text:
the mortgage'in !'luit. But here the allegations and, undisputed showing of purported adverse title rest upon tax titles for defaults in the payment of taxes which arose when the defendant Venner was president and financial manager of the mortgagor compa'ny, or of the predecessor company, as to the earlier certificate, where the relations of the parties will be regarded of like import in equitY,undisturbed by the reorganization; that the tax certificates were bought in by Mr. Venner, or came into his hands under such relation, and tax titles were taken to the New England Waterworks Coinpany, of which Mr.,Vemier was the organizer, and was president during all 'the times referred to. As president of the mortgagor company, then apparently insolvent, he received and held the taxcertificates as trustee for the mortgagee and creditors, or, if not as a technical trustee, at least in a fiduciary relation. ManufR('turingo Co.v. Hutchinson, 24 U. S. App. 145, 11 C. C. A. '320, and 63 Fed. 496. And no title adverse to the mortgagee can be' created through such source, but the transactlon must be regarded as a payment of the tax. Avery v. Judd, 21 Wis. 262; Stears v. Hollenbeck, 38 Iowa,' 550, and cases cited. From such fiduciary relation alone inquiry would be open in this action to determine the character of the title, and surely the further allegations of collusion .by which the newly-o,rganized company obtained pOssession from the mortgagor company, as foundation for its tllX titles, furnish ample support for the bill in this aspect. Whether inquiry is open 'as to invalidity of the tax titles In other respects, as alleged, may be left for determination at final hearing. If the allegations previously referred to are sustained, both possession and title are under the mortgagor, and subordinate to the mortgage lien, and therefore subject to adjudication in this action. Mendenhall v. Hall, 134 U. S. 559, 568, 10 Sup. Ct. 616; Trust 00. v. McKenzie (Minn.) 66 N. W. 976. "2. With the second branch of the objection I have found the greatest ditllculty; involving, as it does, the serious,question of a just exercise of the discretion reposed in courts of equity. The answering affidavits, especially that of the defendant Venner, furnish strong corroboration for the material allegationS of the amended and supplemental bill respecting the relationship of both title and possession. The New England Waterworks Oompany has entire possession of thiS .valuable plant, with the issues and profits, for its purported and comparativelylnsignlficant investment 'of the amount of the tax certificates. The mortgagee is 'entitled toprotectlon against such schemes and schemers as appear disclosed in the transactions set forth in this record, and to secure 'the integrity of the property, as Well, as benefit of the rents and profits, I am: satisfied that judicial custody is the sole assurance; thereby pro-tecting all the interests 'involved, including those of the mortgagee, American Loan & Trust: Co., holding under mortgage made by the New England Oompany, for means claimed to have entered into improvements made by it. The presumptive right of the mortgagee to rents and profits after default can be obtained only through possession, actual or constructive. Sage v. Railroad Co., 125 U. S. 361, 8Sup.Ot. 887. This can.be p'reserved by the receivership, "but not otherwise. I am therefore of opinion that' a case is clearly made for the appointment of a receiver to take such property into the custody of the court; and an order will' be entered accordingly, With the amount of bond to be fixed therein."
The order of the circuit court is affirmed.
BUMP v.' BUTLER OOUNTY et at (Circuit Oourt, E. D. Missouri, R D. No. 3,844. March 15, 1899.)
A railroad company executed a mortgage by which it conveyed certain lands it had received from a county in payment of a stock subscription to three trustees, and "to the survivor and survivors, successor and successors, of them," as joint tenants, to secure the payment of bonds. The
IlUMP V. BUTLER COUNTY.
mortgage fnrther provided for the filling of vacancies in the office ot trustee. The county snbsequently brought a suit to cancel its conveyance of the lands to the company and the mortgage thereon, making the company and the original trustees defendants; service on the trustees being made by publication as ,nonresidents. Prior to the commencement of the action one of the trustees had died, and another died before the order for publication was return,able. Action was taken purporting to fill the vacancies so caused, but no record thereof was made in the county where the mortgage was reeorded; :nor did the pleadings; which were filed on behalf of all the defendants, suggest either the deaths of the original trustees or the new appointments, although one of the appointees appeared of record as counsel, and such facts were not known to the county or its counsel until after final decree, which was rendered three years after the suit was commenced, and which set aside and canceled the conveyance from the county and the mortgage, as to the lands in suit. Held that, conceding the regularity and validity of the appointment of the new trustees, it must be presumed, in support of the jurisdiction of the court, when collaterally attacked, that such appointments had not become effective by the acceptance of the appointees, and that the title under the mortgage remained in the survivor of the original trustees, and the decree was therefore a conclusive adjudication of tpe invalidity of the title of the company and its trustees,
2. CORPORA'l'IONS-DISSOJ,UTION BY SALE 'OF PROPERTy-VALIDITY OF SERVICE.
Where a legislative act directing the sale of a railroad to satisfy a lien of the state especially provided that it should not be construed to authorIze the conveyance to the purchaser of any lands which had been conveyed to the railroad by counties, of which the company held a large amount, the sale cannot be held to have worked a dissolution ,of the railroad corporation, so that a servIce upon its offiecrs did notgi1'e a court jurisdiction over the company in a subsequent suit relating to such lands, especially where it appeared and contested the suit, and continued, to exercise the powers of a corporation for years thereafter.
A delay of nearly 30 years by a claimant of land out ot possession, before bringing suit, constitutes such laches as will preclude him from attacking the validity of a decree which adjudged the title to be in the defendant county, and under which it and its grantees have claimed ever since. "rhere a claimant orlands adversely to a county and its grantees, pending litigation as to his rights, and with knowledge that he did not have the legal title, voluntarily procured the land to be assessed in his mime, and paid the taxes thereon for a number,of years, the acceptance of such taxes will not estop the county, nor its grantee having knowledge of such facts, from asserting title. to the lands,
Acts of ownership exercised over wild and unoccupied lands, to constitute adverse possession as against the owner of the superior title, must be of a character so open, notorious, and uneqUivocal that they cannot fail to be known to the true owner, and to advise him of the claim made; and loose testimony as to occasional acts by a claimant, such as the making of surveys or driving off trespassers, while at the same time the owner of the legal title of record was exercising similar acts, and was offering for sale and selling portions of the lands, is insufficient to establish such adverse possession as will ripen into title, and in such case the rule must be applied that follows him who has the better title.
M. W. Huff and John F. Shepley, for complainant. M. L. Clardy and Wood & Douglas, for defendants. ADAMS, District Judge. This is a suit in equity to annul certain conveyances of swamp lands in Butler county,as clouds upon com-
plainant's title. The complainant Claims title through the following Iwslative acts and conveyances: That is to say, the act of congress of .September 28, 1850, authorizing the conveyance of certain lands, known as "swamp or overflowed lands," to the state of Missollri; the llchl of the gelleral assembl;y of the state of Missouri approvf\1! March 3, 1851,andFepruary 23,1853, dOIJ,ating to Butler county such of .said swamp lands as were located within its confines; th(' act of the general assembly of Missouri of February 24, 1853, authorizing the formation of railroad associations, and subscriptions to the capital county court stockQf such associatic)ns by counties; the orders of of Butler county of dates October 24, 1854, and December 6, 185fi, making two subscriptions, each for $50,000, to the capital stock of Oairo & Fulton Railroad Company, and providing for the payment of such subscriptions by the conveyance to said railroad company (If swamp lands at $1 per acre; the selection of such lands; the convey· ance thereof to the railroad company by a patent executed by the governor of the state of Missouri, of date April 20, 1857; the mortgage executed by the railroad company, of date May 23, 1857, conveying said lan(jEto Moore, Wilson, andWa.terman, trustees, to secure the payment of. an issue of 1,600 bonds of the railroad company, each for the sum of .$1,000; the foreclosure of said mortgage by a decree of the supreme court of Missouri rendered on the --"- day of - - - , 1879. in the proceedingE\ instituted byOharles P. Chouteau against the Cairo & Fulton Company et al.; the sale of the lands on October 30, 1882, by a deed executed by the special commissioner appointed by the supreme court of Missouri, to Charles P. Chouteau, from whom the complainant, by mesne conveyance, claims to have acquired title. defendants admit complainant's chain of title as already set forth, but assail" some of the proceedings involved in it, and especially the validity of the subscriptions made by the county court of Butler county to the stock of the railroad company. They contend that these subscriptionflwere without authority of law,in that there 'Ya8 no vote of .the taxpayers of the county, as required by section 29 of the act of February 24, 1853, authorizing such subscriptions, and that the subsequent selection of lands, and conveyances thereof to the railroad company, and its mortgage thereof to secure ite issue of bonds, were each and all illegal and void acts. The proof shows that a suit was institllted in the circuit court of Butler county on the 12th day of June, 1866,by Butler county against the Cairo & Fulton Railroad Company and Moore, Wilson, and Waterman, tr'Ilstees named in the mortgage, to cancel and set aside the patent to the railroad company, and its mortgage oiMay 23,1857, to Moore, Wilson, and Waterman, trustees, because of fraud and illegality in the proceedings involved in securing the same,and that such proceedings were had as resulted on the 2d day of July,1869, in a final decree annulling said patent and mortgage, and vesting the title to the lands described in the mortgage in Butler county. The proof furtber shows that the county thereafter, by three separate conveyances called "patents," dated, respectively, January 31, 1871, and December 10 and December 21, 1874, conveyed a part of the lands included in said mortgage so annulled by the decree of 1869 to the defendant the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern
way Company. (I do not now, and will not hereafter, undertake to distinguish between the two names of this corporation,-the railroad company and its successor, the railway company.) It is these conveyances, and others of like character, which the complainant seeks to have set aside as clouds upon his title. As already stated, complainant claims a title of record from Butler county, by and through its subscriptions to the capital stock of the Cairo & Fulton Railroad Company, its conveyance of the lands in question to the last-named railroad company in payment of such subscriptions, the mortgage by the last-named railroad company to secure its bonds, the foreclosure of the mortgage, and purchase thereunder by his grantor, Mr. Chouteau. The foundation of complainant's title is assailed at the outset by the defendants. It is conceded in the argument of this case that the subscriptions to the capital stock of the Cairo & Fulton Railroad Company were made by the county court of Butler county without the assent of the taxpayers of the county, secured at an election held for that purpose. It is contended that under the provisions of section 29 of the act of February 24, 1853, sllch a vote was a condition precedent to the right to make the subscriptions in question. On the other hand, the complainant contends that such is not the true construction of said section 29, and claims further that by the provisions of the act of December 10, 1855, entitled "An act to secure the completion of certain railroads in the state," the county court of Butler county had the right to subscribe its overflowed or swamp lands as stock to any railroad passing through the county, upon such terms, and to be valued at such prices, as may be agreed upon by the county court and the directors of the railroad company in which stock was taken, and that this act was in force at the time the patents were made to the railroad company, and was ample authority for the conveyance, without the consent of the taxpayers. The able arguments of counsel, the several decisions of the supreme court of Missouri, and divers acts of the general assembly bearing upon the necessity for a preliminary election, would command critical consideration, if the questiQn involved were an open one to this court; but, in my opinion, the decree of July 2, 1869, in the case of Butler county et a1. against the Cairo & Fulton Railroad Company et aI., concludes the complainant on this question. That suit was instituted by Butler county against the railroad company and the trustees of the bondholders for the purpose of annulling the county's subscriptions to the capital stock of the railroad company, and for the purpose of setting aside the patent of April 20, 1857, from the governor of Missouri to the railroad company, and the mortgage, of date )Iay 23, 1857, from the railroad company to the trustees for the bondholders,-Moore, Wilson, and Waterman. The ground of complaint was that the title to the lands involved was procured from the county fraudulently and without warrant of law, and that, among other things, there was no consent of the taxpayers thereto. The suit, after pending three years or more, came on for a hearing upon the merits; and a final decree was rendered as prayed for by the county, setting aside and annulling the 'title of the railroad company 3nd -/-}1e trustf'es for the
This decree, if valid, is binding upon the parties to that case, and all others in privity with, tbem,-including, of course, any purchasers under the annulled mortgage. Illlll unable to agree "With co.unsel for complainant that said decree was void for want of necessary parties. The -stiit was instituted in June, . John Moore, John Wilson, and Albert G.Waterman, the trustees named inthemortgageof 1857,which was duly recorded in the recorder's offiCe of Butler county, were named. as defendants in and being nonresldents at the time of the execution of the the, mortgage t.o them on :May'23, 1857, and supposed to be so in 1866, an secured and duly executed against them as order ofpubIication such nonresidents; requiring them to at the September term of said court and answer the petition of the plaintiff., But it now appears that, Waterman died in February, 1862, and that Moore died on September23, 1866, before the order of,publication was returnable. Wilson al.one survived. Notwithstanding the death of Waterman and Moore, cortnsel entered apPearance and filed pleadings fOr all the defendants,. The case toot{ the usual course, and was tried, and the decree 'was entered 1869, with no knowledge on the part of Butlereounty of the death ,of the two trustees, or of any irregularity in the ,proceedings. By: the ,provisions .of the mortgage: Of 1857, the land therein described wascoljlveyed to John Moore, John.Wilson, and Albert q. Waterman,and''to the survivor and ,survivors; successor and successors, ofthem, forever, as joint tenants, and not tenants in common, for the uses and purposes set forth." The mqrtgage also provided: ,
"That, fpr :the, purpose of, and' securing the due execution of the trusts hereby created, it is, declared that all vacancies that may occur in the office of trustee,by death, resignation, or otherwise, shall be filled thus: The first vacancy shall be filled by a majority of the members of the board of trustees as, .constituted, being in office at the time such vacancy shall take place; the next vacancy shall be filled by the said party of the first part [which is tl1e ,Cairo & Fulton Rl,tilroad Companyl; and so on alternately. until the eric:f.'· And trustees so appOinted shaJI fill the terms and succeed to and perform all the duties, and have all the powers, hereby conferred upon the members: of the board of trustees .herein named or provided for."
if appears that anattempf was made, pursuant to the provisions of the mortgage, to appoint a successor to, Waterman, who died in 1862. One. MaS?D Brayman' had, before then, .pursuant to the provisions of the original mortgage, been chosen by the three origin.al trustees as president Of the board of On March 22, 1866, he and John Wilson s'igned a paper at, Springfield, Ill., the home of the trustees, and wheretlley seemed to have hadan. ,office, purporting, by its terms, to appointthe said Brayman a trustee to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Albert G. Waterman. It also appears that ilfter the death of John Moore, to wit, on April 11, 1867, the board of qirectors of the Cairo &FultonRailroad Company,'purporting to act under the power conferred by t;!?E: original mortgage, passed a resolution appointing Henry as trustee to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death ,:1,nd a 'Writing embodying this resolution and this apof John pointment 'waasigued by Gr(ten L. Poplin, president, and T.. W. Johncompany. These appointments, it apson, secretary, of"
nmIP V. BUTLER COUKTY.
pears, were recorded on what purport to be the of proceedings of the board of trustees, at Springfield, Ill., and of the railroad company, at Bloomfield, They were not sealed or acknowledged by the persons signing them, and were never recorded in the recorder's office of Butler county, wherein the lands affected by them were situate. It appears that Butler county, or its attorneys, had no actual knowledge, either of the death of these two trustees, or of any appointment of their successors, until long after the final decree in qJJestion. By the public records, Moore, Williion, and Waterman appeared to be the trustees holding the legal title, and therefore the proper parties to be made defendants. By the public records, also, as shown in the original mortgage, duly recorded, it appeared that, in case of the death of one or more of such trustees, the survivor or survivors took the sale title. The county might reasonably suppose, in the absence of knowledge to the contrary, that the three trustees named in the mortgage, who were nonresidents of this state, were living at the date of the institution of the suit; and the county might confidently rely, by reason of the legal situation created by the mortg-age, that if, perchance, one or more of such original trustees were then dead, the survivor or survivors were fully vested with the title; and as it appears that one of them (Wilson) was living at the time of the institution of the snit, and at the time of the return of process, and at the time of the trial of the cause and entry of the decree, service upon him was effective to subject the trust estate represented by the mortgage to the jurisdiction of the court in that case, unless such appointments of successors of the deceased trustees had been so made as vested them with title as joint tenants with Wilson. This necessitates an inquiry into the sufficiency of the appointments of Brayman and Bedford. It is claimed by counsel for complainant that the appointment of a substituted trustee, under the provisions of the mortgage in question, was but the exercise of a power, was not required to be made by deed, did not amount to a conveyance of real estate, and therefore was not within the requirements of our registry acts, and that their validity is in no manner affected by the fact that the public records of Butler county failed to show them. This contention has much force, but does not appear to have met with favor by the supreme court of in the case of F. G. Oxley Stave Co. v. Butler Co., 121 614, 26 S. W. 367, in which the view is expressed to the effect that Butler county was not chargeable with notice of the substitution of trustees, in the absence of actual notice, or constructive notice resulting from recording the instruments making such substitution. There are, moreover, additional reasons why the decree of 1869 is not invalidated for the reason that and Bedford were not made parties. There lVas no evidence before the circuit court of Butler county that Brayman or Bedford ever acceptpd the trust or acted as such trustees, even if they were lawfully appointed as such. The facts that Bedford acted as ('ounsel for the defendants of record, was possessed of knowledge of the facts, and did not disclose that he himself was a substituted trustee, impel me to the conclusion that if he knew of the transactions conducted at Springfield, Ill., and Bloomfield, to make Brayman and himself trustees, he at least had concluded not to accept the honor.
is the only conclusion consistent with common honesty. If, therefore, notwithstanding the fact that. the appointments of Brayman and Bedford were unacknowledged and unrecorded, they could be held effective as tenders of appointment, it may be that a nonaccept· ance of the trust was found by the circuit court of Butler county. At least, such a presumption may well be indulged in favor of the juris· diction of that court, possessed as it was of general jurisdiction, in order to support its decree. It is next contended that the Cairo & Fulton Railroad Oompany had been dissolved by the sale made on October 1, 1866, to enfOrce the state's lien for money loaned to it, pursuant to the provisions of the act of February 19, 1866, commonly known as the "Sell-Out Act," and that, such being the case, the last board of directors became thereafter trustees for the railroad company, and that they, instead of the presi. dent of the railroad, Mr. Poplin, should have been served with process in the case of Butler county against the railroad. It seems to me that a complete answer to this contention is found in the provisions of the last-mentioned act, as follows:
"Nothing In this act shall be construed as to conveyor authorize to be conveyed, to the purchasers of said railroad, any of the lands subscribed by the counties to the stock of said railroad company."
