text:
The Fula Kita (also known as the Fula Maasina) are located predominantly in the Maasina region of Mali. However, there are other smaller communities of Fula Kita in Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire. The language spoken by these Fulani people is called Peul, or Fuladougou. Peul, which is a part of the West Atlantic branch of the Niger-Congo language family, has two dialects: eastern and western.
Almost all the population of Mali is African. The major groups include the Bambara, the Tuareg, the Soninke, the Sénouf, the Songhai, the Malinké, and the Fulani. Nomadic Tuareg and other Berber tribes roam the Sahel region and parts of the Sahara Desert.
The Maasina region of Mali is a full-fledged geographical and political state located in the central part of the country. The culture and lifestyle of the Fula Kita who live there are virtually identical to those of the other Fulani peoples in West Africa.
The Fula Kita make a living mainly from farming and herding. Gathering forest products, hunting, fishing, and trading are also part of their daily lives. Staple crops include millet, rice, and peanuts. Cattle are their main type of livestock, but sheep and goats are also raised. The cattle are not the usual Fulani humped breed, but a native Fouta Djallon breed called Ndama, which is resistant to the disease-carrying tsetse fly.
Herding cattle is usually a male activity, although the women milk and help take care of the cattle. The women also tend to the small livestock and poultry, cultivate gardens, and carry containers of milk and cheese to the local markets for sale or trade.
Although Fula Kita villages are scattered, each village has a central court and a mosque. Together, these compose a miside, or community. Each miside has a headman who handles village affairs and answers to a chief.
Houses belonging to the settled Fula Kita are typically round with mud walls and thatched roofs. Each hut has an encircling veranda. The nomadic Fula Kita live in open, beehive-shaped huts with no walls or verandas. Each hut is surrounded by a cattle corral.
Daughters remain with their mothers until they marry. However, as soon as a son reaches puberty, he leaves the family compound and lives alone in a nearby compound, usually with some cattle. This new compound will become the home of the son and his future wife.
The first marriage of a man is usually arranged by the man's father. A bride-service of helping the girl's father with his livestock is performed by the man, who usually marries while he is in his early twenties. Polygyny (the practice of having more than one wife) is common, up to the Muslim limit of four wives. There is one chief wife, however, who has authority over the other wives.
Children belong to "age-sets" until they marry. An age-set occurs at three or four year intervals, with every child born in those years belonging to that set. The children in an age-set go to school together and often work together. When the time for marriage arrives, they may even help one another with the bride-service. Within each age-set are a leader, a deputy, and a judge.
The Fula Kita in Mali almost completely Muslim. As such, they follow the teachings of the Koran, Islam's holy book. They believe that Allah is the only god and that Mohammed is his prophet. To teach their children the Muslim faith, some of the Fula Kita villages have established Islamic schools.
Efforts to evangelize these people have resulted in only a very small number of Fula Kita believers. Apparently, they are very devoted to Islam and view it as a fulfillment of their needs. To win the Fula Kita to Christ, further prayer is needed so that their hearts and eyes will be opened to the Truth.
* Ask the Lord to send additional missionaries to join the ones who are already working among the Fula Kita of Mali.
* Pray that God will use the Fula Kita believers to minister salvation to their families and friends.
* Ask God to raise up prayer teams who will begin breaking up the spiritual soil of Mali through worship and intercession.
* Pray that strong local churches will be raised up among the Fula Kita.
|Profile Source: Bethany World Prayer Center
|Prayer Links:
|Global Prayer Digest: 2007-01-18
|Global Prayer Digest: 2011-02-26
|Global Prayer Digest: 2014-02-22
|People Name General
|Fulani, Maasina
|People Name in Country
|Fulani, Maasina
|Population in Mali
|World Population
|Total Countries
|Progress Scale
|1 ●
|2 (per PeopleGroups.org)
|Alternate Names
|Fula Kita, Fula Macina, Fulani, Fulbe Maasina, Fulfulde Masina, Liptako, Maasina, Macina, Macina Fula, Macina Fulani, Niafunke, Peuhala
|People ID
|West and Central Africa
|10/40 Window
|Persecution Rank
|44 (Open Doors top 50 rank, 1 = highest persecution ranking)
|Location in Country
|Widespread. Source: Ethnologue 2016
|West and Central Africa
|10/40 Window
|Persecution Rank
|44 (Open Doors top 50 rank, 1 = highest persecution ranking)
|Location in Country
|Widespread.. Source: Ethnologue 2016
|Primary Language:
|Fulfulde, Maasina People group listing
|Language Code:
|ffm Ethnologue Listing
|Yes ScriptSource Listing
|Total Languages:
|Primary Language:
|Fulfulde, Maasina People group listing
|Language Code:
|ffm Ethnologue Listing
|Total Languages:
|Primary Language:
|Fulfulde, Maasina
|Bible Translation ▲
|Status (Years)
|Bible Portions
|Yes (1934)
|New Testament
|Yes (2005)
|Complete Bible
|Audio Bible
|Possible Print Bibles
|Forum of Bible Agencies
|Gospel Go
|World Bible Finder
|World Bibles
|Resource Type ▲
|Resource Name
|Audio Recordings
|Audio Bible teaching (GRN)
|Audio Recordings
|Online New Testament (FCBH)
|Film / Video
|Jesus Film: view in Fulfulde, Maasina
|Text / Printed Matter
|Bible: New Testament: Gospel of Jesus the Messiah
|Primary Religion:
|Major Religion ▲
0.00 %
|Christianity (Evangelical 0.01 %)
0.01 %
|Ethnic Religions
0.00 %
0.00 %
99.99 %
0.00 %
|Other / Small
0.00 %
0.00 %
|Christian Segments ▲
0.0 %
0.0 %
0.0 %
|Other Christian
0.0 %
25.0 %
|Roman Catholic
75.0 %
|Photo Source:
|West Africa Gateway
|Map Source:
|Bethany World Prayer Center
|Profile Source:
|Bethany World Prayer Center
|Data Sources:
|Data is compiled from various sources. Read more


text:
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We offer a wide range of accounting software's and inventory software's across a complete spectrum of brands, priding ourselves as total solution providers. Meanwhile our extensive, well-trained and readily available team of engineers is waiting to help you. Furthermore, we are listed as fast track approval consultants for software package solutions under iSPRINT BY IDA Singapore.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
This Charming Man: Bronson Twine
My journey into Second Life has led me to some amazing places to shop. I am a shopoholic. I like to look good. During my time in SL a few kind residents and friends have often stated that I have great style. But when I think of mens style, there is one name that comes to mind: Bronson Twine.
I stumbled upon irregularguy, Bronson's blog, through perusing other blogs. When I landed on his site I was immediately in heaven. A male with great style, amazing photographs and a presentation of it all so clean, I immediately bookmarked and read every single entry.
We have a lot of the same taste in style, which made me curious about who Bronson was behind the blog. A little social network called Plurk brought Bronson to a much more vivid light for me. I have learned he has a great sense of humor, is very intelligent, witty and charming, amongst a myriad of hilarity that always leaves me laughing. Then there is his music taste, almost identical to mine! Is Bronson my long-lost twin brother from another mother? Perhaps, in spirit and through the intertwined highway that is the internet, I feel I have found a kindred spirit.
Bronson inspired me in many ways to reach my goal to blog male fashion and my findings in Second Life. His images make me want to know more, they paint a journey, conjuring up a tapestry that often feels like watching a film trailer. I always get taken into a journey that spurs music and fast paced flashes of scenes and I am never disappointed!
Through painting imagery and sharing your style, I feel we bloggers have something special, a visual highway of adventuring in Second Life and a network to show our personalities and the 'soul' of the avatar. Creativity is my addiction and through my blog I have found a new way to be the artist I am unable to be in my real life due to my illness creating limitations.
So I thank you Bronson Twine, for sharing your creativity and stellar imagery, for without doing so I would never have leaped into the fashion blogging, a creative outlet that has brought me great joy. It has been a great gift to get to know you.
What Bronson Is Wearing:
Skin – Rainn T2 Beard – *Sacred*
Hair – Rob Hair, Espresso – NSD
Glasses – Augie Glasses – Reek
Ears – Type 1 Stretched Ear, Human, 7/8″ – Aitui
Shirt – White Oxford, Full Messy Tails – Schadenfreude
Tie – Skeletonflake Tie – Schadenfreude
Jeans – Polar Jeans, Black – Blitzed
Shoes – Pornstar Lo-tops – Urban Bomb Unit
T-Shirt – Ture Tee, Black Striped – Nanuk
Cuff – Key Cuff – Kari
Bracelet – Beach Bracelet – Concrete Flowers
Finger tape – SiniStyle Designs
Eyes – Ellis, Sleet – LeLutka
What I Am Wearing:
Hair-Dura Boy*23 Black
Facial Hair-NANUK Anders light beard black
Eyes-.ID. Starburst Eyes – Turquoise
Glasses-:Mr.Poet:: Half Rim Eyeglasses
Watch-*BLITZED* Legacy watch – black
Tie-[ bubble ] Punky Black Tie
T-shirt- NANUK elov ripped collar shirt white
Vest-{Gisaci} Classic Zion Vest – Black
Pants-ARAI Nonwash Denim
Boots-BC322 Work Boots Dr.Murders
Poses-Long Awkward Pose, Diesel Works


