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From personal experience and research comes advice on what works and why
Roald Hoffmann, Saundra Y. McGuire
Learning and teaching science challenges many students as well as instructors.
We have been teaching and helping others to teach chemistry at every level—from high school teachers to undergraduate and graduate students to university faculty—for over four decades. From that experience have come a number of teaching and learning tactics that we find effective in facilitating student learning. Initially improvised, these strategies are more than gimmicks, for they have proven themselves in practice.
We've also sought out recent advances in cognitive psychology that give insight into why these approaches work. We've thought through why they are of use in any subject, not just chemistry. And we've also identified potential problems.
A potential injustice in our account is that credit may not be given to the real innovators. Frankly, we do not know where some of these strategies originated—in examples by others, or out of our own improvisations as we struggled to become better teachers. Many people have independently come to similar practices.
Some of what we write is addressed to teachers, some to students. This is deliberate. Cognizance of learning strategies benefits teachers, and awareness of teaching strategies can help learners understand the motives of teachers. Teaching and learning are a double flame.
The first learning strategy is to take notes by hand, even if the class notes are provided. Preferably no later than the evening of the class day, rewrite your notes, by hand, amplifying their content. During the rewriting stage, it is important that you not just recopy your notes, but rather both condense and extend them where appropriate, paraphrasing them so that you make the meaning your own. The question of whether taking notes on a laptop or by hand is more effective is a contentious one. We think taking notes by hand works best, largely because it is difficult to type in chemical structures, graphs and equations on a computer.
It is now well established that active engagement in the process is imperative for learning to occur. When students take their own notes, they are engaged, in real time, and their minds focus on the task. For kinesthetic learners (those who learn best when moving, activating large or small muscles), the movement involved in taking notes facilitates learning.
The process of paraphrasing and rewriting the notes shortly after a lecture helps to transfer information from short-term to long-term memory. If the rewriting is delayed longer than 24 hours, much of the information needed to flesh out the notes taken in class will have disappeared from accessible memory. And it is so much better that gaps in understanding surface in the engaged rewriting of notes, rather than in the frantic cramming the night before an exam. Students need to be convinced that it is important to take the time to rewrite their notes, even if they felt they have understood the material the first time.
Missed classes provide the second learning strategy. If you must miss a class, rather than simply download the notes from a Web page, get the notes from a fellow student. This strategy is another way into group discussion and learning. It is important to develop relationships with other class members and to form study groups early in the course. During discussion of the class notes, much learning takes place. A typical scenario: Student A (the one who missed lecture and is borrowing the notes) says "I don't understand this part of what you wrote," to student B, the note taker. Because B is a fellow student, A is comfortable asking her the question, whereas A might be reluctant to ask it of the course instructor. B explains, and is thus engaged in the most salutary of learning actions, teaching. The only potential problems are that the note taker may not understand, or may propagate a misconception. Additionally, some people are just too shy to ask another human being.
A third strategy makes the best use of a course's textbook. Most students do their homework in solitude (or as much of that as a residence hall room allows) by trying to follow text examples of similar problems. But often the text examples are not exploited for the learning opportunities they provide. First do the obvious; study the text and lecture information relevant to the problems. But then treat the examples in the text and in lecture notes as if they were homework problems—work out the example before looking at the answer, and compare your approach to the text's, not just your answer. There are often several ways to do a problem, but try to understand the text's method. If the homework answers provided do not include a way of working out each problem, the instructors should be encouraged (that's putting it mildly) to provide complete solutions. The ability to work a problem without using a model is the essential skill tested by all exams (which is obvious to instructors, but not to most students). This approach to homework focuses on methods rather than final answers. Furthermore, exploring alternative methods will help you to learn to be an agile, flexible thinker.
Study groups are important in learning, but it seems to work best to alternate group work with individual effort. First, you should try to do a homework problem or prepare for an exam on your own. Then, the collective wisdom of a study group can be enlisted. Three to six fellow students who have each done their best to digest and absorb difficult material are powerful resources for each other. Social constructivist learning theorists have shown that meaningful learning results from small study groups with two crucial features: discussion and problem-solving activities. Several websites provide excellent tips on forming and running successful study groups. But finally, you must return to solving the problem set or facing the exam preparation on your own.
Not all instructors are comfortable with homework done in groups, but our experience is that groups are very effective. Do-it-yourself is the primary principle of active learning, though groups can help resolve the occasional blind spot. Some social dynamics may limit group value—for instance, passive personalities are likely to merely listen.
Groups can also be useful study aids if students make up practice quizzes and tests for each other, thereby thinking from the teacher's perspective. One of us (Hoffmann) tells his students: "The only way you will get into my mind about the exam is… to try to get into my mind. That means to do what I do, and make up an exam." Creating a practice exam involves not only selecting and organizing all the material (including choosing what is representative and what is important) but also discussing the exam in a group setting.
Another way to enter the tester's mind is by teaching the material, one student to another. When one of us (McGuire) asks instructors attending faculty-development workshops when they began to develop a deep understanding of the conceptual structure of their discipline, most say that it did not happen until they began teaching. Helping a fellow student not only accelerates one's learning but moves one past disappointment about not getting things right oneself. Usually, if you can help someone else get going, the gratification is motivating for both parties.
Finally, we encourage students to set attainable goals. If you are spinning your wheels and studying does not lead to learning, the process can share some symptoms with depression—feeling unable to act, for instance. For this reason, it is important to tackle small, achievable tasks.
In working problems and taking tests, move slowly, from simple problems to more complicated, integrative ones. Success, self-achieved, builds confidence, and so is a very powerful motivator. When you attempt to reach a goal that is within your grasp, a wonderful cycle of initial success, more effort, and additional success is put into motion.
It is important for students to realize that everyone learns differently; an attainable goal for one student may be trivial for another. It is most relevant to develop the learning skills necessary to perform more cognitively demanding tasks.
Moving to the teacher's side of the classroom, we recommend instructors grade on a contract with the students, whereby grades are based on a combination of a major, absolute performance component (examinations and quizzes) and a minor "curved" part of the course (such as labs and other multisection pieces). The only reason for curving should be fairness—if several graders are involved, for instance. The grading criteria—the percentage mastery equivalent to an A, B, etc.—must be explained to the students at the beginning of the course, along with a promise that the borderlines between grades will not be raised. Students are empowered when they see that the outcome of their course grade is dependent on their work, rather than on a comparison with the work of others. Young people react very positively to fairness; a contract boosts confidence.
However, the professor will need to construct exams such that the level of mastery of the material is accurately reflected by the grade that students achieve on the test. In psychometrics, this is referred to as content validity. In particular, one has to watch for misjudgments of mastery in multiple-choice exams of the type where the simplest arithmetic mistake will yield an incorrect answer.
The kind of contract we recommend is very scary to some department administrators, who may insist that each course has a predetermined median grade. Such worries, amusingly, reflect a lack of confidence in faculty members' ability to assess mastery levels.
A second teaching strategy is to bring "real life" into the classroom. News, crises and everyday life open the mind. Devote five minutes of each class to a discussion of science in current affairs. Every minute spent this way is worth it.
Newspapers (print or online editions) sadly carry little science; what they do carry is often health-related. The stories rarely give chemical structures but sometimes name the molecules or drugs. But the structure of a molecule can be shown in class, along with a copy of the story.
From a stream of such short stories from the real world comes appreciation of the relevance of what is taught. In chemistry, students begin to see that small differences in the structures of molecules may determine whether a substance will hurt or heal, or both. For example, they may begin to understand that not all cholesterol is bad, or that the drug methamphetamine (crystal meth) and the decongestant it's illegally made from in home laboratories differ by just one atom.
But the discussion of newsworthy topics may not be the most important part of this strategy. Ultimately, bringing real life into the classroom day in, day out builds a bond between teacher and student. Students begin to feel that the instructor has gone to the trouble of searching the media that very day and cares that students learn.
Here's a strategy on which the two of us disagree: Allow each student to bring into a test or final examination an 8½-by-11-inch page on which anything in the world can be written.
One of us (Hoffmann) feels strongly that as we move from print to digital textbooks, and as it becomes increasingly more difficult to forbid a student to use a computer or fancy calculator in an exam situation, we are moving toward open-book exams anyway, like it or not.
The other co-author (McGuire) feels that this is not a good strategy because she has observed its negative consequences. In her experience, most students think that if they can bring in a "cheat sheet" to the test, they need not know anything because everything relevant can be written on the sheet, information of which they have no conceptual understanding. She feels that professors should provide information (such as constants) that students need, but are not expected to memorize. She stresses to students that they can only think critically using information safely stored in their minds—information that they own.
On the up side, the sheet serves as a security blanket for scared students. But its true purpose is to make the student review the material, to make judgments about what is essential and what isn't, and to organize the material. The sheets can become a prime learning tool. With progress in the course, one of us has observed that students realize this, saying after an exam "I didn't even look at the sheet."
Getting students to think on their own is the primary objective of teaching, and care must be used to make students see multiple paths to an answer. Suppose a teacher in an introductory chemistry course has just gotten through discussing, say, the mass relationships in a combustion reaction: Octane (C8H18) is burned with unlimited oxygen to give water and carbon dioxide. He or she then continues: "Here we've seen how to figure out that if you burn 114 grams of octane with an unlimited amount of oxygen you will get 352 grams of carbon dioxide. But wait, the same ideas can be put to work in many more problems. For instance, I don't have an unlimited amount of oxygen (the air intake on my car is clogged), I have 200 grams of O2. How much carbon dioxide would I get then from my 114 grams of octane? This is a so-called limiting reactant problem; seemingly different and tougher. Yet the same ideas are at work.
Here's another problem: My Volvo travels 8,000 miles a year, at an average fuel consumption of 22 miles per gallon. How much CO2 am I putting into the atmosphere each year?"
Turning around the problem reinforces mastery of the underlying concept. There is nothing more convincing of a concept's value than the feeling that it can be used for not just the problem that occasioned it, but for many other problems. And turning things around has an element of surprise to it. Repeating the same type of question in different permutations may seem repetitive to the teacher; we think it is rarely so to the student.
Surprise and humor can help bridge the gap between teachers and students. When one of us (McGuire) asked a group of Louisiana State University students to explain the difference between studying and learning, most replied that studying involves forcing yourself to memorize uninteresting stuff (as they put it), whereas learning means gaining insight into things you actually care about. How can we build into the travails of most study some of the psychological fun of learning—that tremendous empowering sensation of understanding after not understanding?
Judicious doses of humor help a lot. Few chemical stoichiometry problems or lists of the names of the foot bones could be imagined to evoke raucous laughter. But lapsing into a fragment of "Dry Bones" (the thighbone is connected to the hipbone…), or playing Tom Lehrer's "Element Song," or Blackalicious' "Chemical Calisthenics," or Diego Carrasco's "Química" breaks tedium, giving the feeling of fun.
Humor is also a smile, or a surprise, or turning things around and looking from a different perspective. All of these things are part of what made the Marx brothers so good. Work in that direction, work to achieve surprise. Look in the course material for mistakes that lead to weird contradictions or unphysical results. These are the intellectual equivalent of pratfalls. Humorous situations, in moderation, are attention grabbing, emotionally satisfying and can create an environment that promotes long-term retention and learning. Humor also reduces stress, allowing students to enjoy the learning experience. Humor humanizes the instructor and builds a bond.
A final teaching strategy is to do still more demonstrations, even if you already do some. Although not every subject lends itself to doing demonstrations, chemistry certainly does. Mind you, demonstrations did not come easily to one of us, a theoretical chemist (Hoffmann). But he took to it and, in fact, learned how to turn white wine into red (and back again) from his coauthor. Demonstrations are somewhere between magic and science, somewhere between gripping theater and chemistry.
We know of no deeper silence in a classroom than during the first seconds of a demonstration. Theater directors and nervous concert-hall managers envy us those natural moments of rapt attention. The auditorium is hushed, awaiting change. The demonstrator does not fail to provide it, with color, flame, smoke or explosion. There ensues catharsis for the lecturer, a catering to all the senses of the audience, and, sometimes the only thing the students remember from a course.
Yet a demonstration is also a shifting of gears, from lecture to action. It is an intellectual alarm clock—"time to wake up, something is going to happen!" The act may be staged, but it is tangible. And it may invoke in the minds of a few students the essential question: "What is happening?"
A potential problem with this approach is that at times the link between demonstrations and what is being taught is weak. Moreover, a course overloaded with demonstrations could sacrifice learning for entertainment. But, perhaps in the lecture room it is as Daryle Singletary sings: "I ain't never had too much fun."
So far, we have presented quite specific strategies. We now turn to some general observations about the education process, awareness of which can greatly enhance learning. These are directed toward both the learner and the teacher.
A student's learning style impacts the way she or he prefers to take in and process information, and to interact with others. Some students prefer to memorize discrete facts and specific formulas and then apply them, whereas other students prefer to use broader concepts and organizing principles to derive the discrete facts and formulas themselves. Learning style can also refer to a person's preferred modality—visual, auditory, read/write or kinesthetic. It is important for students to become aware of their learning styles and for teachers to know that there are different ways to learn, that more roads than one lead to this Rome. Why impose your way (and get frustrated when people don't use it) when you can encourage students to learn in their own, optimum ways? When students become aware of their learning preferences, they learn more efficiently by, for example, converting lecture notes or a course manual or a text into their preferred format.
A potential difficulty is that when students determine their preferred learning style, they may be tempted to think they can learn only in that way. It is important to stress that the various learning styles can be learned; just being aware that something may be learned in a variety of ways helps. When students investigate a spectrum of strategies, consistent with the gamut of learning styles, they broaden their learning preferences and become better thinkers.
Most students think that learning selected terms, definitions and solutions to specific problems is the way to perform well in courses. Few of them realize that learning is a process, and that there are various stages of learning. Learning how to learn, through examples, is the key. In 1956 Benjamin Bloom and colleagues identified levels of learning proceeding from rote memorization through comprehension, application, analysis and synthesis, finally to evaluation. Recently, this taxonomy has been revised and verbs used to describe the levels. Additionally, the top two levels have been reversed. In the new taxonomy the levels proceed from remembering through understanding, applying, analyzing and evaluating to creating. (See the figure at right.)
We have found that teaching students how to learn has transformed many of them from rote memorizers and regurgitators into independent, self-directed learners. Showing students how Bloom's Taxonomy is applied to "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" helps them understand the distinctions between the levels.
In addition to teaching students about Bloom's taxonomy, we have found that when students learn about metacognition (thinking about one's own thinking), they transform their attitudes about learning, their methods of study and their grades. Metacognition is a way of standing outside, of willed thinking about the acquisition of knowledge and understanding.
Is there a potential danger of talking too much about the metaworld, at the expense of applying what one has learned to the academic subject at hand? An introductory chemistry course is not a philosophy of education course. We may have another disagreement between the authors here. One of us (McGuire) can't get enough of metacognition because she has seen countless students improve their test scores from below 50 to over 90 in a matter of weeks, just by using metacognitive learning strategies, whereas the other one of us (Hoffmann) tires and wants to grapple with real teaching. We do agree that when students become fluent in the language of chemistry (or any subject) their metacognitive sophistication will increase to the level that they no longer have to consciously think about it.
Our third observation reflects on the relationship between teacher and learner. The feeling that the teacher knows much more than you—knows more ways to transform raw facts into understanding or how to actually make an object or molecule—can intimidate a learner. You might think, "How could I possibly learn to do that?" But when respect for a teacher's mastery accompanies a second feeling, that the teacher cares deeply about transferring understanding to you, a mysterious psychological force is turned on—the mentor/apprentice relationship.
There is nothing about this linkage specific to learning science—it is a constant of human society. The reason the relationship works so well as a learning/teaching strategy is, we believe, twofold: First there is a simple motivating force: The student admires the mentor (admiration does not exclude resentment of a perceived taskmaster) and wants to gain the mentor's ken.
Second, learning is not a process that insists on perfect understanding at every step. That's a caricature of mathematical proof. At its best, learning in science is a nonlinear sequence of observing facts then trying to explain them, and in the process gathering or being confronted with further facts and continuing to augment one's understanding.
In this sequence, confidence that the mentor has wisdom and tools to impart can make the learner accept facts on faith, secure in the psychological confidence that the mentor will explain, in time. To put it another way, the mentor/apprentice relationship can guide the learner through unavoidable boring or tough stages, toward mastery.
We have called the teaching process magical and mystical; so is learning. People have taught and learned for tens of thousands of years; the biological roots of learning are older still. There is no one way to teach or learn, yet we think there are some identifiable underlying psychological principles that enable good learning:
1. Empathy: The teacher must care, and everyone knows it is difficult to do so when there are obstacles such as four classes to teach, inadequate pay, social problems and other distractions. But students have finely tuned emotional antennae that detect care, and a good number respond.
2. Active learning: Any teaching strategy that stimulates participatory activity on the part of the student will make learning so much easier.
3. Judicious interplay of groups and individuals: Learning is a solitary action, yet it can be enhanced by episodes of group activity. Such interplay is often observed in society, for example, in the way kids master any sport (dribbling practice in soccer, a team scrimmage) or learn music through taking part in a marching band. And the group interplay at a meeting of professionals from any discipline demonstrates learning at its best!
4. Empowerment: Students love to feel capable. We have seen countless students get hooked on studying and learning once they saw their abilities growing dramatically, through their own efforts.
We in academia expect students to acquire information, strategies and critical-thinking skills that allow them to learn from our teaching. There should be no less expectation that instructors think critically and seek out specific strategies to improve performance in the classroom or lecture hall.
The suggestions we present here are not prescriptive; we just want to share with you some of the strategies we have improvised and developed over the years to facilitate learning for, rather than to deliver instruction to, the students we have taught. We hope that you will find them to be useful tools in your own teaching and/or learning.
Further Reading
For more information on metacognitive strategies, Saundra McGuire recommends the following online resources:
We are grateful to many people for their thoughtful comments, including Stephanie McGuire, Deena S. Weisberg, Brian Coppola, Robert Root-Bernstein and James Wandersee. A much abbreviated and modified version of this article was published in Science 325:1203–1204. Additional references on the strategies suggested are available from the authors.
©Roald Hoffman and Saundra Y. McGuire
You can find this online at http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/num2/learning-and-teaching-strategies/1
© 2016 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society


