were housed in one of three conditions: 24 hours of constant light, a standard light-dark cycle that included 16 hours of light and eight hours of dark, or 16 hours of daylight and eight hours of dim light.
Results showed that, compared to mice in the standard light-dark cycle, those in dim light at night had significantly higher increases in body mass, beginning in the first week of the study and continuing throughout.
By the end of the experiment, dim-light-at-night mice had gained about 12 grams of body mass, compared to eight grams for those in the standard light-dark cycle.
Mice in constant bright light also gained more than those in the standard light-dark cycle, but Nelson says the mice exposed to dim light was a more important comparison for humans.
Although the mice exposed to dim light did not eat more than others, they did change when they ate, consuming more food at night.
Since the timing of eating seemed significant, the researchers did a second study, with a change: instead of having food freely available at all times, food was restricted to either the times when mice would normally be active or when they would normally be at rest.
In this experiment, mice exposed to the dim light at night did not have a greater gain in body mass than did the others when their food was restricted to times when they normally would be active.
"When we restricted their food intake to times when they would normally eat, we didn't see the weight gain," says Fonken. "This further adds to the evidence that the timing of eating is critical to weight gain."
Eating late
The researchers say the findings offer clues for causes of the obesity epidemic in Western countries.
"Light at night is an environmental factor that may be contributing to the obesity epidemic in ways that people don't expect," says Nelson. "Societal obesity is correlated with a number of factors including the extent of light exposure at night."
He says prolonged computer use and television have previously been linked to obesity, but because they are associated with a lack of physical activity.
"It may be that people who use the computer and watch the TV a lot at night may be eating at the wrong times, disrupting their metabolism," says Nelson.
"Clearly, maintaining body weight requires keeping caloric intake low and physical activity high, but this environmental factor may explain why some people who maintain good energy balance still gain weight." |
A-Rod’s struggles at plate hurting Yankees in ALDS
New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, front, fields a ground ball by Baltimore Orioles’ Matt Wieters in front of shortstop Derek Jeter in the second inning of Game 2 of the American League division baseball series on Monday, Oct. 8, 2012, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)
For all of his home runs, All-Star accolades and huge salaries, Alex Rodriguez finds himself in a most familiar spot this season.
A-Rod is an October lightning rod.
advertisement
With every swing and miss, memories of his amazing run during the New York Yankees’ championship season in 2009 fade even further. Instead, fans are becoming more and more vocal, calling for manager Joe Girardi to drop him from the No. 3 spot in the lineup.
Rodriguez struck out to end the Yankees’ 3-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles in Game 2 of their division series Monday night, leaving the best-of-five matchup tied at 1.
He’s fanned plenty of times — five in all while going 1 for 9 so far in the series.
“I feel fine at the plate,” Rodriguez said after the loss. “I’ve just got to finish at-bats. I’m getting good swings.”
He’ll have the chance to turn things around Wednesday night when the series shifts to the Bronx for Game 3. Hiroki Kuroda (16-11) starts for New York against Miguel Gonzalez (9-4), a rookie right-hander who has 17 strikeouts in 13 2-3 innings against the Yankees in two starts.
After their train experienced an electrical outage after the loss Monday and turned a usual 2-hour, 15-minute trip to New York into a 5-hour journey, manager Joe Girardi was reluctant to address the Yankees’ more pressing power problem Tuesday.
“I think that we’re going to do whatever it takes to win this three-game series. Nothing that we do will be something that is just a knee-jerk reaction,” Girardi said. “The great thing about this is I have a great group of guys that’s very unselfish, and they really want to win. And that’s what we’re going to do, what we think is best to win.”
Always protective of his players, Girardi might be choosing to coddle Rodriguez after watching Joe Torre cause a stir in 2006 by dropping the 14-time All-Star to eighth in the Yankees order against the Detroit Tigers in the first round.
“Sometimes it’s just not as easy as just writing a name or taking a guy out, a pitcher out. You have to think about the emotional part,” Girardi said. “You always have to think about that as a manager.”
A big fan of the numbers, all collated in his ever-present binder, Girardi need not look too deep to see that the 37-year-old Rodriguez is not the same player that has amassed 647 homers, fewer than only Willie Mays, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds.
The third baseman hit only 18 home runs and had a .430 slugging percentage while driving in just 57 runs in 122 games this season, exclusively batting third or fourth for the team that scored the second most runs in the majors with 804.
Rodriguez went a startling 67 at-bats in September without an extra-base hit shortly after returning from a broken left hand. Robinson Cano, who had an RBI double Monday, had nine straight multihit games to finish the season, hitting .615 over that stretch, and many fans want to see him hit in the No. 3 slot.
Granted, Rodriguez is not the only player that’s nearly Oh-for-October. Baltimore’s Adam Jones is 1 for 8, Washington’s Bryce Harper is 1 for 10 and Detroit’s Prince Fielder is 1 for 8, but the Tigers are up 2-0.
But none of those stars have as much history as the three-time MVP, either. The highest-paid player in baseball with a contract that can exceed $300 million and has five years remaining, A-list girlfriends, a gossip page fixture.
Ending the Yankees’ last two trips to the playoffs with whiffs doesn’t help — Game 6 in 2010 ALCS with a caught looking and a swinging strike three against the Tigers last year in the first round. He also hasn’t homered in the postseason since hitting six in 2009, but he’s fanned 17 times.
Overall, Rodriguez is a career .271 hitter in the postseason with 13 homers and 41 RBIs since making his first playoff appearance in 1995 with Seattle. He is a career .300 hitter in the regular season with 1,950 RBIs.
But Girardi insisted he likes what he sees from Rodriguez. He hit a sharp liner that Baltimore second baseman Robert Andino stopped with a dive and singled before striking out twice as the Yankees tried to rally.
“He squared up two balls,” Girardi said. “You look at the ball he hit in the first inning, he squared it up. And then he had the other hard single. Right now I don’t have any plans to make any changes.”
Rodriguez isn’t the only one struggling for the Yankees against the Orioles solid pitching staff. New York went 2 for 8 with runners in scoring position and stranded 10 in Monday’s loss.
Leave a Comment
Please use the comment box below for general comments, but if you feel we have made a mistake, typo, or egregious error, let us know about it. Click here to "call us out." We're happy to listen to your concerns. |
Q:
Question on Rudin's Proof of the Residue Theorem
The Theorem in question is Theorem 10.42.: If $f$ is meromorphic in $U$, $A$ is the set of poles of $f$ and $\Gamma$ is a cycle in $U-A$ so that $Ind _{\Gamma}=0$ in $U^c$ then
\begin{equation}\frac 1{2\pi i}\int_{\Gamma}f=\sum_{a\in A}Ind_{\Gamma}(a)Res_f(a)
\end{equation}
My problem is with the first part of the proof, i.e. proving that the sum, or equivalently the set $B=\left\{a\in A:Ind_{\Gamma}(a)\neq 0\right\}$ is finite. The proof goes like this:
Every component $V$ of $(\Gamma^*)^c$ (that is a component of the interior, or the exterior of $\Gamma$) that is unbounded or intersects $U^c$ is in the exterior of $\Gamma$ ($Ind_{\Gamma}=0$ in $V$). Since $A$ has no limit points in $U$, we conclude that $B$ is a finite set.
How exactly do we conclude that? The arguments made before that are pretty obvious but this one is not. I am thinking that $B$ is bounded and with no limit points, but that does not make it finite right?
A:
Any set $B$ which is bounded and has no limit points must be finite.
Otherwise you can find a sequence $x_n \in B$ with $x_n \neq x_m, \forall m \neq n$.
Since $B$ is bounded, its closure is bounded and closed, thus compact. Hence $x_n$ has a subsequence which is convergent in $\bar{B}$. But then, the limit is a limit point for $B$.
|
Cannabis Compound Stops Spread of Breast Cancer: Medical Research Study
More and more studies prove cannabis fights cancerA compound of the marijuana plant may prevent aggressive breast cancers from spreading throughout the body, new research from the United States suggests. A team of researchers at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute say cannabis compound CBD (cannabidiol).
