text:
About: Southend Hospital Southend Hospital Westcliff-on-Sea SS0 0RY
Posted via NHS Choices
I wanted to extend my appreciation of the A & E staff at Southend Hospital after my mum broke her Elbow recently. Not only were the receptionist staff friendly, the ambulance people stayed with my mum until she was seen. ( Private Ambulance by NHS) The care they care her in keeping her upbeat was amazing and they even had me laughing. In such a horrible situation this was very reassuring. Mum had x-rays by a lovely lady, ithey included me by explaining everything that was going on. The doctor was extremely professional and on the ball in going in the X-ray room to have a look. Within 1/2 hour of the x-ray being done, my mum knew what she had done, knew what the next steps were and felt reassured knowing. The nurses spent time talking to mum and making sure she was ok. My only Concern would be when we went in and advised it was an elbow injury the doctor came round and asked what she was in for - not a great deal of communication there, but i would put this down to the staff in A&E having to rush around over what i can only describe as a 'spoilt brat'' throwing herself on the floor in the doorway because she wasn't being seen- and no it was definitely not life threatening) .Its things like this as to why people have to wait longer than necessary. Well done all the staff at A&E! Total experience from her getting seen to on the ward was around 5 hours which isn't ideal but this was not due to the lack of care or responsibility from the staff.
Response from Southend University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust 3 years ago
Many thanks for your kind feedback. A&E is often a hectic and busy place and I appreciate the time you have taken to write about your experiences and observations. These will be passed to the A&E team who will be pleased to learn of your positive experience and will take on board your very constructive comments.
I hope your mum has made a good recovery and that she is doing well.
Steve McEwen
Patient Experience Lead
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Executive Director of Corporate Relations and Career Services Susan Brennan discusses the results of Bentley's survey on millennial preparedness.
You are here
Newsroom: Media Coverage
The results of Bentley's PreparedU Project survey are highlighted in this opinion piece advocating the importance of the arts and sciences in MBA programs.
Anti-scam expert and Senior Lecturer Steven Weisman appears on New England Cable News to explain the problem of identity theft with regards to income taxes.
Marilyn Santiesteban, Assistant Director of Graduate and Alumni Career Services, discusses helpful tips for keeping your resume updated.
Director of Bentley's Center for Marketing Technology, Ian Cross, comments on CVS' bold move to ban
Bentley University's study on recent college graduate prepardness is highlighted in this article, which also offers millennials tips on how to be successful in the workplace.
Fred Ledley, director of the Center for the Integration of Science and Industry, joins Vo
Founding Director of the Center For Women and Business, Betsy Myers, is highlighted for her role as a featured speaker at the 8th Annual Prop
Chief Marketing Officer David Perry discusses the results of Bentley's PreparedU Project survey on millennial preparedness.
Bentley's recent PreparedU survey is cited for its analysis of college students' perceived preparedness for the workplace.

subset: commoncrawl


text: I don't know if this is a juice defender problem or not. My phone is ditching the 3g connection when the screen is turned off. As soon as the screen turns off, it drops the 3g connection. I noticed this through use of Pandora. While the screen is open, it will play a song...when the song is over, nothing plays. I press the power button, unlocked the screen and 1. I have no 3g icon and 2. Pandora says "waiting for connection." A couple second later, my 3g icon returns and Pandora loads and carries on with the music...until the end of the current song. I have to repeat this over and over. I've added Pandora to the list of apps Juice Defender is supposed to ignore, as well as turning off the screen based data connection. Still does it. Any ideas? Thanks, - Randy


text:
Cakes, Cupcakes & Whoopie Pies
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October 15th, 2011, 06:06 PM
(formerly junie22)
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: California
Posts: 11,271
Chocolate Chip Cupcakes
1 3/4 c. cake flour
1 1/4 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
2 c. granulated sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
1 c. unsalted butter, softened, cut into cubes
4 large eggs
1 c. milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 c. miniature chocolate chips
3/4 c. unsalted butter, melted
1 c. unsweetened cocoa powder
4 1/2 c. confectioners' sugar
1/2 c. milk, or more as needed
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line cupcake pans with paper liners; set aside.
For the cupcakes, in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, sift together flours, sugar, baking powder, and salt; mix together until combined. Add butter cubes, mixing until coated with flour.
In a large glass measuring cup, whisk together eggs, milk, and vanilla extract. With mixer on medium speed, add wet ingredients in three parts, scraping down sides of bowl after each addition; beat until ingredients are incorporated, but do not over-beat. Stir in miniature chocolate chips.
Divide batter evenly among liners, filling halfway to two-thirds full. Bake in preheated oven, rotating pans after 10 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean, 17 to 20 minutes. Set aside to cool completely before frosting.
For the frosting, in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine melted butter and cocoa. Alternately add confectioners' sugar and milk, beating to spreading consistency. Add small amount of additional milk, if needed. Stir in vanilla extract. Generously frost cupcakes.
Yield: 24 cupcakes
Last edited by Mom2JDub; October 16th, 2011 at
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text:
THL's upcoming Monkey King phone to come with 13 MP front camera, because why not?
THL is a small China-based smartphone manufacturer that most of you didn't know existed until five seconds ago. Am I right so far? I think I am. And I also think I'm right in saying THL will get its 15 minutes of fame starting… now. (more…)Read More


text:
We have no difficulty seeing a straight line drawn on a paper even when the paper is bent, but this inference is in fact nontrivial. Doing so requires either matching local features or representing the pattern after factoring out the surface shape. Here we show that single neurons in the monkey inferior temporal (IT) cortex show invariant responses to patterns across rigid and nonrigid changes of surfaces. We recorded neuronal responses to stimuli in which the pattern and the surrounding surface were varied independently. In a subset of neurons, we found pattern-surface interactions that produced similar responses to stimuli across congruent pattern and surface transformations. These interactions produced systematic shifts in curvature tuning of patterns when overlaid on convex and flat surfaces. Our results show that surfaces are factored out of patterns by single neurons, thereby enabling complex perceptual inferences.
NEW & NOTEWORTHY We have no difficulty seeing a straight line on a curved piece of paper, but in fact, doing so requires decoupling the shape of the surface from the pattern itself. Here we report a novel form of invariance in the visual cortex: single neurons in monkey inferior temporal cortex respond similarly to congruent transformations of patterns and surfaces, in effect decoupling patterns from the surface on which they are overlaid.
- 3-D vision
- object perception
- object recognition
- inferior temporal cortex
we frequently recognize the same pattern overlaid on many types of surfaces (e.g., markings on animals, patterns on dresses, and text on banners). This is a nontrivial inference: it involves decoupling the pattern itself from the surface on which it is overlaid. This ability—which we term "surface invariance"—is a generalization of viewpoint invariance. In view invariance, a pattern on a surface can be recognized across rigid three-dimensional (3-D) rotations of the surface, whereas in surface invariance, a pattern can be recognized even across nonrigid transformations such as bending of the surface (Fig. 1A).
To investigate the neural basis of surface invariance, we targeted the monkey inferior temporal (IT) cortex, the terminus of the ventral visual pathway. IT neurons show invariant responses to objects across changes in position, size, and viewpoint (Brincat and Connor 2004; Hikosaka 1999; Hung et al. 2012; Ito et al. 1995; Yamane et al. 2008; Zoccolan et al. 2007). They are modulated by surface curvature (Brincat and Connor 2004; Yamane et al. 2008) and show nonlinear interactions between surface fragments (Brincat and Connor 2006). They are also selective for three-dimensional shape and show congruent selectivity for surfaces defined by texture or disparity (Liu 2004; Orban 2011). These properties make IT cortex a likely neural substrate for decoupling patterns from surfaces.
To investigate pattern and surface representations in IT, we designed tetrads of stimuli in which a pattern and a surface were manipulated independently to decouple their effect on the neuronal response. We have used the term "pattern" throughout because it implies two-dimensional features overlaid on a surface more than the term "shape" (which could be 3-dimensional). However, our results can be interpreted equivalently in terms of how surface shape is factored out of two-dimensional shapes overlaid on the surface. In the example stimulus set shown in Fig. 1B, the pattern (the letter E) is either flat or curved and is overlaid on a flat or convex surface. A neuron sensitive only to the pattern or the surface will produce similar responses along rows or columns (Fig. 1C). A cell that is surface invariant will respond similarly to stimuli along the main diagonal, which are related through a nonrigid bending operation (Fig. 1C). In contrast, a neuron sensitive to low-level pixel differences would show small changes in response along rows or columns (where only the pattern or surface change) and large response modulation along both diagonals (where both pattern and surface change). Thus sensitivity to low-level image changes cannot explain surface invariance.