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Just wanted to post my experience with White Oak Apiaries in Brewster NY. I know that Mike the owner is just starting out, and I wanted to give him some slack but I cannot as I have spoken to and seen reviews from others that had similar experiences to me.
First off we were told that they would be ready Mid may--I picked them up on Friday June 15 (one month later than planned) This was annoying but I didnt mind as I would rather have good nucs than rushed nucs. Well I went over to get my 24 nucs for the local club and arrived at 9 am and was told "oh someone who wasnt supposed to pick up today came unplanned and so I had to give him 40 nucs" 24 of which were mine--so then I had to wait an hour for him to wrangle up 24 nucs.
Then right off the bat while I am checking some of them I see one with hardly any eggs no brood so we had to swap it for another. I had people meeting me enroute home and now I was one hour late so I couldn't go through each nuc. So I get home an before giving each nuc to club members I checked them
1 had 4 frames no brood eggs nothing
3 had just eggs no brood capped
1 had a swarm cell that just emerged and one in process
I was so mad I cannot give these to new beekeepers in good conscience. So I had to drive all the way back to Brewster to switch them for new ones which the owner did--but I must say he was rather unapologetic. I understand this is a new business and it is one young guy doing everything but I think he got in over his head. The nucs that were good were great but the bad ones....well they were not even sellable.
Anybody else buy NUCs from White Oak?

