text:
The Future of Packaging: Coronavirus Update. For more information click here
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During the continuation of the Project and for a period of 6 months after the completion thereof neither party shall without the prior written consent of the other directly or indirectly employ or engage any employee of the other or any person who has been an employee of the other during the period of 6 months prior to such employment or engagement and who has been concerned with or involved with the Project.
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text: Once every few years a very special book comes on the market. In recent years we have had an abundance of fly-fishing books that cover every aspect of the sport of fly-fishing. While many of these books have provide fly-fishers with valuable information about various aspects of the sport many of them have merely been a rehash of what has already been published elsewhere. Tying Catskill-Style Dry Flies is a truly outstanding addition to angling literature, and a substantial contribution to the history of one of the truly special places and special people that have left us a considerable legacy.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The contest challenges high school students to conduct innovative research on our changing planet using the latest geospatial tools and data. From CEC Specialty Group Leader Nancy Colleton of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies.
$3,500 in Cash Awards Available
Entries Due: April 11, 2011
*** Be part of a new generation of problem solvers that will meet the challenges posed by a changing planet ***
From the massive Gulf oil spill to the continued decline of Arctic sea ice, satellites and other observing instruments have proved crucial this year in monitoring the many environmental changes -- both natural and human-induced -- occurring on global, regional and local scales.
The 2011 Thacher Environmental Research Contest, sponsored by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, challenges high school students (grades 9-12) to conduct innovative research on our changing planet using the latest geospatial tools and data, which in recent years have become increasingly accessible to the public.
The best projects will receive cash awards in the amount of $2,000 for first place, $1,000 for second place and $500 for third place. Entries can be submitted by individuals or teams. In the case of team entries, the cash award will be split equally among the winning team members. Winners also will be featured in an Encyclopedia of Earth article.
In addition to the student prizes, teachers of the first-, second- and third-place students or teams will receive a $200 amazon.com gift card. If participation is part of an after-school club or other activity independent of school, the student or team can identify an adult "coach" who would be eligible for this award (e.g., a parent, club leader, etc.).
Entries must be received by April 11, 2011, and will be judged by IGES staff.
Eligible geospatial tools and data include satellite remote sensing, aerial photography, geographic information systems (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS). The main focus of the project must be on the application of the geospatial tool(s) or data to study a problem related to Earth's environment.
Geospatial tools and data have numerous uses in science research, ranging from climate prediction to archaeology. They can be used to improve our understanding of Earth systems, including interactions within and among the atmosphere, biosphere, geosphere and hydrosphere. They also can be used to improve the quality of our lives by supporting weather prediction, natural hazards monitoring, agriculture, land-use planning, coastal management, transportation, public health, emergency response and other fields.
The Thacher Environmental Research Contest (formerly the Thacher Scholars Award) was founded in honor of former IGES board member Peter Thacher, who was a leader in promoting the use of satellite remote sensing. Thacher was former deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, NASA advisor and, at the time of his death, president of the Earth Council Foundation/U.S.
For more information on the 2011 Thacher Environmental Research Contest, including a list of resources for geospatial data, please visit www.strategies.org/ThacherContest.
Dan Stillman
Institute for Global Environmental Strategies
(703) 312-7138 (Phone)
Email: email@example.com


text:
Hi Everyone...
I made a new card yesterday. For this card I used yellow and purple cardstock,border punch, purple ribbon, purple glitter pen, yellow rhinestones,and golden bead and a purple and yellow quilled flower. I have not written the sentiment yet so that it can be customized occording to the occasion. In the second pic you can see where the sentiment would go.
Tissue Tape
Thank you all for visiting and keep coming back for more craft and card projects... :)


text:
|In this module we demonstrate techniques for getting sound in real-time. Getting real-time performance is mostly an issue of the right signal data structure. However, there is no one-size-fits-all data structure. For choosing the right one, you need to understand how various data structures work, what are their strengths and what are their weaknesses.
|First, we define a play routine for lazy storable vectors. Storable lazy vectors are lazy lists of low-level arrays. They are both efficient in time and memory consumption, but the blocks disallow feedback by small delays. Elements of a storable vector must be of type class Storable. This means that elements must have fixed size and advanced data types like functions cannot be used.
|Here is a simple oscillator generated as lazy storable vector. An oscillator is a signal generator, that is it produces a signal without consuming other signals that correspond in time. Signal generators have the maximal block size as parameter. This is the lower limit of possible feedback delays.
|A routine just for the case that we want to post-process a signal somewhere else.
|The simple brass sound demonstrates how to generate piecewise defined curves. Some infix operators are used in order to make the pieces fit in height. There are also operators for intended jumps.
|We rewrite the filter example filterSaw in terms of type classes for more signal types. The constraints become quite large because we must assert, that a particular sample type can be used in the addressed signal type.
|Here we instantiate filterSawSig for storable vectors and play it. This means that all operations convert a storable vector into another storable vector. While every single operation probably is as efficient as possible, the composition of all those processes could be more efficient. So keep on reading.
|The next signal type we want to consider is the stateful signal generator. It is not a common data structure, where the sample values are materialized. Instead it is a description of how to generate sample values iteratively. This is almost identical to the Data.Stream module from the stream-fusion package. With respect to laziness and restrictions of the sample type (namely none), this signal representation is equivalent to lists. You can convert one into the other in a lossless way. That is, function as sample type is possible. Combination of such signal generators is easily possible and does not require temporary storage, because this signal representation needs no sample value storage at all. However at the end of such processes, the signal must be materialized. Here we write the result into a lazy storable vector and play that. What the compiler actually does is to create a single loop, that generates the storable vector to be played in one go.
|We demonstrate the stateful signal generator using the known filterSaw example. Actually we can reuse the code from above, because the signal generator is also an instance of the generic signal class.
|Merging subsequent signal processes based on signal generators into an efficient large signal processor is easy. Not storing intermediate results is however a problem in another situation: Sometimes you want to share one signal between several processes.
|In the following example we generate an exponential curve which shall be used both as envelope and as resonance frequency control of a resonant lowpass. Actually, recomputing an exponential curve is not an issue, since it only needs one multiplication per sample. But it is simple enough to demonstrate the problem and its solutions. The expression let env = exponential2 50000 1 fools the reader of the program, since the env that is shared, is only the signal generator, that is, the description of how to compute the exponential curve successively. That is wherever a signal process reads env, it is computed again.