text:
So I've been feeling something is wrong for weeks... lots of cramping in my cervix and always feeling kinda damp and squishy... But my doctor kept blowing me off and saying oh it's normal and basicaly treating me like a paranoid pregnant lady.
Well I also see a perinatologist for past complications and miscarriages, and because i have thyroid disease. Well she was doing my ultrasound a few days ago and asked me if i'd been leaking or contracting. I told her yeah, i've had some pain... and i always feel damp. She said my fluid was pretty low. They put me on bed rest and we're doing another ultrasound and fetal monitoring today. I'm not sure whats going to happen now. If my fluid hasn't come back up, will they take the baby early? I was schedualed for a c-section next month. I'm 33 weeks on saturday.
Anybody else have low fluid? What happens? Anyway to help fix it besides drowning yourself in water?
This isn't my first baby, but I'm really getting scared. This pregnancy has been absolute hell and I've had a feeling she's going to come early, for weeks now.


text:
A few nights ago, a group of friends and I were going to take a colleague out for dinner. At the last moment, the honoree phoned and said he was called out of state on an emergency. I believe he told one of my friends that he was in Chicago and that he wouldn't return for a few days. Because this friend was recently downsized, we felt sad but disbanded and all thought of rescheduling.
The very next day, in the late morning, the person who we were taking to dinner was spotted in Target shopping not two miles from the restaurant. My friend who got the call saw him, they spoke casually but he did not confront the person, as the honoree recently lost his job and now was caught in a lie.
Why he decided to lie about his where-a-bouts, verses telling the truth is beyond me (actually all of us). But the sense of trust that all of my friends felt for this person was damaged in the process of his fabrication.
The story above is an example of what Sam Harris writes about in his new book, Lying. More of an expanded essay than an actual book, the new work can be read in just under an hour. I downloaded it for $1.99 from Amazon and read it on my Kindle app on my iPad.
The book moves the reader to think about lying as not only a psychological state which can be mild to dramatic (white lies to the sociopath), but as having numerous outcomes with their own social consequences, which are mostly always negative.
To Harris, lying is a form of denying reality, for limited or long-term opportunity or comfort, or to manipulate an outcome to avoid personal responsibility for thoughts or actions. In all cases this, Harris believes, is a breach of trust and a very human fault that disconnects individuals in small and big ways and which does more harm than good to relationships and society. As the author notes:
Whatever our purpose in telling them, lies can be gross or subtle. Some entail elaborate ruses or forged documents. Others consist merely of euphemisms or tactical silences. But it is in believing one thing while intending to communicate another that every lie is born.
Harris does briefly discuss the possible evolutionary antecedence of lying, however it is not the major topic of this work and sadly I wish it were. Lying may have some evolutionary purpose and there is even proof that non-human primates lie. When 400-pound Koko, the American-Sign language using gorilla in an incident blames someone else for breaking the countertop in her trailer, even though the researchers saw her sit on it, that is a form of higher cognitive functioning. Koko lied because she knew if she told the truth, she'd get in trouble. So she blamed another to avoid a negative outcome.
Harris notes statistics which state that 10% of spousal and 38% percent of college student communication involves some form of lying or obfuscation. He suggests that ethical transgressions fall into two categories, poor acts that we perform and good acts which we fail to do. The author believes that lying is an act of commission, or a poor act which we perform. This because thinking about and then lying requires some action from the sender to the receiver.
Harris' discourse includes the interpretation, examples and negative outcomes of white lies (how do we reply when someone says "do I look fat in this dress?"); faint praise (where honest feedback could save both time and resources); and secrets (sharing gossip with one but not the target of the secret). He also explains why telling the truth, while at times it may be painful for many reasons, leads to better positive outcomes. Certainly, the author suggests, in terms of the energy spent remembering the details of lies and the cost of one's personal integrity.
In his brief chapter on "Big Lies," Harris notes, would we have more trust in government and our national leaders if we weren't fed lies about The Gulf of Tonkin, or Watergate, or being told the war in Iraq was to eliminate Saddam Hussein's WMD, which were never there in the first place. These are very big questions and Harris does a fine job answering them through example and "What if's" which may have lead to more honest and open national conversations about war and American influence at home and overseas.
Harris' work in "Lying" does provide an excellent exposition on the process and potential negative outcomes of untruthfulness. I read the work as one of sincerity on the part of the author. I see what he is reaching for philosophically in terms of perfect form, which may be academically or theoretically attainable but in reality for our species perhaps not so. And this may not be a bad thing since lying, even though it's a bad thing to do, still may be in our hominid evolutionary toolbox.


text:
Mount Angel's Oktoberfest,
a celebration of the harvest in Bavarian style.
Something for everyone at Oktoberfest!
Join us for our 51st Celebration Sept 15-18, 2016
Visit the many unique places and sights in Mount Angel throughout the year.
Visit the Cruz'n Car Show Saturday and Sunday - a new show each day featuring 100 different cars each day.


text:
10 Royal Wedding Pics You Don't Want to Miss
According to some lip-reading sources, that's what Wills said to Kate when he first saw her. Not weak-kneed yet? When she first entered the Abbey, Harry turned around then whispered to his bro, "Wait till you see her."
Yes, yes, Kate was stunning. But admit it, you couldn't take your eyes off of MOH and sister-of-the-bride Pippa's figure in that ultra-flattering dress, right?
Crazy Royal Wedding Pics You Won't See Anywhere Else


text: Back in 2008 when I was first introduced to WordPress, NextGEN Gallery was the first gallery plugin I installed because it was one of the few gallery plugins that I found to have the highest ratings. Today on the web, you continue to find NextGEN included in almost all of the 'Top Ten' gallery plugins lists, because it continues to be the most robust gallery plugin on the WordPress market. Now that Photocrati owns the gallery plugin, I know that its future will continue to be as exciting as it has been for the past 5 years that I have been using the plugin and all the extension plugins that have been developed for it. I can't wait for v2.0! :)


text:
- Posted June 9, 2012 by
- LloydBrown
Rolling Hills Estates, California
The 25th Annual Palos Verdes Street Fair & Music Festival is this weekend
The 25th Annual Palos Verdes Street Fair & Music Festival is going on this weekend. The fair will have more than 200 arts and crafts booths, live entertainment on two stages, a food court and beer garden as well as gourmet food trucks. The street fair will be fun for the entire family with carnival rides for all ages as well as free pony rides for the kids and a free children's petting zoo. This event is even dog friendly with the 2012 "Top Dogs" Dog Show and a dog adoption.
As it happens, I was picked to be the official photographer for this event; and tonight they had their 4th Annual PV Teen Night. Essentially the fair was opened to the middle school and high school kids.
You can go to PVstreetfair.com for more details. I will get the all the photos up on GotBaddog.com as quickly as I can; in the meantime, here are some samples from tonight.