Cannabis and Cancer Studies from SafeAccess.ca: safeaccess.ca/research/cancer.htm
Previous CC Magazine articles about cannabis and cancer studies
Study Finds No Lung Cancer-Marijuana Connection
May, 2006 - Washington Post
THC May Fight Lung Cancer
April, 2007
Cannabis for the healing of the nationsMore About The Breast Cancer/CBD Study
From California Pacific Medical Center
Our research team is studying the potential of the endocannabinoid system to control cell fate with the goal of developing therapeutic interventions for aggressive cancers. This newly discovered biological system can be regulated by many different classes of cannabinoid compounds that work through specific cellular receptors. The cloned cannabinoid receptors have been termed cannabinoid 1 (CB1) and (CB2).
Delta-9 THC (Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol), a mixed CB1 and CB2 receptor agonist, is the primary active constituent of Cannabis sativa and is currently being used in a clinical trial for the treatment of aggressive recurrent glioblastoma multiforme (GBM).
Cannabinoids are also being used in clinical trials for purposes unrelated to their direct anticancer activity. The compounds have been reported to be well tolerated during chronic oral and systemic administration.
In addition to Δ9-THC, cannabidiol (CBD), cannabinol (CBN) and cannabigerol (CBG) are also present in reasonable quantities in Cannabis. CBN has low affinity for CB1 and CB2 receptors, whereas the non-psychotropic cannabinoids, CBD and CBG, have negligible affinity for the cloned receptors. We have determined that these additional cannabinoids are also effective and inhibiting aggressive cancers. Importantly, we have discovered in vitro that a synergistic increase in the antiproliferative and apoptotic activity of cannabinoids can be produced by combining specific ratios of CB1 and CB2 receptors agonists with non-psychotropic cannabinoids.
We are currently determining the molecular mechanism that may explain the synergistic increase in anticancer activity that is observed with the combination treatments. We are also studying whether this combination strategy will lead to greater antitumor activity in vivo.
In addition to the combination therapy project, we are working in collaboration with Dr. Pierre Desprez to develop novel inhibitors of Id-1 using cannabinoid compounds. Id-1 is a helix-loop-helix protein that acts as an inhibitor of basic helix-loop-helix transcription factors that control cell differentiation, development and carcinogenesis. Past research of Id-1 expression in normal and cancerous breast cells, as well as in mouse mammary glands and in human breast cancer biopsies, demonstrated that increased Id-1 expression was associated with a proliferative and invasive phenotype. Specifically, it was found that Id-1 was constitutively expressed at a high level in aggressive breast cancer cells and human biopsies, and that aggressiveness was reverted in vitro and in vivo when Id-1 expression was targeted using antisense technology.
Importantly, we have recently discovered that CBD, a nontoxic cannabinoid that lacks psychoactivity, can inhibit Id-1 gene expression in metastatic breast cancer cells and consequently their aggressive phenotype. The down-regulation of expression was the result of the inhibition of the endogenous Id-1 promoter and corresponding mRNA and protein levels. CBD and compounds based off of its structure can therefore potentially be used as therapeutic agents. CBD also inhibits breast cancer metastasis in vivo.
Based off of our recent findings, we are currently involved in 1) developing novel CBD analogs for the treat of aggressive breast cancers 2) discovering the detailed mechanisms through which cannabinoid compounds regulate Id-1 expression.
Publications
McAllister, S.D. , Christian, R.T., Horowitz, M.P., Garcia, A. and Desprez. P (2007). Cannabidiol as a novel inhibitor of Id-1 gene expression in aggressive breast cancer cells. Molecular Cancer Therapeutics Nov. 6 (11).
McAllister, S.D., Chan, C., Taft, R.J., Luu, T., Abood, M.E., Moore, D.H., Aldape, K., Yount, G. (2005) Cannabinoids selectively inhibit proliferation and induce death of cultured human glioblastoma multiforme cells. Journal of Neuro-Oncology (74):31-40
McAllister, S.D. and Abood, M.E. (2005) Endocannabinoids and intracellular signalling. In Endocannabinoids: The Brain and Body?s Marijuana and Beyond. Ed: Onaivi, E. Taylor and Francis Books, New Fetter Lane, London.
McAllister, S.D., Hurst, D.P., Barnett-Norris, J., Lynch, D., Reggio, P.H., and Abood, M.E. (2004) Structural mimicry in class A GPCR rotamer toggle switches: the importance of the F3.36(201)/W6.48(357) interaction in cannabinoid CB1 receptor activation. Journal of Biological Chemistry Nov 12;279(46):48024-37
McAllister, S.D., Rizvi G., Hurst, D.P., Barnett-Norris, J., Lynch, D., Reggio, P.H., Abood, M.E. (2003) An Aromatic Microdomain at the Cannabinoid CB1 Receptor Constitutes an Agonist/Inverse Agonist Binding Region. Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. Nov 20; 46(24): 5139-52.
McAllister, S.D. and Glass, M. (2002) CB1 and CB2 receptor-mediated signaling: a focus on endocannabinoids. In Endocannabinoids in the Third Millennium: From Chemistry to Medicine. Prostaglandins, Leukotrienes & Essential Fatty Acids. 66(2-3): 161-71
Glass, M. and McAllister, S.D. (2002) Cannabinoid mediated signal transduction. In The Biology of Marijuana: From Gene to Behavior. Ed: Onaivi, E. Harwood Academic Publishers, Reading, UK. |
It’s Halloween – the perfect time for a ghost story. At RoS, with thousands of properties and centuries of history on our registers, we have more than a few to share – read on for some spooky stories to get you in the Halloween spirit (pun intended).
Edinburgh Castle
With almost a thousand years of history behind its walls, it’s unsurprising that Edinburgh Castle makes this list. It’s played an important role in the history of RoS, housing the very first inventory and register of land in the 13th century, but through the years Edinburgh Castle has also acted as a prison, barracks and military stronghold. Much paranormal activity has been reported there, but one of the most famous and endearing is the headless drummer, who was allegedly first seen in 1650. Ominously, the drummer is known as an ill omen, as he would be seen the night before an attack was to be carried out on the Castle. It’s been many years since the last assault on Edinburgh Castle, which may explain the lack of recent sightings, but the sounds of eerie drumming have still been heard from the ramparts above Scotland’s capital.
Crathes Castle
We featured Crathes Castle in our On Our Registers series. But there’s another side to the story of Crathes. It’s said to be haunted by the spirit of the Green Lady. According to local lore, the apparition is always seen in the same room of the castle, pacing back and forth. She isn’t always alone either; she’s also been seen with a small child in her arms.
The exact identity of the Green Lady remains lost to history, but some believe she was a servant girl who gave birth out of wedlock and fled from the castle, never to be seen again. Even more spookily, during routine restoration work at the castle, the bodies of a young girl and child were found underneath a fireplace. Could this be the Green Lady and her lost child?
Crathes Castle itself has been on our registers for several hundred years; its search sheet covers everything from the building itself to a family burial ground, and it’s also registered by the National Trust for Scotland as a place of historic interest or natural beauty.
Stirling Castle
Like many historic locations in Scotland, Stirling Castle can be found on our map-based land register, which ensures the property details of this important fortress are preserved for centuries to come.
Stirling Castle features its own Green Lady, who was said to have died trying to save her master from a fire. Another ghostly figure has been attributed to Mary Queen of Scots, one of the most famous figures in Scottish history. Then there’s ‘the Highland Ghost’. Many tourists have reported seeing this kilted man and mistaken him for a tour guide, only for the figure to disappear when approached. No one knows who the Highlander is or why he haunts the castle grounds, and he was even reportedly caught on film in 1933, but he adds another spooky side to one of Scotland’s classic castles.
Culloden
Referenced everywhere from history books to Outlander, the Battle of Culloden is one of Scotland’s most famous historic moments. Fought in 1746, it marked the end of the final Jacobite Rising, and was also the last pitched battle to be waged on British soil.
The battlefield, located just outside of Inverness, is now a popular visitor attraction owned by the National Trust for Scotland, and can be found on the sasine register. Culloden’s violent past, however, may not be completely consigned to history. Culloden Moor, and the graves of the soldiers found there, are said to be visited by ghostly figures, accompanied by the clanging of swords and shouts of anguished war cries.
Visit our friends at VisitScotland for more details on frightening festivals and ghoulish ghost tours this Halloween.
Find out more!
You can follow the team via @RegistersOfScot on Twitter and on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube for more updates. Want to comment? Let us know below.