You can achieve sharing by a very simple way. You can write the result of the signal generator in a list (toList) and use this list as source for a new generator (fromList). fromList provides a signal generator that generates new sample values by delivering the next sample from the list.
In a real world implementation you would move the Sig.fromList . Sig.toList to filterPingStateProc, since the caller cannot know, that this function uses the signal twice, and the implementor of filterPingStateProc cannot know, how expensive the computation of env is.
You can use any other signal type for sharing, e.g. storable vectors, but whatever type you choose, you also get its disadvantages. Namely, storable vectors only work for storable samples and lists are generally slow, and they also cannot be optimized away, since this only works, when no sharing is required.
Whenever a signal is shared as input between several signal processes, the actual materialized data is that between the slowest and the fastest reading process. This is due to lazy evaluation and garbage collection. If the different readers read with different speed, then you will certainly need a temporary sample storage.
It is however not uncommon that all readers read with the same speed. In this case we would in principle only need to share the input signal per sample. This way we would not need a data structure for storing a sub-sequence of samples temporarily. But how to do that practically?
The solution is not to think in terms of signals and signal processors, e.g. Sig.T a and Sig.T a -> Sig.T b -> Sig.T c, respectively, but in terms of signal processors, that are guaranteed to run in sync. That is we must assert that signal processors process the samples in chronological order and emit one sample per input sample. We call such processes "causal" processes. For example Causal.T (a,b) c represents the function Sig.T (a,b) -> Sig.T c but it also carries the guarantee, that for each input of type (a,b) one sample of type c is emitted or the output terminates. Internally it is the Kleisli arrow of the StateT Maybe monad.
Another important application of the Causal arrow is feedback. Using causal processes guarantees, that a process cannot read ahead, such that it runs into future data, which does still not exist due to recursion.
Programming with arrows needs a bit experience or Haskell extensions. Haskell extensions are either an Arrow syntax preprocessor or the preprocessor that is built into GHC. However, for computing with physical dimensions you can no longer use the original Arrow class and thus you cannot use the arrow syntax. So here is an example of how to program filterPingShare using Arrow combinators.
|Produced by Haddock version 2.4.2


text:
David M. Bressoud April, 2009
Student Perceptions of On-line Homework
Evidence of Effectiveness
Annotated Bibliography
WeBWorK is one of many web-based homework systems designed for mathematics. As the largest such open source system, now used at over 150 colleges and universities, it is the one that has been studied most extensively. In addition to multiple choice responses, this system can grade free response numerical answers, free response answers involving mathematical expressions, and, in fact, any type of answer for which it is possible to write programmed instructions to determine correctness. The software is capable of recognizing equivalent answers. Each student sees individualized problems, gets immediate feedback on whether or not the problem is correct, and is encouraged to continue reworking the problem until she or he gets the correct answer. The instructor gets detailed statistical information on work on the assignment, both at the personal and class level.
Unlike some of the other systems, WeBWorK provides no hints or templates for working types of problems, but the WeBWorK page includes a button that enables the student to send an email message for help to the instructor, giving the instructor complete control over how much assistance to offer. This does result in increased email contact between instructors and students, an effect that most instructors appreciate.
After many years of development at the University of Rochester by Michael Gage and Arnold Pizer, the MAA is now in the early planning stages for taking on responsibility for hosting and supporting WeBWorK. In the meantime, MAA hosts the home page, webwork.maa.org, that describes WeBWorK and connects to all of the resources including software downloads, instructions and advice how to set it up and how to use it, user discussion groups (both basic and advanced), and links to extensive libraries of problems. For those interested in trying it out in a few classes, but not yet ready to set it up on one of their own servers, Gage and Pizer have hosted a limited number of WeBWorK courses for other schools on a University of Rochester server. The MAA intends to provide this service in the future.
The advantages of WeBWorK include the simplicity of setting it up, the extensive libraries of problems written for a wide variety of courses, the existence of a large network of experienced users who are eager to share their knowledge and insights, and the ease with which instructors can use its Perl-based language to create their own questions. In addition, the fact that this is all freeware has encouraged many individuals to work on its further development.
Jim Glimm, former President of the AMS, was so taken by the effectiveness of WeBWorK at SUNY-Stony Brook, that he has spurred an NSF-funded survey, being run this month under the direction of Alan Tucker, of all departments now using computer software to grade homework. Glimm has seen improvement in the performance of calculus students at Stony Brook, "The key mechanism for this improvement seems to be that the students find their homework to be far more rewarding and do more of it, and, not surprisingly do learn more."
Other institutions that have seen improvements in student performance that they attribute to student use of WeBWorK include Columbia University, Morgan State University, Alfred University, The College of New Jersey, University of Portland, and Eastern Michigan University. More common than actual claims of improved student grades are positive impressions of student engagement with homework and reports that both students and faculty like it and find it easy to use. Testimonials to this effect have come in from the University of Michigan, Washington University, University of Utah, University of North Carolina-Charlotte, University of California-Irvine, University of California-Santa Barbara, Alabama State University, University of Maine, University of Kentucky, Arizona State University, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.
All of these are impressions that individuals have submitted of what they believe is happening to their students in their classes. Even though WeBWorK and other comparable on-line homework systems have been around for about ten years, there has been relatively little careful study of student attitudes and the effectiveness of using such systems. In the remainder of this article, I will summarize the findings that I have found in the literature. Virtually all of this literature relates specifically to WeBWorK. Because it was one of the first such systems, because it is very widely used, and because it is freely available, it is the system that has attracted the attention of most of the researchers in this area.
Student Perceptions of On-line Homework
One of the first groups of researchers to study WeBWorK was Roth, Ivanchenko, and Record [11]. They surveyed the attitudes of 2387 students over the period 2002–04 at all levels of calculus as well as Discrete Mathematics, Differential Equations, and Linear Algebra. On a Likert scale of 1 to 5 (1 = never, 2 = almost never, 3 = sometimes, 4 = almost all the time, 5 = all the time), students were asked about
- Preference ("I prefer WeBWorK over paper and pencil homework"),
- Persistence ("Get an entire assignment correct." "WeBWorK forces me to keep up with the class material."),
- Effectiveness ("WeBWorK effectively prepares me for course examinations." "The immediate responses I get from WeBWorK help me learn the course material."), and
- Frustration ("Get frustrated with and give up on a particular problem due to mathematical difficulty." "Get frustrated with the syntactic requirements of answers you submit to WeBWorK.").