text:
Any excuse for a gallery, and this time io9's is concept art that reimagines the greatest space epics. The Star Wars offerings are the best of the bunch, naturally.
Any excuse for a gallery, and this time io9's is concept art that reimagines the greatest space epics. The Star Wars offerings are the best of the bunch, naturally.
The Doctor gets spiffed up for new season. As if Flopsy McEmohair wasn't enough of a change, the BBC has unveiled a new logo/branding for Doctor Who. It's a tad sophomore-year design project, but I kinda dig it.
Second verse, same as the first. Dollhouse is in trouble! How novel! The campaign is thataway.
Ride into Westeros. Horse-riding extras are needed in Northern Ireland for HBO's A Game of Thrones later this month.
Geoff Boucher pointed out yesterday that David Tennant is heading to San Diego for the first time – ostenibly to promote his last spin as Doctor Who – and could that perhaps mean he's won the lead role in The Hobbit? Others are taking the speculation as an excuse to crow that it's a done deal, but we'll just have to wait and see.
As for Peter Jackson, he's denying that we'll get any casting news at Comic-Con.
Boucher's also running an opinion poll, where Atonement's James McAvoy is just narrowly beating Tennant.
Here are some of the things I've micro-blogged over @clubjade in the last week or so.
Sci-fi raver chic, or… Eventually, some fan costumer is going to get their hands on this fiber-optic fabric, and we're going to be seeing walking holograms at cons.
My god! "Star Trek's entire history in all media over the last four decades has been nothing but revisions and reboots. " And so it is. Fascinating stuff… And very familiar.
Speaking of a cycle of never-ending reboots… The companion for the new Doctor Who was announced last week. Quote of the hour: "…I feel like I'm going to be watching Doctor Nine Oh Who One Oh."
For my peeps. Jezebel takes the TV teen queens of the early 90's head to head. Blossom or Clarissa?
Geek decor. Twenty brilliant bookcases.
Wait. Seriously? No wonder Time Lords get only 13 incarnations – at this rate the Doctor is going to be prepubescent before 2018.
You Bent My Wookie's collection of gingerbread… things… is not all geeky, but it is mostly geeky, and isn't that the most important thing? Some of these have been around a while, but others – like the Star Destroyer above – are new to me. (via)
And just for the hell of it, here's a Dalek Christmas tree. CELEBRATE!
Both Lying in the Gutters and SF Crowsnest are calling Eleven for Paterson Joseph, who has been considered a leading contender for the role. He is reportedly the favorite of new showrunner Steven Moffat, and would be the series' first black Doctor.
Joseph did play a bit part in Series 1, but as anyone who remembers Hercules and Xena will tell you, that rarely matters.
Well, it's official – he's leaving after finishing up four specials, and a new Doctor will be stepping in sometime in 2010. Let the speculation
begin continue.
Alan Carr and Justin Lee Collins read David Tennant some 'explicit' Who fanfic. His reaction is priceless. (via)
Russell T. Davies, who revived Doctor Who for the BBC, turned down George's offer to talk about the Star Wars live-action series, according to SFX's review of his new book, The Writer's Tale. Given that every female Who fan I know is not that fond of the guy I'm not shedding any tears… (via)


text:
- Report: #86704
Report - Rebuttal - Arbitrate
Complaint Review: Palmetto Marketing Inc.
Palmetto Marketing Inc.7522 Wiles Rd., STE. 112 Coral Springs, Florida U.S.A.
Palmetto Marketing Inc., PMI ripoff no delivery fraudulent billing asked for cash Coral Springs Florida
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It was not until April 5 that I realized that it had been a month since I had ordered the magazines and still had not recieved them. They had already cashed my two checks I had written to them before I realized that I had been riped off. I looked on the back of the order form for information and found that there was none. They have a declaimer on the back but only if the seller writes the date on the back of it. Then they want you to send a blank check to them to cancel your subscribtion. They also never asked me if I did drugs and about being mean person. They never quoted me any prices until after I ordered the magazines. What made me even think about being riped off was because I had another high school student come to my door tonight tring to sell me magazines for a scholarship to Virginia Tech.
If you are like me you are just plain out of luck. There is nothing I can do to get my $84 back. All I tried to do was help out some high school kids to go on a trip. I have learned my lesson, never give anyone money for anything without verification of company.
Chesapeake, Virginia
This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 04/05/2004 06:21 PM and is a permanent record located here: http://www.ripoffreport.com/r/Palmetto-Marketing-Inc/Coral-Springs-Florida-33067/Palmetto-Marketing-Inc-PMI-ripoff-no-delivery-fraudulent-billing-asked-for-cash-Coral-Sp-86704. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year.
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text:
Student Discipline: The Case Against Legalistic Approaches
In their efforts to manage the college environment, many higher-education institutions have deployed complex systems of student discipline — often in the form of legalistic codes of conduct. But, paradoxically, the major challenges involving...
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text:
Old Spice: Nasty chump
Residue is evil. Stop it.
Advertising Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, USA
Executive Creative Directors: Susan Hoffman, Mark Fitzloff
Creative Directors: Eric Baldwin, Jason Bagley
Art Director: Eric Kallman
Copywriter: Craig Allen
Photographer: Chris Buck
18 comments
Lynx ad from a year ago where he lifts his arm up and it squirts water out?
agreed, it wasnt a mind blowing idea, and it doesnt shows the evilness of the residue
as nasty as that image is...I don't care. That girl has a nice booty.
No comment
Lo encuentro, además de un poco literal, bastante desagradable.
Chief Creative Director Nexus BBDO
HERO CHINA, I can 'see' your reaction to the idea in your photo. :D
Gross! I've seen clumped up deodorant and it truly is evil. :D The visual is pretty icky but then again so are underarm clumps, so yeah: I totally get it. Conscientious people everywhere will start checking their pits and Old Spice sales will skyrocket! Pretty effective call to action, wouldn't you say?
I dream of a day when chickens will be able to cross the road without being questioned regarding their intentions.


text:
Experience Freedom!
Latest News
- Remembering Vernon Adams
- QtCon Keynote: Software as a Public Service
- Canonical Becomes a Patron of KDE e.V.
- Three Weeks Until QtCon!
- KDE's Kirigami UI Framework Gets its First Public Release
Community Blogs
|Migrating to Nextcloud 9
|Ascending from the MV Karwela
|Latest attacks on privacy...
|Multiscreen in Plasma: Improved tools and debugging
- KDE Brainstorm :: Kate option: share tools+sidebar for all docs & split views
- KDE Neon :: Re: Kipi plugins in Gwenview - when?
- KDE Brainstorm :: Re: [Dolphin] Double click to open files as default
- Krita News & Discussion :: Re: A question for Krita developers.
- KDE Neon :: Re: Kipi plugins in Gwenview - when?
Social Media
The KDE® Community is an international technology team dedicated to creating a free and
user-friendly computing experience, offering an advanced graphical desktop, a wide variety of
applications for communication, work, education and entertainment and a platform to easily build
new applications upon. We have a strong focus on finding innovative solutions to old and
new problems, creating a vibrant atmosphere open for experimentation.
Learn more...
Latest Announcements
KDE Releases Applications 16.08.0
18 August, 2016. KDE ships KDE Applications 16.08.0.
KDE Releases Frameworks 5.25.0
13 August, 2016. KDE ships monthly release of KDE Frameworks 5, our modular Qt libraries.
Plasma 5.7.4 Released
Tuesday, 23 August 2016. Plasma 5.7.4 release.
Application Spotlight
Kronometer is a stopwatch application.


text:
D800 article from a canon user
Interesting article about d800 from canon user perspective
#1. "RE: D800 article from a canon user" | In response to Reply # 0yellowz Registered since 05th Sep 2009Fri 13-Apr-12 10:49 PM
Sounds like he's clinging desperately to being comfortable with the canon layout/handling even though he KNOWS he has a better camera in the D800...
All I know is I could never deal with the stupid power switch being on the back of the camera! That and AF that doesn't work. My D200 had better AF accuracy/speed than most newer canons...
Visit my Nikonians gallery.
Visit my Nikonians gallery.
Visit my Nikonians gallery.
#2. "RE: D800 article from a canon user" | In response to Reply # 0DAJolley Nikonian since 19th Dec 2007Fri 13-Apr-12 10:53 PM
Thanks, very interesting. I haven't used the Canon Live View but most comparisons say it much better than Nikon's. I hope Nikon improves this in the future.
Dave Jolley
David Jolley
Pickerington, Ohio
Please visit my Website


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Stop the off-topic, This is about the Explorer Outfit, that we STILL wrongfully didnt get...
i would like to add to this topic that i have been contacting Ubisoft on the support site and they don't reply other then to close the topic which i keep re-opening... and i still have yet to receive the explorer outfit after going above and beyond during the event to help finish the event.... Look I am getting extremely pissed, this is in no way right... I just want what i rightfully deserve why is this issue still not fixed?
Going on three weeks Ubisoft, and this is the ONLY outfit I don't have, which I earned on day one of the challenge.
Not cool.
Even when it ends, is it ever possible to complete it again and still get it, because people hate it when they can't get everything. It's a bit unfair. Well, if they do miss it, can it come in a DLC?
I really hate to be so blunt but ubisoft you're REALLY pissing me off. With AC3 and all the glitches, is swore off ever buying AC at launch again. I read that Black Flag was basically glitch free so I bought it day one. Well here we are five weeks after launch, I still don't have the community challenge explorer outfit, nor can I 100% the challenges because of this issue.
Don't release your damn games if they don't work properly. Now when in the hell are these bugs going to be fixed?
Well, I finally turned on my ACBF after about a month to let ubisoft work on some bugs. Colored me surprised, I finally got my notification for completing the challenge and my outfit is indeed unlocked. I would like to personally thank ubisoft for working on this matter and giving me my reward. Now if I could get the 99/100 challenge glitch patched I'm golden (off-topic). I certainly do hope the rest of the community that had this problem gets their outfit.