3 thoughts on “Recording Scotland’s haunted properties”
Your Stirling Castle reference to ” Mary Queen of Scotland ” should read ” Mary Queen of Scots ” as there is a distinction to be made from the sovereignty perspective.
Thanks Derek, this has been amended accordingly. Hope you enjoyed the blog nonetheless. Thanks, Innes. |
CHICAGO, Sept. 3 /CNW/ - BMO Capital Markets, the investment and corporate banking arm of BMO Financial Group (TSX, NYSE: BMO), will hold its fourth annual North American Real Estate Conference, September 9 - 11, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Chicago. The BMO Capital Markets highly regarded REIT equity research team will host the event. The team includes senior research analysts Paul Adornato, Richard Anderson and Karine MacIndoe. BMO's three-day conference will focus on challenges and opportunities in the real estate sector and explore the depth and sustainability of the recent recovery in REIT stocks. Over 300 institutional investors, industry participants and company executives from across North America are expected to attend the event. This forum features a unique line-up of presentations from more than 60 leading public and private real estate companies. Media interested in attending the conference or scheduling an interview should call (416) 867-3996 or toll free at 1-866-298-8385. (*) Company presenters include: U.S REITS/CORPORATIONS Acadia Realty (AKR) AIMCO (AIV) AvalonBay Communities (AVB) Behringer Harvard Brandywine Realty (BDN) Camden Property Trust (CPT) Cedar Shopping Centers (CDR) Colonial Properties (CLP) Corporate Office Properties (OFC) DCT Industrial (DCT) Douglas Emmett (DEI) Duke Realty (DRE) EastGroup Properties (EGP) Entertainment Properties (EPR) Equity Residential (EQR) Essex Property Trust (ESS) Extra Space Storage (EXR) First Industrial (FR) First Potomac (FPO) HCP, Inc. (HCP) Health Care REIT (HCN) Healthcare Realty (HR) Home Properties (HME) Inland American Inland Real Estate (IRC) Inland Western Kimco Realty (KIM) Kite Realty Group Trust (KRG) Liberty Property Trust (LRY) Lillibridge LTC Properties (LTC) Mid-America Apartments (MAA) Nationwide Health Properties (NHP) Parkway Properties (PKY) Piedmont Office Realty Trust PS Business Parks (PSB) Sovran Self Storage StorageMart U-Store-It Trust (YSI) UDR, Inc. (UDR) Ventas, Inc. (VTR) WP Carey (WPC) CANADIAN REITS/CORPORATIONS Allied Properties (AP.UN) Artis (AX.UN) Boardwalk (BEI.UN) Calloway (CWT.UN) CAP (CAR.UN) Chartwell Seniors Housing (CSH.UN) Crombie (CRR.UN) Dundee REIT (D.UN) Extendicare (EXE.UN) First Capital Realty (FCR) H & R (HR.UN) InnVest (INN.UN) Killam Properties (KMP) Northern Property (NPR.UN) Parkbridge Lifestyle Comm. (PRK) Primaris (PMZ.UN) RioCan (REI.UN) (*)the list is subject to change. A complete conference agenda is also available by visiting the website. Presentations will be broadcast live and archived at: North America with US$385 billion total assets and 37,000 employees as at July 31, 2009.
For further information:
For further information: Media Contacts: Kim Hanson, Toronto, kim.hanson@bmo.com, (416) 867-3996; Holly Holt, New York, holly.holt@bmo.com, (212) 885-4153; Kevin Windorf, Chicago & New York, kevin.windorf@bmo.com, (908) 391-2723; |
VII The Strike
FOR a period extending over several months Judith kept her promise, and did not attempt to harass me. Jim McGrath proved a jealous lover, and watched her narrowly; perhaps she was afraid of him. Me he avoided, but I think he bided his time. His disposition was sullen, morose, and bitterly revengeful. He felt in his heart that Judith did not really care for him, and therefore he hated me. I knew him for an enemy, but I was not afraid; I thought, because I had overcome him in our first encounter, I should be able to do the same again if need arose; but occasionally meeting his eyes by chance, I received a thrill: they were so savage, so brute-like in their expression of mute malignity.
― 57 ―
My life was uneventful. I studied, read and roamed, keeping much to myself. I only met Judith at meals, and seldom conversed with her even then; twice a week I harangued the Push, and rose steadily in their favour and esteem. I was fast sinking into a groove, a rut of monotonous and unexciting existence. My uncle dropped frequent hints of a trial which I should have to undergo in the near future, a mysterious ordeal, the meaning of which he refused to explain; but the constant “wolf” cry dulled my curiosity. Time passed, nothing happened, and the peace I loved seemed to be entirely mine. I developed both mentally and physically; sometimes I was impatient of my lot, and craved for change, but not often. The adulation of the Push acted as a balm, it was unstintedly lavished upon me, it comforted and soothed all discontented moods. So I lived until occurred the Great Maritime Strike, which so vitally affected the shipping and commercial interests of Australia, and placed Sydney for a time under arms. The Push district bordered upon a great number of wharves, and was, therefore, directly affected by the strike. Many of the Push were also themselves either sailors, dock assistants, or wharf labourers, and members of labour unions. The harbour was filled with crewless ships and steamers. Nearly all the shipping offices were barricaded and besieged. The strikers conducted their campaign with orderly violence. They flung out pickets from their regular bodies, and patrolled the streets in force, so that the ship owners should have no chance of introducing blackleg crews on board the vessels. Business in the city was practically suspended, and the entire population watched the struggle. Naturally feeling ran high. The Dogs' Push subscribed liberally to the strike fund from their reserves, and the whole Push took keen interest in the strike. An army of special constables was enrolled by the authorities, and the military were held in readiness to check an insurrection. All streets in the neighbourhood of the sea were invaded by excited crowds, which thinned neither by day nor night, and the police hung on their outskirts watchful as hawks. Riots constantly occurred, and the strikers generally obtained the advantage. In spite of their vigilance,
― 58 ―
however, steamers left the harbour continually, manned by clerks, gentlefolk, and other blacklegs. The strikers, in sheer desperation, resorted to more stringent methods. When steamers appeared in readiness to sail, they were boarded in force from the water, and most reckless fights ensued. The police were at last armed with revolvers, and it seemed that a species of civil war was about to be waged. I felt the greatest sympathy for the strikers, for they had been called out in a just cause, and were, perhaps, the most hard-working and miserably underpaid body of labourers in Australia. My uncle, however, for some recondite reason of his own, sternly forbade me to take any part in the struggle, and enjoined me to keep within doors, except during my journeys to and from the foundry. Inflamed with excitement and curiosity, I found his mandates extremely distasteful, but for a time obeyed them. Perhaps I should have continued obedient, had it not been for a chance meeting with Jim McGrath. We came face to face one afternoon, just without the entrance of the foundry, as I was about to return home for the day. I had paused to watch a company of police marching citywards, with several prisoners in their midst. McGrath had been drinking; he smelt of rum, and his face was like a flag of wrath.
“Quit loafing here!” he cried, fiercely. “Get home, or I'll make you!”
I flushed with rage. “How dare you interfere with me? I shall do as I please!”
“Will you?” he grated, and seized my arm.
I tore myself free, and, swinging on heel, strode in the direction of the city, my only thought to show McGrath that I despised him.
“I'll tell your uncle!” he shouted, but I did not turn.
Pride came, and anger changed to stubbornness I made my way to Margaret Street, and in reckless mood sought the shipping. Soon my progress was blocked by a great shouting crowd. From the hill I perceived a large punt packed with grimy-faced men lying by the jetty. The crowd stared and strained in one direction, hoarsely exclaiming, groaning, and at intervals madly cheering. The men
― 59 ―
on the punt alone were silent. Burning with curiosity, I swarmed up a lamp-post, and, over the heads of the surging mob, saw that a desperate struggle was in progress between a body of police and strikers immediately before the North Coast Company's office doors. Slipping down, I wormed my way through the press, eager for a closer view. It was a mistake. Once in the grip of the crowd, I was helpless. Panting and breathless, I was forced, being slight and lithe, to the very front rank, and was presently thrust into the heart of the mêlée. The police were in a bad plight; they were covered with flour, half blinded, and plainly overmatched, but they fought like heroes. Half frantic, I struck out right and left at friend and foe. I was pitched backward and forward like a shuttlecock, and thought my last hour had arrived. Suddenly there came a lull. Bruised, dazed, and bleeding, I stood for a second in a little open space. The combatants had separated; why, I did not know, but I was wild to escape. I darted forward, intending to slip through a serried opening, but a pistol flashed in my face, and I saw that the police had drawn their revolvers. I heard a mighty groan, and the throng fell back.