Average responses were 3.5 (between "sometimes" and "almost all the time") on Preference, 3.8 on Persistence, 3.2 in the first year rising to 3.3 in the second and third years on Effectiveness, and 2.4 falling to 2.2 by the third year on Frustration.
Several changes were incorporated into WeBWorK after the first year of this study including a Preview feature that lets students see the typeset version of the expression they have entered before submitting it, a feature that greatly reduced student frustration, and a warning that appears when a student attempts to submit an answer that has already been submitted and identified as incorrect. Before these warnings were incorporated, a third of all incorrect answers were previous incorrect answers that students had re-entered. The high fraction of students re-entering answers they had already been told were wrong is a reflection of one weakness of online grading that was also found by Gotel, Scharff, and Wildenberg [6]: Students are less likely to trust the software than they would their instructor when told that their answer is incorrect.
Also in 2002, Hauk and Segalla [8] studied student reactions to WeBWorK for College Algebra at a "large publicly funded university in the western United States." They found that students were comfortable using computers to submit the homework and were just on the positive side of neutral in terms of ease of use of WeBWorK.
Evidence of Effectiveness
I have only been able to find three controlled studies of the effectiveness of an online homework system in improving student grades or mastery of the mathematics. All of these studies looked at the effect of WeBWorK. The bottom line is that
- If nothing else changes, then WeBWorK produces at most a very modest improvement in student performance. It clearly has no negative effect on student performance.
- There is some indication that WeBWorK does more to improve the performance of women than men.What is clear is that neither gender is disadvantaged by the introduction of WeBWorK. There is no evidence that any ethnic group is is either advantaged or disadvantaged by the introduction of WeBWorK.
- The greatest measurable benefits of online homework are that homework assignments that previously had not been graded now can be, and if homework assignments had been hand-graded by instructors, then those individuals are now freed to use their time on other activities that can improve teaching and learning.
A brief summary of the studies is given below.
Weibel and Hirsch, Rutgers University, 2001 [9,12]. The study was conducted in Fall, 2001, in Calculus I for non-science majors, using 1175 students for whom SAT scores were available. The control group that did not use WeBWorK consisted of 368 students. The remaining students had the same instruction format, but with the addition of WeBWorK assignments. They found a slight (about 1/4 of a grade) but statistically significant improvement by the WeBWorK students, even after controlling for scores on the placement exam. They found no gender effect. They did find that completion of at least 80% of the WeBWorK problems resulted in a substantial improvement in average grade (by at least half a letter grade), and that first-year students were much more likely to complete the WeBWorK assignments than were students who were past their first year.
Hauk, Powers, Safer, and Segalla, a "Big Public University," 2002 [7]. This study was conducted in Fall 2002 with the 644 students enrolled in 19 sections of College Algebra. The control group consisted of seven sections with 236 students. There were three instructors who had both a control section and a section using WeBWorK. Student performance was measured using a standardized multiple choice test that was given at the start and end of the term as well as several problems that all instructors were required to use in the final exams. No statistically significant differences (at the 0.05-level) were found between the control and the WeBWorK sections, with or without controlling for SAT scores. There also were no statistically significant differences when the data were broken down by socio-economic status or ethnicity. They did find a small but statistically significant difference for women. Women did better in the WeBWorK sections.
Dedic, Rosenfield, and Ivanov, Concordia University, Montreal, 2006 [2]. This study was conducted in Fall 2006 with 354 students studying Calculus I for Social Science majors. There were 354 students in nine classes, three of which were assigned to each of three conditions: C1 (control, 118 students) consisted of class lectures and paper and pencil homework, C2 (only WeBWorK, 114 students) was identical to C1 except that homework was to be submitted using WeBWorK, and C3 (WeBWorK plus, 122 students) consisted of the same lectures as the other groups, but also included one hour per week spent with the instructor in a computer lab working on the WeBWorK problems. The study found no significant differences between the students in groups C1 and C2. It did find significant differences between the students in these two groups and those in C3. This was a highly nuanced study with many factors considered including prior achievement, prior knowledge of algebra and functions, motivation, sense of self-efficacy, and gender. The students in group C3 demonstrated greater achievement, greater perseverance (completing more of the assignments), and a greater improvement in sense of self-efficacy. This last was especially notable for women.
There is one other study that is worth mentioning, an ex post facto analysis by Dufresne et al [4] of introductory physics classes at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst during 1997–2000. They found that students using online homework scored a third of a standard deviation higher than students in classes that collected paper and pencil homework assignments. In addition to the fact that faculty self-selected who would use the online system and no attempt was made to provide uniform instruction, the two groups differed in that only a few selected problems from each paper and pencil assignment were graded, while all of the online homework problems were graded.
MathFest in Portland, Oregon this coming summer will feature a panel discussion on "Assessing the effectiveness of online homework" by Helena Dedic, Steven Rosenfield, Vicki Roth, and Michel Scott. There also will be a contributed paper session on Online Homework - Innovation and Assessment at the Joint Math Meetings in San Francisco in January, 2010.
The first and clearest conclusion is that WeBWorK does no harm to student learning, while at the same time freeing instructor time to focus on other aspects of the course. This is a significant benefit. The second conclusion is that just adopting WeBWorK or a comparable online homework system may do some good, but one should not expect a dramatic improvement in student performance if nothing changes except the adoption of online homework.
Like the clickers that I discussed last month ("Should students be allowed to vote?"), the technology is significant not because it improves student performance, but because it facilitates other changes that can improve student performance. One would hope that faculty who are freed from grading the kinds of procedural problems that are most easily handled by online systems will use the saved time to work with students on higher order questions. The most common complaint from students who must submit homework using an online system is that they miss receiving personalized feedback. At most institutions that are considering the adoption of an online homework system, such personalized feedback has been impossible. Online homework systems may now actually facilitate it.
[1] Cassady, J. C., J. Budenz-Anders, G. Pavlechko, W. Mock. 2001. The Effects of internet-based formative and summative assessment on test anxiety, perceptions of threat, and achievement. presented at Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (Seattle, WA, April 10–14, 2001). 12 pages. ED453815 at http://eric.ed.gov
This study shows the benefits of using online assessment tools because of the decrease in test anxiety that results when students are able to schedule tests at a time that is most convenient for them.
[2] Dedic, H., S. Rosenfield, I. Ivanov. 2008. Online assessments and interactive classroom sessions: a potent prescription for ailing success rates in Social Science Calculus. 210 pages. http://sun4.vaniercollege.qc.ca/PA-2005-008
This is the most recent and thorough controlled study of the effect of online homework.