subset: commoncrawl


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text: I think perceptions can be misleading. There are plenty of athlete's that are also very good at pastimes like golf. I don't think one can correlate that to their dedication to their primary sport. Romo has had some hard luck getting over the top but he's always seemed to me to be a good guy and a very good QB.


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We've been moving ALL of our hives to cranberries for the last 8 yrs...with different amounts of success. I know that strong bees in; means strong bees out. I know that feeding pollen sub makes an huge difference. I know that on bigs farms (ie: 1300 hives at 3.5/acre) the bees do way worse than small farms.
But what I don't know is, does feeding sucrose during crans make them come out awesome? I'd feed them in frame feeders at the same time as feeding pollen sub. Should be great right? Anyone done this?


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Thomas W. Ely, 33, Bedford, died Saturday, July 7, 2012.
Born Nov. 27, 1978, he was the son of Sandra Ely and the late Melvin Lee Ely, Jr.
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text: here in the south it does not get cold all that much so my bees always have brood. my hopes is if i cover my hives with black plastic,they would think its dark and she would not lay. that way i would get a long break in brood to help keeps mites down. would this work or is it far fetch.


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Serves 4
4 cups diced watermelon
2 cups finely diced pineapple
1 cup grated coconut - preferably fresh - but alternatively you can use desiccated
1 cup coconut milk
1 cup coconut water
Juice of one lemon
Juice and finely grated zest of one lime
1 Tbs honey
Ice cubes
1 Put the watermelon into a large bowl and gently mash without breaking it up completely.
2 Add the pineapple, coconut, coconut milk and coconut water.
3 Stir in the lemon juice, lime juice and lime zest.
4 Drizzle in the honey and add the ice cubes then pour into large glasses and serve with a spoon.


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Hi All,
Just wanted to start a helpful thread for those of us that have CA BOOTS, or any boots, that need that extra Movie or MOM Look to them.
Ive noticed that those of us that do have these boots either dont weather them, or simply dont weather them enough.
This Tutorial will require some painting skills, and the mixing of paints.
So here are the type of paints and supplies you will need to complete this:
I use an Acrylic water based paint. Namely DELTA CERAMCOAT.
Why? Theyre CHEAP!! .99cents each to be exact.
We already spend way too much money for this hobby Its good to cut some corners every once and while...
You can find them at ANY crafts store AND WALMART!!. And being that we will be painting on material the acrylic is forgiving in that it bends, and still allows the material to breathe.
Heres the list of the EXACT colors you will need.
You will also need some sturdy/Cheap Sable paint brushes and a good Blow/HairDryer. I use my wife's..shhhhhhh .
- Charcoal
- Black
- White
- Burnt Umber
- Straw
- Purple
UPDATED 10/18/2010: I am now using an airbrush to weather.. and detailing with brushes...
And some Sand-Paper...150grit or higher.
I want to thank DARTHMILLER for being my "test subject" with his boots
This first pic is obviously the way the CA BOOTS come .wrong color and in need of some tender "Love"/ Weathering.


text: San Antonio March 14th, 8:00 PM TV - WDIV HD, NBALP The defending champion Spurs come to town with a 17-15 road record - and oh, they began the week in first place in the wild, wild west. At the time of this post they currently are holding the 3rd seed. The Spurs have dropped their last three ( Denver, Suns, & Hornets) road games. The Pistons won the previous meeting 90-80 in SA as Duncan and Sheed both pulled down 15 boards and scored 24 and 23 points respectively.


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Feedback on Custom PC's new games pages
Posted on 20th Aug 2009 at 08:29 by Joe Martin with 8 comments
So, instead I thought it would be a good chance to get some feedback on a little change I've introduced to the latest issue of Custom PC and which, if it goes down well, I'll keep going. If you've got Issue 73 to hand (it's out in the shops today) then you can see what I'm talking about on pages 26 and 27 – the 'Games Etc' spread.
Basically, I've replaced the usual batch of four or five gaming news items with a hand-picked of really good free games from the last month which we think people will like. There's some free flash adventure games there, some mods and some downloadable indie games – something for everyone and I'd like to do this every month instead of using that space for gaming news.