Our results demonstrate that there is a subpopulation of surface-invariant IT neurons that decouple patterns across surfaces. These cells showed pattern-surface interactions that resulted in opposite tuning for pattern and surface changes. In a follow-up experiment, we found that these neurons show systematic shifts in curvature tuning for patterns juxtaposed against flat and curved surfaces. Taken together, our results suggest that IT neurons decouple patterns from surfaces to potentially enable complex perceptual inferences.
All experiments were performed in accordance with a protocol approved by the Institutional Animal Ethics Committee of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and the Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments of Animals, Government of India. Many experimental procedures were similar to those described in a previous study (Ratan Murty and Arun 2015) and are therefore only summarized below.
Two adult male monkeys (Macaca radiata, laboratory designations monkeys Ka and Sa, both aged 7 yr) were used in the study. Each animal was implanted with a titanium headpost and Cilux recording chamber (Crist Instruments). The recording chamber was centered on anterior left IT using structural MRI referenced to a standard rhesus monkey atlas (Saleem and Logothetis 2006). The location of the recording chamber was subsequently verified after placement using structural MRI. The center of the recording sites corresponded to anterior +14 mm and lateral +13 mm for monkey Ka and anterior +19 mm and lateral +15 mm for monkey Sa—which corresponded to anterior-ventral inferotemporal cortex (Fig. 2A). In monkey Ka, the recording chamber was positioned over anterior +19 mm but was tilted by 12° posteriorly and 7° laterally, making the effective recording location anterior +14 mm. Eye movements were monitored using an infrared eye tracker (ISCAN). Stimuli were displayed on a 120-Hz liquid-crystal display (LCD) screen (VX2268wm; ViewSonic). Stimulus presentation, eye position, and reward were under control of a computer running NIMH Cortex. On each day of recording, we inserted a multicontact electrode (Plexon 24 channel U-Probe with 100-μm interelectrode spacing along the shank) through a grid of 1-mm spacing, using a guide tube to ∼10 mm above IT cortex. We lowered the electrode further using a micromanipulator (Narashige) until phasic visual responses were observed. We isolated single units from the multiunit trace manually using commercially available spike-sorting software (Offline sorter V3; Plexon). To avoid instances when the same unit is picked up across multiple channels, we calculated a shuffle-corrected cross-correlogram for all pairs of simultaneously recorded channels and removed from further consideration units that had a cross-correlation peak exceeding 0.3 at zero lag. In all, our recorded population contained 106 well-isolated visually responsive neurons (62 from monkey Ka and 44 from monkey Sa) from 46 sites (29 from monkey Ka and 17 from monkey Sa) for experiment 1. For experiment 2, there were 58 visually responsive single units (34 from monkey Ka and 24 from monkey Sa) recorded across 38 sites (24 from monkey Ka and 14 from monkey Sa).
Behavioral Task
Monkeys were trained to fixate a series of eight stimuli presented at the center of gaze (stimulus duration 200 ms followed by a 200-ms interstimulus interval) and received a juice reward for successfully maintaining fixation within a 3° fixation window. Post hoc analyses revealed that eye position was closely centered around fixation (average standard deviations across all trials and sessions: 0.22° about the vertical and 0.20° about the horizontal; we observed no systematic differences in gaze position across the 4 stimuli within a tetrad).
Experiment 1: Decoupling of Patterns From Surfaces
We tested a total of six patterns on four surfaces for each neuron. Each pattern-surface combination was used to create a set of four stimuli as depicted in Fig. 2B. Based on the rationale that IT neurons may encode patterns relative to the orientation or curvature of the surrounding surface, we tested four surfaces: two elemental curvatures (convex and concave) and two elemental viewpoint rotations (2-D rotation and 3-D tilt). The six patterns were chosen such that they contained no consistent alignment cues with the surfaces. Each pattern yielded four tetrads corresponding to each of the four surface transformations. However, since the pattern on the flat surface is common to the four tetrads, there were only 13 unique stimuli for each pattern, resulting in a total of 78 stimuli (6 patterns times 13 stimuli).
Stimuli were created using 3-D modeling software (Autodesk 3ds Max 2015; Academic License). Patterns (3.5° wide) were first imposed as textures on a flat surface (7° wide), after which the surface was transformed according to the surface type (convex/concave/rotated/tilted). Stimulus sizes were generally within the range of receptive field sizes reported for IT neurons (Connor et al. 2007; Tanaka 1992). However, we did not explicitly map the receptive field or tailor the stimuli to each neuron because our goal was to characterize how the neural population represents a fixed set of stimuli. However, note that the presence of a pattern-surface interaction implies that both the pattern and surface modulate the neural response, and therefore both must lie within the receptive field (see discussion). The three-dimensional shape of the surfaces was made apparent through shading cues (imposed using diffuse matte shading) and through the shape of the edges (tilted/curved). Incongruent stimuli were created by cropping out the central pattern from the flat and transformed surfaces and pasting them on the other surface using an image manipulation program (GIMP v2.8). All stimuli were presented as grayscale against a black background.
Trial design.
A total of eight stimuli were presented in a trial in pseudorandom order with the constraint that consecutive stimuli in a trial did not contain the same pattern or surface. Each stimulus was repeated at least eight times over the course of a recording session. Error trials were repeated after a random number of other trials.
Experiment 2: Impact of Surface Curvature on Pattern Tuning
For each neuron that appeared surface invariant in experiment 1 during recording, we recorded responses to its preferred pattern by varying it parametrically from convex to flat to concave and overlaying these variations on either a convex or a flat surface (Fig. 8). The dimensions of stimuli were as in experiment 1. In some cases we recorded the response of the same neuron to other pattern variations as well, with the result that the data set contained 96 response sets collected from 58 neurons (34 from monkey Ka and 24 from monkey Sa).
Pattern curvature was varied by applying the flat pattern as texture on a flat surface and then transforming the surface in five equal steps in both concave and convex directions (30, 60, 90, 120, and 150° levels along each direction; "bend modifier," Autodesk 3ds MAX). The resulting central patterns were cropped using GIMP and overlaid on a flat and a convex surface. The convex surface corresponded to a convex curvature of −3 levels away from flat (i.e., 90° level, "bend modifier," Autodesk 3ds MAX). As a result, each curved pattern on a flat surface would be equivalent (through a nonrigid transformation) to a pattern shifted exactly by 3 levels on the convex series (Fig. 8). This yielded a total of 22 stimuli that were tested for each neuron (11 pattern curvatures against 2 surfaces). We tested each neuron also on concave surfaces, but we observed inconsistent interaction effects possibly because of sampling issues (see results).
Trial design.
All other details of the experiment were identical to experiment 1.
Data Analysis
Pattern decoding.
For each trial of the stimulus, we calculated the population response vector with the firing rates (50–150-ms poststimulus onset), elicited by all 106 visual neurons. This analysis assumes that the responses were recorded simultaneously (which is not the case) and therefore can be considered as a lower bound on the information in the population (Hung et al. 2005). We then projected the entire set of responses along their principal components to retain most (70–80%) of the total variance. This step had the effect of removing cells with redundant and noisy responses (varying this fraction yielded qualitatively similar results). We then trained a multiclass linear discriminant classifier ("classify" function in MATLAB) on the responses and the corresponding six pattern labels for version v11 (Fig. 3A). We evaluated the performance of the classifier to decode the pattern on v11 using a leave-one-out approach: for each trial we trained the classifier on the remaining trials and predicted the pattern label. This yielded a percent-correct accuracy measure that represents how well pattern identity could be decoded from the neural population. To evaluate whether the pattern classifier trained on v11 generalized to the other versions, we tested it on the other versions (v12, v21, and v22). This yielded a percent correct measure that indicates how well a pattern classifier trained on flat surfaces (v11) can decode patterns across other versions (v12, v21, and v22) across all surface types.
Selection of tetrads with visual responses.
We estimated the spontaneous activity of each neuron in a 200–400-ms window after the end of the trial. The spontaneous activity was compared with the response to each stimulus in the tetrad in a window 0–200 ms after stimulus onset using a rank-sum test. Tetrads were included for further analysis if at least one of the four responses was statistically significant compared with spontaneous levels (α = 0.05, rank-sum test). Of the 2,544 tetrads (106 neurons times 6 patterns times 4 surfaces) tested in this manner, 1,608 tetrads (63%) were determined in this manner to be visually responsive to at least 1 of the stimuli. We obtained similar results using the spontaneous activity estimated from the pre-stimulus onset period.
Multidimensional scaling analysis.