[3] Denny, J. and C. Yackel. 2005. Implementing and teaching with WeBWorK at Mercer University. Proceedings of the 2005 ASCUE Conference. pp. 85–93. http://fits.depauw.edu/ascue/Proceedings/2005/p85.pdf
This article describes how WeBWorK has been implemented at a particular university and includes a discussion of the process of bringing the faculty up to speed on using it.
[4] Dufresne, R., J. Mestre, D. M. Hart, and K. A. Rath. 2002. The effect of web-based homework on test performance in large enrollment introductory physics courses. Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching. 21(3):229–251.
This ex post facto study showed a significant improvement of students in sections using web-based homework over those using paper and pencil homework. The likely explanation is that using the web-based homework enabled all homework problems to be graded whereas only a few problems were graded under the paper and pencil system.
[5] Gage, M., A. K. Pizer, V. Roth.2003. WeBWorK: generating, delivering, and checking math homework via the internet. In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Teaching of Mathematics. New York:Wiley. http://www.math.uoc.gr/~ictm2/Proceedings/pap189.pdf.
This is a helpful overview of WeBWorK: what it is, what it does, and how it can be used. It also includes a summary of student responses.
[6] Gotel, O., C. Scharff, A. Wildenberg. 2007. Extending and contributing to an open source web-based system for the assessment of programming problems. ACM Principles and Practices of Programming in Java. pp. 3–3–12. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1294325.1294327
This paper shows how WeBWorK can be used to support a programming class.
[7] Hauk, S., R. A. Powers, A. Safer, A. Segalla. 2004. Impact of the web-based homework program WeBWorK on student performance in moderate enrollment college algebra courses. Preprint. http://hopper.unco.edu/faculty/personal/hauk/segalla/WBWquan.pdf
This was a study at a "Big Public University" that saw no statistical difference in grades between those who were in WeBWorK classes and those who were not. Broken down by ethnicity, they also saw no difference. But there was a statistically significant improvement for women when WeBWorK was used.
[8] Hauk, S. and A. Segalla. 2005. Student perceptions of the web-based homework program WeBWorK in moderate enrollment college algebra classes. Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching. 24(3): 229–253.
This is a continuation of the study described in [6], focusing on student attitudes toward and how they used WeBWorK.
[9] Hirsch, L. and C. Weibel. 2003. Statistical evidence that web-based homework helps. MAA Focus. 23: 14.
This is a summary of the results in [10].
[10] LaRose, P. G. and R. Megginson. 2003. Implementation and assessment of on-line gateway testing at the University of Michigan. PRIMUS. 13(4):289–307. http://instruct.math.lsa.umich.edu/gw/primus.pdf
This paper describes how an on-line homework system has been used for gateway tests, significantly lowering workload while being at least as effective as paper and pencil tests in verifying that students have achieved basic mastery of computational skills in calculus.
[11] Roth, V., V. Ivanchenko, N. Record. 2008. Evaluating student response to WeBWorK, a web-based homework delivery and grading system. Computers & Education. 50: 1462–1482. Available through ScienceDirect: http://www.sciencedirect.com
This detailed study looks at student response to WeBWorK (very positive) and investigates how students actually use it across a wide variety of courses: calculus, multivariable calculus, discrete mathematics, differential equations, and linear algebra.
[12] Weibel, C. and L. Hirsch. 2002. WeBWorK effectiveness in Rutgers Calculus. preprint. 18 pages. http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~weibel/webwork.html
This reports on the controlled study at Rutgers University. The authors saw no statistical difference in grades between those who were in WeBWorK classes and those who were not. But there was a statistically significant half grade improvement (C+ to B) among those who were in WeBWorK classes and who did at least 80% of the online problems.
Access pdf files of the CUPM Curriculum Guide 2004 and the Curriculum Foundations Project: Voices of the Partner Disciplines.
Purchase a hard copy of the CUPM Curriculum Guide 2004 or the Curriculum Foundations Project: Voices of the Partner Disciplines.
Find links to course-specific software resources in the CUPM Illustrative Resources.
Find other Launchings columns


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Panasonic Sued For Deteriorating Black Levels
Panasonic Sued For Deteriorating Black Levels
Panasonic has been in the news lately; all but for the wrong reasons. Apparently, a handful of AV enthusiasts have made complaints about their PDP's black levels. To add salt to the wound, a formal class-action lawsuit has been filed against the CE giant. The lawsuit, officially filed on February 12th in a New Jersey federal court, alleges there's a gradual increase in brightness of black levels and a consequential drop in contrast ratio with Panasonic displays. Over a period of time, of course.
Electronista - Panasonic has been hit with a class-action lawsuit filed in a federal court in New Jersey. The plaintiffs allege that their plasma televisions no longer produce the same image quality as the company promised, as the brightness of black levels has slowly increased over time.
Panasonic's "automatic voltage adjustment" feature has been of much contention lately. Till a justifiable verdict is announced, we can only wait and see if the Japanese would emerge as victors or losers on this imminent, yet unavoidable legal warpath. Read more about it here.


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Beauty comes from within this lovely and super handy wash bag!
Our natural canvas toiletry bags are perfect for storing your travel toiletries, bathroom essentials and makeup. The handy large size is perfect for travelling but also makes a great everyday wash bag.
The beautiful design has been printed in pink glitter on heavy natural canvas. Inside there is a black waterproof lining which can be easily wiped clean. There is also a small but handy pocket on the reverse. Both heavy duty gold metal zips are complete with smart black canvas zip pulls.
- Heavy natural canvas
- Screen printed in pink glitter
- Black waterproof lining
- 310mm by 220mm by 110mm (12¼ by 8½ by 4¼ inches)


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Ready or not, the "Jersey Shore" has landed in Florence.
Snooki, The Situation, and the rest of the tanned, hard-partying gang were greeted by screaming fans when they emerged from the airport on Monday. But Italians have a mixed reaction to the infamous guidos and guidettes filming in their 'hood for the reality show's upcoming season.
Florence Mayor Matteo Renzi tried to be optimistic. "Maybe the art could save The Situation and the other stars," he told the Today Show, referencing star cast-member Michael Sorrentino.
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
Renzi didn't go into much detail about what The Situation needed to be saved from, but some of the locals offered some ideas.
"They are full of tattoo, they get drunk, I think they are stupid," said one woman of the infamous guidos and guidettes. Another girl said, "Italians are not like that."