A policeman caught me by the collar and held tight. Mad with fear, I dashed my shut hand in his face, and wrenching myself free, ran like a hare along the houses towards the water. The crowd uttered a great cry, and, making way for me, turned to watch my flight. Two constables gave chase. I reached the end of the alley, and sprang for the rail of the jetty about two yards before them. A big man standing behind the rail helped me over and swung me on to the punt, where room was made for us both. I forgot to be afraid, and shook my fist in the face of the constables. One pointed his revolver at me, but he was detached from his companions and at the mercy of his enemies. Someone jerked his arm, and the bullet went singing into the sky. I felt myself a hero! The punt immediately pushed from the shore, and was sculled swiftly into the bay. I observed a large iron steamer backing out from the Company's wharf into the stream. The name on her bow was Alice. I understood then the reason of the riot. She was manned with blacklegs. The men on the punt were armed with coal. As the
― 60 ―
Alice turned they planted the punt before her bows and discharged a volley of missiles at the captain, who stood upon the bridge. He escaped unhurt. Fired with enthusiasm, I picked up a stone and hurled it, hardly knowing what I did. It struck the helmsman on the shoulder, and he dropped to the deck below. The captain sprang to the wheel and shouted out some orders. But my companions were frenzied with delight. They yelled like maniacs, patted me on the back, and one big bearded fellow actually kissed me. The crowd on shore cheered my exploit to the skies. I felt myself doubly a hero! But the captain of the Alice knew what he was about; he got his vessel under way, and headed directly for the punt, at full speed. In a second all was confusion aboard. Every man shouted a different direction or command. Our steerer got confused, and the oarsmen pulled different ways. We swung round, and the huge iron bows of the Alice almost shaved our stern as she thundered past. To add to our discomfiture, several buckets of hot water were poured upon us from the towering bulwarks. My companions utterly lost their heads; but, filled with rage, I caught up an iron bar and hurled it at the ship. It smashed through a portion of deckhouse with a crash which resounded loud above the din. The strikers looked upon me as though I were a sort of battle-god, and frankly paid me homage as commander.
“Where to now?” they asked.
“Back to the shore!” I cried. My blood was up. I wanted revenge upon the policeman who had fired at me. I could not understand myself. I was completely reckless and on fire. But when we reached the jetty the police had disappeared. I was, however, recognised, and loud cries greeted me from Dogs among the crowd.
“Speech, speech!” they yelled.
Nothing loth, I sprang ashore, and was immediately hoisted on to a platform of boxes which appeared with the speed of magic.
“Friends!” I shouted. “Do you know what has happened this day? I shall tell you. We, the maritime working-men of New South Wales, have been long oppressed by capitalists, who have stolen the fruits of our
― 61 ―
labour, ground us down by every means which their cursed ingenuity could devise, forced us to toil early and late for a wretched pittance, and crushed our every effort to lift ourselves from the mire in which their infernal greed has plunged us. This is an old story. We have for years writhed under the injustice, and at last in the might of right we have risen united, like brothers, to resist the tyranny of our oppressors. What have we asked for? An advance in wages—not a great thing, not an unjust thing, but a thing we are well entitled to, for it is our labour, our toil, our sweat and suffering which keeps the fat man fat. We only want a little of his fat, or rather our fat, since we have made him fat. What happens? Rather than give us what is rightfully our own, he prefers to spend his stores to the last farthing in keeping us slaves, and forging new and stronger fetters for our limbs. He does not fight us himself—he dares not, for he is a coward, the beastly fat man! He sends his servants to fight us. His police—curse them!”
Here burst out a deafening thunder of applause. I scarcely waited for it to subside. “Friends,” I shrieked, “to-day the fat man has put the last straw on the patient camel's back. While he fought us fair, we didn't mind; we are strong, and can fight at least as well as his paid hirelings. But, friends, to-day he passed the Rubicon—to-day his brutes have fired upon us. Friends, there are women among you, women and children. The police fired upon them, too. Shall we suffer that? shall we allow our wives and sisters to be shot down like dogs, by bloody hirelings?”
The uproar became so tremendous that I was forced to pause. I gazed at the sea of wild and frenzied faces, terrified at the passions I had stirred and fanned to life. I had spoken without thought, my senses carried away on a swirl of passionate emotion. I realised that I had been mad, criminally mad. The crowd was ripe for deeds of reckless violence. It howled and surged and screamed; it merely required a leader to become a mighty weapon of destruction. Its eyes gleamed like wind-driven sparks of fire, its clenched hands struck at the sky, its cavernous mouths vomited fumes of rage, “My God! what have I done?” I cried, and did not hear the words. A cold perspiration
― 62 ―
drenched my face. I grew dizzy and strangely weak. Suddenly a man stood beside me on the platform. He waved his hand, and for a moment a hush succeeded. “Friends!” shouted the man. “Look at this boy. Look at his arm; he is shot, he is wounded!”
A low but terrible roar answered him; then a second hush.
“Look!” cried the speaker, “he totters! he faints! Revenge! Revenge is the word!”
“Revenge!” yelled the crowd.
Vertigo assailed me. The world swung round my aching eyes, fast and ever faster. I slipped into blank unconsciousness. I opened my eyes, wakened to life by pain. I was lying in my own bedroom, a strange man was sponging my arm over a basin of hot water. I was sick and dizzy. My uncle and Judith Kelly stood beside my bed, looking pale and anxious.
“I fell,” I muttered. “What happened then?”
My uncle started forward, his face lighting up. “Hush!” he said.
“What happened?” I persisted.
He whispered in my ear. “S-sh! The surgeon! They wrecked a warehouse, but the police were too strong for them!”
“Were any arrested?”
“Yes, but none of ours!”
I sighed. “Are you angry with me for breaking bounds?”
He shook his head, and muttered low: “It's the best thing you have ever done. The boys will just worship you; and, better than all, no one spotted you—not a single copper—not even Tobin, though he was there.”
I did not know who Tobin was, but the surgeon prevented me from feeling curious, so sharply did he hurt me in probing and dressing my wound. My uncle took him off at last. Judith fell to kissing my bandages. I was too weak to reprove her, and sleep came upon me before she had done.
Fever chained me to my bed for several weeks, and long before I resumed work at the foundry the great strike was a thing of the past. |
Whether you’re a mom of a 5-year-old or 15-year-old, chances are, bullying is on your radar. But how do you tell what is just normal childhood disagreements and social tiffs, and what constitutes bullying? And if you think your child needs help, what’s the best way to intervene (or should you step in at all…)? We asked Dr. Allyson Maida, a psychotherapist and Associate Adjunct Professor at St. John’s University’s Criminal Justice Department in New York these questions and others.
In your opinion, has bullying gotten more frequent, or worse, since we were kids?
Such a great question. This depends upon who you are talking to. Chances are I am a bit older than many of your readers. No, I do not believe that bullying is worse now than in than my Gen X, or anyone else’s generation. Historically, bullies use any means available to harass their target. Presently, bullies have opportunities to bully in-person and through technology such as telephones, texting and other cyber systems. As the use of technology increases, so does cyberbullying. Reporting, media exposure, policy and program development occur more frequently than ever before. So, now it seems as if bullying has worsened but it has not.
How common is bullying?
It is extremely common. It is daily, likely happening somewhere right now and one-minute ago. It is local, national and global. More than one out of every five students report being bullied.
What are some signs of bullying in young school age kids?
Reading elementary school kids can be difficult at times. We love our children so much that we shudder at the thought of them having their feelings hurt. We are so attuned to our children that we try to watch and interpret every nuance, yet there are times where we can either miss or misinterpret what we are hearing and/or seeing. We can confuse peer-conflict with aggression. Both young children and teens may show signs of bullying. There are also some kids who mask these signs as they are embarrassed, uncomfortable with thoughts of spending more time facing the issue, or they may simply be afraid. For the most part, signs of bullying are similar whether experienced in elementary, middle, high school or college. The difference between the reactions of younger or older kids is that they verbalize differently, and behaviors will be appropriate to the age group.