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© The Financial Times Ltd 2016
FT and 'Financial Times' are trademarks of The Financial Times Ltd.
The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice.
August 6, 2011 12:09 am
Powell's engaging memoir of his 13 years as Tony Blair's chief of staff uses The Prince, Machiavelli's classic political treatise, to analyse Blair's leadership. Each chapter explores a different theme – "That flatterers should be shunned", for example – testing Machiavelli's principles through an appraisal of Blair's performance.
In Powell's opinion, Blair had those princely qualities, which he explores without undue flattery. He nails his own Blairite colours to the mast clearly in the chapter discussing the PM's vexed relationship with his chancellor – baldly concluding that Gordon Brown was poor prince material and squandered the New Labour legacy.
Powell is surprisingly indiscreet with his anecdotes and asides, which give intriguing glimpses into ministerial chicanery. Absorbing and entertaining, his memoir also has the topical interest of showing scant period critique of Rupert Murdoch's empire.
The New Machiavelli: How to Wield Power in the Modern World, by Jonathan Powell, Vintage, RRP£8.99, 340 pages
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State Sen. Dan Wolf has endorsed his Cape Cod Economic Development Council colleague, Mary Pat Flynn, for another term as county commissioner.
In a press statement, Wolf cited Flynn's leadership on the OpenCape and electronic permitting initiatives.
Wolf, a Democrat, has also endorsed Flynn's fellow Democrat, County Commissioner Sheila Lyons, for re-election.
Location, ST | website.com


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Talk about a sweet deal that keeps getting sweeter.
Orlando Health, one of the region's two large non-profit hospital systems, bought the hospital in Ocoee known as Health Central in 2012.
The sellers? Taxpayers.
A public tax district, which once collected property taxes to build and maintain Health Central, sold the 171-bed hospital plus a nursing facility and doctors' offices for $181 million.
But if taxpayers expected a rebate they are sorely disappointed.
When I first wrote about the West Orange Healthcare District in February, the district had handed back $46 million of that taxpayer money to Orlando Health.
The money was doled out in the form of...


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New Blog Like the Sartorialist, But With Elderly People
Advanced Style gives a nod to the older fashionable set.
We got wind of a new blog called Advanced Style. Blogger Ari Cohen tells us it "documents street style and fashion of the mature and wizened. Our aim is to take photos of elders with a unique sense of personal style that has developed with age." Yes, it's like the Sartorialist, but replace the Vogue editors and model types with quirky grandparents — a demographic the fashion industry all too often ignores. [Advanced Style]


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A vibrant homemade pesto recipe that pairs beautifully with anything from pasta to pita chips.
Sweet corn swimming in a creamy coconut sauce, best served with piping hot rice.
The perfect special-occasion dish using Minute Multi-Grain Medley.
Biscuit bars, DIY mimosa-mixing stations, and beyond.
Learn an easy technique for baking up perfectly portioned mini pies.
Get game-day ready with this guide to deep-frying equipment and techniques.
Staring down an excess of summer squash? Zucchini boats to the rescue!
Use frozen bananas to make this creamy, guilt-free ice cream: with three different flavor variations!
Peanut butter, bananas, and Cocoa Pebbles cereal - the perfect trifecta of deliciousness!
Take your childhood favorite cereal and transform it into a unique and charming dessert, sure...


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The Go and Chess Club (GCC) is a club for people interested in strategy board games, particularly Chess and Go.
Come join us if you enjoy playing or want to learn more about how to play. All skill levels are welcome.
We meet Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 4pm and Fridays at 5pm in Kirkhof's South Lounge (across from the Lobby Shop, near the LGBT Center).
In addition to Western Chess, our club also welcomes members to come and play shogi (Japanese Chess) and xiangqi (Chinese Chess).
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A club for people interested in strategy board games, particularly Chess and Go. Meeting times for the Fall 2015 semester are Thursday and Friday at 4pm. We are usually there for a few hours, so feel free to come late.
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Definition of Astor, Nancy in English:
Astor, Nancy
Viscountess (1879–1964), British politician, born in the US; born Nancy Witcher Langhorne. She became the first woman to sit in the House of Commons when she succeeded her husband as a member of Parliament.
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Donald E. Peterson, 88, of Belview passed away Monday, April 8, 2013 at the St. Joseph Hospital in St. Paul. A Celebration of Life will be held at 4 p.m. Monday, April 15, 2013 at the Augustana Lutheran Church in St. Paul. A graveside service with military honors will be held at 12 p.m. Friday, April 12, 2013 at the Belview Cemetery. Online condolences may be placed at www.sunsetfuneralassociation.com. The Sunset Funeral & Cremation Association of Echo and Wabasso are handling the arrangements for the family. Donald Eugene Peterson was born August 4, 1924 to Bertina (Hegdahl) and Andrew Peterson. He was a graduate of Belview High School in 1942. He served in U.S. Navy during WWII.
Donald married Maalfrid Solberg September 12, 1948. His children are Berit (Rick), Pamela (Ron) Iverson, Aaron (Sandy), Andrus (Nancy); grandchildren, Kristin Iverson, Ross (Jennie) Iverson, Laura (David) Blumberg, Megan (Justin) Tomlinson, Adam (Anna) Peterson; great-grandchildren, Hunter, Grant, Sophia, and Hudson. He was the owner of Don Pete's Market for more than 40 years. Donald was an active leader in his community. Memorials preferred to Augustana Lutheran Church, Parkview Nursing Home in Belview, or memorial of your choice.
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The Kichler Bellamy ceiling fan has a wonderful olde bronze finish and an integrated light kit with opal glass.
This gorgeous ceiling fan is part of Kichler's Bellamy Collection. This warm design comes in a olde bronze finish complemented by an satin-etched cased opal glass light kit. Five reversible blades are pitched 14 degrees and feature walnut/cherry finishes. The motor comes with a limited lifetime guarantee. Integrated downlight kit offers warm illumination. This fan comes with a full function CoolTouch Control System remote control. 54" blade span 6" and 12" downrods included. (IMAP)
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36" to 48" ceiling fans have airflow efficiencies ranging from approximately 71 to 86 cubic feet per minute per watt at high speed.
49" to 60" ceiling fans have airflow efficiencies ranging from approximately 51 to 176 cubic feet per minute per watt at high speed.
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Cal Poly Athletics Camps
(All camps are open to any and all entrants limited only by age, gender, numbers, or grade level)
Cal Poly Men's Soccer ID Camp No. 4|
Saturday and Sunday, August 6-7, 2016
For Males in Grades 9-12
Times: August 6 -- 1-6 p.m.; August 7 -- 9 a.m. to 12 noon.
Cal Poly Sports Complex (on the Cal Poly campus)
Cost: $265 per participant (check in August 6 at 12 noon) (registration closes August 5 at 12 noon)
For more information, call Shaun Harris at (805) 756-7070.
Independent Camps and Clinics
The following sports camps and clinics are independently owned and operated by the respective coaching staff listed, and are not associated with Cal Poly. The university has not reviewed the practices and procedures of these independent operations. These listings are provided for informational purposes only; please refer to the addresses and telephone numbers listed for further information.
Larry Lee Baseball Camps
Two camps held each summer in San Luis Obispo for youth 7-13 years of age. Click here for a flyer on the 2016 camps, to be offered in San Luis Obispo, or contact Larry Lee at (805) 459-0422 or Teddy Warrecker at (805) 441-2205. Also, visit www.larryleebaseball.com for more information.
Joe Callero Basketball Camp
The Joe Callero Basketball Camp for boys and girls entering grades 2-7 will be held June 13-16, 2016 in the Nipomo High School gym from 9 a.m. to 12 noon. Fee is $125 ($110 if registered before June 3rd). Fee includes a camp T-shirt. For more information and online registration, please visit www.JoeCalleroBasketball.com. For questions, please call Erika Callero at (805) 202-8007 or email email@example.com.