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Paula Joan Caplan
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Don't Blame Mother: Mending the Mother-Daughter Relationship
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Bias in Psychiatric Diagnosis
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Quick Links
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View Comment
Posted at 5:35 AM on October 10, 2011
Cullen Swan
Posted at 1:08 AM on August 4, 2011
shut up
Posted at 6:40 AM on July 30, 2011
u guys are idiots
Posted at 11:25 PM on July 6, 2011
You guys are making a Huge deal out of a movie.You guys are so pathetic thinking that your gonna cry or u did because its a STINKING MOVIE!!Its not like u guys acted like this when the last three books and movies came out.And now when there is a stinking wedding u guys are crying?!Do u guys act like this when u go to a friend or family wedding?If u do i'm telling u now…..GET OVER IT!!U should be happy their getting married and not sittin there sobbing!Listen u may not agree with me but hey if u dont then im tellin u ….Im only 14!If nobody cares then well i care and nobody is changing my mind!Its not like im gonna die if you dont agree with me.:(
you are fool
Posted at 8:03 AM on July 23, 2011


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Central Retreat with Sunlit Terrace
숙박 가능인원5
침실 수2
면적100 m²
Floor No.
- 인터넷
- 부엌
- 흡연가능
- 발코니/테라스
- 수건
- 식기 세척기
- Baby cot
Accommodation summary
|Travessa do Caldeira, 1200-085 Lisbon, 포르투갈
|Acceptance rate
|Response time
|1 day
|Calendar updated
The apartment very charming is 100 sq. metres and includes a wonderful terrace, a living area with TV and sofa bed, another living area together with a dinner area and kitchen well equipped. There are two double bedrooms and one bathroom. The sunny terrace is perfect for you to unwind and relax.
This beautiful apartment, renovated, is located in city centre, in old quarter of Santa Catarina, 100m from the best city view of the city: Miradouro de Santa Catarina. This is the best terrace view in Lisbon.
|2 명 이상시 가격
|1980131 ₩ 1박당/
|Check-in before
|환불 규정
|매우 유연함
If you want to spoil your trip, make reservation here. The owner received double reservation on same date, when we arrived there, already another guest was in this apartment. The woman who the host hired said "already happened a lot these kind of case"
But more unbelievable thing was, even we called on the way to go there on check in day, the owner didn't notice this kind of situation. After we arrived, and then we found that situation, the owner disconnected contact with us. We should wait a lot in front of owner's apartment, the woman who the owner hired changed a lot what she said. And all the time acted like do a favor for us. In the end the hired woman offered the place for one night, we should stay the very unsatisfied place far away from center, because we couldn't stayed in the street.
After that, I tried to call to owner, but she didn't answer. That night I couldn't sleep at all, I tried to call wimdu and tried to find another apartment. Next day after wimdu contacted with owner, she started to receive call. But she didn't say she'll make reservation for second night even that kind of situation. After I blamed her a lot, she made reservation, not valuntary. Anyway I couldn't look around lisbon at all, spent time to fix this problem. Also I don't know how many times I called wimdu. It's hard to contact during trip. I hope someone never experience this kind of situation, it's horrible. That why I left comment here.
Very nice apartment, just beside the big touristic area. Not everything is so shiny as on the picture, however you are in an authentic neighbourhood and have plenty of space.
The apartment was very nice, well equiped and in one of Lisbon's most fun neighbourhoods. Balcony was great. Only drawback was that the house was noisy with creaking ceilings from the neighbour above. Otherwise very recommendable.
Very nice apartment and victoria was really nice and flexible with the check in and check out time..
Thanks a lot !
Very nice apartment and Victoria was really nice and flexible with the check in and check out time..
Thanks a lot !
This property is located in a very quiet small street in trendy Barrio Santa Catarina with wonderful cafés and outdoor bars. The apartment is perfectly equipped and really nicely furnished. WiFi was working reliably the whole time. The small patio is perfect for sitting outside.
Personally, I would say that the layout is perfect for a family with 2 kids and more or 2 couples or a party of 4 individuals as there are 2 bedrooms and one couch in a separate living room and one couch in a open kitchen/seating area.
As this is a very old house and typical for Lisbon, the air/smell inside can get a bit damp, but nothing that a opening the windows for some time or putting on the mobile heating (in cold weather) cannot solve.
The bathroom could have been cleaned a tiny little bit more thoroughly, but anything else was impeccable.
The owners of the apartment live next door and run a small café/grocery store and are very helpful on any matter. Definitely recommended!
L'appart est super, propre, très bien agencé et meublé (avec un petit bémol pour le mobilier d'extérieur qui est un peu fatigué). La terrasse est un vrai plus pour le soir. L'accès est un peu ardu mais la vieille ville de Lisbonne se mérite ! Quartier authentique et charmant. Accueil adorable de la part des propriétaires du petit café de la rue. Expérience très agréable qui deviendra un excellent souvenir. Merci !
Leider hat die Kommunikation durch Eigentümerwechsel in der Zwischenzeit nicht funktioniert. Die Kontaktdaten wurden nicht aktualisiert und man konnte nur sehr umständlich und in der letzten Sekunde die Eigentümerin erreichen was Ungewissheit, viele Telefonate und darauffolgenden Stress mit sich zog. Die Bilder von der Wohnung entsprachen nicht ganz der vorgefundenen Situation, die Möbeln in Schlafzimmer wurden gewechselt was aber nicht von grosser Bedeutung war. Die Wohnung liegt günstig und hat Altbau-Flair wenn man sich an etwas muffigen Geruch nicht stören lässt. Manche Kleinigkeiten könnten besser sein, zB. Besteck oder teilweise Sauberkeit. Betreuer waren sehr nett, sprachen aber kaum Englisch. Alles in Allem eine nette Wohnung mit kleinen Mankos.
- 확인된 숙소의 품질
- 모든 호스트는 전화로 입증되었습니다.


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Chloe Console Table
- Everyday Value
- Overview
With rounded corners and gently flared legs, this beautifully crafted hardwood console has a graceful silhouette that's matched with incredible durability.
- Top and legs are crafted of solid hardwood.
- Apron is built with hardwood, Plywood and hardwood veneer.
- Finished entirely by hand and sealed with lacquer for moisture resistance.
- Imported.
- Simple assembly required.
- Adjustable levelers to add stability on uneven floors.
- Dimensions & Care
- Overall: 47.5'' wide x 17'' deep x 30'' high
- Upper Shelf Interior: 43.5" wide x 13" deep
- Clearance Above Upper Shelf: 9.5"
- Bottom Shelf Interior: 43.5" wide x 13" deep
- Clearance Above Bottom Shelf: 10"
- Clearance From Floor: 6.5"
- Distance Between Legs: 42.5'' at sides; 10.5" at head
- Weight: 43 pounds
- To clean, wipe with a soft damp cloth.
- Avoid the use of chemical and abrasive cleaners.
- Glass cleaner may be used to clean glass shelves, but avoid spraying it onto the painted wood frame.
- Wipe up spills immediately.
- Shipping & Return Info
UPS can deliver most in-stock items within 4-5 business days.
Next Day Delivery and Processing
We can arrange for next day delivery to most destinations within the contiguous 48 states, for an extra charge of $17.50 per address. If we receive your order by 6pm PT Monday through Friday, you'll receive your order the next business day; orders placed on Friday after 6pm PT through Sunday will arrive on Tuesday. Note: Next Day Delivery service is not available for some oversized items, White Glove Delivery, out of stock items, personalized items or for items shipped directly from the manufacturer.
Select oversized items have an additional delivery and processing surcharge; this charge is listed below the item price.
View the complete Shipping and Delivery Information page.
We take great pride in the quality and craftsmanship of each and every Pottery Barn product and we hope you love your purchase. If for any reason you do not, you have 30 days – or 7 days for all Quick Ship upholstery items – to return your purchase for a full refund or exchange. You can return most non-furniture items to your local Pottery Barn store – FREE.
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Questions? See our full Returns Policy.