Common signs of bullied children are seen in behavioral changes such as:
- Trouble getting out of bed/not wanting to go to school
- Change of routines to get to school/uncomfortable walking to school
- Change in sleeping or eating patterns
- Frequent tears, anger, frustration, mood swings, increased sensitivity
- Stomach aches, headaches, or unexplained pain
- Unexplained physical injuries such as bruises or scratches
- Avoiding classroom and recreation activities
- Missing personal items such as clothing, money, food, school supplies
- Coming home unusually hungry
- Falling grades
- Changes in friends or friend groups
- Sadness or significant frustration about relationships
- Sudden change/discomfort in social circumstances or becoming the target of teasing, or ridicule
- Show an unwillingness to discuss their online communication
Why are kids most often targeted?
Kids are targeted for a handful of reasons which can be categorized under a handful of topics. However, the bottom line is that bullying is the same as prejudice. Bullies zero in on those who they do not understand or find to be a threat. Boiled down, those bullied are generally different than most of the other kids in their peer group.
Kids are often targeted because they are the quiet/shy kid, are not as socially adept as their peers, have disabilities (regardless of whether they are physical, emotional or academic), come from a family that is “different”, exhibit a sexual orientation that is different than their sex at birth (i.e.: transgender), exhibit a sexual preference that is not specifically heterosexual (i.e.: bisexual), have low self-esteem, are a perceived threat to someone’s popularity (i.e.: gaining the attention and acceptance of a teacher, coach or other kids).
What is peer-conflict and peer-abuse?
Conflict and abuse are different. Conflict is when two or more people do not agree about a specific topic. With different perspectives, their opinions are not aligned and in conflict, leaving everyone frustrated. Eventually, they agree to disagree, come to a compromise or see the other person’s reasoning.
Abuse is deliberate, preconceived, creates patterns of behaviors and events that include an imbalance of power. Peer-abuse may begin as a conflict and develop into bullying. Bullies look for opportunities to pursue and overpower the other kid. They may do this alone or create a group to intensify intimidation. Although not always, those bullied find they are a target of this aggression over and again.
As a parent, what is the most important thing for us to do if we suspect our child is being bullied?
Observe and listen. Listen to the frustration that your child feels. Do not be too quick to dismiss social issues that, as an adult, you would sweep under the rug. If your child and the bully are enrolled in school (or a program) contact the appropriate party to let them know. This may be a teacher, guidance counselor, principal or program leader. Depending upon the circumstance you may choose to contact the parents of the bully and suggest that everyone work together to resolve the issue(s). As many states and school districts have bullying policies, there is an obligation to address the issue as soon as it is reported. Keep in mind that although these policies or laws are in place, you are still speaking to other human beings. After they explain their protocol to you and act accordingly, if you do not see enough of a change, re-approach or go to a more influential source within the school/program. Remain involved and ask that the school/program keep you in the loop. Chances are that your child is not the only one in this situation and your child needs to feel assured that action is being taken. If you believe that your child is bullying others, do the same thing. Bullies need help too. They only bully because they are not happy with something. Be sensitive to the fact that most children are afraid of retaliation so they may beg you to stop helping. If that is the case, work “behind the scenes” – become stealthily effective. The outcome is what matters most, not your overt presence. If the bullying continues and help cannot be found elsewhere it is not out of order to contact the police for advice and intervention where needed.
No one wants to think that their children are being picked on or are the bully. I have seen so many parents insist that their child(ren) “would never do that”, when in fact they are doing “that”. Instead of worrying about how we look as parents, as if our children’s behavior is a public display of our success or failure, let’s take an active role in objective parenting. Objectivity is based upon what is really happening. Let’s raise our kids to be socially responsible and respectable. Anything else is a mistake.
Why is bullying an issue that needs to be addressed—and not just “kids being kids”?
Kids being kids refers to children developing. They are stretching their wings, testing the world as they know it, which includes conflict, disappointment and problem-solving. Kids being kids includes defining who they are and deciding who are friends, acquaintances, frienemies and people that they should not be friends with at all. Kids are not always nice, and they are simply trying to make the world make sense.
Bullying needs to be identified and addressed as soon as possible. The longer bulling is experienced the greater the impact. These experiences are rarely forgotten as they help the young developing mind to realize that people may not be as trustworthy as they seem, and that life can hurt. The more these thoughts occur the more they define future thoughts and perceptions. Bullying can provoke aggression that turns the nicest kid into that kid with an attitude and intense opinion. Generally, where that occurs, aggression is around the corner. Bullies can also shift their perceptions as they experience the intense responses of a victim. A bully can begin to feel badly about their aggressive role and become the victim of those they have bullied with. Therefore, as parents and adults on-site, we need to keep our ears and eyes open as children interact and develop their social selves. We are here to provide and instill healthy guiding principles – kids rely upon that.
This story originally appeared on Greenwich Moms. |
Earrings: Bealles Watch & Bag: Kate Spade NY Bracelet: JCREW Sunnies: Franco Sarto
Hope everyone is having a superb Wednesday! I woke up this morning and realized that Summer is slipping away. The realistic part of me is actually quite happy about that. No more sweaty, stifling days getting in and out of a hot car or slathering on sun screen just to go outside for a moment. The fashion blogger side of me is quite panicked though as I must ensure I wear all of my summer items before Fall arrives! Yeah..I know #FashionBloggerProblems.
Still…I’m hanging on to Summer…even if the Fall style issues are out next month and everything will soon become sweaters, boots and not a shred of skin will be showing. With that being said….today’s post is all about the sunshine! If you’ve been following my blog, you’ve read about my major shoe score from ShoeDazzle a few weeks ago. I’ve only debuted one of the 8 or 9 (sad that I can’t remember, isn’t it) pairs of shoes I purchased. Today pair number two comes out to play.
I’ve always loved a good wedge. I know I have nothing new to say about the many, many attributes of the wedge. No…alas all has been said before and much more eloquently than I could pen..er…type. However, let’s just say they are a girl’s best friend…adding height and lengthening the body while adding evenly distributed support!
ShoeDazzle featured these sunny yellow, basket weaved wedges a couple of months ago and I’ve had my eye on them for some time. They’re made by Madison and come in combinations of white/yellow and black/pink.
I couldn’t make up my mind which I like best…so I bought both.
Love, love, love these wedges! Cute and comfy and just different enough to garner attention without being too overstated.
I paired them with a white on white look…white shirt, white skirt and white jacket. I also added a pair of dainty yellow earrings to distribute the color and a silver and pearl necklace for some shine.
Now…for the bag. Yes…it’s Kate Spade. And yes….it’s so hot it’s cool. What says Summer more than Palm Springs!? Love it, want it, need it? Get it here!
Laters! xoxo…Cortneybre… |
With this issue of Physics & Society, we kick off a debate concerning one of the main conclusions of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body which, together with Al Gore, recently won the Nobel Prize for its work concerning climate change research. There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S concerning that conclusion. This editor (JJM) invited several people to contribute articles that were either pro or con. Christopher Monckton responded with this issue's article that argues against the correctness of the IPCC conclusion, and a pair from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, David Hafemeister and Peter Schwartz, responded with this issue's article in favor of the IPCC conclusion. We, the editors of P&S, invite reasoned rebuttals from the authors as well as further contributions from the physics community. Please contact me (jjmarque@sbcglobal.net) if you wish to jump into this fray with comments or articles that are scientific in nature. However, we will not publish articles that are political or polemical in nature. Stick to the science! (JJM)
Something is happeniong here dear chums. A year ago P&S said the discussion was done. Over with. Don't bother me.
Large organizations and especually technical journals don't change easily. First there are egos, and yes, careers to consider. That they reopen the door is both startling and telling.
Microsoft said today that its fiscal fourth-quarter profit jumped 42 percent, helped by strong sales of its Office and Windows software, but the company offered a soft outlook for the current quarter.
Earnings for the three months ended June 30 rose to $4.3 billion, or 46 cents a share, but that missed Wall Street's expectations by a penny a share. In the year-ago quarter, Microsoft reported earnings of $3.04 billion, or 31 cents a share.