To visualize the average similarity relations within a tetrad, we calculated the pairwise dissimilarity between stimuli as the average absolute difference in firing rates (50–250 ms after stimulus onset). In all, there were six pairwise distances across the four stimuli in each tetrad, which were averaged across all tetrads. We then performed a multidimensional scaling on the average distances between stimuli in tetrads of a particular type (e.g., those that contained interaction effects). This yielded a set of 2-D coordinates whose pairwise distances produce the best match between the six observed average pairwise distances. This was implemented using the "mdscale" function in MATLAB (MATLAB 2015a; MathWorks).
To investigate the neural basis for how patterns are decoupled from surfaces, we recorded neuronal responses from the left anterior IT cortex (Fig. 2A) of two monkeys that viewed images during a fixation task. In experiment 1, we tested IT neurons on a number of patterns and surfaces to characterize the strength and extent of surface invariance. In experiment 2, we investigated whether surface-invariant responses arise from systematic shifts in pattern tuning due to modulation by the surrounding surface.
Experiment 1: Decoupling of Patterns From Surfaces
In this experiment, we tested a total of 106 visually responsive IT neurons using a fixed set of 6 patterns and 4 surface transformations (Fig. 2B). Our rationale for selecting surfaces was that, to decouple patterns from surfaces in general, neurons would need to decouple patterns from elemental surface transformations such as bending or tilting. We therefore tested four surface transformations: bending of the flat surface to become convex or concave (i.e., nonrigid transformations) or tilting the flat surface either in plane or in depth (i.e., rigid/affine transformations). For each pattern-surface combination, we created four stimuli in which the pattern and surface varied independently (Fig. 2B). In this design, a neuron selective only to the central pattern will produce similar responses along columns (Fig. 1C, top). This would produce a main effect of pattern in an ANOVA on the firing rate with pattern and surface as factors. A neuron sensitive only to surface changes would produce similar responses along rows, respectively, which would represent a main effect of surface in the same ANOVA (Fig. 1C, middle). A neuron that decouples patterns from surfaces would produce similar responses along the main diagonal, which corresponds to an interaction effect (Fig. 1C, bottom). Note that similar responses along either diagonal would produce an interaction effect, but we are interested in a particular type of interaction that produces similar responses along the main diagonal (indicating stimuli equivalent across rigid and nonrigid transformations) but not the other diagonal.
The example responses of two IT neurons are shown in Fig. 2, C and D. These responses illustrate the considerable diversity we observed in our data. Both neurons showed pattern and surface main effects (Fig. 2, C and D, green and blue rasters). Notably, however, they showed similar responses to the congruent pattern/surface combinations, particularly when they show an interaction effect (Fig. 2, C and D, red rasters).
Pattern Classification
Despite the diversity in the individual neuronal responses, the neuronal population as a whole may systematically signal patterns independent of surfaces. For ease of exposition, we denote the four stimuli in a tetrad as v11, v12, v21, and v22, where v11 is the flat pattern against the flat surface, v12 is the curved pattern on the flat surface, etc. (Fig. 3A). To investigate whether pattern decoding generalizes across surfaces, we trained a linear classifier to decode patterns overlaid on flat surfaces (i.e., on the v11 versions of all patterns) using all 106 visually responsive neurons. The performance of this classifier was well above chance (Fig. 3B), which is not surprising considering IT neurons are selective to these patterns. Critically, we next asked whether the same classifier, trained on patterns overlaid on flat surfaces, could correctly identify the pattern in the other versions (i.e., on the v12 versions of all 6 patterns, or v21 or v22 versions, etc.). The classifier showed an above-chance generalization only for the congruent version (v22) but not for the other versions (Fig. 3B), indicating that cells informative about pattern identity also generalize across rigid and nonrigid surface changes. Thus, IT neurons show surface-invariant pattern decoding at the level of the population.
Incidence of Pattern, Surface, and Interaction Effects in IT
The above analysis shows that the IT neuronal population as a whole exhibits surface invariance, but these effects could be driven at the single-neuron level by a smaller subset of neurons that show systematic variations across the four stimuli in each tetrad. To understand these variations better, we analyzed each tetrad separately to assess how pattern, surface, and interaction effects were distributed (see below for neuronwise analyses). We performed an ANOVA on the firing rate of each neuron (in a 50–250-ms window after image onset) to the stimuli in each tetrad, with pattern (flat/transformed) and surface (flat/transformed) as factors. There were thus a total of 24 tetrads per neuron (6 patterns times 4 surfaces each), resulting in a total of 2,544 tetrads. Of the 2,544 tetrads, 1,608 of them (63%) elicited a significant visual response in at least 1 of the 4 stimuli in the tetrad (see methods) and were considered for further analysis.
The distribution of significant effects obtained in the ANOVA across the visual tetrads is shown in Fig. 4A. A majority of tetrads (1,193/1,608, i.e., 74%) did not show significant modulation to the pattern and surface changes, indicating equal responses to all four stimuli in the tetrad. The remaining tetrads showed significant response modulation to pattern, surface, or their interaction (n = 415 or 26%). These significant effects were observed across 86% (91/106) of all cells. Among these significant effects, nearly half (206/415 or 50%) showed a main effect of surface, a third of them (114/415 or 27%) showed a main effect of pattern, and a slightly larger fraction (145/415 or 35%) showed interaction effects. Although the interaction effects were relatively few in number across all visual tetrads (145/1,608 or 9%), this proportion was significantly greater than the fraction (5%) expected by chance (P < 0.00005, chi-squared test). Notably, these interactions were present in a majority of cells (70/106 or 66%) and were present more consistently in some cells than others (see below).
Analysis of Surface-Pattern Interactions
The above analyses show that IT neurons are modulated by both pattern and surface curvature and also exhibit pattern-surface interactions. However, a pure pattern-surface interaction represents equal responses along each diagonal of a tetrad with one diagonal being larger than the other (Fig. 4A). We therefore asked whether these interactions resulted in a specific type of response in each tetrad. Of particular interest to us was whether the interactions resulted in similar responses to the two stimuli along the main diagonal, i.e., when both pattern and surface show congruent changes.
We measured the neuronal dissimilarity between two stimuli as the absolute difference between the responses to the stimuli averaged across the population (Sripati and Olson 2010b). We then averaged the neuronal dissimilarity between all six possible pairs of stimuli (4 choose 2) across tetrads with significant pattern-surface interactions (Fig. 4B). The firing rate difference along the main diagonal (v11–v22) was smaller than all other differences (average absolute firing rate differences: 8.5, 8.4, 4.0, 5.6, 9.0, and 8.2 Hz for v11–v12, v11–v21, v11–v22, v12–v21, v12–v22, and v21–v22, respectively; P < 0.00005 on a signed-rank test comparing v11–v22 difference with all other pairs across tetrads).
Note that by selecting interaction effects, we are by definition selecting responses that are stronger along one diagonal compared with another, but this selection does not predict which diagonal should show more similar responses. Thus the critical comparison is between the two diagonals which yielded a statistically significant difference. Likewise, if response patterns were idiosyncratic across neurons, we would have observed equal numbers of tetrads with similar responses along either diagonal. Thus the observed pattern of firing rate differences is nontrivial and cannot be due to idiosyncratic neural selectivity. Thus, among the tetrads with interactions, stimuli with congruent pattern and surface changes are most similar to each other compared with all other pairs. We obtained qualitatively similar results for both rigid (tilt/rotate) and nonrigid (convex/concave) surface changes (see below).
Although the above results directly show that pattern-surface interactions lead to similar responses to congruent pattern and surface changes, it is instructive to visualize these neuronal dissimilarities using multidimensional scaling. In the resulting plot, stimuli are placed far apart if their average neuronal dissimilarity was large. Across tetrads with interaction effects, it can be seen that the congruent pattern-surface pairs are closer to each other, reflecting their equivalence across both nonrigid and rigid transformations (Fig. 4C).
The surface-pattern interactions could have arisen if one of the off-diagonal stimuli (i.e., versions v12 or v21) produced a large response compared with all other stimuli. To test this possibility, we identified the stimulus with the largest response in each tetrad and asked whether the off-diagonal stimuli (v12 or v21) tended to be the best stimulus more often than expected by chance (50%). The off-diagonal stimuli elicited the largest response in 54% of the interaction tetrads (79 of 145) but this fraction was not significantly different from chance (P = 0.32, chi-squared test). We conclude that surface-pattern interactions do not arise due to isolated large responses to the off-diagonal stimuli within a tetrad.