In other words, the act in question did not authorize the sale, and no sale was made, of a large quantity of lands belonging to the railroad company. Butler county alone had, as then supposed, conveyed over 100,000 acres of swamp lands to this railroad company; and other . counties had in like manner conveyed to it, as I understand, over 300,000 acres more of such lands. Although the railroad company had mortgaged its lands, the equity of redemption still remained in it. Considering the fact that the railroad itself was never completed, it seems to me that there was probably less in fact conveyed to the state under the sell-out act than was allowed to remain unsold under its provisions. Be this, however, as it may, the mere insolvency of corporation, or the sale of the larger portion of its assets, does not necessarily work a dissolution. Hill v. Fogg, 41 Mo. 563; Bank v. Robidoux, 57 Mo. 446; Hotel Co. v. Sauer, 65 Mo. 279; F. G. Oxley Stave Co. v. Butler Co., 121 Mo. 614, 26 S. W. 367. The cases relied upon by counsel for the complainant, namely, Opinion of the JUdges, 37 Mo. 129, Moore v. Whitcomb, 48 Mo. 543, and Ohouteau v. Allen, 70 Mo. 290, in which some expressions are found substantiating their views, deal with cases in which there had been a sale of all the property of the corporation,or in which a dissolution was admitted by the pleadings. These last·mentioned cases are considered by the supreme court of Missouri in the F. G. Oxley Stave Co. Oase, supra, and their authority is gravely doubted; and, notwithstanding them, the court holds that service upon the president of the railroad company, instead of upon the members of the last board of directors, was, at the worst, an irregularity which might have been corrected if season· ably,suggested, and affords noground for vacating the judgment rendered, at the suit of Mr:Chouteau or his grantees. To the same effect the case of Hotel Co. v. Sauer, supra. Taking all the§e cases together, and giving them due consideration, I cannot hold that the
Cairo & Fulton Railroad Company was so diEsolved as to render service of summons upon its president ineffectual to bind the railroad company. Not only is it true that the railroad company was the owner of the unsold lands, but the proof shows a continuous and necessary exercise of the functions of a corporation long after the sale of 1866. Stockholders' meetings and meetings of its board of directors were held at the call of Poplin, the president of the company. trustee, The appointment of Bedford as a successor to John which the complainant invokes in aid of his rights, and upon which he must rely as a valid act of the railroad company, was made by authority of the board of directors, and executed by the president of the company, after the sale under the sell-ont act had been made. As late as 1870 the railroad company brought suit in the Butler county circuit court against the trustees and Chouteau and Poplin to set aside deeds of trust on the ground that the same had been obtained from the company by fraud. Later, in 1871, the railroad company the decree of July 2, 1869, brought suit in the same court to upon the ground that it had been obtained by collusion and fraud. This last-mentioned suit, it may be proper here to say, was never pressed to a final hearing, but dismissed by the railroad company. All of these acts were corporate acts exercised by the company, and necessary to the preservation and disposition of corporate assets and the assertion of corporate rights. It cannot be held, on this state of facts, and on applicatory authority already cited, that the railroad company was so dissolved by the sale to the state in 1866 as rendered its last board of directors trnstees, and thus necessary parties to the suit of Butler county against the railroad in question. Service was made upon the president of the corporation according to law, and the corporation duly appeared and contested the suit. The court therefore acquired full jurisdiction over the owner of the equitable title to the lands in controversy. I have already shown that it had full jurisdiction over the holders of the legal title. No question is made but that it had jurisdiction over the subject-matter. In my opinion, therefore, it had full jurisdiction over the case, and all parties are concluded by its decree. The supreme court of Missouri has carefully considered all these questions in the case of F. G. Oxley Stave Co. v. Butler Co., supra. That suit was instituted by the plaintiff, who claimed title, as the complainant in this case does, by conveyances from Chouteau, and was instituted for the express purpose of setting aside the decree of 1869. All of the grounds of objection to that decree which are now made before this court were fully presented to the supreme court in that caSe. The last-named court took substantially the same views as I have taken, and in addition thereto announced a salutary, and, in my opinion, correct, doctrine, applicable to this case, and which effectually disposes of all the questions already considered, namely, that the delay of nearly 30 years by persons claiming these hmds adverse to Butler county constitutes such laches as deprives them of any standing in a of equity to aid their own title by destroying the county's muniment of title afforded by the decree of 1869. This principle is also distinctly announced in the case of Boone Co. v. Burlington &.
M. R. R. CO., 139 U. S. 684; 11 Sup. Ct. 687. The supreme court of the United States, to which the case of F. G. Oxley Stave 00. v. Butler Co. was taken by writ of error (17 Sup. Ct. 710), says as follows:
"The supreme court of Missouri properly said that only two questions were presented by the record for its determination: First. Were the subscriptions by the county courts [county and district] of Butler county to the stock" of the Cairo & Fulton Railroad Company, and the conveyance of the swamp lands of that county to said railroad in satisfaction of said subscriptions, authorized by law? . Second. Ought the decree of the circuit court of Butler county annulling the conveyances of said lands to be set aside for the reasons urged by the plaintiffs, to wit-First, because procured by fraud; and, second, because two of the defendants named in it were dead at the time of its rendition. and the railroad company a dissolved ,corporation 1"
After stating the foregoing propositions as having been presented, the supreme court of the United States says:
"Whether the by the county, court of Butler county to the stock of the railroad company, and the conveyances to that company, were valid, and whether the decree which the plaintiffs sought to have declared void was obtained 'by fraud, wer6l questions of local law or practice, in respect of Which the judgment of the state court was final."
This expression of opip.ion of the supreme court would have concludedany and all consideration of the questions already discussed, had not for cOl;nplainant invoked the fourteenth amendment to tbe of theUilited States, and claimed that he, or his gra,ntees in title,had of their property pro· cess ,of law. This which, for, the reasons stated by Mr. Harlan in p{.(Sjlouncing the of the supreme court, cQu.ld n9t be considered' by the supreme court, necessitated ,my ruling upon, the .questiolls already considered" namely, whether Brayman and and of the Cairo & Fultollnailroad Com· pany iJ;1 office immediately: prior to the sale of that road under the sell·outaCt, were to the sllit of Butler county against tbeCairo &Fulton In view of what has already been said in tliesequestions,)t is my opinion that they were n9,t p,ecessary but that all necessary parties before the court in that case, and therefore that the complainants, ,who ,claim undefthe {larties defendaI\.t in that case, werenot, by the ,decree in that case, deprived of. their, property without due prqcess of , The considerations result in tbe conclusion that complainant has Il,O legal title to in question by virtue of the sale under the, decree of foreclosure rendered in 1879 in the suit of ChouteauagaJnst the Cairo ,& Fulton Railroad Company et UrI. But counsel that Butler ,l;ounty, and .its grantees under its patents to the St. !puis, Iron & Southern Railway Company (hereafter the "Railway COmpany") of 1874, and others, are from aught againstcoinplainant's title; and this by reason of the fact that the county assessed taxes against .Chouteau upon the lands in qll,efjtion,aud collected the same from him and his grantees, for years after the, date of his purchase, in a)ld that the Rail· wj1.y Company knew of ::wch and pttyments, and allowed the same to be done. n is the settled law of this that the assessment against, of taxes from, a. person, by a county of
this statf, do not estop the county from afterwards asserting its own title to the lands against which. such taxes were a£!sessed. City of St. Louis v. Gorman, 29 Mo. 593; City of Hannibal v. Draper's Heirs, 36 Mo. 332; Sturgeon y. Hampton, 88 :,\'[0. 203; Hook:e v. Chitwood, 127 Mo. 372, 30 S. W. :t67. In addition to this, the facts of the case do not, in my opinion, justify the application of the doctrine of equitable estoppel. ..From 1882 to 18!J3, during which time taxes were being paid by Chouteau and his grantees, there was unquestionably a spirited contention between Chouteau and his grantees, claiming title, notwithstanding the decree of 1869, under the foreclosure proceeding, and Butler county and its grantees, claiming title under patents made after the decree of 1869, as to which title should prevail. Chouteau must be presumed to have known that his legal title was cut out by the decree of 1869, and that notwithstanding his purchase, in 1882, there was a serious infirmity in his claim to equitable title. He assumed to believe that the decree of 1869 would be held nugatory and void' as to him, and instituted, or caused to be instituted, the suit of P. G. Oxley Stave Co. v. Butler Co., supra, for that purpose. Pending a hearing and determination of that suit, Chouteau manifestly desired to bolster up his title, if possible. Accordingly, soon after his purchase, in 1882, he voluntarily paid delinquent taxes assessed against the lands in controversy,-induced the county court to assess the same in his name for the year 1883. This assessment was afterwards set aside and annulled by the county court, presumably because the title stood, apparently, in the Railway Company, under the grant of the county made in 1874. This action of the county court was so unwelcome to Mr. Chouteau that he employed an attorney to appear before the court to reinstate the assessment against him. This was accomplished in 1885, after several appearances; and he finally suc- . ceeded, on March 4, 1885, in getting a special tax book made, assessing these lands to him; and he paid taxes, and conti.nued to do so for eight or ten years thereafter. The question is whether the payment of taxes under such circumstances, and the receipt of them by the county, with the knowledge of the Railway Company, amount to an estoppel on the. part of the county or the Railway Company against claiming to such lands adverse to the Chouteau title. In my opinion, there are two satisfactory reasons why no estoppel arises out of such facts: Pir-st, Chouteau, and those claiming under him, knew that, according to the court and land records of Butler county, a perfect legal title to the lands in question was vested in Butler county and the Railway Company; and, second, no deceit, fraud, or concealment of any kind was practiced either by Butler county or the Railway Company to induce Chouteau to pay the taxes. On the contrary, the county protested against his payiI).g them, to the extent, at least, of once striking the lands off the assessment, as against Mr. Chouteau's name. The Railway Company made no representations, concealed no facts, or took no steps whatsoever to induce Chouteau to take up or carry his self-imposed burden. Conveyances evidencing its title to the lands stood recorded in the public records of the county. Its name appeared on the assessment books as the owner of the lands until Chouteau made his purchase, and Chouteau voluntarily paid all
delinquent taxes. The facts, in my opinion, all show that Mr. Chouteau, with his eyes wide open to all the facts, and with full knowledge of- the real title, with no deception, fraud, or misrepresentation, on the part of the real owner, set about creating a title by adverse possession, against the real owner, if possible. This, in my opinion, is not such a laudable and praiseworthy project as to particularly inspire a court of conscience to lend its aid in its accomplishment. How well he succeeded in this will be presently shown. It is sufficient to say that, in my opinion, the facts in this case do not permit the application of the doctrine of estoppel in aid of complainant's title, as against either the county or the Railway COmpany. Brant v. Iron Co., 93 U. S. 326; Steel v. Refining Co., 106 U. So 447, 1 Sup. Ct. 389; , Merrill v. Tobin, 30 Fed. 738., Complainant next claims that he has acquired title to the lands in controversy by adverse possession by himself and his grantor. In considering this question, it is well to start out with the undisputed fact that the lands are what is known as "swamp or overflowed lands." Neither Mr. Chouteau nor his grantee, the complainant in this case, have ever had the actual possession, in the sense in which these terms are employed in speaking of cultivated lands, but it is claimed that they have had all the possession which wild lands are susceptible of. This is claimed to consist in certain surveys, blazing trees, running off of squatters, prosecuting trespassers, and generally keeping an eye on the lands. The evidence in relation to all these acts is extremely general, and, indeed, the cross-examination of the witnesses produced to prove them shows that the "interest lauds," as they are called, which are not involved in this case, were the subject of many of the alleged proprietary acts of Mr. Chouteau. All these acts, whether applicable to the lands in question or to the "interest lands," appear by the proof to be uMubstautial in character, and entirely insufficient to establish that open, notorious, adverse possession, under a claim of right, which alone is held sufficient to destroy the title of the real owner. They signally fail to comply with the requirements laid down by the supreme court of Missouri for such purpose. In Musick v. Barney, 49 Mo. 458, it is said:
"It would endanger property rights to permit a loose claim to land. with such acts of ownership oniy as might be exercised without attracting the attention of the real owner, and without occupancy, to ripen into title. The indications of the claim of possession should be so patent that the real owner could not be deceived,"
The following authorities are, in my opinion, conclusive against the claim of the complainant in this case: Leeper v. Baker, 68 Mo. 400; Pharis v. Jones, 122 Mo. 125, 26 S. W. 1032; Nye v. Alfter, 127 Mo. 529, 30 S. W. 186; Carter v. Hornback, 139 Mo. 238, 40 So W. 893. In' addition to this, the proof shows that the Railway Company was during all these years exercising acts of ownership, in offering to /Sell, and selling, parts and parcels of the lands in question, and that these lands were quite generally known throughout the community as "railroad lands,"-probably better known as "railroad lands" than as ''Chouteau lands."