The "Jersey Shore" gang is often criticized for promoting ugly stereotypes of Italians. Snooki and JWOWW (Jenni Farley) are constantly chasing after bulky Italian juicehead gorillas and Vinny (Guadagnino) and The Situation boast their Italian roots.
But Mayor Renzi has imposed some rules for his bronzed visitors and has asked that the cast not be filmed drinking. It's not clear if he realized that was half the show.
"Jersey Shore" will be filmed in Italy throughout the spring and is expected to air in the fall.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Selected Reading: PopEater, Entertainment Weekly, TV Squad


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Smart rendering in Premiere Pro has been available for DV and DVCPro formats for years, but since Premiere Pro CS6 (6.0.1), many more formats have been added.
In Premiere Pro CS6 (6.0.1, and later), smart rendering capability has been added for Long GOP MPEG2 OP1a exports, where the original material is a matching long GOP MPEG2 OP1a or XDCAM EX file. The intention is that smart rendering creates better quality output by avoiding recompression when possible.
For Premiere Pro CS6 users, update Premiere Pro CS6 to get the full benefit of this feature.
In Premiere Pro CC, additional codecs have been added for smart rendering (scroll down for details).
- AVC-Intra in MXF (located in Format > MXF OP1a)
- DNxHD in MXF (located in Format > DNxHD MXF OP1a)
- DNxHD in QuickTime
- ProRes in QuickTime
- Animation in QuickTime
Premiere Pro engineer, Wil Renczes, explains how smart rendering works in Premiere Pro CS6 (6.0.1, and later):
What is it? (probably obvious, but I'll start at the beginning):
The feature is specifically for accelerating render times for long GOP MPEG2 and essences and certain QuickTime codecs (in Premiere Pro CC), while avoiding recompression.
Which new formats are now accelerated?
Source media that is either XDCAM HD in an MXF wrapper (ie 4:2:0 XDCAM HD @ 18/25/35 mbits/second, or 4:2:2 XDCAM HD @ 50 mbits/sec.), or XDCAM EX (.mp4 wrapper within a BPAV folder structure, 18/35 mbits/second).
Scroll down for formats introduced in Premiere Pro CC.
What do I have to do for it to work?
Nothing for DV or DVCPro formats, smart rendering automatically engages. For XDCAM formats, check the checkbox for smart rendering in the XDCAM exporter plug-in. If you have these types of clips in your timeline in a sequence with matching settings, are exporting out to MXF OP1a with a matching preset, and the checkbox is checked in the XDCAM exporter plug-in, it'll engage. It'll also figure out if there's any effects applied and fall back to regular rendering if needed.
Can I turn it off?
Uncheck the checkbox in the XDCAM exporter plug-in.
How do I know it's working?
Excellent question. Since it's supposed to work seamlessly, there are no hints in the UI as to what's going on. As an engineer, we can check out conflicts in a debug console window. If there are any mismatches, then smart rendering won't occur. Unfortunately for the user, there is no way to test if smart rendering is working other than noting an accelerated workflow, and less generational loss.
What kind of acceleration are we talking about exactly?
Well, the idea is that for untouched clips, recompressing frames is probably going to take longer than simply copying the data directly from the source clip. Now, it's not quite as simple as that, as if you have edit points that don't land on I frame boundaries, then there's some partial GOP 'healing' that needs to happen, but we don't need to get into the nitty gritty here. Anyway, provided you have good disk i/o, the render numbers are a fair bit better.
Testing indicates that the render numbers are anywhere from 4x to 12x faster than realtime. On my own benchmarks (off a single drive, SATA 3 mind you, but still), a regular render of XDCAM HD 4:2:2 at 50 mbits is usually 2x realtime. With smart rendering enabled, the same clip now renders at 6x faster. Not too shabby. And, the lower the bitrate, the faster it renders (less data per frame to copy, so it can do more at the same transfer speed).
Okay, I'm trying to smart render an XDCAM EX clip out to OP1A, and why isn't it smart rendering?
This is probably the trap that most people will fall into when trying it for the first time. For example, if I pick an EX clip, 35 mbits/sec, shot at 24fps. Then, I drop it into a matching sequence, pick the XDCAM HD 1080 35 NTSC 24p preset, and hit render. However, if I check it on the console, I see errors.
Why the heck is that?
XDCAM EX footage is at a full 1920 x 1080 raster size. XDCAM HD 4:2:0, on the other hand, is actually 1440 x 1080 with a PAR adjustment. So we can't smart render this, the frame sizes are different.
Wait a second, didn't you say that EX is a supported smart render format!? Quit foolin'…
Why yes, it is. It's just a problem with the preset. We don't have prebuilt presets for EX material in the OP1a exporter's list of available presets to choose from, so if you want to smart render EX material, you'll need to create a preset with the right settings. So, going back to my example, if I go to the Video Settings and look under the Video Codec list, and pick XDCAM EX 35 NTSC 1080 (4:2:0), now it'll smart render.
Well, that's a little confusing.
Agreed. The feature really was initially meant for XDCAM HD workflows, which you have all the presets available for. The EX was kind of a bonus request that we threw in based on a specific request from a broadcaster.
What other kinds of errors will potentially bork smart rendering?
Weird ones: mismatches between your source media & the settings you pick to render out to – things that aren't immediately obvious (but the console window will tell you). For instance, your source file's MPEG GOP structure doesn't match the destination, or the source is VBR but you picked a CBR preset, or the bitrate is too different, or there's a frame size mismatch. All these conditions will make it fall back to regular rendering.
Will this smart render take advantage of my preview files so that my final render is that much faster?
Sadly, no. We'd have to enable XDCAM HD as a preview format option, but then yes, this would suddenly work. Great feature request, feel free to pass it along! (Make a feature request here: http://www.adobe.com/go/wish).
Smart Rendering Formats updated in Premiere Pro CC
In Premiere Pro CC, the following formats are accelerated:
- AVC-Intra in MXF (Format > MXF OP1a)
- AVC-Intra Class50
- AVC-Intra Class100
- DNxHD in MXF (Format > DNxHD MXF OP1a)
- DNxHD (QuickTime)
- ProRes (QuickTime)
- ProRes Proxy
- ProRes LT
- ProRes 422
- ProRes 422 (HQ)
- ProRes4444
- Animation (QuickTime)
Details about smart rendering can be found in this video by reTooled.net
Premiere Pro New Features – Smart Render for ProRes and Preview Files from reTooled.net on Vimeo.
Thanks to Wil Renczes for the content of this post.