The pattern-surface interaction effects could also have arisen because some patterns (triangle, Y, and +) contained edges that were aligned to the surface edges in the two congruent variations (v11 and v22). If this were so, it would predict greater pattern-surface interaction effects for these patterns compared with the others (E, L, and H), which were rotated away so as to preclude alignment cues. However, we did not see such a predisposition across the observed interaction effects: 47% (68 of 145) of interactions involved the aligned patterns (triangle, Y, and +) while 53% (77 of 145) of them involved the tilted patterns. These proportions were not significantly different from the 50-50 split expected by chance (P = 0.51, chi-squared test). We conclude that the observed surface-pattern interactions do not arise due to special alignment cues between the patterns and surfaces used in this experiment. Further support against this possibility comes from experiment 2, in which we find that neurons show systematic shifts in their pattern tuning when patterns are overlaid on flat or convex surfaces (see below).
The pattern-surface interactions observed may be more frequent for the preferred stimuli in each neuron. To assess this possibility, we sorted the responses to the six patterns tested for each neuron against a flat surface from low to high and asked whether pattern-surface interactions were more frequent for the three most preferred patterns compared with the least-preferred patterns. We observed no significant predisposition toward the preferred patterns compared with the 50-50 split expected by chance (number of interactions: 72 for preferred patterns, 73 for nonpreferred patterns, P = 1.00, chi-squared test).
Analysis of Surface and Pattern Main Effects
We also performed similar analyses on the tetrads that exhibited at least one main effect (n = 301). The resulting pattern of neuronal similarity was qualitatively different (Fig. 4D). Although there was a still a tendency toward the firing rate difference along the main diagonal (v11–v22) to be smaller than along the other diagonal (v12–v21), this effect did not reach statistical significance (average firing rate difference: 8.5 and 8.9 Hz, respectively, P = 0.19 on a signed-rank test across 301 tetrads with main effects). Importantly, however, the smallest change in firing rate occurred for changes in pattern only (v11–v12 and v21–v22; Fig. 4D) and not for the congruent stimuli (i.e., for v11–v22). These similarity relations can be seen at a glance in the multidimensional scaling plot (Fig. 4E).
Finally, we considered the overall neuronal similarity across the entire population of tetrads with significant main or interaction effects. This too revealed a pattern similar to the main effects (Fig. 4F): pattern changes caused the smallest change in firing rate, but there was a significant tendency for the stimuli along the main diagonal to be more similar than the other diagonal (average firing rate difference: 7.0 and 7.7 Hz, respectively, P < 0.05 on a rank-sum test across 415 tetrads). These similarity relations can be seen visually in the multidimensional scaling plot (Fig. 4G).
Analysis of Neuronwise Effects
In the above analyses, the main and interaction effects may have arisen within a small subset of neurons, which could have, in turn, resulted in an inflated statistical significance at the neuronal level. To verify that this was not the case, we repeated the above analyses after averaging the neural dissimilarity across tetrads recorded from each neuron. To this end, we first selected the neurons that showed a main or an interaction effect at the level of individual tetrads. For these neurons (n = 96), we first plotted the neural dissimilarity (average firing rate difference) for v11–v22 pairs against the v12–v21 pairs for each tetrad as before (Fig. 5A). We then plotted the same data after averaging the tetrads with a significant effect for each neuron, so that there is one data point per neuron—this too showed the same effect (Fig. 5B). The same was true on plotting firing rate differences for interaction effects across tetrads (Fig. 5C) or after averaging across tetrads for each neuron (Fig. 5D). Thus, even when the data are averaged across tetrads for a given neuron, neuronal responses show greater similarity across the perceptually equivalent stimuli (v11–v22), indicating that IT neurons decouple patterns from surfaces.
Surfacewise Analysis of Interaction Effects
To confirm that the above surface-pattern interactions are present in both rigid and nonrigid surface/pattern transformations, we repeated the key comparison in the above analyses separately for rigid transformations (tilt/rotate: Fig. 6, A–C) and for nonrigid transformations (convex/concave: Fig. 6, D–F). We obtained similar results for both types of transformations—in other words, pattern-surface interactions tended to produce similar responses to congruent rigid or nonrigid transformations of patterns and surfaces.
Do Surface-Pattern Interactions Tend to Co-occur Across Cells?
Do the pattern-surface interactions tend to occur within the same population of neurons? If this were true, a neuron that showed pattern-surface interactions for one set of patterns/surfaces should also show interaction effects for another independent set of patterns and surfaces. To investigate this issue, we performed a split-half analysis as follows. We divided the patterns and surfaces tested on each cell into two random groups of three patterns/two surfaces each (i.e., 6 tetrads per group). We then calculated the strength of the pattern-surface interaction as the absolute difference between the mean firing rate (50–250 ms after image onset) along one diagonal and the mean firing rate along the other diagonal. Next, we asked whether cells that show a large interaction effect strength for one group of patterns/surfaces would show a large interaction for the other group. A positive correlation would imply that the same cells show consistently larger or smaller interactions across patterns/surfaces. Indeed, this analysis yielded a weak but statistically significant correlation (median correlation: r = 0.41 across 1,000 random surface/pattern splits; this correlation was >0 in all splits). We obtained similar correlations for pattern and surface modulations as well (r = 0.42 for pattern; r = 0.36 for surface; both correlations were positive in all the splits). We conclude that pattern-surface interactions (as well as pattern and surface modulations) occur more consistently in some neurons than others, indicative of a single subpopulation that extracts patterns from surfaces.
Mechanisms Underlying Pattern-Surface Interactions
How are these pattern-surface interactions computed? We reasoned that similar responses to congruent stimuli could arise if the response increases for a pattern change and decreases for an equivalent surface change, resulting in no net change in response when both pattern and surface change. This can be implemented by a neuron that receives excitatory modulation from pattern changes and inhibitory modulation from surface changes, or vice versa (Fig. 7A).
It is instructive to consider what happens in the simple case when excitatory and inhibitory influences combine linearly. Consider a neuron with a baseline response of B for the tetrad stimulus v11, that received an excitatory modulation of Δ across a pattern change and an equal but opposite (inhibitory) modulation of −Δ for a surface change. Then the responses to the four stimuli in the tetrad would be B, B + Δ, B − Δ, and B. While this would produce the desired effect (i.e., equal responses to v11 and v22), this linear summation would produce two main effects but not an interaction effect. The fact that we observed surface invariance only for interaction effects (Fig. 4B) but not for main effects (Fig. 4D) thus indicates a nonlinear summation of excitatory and inhibitory modulations.
To investigate this further in our data, we asked whether pattern and surface modulations were negatively correlated for tetrads with surface-pattern interactions. For each tetrad, we calculated a modulation index that measures how strongly the response was modulated by a surface change or a pattern change. The pattern modulation index was estimated as (T − F)/(T + F), where F is the average response to the flat pattern and T is the average response to the transformed pattern (Fig. 7A). The surface modulation index was calculated analogously. We then asked whether pattern modulation was correlated with the surface modulation across tetrads. Tetrads with pattern-surface interactions showed a significant negative correlation between the surface and pattern modulation indexes (r = −0.54, P < 0.00005, Fig. 7C). This correlation was present even upon removing the three outlier points with surface modulation close to −1 (r = −0.43, P < 0.00005). It was present for both rigid rotate/tilt transformations (r = −0.56, P < 0.00005) as well as for nonrigid (convex/concave) transformations (r = −0.51, P < 0.00005). In contrast, there was no such correlation across tetrads without these interactions, i.e., with main effects (r = 0.08, P = 0.001). Thus surface invariance arises through nonlinear interactions that produce opposite tuning for surface and pattern changes.
Experiment 2: Impact of Surface Curvature on Pattern Tuning
In experiment 1, we have shown that a subpopulation of IT neurons exhibit surface-pattern interactions that decouple patterns from surfaces. However, there were two shortcomings of this experiment which we sought to address using a follow-up experiment. First, the surface-pattern interaction effects may be much stronger if the stimuli were matched to the preference of the neurons. Second, the fact that patterns and surfaces underwent congruent changes raises a potential concern: the curved E in Fig. 1B, for instance, may be decoupled from a curved surface only when its curvature is congruent with that of the surface. This could happen because both pattern and surface share features or alignment cues when both are flat and both are curved.