After giving a patient and impartial consideration to all the evidence in the case, guided by the true rules of interpretation as laid down by the supreme court, I am unable to find that Mr. Chouteau's possession was so open, notorious, and visible as to deprive the true owners of their title. In my opinion, the loose and uncertain generalization of the witnesses with respect to Chouteau's possession, taken in connection with the evidence of acts of ownership of the Railway Company, whatever they may be worth, leave this case a very proper one for the application of the general rule that possession follows him who has the better title. Complainant's bill must be dismissed.
AMERICAl'I STAVE & COOPERAGE CO. v. BUTLER COUNTY.
(Circuit Court, E. D. Missouri, E. D.
1'10. 4,037.
March 15, 1899.)
COUNTy-POWER TO MAKE CON'I'RACT-SAI,E OF SWAMP LANDS.
A county, having power, under the statute, to sell its swamp· lands, the proceeds to be devoted to their reclamation, and any surplus to be paid into the school fund, entered into contracts with a railroad by which the latter, in consideration of the conveyance to It of certain swamp lands, agreed to construct levees for the drainage Of swamps. No right in such levees, or to their use when completed, was reserved to the railroad company. As constructed, they were continuous embankments, without culverts, bridges, or trestles, were fairly well constructed for the purpose of drainage, and were accepted by the county officers, and a conveyance of the lands made. Held, that the transaction was not ultra vires on the part of the county, though its real purpose may have been to secure the construction of a railroad along such embankment.
SAME-LACHES-AcQUIESCENCE IN CONVEYANCE.
A county acquiesced in a conveyance of certain swamp lands made by its officers, for 20 years or more, without objection, recognizing the grantee as the owner, and collecting taxes from the lands. Held that, though the transaction by which the lands were disposed of may have been voidable, such acquiescence amounted to a ratification, and the county was barred by its laches from asserting title, as against its grantee. A vendor who undertook to deliver a sufficient conveyance cannot take advantage of a defect in his own deed. A circuit court of the United States may entertain a suit in equity to quiet title to lands, where the complainant is in possession.
ESTOPPEL-GRAl'\TOR IN DEFECTIVE DEED.
In Equity. E. S. Robert, for complainant. Wood & Douglas, for defendant. ADAMS, District Judge. This is a proceeding to quiet the title to certain lands, known as "swamp lands," which the complainant's grantor, the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Railroad Company, claims to have acquired from the defendant county by three certain deeds, dated, respectively, January 31, 1871, December 10, 1874, and December 21, 1874. The considerations for these conveyances are found in two certain contracts entered into by and between Butler county


text:
ISRN Applied Mathematics
Volume 2013 (2013), Article ID 520635, 11 pages
A Faster Gradient Ascent Learning Algorithm for Nonlinear SVM
1Department of Informatics and Cybernetics, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Dorobanţi 15-17, 010552 Bucharest, Romania
2Department of Mathematics and Informatics, University of Pitesti, Târgu din Vale No. 1, 110040 Pitesti, Romania
3Department of Informatics, Ionian University, Palaia Anaktora 49100 Corfu, Greece
Received 27 May 2013; Accepted 19 July 2013
Academic Editors: S. He and L. Wu
Copyright © 2013 Catalina-Lucia Cocianu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
We propose a refined gradient ascent method including heuristic parameters for solving the dual problem of nonlinear SVM. Aiming to get better tuning to the particular training sequence, the proposed refinement consists of the use of heuristically established weights in correcting the search direction at each step of the learning algorithm that evolves in the feature space. We propose three variants for computing the correcting weights, their effectiveness being analyzed on experimental basis in the final part of the paper. The tests pointed out good convergence properties, and moreover, the proposed modified variants proved higher convergence rates as compared to Platt's SMO algorithm. The experimental analysis aimed to derive conclusions on the recognition rate as well as on the generalization capacities. The learning phase of the SVM involved linearly separable samples randomly generated from Gaussian repartitions and the WINE and WDBC datasets. The generalization capacities in case of artificial data were evaluated by several tests performed on new linearly/nonlinearly separable data coming from the same classes. The tests pointed out high recognition rates (about 97%) on artificial datasets and even higher recognition rates in case of the WDBC dataset.
1. Introduction
According to the theory of SVMs, while traditional techniques for pattern recognition are based on the attempt to optimize the performance in terms of the empirical risk, SVMs minimize the structural risk, that is, the probability of misclassifying yet-to-be-seen patterns for a fixed but unknown probability distribution of data [1–4]. The most distinguished and attractive features of this classification paradigm are the ability to condense the information contained by the training set and the use of families of decision surfaces of the relatively low Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension.
SVM approaches to classification lead to convex optimization problems, typically quadratic problems in a number of variables equal to the number of examples, and these optimization problems become challenging when the number of data points exceeds few thousands.
For making SVM more practical, several algorithms have been developed such as Vapnik's chunking and Osuna's decompositions [1, 5]. They make the training of SVM possible by breaking the large QP problem into a series of smaller QP problems and optimizing only a subset of training data patterns at each step. Because the subset of training data patterns optimized at each step is called the working set, these approaches are referred to as the working set methods.
Recently, a series of works on developing specializations as, for instance, reduced support vector machines (RSVM) [6] and smooth support vector machines (SSVM) [7] as well as parallel implementations of training SVM's have been proposed [8]. Also, there have been proposed methods to solve the least squares SVM formulations [7–10] as well as software packages as [11], mysvm [12], and many others [3, 11, 13–15]. It is worth to mention that a series of developments aimed to improve the accuracy of the resulted SVM classifier by combining it with boosting-type techniques [16, 17].
Assume that the data is represented by a finite set of labeled examples coming from two pattern classes, and is a vector-valued function representing the filter that extracts information from the current input. The function is usually referred to as the feature extractor, and is thought as the feature space. Briefly, from mathematical point of view, the problem of determining the parameters of an optimal margin classifier reduces to the quadratic programming (QP) problem [3]:
If is a solution of (1), then the SVM classifier corresponds to the decision rule, where IF THEN , IF THEN , IF THEN , and means "unclassifiable."
Using the Lagrange multiplier method, the QP problem (1) reduces to the QP problem
The parameter cannot be explicitly computed by solving the SVM problem, a convenient choice of being derived in terms of the support vectors. Usually, a suitable value of should be selected such that holds, for instance [3],
In our work, we prefer to use a value of the parameter computed on a heuristic basis aiming to take into account the available information about the variability of the subsamples coming from the classes [18].
The performance of the resulted classifier is essentially determined by the quality of the feature extractor , the main problem becoming the design of a particular informational feature extractor. One way in over passing this difficulty is the "kernel trick." Basically, the method consists in selecting a suitable kernel that, on one hand, "hides" the explicit expression of and, on the other hand, allows working in a feature space of possibly very high dimension without increasing the computational complexity [3]. Usually, we assume a certain particular functional expression for the kernel that "hides" both the dimension of the feature space and the explicit expression of the feature extractor .
If we assume that the kernel is given by for a certain feature extractor , then is a semidefined Mercer kernel [4]. Then, the problem of determining the parameters of an optimal margin classifier corresponds to solving the optimization problem (2), where the objective function is
In our work, we use exponential type kernels (RBF) and develop a modified gradient ascent method for solving the QP problem (2). The refinement considered in our developments comes from the use of weights in determining the direction of the search displacement at each step in order to get a better tuning to the particular training sequence. We propose three attempts in determining the weights, partially heuristically, and their corresponding performance is experimentally analyzed in the final section of the paper. In our developments, we implemented an SVM classifier of type [11].
2. Modified Gradient Ascent Method for Learning Nonlinear SVM Purposes
In [19], we proposed a modified learning rule of gradient ascent type for linear SVM that can be extended to the nonlinear case as follows. Assume that is a set of labeled examples coming from the classes. Conventionally, the first examples come from the class labeled by 1, the rest of examples being labeled by −1. By straightforward computations, the expressions of the gradient and the Hessian matrix are Note thatis a negative semidefined matrix.
For a given learning rate , if is the current value of the parameter, the updating rule of a gradient type learning algorithm is
However, being given that the updating rule (6) should be modified such that to assure that the new parameter still belongs to the space of the feasible solutions. Our method can be briefly described as follows. Assume that are the components of the current parameter vector selected for being updated, ,. If is a weighting parameter expressing the relative "influence" of and to the direction of the updating displacement, then the updated parameter satisfying the constraint is , where The indices involved in the updating step should be selected such that to assure the local maximization of . Using first-order approximations, the pair of indices should satisfy the conditions [19] Therefore, one has to pick up a pair satisfying (8) for which is maximized.