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Get dirty, have fun and grow more food with great gardening tips from real-life gardeners.
By Cheryl Long
tomatoes, varieties
American seed catalogs offer literally hundreds of tomato varieties but the catalogs don't always reveal which ones have really great flavor. But now, thanks to the extraordinary work of Amy Goldman in her book The Heirloom Tomato, we have a source for a comprehensive flavor ratings of 200 heirloom varieties, all grown in the same location. Below is a list of the 56 heirloom tomatoes that Goldman rates as having "excellent" flavor. And she tells us what she means by "excellent": "Scarcely equaled in texture of flesh and richness of flavor. Distinctive, delicious, deep and complex, with luscious, rich flavor. Savory, mouth-filling, and juicy. No grave faults. Finely balanced sugar-acid ratio yet endowed with intense flavor. Extremely desirable."
In describing, evaluating and photographing such a large number of tomatoes in such a beautifully produced book, Goldman has done gardeners an unprecedented service. Plus, she's included an outstanding selection of recipes to help us make the most of our tomato harvests. The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table was a classic the day it was published. Order your copy here.
From The Heirloom Tomato, by Amy Goldman
To find seed sources for these varieties, visit our Seed Finder.
To learn more about growing tomatoes, see America's Favorite Tomatoes and Enjoy Fresh Tomatoes All Year.
Cheryl Long is the editor in chief of MOTHER EARTH NEWS magazine, and a leading advocate for more sustainable lifestyles. She leads a team of editors which produces high quality content that has resulted in MOTHER EARTH NEWS being rated as one North America's favorite magazines. Long lives on an 8-acre homestead near Topeka, Kan., powered in part by solar panels, where she manages a large organic garden and a small flock of heritage chickens. Prior to taking the helm at MOTHER EARTH NEWS, she was an editor at Organic Gardening magazine for 10 years. Connect with her on Google+.
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Ergodic capacity is investigated for the optical wireless communications employing subcarrier intensity modulation with direct detection, and coherent systems with and without polarization multiplexing over the Gamma-Gamma turbulence channels. We consider three different adaptive transmission schemes: (i) variable-power, variable-rate adaptive transmission, (ii) complete channel inversion with fixed rate, and (iii) truncated channel inversion with fixed rate. For the considered systems, highly accurate series expressions for ergodic capacity are derived using a series expansion of the modified Bessel function and the Mellin transformation of the Gamma-Gamma random variable. Our asymptotic analysis reveals that the high SNR ergodic capacities of coherent, subcarrier intensity modulated, and polarization multiplexing systems gain 0.33 bits/s/Hz, 0.66 bits/s/Hz, and 0.66 bits/s/Hz respectively with 1 dB increase of average transmitted optical power. Numerical results indicate that a polarization control error less than 10° has little influence on the capacity performance of polarization multiplexing systems.
1. Introduction
Terrestrial optical wireless communication (OWC) systems are vulnerable to atmospheric turbulence and suffer random irradiance fluctuation, also known as scintillation, due to the random refractive index variation caused by inhomogeneities in both temperature and pressure. Scintillation is a major source of performance degradation, since it affects both the reliability and data rate of the OWC systems [1]. Several fading mitigation techniques have been proposed for OWC systems operating in atmospheric turbulence. These techniques include error control coding with interleaving, maximum-likelihood sequence detection, and spatial diversity using multiple apertures for transmission and/or reception. Adaptive transmission technique that varies basic transmission parameters according to the channel fading is also a promising fading mitigation solution. The main advantage of the adaptive transmission is the provision of high spectral efficiency without sacrificing bit-error rate (BER) requirements. Adaptive transmissions employing phase-shift keying (PSK) and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) were studied for the outdoor OWC systems [2, 3].
For an adaptive transmission, ergodic capacity, also known as average channel capacity, is an important information-theoretic performance metric which defines an upper bound for the achievable transmission rate with a negligible error over the fading channels [4, 5]. Recent works on ergodic capacity of OWC systems with coherent detection and intensity modulation with direct detection (IM/DD) are reviewed as follows. The authors in [6, 7] study the ergodic capacity and outage capacity of the coherent OWC systems with lognormal amplitude fluctuations and Gaussian phase fluctuations. The authors in [8] develop closed-form ergodic capacity expressions for a coherent OWC system with heterodyne detection by considering the combined impact of the Gamma-Gamma turbulence and pointing errors. Closed-form ergodic capacity expressions are derived for the IM/DD OWC systems over the Gamma-Gamma, K-distributed, and I-K distributed atmospheric turbulence channels in [9–12]. However, all the aforementioned closed-form ergodic capacity expressions are limited to the constant-power, variable-rate (CPVR) adaptive transmission policy where the channel state information (CSI) is available only at the receiver. Recently the authors in [13] present closed-form ergdoic capacity expressions for the variable-power, variable-rate (VPVR), CPVR, and truncated channel inversion with fixed rate (TCIFR) adaptive transmissions over the lognormal channels, which is commonly used to describe the irradiance fluctuation in a weak turbulence. Previously the authors in [14, 15] study ergodic capacity of the VPVR, CPVR, complete channel inversion with fixed rate (CCIFR), and TCIFR adaptive transmissions for subcarrier IM/DD OWC systems in Gamma-Gamma turbulence using a numerical integration based approach. In [16], the authors also derive ergodic capacity expressions of the VPVR, CPVR, CCIFR and TCIFR adaptive transmissions over the generalized-K fading channels (which is similar to the Gamma-Gamma fading channels) in terms of series solutions. However, their derived expressions for VPVR, CPVR and TCIFR adaptive transmissions are limited only to the integer values of m (a parameter of the generalized-K fading channel). In most of practical scenarios, the parameters of the Gamma-Gamma turbulence channels take non-integer values. As such the closed-form expressions developed in [16] for integer value of the generalized-K fading channel parameter can not be used to evaluate capacity performance of VPVR and TCIFR schemes over the Gamma-Gamma turbulence channels. In [17], the author also derives closed-form ergodic capacity expressions for the VPVR, CPVR, CCIFR and TCIFR adaptive transmission policies for subcarrier IM/DD over the Gamma-Gamma turbulence. However such closed-form results are presented in terms of the special Meijer's G-function, which does not reveal any insight into the system performance. OWC systems employing polarization multiplexing (POLMUX) with coherent detection has also gained attention because of its ability to boost the data throughput. In [18], the authors analyze and experimentally verify a novel POLMUX system with coherent detection over a lognormal turbulence channel. In a related work, the authors in [19] analyze BER performance of a coherent OWC system with POLMUX in Gamma-Gamma turbulence and Gaussian phase noise. However, to the best of authors' knowledge, no prior work has been reported on the comparison of ergodic capacities of subcarrier IM/DD, and coherent systems with and without POLMUX when adaptive transmissions are utilized.
The motivation of this work is to analyze and compare the ergodic capacity of the subcarrier IM/DD and coherent OWC systems with and without POLMUX using different adaptive transmission strategies when the CSI is available at both transmitter and receiver. In particular, we consider VPVR, CCIFR, and TCIFR adaptive transmission policies over the Gamma-Gamma turbulence channels. For all the adaptive transmission schemes, we assume the receiver can accurately estimate the channel, and an accurate channel estimation is available at the transmitter via a reliable feedback channel. Highly accurate ergodic capacity expressions are derived using a series expansion of the modified Bessel function and the Mellin transformation of the Gamma-Gamma random variable. Unlike [16], our series solutions for VPVR and TCIFR schemes work well when both parameters of the Gamma-Gamma turbulence channels take non-integer values. In addition, we carry out the asymptotic analysis of our ergodic capacity expressions and reveal some interesting insights into the capacity performance of the considered systems over the Gamma-Gamma turbulence channels. We also present a channel capacity comparison among the subcarrier IM/DD, and coherent OWC systems with and without POLMUX under an average transmitted optical power constraint. Although for non-adaptive transmission, the ergodic capacity is achievable with the assumption of independent turbulence/fading across time, capacity associated with adaptive transmission schemes namely, VPVR, CCIFR, and TCIFR is achievable without such independent assumption. While the detailed reason can be found in [34], for completeness of this paper, we discuss it here briefly. For the VPVR transmission, the time-varying channel can effectively be reduced to a set of time-invariant additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels in parallel [34]. For each of these time-invariant channels, a capacity achieving encoder/decoder pair can be used in a time multiplexed fashion. As such there is no need to have the channel turbulence to be independent. The average capacity of the time-varying channel corresponds to the sum of capacities of the time-invariant channels weighted by the probabilities of having these time-invariant channels over time. For CCIFR transmission, since the transmitter adjusts the transmit signal power according to the channel turbulence in order to maintain a constant received SNR and transmits at a fixed rate, the channel appears to the encoder/decoder pair as a time-invariant AWGN channel. The capacity achieving encoder/decoder pair for the AWGN channel can be used and there is no need to have the channel turbulence to be independent. For TCIFR transmission, the transmitter adjusts the transmit signal power according to the channel turbulence in order to maintain a constant received power and transmits at a fixed rate as long as the received SNR is above a certain threshold, otherwise, the transmission is suspended. Similar argument as CCIFR can be made for TCIFR transmission. Therefore, our derived capacity expressions for the above mentioned three adaptive transmission schemes are valid without independent assumption of atmospheric turbulence over time. Since OWC systems transmit in the range of Gbits/sec, ergodicity assumption for such systems may not be valid. However, this is a standard assumption used in the literature [8–12, 20, 21]. This assumption corresponds to an ideal scenario and obtained results based on this assumption can be considered as theoretical upper bounds on the systems' performance. Yet these results allow us to compare different systems under consideration and reveal insight into system's performance improvement as well as design.
2. Channel and system models
2.1. Atmospheric turbulence models
Several statistical models have been proposed to describe turbulence induced irradiance fluctuation. The Gamma-Gamma distribution recently emerges as a useful turbulence model since it has an excellent fit with measured data over a wide range of turbulence conditions [22]. In this paper, we model the optical irradiance I using a normalized Gamma-Gamma random variable (RV) with probability density function (PDF)23, Eq. 8.310] and Kα−β (·) is the modified Bessel function of the second kind of order α−β [23, Eq. 8.432(9)]. Here α is the effective number of large scale eddies and β is the effective number of small scale eddies. The shaping parameters α and β can not be arbitrary chosen in OWC applications, and they are related to the Rytov variance. Under an assumption of plane wave propagation with negligible inner scale (which corresponds to long propagation distance and small detector area), they can be determined by [24, Eqs. 2a, 2b]. Under this assumption, the inequality α > β holds for most scenarios [24]. Without loss of generality we assume α > β in this work. Scintillation index ( ) is another important parameter to measure the turbulence level, and it is given by [25]
2.2. Coherent OWC system
In a coherent OWC system, the information is modulated on the optical carrier amplitude and phase for transmission. After being transmitted through a free-space channel, the received optical signal is coherently mixed with the optical beam generated by a local oscillator (LO), and the combined optical beam is incident on the photodetector. We assume the phase noises from the turbulence and narrow-linewidth lasers change slowly, and they can be compensated using a phase locked loop (PLL) aided phase noise compensation mechanism [26]. This assumption is reasonable because atmospheric turbulence channel is a slowly varying fading channel with channel coherence time on the order of milliseconds [6], and the narrow-linewidth lasers have linewidths on the order of 10 kHz [27]. Consequently, the accumulated phase noises introduced by the atmospheric turbulence and/or lasers have millisecond variation on the timescales. In order to compensate such phase noises the PLL circuits should have a loop bandwidth (also known as the response rate of the PLL circuit) on the order of KHz [27]. Note that a practical PLL can work successfully up to 10 MHz [28]. Consequently, the accumulated phase noises due to the atmospheric turbulence and/or lasers can be tracked and corrected almost perfectly following the photodetection [18, 29]. Therefore, in the subsequent analysis we do not consider the impact of phase noises on the coherent detection. The optical power incident on the photodetector can be expressed as33]
2.3. POLMUX OWC system with coherent detection
In a coherent POLMUX OWC system, the optical signal from a continuous wave laser source is splitted into two orthogonal polarizations by a polarization beam splitter (PBS). The outputs of PBS are amplitude and/or phase modulated and then combined by a polarization beam combiner (PBC) before being transmitted. Since atmospheric turbulence channel is typically a weak depolarizing channel [30], the fluctuation of the state of polarization (SOP) of the transmitted optical beam is assumed to be in a controllable order [19]. The electric field of the received optical signal at the front end of optical receiver can be written as Er(t) = [Ex,r (t), Ey,r(t)]T where the subscripts x and y denote the two orthogonal channels, and where19, Eq. 3] 18, Fig. 5], a post photodetection digital signal processing (DSP) aided coherent receiver is employed to recover the transmitted symbols from the two outputs of the PBS. For a fair comparison, we assume the LO power is equally distributed between two orthogonally polarized modes. We express the instantaneous SNR per orthogonal channel as [18, Eq. 20] 31]. However, such impairments are absent and/or negligible in atmospheric optical communications, and consequently, the atmospheric channels are more favourable to the coherent POLMUX systems. Atmospheric channel offers zero PMD (since atmosphere is not a birefringent propagation medium), negligible PDL, and depolarization [32]. Polarization rotation is the only effect that needs to be considered for the coherent POLMUX OWC systems. However, the polarization rotation is a slowly varying process, and the resultant cross-polarization interference can be equalized by a post-photodetection DSP. Consequently, coherent POLMUX OWC system is less complex compared to the fiber-optics POLMUX system with coherent detection. In addition, the recent development of integrated coherent receivers and post-photodetection high speed DSP have made this approach practically feasible [18]. However, a detailed study on the practical implementation of POLMUX system for OWC applications is beyond the scope of current paper and the interested readers are referred to [32] for further reading.
2.4. OWC system with subcarrier intensity modulation/direct detection
In a subcarrier IM/DD OWC link, an RF signal, s(t), pre-modulated with data source, is used to modulate the irradiance of a continuous wave optical beam at the laser transmitter after being properly biased. For an atmospheric turbulence channel, the received photocurrent after direct detection using photodetector can be expressed as33] (2), we define the average SNR of the subcarrier IM/DD OWC system as , and relate to the instantaneous SNR γs by (2) and the relation , we write average SNR of the subcarrier IM/DD systems in terms of the average transmitted optical power as
3. Ergodic capacity of coherent OWC system
3.1. Variable-power, variable-rate adaptive transmission
In a VPVR adaptive transmission scheme the transmitter simultaneously adapt the power and data rate in order to maintain a target BER at the receiver for all SNRs. With this adaptive transmission policy, more power and higher data rates are allocated when the channel condition is good, and the transmission is terminated when the received SNR falls below a cutoff level γo. For a VPVR adaptive scheme, the ergodic capacity (in bits/s/Hz) of a fading channel can be calculated by [34, Eq. 7]34, Eq. 6] Eqs. (13) and (14) fγc (γc) is the PDF of the SNR γc. Using a series expansion of the modified Bessel function of second kind [25, Eq. 15], we obtain the PDF and the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of γc, respectively, as
3.1.1. Computation of Cutoff SNR γo
Equation (14) can be rewritten asEq. (14), we can write r1,c(α, β, ) as 35]. Using the Mellin transformation of the Gamma-Gamma RV (see Appendix), we obtain r1,c(α, β, ) as Eq. (15) into the second integral of Eq. (14), after some algebraic manipulation, we can evaluate r2,c(α, β, γo, ) as Eqs. (16), (18), and (20) to Eq. (17), one obtains a series expression involving the cutoff SNR γo. For min{α, β} > 1, such expression can be numerically solved along with Eq. (14) in order to compute the cutoff SNR γo for a given average SNR. From Eqs. (16), (19) and (20), when we have Fγc (·) → 0, r1,c(α, β, ) → 0, and r2,c(α, β, γo, ) → 0. As a result, when the average SNR in Eq. (17) approaches infinity, γo approaches unity. Therefore, for the Gamma-Gamma turbulence channels, the value of the cutoff SNR, γo, is restricted to [0, 1].
3.1.2. Computation of ergodic capacity
In order to facilitate the computation of ergodic capacity of the VPVR adaptive scheme, we rewrite Eq. (13) as(21) is the expectation of lnγc, i.e., E[lnγc]. In order to estimate the expected value of lnγc, we first define Z = lnγc. The moment generating function of Z is 24, Eq. 3] 36, Eq. 06.05.20.0001.01] we can derive g1,c(α, β, ) as 23, Eq. 8.360(1)]. In order to evaluate g2,c(α, β, γo, ) in Eq. (21), we first recall the fact that limz→0za ln z = 0 for any real non-negative z and a. Substituting Eq. (15) into the second integral of Eq. (21) and using [23, Eq. 2.723(1)], we obtain g2,c(α, β, γo, ) as Eq. (26) numerically, we consider only a summation of finite K + 1 terms. Consequently, a truncation error is introduced due to elimination of infinite terms after the first K + 1 terms. Using a similar method described in [25], we can derive an upper bound for the truncation error, and show that the truncation error rapidly decreases with increasing K values and/or average SNR . Finally, using Eqs. (25) and (26) one obtains the ergodic capacity for the coherent VPVR adaptive OWC system as