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At Egencia ("Egencia", "we", "us", "our"), we understand that booking travel online involves significant trust on your part. We take this trust very seriously, and make it a priority to ensure the security and confidentiality of the personal information you or your organisation provides to us (such as your name, phone number, email address or payment details.)
This Privacy Statement sets out our information privacy practices as follows:
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When you book travel through Egencia, we have to make certain decisions about how and why to process your personal information in order to fulfil your travel booking. We are therefore responsible for protecting your personal information throughout the travel booking process.
This is what we explain in this Privacy Statement, which sets out Egencia's policies concerning the management of personal information and describes the types of personal information Egencia holds, the purposes for which it holds that personal information and the ways in which Egencia collects, holds, uses and discloses that information.
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To manage its business travel needs, your organisation has enrolled in the Egencia Corporate Travel Programme. Under this Programme, your organisation may designate a travel manager ("Travel Manager") to manage and administer the travel needs of your organisation and may appoint one or more travel arrangers ("Arranger" or "Travel Director") to book and manage the travel of individual employees ("Travellers"), as well as non-employees, as deemed appropriate by the company ("Guests").
Rules relating to bookings by Travellers
To book and manage their own travel, Travellers must register to become a member of Egencia or have profile data loaded into our system by the Egencia implementation team. In the event that Travellers do not register to become members of Egencia, they must rely on their Travel Manager, Arranger or Travel Director to make a booking on their behalf. If you are a Traveller, this Privacy Statement applies to how we collect and use your personal information, regardless of whether you are booking and managing travel yourself or through your Travel Manager, Arranger or Travel Director. Accordingly, unless we expressly provide otherwise, when we refer to "you" in this Privacy Statement, we are referring to you as the Traveller, whether you are acting on behalf of yourself or through a Travel Manager, Arranger or Travel Director
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This Privacy Statement sets out the information, collection and use practices of Egencia. The policies or practices of your organisation may differ, and we are not responsible for any use or disclosure of your personal information by anyone at your organisation or any acts or omissions of your organisation, Travel Manager, Arranger or Travel Director. If you have any questions about the manner your organisation, Travel Manager, Arranger or Travel Director handles your personal information or books, or manages travel on your behalf, please contact the appropriate representative of your organisation or refer to your organisation's privacy statement.
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Before you access the Egencia website, we require you to sign in as a member, using your member ID and password. Generally, Egencia collects and stores all information you provide to Egencia including, without limitation, all personal information about you that you specifically and voluntarily provide or give us in any other way. This includes information that can identify you ("personal information"), including first name, surname, telephone number, email address and passport information and billing information (such as credit card number, cardholder name and expiry date). We also may request information about your travel preferences, including meal requests, seat selection, frequent flyer/hotel/car rental programme information and ticketing options. Your Travel Manager, Arranger or Travel Director may provide us with additional personal information about you, such as your employer ID number.
Circumstances where Egencia collects personal information include, without limitation, when you:
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Egencia uses sensitive billing information (such as cardholder name, credit card number and expiry date) for the purpose of completing the travel bookings you conduct on our site. We use other information about you for the following general purposes: to register you as an Egencia member; to provide you with the products and services you request; to provide you with travel confirmation and updates; to send you travel notifications; to provide information about service updates and services that may interest you; to communicate with you in general; to respond to your questions and comments; to measure interest in and improve our products, services and website; to otherwise customise your experience with Egencia; to solicit information from you, including through surveys; to resolve disputes, collect fees or troubleshoot problems; to prevent potentially prohibited or illegal activities; to enforce our Terms of Use; and as otherwise described to you at the point of collection.
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Egencia and its service providers may share your personal information with the following entities:
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• When it has been explicitly requested by you.
• In response to a summonses, court orders or other legal process; to establish or exercise our legal rights; to defend against legal claims; or as otherwise required or permitted by applicable law. In such cases, we reserve the right to raise or waive any legal objection or right available to us.
• When we believe it is appropriate to investigate, prevent or take action regarding illegal or suspected illegal activities; to protect and defend the rights, property or safety of Egencia, our customers or others; and in connection with our Terms of Service and other agreements.
• With law enforcement agencies and governments around the world for security, customs and immigration purposes. For example, under US Law, the US Department of Homeland Security Bureau of Customs and Border Protection requires that certain travel and reservation information, known as Passenger Name Record or PNR data, relating to people travelling to or from the USA, or through US airspace, be provided to the Department prior to such travel. We may disclose this information to airlines or other travel providers so that they can forward it to the applicable law enforcement agencies and governments.
• In connection with a proposed or completed corporate transaction, such as a divestiture, merger, consolidation, asset sale or in the unlikely event of bankruptcy.
Your choices with respect to collection and use of your information
• You can access, add, update or delete information on the My Profile and My Trips pages, and close your account as described below.
• You may also submit a written request to access the personal data that we hold on you. If you make such a request, Egencia is entitled to request appropriate identification before servicing such a request. You can make a written request for access to your personal data by contacting us via the contact information provided below in the "How to contact us" section. We will endeavour to respond within an appropriate time frame and, in any event, within any timescales required by law.
As a participant in the Egencia Programme, you may receive communications from us providing you with travel news and updates. You can discontinue your subscription to such email newsletters at any time on the My Profile page under the heading "Email settings", or by telling your Travel Manager, Arranger or Travel Director that you no longer wish to receive such communications from Egencia. You will also be given the opportunity to unsubscribe from such newsletters in any such email we send. Please note that we reserve the right to send you other communications, including service announcements, administrative messages and surveys relating either to your Egencia account or to your transactions with Egencia, without offering you the opportunity to opt out of receiving them.
Cookies and other technologies
Cookies are small data text files that can be stored on your computer's hard drive (if your Web browser permits). The Help portion of the toolbar on most browsers will tell you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, or how to disable cookies altogether. Please note that if you refuse to accept cookies, you may not be able to access many of the travel tools offered on our sites. As a member or visitor to this site, you may be assigned a permanent cookie file on your computer's hard drive. You can choose to not receive a cookie file by enabling your web browser to refuse cookies or to prompt you before accepting a cookie. While this cookie does not contain any personal information, it may be associated with your personal information in order to provide you with targeted email notifications.