The stopping condition for the search process is controlled by a given threshold , and it holds when at least one of the conditions (9) is satisfied:
3. Strategies for Determining the Influence Weight in Implementing the Gradient Ascent Search
The option on the values of the learning rate and the weight parameter should be such that to assure good performance from both point of views, accuracy and efficiency. In our tests, we used.
Our research focused on several ways to compute the weight, all of them being expressed in terms of the first- and second- order statistics computed in the feature space. Let ,, ,be the sample means and sample covariance matrices computed on the basis of the samples labeled by 1 and −1 in the feature space, where is a particular feature extractor. We denote by the kernel generated by , that is, . Since we assumed the first examples as coming from the first class and the next examples as coming from the second class, we get
Concerning the options on the choice of the weight parameter we have to take into account that its particular expression should be justified by evidence or by mathematical arguments, and moreover its value should be computable in the feature space without increasing the computational complexity. We propose three variants for the expression of the weight parameterestimated exclusively from data in terms of first- and second- order sample statistics, namely, where
The expression (11) is mostly heuristic, justified by geometric reasons, while the significance of (12) and (13) is supported by standard arguments coming from mathematical statistics (in terms of eigenvalues of sample covariance matrices and Fisher information, resp.). Note that the weight coefficients (11), (12), and (13) can be evaluated in the feature space using exclusively the values of the kernel on the available sample. Indeed, using straightforward computation, the coefficient can be expressed in terms of the kernel as follows: where the norms and are evaluated as Usually, the kernels are normalized, that is, for any . In case of a normalized kernel, using straightforward computations, we get and similarly Consequently, the expression of the weight coefficient is The evaluation of can be carried out as follows. Since by denoting we get that is, Note that the weight coefficient is the extension of the Fisher coefficient to the multidimensional repartitions.
4. Experimental Performance Analysis of the Proposed Variants of the Weight Coefficient
In order to develop a comparative analysis on the proposed variants of the modified gradient-like algorithm in solving the QP problem (2), we performed a long series of tests on simulated data coming from Gaussian repartitions and on the public databases WINE and Wisconsin Diagnostic Breast Cancer (WDBC) [20], all tests involving the feature extractor corresponding to the RBF kernel, . Note that the generated data used for training were linearly separable. The comparative analysis aimed to establish conclusions about the performance of the modified gradient ascent algorithm in the feature space using the weight coefficients against Platt's SMO method and the standard gradient ascent algorithm in the initial space.
Also, we aimed to evaluate(i)the influence of different values of the parameter on the number of iterations needed to obtain significant accuracy,(ii)the dependency of the number of iterations required to obtain significant accuracy on the distance between the classes the samples come from and on the samples variability,(iii)the influence of different values of the parameter on class separability index.
The variability of a sample coming from a certain class can be expressed by many ways. We considered the indicator given by the mean distance between the feature vectors representing examples coming from that class to quantitatively express the variability within the sample. If is the subset of containing the examples coming from one of the labeled classes, then the measure of the variability of is that can be expressed in terms of the kernel function as [18]
The class separability index is evaluated by
Test 1. We aimed to derive conclusions of previously mentioned types in case of simulated data from normal multidimensional classes. The closeness degree between the resulted datasets of sizes can be evaluated by many ways. One way was to express it in terms of the Mahalanobis distance, . We consider two model-free indices to express the closeness degree using only the datasets, given by the sample Mahalanobis distance, and , respectively, where ,are the sample means and sample covariance matrices corresponding to, .
For instance, the conclusions derived on the basis of the samples generated from Gaussian repartitions, where,, , and are summarized in Figures 1–3 and Table 1.
The samples prove to be comparable values of the variability index, for each, and the variability indices depend increasingly on (Figure 1).
The results obtained in solving the QP problem (2) using Platt's SMO algorithm and the variants of the gradient algorithm using the weight parameters given by (15), (20), and (24), respectively, are summarized in Table 1 and shown in Figure 2. Each entry a/b of Table 1 represents and of (4) corresponding to a particular value of and resulted by applying one of the proposed variants of algorithms.
According to the experimental results, we can conclude that in order to obtain the same accuracy, the variants of the gradient ascent algorithm using the weight parameter given by (15), (20), and (24) require a far less number of iterations. Moreover, as increases, the number of iterations dramatically decreases as compared to Platt's SMO algorithm.
In order to evaluate the recognition rate of the resulted SVM classifier, we used linearly and nonlinearly datasets coming from the same distributions. In the case of this example, the mean recognition rate was around 94%.
Similar results were obtained in case "closer" or "farther" normal distributions were used to generate datasets.
Concerning the variants (15), (20), and (24) of weighting coefficient, the tests proved almost the same efficiency, their mean values being around 0.62, 0.54, and 0.64, respectively. It seems that the variant (24) behaves better than (15) and (20) for .
Test 2. We aim to develop a comparative analysis among the performance corresponding to Platt's SMO and the variants of gradient ascent algorithms presented in Section 2 on the WINE dataset [20]. The data in WINE dataset are the results of a chemical analysis of wines grown in the same region in Italy but derived from three different cultivars, the analysis being determined by the quantities of 13 constituents found in each of the three types of wines. The dataset consists of labeled examples of sizes 59, 71, and 48 coming from the pairwise linearly separable classes respectively. In processing the WINE dataset, we used the kernel , for different values of .
In order to implement the previously mentioned algorithms, we used the variability and separability indices (26) and (27) to find out a suitable criterion for planning a two-class classification of these three subsamples. Unfortunately, the three subsamples proved very close values of the interclass separability index (27), for all values of; therefore, from this point of view, all two-class classifications seemed to be almost equivalent. The variation with respect to of the interclass separability index (27) is presented in Figure 4.
Hopefully, the three subsamples proved quite different variability in the sense of the variability index (26), for all values of , enabling us to formulate the plan: discriminate first between and and then discriminate between and .
The results obtained in solving the QP problem (2) using Platt's SMO algorithm, and the variants of the gradient algorithm using the weight parameters given by (15), (20), and (24), respectively, are summarized in Tables 2 and 3 and shown in Figures 5 and 6. Each entry a/b of the tables represents and of (4) corresponding to a particular value of and resulted by applying one of the proposed variants of algorithms.
In case of this example, the recognition rate was 100% for all values of . Being given the missing information about the measured features and the sizes relative small sizes of the subsamples coming from the three categories of wines, we had no possibility to test the generalization capacities of the resulted classifiers either on simulated data or by splitting the subsamples in design and test data, respectively.
Test 3. We performed a series of tests on the dataset Wisconsin Diagnostic Breast Cancer (WDBC) [20] aiming to develop a comparative analysis on the performance of the variants of gradient ascent algorithms presented in Section 2 and Platt's SMO. We used the kernel , for different values of, and the weighting coefficients given by (15), (20), and (24).
The examples in WDBC dataset 30-dimensional vectors representing the features computed from a digitized image of a fine needle aspirate (FNA) of a breast mass describing characteristics of the cell nuclei present in the image, a confirmed diagnosis either benign (B) or malignant (M) being supplied. It is stated that the dataset is linearly separable and relevant for the design of classifiers having good generalization capacities. The sizes of subsamples labeled by Band M are 357 and 212, respectively.
The variation with respect to of the values of the variability and separability indices (26) and (27) is presented in Figures 7 and 8. The separability index (27) proves to be quite sensitive to the variation of the values of the parameter pointing out an increasing dependency on . Moreover, for , the values of the separability index (27) stabilize around 1.41. Using the variability index (26), the tests revealed that the variability of the M-class seems to be insensitive at the variations of , while the variability index of the B-class depends increasingly on , the values stabilizing around the value 0.705 for .
In the first series of tests, all examples were used in both design and test phases. The results are summarized in Table 4 and Figure 9. Concerning the use of the weight coefficients (15), (20), and (24), the accurate estimates of the maximum value of (4) were computed in a far less number of iterations than Platt's SMO algorithm. A slight better performance resulted for all values of in case of using (24), the mean value of being around 0.99, while the mean values of and were around 0.5 and 0.4, respectively.
From the point of view of the performance in discriminating between the B-class and M-class, for all values of , the recognition rate was 100%.
Being given that the size of the WDBC dataset is relatively large, we used it in order to develop a comparative analysis from the point of view of the generalization capacity corresponding to the proposed variants. In order to derive a suitable splitting strategy of the available data into design and test datasets, we took into consideration the relative relevance of the examples with respect to the class from which they come. We computed a prototype (barycenter) for each class by averaging the examples belonging to it, and the relative relevance of each example coming from each class is expressed in terms of the Euclidian distance to the corresponding prototype.
In order to establish suitable partitions into design and test subsets for each class, we used several strategies, the differences between them being given by the sizes and the way in which the available examples were allotted to the design and test samples. On one hand, in order to extract the most information concerning the classes, the design sample should include some of the most representative examples. On the other hand, the less representative examples give us information concerning the class variability. Following this idea, we arrived at the conclusion that the design and test samples should contain both kinds of examples in different proportions. We aimed to derive conclusions on experimental basis concerning the effects of design and test samples on the recognition rate and generalization capacity. In a series of tests, we considered the following experimental plan. (1)Compute the barycenter of each class (given by the mean of the examples belonging to the class), and sort the examples in each class according to the increasing order of the values of the Euclidian distance to the barycenter. (2)Select the first 10 examples from each class and include them in the test sample. Include the 10 examples from each class corresponding to the largest distances to the barycenter in the design sample. The rest of the examples are placed alternatively in the design and test datasets.
By applying this plan, the whole dataset was split into design dataset consisting of 179 and 106 examples and test dataset including 178 and 106 examples coming from the B-class and the M-class, respectively.
The results are summarized in Table 5 and Figure 10. Concerning the usefulness of the proposed weight coefficients, the variants (15), (20), and (24) proved almost equal efficiency, the number of iterations required to obtain an accurate estimate of the maximum value of (4) being far less than in case of Platt's SMO algorithm. By submitting the test sample to the resulted classifiers, we obtained correct recognition rates in the range [94.01%, 95.07%], the maximum value 95.07% being obtained for and the weight coefficient (20).