To address these lacunae, we performed an additional experiment on a subset of the neurons in experiment 1 that (during recording) appeared to show pattern-surface interactions (see methods). In this experiment (experiment 2), the preferred pattern of each neuron was bent parametrically such that it varied from being bent up (defined as concave) or bent down (defined as convex) in 11 equal parametric steps (Fig. 8A). These pattern variations were overlaid on either a flat surface or a curved surface that was produced by bending the flat surface by three curvature steps. The consequence of this design is that each pattern on a flat surface is equivalent (across a nonrigid transformation) to a pattern on a curved surface that is exactly three steps away (Fig. 8A). Consider then a hypothetical neuron with a Gaussian tuning with a peak centered at one of the pattern curvature levels (Fig. 8B). Note that this tuning curve is depicted as Gaussian for simplicity but could be any arbitrary tuning curve without violating the essential logic. We reasoned that this neuron should show a systematic shift in tuning for pattern curvature for patterns against a curved surface compared with patterns on a flat surface (Fig. 8B). To assess this possibility, we performed a cross-correlation analysis (Fig. 8C). We shifted the responses to pattern variations against a flat surface (elements 4–8 in Fig. 8C) and calculated for each shift the correlation with the responses to the same patterns against a curved surface. If a neuron were selective only for the physical shape of the pattern regardless of the surface, this analysis would yield the best correlation for a shift of zero. On the other hand, if the neuron were factoring out the surface curvature from each pattern, the best correlation would occur for a shift of −3 (Fig. 8C).
We tested each neuron on variations of at least 1 pattern, with the result that we obtained a total of 96 sets of responses from 58 IT neurons. The responses of an example IT neuron are shown in Fig. 9A. Here, the responses are aligned so that the patterns on the two surfaces are physically identical. This neuron responded differently to the same physical pattern presented against a curved and flat surface (Fig. 9A). However, strikingly, when its responses are shifted so that nonrigid equivalent stimuli are aligned together (i.e., for a shift of −3), its responses are much more similar (Fig. 9B). We confirmed this quantitatively using cross-correlation on the firing rates (100–200 ms after stimulus onset): responses to pattern variations were correlated best across the two surfaces when the flat surface responses were shifted by −3 (Fig. 9C). Thus this neuron shows a shift in tuning for pattern curvature against a curved surface compared with a flat surface, and this shift is exactly as expected if neurons were invariant to patterns across nonrigid transformations.
This effect was present across the 96 sets tested across the 58 neurons: the average tuning correlation for a shift of −3 was larger than the tuning correlation at all other shifts (P < 0.05, rank-sum test, Fig. 9D). We observed the same result using neuronal dissimilarity: for each shift in tuning, we calculated the average neuronal dissimilarity between the patterns on the flat surface and patterns on the curved surface. This too revealed that the nonrigid equivalent stimuli were the most similar (Fig. 9E). To further elucidate this shift in tuning, we calculated in each case the tuning shift that yielded the best cross-correlation. The largest number of instances had a preferred shift of −3 (n = 24 of 96 or 25%); these occurred across 21 of 56 neurons (i.e., 38%) (Fig. 9F).
We conclude that IT neurons show systematic shifts in tuning to pattern variations on a convex surface compared with a flat surface.
Tuning Shifts for Concave Surfaces
Although the above analyses were performed on neuronal responses to patterns overlaid on flat and convex surfaces, we also tested neurons in this experiment on patterns overlaid on concave surfaces but did not obtain the same result as with convex surfaces. We present our analyses for concave surfaces below and discuss the possible reasons for this discrepancy.
According to our experimental design (Fig. 8), surface-invariant neurons should show a systematic shift that is opposite in direction when patterns are overlaid on concave surfaces compared with convex surfaces. Conversely, we expect no systematic changes in pattern curvature tuning in neurons that do not show surface-pattern interactions.
We therefore set out to confirm whether neurons tested in experiment 2 exhibit surface-pattern interactions in this experiment by selecting tetrads of stimuli identical to those tested in experiment 1. Specifically, we compared the firing rate difference between all pairs of versions (v11–v12, v11–v21, etc.) for the tetrad containing perceptually matched surface/pattern transformations for both the convex surface (Fig. 10A) and the concave surface (Fig. 10B). Across the population of neurons sampled, surface-pattern interactions were statistically significant for the convex surface (i.e., v11–v22 was smaller than v12–v21; Fig. 10A) but not for the concave surface (Fig. 10B). We then analyzed the neuronal responses to convex and concave surfaces for shifts in tuning for pattern curvature as before. We found systematic shifts in pattern curvature tuning for convex surfaces (Fig. 10C) but not for concave surfaces (Fig. 10D).
To summarize, for neurons that exhibit surface-pattern interactions (for convex surfaces) we observed systematic shifts in pattern tuning. For concave surfaces, these neurons showed neither the systematic pattern-surface interactions nor any systematic shifts in pattern tuning. Our conservative explanation of this finding is that neurons selected for further testing in experiment 2 may have been chosen inadvertently when they exhibited interaction effects for convex but not for concave surfaces. The other possibility is that surface invariance is more prevalent for convex compared with concave surfaces. When we investigated this possibility in experiment 1, we did not find a greater incidence of surface-pattern interactions for convex (32 of 145 interactions) compared with concave surfaces (35 of 145 interactions). However, this finding is consistent with the representational bias observed in IT neurons for convex over concave surfaces (Vaziri and Connor 2016; Yamane et al. 2008) and in human lateral occipital complex (Haushofer et al. 2008). This bias, in turn, may reflect the geometric property that any closed surface must have more convex than concave surfaces. Testing these possibilities, however, will require a more systematic study of surface invariance for convex and concave surfaces.
Here we have shown for the first time that IT neurons exhibit a novel form of invariance, which we term as surface invariance: they encode patterns after factoring out the surface on which it is embedded. We have shown that surface invariance is produced by nonlinear pattern-surface interactions (experiment 1) that produce systematic shifts in pattern tuning depending on the surface (experiment 2). These surface-invariant responses can potentially support complex perceptual inferences in which patterns have to be recognized across changes in the surface on which they are overlaid. Below we discuss our findings in the context of the existing literature.
Relation to Nonlinear Interactions in IT Neurons
Our finding that IT neurons exhibit relatively few surface-pattern interactions is consistent with previous reports of weak interactions between color and shape in IT neurons (McMahon and Olson 2009), between spatially separated parts within an object (Sripati and Olson 2010b), and between the sizes of object parts (Vighneshvel and Arun 2015). It is also consistent with the presence of nonlinear interactions between surface and contour fragments observed in IT neurons (Brincat and Connor 2004, 2006; Yamane et al. 2008). However, we have also shown that the surface-pattern interactions, when they do occur, are extremely systematic and occur within the same set of neurons. This finding is reminiscent of our recent finding that part-size interactions result in sensitivity to relative size in IT neurons (Vighneshvel and Arun 2015). These two studies together indicate that nonlinear interactions between object features in IT neurons are systematic and serve specific perceptual goals. This is also consistent with the recent finding that V4 neurons encode normalized rather than absolute curvature (El-Shamayleh and Pasupathy 2016).
Our results also elucidate the mechanism by which patterns are decoupled from surfaces. We have shown that surface-pattern interactions lead to opposite nonlinear modulation for patterns and surfaces: this is reminiscent of a center-surround organization with antagonistic tuning between the pattern and the surrounding surface. Our finding that pattern curvature tuning is systematically biased when juxtaposed against a curved surface can be interpreted as a specific type of contextual modulation: the surface shape information in the immediate vicinity of a pattern must be factored out of the pattern representation itself.
Relevance to Pattern Perception
We now discuss an important aspect of our study, namely, that our results are based on recording neuronal activity while monkeys performed a fixation task. Our results do not imply that the animals had a surface-invariant perception of the patterns—demonstrating this requires training the animals to report their percept and using perturbation techniques to establish a causal link. However, the fact that surface-pattern interactions are highly systematic and lead to surface invariance even in the absence of explicit training implies that surface invariance can arise in IT even through unsupervised learning. The observed frequency of interactions in this study may in fact be a lower bound on their incidence: they may be stronger and more widespread when animals engage in behaviors that require decoupling of patterns from surfaces.
Our study may also have underestimated the true frequency of interactions because we did not test each neuron with its preferred stimuli or scale the stimuli to lie within its receptive field. This could have resulted in more pattern modulation in neurons with receptive fields too small to sense surface changes and more surface main effects in neurons with receptive fields too large to be sensitive to subtle pattern changes. Thus we may have observed more frequent interactions if the stimuli were scaled to the receptive field size. We did not tailor stimuli to each neuron because our goal was to characterize how an entire neural population in IT represents a fixed set of stimuli. Moreover, the presence of a pattern-surface interaction by definition implies that the neuron is sensitive to both pattern and changes, which, in turn, implies that the stimulus is contained within the receptive field.