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Dont worry Moke no more congratulations threads. You think I ever want the Giants to win. I would never root for a team that beat us in the playoffs twice and rubbed it in our faces.
Just stop, please stop. It's some sick fantasy world you're living in where you think ALL giant fans rub **** in people's faces.
The only reason we MAY rub it in people's faces (which is probably the "analysts" of the NFL) is because every year is a new year of the Giants are a horrible team.
Of course Burress talking trash in the 07 championship game was icing on the cake as why I dislike the Giants even more.
Cry us a river, build a bridge and get over it. You sound like a hurt 10 year old, my god.


text:
Home sales fall as tight supply boosts prices
WASHINGTON U.S. home resales fell from a more than 10-year high in April, weighed down by a chronic shortage of houses on the market that is keeping prices elevated and sidelining prospective buyers.
NEW YORK Bill Gross, founder and co-chief investment officer of bond giant PIMCO, wrote in his first letter to investors this year that money printing by central banks will lead to a destructive bout of inflation.
Gross, who has criticized the Federal Reserve's purchases of Treasuries and agency mortgage bonds in past letters, wrote in his January investment outlook entitled "Money for Nothin' Writing Checks For Free" that the purchases will lead to a devaluation of currencies and gradually weaker investment returns.
"The future price tag of printing six trillion dollars' worth of checks comes in the form of inflation and devaluation of currencies either relative to each other, or to commodities in less limitless supply such as oil or gold," Gross wrote.
Gross, whose Pacific Investment Management Co. had $1.92 trillion in assets as of September 30, 2012, referred to a speech in 2002 by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in which Bernanke said that the United States could print an unlimited amount of dollars "at essentially no cost."
Gross countered in his letter that the cost will be inflation, which will weaken the returns on long-term bonds and eventually risk assets such as stocks and high-yield bonds, and also hurt businesses.
Gross likened inflation to "dragons" lurking within the "cave" of money-printing programs.
"Zero-bound interest rates, QE maneuvering, and 'essentially costless' check writing destroy business models and stunt investment decisions which offer increasingly lower ROIs and ROEs," Gross wrote, referring to returns on investment and equity.
Gross' flagship PIMCO Total Return Fund earned a return of 10.36 percent in 2012, besting 88 percent of U.S. intermediate-term bond funds, according to Morningstar. The fund attracted $18 billion in new cash last year, bringing assets in the fund to $285 billion.
According to PIMCO's website, the flagship fund's biggest holdings are in mortgage and Treasury bonds, the securities which the Fed pledged to buy at $85 billion per month last December. The fund had 44 percent of its holdings in mortgage bonds and 23 percent of its holdings in Treasury securities as of the end of November 2012.
Gross recently wrote on PIMCO's twitter account on December 30 that stocks and bonds will return less than 5 percent in 2013.
(Reporting by Sam Forgione; Editing by Gunna Dickson, Gary Hill)
WASHINGTON U.S. home resales fell from a more than 10-year high in April, weighed down by a chronic shortage of houses on the market that is keeping prices elevated and sidelining prospective buyers.
NEW YORK Facebook Inc has signed deals with millennial-focused news and entertainment creators Vox Media, BuzzFeed, ATTN, Group Nine Media and others to make shows for its upcoming video service, which will feature long and short-form content with ad breaks, according to several sources familiar with the situation.
Ford Motor Co said on Wednesday that new Chief Executive James Hackett is eligible for at least $13.4 million in total annual compensation.


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If you are seeking a world-class educational experience within a vibrant, Christ-centered learning community, Cedarville is the place for you. Step up to the challenge of our arts, sciences, professional and graduate programs, and achieve more than you ever imagined. Be challenged and transformed by professors who are experts in their fields and invest their lives at Cedarville to mentor and guide students like you.
A teaching experience in an early childhood setting under the supervision of the cooperating teacher and a university supervisor. Required seminars encourage reflection on the teaching experience as well as discussion of issues of importance to educators. Prerequisite: successful completion of the E.C. Methods II block.


text:
Godfather turned to the Oddfather in his final years
Page Tools
The personal life of the intensely private actor Marlon Brando remained largely mysterious until his death from lung failure in July, at the age of 80. But it has emerged that he spent his ailing final years developing the oddest of friendships - with Michael Jackson, whose Neverland Ranch he considered a second home.
The details have been made public as Brando's friends and business associates begin staking claims on his estate, which is valued at about $US21 million ($30 million) despite a widespread belief before his death that he was almost destitute.
The star of On The Waterfront and The Godfather counted Jackson as one of his closest friends and put in long stays at Neverland Ranch in Santa Ynez valley, central California, where the alleged child abuse for which Jackson is facing trial is said to have taken place. The singer is also accused of keeping one alleged victim's family "virtual prisoners" at Neverland in an effort to silence them.
Brando's son, Miko, worked as a security guard at the ranch, on which Jackson has built his own amusement park, zoo and railway. "The last time my father left his house to go anywhere, to spend any kind of time, it was with Michael Jackson," Miko Brando said. "He loved it. [He] had a 24-hour chef, 24-hour security, 24-hour help, 24-hour kitchen, 24-hour maid service."
Brando's ashes were scattered in Death Valley, California, and in Tahiti following a memorial service attended by Jackson, Sean Penn, Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty.
Brando appears to have preferred the ranch over his own private kingdom, the Polynesian island of Tetiaroa, which accounts for a large portion of his assets. The small airline that used to take visitors there is the largest claimant to the Brando estate.
Air Moorea says it is owed $US460,000 for the service it provided the late actor.
Most of Brando's fortune is likely to end up with the nine children he named in his will, who are determined not to give any ground by squabbling among themselves, said Brando's lawyer, David Seeley. An adopted 10th child, Petra, who works as a lawyer in London, was not included as a beneficiary.
The Guardian


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If you are seeking a world-class educational experience within a vibrant, Christ-centered learning community, Cedarville is the place for you. Step up to the challenge of our arts, sciences, professional and graduate programs, and achieve more than you ever imagined. Be challenged and transformed by professors who are experts in their fields and invest their lives at Cedarville to mentor and guide students like you.
Senior course for preseminary and comprehensive Bible majors. Students demonstrate the ability to articulate and defend an appropriate systematic theology. Capstone Course.