3.1.3. Asymptotic high SNR capacity
When the average SNR approaches infinity, the value of the cutoff SNR γo approaches unity, and consequently, log2(γo) approaches zero. Also, it can be shown that in large SNR regimes since in large SNR regimes . Hence, for asymptotically high average SNR we can evaluate the ergodic capacity of a coherent VPVR adaptive OWC system asEq. (5) to obtain the last equality. Equation (28) revels that the high SNR ergodic capacity of the coherent VPVR system gains 0.33 bits/s/Hz with 1 dB increase of average transmitted optical power.
3.2. Complete channel inversion with fixed rate
Under this adaptive transmission scheme, the transmitter adapts the transmit power (under an average transmit power constraint) according to the channel fading state in order to maintain a constant SNR at the recevier, i.e., inverts the channel fading while maintaining a constant transmission rate. The ergodic capacity (in bits/s/Hz) of a CCIFR adaptive transmission scheme is given by [34, Eq. 9](19). As a result, we can express the ergodic capacity of the CCIFR scheme as Equation (30) is similar to the ergodic capacity of the CCIFR scheme over the generalized-K fading channel given by [16, Eq. 29]. However, our derivation approach is different from [16] and our capcity expression in Eq. (30) does not require that β is an integer. The asymptotic capacity in large SNR regimes can be obtained as . Hence, CCIFR scheme also gains 0.33 bits/s/Hz with 1 dB increase of average transmitted optical power.
3.3. Truncated channel inversion with fixed rate
Since the CCIFR scheme exhibits a large channel capacity penalty in severe fading, a modified channel inversion scheme is proposed where only the transmit power is adaptive according to the channel fading state provided that the received SNR is above a certain cutoff SNR γcoh. The channel will not be used if the received SNR falls below γcoh. For this adaptive transmission policy, the ergodic capacity (in bits/s/Hz) is given by [34, Eq. 12]Eqs. (18) and (20), respectively. Here, the cutoff level γcoh is selected in order to maximize the channel capacity in Eq. (31) for a given average SNR. Our numerical result shows that the cutoff SNR that maximizes the channel capacity of a coherent TCIFR system increases with an increase of average SNR. Recall that the cutoff SNR of a coherent VPVR system is restricted to the range [0, 1]. Hence, due to increasing cutoff SNR values, coherent TCIFR systems exhibit higher outage probability compared to the coherent VPVR systems. Also note that, for coherent systems, Eqs. (30) and (32) are valid when min{α, β} > 1, which is typically satisfied for the Gamma-Gamma turbulence channels [26].
4. Ergodic capacity of coherent POLMUX OWC system
4.1. Variable-power, variable-rate adaptive transmission
In a coherent VPVR POLMUX scheme the transmit power on each channel is adapted subject to an average transmit power constraint per channel. For a fair comparison it is assumed that the total average transmit power of a coherent OWC system with and without polarization are same, and the total average transmit power is equally allocated between the two orthogonal channels in a POLMUX system. Under this assumption, the ergodic capacity of a coherent POLMUX VPVR scheme can be expressed asEqs. (34) and (35) reveals that both γa and γb are confined to the range [0, 1]. Using a similar method applied to the coherent OWC system, it can be shown Eq. (16) with and , respectively. Using a similar argument for obtaining Eq. (28), the asymptotic capacity at high SNR can be expressed as Eq. (38), we observe that the high SNR ergodic capacity of coherent POLMUX VPVR adaptive scheme gains 0.66 bits/s/Hz with 1 dB increase of average transmitted optical power.
4.2. Complete channel inversion with fixed rate
The ergodic capacity of coherent POLMUX CCIFR scheme is obtained as
4.3. Truncated channel inversion with fixed rate
The ergodic capacity of coherent POLMUX TCIFR scheme is obtained asEqs. (39) and (41) are valid for min{α, β} > 1.
5. Ergodic capacity of subcarrier IM/DD OWC system
5.1. Variable-power, variable-rate adaptive transmission
The ergodic capacity of a subcarrier IM/DD VPVR adaptive OWC system is given byEqs. (42) and (43), fγs (γs) and Fγs (·) are respectively the PDF and CDF of the SNR of the subcarrier IM/DD OWC systems, and they are given by Eqs. (44) and (45) . Similar to the coherent VPVR OWC systems, an asymptotic expansion of Eq. (43) reveals that for subcarrier IM/DD VPVR adaptive system the value of γe is also confined to the range [0, 1]. Using a similar approach in deriving Eq. (25), we can evaluate g1,s as Eq. (26), we obtain g2,s as Eqs. (46) and (47) we can evaluate the ergodic capacity of the subcarrier IM/DD VPVR adaptive OWC system as Eq. (28), we obtain the ergodic capacity of the subcarrier IM/DD VPVR system at high SNR as Eq. (49) that the ergodic capacity of subcarrier IM/DD VPVR system gains 0.66 bits/s/Hz with 1 dB increase of average transmitted optical power. In high SNR region with 1 dB increase of average transmitted optical power, the subcarrier IM/DD systems provide higher spectral efficiency improvement than the coherent OWC systems without POLMUX. This can be explained by the following analytical arguments. The average SNR of the coherent OWC systems is proportional to the average transmitted optical power whereas the average SNR of the subcarrier IM/DD systems is proportional to square of the the average transmitted optical power, as observed from Eqs. (5) and (12) respectively. Therefore, the high SNR ergodic capacity of the subcarrier IM/DD VPVR scheme has a steeper slope (2 times) with increasing average transmitted optical power compared to the high SNR ergodic capacity of the coherent VPVR scheme. Due to this steeper slope, in high SNR region subcarrier IM/DD systems provide higher spectral efficiency improvement with 1 dB increase in average transmitted optical power than the coherent detection systems. As a result, although the coherent systems significantly outperform the subcarrier IM/DD systems, the capacity performance gap between the coherent and subcarrier IM/DD systems is reduced with the increase of average transmitted optical power. Such a observation is also depicted by our numerical results.
5.2. Channel inversion with fixed rate
The ergodic capacity of a subcarrier IM/DD CCIFR scheme is given byEq. (50) and using Mellin transformation of Gamma-Gamma RV, the ergodic capacity of the subcarrier IM/DD CCIFR scheme can be expressed as Eq. (51) reveals that ergodic capacity of subcarrier IM/DD CCIFR scheme gains 0.66 bits/s/Hz with 1 dB increase of average transmitted optical power. The ergodic capacity of a subcarrier IM/DD TCIFR scheme is given by Eqs. (51), (54), and (55) are valid when min{α, β} > 2.
6. Numerical results
In this section, we compare the ergodic capacity of the subcarrier IM/DD, and coherent OWC systems with and without POLMUX using our series solutions with the exact ergodic capacity obtained using numerical integration. All series solutions are calculated using the first 31 terms. We consider the following turbulent OWC scenarios where the path loss factor is empirically expressed in terms of visibility, and the turbulence strength is assumed to increase with propagation distance [26] : 1) a 2 Km haze optical channel (in strong turbulence with α = 2.04 and β = 1.10) with 4.35 dB/Km path loss; 2) a 900 m light smoke optical channel (in moderate turbulence with α = 2.50 and β = 2.06) with 9.56 dB/Km path loss; 3) a 700 m light fog optical channel (in weak turbulence α = 4.43 and β = 4.39) with 11.5 dB/Km path loss. In order to generate the numerical plots of capacity versus the average transmitted optical power, we also make the following assumptions [26]: the modulation index ε = 0.85, the photodetector responsivity R = 0.75 A/W, load resistance RL = 50 Ω, the bit duration T = 1ns with approximate transmission bandwidth 1 GHz, thermal noise variance 3.3 × 10−13 Amp2, and the background noise variance 10−15 Amp2. Assuming a typical LO power 10−2 W [37], the local oscillator-induced shot noise variance is 5 ×10−12 Amp2. Also, in our numerical results we have selected the range of the average transmitted optical power from −12 dBm to 6 dBm so that the assumption PLO ≫ Ps remains valid.
Figures 1(a) and 1(b) respectively present the ergodic capacity of the coherent and coherent POLMUX OWC systems over a strong Gamma-Gamma turbulence channel. In both figures, excellent agreement is observed between the exact channel capacity and capacity obtained by our series approximations. From these figures, it is obvious that the VPVR scheme achieves the largest channel capacity for both the coherent and coherent POLMUX OWC systems. From Fig. 1(b) it is depicted that due to the polarization control error the ergodic capacity of a coherent POLMUX system gets reduced. However, a polarization control error with ε = 10° has no noticeable influence on the ergodic capacity performance. Asymptotic channel capacities for the VPVR and CCIFR schemes are also shown in both figures, and they converge to the exact capacity at large SNR values, as expected.
Fig. 1