Relation to Other Forms of Invariance
IT neurons are well known for their invariance to many identity-preserving transformations such as size, position, and viewpoint (Connor et al. 2007; Tanaka 1992). We have demonstrated a novel form of invariance in IT neurons, namely, that they are invariant to nonrigid transformations of surfaces. Our finding is concordant with a recent study from our laboratory where we have shown that a subset of IT neurons are sensitive to the relative size of items in a display (Vighneshvel and Arun 2015). Both surface invariance and relative size coding were subtle effects in that they were present only in a subset of IT neurons and were detected only using subtle but systematic shape variations. In both studies, many IT neurons were insensitive to these subtle shape variations suggesting that they encode gross features of patterns whereas clearly only a minority of cells are sensitive to subtle variations. Our results show that responses to subtle variations are highly systematic and reflect real-world regularities.
Taken together, observations of invariance in IT neurons raise the more general question: What family of image variations produce invariant responses in IT neurons or, for that matter, in perception? Recent studies have referred to these variations as "identity-preserving" transformations (DiCarlo and Cox 2007; Li et al. 2009; Rust and DiCarlo 2012; Sharpee et al. 2013; Zhivago and Arun 2016; Zoccolan et al. 2007), although this of course raises the more fundamental question: What is object identity? One compelling possibility is that identity is inferred when objects undergo slow and smooth spatiotemporal variations during natural experience (Li and DiCarlo 2008, 2010), but precisely how associations learned with specific objects generalize to all objects remains an important open question.
Taken together, our findings add to a growing body of evidence that neuronal representations in IT neurons predict aspects of human perception both qualitatively (Rollenhagen and Olson 2000; Vighneshvel and Arun 2015) and quantitatively (Op de Beeck et al. 2001; Sripati and Olson 2010a; Zhivago and Arun 2014). Recent studies have shown that IT neurons are selective for surface shape independent of the disparity or texture cues that define the surface (Liu 2004; Orban 2011). Our findings complement this observation by showing that IT neurons are selective for patterns independent of the surface shape. These studies suggest that IT neurons can decouple surfaces from patterns and patterns from surfaces so as to produce independent representations of both.
This research was funded by a Senior Research Fellowship from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (N. A. Ratan Murty) and an Intermediate Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust-DBT India Alliance, and the DBT-IISc partnership programme (S. P. Arun).
No conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, are declared by the author(s).
N.A.R.M. and S.P.A. conceived and designed research; N.A.R.M. and S.P.A. performed experiments; N.A.R.M. and S.P.A. analyzed data; N.A.R.M. and S.P.A. interpreted results of experiments; N.A.R.M. prepared figures; N.A.R.M. and S.P.A. drafted manuscript; N.A.R.M. and S.P.A. edited and revised manuscript; N.A.R.M. and S.P.A. approved final version of manuscript.
- Copyright © 2017 the American Physiological Society
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY 3.0: © the American Physiological Society.


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Life, To begin with, I must ask you, in your opinion what is the simple life?. Your answer is great, and so is everyone Else's. For you see my Friend Life has always been and will always be what you make it. And to each one of us, and based on our experiences and upbringing, Life will be looked at with a different set of eyes. So today, we will look at 7 easy ways that almost everyone, no matter your background, will agree on if you follow them. And that will make life way more enjoyable and your great health will be maintained.
First Easy way To live the Simple Life is : Don't Take Anything Personally
Yes dear friend, don't take anything personally in all the wrongs that you feel has been done, is being done and will be done to you. Again I say " That You Feel ", because most of the times what you think it is turn out to be something entirely different. And the Universe that you live in never quite reveal to you at the beginning of a situation, what all the goods are that will come out of it. And sometimes it is not until years later that you start saying " Thank God that this never happened, or that this did happen this way."
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And nothing will put you in a better mood after a bad day, or an argument, Than when you just sit back and enjoy the sweet smell of your favorite ice cream. Between the sugar, the ice, the taste and the smell, the world will go away and once again you will be living the Simple Life with no worries. And Remember to always go back to the First Step when in doubt.
Third Easy Way: Drive And Feel The Wind In Your Hair
You and I both know that the brain controls all functions of the body, and also that this whole life is a mountain of illusions that is fooling you as well. And all because your 5 major senses keep feeding data into your head to pass down to your body. I mean you feel, you taste, you hear, you see and you smell. So when life's illusions are getting to you, go for a drive. Drive with the windows down, and convertible top down as well if you have one, and let the wind through your hair and to your head and calm down. Because when the head or brain is cooled down, the whole body will follow. Remember Step 1.
Fourth Easy Way For The Simple Life: Listen To Your Favorite Song Play
The Universe is a string of musical notes and sounds, for even when God was creating it there was a grumble in His throat and then He shouted " Come Forth ". So sounds are part of you and musical notes harmonize and rearrange your body along with your cells, in ways that you could never imagine. And even God Has Angels - Cherubim - Seraphim, all singing 24 - 7 in his Throne room reminding him how Great and Awesome He Is. Remember you are made in God's Image, and so you need to hear your favorite song that makes you smile. That also makes you feel Loved and then all your problems will go away at that moment.
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Fifth Easy Way: Learn To Say No
Be Very Slow To Make A Promise, But Be Quick To Keep One "'. And nothing is worse than to feel like the whole world is closing in on you, and you are being pulled in a thousand directions. Simple Life Remember?. And please stop over promising to your friends, your kids, your lover, your parents and so on. So move at your pace and take it easy, for if you die tomorrow - Trust Me - all will move on and be just fine.
Sixth Easy Way To Live The Simple Life: Make Free Time
Make free time to play, make free time to love and to make love. Make free time to eat your ice cream ( In moderation of course ), make free time to walk on the beach. Make free time to pamper yourself, make free time to love yourself (keep improving of course), and make free time to help others daily and within reason.
Now For The Seventh Easy Way: Laugh At All Times
Laughter is the greatest medicine, and you have heard this a thousand times. So learn to laugh at your problems and your higher self will give you a solution. Laugh at situations that seem to fall in your lap that you had nothing to do with, and a solution to get out of it will present itself. You can not fix anything and I do mean anything if darkness overpower you, and laughter is the great light that opens up the Universe to do your bidding. So laugh everyday, get comedy tapes and laugh, look at children play and laugh at their pure innocence. Examine your pets and laugh at how they take it easy and live the simple life with only what you provide for them. Laugh, Laugh and Laugh... Your Life Advocate, James Dazouloute
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I work in a nice 9 story office building in houston, tx.
It was built in 1988.
I work on the top floor so for exercise i take the stairs instead of the elevator.
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The material he?s talking about is a dark gray color....it looks like someone blow tons of dust and dirt all over the ceiling.
How do I know if this is asbestos?


text:
Spider-Gwen (Vol. 2) #5 Review
"…didn't know it would kill ya to try something new."
The devil offers George Stacy a deal…the death of Frank Castle for Gwen's safety!
WRITER: Jason Latour
ARTIST: Chris Visions
COLOR ARTIST: Rico Renzi
LETTERER: VC's Clayton Cowles
COVER ARTIST: Robbi Rodriguez
VARIANT COVER ARTIST: Michael Cho
HANDBOOK ENTRY PRODUCTION: Joe Frontirre
ASSISTANT EDITOR: Devin Lewis
EDITOR: Nick Lowe
STORY: Months ago, Frank Castle's wife and family leave him. In the present, George Stacy confronts Matt Murdock and Murdock offers to kill Castle to keep Gwen and her secret safe. Meanwhile, Cap confers with Jean Dewolff and with the help of Bucky, located the fallen Spider-Woman as Harry mutates further into the latest Lizard!
THOUGHTS: Well, the dreaded (by me) fill-in artist issue of Spider-Gwen has arrived. Ever since I was a kid (and that was some time ago-decades, in fact), I've never been a fan of having an artist's run interrupted. The art never lived up to my exacting standards. It was different. My tastes have definitely matured since I was 12 and I've come to appreciate many different styles. However, a fill-in issue always arrives with trepidation. Will the art blend in with the established visual continuity? Will it make me like the story less compared to if the regular artist penciled it? I'm happy to say that although Visions isn't Rodriguez, the art in this issue still feels like Spider-Gwen, despite the different style and heavier line work!
Latour starts his story off months ago with a one page flashback to Frank "The Punisher" Castle losing his family. Unlike the 616 version who lost his loved ones in a gangland hit, the Castle of Earth-65 loses his due to a single-minded dedication to his job. Knowing several people who work in public safety and the stress and pressure they are constantly under made this brief scene really hit home for me. Mental health, PTSD, and being unable to "turn off" are all very important issues that probably don't get talked about enough by those that serve their community in police, fire, EMS, and the military. Even if it's only a page, I'm glad Latour brings it up and provides a different spin to this Punisher.