Several tests were performed using the same strategy for different sizes of the design and test datasets. For instance, in Table 6 and Figure 11, the results of a test that used the design and test datasets obtained by including from each class the most relevant 10 examples in the test set and the least relevant 30 examples in the design sample are represented. This way, the learning phase was developed on a design dataset containing 189 and 116 examples coming from the B-class and the M-class, respectively. The test phase was performed on a dataset containing 168 and 96 examples coming from the B-class and the M-class, respectively, the resulted recognition rates being in the range [95.08%, 96.59%], where the maximum value 96.59% was obtained for .
As it is expected, higher recognition rates are obtained in case the design dataset is enlarged to contain more of the less relevant examples. For instance,(a)in case the design dataset consists of the least relevant 60 examples and 40 examples from B-class and M-class, respectively, the rest of examples being allotted alternatively to the design and test samples; the sizes of the test and design datasets are 41.12% and 58.88%; the resulted recognition rate is 96.15% when ;(b)the test based on the design dataset consisting of the least relevant 75 examples and 60 examples from B-class and M-class, respectively, the rest of examples being allotted alternatively to design and test samples (38.14% examples in the test set); the recognition rate increases to 98.18% when ;(c)finally, 100% recognition rate results using and the design dataset consisting of the least relevant 100 examples and 70 examples from B-class and M-class, respectively (33.56% examples in the test set).
5. Conclusions and Suggestion for Further Work
In the paper, we propose a modified gradient ascent method for solving the dual problem of nonlinear SVM. Basically, the refinement proposed here consists in using weight parameters to tune the direction of the search to the particular training sequence. The work was based on the use of variability and separability indices expressed in terms of the exponential RBF kernel. A part of the comparative analysis aimed to evaluate the dependency of the expected number of iterations required to obtain reasonable accuracy of the criterion function on the kernel parameter.
The proposed variants of the gradient ascent learning algorithm are somehow heuristically justified in the sense that there is no mathematically founded proof of the convergence properties. Therefore, several tests were performed in order to derive conclusions on experimental basis. The tests pointed out good convergence properties of the modified variants, and their convergence rates were significantly higher as compared to Platt's SMO algorithm. The experimental analysis aimed to derive conclusions on the recognition rate as well as on the generalization capacities. All linear classifiers proved almost equal recognition rate and generalization capacities, the difference being given by the number of iterations required for learning the separating hyperplanes.
The learning phase of the SVM involved linearly separable samples randomly generated from Gaussian repartitions and the WINE and WDBC datasets. In order to evaluate the generalization capacities, several tests were also performed on new linearly/nonlinearly separable data coming from the same classes in case of samples randomly generated from Gaussian classes. In case of the WINE and WDBC datasets, both of them are linearly separable and no information concerning the generative model is supplied; therefore an additional strategy for splitting them into design and test samples was required. In case of the tests performed on the WINE dataset, being given its relatively small size, the performance was analyzed using all samples in the design and test phases, while the size of the WDBC dataset, being significantly larger, allowed us to develop different experimental plans by splitting the available data into design and test samples of different sizes.
Being given the optimality of SVMs from the point of view of generalization capacities, as expected, we obtained high recognition rates on new test data in most of cases (around 97%). In case of the WDBC dataset, higher recognition rates were obtained in case the design dataset was enlarged to contain more of the less relevant examples. For instance, a 100% recognition rate resulted using and 66.44% examples in the design set.
The tests pointed out that the variation of the recognition rates depends also on the inner structure of the classes from which the learning data come as well as on interclass separability degree. Consequently, we estimate that the results are encouraging and entail future work toward extending these refinements to multiclass classification problems and approaches in a fuzzy-based framework.
- V. Vapnik, The Nature of Statistical Learning Theory, Springer, New York, NY, USA, 1995. View at Zentralblatt MATH · View at MathSciNet
- V. Vapnik, Statistical Learning Theory, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY, USA, 1998. View at Zentralblatt MATH · View at MathSciNet
- S. Abe, "Support vector machines for pattern classification," in Advances in Pattern Recognition, Springer, London, UK, 2010. View at Publisher · View at Google Scholar · View at Zentralblatt MATH · View at MathSciNet
- J. Shawe-Taylor and N. Cristianini, Support Vector Machines and Other Kernel-Based Learning Methods, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2000.
- E. Osuna, R. Freund, and F. Girosi, "Improved training algorithm for support vector machines," in Proceedings of the 7th IEEE Workshop on Neural Networks for Signal Processing (NNSP '97), pp. 276–285, September 1997. View at Scopus
- L. I.-J. Chien, C.-C. Chang, and Y.-J. Lee, "Variant methods of reduced set selection for reduced support vector machines," Journal of Information Science and Engineering, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 183–196, 2010. View at Google Scholar · View at Scopus
- Y.-J. Lee and O. L. Mangasarian, "SSVM: a smooth support vector machine for classification," Computational Optimization and Applications, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 5–22, 2001. View at Publisher · View at Google Scholar · View at MathSciNet · View at Scopus
- L. J. Cao, S. S. Keerthi, C. J. Ong, P. Uvaraj, X. J. Fu, and H. P. Lee, "Developing parallel sequential minimal optimization for fast training support vector machine," Neurocomputing, vol. 70, no. 1–3, pp. 93–104, 2006. View at Publisher · View at Google Scholar · View at Scopus
- G. C. Cawley and N. L. C. Talbot, "Improved sparse least-squares support vector machines," Neurocomputing, vol. 48, pp. 1025–1031, 2002. View at Publisher · View at Google Scholar · View at Scopus
- C.-H. Li, H.-H. Ho, Y.-L. Liu, C.-T. Lin, B.-C. Kuo, and J.-S. Taur, "An automatic method for selecting the parameter of the normalized kernel function to support vector machines," Journal of Information Science and Engineering, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 1–15, 2012. View at Google Scholar · View at MathSciNet · View at Scopus
- T. Joachims, "Making large-scale SVM learning practical," in Advances in Kernel Methods—Support Vector Learning, pp. 41–56, 1998. View at Google Scholar
- J. A. K. Suykens, J. de Brabanter, L. Lukas, and J. Vandewalle, "Weighted least squares support vector machines: robustness and sparce approximation," Neurocomputing, vol. 48, pp. 85–105, 2002. View at Publisher · View at Google Scholar · View at Scopus
- S. Rueping, "mySVM: another one of those support vector machines," 2003, http://www-ai.cs.uni-dortmund.de/SOFTWARE/MYSVM.
- E. Alpaydin, Introduction to Machine Learning, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, USA, 2004.
- P. Laskov, "Feasible direction decomposition algorithms for training support vector machines," Machine Learning, vol. 46, no. 1–3, pp. 315–349, 2002. View at Publisher · View at Google Scholar · View at Scopus
- S. Shalev-Shwartz, Y. Singer, and N. Srebro, "Pegasos: primal estimated sub-GrAdient sOlver for SVM," in Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML '07), pp. 807–814, June 2007. View at Publisher · View at Google Scholar · View at Scopus
- V. Yugov and I. Kumazava, "Online boosting algorithm based on two-phase SVM training," ISRN Signal Processing, vol. 12, 2012. View at Google Scholar
- L. State, C. Cocianu, and M. Mircea, "Heuristic attempts to improve the generalization capacities in learning SVMs," in Proceedings of the 13th ACIS International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing, pp. 108–116, 2012.
- C.-L. Cocianu, L. State, and P. Vlamos, "A new method for learning the support vector machines," in Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Software and Database Technologies (ICSOFT '11), pp. 365–370, July 2011. View at Scopus
- http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/index.html.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
I don't worry too much! Just a little curious though.
I will use -Os. Done! Decided! :)
Printable View
I don't worry too much! Just a little curious though.
I will use -Os. Done! Decided! :)
Global functions CAN be inlined, but you always need to also have a global copy too (because some source that doesn't include the source may be calling the function). If the function is marked static, the compiler can avoid generating the code for the function if it's not called within the current unit.
By the way, the keyword "inline" does not allow the function to be defined twice. It needs to be "static inline" to allow it to be declared twice.
inline forces the compiler to allow multiple definitions across compilation units, whether the function is static or not. (And in this sense, the compiler isn't allowed to ignore inline.) However, if it's not static, all definitions must be exactly the same (no diagnostic required), or undefined behaviour will result. Effectively, this means you can have one definition in a header file, included by whoever wants the functionality.
Thanks, that is good to know!
It would be good if matsp issue could be solved though. Could you post your full example please?
I don't understand the original problem. The question is, how to prevent the compiler from inlining a function. The answer is, define the function in a .cpp file, not a .h file. Simple as that.
If the function is in a .cpp file, then other modules don't have access to its source implementation, and the ONLY choice is to call the function.
Writing the code in the .h file, either as an in-class-definition inline or outside the class using the "inline" keyword, still doesn't guarantee that the compiler will inline it.
In sum, it is easy to PREVENT inlining, although there is no (portable) way to FORCE it. I don't see what the source of the original question was.
And indeed, that solution was suggested in post #5, as I noted earlier.Quote:
The question is, how to prevent the compiler from inlining a function. The answer is, define the function in a .cpp file, not a .h file. Simple as that.
Not very clear, that. No, you can't include the header twice, but there's absolutely no reason to do that anyway. That's what header guards are for.
The issue I'm talking about is when you have two source files that include the header containing the definition.
Anyway, I see what the misunderstanding manav had was. Inlining is not directly related to code size. Inlining can make the executable bigger, and in other cases it can also make it smaller. I think he is aware of this now.
Whole Program Optimization is MS's term. GCC doesn't support it yet, except via the -combine switch, which, frankly, is a hack and doesn't play well with the structure of traditional makefiles.


text:
Wellington, Sept. 20 (ANI): Pope Francis has urged the Catholic Church to overcome small-minded rules to find a new balance between upholding its teachings and becoming understanding priests, not dogmatic bureaucrats.
In an interview with the Italian Jesuit monthly, Civilta Cattolica, Pope Francis said the Church should not allow its bans on gay marriage, abortion and contraception to dominate its teachings, but must be a more welcoming place where priests are understanding pastors, Stuff.co.nz reports.