Egencia automatically collects certain information about your computer when you visit this website. For example, we collect information about your IP address, operating system and web browser software (such as Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer). We also may collect information about your online activity, such as trips viewed and travel booked. Our goals in collecting this automatic information include customising your user experience, increasing convenience as you use our site and collecting analytics information in order to continually improve our site. We may use cookies to help us recognise your browser as a previous visitor and save and remember any preferences that may have been set while your browser was visiting our site. We also may record your password in a cookie if you ticked the box titled "Remember my password on this computer." Please note that member IDs, passwords and any other account-related data included in such cookies are encrypted for security purposes. Egencia will never store sensitive personal information, such as credit card numbers, in a cookie. In addition to the above cookies, we may use Local Shared Objects, also referred to as "flash cookies", on our website. These are used to enhance your user experience, for example, by storing your user preferences and settings such as your volume/mute settings, and in connection with animated content on our website. Local Shared Objects are similar to browser cookies, but can store data that are more complex than simple text. You can find out more about flash cookies and how to disable them at this website: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/526/52697ee8.html .
This site may also use Web beacons (also known as clear gifs, pixel tags or Web bugs), which are tiny graphics with a unique identifier, similar in function to cookies, that are placed in the code of a Web page. We use Web beacons to monitor the traffic patterns of users from one page within our sites to another, to deliver or communicate with cookies, to understand whether you have come to our site from an online advertisement displayed on a third-party website, and to improve site performance. We also may allow our service providers to use Web beacons to help us understand which emails have been opened by recipients and to track the visitor traffic and actions on our site. This helps us measure the effectiveness of our content and other offerings.
Information collected by third parties/Display of tailored advertising
Third-party advertisers, such as advertising entities and business partners, may use cookies and other technologies (such as Web beacons) to collect information about your online activities. The purposes for collecting this information include: To measure and understand usage of our site; and to analyse, modify and personalise advertising content on this site and other sites to your apparent interests. We do not have access to or have control over cookies or other features they may use, and the information practices of these advertisers are not covered by this Privacy Statement. You can find out more about third-party advertisers and explore the option of not having this information collected by accessing one of the following resources:
• http://www.youronlinechoices.eu/
• http://youradchoices.ca/choices/
• http://www.aboutads.info/choices/
Do-not-track signals and similar mechanisms
Some web browsers may transmit "do-not-track" signals to websites with which the browser communicates. Because of differences in how web browsers incorporate and activate this feature, it is not always clear whether users intend for these signals to be transmitted, or whether they even are aware of them. The leading Internet standards-setting organisation which is addressing this issue has participants who are in the process of determining what, if anything, websites should do when they receive such signals. Egencia currently does not take action in response to these signals. If and when a final standard is established and accepted, we will reassess how to respond to these signals.
Using the Egencia mobile phone and tablet apps (the "Mobile Apps")
When you use an Egencia Mobile App, we collect and use information about you in the same way and for the same purposes as we do when you use our website.
In addition to this, we also use some other information that we collect automatically when you use our Mobile Apps. Specifically:
• We collect information about Mobile App functionality that you access and use. This allows us to identify those areas of the Mobile App that are of interest to our customers, so that we can refine and continuously improve the Mobile App.
• If you use a Mobile App's "find hotels" feature using your "current location", we use information about your current location – provided by your mobile device using GPS or similar technologies – to show nearby facilities. We do not collect location data unless you consent to this by expressly clicking the "find hotels" feature using "current location" as your destination, or you switch on location data collection through your phone settings menu. If you agree to share location information with us through your app or device settings, we may use and share this location information to offer you localised hotel or transport options, or to provide you with other relevant information or services.
• Each Mobile App will also send us error reporting information in the event that it crashes or hangs. This enables us to investigate the error and to improve the stability of the Mobile App for future releases. As part of these error reports, the Mobile App sends us information about the mobile device type and version, your customer ID, the time the error occurred, the feature being used and the state of the application when the error occurred. We do not use this information for any other purpose than investigating and remedying the error.
• We may send push notifications concerning changes in flight status or other items coming up during your trips. In addition, we may also use push notifications to issue key communications from your travel manager/employer in case of an emergency. These permissions can always be managed from your mobile device settings.
• If you select "Contact an Agent" and choose the "request a callback / request callback" option under Egencia AssistMe, where this feature is available, the Mobile App will send your customer ID, itinerary information and potentially other information about recent Mobile App usage to the travel consultant. This is done to expedite the customer service interaction and make for a smoother, more knowledgeable exchange.
You always have the ability to control certain information that a Mobile App sends to us. You can switch off location data collection at any time through your phone settings menu. Alternatively, you can remove the Mobile App from your mobile device entirely, and access our services through our website or by phone.
How we protect your information
We want you to feel confident about using our services to plan and book your travel, and we are committed to protecting the information that we collect. While no company can guarantee security, we have implemented appropriate administrative, technical and physical security procedures to help to protect the personal information in our custody and control. For example, only authorised employees are permitted to access personal information, and they may only do so for permitted business functions. In addition, we use encryption when transmitting your sensitive personal information between your system and ours, and we employ firewalls and intrusion detection systems to help to prevent unauthorised persons from gaining access to your information.
How you can access your information
You have access to your information in the following areas of this website:
My account
The My Profile pages on Egencia allow members to view and change their account settings. The email settings option lets you change your email address and manage your travel newsletter and any other subscriptions. You can also change your password and elect to have an automatic password sign-in when logging on to this website. You can add new Travellers and delete existing Travellers from your member profile; update or correct names, phone numbers, passport information, emergency contacts for Travellers associated with your profile; and update your travel preferences.
Request to close an account
You can close your Egencia account by contacting us as described below. Once you have closed an account, you will not be able to sign in or access any information associated with the account, but you can open a new account at any time. We will send you an email confirming your account closure to the email address contained in your member profile.
My trips
The My Trips page on this website allows members to view, update or delete their saved itineraries. In the event that you notify Egencia that certain personal information about you is not accurate, complete or up to date, Egencia shall take reasonable steps to correct the personal information so that it is accurate, complete and up to date.
External links
If any part of this website provides you with a link to other websites that we do not own or operate, those websites do not operate under this Privacy Statement. We recommend that you examine the privacy statements posted on those other websites to understand their procedures for collecting, using and disclosing personal information.
Where your data are stored
Egencia stores and processes Personal Data about Travellers in secure environments in the United States and Europe. In relation to the processing of non-US Traveller data, in order to provide its services, Egencia must transfer your Personal Data to its affiliates and/or service providers in the US.
In the case of Europe, Egencia legitimises the transfer of Personal Data to the US by way of inter-company EU model clauses. These "model clauses" are standard-form data transfer contracts whose content has been approved by the European Commission. When required by local data protection law, other measures are put in place by Egencia in order to ensure the legality of the international transfers of data to the US.