Figures 1(c) and 1(d) plot the ergodic capacities of the coherent and coherent POLMUX OWC systems over a moderate Gamma-Gamma turbulence channel. Excellent agreement is also observed between the exact channel capacity and the capacity obtained by our series approximations. In both figures we observe that the performance gap between different adaptive transmission schemes gets decreased with a decrease of turbulence strength. From Figs. 1(c) and 1(d), the SNR gap between the VPVR and CCIFR schemes is approximately 3 dB for both the coherent and coherent POLMUX OWC systems when α = 2.50 and β = 2.06. This result agrees with the predicted SNR gap of 3.06 dB between the VPVR and CCIFR schemes from our asymptotic ergodic capacity analysis. Asymptotic capacities are also shown in this figure, and they converge to the exact ergodic capacity when or .
Figure 2(a) compares the ergodic capacities of the subcarrier IM/DD and coherent POLMUX VPVR schemes over a strong Gamma-Gamma turbulence channel, while Fig. 2(b) compares the ergodic capacities of the subcarrier IM/DD and coherent POLMUX CCIFR schemes over a weak turbulence channel with the same average transmitted power constraint. Figs. 2(a) and 2(b) clearly demonstrate that the coherent POLMUX schemes significantly outperform the coherent and subcarrier IM/DD schemes for the same average transmitted optical power. For example, at an average transmitted optical power of −12 dBm, the coherent POLMUX VPVR scheme achieves 26.28 bits/s/Hz and 25.37 bits/s/Hz channel capacity with polarization control error ε = 0° and ε = 30°, respectively. On the other hand, for the same average transmitted optical power, the coherent and subcarrier IM/DD VPVR schemes attain channel capacity of 14.19 bits/s/Hz and 5.03 bits/s/Hz, respectively. From Fig. 2(b), at an average transmitted optical power of −4 dBm coherent POLMUX CCIFR scheme achieves 32.74 bits/s/Hz and 31.83 bits/s/Hz channel capacity with polarization control error ε = 0° and ε = 30°, respectively. On the other hand, for the same average transmitted optical power, the coherent and subcarrier IM/DD CCIFR schemes obtain channel capacity of 17.42 bits/s/Hz and 9.738 bits/s/Hz, respectively. Both Figs. 2(a) and 2(b) illustrate that the performance gap between the coherent and the subcarrier IM/DD systems gets narrowed with an increase of transmitted optical power. However, the performance gap between coherent POLMUX and subcarrier IM/DD systems remains constant with an increase of transmitted optical power. This is because both coherent POLMUX and subcarrier IM/DD systems have the same slope of 0.66 bits/s/Hz whereas the coherent systems have a slope of 0.33 bits/s/Hz with respect to the dB values of average transmitted optical power.
Fig. 2
7. Conclusion
We have developed highly accurate series ergodic capacity expressions for the subcarrier IM/DD and coherent OWC systems with and without POLMUX employing different adaptive transmission schemes. Our ergodic capacity analysis reveals that the coherent POLMUX OWC systems significantly outperform the coherent and subcarrier IM/DD OWC systems even in the presence of polarization control error.
Mellin transformation of a RV I is defined as . Assuming I is a Gamma-Gamma RV, one can show I = XY, where X and Y are two independent Gamma RVs with PDFs respectively given by and . Since the Mellin transformation of a product of two independent RVs is a product of Mellin transformations of the two RVs [38], we obtain MI (z) = MX (z)MY (z). Using an integral identity [23, Eq. 3.326(2)], we obtain the Mellin transformations of RVs X and Y, respectively, as and . Finally, the Mellin transformation of I becomesEqs. (18) and (54), can be obtained by letting z = 0 and z = −1 in Eq. (56) [35].
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Learn more about
Smokey and Blue Ridge Mountains: Fall Foliage Colors Season in Hiawassee GA and Hayesville NC
FALL FOLIAGE UPDATE - Far western North Carolina - Murphy, Hayesville, Hiawassee, Andrews area report
October 18, 2015. (Altitude 1,800 - 2,400)
2015 leaf season is now in full swing. With our first frost last night almost all the trees are showing color, except the oaks and Bradford pears. Most dogwoods are now a deep purple, some scarlet red virigina creeper can be seen among the trees and the sugar maples are showing a nice frosting of color. Hickorys and poplars are about mostly yellow. And the sourwoods are really adding some red to the forest. Most of the oaks are still green below 2,400 feet. Higher elevation locations such as Nantalhala wilderness east of Hayesville, Cherohala skyway or the rim trail at Firescreek should be near peak around now. Our current guess for the peak for the North Georgia and extreme western NC 2014 leaf season around November 1st.
October 11, 2015. (Altitude 1,800 - 2,400)
Evening temperatures are now dipping into the 50s and the leaves are beginning to change in earnest. Many dogwoods are now showing purple, some scarlet red virigina creeper can be seen among the trees and the sugar maples have flared to life this week. Hickorys, maples, and poplars are about 50% yellow. And the sourwoods are really adding some red to the forest. Most of the oaks are still green below 2,400 feet. Higher elevation locations such as Nantalhala wilderness east of Hayesville, Cherohala skyway or the rim trail at Firescreek should be putting on a nice show around now. Our current guess for the peak for the North Georgia and extreme western NC 2014 leaf season is between October 28th and Nov 8th.
Oct 4, 2015 - . (Altitude 1,800 - 2,400)
It has been temperate for most of September so most all species are still deep green, but there is some color in the sour woods, dogwood, and poplars. Virginia creeper vines now are showing off their brilliant reds. But most of the best viewing is still over 2200 feet. The heavy rains that hit much of SC this week passed very gently here, with virtually no wind; so the seasonal colors have not been affected. It is too early to call a peak for the North Georgia and extreme western NC 2015 leaf season but it is typically sometime in October. Check back for updates through the season.
Fall Foliage Season
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What is Fall Foliage season in North Georgia and Western North Carolina?
Summer in the North Georgia mountains brings shady oaks, maples, dogwoods, sumacs, and evergreens to their emerald colored peak. However, it is in the fall that Mother Nature truly takes her turn to shine.
In the fall, the leafy foliage takes its most spectacular hues and shades. The scarlet reds, firey oranges, bright yellows, and warm browns make the trees like jewels that blanket the flanks of the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains of North Georgia and North Carolina. Thousands of trees and millions of colored leaves become an unforgettable sight and a must-see in the Appalachian mountains.
For the fall colors season, many leaf lookers or leaf peepers and visitors flock to the North Georgia mountains to experience the spectacular foliage display that only happens for a short few months per year. Through scenic drives, trail walks, and from mountaintop visitors centers, thousands appreciate the brilliant and firey colors on display in the fall.
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Why do the leaves change colors?
As the days shorten and temperatures become cooler, the green colored chemical chlorophyll breaks down as the tree prepares for winter. As the chlorophylls presence fades, chemical in the leaves such as carotenes and xanthophyll pigments shine through in brilliant hues of orange, yellow, and red.
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American Idol Live!: Ticket
Sovereign Center • Reading, PA
Saturday, August 24
What you get
- One Lower-Level Ticket
- See Season 12 Finalists Live On Stage!
You've seen the stars on your TV set every week, now experience the singing sensations of American Idol in concert with this offer: For $35, you'll score one Lower-Level ticket to see American Idol Live! at Sovereign Center on Saturday, August 24. This one-night-only concert brings the biggest stars from the show that started it all to the same stage for an unforgettable night of music. Since 2002, American Idol alums have produced more than 300 chart-topping songs and albums and received a staggering 40-plus Grammy nominations.
Season 12 Idol finalists Amber Holcomb, Angie Miller, Burnell Taylor, Candice Glover, Curtis Finch Jr, Devin Velez, Janelle Arthur, Kree Harrison, Lazaro Arbos, and Paul Jolley will be on hand to charm the audience with their powerful performances -- plus, Season 11 finalist Aubrey Cleland also joins the tour after being voted on by Idol fans.
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use by Sep 4
Hershey, PA
Last Chance Offer: Cirque du Soleil's OVO
Giant Center
Saturday Oct 15
Philadelphia, PA
Ticket to Pour the Core Hard Cider Festival
The Navy Yard
Sunday Sep 18
Philadelphia, PA
Rock 'n' Roll Philadelphia Half Marathon or 5K
Pennsylvania Convention Center (Hall E)
Friday Oct 21 through Sunday Oct 23
King of Prussia, PA
2 Tickets to Philadelphia Festival of Food, Wine, and Spirits
Valley Forge Casino Resort
Saturday Sep 24 through Sunday Sep 25
Mays Landing, NJ
Tickets to the South Jersey Wine & Food Festival
Lake Lenape Park
use by Sep 1
Philadelphia, PA
Ticket to Preseason Pro Football Game
Lincoln Financial Field
Saturday Oct 1 through Sunday Oct 2
Oaks, PA
Ticket to Walker Stalker Con
Greater Philadelphia Expo Center
Nearby deals
Spa Castle - New York
All-Day General Spa Admission + 4-Season Grand Spa Pools
Park & Jet
5, 7, or 10 Days of Consecutive Airport Parking
The Ben Franklin Yacht
90-Minute Friday or Sunday Yacht Cruise
Splash Zone Water Park
All-Day Admission to Splash Zone Water Park
Spring Mountain Ski Area
2, 3, or 4 Anytime, All-Area Ski Lift Tickets
French Creek State Park Pool and Boat Rental
Kayak, Canoe, Paddleboat, or Rowboat Rental
Green Lane Boat Rental
Kayak, Double Kayak, or Stand-Up Paddleboard
Kitchen Consigliere Cafe
$25 to Spend on Traditional Italian Dishes