Jumping back to the present day, featuring events running parallel to the last issue, Latour focuses this story on moving things forward with George Stacey and Captain America. George is in a bar, the bartender attempting to get him to try something new. The scene felt like it was addressing me and my hesitancy to see a different artist on this book, even if it was for one issue. I'm sure Latour didn't have me in mind at all, but the dialogue still spoke to me. I really enjoy not just the character of Spider-Gwen, but what the team does month in and out, not really dipping in to Spider-Gwen's other appearances in titles. They may be great for all I know, but I really just enjoy sticking with Latour and Rodriguez. The barkeep is right, tho. Giving Visions a chance didn't kill me and I actually wouldn't mind seeing him do other work on this book. Maybe in an annual down the road?
The scene in the coffee shop had a few interesting bits of social commentary. The first was the propensity everyone has to whip out their cell phones to take a picture. Almost everyone in the Starkbucks is taking Cap's picture as she walked in. I loved the soldier who chose to salute and stand at attention, though. I missed him the first time! Then there's the guy trying to be subtle but not succeeding AT ALL with his sneaky pic. I'm surprised no one asked Cap to take a selfie with them!
The other bit I liked was the Starkbucks. Not only does Stark sell war, but overpriced coffee, too, as Cap observes. On the war side of things, I liked how War Machine wasn't the name for a suit of armor, but a private mercenary army for Stark that Castle was a part of, complete with a skull adorned shirt.
Jean brings up an interesting idea in her conversation with Cap at the coffee house. She states that without evidence, Spider-Gwen is guilty until proven innocent. Is this just a cop's cynical attitude, or the actual law on Earth-65? In a world that's topsy-turvy with Daredevil working for the Kingpin and Peter dying with Gwen living, your guess is as good as mine. In today's world, it certainly feels like the accused is guilty until proven innocent, at least as far as public perceptions go. Even then, the acquitted suffer the stigma of the charges against them. Just like the original Spidey, Gwen is continuing the tradition of being persecuted by those around her.
Latour equips Murdock with a great metaphor when he meets with George Stacy, observing that the roof they are meeting on is leakier than Stacy's department. Murdock is sporting a red shirt proclaiming that he's not the Kingpin, a nice homage to Daredevil #7 from Mark Waid's run, where the 616 Matt wore a shirt advertising that he was not Daredevil. If you haven't checked out any of Waid's run, it comes highly recommended by me.
Murdock comes right out and says it-he KNOWS Gwen is Spider-Woman. He posits that Castle does, too, and offers to help the Stacys with their problem. When the ninjas pop up, George mistakenly thinks they are for him, but Murdock points out that they're there for the very disheveled Castle, drunkenly stumbling down below. Keeping with Rodriguez's quirky art embellishments, Visions depicts Castle with little green drunk bubbles over his head! Reminds me of the aroma swirls emanating from the corn dogs that Gwen used as Lizard bait a few issues ago.
As Castle valiantly struggles against the ninjas, Murdock illustrates the choice he is offering to Captain Stacy. As a father myself, I was riveted. Murdock is so confident in his organization and his feeling that he is above the law that he has no compunction about killing a cop. By placing Castle's fate in Stacy's hands, he's not only testing George's character, but purporting to be a better father to Gwen, too. After all, he has no problem keeping her safe from those seeking to do her harm. Visions perfectly depicts both the emotional and physical struggle that George is going through as Murdock has his hands at his throat. The fear in his eyes is very clear and I honestly didn't know what way his decision would fall. Would he stick to his convictions and take the harder road that could have dire consequences or take a man's life for short term protection? Stacy has dealt with enough of Murdock's kind to know there would be strings to this deal, not to mention how it would erode his conscience, undermining all he struggled to imbue in his daughter. When Stacy chose to spare Castle's life, putting faith in himself and Gwen's character, the resoluteness in his face leaped off the page. There was great power to George taking control and standing up to Murdock, calling his bluff. I wanted to cheer! However, the last time a Kingpin found out a Spider's identity, it didn't work out so well for those involved. I'm anxious to see where the story takes us next!
The story concludes with Cap walking in on a slightly-more-transformed-compared-to-when-last-we-saw-him Harry, a defeated Gwen at his feet, catching us up to where we ended in issue 4. It would be easy to dismiss this issue as filler, what with Gwen not really being in it, and Rodriguez not penciling, but I really enjoyed this chapter. With Rodriguez's absence, I felt that I noticed the writing more, and even with him being gone, the issue's art still retained the series' trademark energy and musical influences. Renzi marries the words and pictures together with his usual excellent job of coloring, keeping Spider-Gwen's world cohesive and consistent. For an issue I was apprehensive about, it kept me on the edge of my seat at the end!
JAVI'S HUH?: With Rodriguez gone, we get no references to corn dogs this issue, making me wonder if their inclusion in the series is his influence. However, Betty mentions queso, which is far superior anyways!
When he gets attacked, Castle doesn't see red, he sees pink frosting and sprinkles?!?!


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The AHDB Pork knowledge transfer team organises topical training workshops and meetings in your local area, throughout autumn and spring:
- They are on a range of pig production topics from farrowing management to benchmarking performance figures
- They can last for a whole day, an afternoon or an evening
- They offer the opportunity to meet other producers.
The local workshop programme offers options for every level, from stockpeople to unit owners.
Go to: www.pork.ahdb.org.uk/events/eventsmap/default.aspx


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|Click here to view the item
|Simple justice 5 : Marshall's closing statement | American experience (Television program). 1993-01-18, Simple justice--excerpts
In this video segment, NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall summarizes the reasons why the Supreme Court should outlaw segregation in public education. Brown v. Board of Education would become the most important civil rights case of the twentieth century.
Includes a background essay, discussion questions, and alignments to teaching standards.
Major funding for this project is provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Supported in part by a grant from the Open Society Institute.
Collection funded by: Opensource.
Grade range: 6-12.
Part of the series "Simple Justice" series : 1. A Handful of Evidence -- 2. Social Science Evidence -- 3. The Trial Begins -- 4. Arguing the Fourteenth Amendment -- 5. Marshall's Closing Arguments -- 6. Justice Warren Reads the Decision.
The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata.
|Instructional materials | Teaching guides | Resource units | Videorecordings | MovingImage
|Plessy, Homer Adolph--Trials, litigation, etc. | Ferguson, John H., judge--Trials, litigation, etc. | Warren, Earl, 1891-1974 | Vinson, Fred M., 1890-1953 | Brown, Oliver, 1918- --Trials, litigation, etc. | Smith, Linda Brown | Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969 | Marshall, Thurgood, 1908-1993 | Summation (Law) | African American lawyers | African American men | African Americans--Civil rights | African Americans--Social conditions | African Americans--Economic conditions | African Americans--Education | African Americans--Legal status, laws, etc. | Judicial process--United States | United States--Politics and government | United States--Social conditions | Race discrimination--United States | United States--Race relations | Discrimination in education--United States | Segregation in education | School integration | Lawyers | Public schools--United States | Equality--United States | Education--United States | African American psychologists | Supreme court justices--United States | United States. Supreme Court | United States. Constitution. 14th Amendment | Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka | National Association for the Advancement of Colored People | American Experience (Television program) | United States, 37.09024, -95.712891
|Teachers' Domain Civil Rights Special Collection
|WGBH Educational Foundation
|Simple Justice (PBS) | Teacher's Domain Civil Rights Special Collection | WGBH Educational Foundation
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The Teachers' Domain Civil Rights Collection is a collaborative production of WGBH Education Productions, the WGBH Media Library, and WGBH Interactive, in partnership with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and Washington University in St. Louis.
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Forms part of: Teacher's Domain Civil Right Special Collection.
Forms part of: American Experience (PBS Television Series).
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Whether you're searching for a wild and insane getaway, or you basically need to experience a night or two not at all like anything you can discover in the place where you grew up, we've found the 5 most abnormal inns on the planet. Hoteliers around the globe have extended their creative energies to take into account you're fondest—and maybe even unusual—longs for a night or two like no other.
#5 Maldives, Cocoa Island Hotel –
Around a thousand miles south of Mumbai India, the Maldives is a tropical country comprising of several islands and 26 coral atolls—a diver's, surfer's and fisherman's heaven. The Cocoa Island resort is encompassed by perfect white sand and a warm blue ocean that offers one of the best jump locales in the Maldives. On the off chance that you feel worn out on living in a luxuriously delegated manor, pick one of 33 dhoni-style thatched houseboats moored along planked walkways. Every offers rich room suites that stream into extensive parlors with glass dividers opening onto private verandas. From that point everything you need do is slip into the warm waters enticing beneath. At that point, later, return up the strides and thrive in the wooden whirlpool shower, or savor the experience of bolstering the rainbow-toned fish underneath.