Data retention
We will not retain your information for longer than is necessary for our business purposes or for legal requirements. However, please be advised that we may retain some information after you have closed your account with us, for instance, if this is necessary to meet our legal obligations, including retaining the information for tax and accounting purposes.
Changes to this Privacy Statement
Egencia may update this Privacy Statement in the future. We will notify you about material changes to this Privacy Statement by sending a notice to the email address that you provided to us or by placing a notice on our website. If you have any questions about our Privacy Statement, please email us via the contact information provided below.
How to contact us
If you have any questions about either this Privacy Statement or our privacy practices generally, please contact us at:
Email: customer service and feedback form [INSERT LINK]. We will do our best to respond to your request within 24 hours.
Call: If you need more immediate assistance, please telephone us at [INSERT NUMBER].
Write: Global Privacy Director, Expedia Legal & Corporate Affairs, Expedia, Inc., 333 108th Avenue NE, Bellevue, WA 98004, USA.
We want to make sure that you have control over your online travel experience as an Egencia customer, from planning and booking your travel to protecting your personal information. Egencia customer service travel agents are ready to help with your Egencia travel concerns 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You may also call the customer service number given to you upon company sign-up at any time In addition, you may directly contact the travel supplier on the phone number or at the address provided on your travel itinerary.


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Lebron James & Nicole Scherzinger - Nike After Six Sneaker Promo Commerical
Business LeBron and Nicole Scherzinger smooth it out, slow it down, and Six it up in After Six.
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LONGWOOD, Fla. – Officials released the report on Tuesday into the bear mauling of a Longwood woman earlier this month, shedding light onto the woman's account of the mauling.
Susan Chalfant told Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission Conservation investigators the bear was focused on her and not her two dogs that she was walking when a bear flew towards her and snarled and growled, according to the report.
"That bear was trying to kill me, it just kept coming," Chalfant told officials.
The report also states the bear circled Chalfant 180 degrees, cutting off her escape route, knocked her down and bit her face as Chalfant fought the bear with her hands, trying to hit and gouge its eyes. The bear continued to bite, shake and release Chalfant, according to investigators.
"What happened was a tragedy to the nicest person in the neighborhood, but it doesn't have to change such a beautiful place to live," said Stephani Taylor, who lives next door to Chalfant.
"Susan is a one hundred percent honest, truthful and a level-headed woman," she said.
Taylor believes Chalfant didn't do anything wrong - it was just the "perfect storm," she said, when Chalfant crossed the bear and her cubs with her two dogs.
In the report investigators write, "while the victim apparently did nothing to intentionally provoke the bear, it is possible that Chalfant unknowingly posed some threat to the cubs in the mother bear's mind."
Since the attack, six bears were trapped, two were euthanized and the mama bear, who was identified as the bear that attacked Chalfant, was relocated to Busch Gardens with her two cubs, both of whom were also trapped.
The report states that Chalfant didn't allow investigators to photograph her injuries, but officers described them as "deep-ragged lacerations on the face and head" and that it looked like they could have been from a bear's teeth.
For more information about Florida black bears, visit MyFWC.com/Bear.


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A second colour seems like a good choice. You could paint with the right mouse button too. Of course you lose the ability to select objects with right click while you have a paint tool - but as that is already the case with the sculpt tools it is not a problem.
If I add a settings button to the top you could choose to add all of the various useful colour tools - like HSV bars, Swatches, Recently used colours. Or if you are happy with a simpler view you could remove the RGB bars for a smaller panel. Also would be nice to have type in boxes for RGB, HSL, Web colors.
Perhaps there should be 2 versions of a panel, the settings could have 2 columns of tick box options. And a single click on a toggle in the header bar for a panel switches you from 'lite' to 'detailed' controls when you need them. I've used that system before in Fractal Painter seemed to work quite well.
In fact there should be 3 versions of a panel - the other one is just a named title bar where the whole panel is collapsed, but it is still there in the UI for when you need it. Some apps will take the 'minimised' panels and put them in tabs onthe top or down the side. I quite like them minified and staying in place in the docked column.
The other option is to have a button that popups the full control list temporarily so you can tweak the values then let it disappear again. I suppose I can try out both and see what feels best (possibly keeping both methods).


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BOSTON (Reuters) - States that have more laws restricting gun ownership have lower rates of death from shootings, both suicides and homicides, a study by researchers at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard University found.
States with the most laws on gun ownership, including Massachusetts and New Jersey, have 42 percent lower rates of death from guns than those with the least restrictions, including Utah and Oklahoma, according to the study, published on Wednesday in the online edition of JAMA Internal Medicine.
The study was released as a Senate committee approved new gun-control measures backed by President Barack Obama to crack down on illegal trafficking in firearms in the wake of the December massacre at a Connecticut elementary school.
Based on data from 2007 through 2010, the study looked at the relationship between the number of restrictions states placed on gun ownership — from background checks on gun buyers to bans on military-style assault weapons — and the number of gun-related homicides and suicides reported.
The most likely link between the strictness of a state's gun regulations and the number of shootings was that in states with more restrictive gun control laws, fewer households own guns, the study's lead author, Dr. Eric Fleeger, said on Thursday.
"One of the questions that is always raised in this debate is, 'Do laws make a difference?' There are many people who will try to argue that laws don't make a difference, don't bother passing them, let people do what they want," Fleeger said.
"Our study really suggests the opposite. The states that have taken the time and thought to pass this legislation, we see lower rates of firearms fatalities."
The study determined the strictness of a state's gun regulations by assigning a point value to different rules — from one point for rules against guns in the workplace to six points for rules regulating how gun dealers may operate. The points for each state were totaled to determine which had the most restrictive gun-control regimes.
The data was compared with federal figures on the number of deaths caused by guns, both homicides and suicides, in each state.
Noting that little academic research is done on the link between firearms and public health in the United States, largely due to restrictions on federal funding for such research, Fleeger said he hoped the findings would influence debate on gun-control laws.
The authors cautioned that their methods did not prove any cause and effect connection between firearms laws and deaths, and that factors including how effectively the laws were enforced could undermine their conclusions.
Proponents of gun control argue that restricting access to weapons and ammunition could lower the number of shootings the United States experiences each year, while gun-rights advocates note that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the right to possess weaponry and contend that laws restricting gun ownership do little to deter the criminal use of guns.
Reporting By Scott Malone; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Bob Burgdorfer and Leslie Adler