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resume service in Lutcher, LA
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Puzzles and tricks from Martin Gardner inspire math and science
Erik D. Demaine
Martin Gardner was a great man of many talents. He was an amateur mathematician, a puzzler, a professional magician, a debunker of pseudoscience, and a popular writer about all of these topics. He wrote more than 65 books and published a column, "Mathematical Games," in Scientific American for 25 years, from 1957 to 1982. Because of his influence on countless readers, Gardner became known as the father of "recreational mathematics"—playful mathematical problems designed and solved purely for fun. Gardner's accessible, inviting prose and his ability to correspond with impressive numbers of readers gave the general public the opportunity to enjoy mathematics and to participate in mathematical research. Many of today's mathematicians, including myself, entered the field at least in part due to Gardner's influence.
Sadly, Gardner died on May 22, 2010, at the age of 95. His death has been sorely felt by mathematicians around the world. But rather than dwell on our loss, I feel compelled to celebrate the tradition that Gardner started. Roughly every two years since 1993, Tom Rodgers has organized a conference in Atlanta called the Gathering for Gardner. It brings together mathematicians, puzzlers, magicians and debunkers who love the work of Martin Gardner and the spirit he embodied—playful intellectual curiosity. Gardner's own absence from the Gathering since 1996 has not stopped it from continually growing in participation and intensity. The ninth Gathering, held last March, was the most prodigious yet, with 300 participants, a half-day sculpture-building party and two evening magic shows.
I am a theoretical computer scientist, which puts me at the boundary of computer science and mathematics. The goal of the field is to use mathematics to understand computation—what it is and what it can do. Readers of this column already know that computation is extremely powerful, offering new perspectives, approaches and solutions in perhaps every discipline. Computer science is highly unusual in this universality of influence—the only other example I know of is mathematics—and it's what excites me about the field. The interdisciplinary field of "computational x" is central to most fields where it has been considered (the "x" could be biology, chemistry, neuroscience, geometry, linguistics, finance, and so on)—and for other fields, I believe it is simply yet to be discovered.
What I'd like to show here is that computation is a useful way to think about more recreational pursuits, too—specifically puzzles and magic. Martin Gardner is my inspiration: He did not consider puzzles, magic and mathematics as separate pursuits, but blurred the traditional boundaries between them. He routinely illustrated mathematics using puzzles and magic, and he studied puzzles and magic using mathematics. I like to apply the same spirit to theoretical computer science, where the computational perspective offers new ways to think about puzzles and magic—specifically, how to design challenges and tricks automatically. Voilà, recreational computer science!
Gardner's work continues to influence researchers such as myself. The three examples I'll describe are solutions to problems that Gardner posed—ones he stated explicitly or ones that have been inferred from his work. Throughout Gardner's writings are countless mathematical questions, puzzles and magic tricks that deserve further research and extension. I encourage everyone to read through his collected works, for the fun this always brings, as well as to help find these seeds for future research. I will collect your suggestions, which you can send to martingardner at csail dot mit dot edu dot Long live the spirit of Martin Gardner!
Our first example of recreational computer science is inspired by a magic trick performed by Harry Houdini before he was an escape artist. In his 1922 book Paper Magic, he describes how to take a standard sheet of paper, make a sequence of folds, cut along a straight line, unfold, and obtain a perfect five-pointed star (see the top of the first figure, at right). In 1960, Gardner wrote a Scientific American column that described a few such magic tricks, producing "simple geometrical figures" by a sequence of folds and one complete straight cut.
Gardner included the tantalizing statement: "More complicated designs … present formidable problems." To a theoretical computer scientist such as myself, this screams "Unsolved problem!" Whenever we have several examples of a particular style of magic trick, it is natural to wonder whether it represents a general principle. In this case, we know how to make several simple figures by folding and making one complete straight cut. But what is the complete range of figures that are possible to make in this way, and what sequence of folds will make them? To put it more computationally, can a computer algorithm tell us whether a particular shape can be made, and if so, tell us where to fold and cut to make it?
I started thinking about this problem in 1996 when I was a starting Ph.D. student at the University of Waterloo in Canada. My father, Martin Demaine, then an artist and an avid puzzler and now also a mathematician, had read Martin Gardner's article back in 1960, remembered the problem and suggested we work on it. So we tackled it, together with my Ph.D. advisor Anna Lubiw, and essentially solved it two years later.
Initially we experimented, folding and cutting lots of pieces of paper. One of our first recognizable creations was a heart shape (see the bottom of the first figure, above). This shape, like the five-pointed star, has a line of reflectional symmetry—the center line along which the pieces on either side are mirror images of each other—which is the first fold to make. Why should we fold along symmetry lines? Our effective goal is to fold the paper to align the sides of the shape we want to cut out; once the sides lie along a common line, we simply cut along that line. So if the shape has a line of symmetry, we should fold along it, aligning the two halves of the shape, leaving just one half to align.
What if the shape we want doesn't have a line of symmetry? This is where the problem gets really interesting. Initially we thought that such shapes were impossible: What else could the first fold be? But as we learned more about origami mathematics, which at the time was just making its debut in the scientific literature, we realized that there were many more types of folds than just "fold along a line." Armed with the idea of such complex flat folds, we quickly made progress on solving the problem, building general techniques for producing more and more shapes.
One early step in this progression was making any triangle (see the second figure, at right). To try this out, draw the three sides of a triangle on a piece of paper. Now find the lines that bisect each of the angles of the triangle by starting at one of its corners, folding one edge on top of another, unfolding, and repeating for the two other corners. A classic theorem from high-school geometry is that the three angular bisectors meet at a common point. Now fold along a line through this point so as to bring one of the three triangle sides onto itself, and unfold. The fold will be perpendicular to the triangle side. If you like, you can repeat with the two other sides, though only one perpendicular fold is necessary. The final step, which is the hardest if you've never made a "rabbit ear" in origami, is to fold along all the creases at once, with the angular bisectors folding one way (called "mountain" folds) and the perpendicular ones folding the other way (called "valley" folds). Once you do this, all three triangle sides lie along a line, with the inside and outside of the triangle lying on opposite sides of that line. What's cool is that this works for any triangle—no line of symmetry required.
To our surprise, we also found a way to make any polygon with any number of sides, not just triangles. So you can make the silhouette of your favorite shape, such as the swan in the third figure (at left), by folding and then making one complete straight cut. The fold is substantially more complicated, but not too hard with practice. I recommend precreasing—folding and unfolding each crease line—before attempting to fold all the creases simultaneously and collapse the swan down to a line.
And there's more: You can make several polygons at once with a single cut. This result is especially useful for spelling initials, such as the ones that I prepared for my first Gathering for Gardner (the fifth one, abbreviated G4G5) in 2002. It's rather difficult to fold anything beyond a few letters, but in principle you could fold a piece of paper, make one complete straight cut, and produce the entire Gettysburg Address.
Although this research was motivated by magic tricks, the theoretical computer science that resulted turns out to have more serious applications as well. A closely related problem is that of compactly folding an airbag flat so that it fits into a small compartment such as your steering wheel. The solution to the fold-and-cut problem leads to a natural way to collapse three-dimensional surfaces such as airbags, and this approach has been applied in some simulations of airbag deployment. So recreational computer science may even save lives.
Our next example of recreational computer science is inspired by a collection of classic "penny puzzles," which Gardner wrote about in Scientific American in 1966. Helena Verrill, a mathematician now at Louisiana State University, introduced my father and me to puzzles of this type. You are given a pyramid of six coins, shown on the left in part a of the fourth figure (at right), and your goal is to make a sequence of moves to arrange the coins into a line. But each move you make must place an existing coin into a position that touches at least two other coins. This "two-adjacency" constraint is what makes the puzzle challenging. It might initially seem impossible to get rid of all the three-coin triangles, but with a little insight, it is possible.
There are several coin-sliding puzzles of this type, with the two-adjacency constraint on moves. So again we wondered: How does it generalize? The natural computational question here is whether computers can solve this type of puzzle: Given a starting configuration and a goal configuration of coins, can a computer algorithm determine whether the puzzle is solvable under the two-adjacency constraint, and if so, find a sequence of moves to solve it? Even better, can it find the shortest sequence of moves to solve the puzzle?
Both of these questions are actually still unanswered. I suspect that the second question has a negative answer, and it is computationally intractable to determine the fewest moves needed to solve a puzzle, but no one has proved that yet. However, the first question might have a positive answer, which would be much more interesting—it would essentially provide a general theory for this type of puzzle.
In 1998 Verrill visited my father and me for a couple of days of problem solving, during which we came up with and tackled the first problem. We observed that the puzzle in the fourth figure adheres to a triangular grid: If you draw an equilateral triangular grid where the triangle side length equals the diameter of the coin, then the centers of the coins always remain at grid intersections. This property is a neat consequence of the two-adjacency rule because the coins start on this grid.
For puzzles on the triangular grid, we were able to develop a general computational theory. We found some very simple conditions for when it is possible to transform a starting configuration into a goal configuration via two-adjacency moves. First, the number of coins must be the same in the two configurations, and it must be possible to make at least one two-adjacency move from the starting configuration. Second, and more interesting, the goal configuration must have at least one of three patterns that make it possible to have a last move that solves the puzzle. The patterns are a triangle of three coins, a connected group of four or more coins, and a connected group of three coins along with another connected group of two coins.
As long as the goal configuration has at least one of these patterns, the puzzle is guaranteed to be solvable, and a computer algorithm can tell you how. This result holds even if the coins have different labels (for example, some are heads and some are tails), provided there are more than three coins total.
This kind of simple characterization of solvable puzzles not only helps to find outcomes, but also makes it easy to design new puzzles. Armed with a guarantee about when a puzzle will be solvable, we can design a new one within those constraints that will also be visually interesting. For example, can you solve the puzzle in part b of the fourth figure?
Another special type of coin-sliding puzzle arises if we replace the triangular grid with a square grid, requiring every move to place a coin on this grid. These puzzles are substantially harder to solve, both in practice and in theory. We came up with a nearly complete characterization of solvable puzzles, showing how to complete challenges with at least two "extra coins" to help navigate the other pieces. Puzzles without any extra coins are impossible to solve, and puzzles with just one extra are typically either unsolvable or not too engaging—but we still don't have a computer algorithm to tell us exactly which puzzles can be solved. The situation with two extra coins is quite interesting, however, and has again allowed us to design several puzzles. Try, for instance, the puzzle in part c of the fourth figure. To see more coin-sliding puzzles, visit http://erikdemaine.org/slidingcoins/.
Our last example of recreational computer science is inspired by two tricks with a blindfolded magician, which involve flipping coins into a desired configuration. Because a volunteer manipulates the coins, these tricks have the distinction of being performable over the telephone, on radio or on television, thus being performed "personally" for many people at once.
The first trick, independently invented by Martin Gardner and Karl Fulves before 1980, involves three coins arranged in a line. The spectator arranges the coins as heads or tails, in any combination they like. The magician's goal—without seeing the coins—is to make them all the same—all heads or all tails. Naturally, the spectator should not choose this outcome as the starting configuration, or else the trick will be over rather quickly. The magician now gives a sequence of instructions: Flip the left coin, flip the middle coin, and flip the left coin again. In between, the magician asks whether the coins are yet all the same, and continues to the next instruction only if the trick is not yet over. It's no surprise that the magician can eventually equalize all the coins, but it's impressive that it always takes at most three moves (see the fifth figure, at right).
Why these three moves work is closely linked to a set of codes in computer science that are widely used today to reduce errors when representing digital data with analog signals. These so-called Gray codes, named after Frank Gray from Bell Labs, who patented the system in 1947, have the feature that every two successive binary values differ by only one bit. A configuration of three coins can be seen as a corner of a three-dimensional cube: There are three coins, and each can be either heads or tails, making 23=8 corners. But the cube is effectively folded in half because the all-heads configuration is just as good as the all-tails configuration, leaving just 22=4 "double configurations" arranged in a two- dimensional square. The Gray code tells us how to traverse all these nodes by changing one coin at a time, without ever repeating a configuration. Because we are counting moves instead of configurations visited, we get to subtract 1, for a total of 3 moves. More generally, if we had n coins, we'd have 2n configurations, 2n–1 double configurations, and 2n–1–1 moves in the worst case. This study makes it clear why the trick is for three coins: Four coins would already require 23–1=7 moves.
To make the trick more impressive, we can give the spectator more freedom. A 1979 letter from Miner Keeler to Gardner, which Gardner wrote about in Scientific American in the same year, describes a trick involving four coins arranged in a circle. The setup and goal of the trick are the same as before, but this time the spectator can rotate the circle of coins however he or she likes before following each of the magician's instructions. The magician follows these seven steps: Flip the top and bottom coins (after rotation), flip the top and right coins (after rotation), flip the left and right coins (after rotation), flip the bottom coin (after rotation), flip the left and right coins (after rotation), flip the right and bottom coins (after rotation) and flip the top and bottom coins (after rotation). Despite the spectator's apparent flexibility, the magician equalizes all the coins in no more moves than the original four-coin trick (see the sixth figure, at right).
What makes this trick possible? A recent paper by two MIT students, Nadia Benbernou and Benjamin Rossman, along with my father and myself, analyzes what type of spectator moves such as "rotate the table" still let the magician equalize the coins with a clever choice of moves. The solution is closely tied to group theory, a field crucial to modern cryptography. The key requirement turns out to be that the number of different moves that a spectator can make is a power of 2. In the case of a rotating table, the number of coins must be a power of 2 (as in the four-coin trick above). But it is also possible, for example, to allow the table to be flipped over, because this precisely doubles the number of possible spectator moves.
Like many people, I love puzzles and magic. I also love theoretical computer science. It is wonderful to combine these loves, following in the footsteps of Martin Gardner, and I hope that more computer scientists will consider the recreational side as a good source of fun problems to solve, which may also lead to practical research. Let's keep carrying the torch that Gardner left burning.
You can find this online at http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/num2/recreational-computing/2
© 2016 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society