#4 Crazy Bear Hotel, United Kingdom –
Just the Brits could consider a lodging so extravagant, so rich and lavish that it takes three unique venues to express its miracles. You may need to sink into a profound rocker to appreciate Havana stogies and Zacapa 23 Rum, or go to a Vampire's Ball at Halloween that bring acrobats, vaudeville, enchantment and dark red mixed drinks together in festivity. The end of summer Garden Party grills 500 lobsters for the delight in its visitors, while pool gatherings and sushi-production instructional exercises are joined by the England's most shaking DJ's.
#3 Fantasuite Hotel, Minnesota, USA –
When you're prepared to leave this world without leaving the USA, Fantasuite gives you twenty fabulous room decisions. Pick rooms with a science fiction flavor, for example, the Space Odyssey room, a re-production of the Gemini space case with its extensive 10-sided bed. For a more sentimental overnight, the Cupid's Corner room is finished with a whirlpool, heart-molded informal lodging roof. For a family experience, attempt the Wild West suite with a whirlpool and two different resting ranges; one with a secured wagon informal lodging with a teepee bed.
#2 Barin Ski Resort, Shemshak, Iran –
In the event that you thought Iran was for the most part abandon and sub-tropical, reconsider. Arranged in the foothills of the Alborz mountains, northern Iraq is home to mountains that main 1,800 feet and give wonderful skiing from November through April. The Barin Ski resort rooms propose the guileful bends of a wind-cleared, snow-shrouded mountain. The entryway, corridors and every room get normal light from sky facing windows created into roofs, while the streaming dividers and lobbies help you to remember a frigid bank, maybe even a shrewdly outlined igloo.
#1 Poseidon Undersea Resort, Fiji –
There's no other lodging convenience like it on Earth. You can book a stay at Poseidon that incorporates both a physical estate and an undersea 550 square foot lodging suite. The submerged suites, 24 on the whole, incorporate LCD screens that opacify for security, push catch fish feeders and a perspective into your own private coral greenhouse loaded with ocean life of each shading and depiction. You'll enter by means of an individual Triton submarine; no wet suit needed. Later you may choose to investigate further on board a 1,000-foot extravagance submersible, or appreciate a scuba make the plunge Fiji's unblemished waters. A seven day, six night enterprise starts at $15,000 per individual or $30,000 per c


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About CHRISTINA EMILIE
Based out of New York City, Christina is a fashion photographer best known for her understated, quietly impactful visual language and highly developed sense of texture. Originally from Pittsburgh, Christina´s creative path started out taking a few courses in painting and photography during College where she studied Marketing. Self-taught, Christina's raw talent in perceiving hidden beauty in common places has led her to a career as a professional photographer. Her advertising clients include Sam Edelman, ModCloth, FEED, and collaborations with Coach, Dior Makeup, and Free People. Christina divides her time between New York and Pittsburgh.
email: firstname.lastname@example.com


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When hiking there will be times when you could find yourself walking beyond nightfall, and if you've done this before, you know how important it is to have a headlamp on hand to ensure you get to your destination both safely and without getting lost. Read on to find out more about the best hiking headlamp and why it is so.
To save you some time, our top pick is the Storm Head Lamp by Black Diamond which scores a 4.6 /5 stars from our experts. Now let's look at why we consider it the best.
Typically when people think of torches and headlamps they think brighter is better and in some cases they are right. For emergencies, hunting and for kids to see how high their beam of light go, this is true.
However, when it comes to a hiking headlamp, you don't necessarily need the brightest, since most of us will be hiking into the dark and as day changes to night, so will your ability to see better in the dark.
Typically, it takes around 45 minutes to get your full night vision, after that ambient light and the sheer brightness of the moon is often enough to get by. Yes, sometimes it's darker when the there are clouds overhead, so a headlamp is a must.
Which is why we've chosen the Black Diamond Storm which has 160 Lumens, which is far from the brightest, but for good reason.
You are out there to enjoy nature, not to light up your surroundings like a Christmas tree! So, as long as you can see the ground in front of you and several feet ahead you're going to have a nicer, happier hike.
Red LED for Night Vision
I spoke a little about night vision in the previous paragraph and I will continue that here. Maintaining your night vision is important when night hiking and it will also save your batteries which is crucial if you are on a long or multi-day hike. This is why we've chosen the 'Storm' for its night vision preserving Red LED light capabilities.
You can activate this setting without going through any white light modes, which is a rare feature many manufacturers overlook. You see most of the cheaper brands may add a red light feature as a novelty to sell torches. Not in the case of Blank Diamond.
This company has been around for years and understands the importance of a good reliable and useable red-light. So accessing the red light option without ruining your night vision with white-light is an important feature to look for.
Strobe Mode
Let's face it, when hiking in the wilderness there is always a risk you could become lost, injured or attacked by an animal in some cases. It's what makes hiking so popular for those who simply 'get it'. That's why strobe mode implementation for this headlamp is a good idea and makes it perfect for hikers.
Having the ability to attract attention is one of the first things you should consider before you set off…having multiple ways to call for help is even better. Now, I'd hope that you all have some for of whistle on your person at all times, so we won't get into that.
What we will discuss is the 2nd option which is being able to flash an SOS signal to passers-by or potential rescue teams. The 'Storm Headlamp' has a strobe mode which does just that. Whilst most effective at night for obvious reasons, the strong flashing LED bulbs will be seen in daylight and could mean the difference between being found and not.
The Best Hiking Headlamp
Storm Head Lamp by Black Diamond
Features and Specifications
- Super bright Quad Power main LED for the darkest of places.
- Two single powered LED's which are situated to the side of the main LED and provide light for your peripheral vision.
- An additional 2 single RED LED's for that all-important night-vision preservation.
- Battery Life meter for quick and easy battery level checks.
Touch sensitive casing to allow for quick and easy changing of brightness
What Customers Are Saying
With 4x AAA you are sure to get a longer battery life which makes adding a little extra weight for a much more functional headlamp well worth it.
Out of all the headlamps we've used over the years, we've put this one through its paces and it is our go to hiking lamp 9 times out of 10.
Who Should Buy This Product?
For Hikers and Campers, this headlamp meets all of the standard requirements with a few additional features to boot. For camp chores, getting in and out of a tent or hiking your way across a narrow trail after dark, the Black Diamon Storm ticks all of those boxes.
Who Shouldn't Buy This Product?
If you expect to be submerged under water for any period I would avoid this lamp and opt for a purpose-built dive watch instead. Whilst waterproof up to 1m, I wouldn't want to rely on that for too long.
Commonly Asked Questions
What is the weight of the headlamp?
With batteries, you are looking at 4oz.
Is this headlamp waterproof?
Yes, up to a depth of 1m for 30 minutes.
Do all the LED's provide strobe mode?
Yes, they are all capable of signaling for help should you need it.
The Black Diamond Storm is, in our opinion the best hiking headlamp, camping, climbing and even surfing, since it is waterproof to 1m, therefore heavy downpours when in the outdoors will not pose a problem.


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While this was rumored before, this is the first time something official was said about this. And it is the director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) that gives us the news:
I had lunch with [Sony Pictures co-chairman] Amy Pascal when I got back to town. She was just saying, gosh, nobody wants to do ['Ghostbusters 3'] I said, yeah, it's really hard to take that on, especially since it's 25 years later. How do you come back into a world that's had these ghosts and all this? It just felt too difficult. How do you do it and not screw it up?
But then it was bugging me for the next few days because 'Ghostbusters' is such a great thing and everybody knows it, and it's such a great world. It's a shame to just let this thing sit there. I want to see another one. My favorite thing to do is work with funny women. I was like, what if it was an all-female cast? If they were all women? Suddenly, my mind kind of exploded: that would be really fun. And then I thought, well, what if we just make it new? It's not coming into the world that existed before. It's always hard if the world has gone through this big ghost attack, how do you do it again? I wanted to come into our world where there's talk of ghosts but they're not really credible, and so what would happen in our world if this happened today?"
Furthermore, the director says,
"I love origin stories. That's my favorite thing. I love the first one so much I don't want to do anything to ruin the memory of that. So it just felt like, let's just restart it because then we can have new dynamics. I want the technology to be even cooler. I want it to be really scary, and I want it to happen in our world today that hasn't gone through it so it's like, oh my God what's going on?
[...] Both [screenwriter Katie Dippold] and I are obsessed with how do we make comedy really scary? The sequel to 'The Heat'was going to be pretty scary and funny. Almost like in a 'Silence of the Lambs'type thing but funny. I think funny people in peril and in danger is one of the best forms of comedy, and I really like things to play very real while funny things are happening. So that's what both Katie and I really want to do with this one is make it crazy funny but also you're scared at the same time."