Now let me see. Despite hard economic conditions, this last quarter vs a year ago shows a 15 cent per share improvement... But the AP chooses to push the fact that MS missed Wall Street expectations by a penny???
If you ever needed a concise snapshot of why the major media outlets are dying, that is it. AP's bias here is just so plain that it can't be missed. And long term, that means people walk away.
CHICAGO (AP) - Sometimes it's hard to tell if Barack Obama is running for president of the United States or Mr. Universe.
The Democratic presidential contender exercises regularly, but over a 24-hour span this week, he took it to a new extreme.
Twice on Wednesday and again Thursday morning, Obama traveled to a lakefront apartment building near his Chicago home to work out with a friend at his gym. On Wednesday night, Obama also spent an hour at the East Bank Club, a mammoth exercise facility just north of the city's famous business Loop where he is known to play basketball.
On the former occasions, reporters accompanying Obama saw him get in and out of an SUV wearing a baseball hat, white T-shirt and black sweat pants. On the visit to the East Bank Club, Obama was dressed casually as if going out to dinner, wearing slacks, a blue blazer and flip-flops.
A distinct lack of visible sweat on the Illinois senator triggered questions about whether he was actually exercising or using the gym visits as cover for conducting vice presidential vetting or interviews.
That view held credence among some of the photographers who regularly accompany Obama. They said that even when he shot hoops earlier this year with members of the University of North Carolina varsity men's basketball team, they didn't see Obama sweat. |
require_relative '../../helper'
require_relative '../../globals'
require_relative '../../env'
require_relative '../interface'
module FastlaneCore
# Shell is the terminal output of things
# For documentation for each of the methods open `interface.rb`
class Shell < Interface
require 'tty-screen'
def log
return @log if @log
$stdout.sync = true
if Helper.test? && !ENV.key?('DEBUG')
$stdout.puts("Logging disabled while running tests. Force them by setting the DEBUG environment variable")
@log ||= Logger.new(nil) # don't show any logs when running tests
else
@log ||= Logger.new($stdout)
end
@log.formatter = proc do |severity, datetime, progname, msg|
"#{format_string(datetime, severity)}#{msg}\n"
end
@log
end
def format_string(datetime = Time.now, severity = "")
timezone_string = !FastlaneCore::Env.truthy?('FASTLANE_SHOW_TIMEZONE') ? '' : ' %z'
if FastlaneCore::Globals.verbose?
return "#{severity} [#{datetime.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%2N' + timezone_string)}]: "
elsif FastlaneCore::Env.truthy?("FASTLANE_HIDE_TIMESTAMP")
return ""
else
return "[#{datetime.strftime('%H:%M:%S' + timezone_string)}]: "
end
end
#####################################################
# @!group Messaging: show text to the user
#####################################################
def error(message)
log.error(message.to_s.red)
end
def important(message)
log.warn(message.to_s.yellow)
end
def success(message)
log.info(message.to_s.green)
end
def message(message)
log.info(message.to_s)
end
def deprecated(message)
log.error(message.to_s.deprecated)
end
def command(message)
log.info("$ #{message}".cyan)
end
def command_output(message)
actual = (message.split("\r").last || "") # as clearing the line will remove the `>` and the time stamp
actual.split("\n").each do |msg|
if FastlaneCore::Env.truthy?("FASTLANE_DISABLE_OUTPUT_FORMAT")
log.info(msg)
else
prefix = msg.include?("▸") ? "" : "▸ "
log.info(prefix + "" + msg.magenta)
end
end
end
def verbose(message)
log.debug(message.to_s) if FastlaneCore::Globals.verbose?
end
def header(message)
format = format_string
if message.length + 8 < TTY::Screen.width - format.length
message = "--- #{message} ---"
i = message.length
else
i = TTY::Screen.width - format.length
end
success("-" * i)
success(message)
success("-" * i)
end
def content_error(content, error_line)
error_line = error_line.to_i
return unless error_line > 0
contents = content.split(/\r?\n/).map(&:chomp)
start_line = error_line - 2 < 1 ? 1 : error_line - 2
end_line = error_line + 2 < contents.length ? error_line + 2 : contents.length
Range.new(start_line, end_line).each do |line|
str = line == error_line ? " => " : " "
str << line.to_s.rjust(Math.log10(end_line) + 1)
str << ":\t#{contents[line - 1]}"
error(str)
end
end
#####################################################
# @!group Errors: Inputs
#####################################################
def interactive?
interactive = true
interactive = false if $stdout.isatty == false
interactive = false if Helper.ci?
return interactive
end
def input(message)
verify_interactive!(message)
ask("#{format_string}#{message.to_s.yellow}").to_s.strip
end
def confirm(message)
verify_interactive!(message)
agree("#{format_string}#{message.to_s.yellow} (y/n)", true)
end
def select(message, options)
verify_interactive!(message)
important(message)
choose(*options)
end
def password(message)
verify_interactive!(message)
ask("#{format_string}#{message.to_s.yellow}") { |q| q.echo = "*" }
end
private
def verify_interactive!(message)
return if interactive?
important(message)
crash!("Could not retrieve response as fastlane runs in non-interactive mode")
end
end
end
|
Q:
Assigning values received from asynchronous functions
So I'm creating the a FB app that uses the FB SDK. In the code below, I am getting a list of movies I like and their FB page ids in 'data'. Then, I'm iterating through it to get the get the names of the movies and using the page ids, i get their page links and src of their page profile pictures. Then I use the details to create the following HTML block:
<article>
<figure>
<img src="source">
</figure>
<div>
<a href="link"/>
</div>
</article>
So, I dynamically create each article block and then append them to the below HTML code:
<body>
<header></header>
<section>
<article></article>
</section>
<footer></footer>
<script src = *source of my .js file*></script>
</body>
This is my js code:
// data has a list of FB movie pages, each containing the name of the movie and page id
function print(data)
{
//iterates through the object passed to print movie names in console.
var target = document.querySelector('article');
var docFrag = document.createDocumentFragment();
for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++)
{
var temp = data[i];
var linkElement = document.createElement('a');
var linkText = document.createTextNode(temp["name"]);
linkElement.appendChild(linkText);
//getting the link to the movie's FB page
getLink(function(response){linkElement.href = response;},temp["id"]);
var imgElement = document.createElement('img');
//getting the src of the picture of the movie's page
getPic(function(response){imgElement.setAttribute("src", response);},temp["id"]);
imgElement.setAttribute("width", "304");
imgElement.setAttribute("height", "228");
imgElement.setAttribute("alt", temp["name"]);
var article = document.createElement("article"),
figure = document.createElement("figure"),
div = document.createElement("div");
div.appendChild(linkElement);
figure.appendChild(imgElement);
article.appendChild(figure);
article.appendChild(div);
console.log(article);
docFrag.appendChild(article);
}
target.appendChild(docFrag);
}
function getLink(callback,id)
{
FB.api('/'+id+'?fields=link', function(response)
{
callback(response.link);
});
}
function getPic(callback,id)
{
FB.api('/'+id+'?fields=cover{source}', function(response)
{
callback(response.cover.source);
});
}
My problem is that when I print the output, all the article blocks except the last one lose the href's and the src's for the 'img' blocks. When I print the articles in the console, the href and the src are empty except the last one. I think maybe it's got something to do with async calls to the FB SDK, but I'm not sure. Can anyone help?
A:
var has function scope, not block scope, and is hoisted. Use const or let instead, especially in for loops, especially in asynchronous for loops:
for (let i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
const temp = data[i];
const linkElement = document.createElement('a');
To the interpreter, what you're currently doing looks something like this:
function print(data) {
var target;
var docFrag;
var temp;
var linkElement;
// etc
for (i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
temp = data[i];
linkElement = document.createElement('a');
// etc
So after the end of the loop, once the responses come back, each callback is referencing the same imgElement, the last one the for loop reassigned.