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Turning drivers into geeks: Auto dealers debate need for technology specialists to bring buyers up to speed
The vehicles unveiled during the 2014 North American International Auto Show are certain to sport even higher levels of technology than their predecessors.
And some car buyers will need a little help in navigating the technologies to get the most out of them, dealers agree.
But whether a need exists for dedicated technology specialists to provide that education to consumers at the dealerships is up for debate.
On one side are Ford dealers who've used technology allowances from the carmaker the past several years to hire technology specialists and other dealers who've already hired such specialists or are moving in that direction — even without manufacturer allowances.
On the other side are dealers who say the last thing customers want is to be shuffled to another person when they come in to buy a car.
"The way we approach sales, people want to deal with one person as much as possible," said Bob Shuman, owner and president of Shuman Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram in Walled Lake, and chairman of the 2014 NAIAS.
It's a salesperson's job to explain all of that to the customer, he said.
"They should be trained to explain the car and all of its technology and functions at delivery," Shuman said.
But Ford dealers have used technology allowances from Ford Motor Co. to hire technology specialists since 2011 when the automaker rolled out the assistance.
Among them is Village Ford in Dearborn, which receives about $7,500 a month in allowance money, or about $90,000 a year, according to a September article in Crain's sister publication Automotive News.
Village Ford was able to hire a dedicated specialist earning $30,000 to $40,000 a year to teach customers to use the Sync and MyFord Touch in-vehicle communication systems, thanks to the allowances, Owner Jim Seavitt told Crain's.
But as Automotive News reported, Ford is phasing out those allowances, beginning with the $50-per-vehicle allowance to train customers on use of its Sync voice recognition system at the end of 2013. The $75-per-vehicle allowance Ford dealers get for vehicles equipped with the MyFord Touch touchscreen will be eliminated for 2015 models.
"We want consistency, and plus, it's a time-consuming process," he said.
Having a dedicated technology specialist allows the salesperson to go back to selling cars and allows the specialists to teach technology, Seavitt said.
Seavitt believes the quality of delivery will go down without a dedicated technology specialist in place. He said he may either shift his technology specialist into a sales position or perhaps host automotive technology seminars for consumers, for a fee, to continue offering expert education.
Car dealers outside the Ford brands are also beginning to hire technology specialists, even without manufacturer incentives.
The Troy-based Suburban Collection has product specialists and/or salespeople trained to show customers how to use the electronics on their new vehicles, Chairman and CEO David Fischer said during a November interview with Crain's.
"That's a standard part of the service we are offering, which is something that two years ago, four years ago wasn't done," he said.
It's something that's evolved as the cars get more complicated and include more and more features, Fischer said.
Such technology education is "now part of every transaction if the customer is willing," he said.
Suburban has 29 franchised automotive dealerships across 34 sites. All but two — one each in Palm Beach, Fla., and Costa Mesa, Calif. — are in Southeast Michigan. Among the local dealerships are Suburban Fiat in Ann Arbor, Suburban Kia in Troy, Suburban Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram in Garden City, Chrysler Jeep of Ann Arbor and Fresard Buick GMC in Ferndale.
Lou LaRiche Chevrolet in Plymouth is in the process of hiring a technology specialist to verse customers in the nitty-gritty of the technology in cars and even simple things like how to lift the steering wheel, said Owner Scott LaRiche, who is vice chairman of the 2014 NAIAS.
"We're trying to figure out how to pay them. I'm looking for a Best Buy sales guy who's making like 40K," he said.
But how do you pay someone who's new to the dealership business?
Countering view
But not all dealers agree dedicated technology specialists are needed.
Dealer salespeople have already spent hours getting to know the customer and will be more in touch with the level of explanation needed or desired, Shuman said.
Customers without a smartphone may have no interest in knowing how to sync their phone with the vehicle. Or a customer who's purchased a new minivan may have no interest in learning about the back-seat audio entertainment option if they only plan to use the van to haul lumber, he said.
And young adults typically need no education at all on today's vehicle technologies, Shuman said. "They can figure it out."
You have to tailor your presentations to your customer, Shuman said, and salespeople are the best people to do that.
Carl Galeana, owner and president of Galeana Automotive Group, which includes Galeana's Van Dyke Dodge in Warren, Fiat of Lakeside in Macomb Township and dealerships in Florida and South Carolina selling Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram and Kia brands, agrees.
"You can fumble when you hand off too much," he said.
Additionally, consumers have done research on vehicle technologies before they get to the showroom, he said. "They're a lot smarter than they ever used to be on the product," and salespeople can reinforce what customers already know or explain what they don't.
Galeana doesn't see the need for an "outside person" to educate customers, who do need assistance.
"What little (technology) we have like Uconnect and things like that at Chrysler ... is part of the process," and something salespeople should handle, he said.
"That keeps the salesperson engaged with the customer — which is very important, especially as that person down the line says, 'I'm going to buy a second or third car.' "
Sherri Welch: (313) 446-1694, firstname.lastname@example.com. Twitter: @sherriwelch