He further added that if the Church does not strike a balance between upholding rules and demonstrating mercy, even the moral edifice of the Church is likely to fall like a house of cards.
However, Pope did not hinted out at prospect of any changes to be made soon to such moral teachings.
He also said he envisioned greater decision-making roles for women in the 1.2 billion member Church, but suggested it would not include a change in the current ban on a female priesthood.
Francis went on to become the first non-European pope in 1300 years who condemned the difference of attitude by the Church towards homosexuals.
He said the Church should see itself as 'a field hospital after a battle' and try to heal the larger wounds of society, instead of being obsessed with imposing strict rules of the Church on people. (ANI)


text:
By Dr. Gary Edwards, firstname.lastname@example.com
Localization is the name of the game in multi-unit retail. Large retail chains offer consistency, scale and other benefits, but if the brand fails to deliver exceptional experiences to local consumers, it's unlikely that the retailer will gain any real traction in today's highly competitive retail marketplace.
The most effective multi-unit retailers give local store managers the ability to mold retail experiences to local shopping preferences. Customer feedback plays an important role in shaping local customer experiences. However, many chains send volumes customer feedback to local managers rather than providing them with the summary information they need to make meaningful improvements to local experiences.
The bottom line? Multi-unit retail isn't getting any easier, and stores live and die according to the quality of the experiences they offer their customers. Unless multi-unit retailers find new ways to put actionable customer feedback insights into the hands of local managers, their ability to reap the benefits of increased customer loyalty, brand advocacy and other rewards will be extremely limited.
The local retail dilemma
Local managers value customer feedback and see it as a cornerstone of Customer Experience Management (CEM). So the issue isn't whether or not local managers will use customer feedback if it is offered to them (they will), but whether the feedback they receive will be presented in a manner in a format that can be easily translated into local improvements.
The problem is that local retail managers face practical challenges that complicate the CEM process, underscoring the need for a more streamlined approach to customer feedback analysis. These challenges include:
Simply put, the local retail dilemma is that site managers need visibility to local customer feedback insights in order to create first-rate customer experiences. But in many cases, local managers lack the time, skills and experience to capture those insights in any meaningful way.
Translating customer feedback into local improvements
More and more brands are recognizing that customer experience management is primarily a local retail activity. Consequently, chain retailers are eager to push ownership and responsibility for the customer experience to local store managers. But the brands that are achieving the best results are the ones that provide store managers with tools that leverage local insights as well as global customer experience insights.
For example, rather than being forced to sift through large volumes of feedback data, local managers need streamlined reports that identify local customer experience issues and offer recommendations for local improvements. In fast-paced retail environments, managers should have the ability to identify and target customer experience improvements in a matter of minutes – not hours or even days after customers have informed the brand about the problem. They also need to be given the tools to rescue dissatisfied customers and make sure that their concerns are addressed promptly.
Additionally, local store managers need access to tools and resources that allow them to leverage global insights for local improvements. Social sharing solutions and similar technologies can go a long way toward distributing best practices and creating virtual knowledge centers, giving inexperienced local managers access to learnings that have proved effective across the brand. At the same time, brand executives need to promote opportunities to connect local managers through face-to-face gatherings, technology investments and other strategies.
Customer feedback can (and should) drive local retail performance. By actively supporting local store managers and improving their ability to implement actionable feedback insights, multi-unit retailers can significantly improve both customer experiences and local store outcomes.
Dr. Gary Edwards, chief customer officer at Empathica, is responsible for oversight of sales, marketing, client strategy, marketing science and retail insights. He is involved in solving business challenges with research and technology solutions. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com.


text:
August 4-8, 2009 • Regent's Park College, Oxford
The significance of literature for the development of Christian faith and Baptist identity is evident in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Daniel Defoe's novels, and classics such as The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter. Because theology and literature often provide complementary visions of the world, faithful men and women frequently appeal to imaginative fiction—in the form of novels, plays, short stories, and poetry—to open the life of faith to richer expression and understanding.
Young Scholars in the Baptist Academy will convene a select group of participants across academic disciplines to explore topics related to the literary imagination in Baptist life. We invite essays that explore this theme in various ways, including but not limited to:
- Which literary voices are significant in the development of Baptist faith?
- What unique contributions to the academic study of literature emerge from Baptist scholars or in relation to Baptist life?
- How might literature enrich Baptist life and practice?
- How might Baptist faith and life be enriched by a renewed understanding of the literary aspects of scripture
Keynote Lecture: Ralph Wood, Baylor University "Pope Benedict, Flanery O'Conner and Divine Eros" Benedict Oconner and Eros Ralph Wood ysba 9
- Lynn Hinojosa, Baylor University, "Typology, The Novel, and the Self"
- Bryan Whitfield, Mercer University, "Listening to the Community in the Cave of Resonance: Literary Readings of Scripture and the Gathered Church" whitfield oxford paper
- Mary Nelson, Dallas Baptist University. "Freedom of Conscience: Shakespeare's Measure of Measure" Mary Nelson_DBU
- Adam Glover, University of Kentucky "Allegory and Conversion in Pepita Jimenez" Glover_Young Scholars_Final
- Michael Tilley, Georgetown College "Authority, Liturgy, and Thick Confessions: Themes in Lewis's "Till We Have Faces" Tilley Authority, Revelation and Aesthetic Evaluation Draft Complete Paper 20090611b
- John Thompson, University of Dayton, "It was the Catholic with the Candlestick!: Understanding Baptist Identity through an Analysis of the Competing Ecclesiologies in the Mystery Novels of Andew Greeley and Ralph McInerny" thompsonOxford Paper Summer 2009
- Jonathan Sands Wise, Georgetown College "P.D. James and the Complexity of Evil" sands wise James and the Complexity of Human Evil2
- Jenny Howell, Baylor University, "The Dialogical Imagination in the Poetry of Wendell Berry" howell ysba 09 berry
- Ralph Wood, Baylor University, Senior Scholar
- Paul Fiddes Professor of Systematic Theology, University of Oxford;
- Scott Moore, Baylor University, Consultant
- James D. Anderson, University of Kentucky, Emeritus, Consultant
- Douglas Henry, Baylor University
- Beth Newman, Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond
- Margaret Watkins, Baylor Univeristy
- Andy Chambers, Missouri Baptist Univeristy
- Roger Ward, Georgetown College


text:
- He gets up early with SoJo every morning and lets me sleep. I'm a night owl and both of my boys are not (6am is sleeping in for SoJo), so I really love that he lets me get a little more sleep before he goes to work.
- I never have to ask him to change a diaper. He just tunes in to when it's time.
- Anytime SoJo brings a book to him, he'll stop what he's doing and read it with him.
- When we have dinner together, he always is the one to feed SoJo, letting mama eat. And boy, do I like to eat, uninterrupted, I might add.
- When we go somewhere in the car, he's always the one to buckle SoJo in. Those car seats are a pain to buckle. I'm sure many of you agree.
- He's f-in funny! For example, he finds Thomas the Train pretty creepy. I had to write this because we were just talking about it and watching it really for the first time, and it was cracking me up. He joked that the show is all about conformity and social caste system, since the trains (by nature) are forced to stay on a track. Plus those trains never look each other in the eyes. Their eyeballs just go in circles, avoiding direct contact.
June 21, 2009
Happy Father's Day!
11 comments:
Sounds like a winner of a Dad little Sojo's got there. All those mom perks don't sound too shabby either!ReplyDelete
Happy Father's Day Mr. Geek.
Aww, such handsome menfolk you have!ReplyDelete
That is wonderful Happy Father's Day to him!ReplyDelete
He's a keeper!ReplyDelete
What a great daddy! I hope he has a GREAT Father's Day:-)ReplyDelete
aw he sounds so great! happy fathers day to himWReplyDelete
He's a great dad! Happy Father's Day to him.ReplyDelete
He sounds like such an awesome dad...and a great husband, too!ReplyDelete
What a sweet guy!ReplyDelete
I love how he just jumps in and does things and I particularly enjoy his take on the whole Thomas the Train thing. Thanks to your hubby, we can lift the blinders and see the truth!ReplyDelete
Brings a tear to my eye. HOnestly I wish my dh was like that with our kids. It weighs on me in considering if I want more kids.ReplyDelete
Congrats to your man for being good.


text:
The hundreds of billions of dollars worth of airliner orders now on the books will help insulate aerospace manufacturing companies from the industry crisis now facing U.S. airlines, according to an aerospace manufacturing trade group based near Washington, D.C.
Aerospace Industries Association president Marion Blakey said although U.S. airlines are asking manufacturers to defer orders as they curtail services and lay off workers, foreign carriers have stepped in to occupy those production slots, softening the blow of the industry downturn.
"There is a reason for real concern and pain in the U.S. airline industry, and to an extent worldwide," she said. "But from a manufacturing aspect, a broad picture is emerging of a strong market with the backlog of orders holding pretty well."
U.S. airlines account for only about 10 percent of Boeing's order backlog, as carriers in fast-growing regions like India, China and the Middle East purchase the bulk of new airplanes. But Blakey, the former head of the Federal Aviation Administration, said U.S. carriers eventually will need to replace their aging airplanes with newer models to remain competitive in the face of rising fuel costs. "There is real demand for more fuel-efficient, high-tech aircraft, and that will favor manufacturers," she said.
AIA has close to 300 members, and counts among its ranks Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and scores of other companies exhibiting here at Farnborough this week. The association has a chalet at the show site and is serving as the lead exhibitor at the U.S. Pavilion in Hall 2.
The headwinds buffeting the airline industry aren't expected to abate unless fuel prices retreat from their current record highs. As the situation now stands, they are predicted to go higher still. Besides engine efficiency gains, Blakey also pointed to the so-called NextGen overhaul of the U.S. air traffic control system as a way to cut fuel costs. Scheduled for rollout in phases over the next 15 years, NextGen will leverage satellite navigation and other technologies to provide more direct routes and smoother traffic flows into large airports. But the program could cost an extra billion dollars a year in infrastructure costs.