You can also use forEach, which is significantly better than for loops in most respects. (no manual iteration, automatic abstraction, accepts functions as arguments)
data.forEach((temp) => {
const linkElement = document.createElement('a');
// ...
|
Tour the Golden Circle and enjoy Iceland’s most iconic sites. Thingvellir National Park, Gullfoss waterfall and Geysir geothermal area are locales that encompass much of what makes Iceland so unique. Round off your trip with a soak in the Secret Lag one of the following addresses for pickup: · Gray Line Bus Terminal Klettagardar 4 · Bus stop #3 Lækjargata · Skarfabakki Cruise Port
Experience
- Hear the spine-tingling tales of Viking-age justice doled out at Þingvellir
- Feel the mist of Gullfoss waterfall as it plunges into Hvítárgljúfur canyon
- Look on in awe as an erupting hot spring launches a column of boiling hot water into the air
- Invigorate your mind and body in the waters of the Secret Lagoon
- Roundtrip transport
- English-speaking professional guide
- Admission to the Secret Lagoon
- Free Wi-Fi on board
- Food and drinks
- All areas that customers touch are frequently cleaned
Select participants and date
Participants
Date
Prepare for the activity
What to bring
- Comfortable shoes
- Swimwear
- Towel
- Weather-appropriate clothing
Know before you go
- Please provide your hotel or cruise ship information at the time of booking
- Please wait at your hotel's designated pick-up point or at the cruise port meeting point and the tour supplier's shuttle will come to collect you
- Please note that the discount for children and youths is a family discount and applies to a maximum of 2 children or youths for each full paying adult
- Remember to dress in warm and weather-appropriate clothing
- It is recommended that you bring your own towel and swimwear, but this can also be rented at the Secret Lagoon for a small fee |
Advising Firms Assistance New Entrepreneurs Compete By using The Market leaders
Of course, one with the major factors increasing the achievements of quite a few massive MNCs and native field market leaders is normally efficient and seasoned organization inquiring corporations for Quarterly report. Such corporations guide reside ahead of the competitiveness. The appointing associated with a specialized consultant is definitely also decent since some people furthermore fit your corporation for the similar pedestal everywhere the field leaders are generally competing. This allows you an equal chance to play plus raise.
Such agencies in essence bargain with supplying the exact instruction and even tips regarding every place needs. Component to their significant responsibilities incorporates planning the provider structure, getting sales techniques and starting brand identity. If anyone are planning to launch your have business credit rating, you could appear towards doing work with a business consulting firm. There will be a great number of people who all are more than pleased to grant you high-quality services in the prices that you can afford. In the event you really want to know more on just what exactly many of these businesses is able to do to get you, read on.
What will be small business advising businesses?
Throughout Questionnaire, at this time there are some number connected with consulting companies that give special plus singular experience and even information to the customers. You can find varied types connected with consulting businesses, the very widely well-liked kinds currently being data technology (IT) consulting companies and control consulting corporations. There are also different types such as environmental and also human source consulting organizations.
In point of fact, all internet business asking vendors try distinct recommendations and also procedures. These people appear up through the assistance of skilled specialists who seem to can most important concentrate about a single project as well as educate plus use becomes the particular staff. Furthermore, there tend to be even project- oriented contacting firms of which majorly focus in specified business characteristics. For some sort of case, we can receive a supply sequence or prospect relationship current administration (CRM). These kind of firms review their householders’ needs in addition to manage education, implementation along with development at the same time.
Why will need to you find the services connected with business talking to firms?
Working with a great manager firm on Sydney does wonders to your business. Trust me; these business specialists can make a huge change in the case of enhance in addition to transform your online business procedures. You may of course rely on them to be able to create important optimistic improvements having their years of practical knowledge in marketing and advertising.
A very good inquiring organization can offer any range regarding expert services. Many of these are made under:
Experts may help a person with forms you’ll need for your own enterprise.
Such organizations are aware regarding often the in order to register method plus can method your newspaper publishers. These people today can contrast your company properly along with understand the sorts of equipment and also manpower you can actually will need to run your enterprise proficiently.
These companies give retainer-like solutions.
Once aiding you to begin your business, these consulting providers can improve processes try to make them more beneficial and working. These industry experts will likely perform with you in generating methods or techniques that could enhance your company routines. They will can in addition try that will aid you in developing promotion plans in an attempt to get buyers as well as generate more income.
Therefore finally, we will say this starting up the business can quite simpler under the exact guidance with these agencies.
Read a great deal more:allsaintsthetailor.com |
Weight Loss for Teens Expert Interview
In this interview, Anne Fletcher, M.S., R.D. discusses how teenagers can lose weight and keep it off. If you've tried to lose weight, but hardly see the scale change or see it creep back up after reaching your goal, you are not alone. Many teenagers have been down the same weight loss road, however, many others have found a way to lose the weight and maintain it in a healthy, sensible way.
Weight Loss for Teens Interview with Anne Fletcher
Anne Fletcher, M.S. is a medical/health journalist and registered dietitian who specializes in writing about weight management and addiction. She has written five books about individuals who have managed to lose weight and keep it off. Most recently, she wrote, Weight Loss Confidential: How Teens Lose Weight and Keep It Off - And What They Wish Parents Knew along with a companion book, Weight Loss Confidential Journal: Week-by-Week Success Strategies for Teens from Teens. Weight Loss Confidential is about more than 100 formerly overweight teens who lost weight in healthy ways and kept it off for about a year or more.
Teen Weight Loss Success Stories
The following are a few of the success stories from Anne's books:
- "Joyelle T gained more than 80 pounds in eighth grade (bringing her weight up to more than 200 pounds). With the help of a weight loss program and through healthy eating and exercise, she lost 55 pounds in tenth grade."
- "Tyler D was five feet four inches tall and weighed 185 pounds in seventh grade when he got fed up with being overweight and getting teased about it. He joined the middle school football and track teams, lost 20 pounds, and grew 9 inches."
- "Anne Fletcher's own son, Wes G, weighed 270 pounds and stood 6 feet 1 inch in eleventh grade. During his senior year in high school, he decided he wanted to look good in time for college. He lost 65 pounds by keeping track of everything he ate in a daily planner, weighing himself once a week, and playing pick-up basketball. "
Motivation to Lose the Weight
What motivates a teenager to lose weight in a healthy way?
For most of the teens in Weight Loss Confidential, it was a combination of things: they wanted to look better and feel better about themselves; they were concerned about their health; and they wanted to have better relationships with their peers. Many of them were sick of the teasing they experienced because of their weight.
What are the benefits of being at a healthy weight?
As nice as they can be, changes on the scale and in clothing size were not the only benefits the Weight Loss Confidential teens described. They talked about improved physical fitness and health. Sandra D. said, "Notice that you can do more things - like being less tired after you take part in a fitness test." Victor F. pointed out health benefits of losing weight: "You don't have high blood pressure. You aren't stuck in a wheelchair." Many teens mentioned that improvements in relationships were among the benefits. Katie S. said that before she lost weight, some of her peers had no regard for her feelings. She added, "It still amazes me how much emphasis is placed on being thin and how differently I'm treated now [that I've lost weight] - like all of my worth is in my looks and weight. This is absurd, but it's the way our society is." Last, but not least, the vast majority of teens reported that that their confidence and self-esteem had improved and that they had more energy.
How can a teen stay motivated?
Let's face it: when someone first loses weight, it's pretty exciting because everyone notices. People keep asking, "How'd you do it?" The compliments seem to never end. It's enough to keep anyone pumped…for a while. With time, however, maintaining weight loss can get somewhat boring as the "new you" becomes the "old you".
So I asked the teens what motivated them to keep the weight off. From what they told me, the number one way they stay motivated is that they keep a vivid picture - figurative, literal, or both - of what their lives were like when they were heavier, and they think about how they don't want to go back. Also, many teens stay pumped by using a very positive strategy: focusing on the "payback" for all their efforts. In fact, a good number of them use both strategies. For instance, looking at old photos and remembering how people made fun of him keeps Tom C. from gaining back weight. He also stays motivated "by how good I look in clothes, how good I feel, and how much better other kids treat me."
One way to start this process is by keeping a diary of small changes - in body, mind, and spirit - that take place on the way to a healthier weight. This should jump-start the process of recognizing "the payback" from developing a healthier lifestyle - even if you aren't yet where you ultimately want to be. When you feel discouraged or backslide, pull out the diary to remind yourself of the many positive changes that have already occurred.
What is a healthy way to lose weight?