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|GTA V Latest News | #GTAV | #GTAOnline
2008 1up visits Rockstar North
Grand Theft Auto IV - General News | @ 03:50 AM MDT | By Neil
In a move which seems to be becoming more common, another gaming publication has been invited to visit Rockstar North's offices in Edinburgh. Crispin Boyer's trip from 1up.com's San Francisco offices was an arduous one which encompassed more water than you'd think.
While there's no new information in this preview, it's an interesting look at the city which Rockstar North and around half a million others call home. The offices are located just around the corner from the main shopping district and it's hard to imagine that any of the creatives working there gained inspiration from their surroundings.
Full article: Grand Theft Auto IV Travelogue @ 1up
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Cover Story
Make no small plans
By Joni Moths MuellerRocky Marcoux didn't sleep his first two weeks at Marquette. Every time an ambulance siren sounded in the proximity of McCormick Hall, he jumped out of bed to catch the action. This small-town boy grew up in rural Connecticut, but as a college freshman, he quickly glommed onto big-city excitement.
Now working as the commissioner of city development, Marcoux still can't tamp down his exuberance for the city. He may be Milwaukee's most passionate pocket of civic pride.
Everyone should get to tour Milwaukee with Marcoux and stop at award-winning developments, promising intersections and an apocalyptic-looking tract that is the city's newest venture. It's a frenetic tour with a pitchman who is part-historian, part-sociologist and part-economic realist.
Marcoux, Sp '82, is passionate about attracting town-builder jobs, building workforce housing and creating new blended neighborhoods. He talks about the challenges the city is meeting and beating and takes pride in the fact that empty nesters and young professionals are reigniting downtown Milwaukee. "People lose track of the cumulative value that's already been added to the city," he says. "Milwaukee has reversed a 50-year population decline."
Marcoux thinks constantly about the 96.9 square miles that comprise Milwaukee. There is no land to annex so what's within the grid of city blocks is precious. When he drives past an abandoned building or overgrown parking lot and says "we've got an idea for that spot," you can believe it. This city ambassador has been called part-bulldog and part-evangelist when it comes to pushing Milwaukee toward a more prosperous future. His intrepid determination is applauded by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who says: "Rocky is dedicated to Milwaukee's future. His high energy and enthusiasm are exactly what is needed."
Today's tour incorporates a generous pass through the heart of campus. Marcoux is over the top in expressing what the university means to the city. When the economy started to slide in the 1970s and some of the biggest companies began looking for other places to operate, Marcoux says, "Marquette didn't put on wheels and move out." The university invested in its hometown, becoming an anchor that he credits for helping set in motion today's resurgence of the entire surrounding neighborhood called Avenues West. He points out critical pieces supporting the rise of Avenues West. Of course there are Marquette's contributions, but move just beyond campus and striking change is evident. The city is redeveloping a key thoroughfare, 27th Street, to attract new businesses and make it pedestrian-friendly. New construction mingles with stately architecture. There is the new Milwaukee Center for Independence assisting special needs populations. The Milwaukee Academy of Science and Historic Lofts on Kilbourn are carved out of a portion of the massive complex that once housed Lutheran Hospital. Adapting existing structures for today's users is a concept that's getting big play in Milwaukee. "It's just a collision of good things that forward-thinking developers are working together to solve one of the city's top issues vacant buildings," Marcoux says.
He speaks reverentially of the people who live here and prophetically of those the city needs to attract to complete its makeover. His focus is on building up abandoned land that once served an industrial use, attracting new business development to increase Milwaukee's taxable base and jobs. "Some people will look only at the challenge of attracting the college-educated town-builder workforce," he says, "but we can't forget about people that lack that skill set. If we lose ground with employers that are employing our hardest-to-employ people, then we're destined to fail."
The latter connects to him on a personal level. Marcoux grew up in a textile community where few people went to college. His dad enlisted in the service to escape working at the mill locals called "Brick U." When the mill moved south for cheaper labor, it devastated his hometown. "I saw firsthand what happens to the fabric of communities and families without jobs," he says.
After graduating, Marcoux went to work for the Milwaukee Housing Authority. It was an education in the challenges facing low-income neighborhoods and his first exposure to "super-block" developments. "I saw the drawbacks in the architecture," he says, "that you don't get good results when you build something that looks like a prison. When you're not respecting human dignity, there's no expectation to have other than disastrous results."
In the 1990s, with Marcoux leading the effort, the housing authority redeveloped four superblock housing projects with assistance from the HUD Hope IV program. Down came the massive round towers that Marcoux calls "warehouses for the poor." He believed an architectural solution that offered first-floor accessibility and curb appeal would build pride of ownership and sense of community where none existed before. And it worked. "That's the magic," he says, "that you don't realize it's public housing, and you do that by having good architecture, replacing the junk that was built in the 1950s and '60s, and by giving people places to live where they can thrive."
Marcoux is ecstatic about what's happening in other parts of the city, too. "We have an incredible number of deals on the table," he says. The transformation of the 21-acre Pabst Brewery into a new neighborhood is Marcoux's perfect example of property redevelopment. This project, made possible with substantial support from philanthropist Joseph Zilber, Bus Ad '39 and Law '41, and city funding, will include office buildings, housing, restaurants and plenty of parking. According to Mike Mervis, vice president and assistant to the chairman of Zilber Ltd., the project is an example of how the city and private developers can work together for a common goal. "This is a case where Rocky took the bull by the horns and worked hard to understand our vision," Mervis says. "He participated in how it was modified and shaped and was central to moving it forward, along with the mayor and common council. Both sides were committed to finding a reasonable solution, and that's how good government works."
The $500 million of development under way in the Park East corridor is another example of adaptive redevelopment. Since the city and state took down the Park East freeway ramp, the city has been working with developers on projects that are beginning to take off. The Milwaukee School of Engineering built the Kern Center. Most recently a boutique hotel opened to much fanfare.
"We can't afford to build all of this as a city, so we set the table," Marcoux says, by providing the infrastructure. "This is being built by people who are investing money and getting return on that investment."
Nearby Brewers Hill, Bronzeville and the Westside are picking up steam every day. "There are just cool things happening there," he says. And what's taking place in the Menomonee Valley he calls a study in extraordinary collaboration of committed partners. Many of the industries that were located in the valley ceased functioning or moved away in the 1970s, and people, Marcoux says, turned their back on the valley. Today the valley is thriving thanks to substantial public and private investment that transformed it into a modern industrial park. Ambitions for this parcel keep growing. Marcoux recently returned from an overseas trip with Wisconsin Commerce Secretary Richard Leinenkugel, Bus Ad '80, and Milwaukee 7 representatives that was focused on attracting a major international company to Milwaukee. He's particularly hopeful but declines to name the company until the deal is real. It becomes clear two weeks later, when Ingeteam, a Spanish manufacturer of wind-turbine generators, announces it will open its first North American plant in the valley, bringing 270 jobs to the region. Mick Hatch, president of the Menomonee Valley Partners Board and attorney at Foley & Lardner LLP, says Ingeteam's decision is "one of the best examples" of Marcoux's effectiveness. "He pays attention to the details and emphasizes the right things," Hatch says, "access to quality workforce, an efficient and highly skilled supply chain, transportation infrastructure, and a city government that is eager to help."
More plans for the valley are under way to create a water campus where educational resources and companies that need a steady water supply or access to water technology can locate. There were people who said the Menomonee Valley project was too risky. Those same voices may be sounding alarms about the city's acquisition of 87 acres of land on the north side, property that was the former home of AO Smith and, later, Tower Automotive. Marcoux says it looks post-apocalyptic, and he's right. There is a neglected feel to land that is bounded by a major thoroughfare and sits on a railroad line. The city will invest $35 million to take down many existing buildings and build roads and infrastructure. "We believe we can drive 1,200 jobs out of this real estate," Marcoux says. "We're calling it Century City, the idea being this is a new development for a new century."
Marcoux could not be more excited about retrieving this piece of land. He's convinced it has the same potential as the valley. To those who say it's not worth the risk, he asks with more than a little attitude: "Does that mean we've consigned this portion of the city to look like this forever? That's not what we're here for. We're here to lead, to mitigate the risk and rally the private sector. We've put down a flag here. That's the effective and practical role for government."
P.S. She turned him down.


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