Blakey's official stance with regard to aviation user fees has turned to opposition after spending her last months at the FAA championing the concept as the best way to spread the costs of ATC services among all users and pay for NextGen upgrades.
AIA, she noted, is "clearly opposed" to user fees, a position she has adopted as the association's head. She pointed to a plan in the U.S. Senate that calls for an increase in aviation fuel taxes as a good compromise that provides for additional funding yet doesn't impose fees. Airlines strongly support user fees as a way to spread the cost of ATC modernization to other aviation users, particularly business aviation.


text:
Eli Lilly & Co. announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Novartis Animal Health for approximately $5.4 billion. The transaction will make Elanco, Lilly's own animal health business, the second largest animal health company in terms of global revenue.
Novartis Animal Health had an approximately $1.1 billion revenue in 2013. The business is focused on development of prophylaxis and treatments of diseases in pets, farm animals, and farmed fish. Lilly will acquire nine manufacturing sites, six dedicated R&D facilities, a portfolio of about 600 products, a pipeline with over 40 projects in development, and more than 3,000 employees.
John C. Lechleiter, Lilly's chairman, president and CEO, said, "Animal health continues to represent an attractive growth opportunity for Lilly. We intend to keep Elanco and to take advantage of the substantial synergies between our animal health and human health businesses. Significant investments in our animal health business in recent years have enabled Elanco to double its revenue since 2008, leading the industry in growth. Global trends suggest continued sustained demand for animal health products in the years ahead. Through this acquisition, which moves Elanco to top-tier in the industry, we intend to create value for our shareholders by adding to our promising pipeline of innovative animal health assets, increasing sales through a larger commercial footprint, and improving efficiencies and lowering costs."
The acquisition will be an all-cash transaction and is expected to diversify Elanco. Concurrent with its transaction with Eli Lilly, Novartis also announced divestment of its vaccines business to GlaxoSmithKline.
Joseph Jimenez, CEO of Novartis, said, "Lilly emerged from our competitive process as the clear best buyer for Novartis Animal Health and a good home for our employees. We look forward to a smooth transition of the business over the next several quarters." The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2015.


text:
We're really sorry but we've sold out of this product and are unable to obtain more stock. In most cases this is usually because the manufacturer has discontinued the product. We don't want you to miss out though so here's some of our best selling products which are similar to what you are looking for. Take a look and you could just find the perfect item. Just a small point to note - they might not have the exact features as the product you initially wanted so please be sure to check the features before you buy.
The Accelero Hybrid is the first graphics card cooler with integrated air and liquid solution in the market. It offers an all-in-one solution with 200% cooling performance and 9 times quieter than the stock cooler. While existing VGA Liquid Cooling Solutions (LCS) are restricted to a specific graphics card, this cooler is compatible to a vast range of NVIDIA and AMD graphic cards. It is also the first LCS to have an integrated active fan specifically designed to cool RAM and VR. Moreover, it is simple to use, maintenance-free and excellent value-for-money. Computer enthusiasts and gamers will definitely not want to miss this state-of-the-art integrated cooling solution.


text:
Snackshot: Mozart's
Photos by Katharine Shilcutt
Shiny black ducks bob in the placid water of Lake Austin, just above the dam that creates Lady Bird Lake (nee Town Lake) just below the immense concrete barrier. They dive underneath the water every few minutes or so, catching minnows while they wait patiently for a kind patron at Mozart's (3825 Lake Austin Blvd) to toss them the leftover crumbs of a bagel or slice of coffee cake.
From the sprawling wooden decks that overlook the lake, you can take in Austin's rolling hills, the far-off McMansions that have sprung up on the limestone bluffs, some very brave squirrels who will clamber onto your table in search of scraps and what is one of the city's most relaxing and scenic spots (at least since the original multi-tiered decks at The Oasis burned down and were haphazardly rebuilt into a horrifying tourist mecca). If the hustle and bustle of SXSW has you feeling stressed, Mozart's is the place to come unwind.
A quick drive down Cesar Chavez until it turns into Lake Austin Boulevard, then just a few blocks further west and you'll reach Oyster Landing, a collection of restaurants, cafes and a meditation center, with Mozart's square in the middle of it all. Parking can be difficult in the main lot, so just head up the hill opposite the lake and park your car there. At Mozart, which roasts its own beans on site every two days, your best bet is a cup of bottomless coffee for only $2.99 and a selection from its pastry case; the bakery is on site, as well. There's not much else to be found at Mozart's -- no paninis or beers or anything else to clutter up the simple aesthetic -- which is a good thing. They've been doing coffee right for 17 years (and pastries almost as well for eight years), so why mess with a good thing?
Thursday through Sunday evenings feature live music, so you won't escape the music scene entirely this week. But you're in Austin, after all -- why would you want to?
More pictures of Mozart's are after the jump.
Get the Food & Drink Newsletter
Our weekly guide to Houston dining includes food news and reviews, as well as dining events and interviews with chefs and restaurant owners.
Recommended for You
Powered by SailThru
Upcoming Events
Beaumont Craft Beer Festival
TicketsSun., Nov. 5, 2:00pm
Sponsor Content


text:
Release Tension From Lower Back, Hips and Thighs With This Simple Yoga Pose
Quirktastic Media February 26, 2015
Hello, everyone! During the Quirky, Fit and Fabulous Challenge, I will be bringing you several guest posts from bloggers to help teach you new things and to inspire you on your journey to become 'Quirky, Fit and Fabulous' this year! Meet our guest blogger, Adeola from SHE GOT HER OWN as she shows you a yoga pose that will help you relieve tension.


text:
Stained: An Alpha Billionaire Romance (The Monroe Trilogy Book
Today's Free Kindle eBook: Stained: An Alpha Billionaire Romance (The Monroe Trilogy Book 1)
**PART 1 OF A TRILOGY**"His instant lust was palpable. His instant love was unbelievable. The instant legacy we created? That was fate."Alice doesn't know she will succumb to the gravity that is Damon Monroe, the only heir to his family's mighty legacy.But he does.From the moment they meet at his exclusive nightclub, Monroe insists that Alice is his fated match, foretold almost fifteen years ago when he didn't believe in love. His need for her costs her more than one job. His drive to continue his family's legacy has her making more than one mistake. And his instant lust that transforms into instant love for a woman named Alice Culver?That makes her the only one who can destroy him.Alice doesn't know she will completely change one of the most powerful families in America. She doesn't know she will become one of the most hated yet revered women in the corporate world.Everything she doesn't know, Monroe will teach her. He will stain her, train her, and then help her reign over his empire.All she has to do is show up to work one night. Fate will take over from there.—EXCERPT—Monroe extended his silencing finger from his lips to hers. Guess I'll shut up. Where was the light going? The air? Alice held her breath in case it was the difference between staying alive and suffocating."Two words, Ms. Culver." His voice was the air now. Gentle. Thick. Quiet. Alice thought she had to strain to hear him. On the contrary, the room was so quiet she could hear her own heart beating. "Yes. No. That's it. Those are the only words you're allowed to say for now. Do you understand?"She swallowed. Bile? Hopefully not. "Yes," she squeaked, even though she had no idea what was going on. "Yes, sir.""Ah. I suppose I should allow that as a third word. Sir is fine. I like the way you say 'sir,' Ms. Culver. Very much so."Another gulp, eyes wide, hands curling into nervous fists. What's going on? Is he flirting with me? No. No way. This man did not flirt. He was rich. Handsome. Confident. Those types of men didn't flirt. They demanded. Up front.Oh. My. God.Alice realized why Susan was really steering her away from Mr. Monroe. That reason was coming for her right now.She stumbled back against the couch, landing with bowed legs and hands snatching the armrest. She had fluffed these pillows, too!Monroe loomed over her, refraining from touching her, but his fingers twitching in delight. For her? Really?He had a spirit strong enough to make her recognize it earlier that night. His body? Ha! The more he loomed over her, arms surrounding her as he lowered his lips toward hers, the more Alice recognized an exquisite beauty to him. Somehow this man took classic masculinity and drove it up to eleven… thousand.That cologne bloomed around her countenance. A hundred blossoms flowered, their scent overwhelming her as his stubble grazed her cheek. He was this close?Alice was far from a kissing virgin, whether vanilla or the French variety. Nevertheless, she felt like the most inexperienced lass in the cosmos when Monroe whispered, "Yes?"That wildly thumping heart within Alice's rib cage knew exactly what he meant. "Y…" No, no! This was wrong.This was terrible! She should not be in this situation while on the job! No matter how handsome her boss was! No! Say no, dummy!"Yes?"The word barely eked from her lips when Monroe kissed hers.
Just follow this link to get the freebie:


text:
At Gemvara, we believe that the jewelry you wear should be one of a kind, like you. That's why we make each piece to order, one at a time, just the way you want it. Choose diamond and palladium or citrine and platinum: it's your choice. Mix and match gems and precious metals for a look that's exactly you. It's jewelry for all life's occasions, from an engagement or birthday to your own personal milestones and celebrations. Our anniversary gift ideas celebrate your past, present and future and tell her you'd marry her all over again. Gemvara uses only the highest quality materials to craft your white gold february birthstone band jewelry design with meticulous attention to detail. Our precious metals are recycled or responsibly mined. The February birthstone, amethyst, has a lovely lavender color that complements every shade in your wardrobe. Cool 14 karat white gold goes with almost anything, never overwhelming your outfit. Gemvara also offers any style in luxurious 18-karat white gold, which has higher gold content for even more lasting value. Both are plated with rhodium, a platinum group metal, for a brighter white finish. Our wide selection of white gold february birthstone band jewelry by Jeet Palavwala, Ruzanna Davtian, Just Like You Designs, and other talented designers means you can find jewelry that's exactly your style. You can also shop by style, choosing our Featured Collection, Classic, or Our Picks Collections. Gemvara's fine quality white gold february birthstone band jewelry is designed to be passed down for generations to come, crafted by hand in the United States.
We can help right away. Chat with a jewelry expert now!