Healthy Eating
To go from being overweight to a healthy weight, you need to eat fewer calories than you body uses each day or increase your physical activity so that you burn more calories than you eat. The vast majority of teens I interviewed said they did both. A big theme was giving up or cutting back on regular soda pop, and many teens said that drinking more water is one of their strategies. Other important things mentioned by the teens were cutting back on fat, downsizing portions, eating more fruits and vegetables, snacking smarter, shifting to healthier carbohydrates, making better restaurant choices, and learning how to manage emotions without turning to food. Most of them are not meal-skippers, and they don't deprive themselves of treats because deprivation may make you want to eat more in the long run.
Exercise
Whenever I'm asked to pick one strategy that led to the success of these teens, without hesitation, I say exercise. In fact, becoming more physically active was the number one response when I asked the teens for their most important weight-loss strategies and for the most important things they do to keep the weight off. I was actually surprised to see how dedicated these teens are to exercise. Strength training and running were the most common forms of activity. Less than a quarter of them were involved in team sports, so kids don't have to become "jocks" to be fit.
Parental Support
How can parents support their teen?
Parents and teens in Weight Loss Confidential made it clear that the most important support usually comes from the family. Parents need to understand that nagging, preaching and generally getting on a teen's back about food and exercise just tend to backfire. It's up to the teen to decide if, when, and how (within reason, as long as it's a healthy way) to lose weight. Also, parents should be role models - that is, if they want their teen to eat healthy foods and exercise, then they need to try to do the same. Also, although it's important to have occasional favorite foods and treats, it's also important to have a healthy food environment at home. That means filling the cupboards and fridge with lots of healthy foods and getting rid of highly tempting, low-nutrition, high-calorie items. However, kids should be involved in the decision-making process about what foods are around because a democratic process works far better with teens than a "top-down" autocratic approach.
The information about the teenagers used in this weight loss for teens interview was adapted from Weight Loss Confidential: How Teens Lose Weight and Keep It Off - And What They Wish Parents Knew (Houghton Mifflin, 2007) and its companion, Weight Loss Confidential Journal: Week-by-Week Success Strategies for Teens from Teens (Houghton Mifflin, 2008) by Anne M. Fletcher, M.S., R.D.
Disclaimer
The ads that accompany this article have nothing to do with this article and the products sold in them are not endorsed by Anne Fletcher. Any products suggesting quick weight loss are particularly inappropriate for teenagers, who should check with their physicians when considering weight loss. |
Twitter
Instagram
Patreon
RSS icon
Record audio message
Women Winning @ Work Podcast with Barkha Herman
Conversation with Jessica Callahan
June 26, 2021
Join me in a conversation with Jessica Callahan - Program Manager at Microsoft, with more than 22 years in the Military, mother, wife, world traveler, rescuer of animals, mentor to transitioning service members who want to work in tech, and an overall winner.
In this Episode:
Jessica's current Job, what is airgap, cloud etc.
Origin Story - childhood, teen mom, 20+ years in the military, basic training away from 1 year old, mental games, divorce, learning who I was, special ops, marrying my best friend, juggling motherhood and military service.
On failure and success, 10 months away from my son, life before internet, living in the time of change.
Journey to Microsoft, finishing degree, U of Arizona, Microsoft Case Studies, coming home to the Pacific Northwest.
Work and raising kids, children forgetting who you are, picking your battles, choosing to enjoy work, teaching kids resilience, marrying your best friend, balance vs. harmony, focus, my orchestra rant.
Military to Teach, imposter syndrome, change, overcoming, glass ceilings, support, differences between military and corporate, finding diverse backgrounds, being the "only female", expectation of equality.
Working at IBM 30+ years ago, crying, being alone, progress, changing the face of future, fitting in, rough start, and being the woman I needed when I was younger.
The evil twin, becoming the environment vs. rising above, and support.
Growth Mindset, making small wins, being open, growth in tech, getting girl in STEM.
Parrot and Dog rescue, mentoring ex-military transitioning to tech.
Be Kind and never give up.
Jessica's LinkedIn:
Parrot Rescue of Costa Rica :
My LinkedIn:
Barkha's LinkedIn:
Barkha Herman | LinkedIn
Would you like to be featured on my podcast? Message me on LinkedIn!
Join our growing group of supporting, empowering, and creative Women In Tech
here
. |
Upper Peninsula Regional Digitization Center
Source: Newberry NewsNewberry, Luce County, Mi.May 3, 1888ThursdaySt. Ignace - At 11 o'clock this morning an alarm of fire was sounded by one of the yard engines and in a few moments it begame [*became] generally known that the South Shore round house in the Third Ward was on fire. The fire originated in a small building (pump house) occupied by the tank engine, soon spread to the round house and in a remarkably short time that large building was a mass of flames. There were four locomotives in the building at the time - two of them new moguls received only a few weeks ago and two others comparatively new engines. One of the switch engines ran into the house and coupled onto one of the old engines and pulled it out, but in crossing the rickety turn table it left the track and in such a way as to prevent the switch engine from returning to the house and rescuing the other three and they were totally destroyed. The cab on the engine that was pulled out took fire and burned off as well as the rest of the woodwork. The loss cannot be given definitely, but it must be nearly or quite $100,000. (Loss was $30,000).The firemen has [*had] not sufficient hose to reach the house and what they did have appeared to be worthless. Of course the house will be at once replaced and [*with] a brick one of much larger capacity. We have only room for this meager report of the fire today.DSS&AStations - St. IgnaceLocomotives
Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections. |
Battling Knights edge past Doncaster: Friday 30th March - League 1
An outstanding second half defensive effort at the Keepmoat Stadium yesterday ensured that York City Knights became the first team to beat Doncaster in 2018.
It was the second consecutive Good Friday victory for York over the Dons and a fifth consecutive victory for the Knights this season, lifting them up to third in the Betfred League 1 table.
With Colton Roche recalled by Huddersfield, Ash Robson and Brad Hey injured and no dual registration options available, the Knights faced a tough challenge against the previously unbeaten Dons as Head Coach James Ford rang the changes. Tim Spears and Joe Batchelor passed late fitness tests and each got through a mountain of work throughout. Hookers Andy Ellis and debutant Aaron Smith both provided great service from dummy-half, with Will Jubb effectively slotting into the second row.
It was an aggressive opening to the match as both teams looked to assert their dominance, and tempers eventually flared up in midfield where a scuffle saw the Knights lose Adam Robinson and Sam Scott to the sin bin with Doncaster’s Jordie Hedges also taking an enforced ten minute break.
While it was 12 v 11 York opened the scoring thanks to a 17th minute Connor Robinson penalty, before Doncaster took the lead with a spectacular try. A break down the right edge saw Sam Doherty in space who kicked back infield towards the posts, Judah Mazive was duped by an awkward bounce and substitute Kieran Cross touched down. Former Knight Liam Harris converted.
The Knights regained the lead five minutes later – Sam Scott ran an excellent line off a well timed Ben Cockayne pass and laid on a brilliant offload to the onrushing Ronan Dixon who crashed over just to the right of the posts. Robinson duly added the extras to make the score 6-8 at the break.
Doncaster started the second half strongly and enjoyed an extended period of attacking pressure on the Knights line, but only came away with a 48th minute Liam Harris penalty goal to show for it, levelling the score at 8-8.
Another Robinson penalty goal edged York in front again in the 54th minute, and it was Robinson’s attacking kick that set up the Knights next – ultimately crucial – try, Will Jubb gathering and juggling over the line before successfully grounding the ball to the left of the posts. Robinson maintained his 100% conversion rate and the Knights stretched their lead to 16-8 on the hour mark.
The final twenty minutes was nearly all Doncaster – consecutive penalties piggybacked the hosts up the field and Harris forced a number of repeat sets. Monumental defensive efforts somehow kept out almost certain try-scoring opportunities from Jack Sanderson and Richie Owen, before Cameron Scott gathered a Jordie Hedges attacking kick to score. Harris converted and the score was 14-16 with just five minutes remaining.
The Dons continued to throw everything bar the kitchen sink at the Knights in the closing stages, but backed by excellent travelling support in the stands, the visitors managed to hold on and claim two vital league points.
The Knights now enjoy an extended 9 day turnaround before a tough trip to Kingston Park, where they will face an in-form Newcastle Thunder on Sunday 8th April. |