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In first graph, first sentence of release, date should read: June 7, 2011 (sted June 7, 2017).
Arrowhead Research Corporation (NASDAQ: ARWR), a nanomedicine company with development programs in oncology, obesity, and regenerative medicine, today announced that Dr.
Arrowhead Research Corporation (NASDAQ: ARWR), a nanomedicine company with development programs in oncology, obesity and regenerative medicine, today announced that John J.
Arrowhead Research Corporation (NASDAQ: ARWR), a nanomedicine company with development programs in oncology, obesity and regenerative medicine, today announced that majority-owned subsidiary Ablaris Therapeutics, Inc.
Arrowhead Research Corporation (NASDAQ: ARWR), a nanomedicine company, today announced that Dr.
Arrowhead Research Corporation (NASDAQ: ARWR) today announced that its Unidym, Inc.
Another round of small-cap companies are on watch by the Nasdaq and NYSE to be delisted in six months.
Arrowhead Research Corporation (NASDAQ: ARWR) today announced financial results for its fiscal 2010 fourth quarter and year ended September 30, 2010.
Arrowhead Research Corporation (NASDAQ: ARWR) (“Arrowhead” or the “Company”) today announced that it has executed an exclusive world-wide license on technology developed by Drs.
Arrowhead Research Corporation (NASDAQ:ARWR) today announced that it will report its financial results for the fiscal 2010 fourth quarter and year ended September 30, 2010, on Wednesday, December 22, 2010 at 4:30 p.
Unidym, Inc., a majority owned subsidiary of Arrowhead Research Corporation (NASDAQ: ARWR), announced today that it has completed IP cooperation and license agreements with Samsung Electronics Co.
BBC Broadcasts Interview With Dr. Samuel Stupp, Founder Of Arrowhead Portfolio Company, Nanotope, Inc.
An interview with Dr. Sam Stupp, founder and scientific advisor to Nanotope, Inc.
Arrowhead Research Corporation (NASDAQ: ARWR) today announced that Douglass Given MD, PhD, MBA, has joined the Company’s Board of Directors, expanding Arrowhead’s Board to a total of six directors.
Arrowhead Research Corporation (NASDAQ: ARWR) today announced that its portfolio companies, Calando Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Arrowhead Research Corporation (NASDAQ: ARWR) today announced that Dr.
Arrowhead Research Corporation (NASDAQ: ARWR) today announced that its portfolio company, Nanotope, Inc.
Arrowhead Research Corporation (NASDAQ:ARWR) today announced that Dr.
Arrowhead Increases Ownership In RNAi Subsidiary Calando Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
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Article: The North Sea Oilfield Service Market - Dead or alive?
In the latest DCube version (August 2016), oil market fundamentals points in the direction of a reduced oilfield service market. The short term market decline has been reduced to -6.5% CAGR from 2015-2017.
The service company’s activities related to shale have seen a tremendous drop in their margins due to the market downturn. In 2014, the average EBITDA-margin was at 17%, and in 2015 this turned negative. Pressure pumpers led the deterioration of the margins and onshore drillers along with other suppliers followed. Even though there have been some improvements of the margins for shale in 2016, E&P companies are still realizing 26% price cuts and 17% efficiency cost cuts for its drilling and completion activity in 2016 compared to 2014.
Suppliers to the offshore industry have fared better in terms of margins. From 2014 to 2016, margins have only fallen 6 percentage points. Some segments, such as offshore drillers have fallen much more, however, the offshore industry has shown remarkable resilience. In the nature of offshore, field developments take more time when compared with the shale industry. Contracts typically last longer due to the complexity and lead times for equipment and services. Due to longer lasting contracts, healthy project margins will aid the offshore suppliers in a depressing market. Looking at the offshore drillers, 57% of the active rigs this summer had their fixtures closed prior to 2015, before the oil price really plummeted. Many of these contracts were closed in Australia and Brazil by Petrobras. Turning over the stone of the greenfield subsea market in 2016 shows that as much as 73% of the spend is related to contracts awarded prior to 2015. Noticeable contracts that still linger on are Aasta Hansteen, Maria and Egina. For EPCI, the comparable number is 71%. Hebron, Upper Zakum and Nasr are sizeable greenfield contracts that are still running. The key driver of the margin decrease for Subsea and EPCI have been related the greenfield contracts awarded in 2015 and 2016 along with renewal and renegotiations of brownfield contracts.
Being exposed to the offshore service market, suppliers have had longer time to adapt to lower activity levels than their shale-exposed peers. They have been able to downsize their organization and fleet of assets fast enough to adapt to the declining market. The remaining people and assets are typically the “best in class”, which improves efficiency. In addition, they have been able also put significant pressure on their sub-providers in a timely manner to cut costs down the value chain.
Whether or not the margins for offshore and shale will hit rock bottom in the near future is rather unlikely. Service companies have taken severe measures and are closely monitoring the market development. In the case of increased demand for their services, they will focus on maintaining their cost base and improving their margins. In the search of cost excellency, E&P companies needs to work with the service companies and not against them.
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Erwin Schrodinger, an Austrian quantum physicist, was skeptical of the interpretation and came up with his famous thought experiment in 1935.
Suppose you have a cat in a sealed box. Alongside the cat are a radioactive sample, a Geiger counter for measuring radiation and a bottle of poison. If the radioactive sample decays it will be detected by the Geiger counter which in turn will smash the bottle of poison and kill the cat.
If the box is sealed and unobservable, the radioactive sample can be both decayed and stable at the same time. If this is the case, the cat is both alive and dead.
Obviously this isn't the case and the cat is either alive or dead. This thought experiment was an effort to highlight the very blurred lines between observable reality and perceived proper reality. The cat has been used to show differences in emerging models of quantum physics.
In the 1950s, the "Many Worlds Interpretation" would argue that when the box is opened reality is split in two. Both the dead and living cat can be observed at the same time!
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Compare and Contrast the Domestic Policies of Two Rulers of Single Party States, Each Chosen from a Different Region.
The beginning of the 20th century provided the rise of powerful leaders of single party states. Leaders such as Stalin and Mao ruled over Russia and China and effectively made their rule known not only to other countries, but its own people as well. Although both Stalin and Mao utilized self-promoting propaganda, Mao endorsed a policy of social reform whereas Stalin did not.
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People all over the world enjoy topping their food with some type of condiment. Condiments take bland, boring food and transform it into something extraordinary. People love to dip food into something savoury and sweet or kick up the spice with some tangy sauce. One thing is for certain, food just wouldn't be the same without adding condiments.
Ketchup, or ketchup, is used by people of all ages. Who would have ever guessed smashing tomatoes and adding some spices would become one of the most popular condiments in America? Ketchup can be used at every meal time, from eating with eggs to dipping chicken nuggets. Ketchup is considered to be one of the most popular condiments used in America.
Mustard comes in many different variations. Some prefer traditional yellow mustard on hot dogs or pretzels, while others prefer a zestier type of mustard. A popular mustard to use on sandwiches is zesty brown mustard. This mustard brings sweetness and spice to any sandwich. A popular mustard used to dip chicken fingers is the sweetly delicious honey mustard. This mustard is jam-packed with a variety of spices, mustard and honey, making it an ultimate condiment for chicken.
This condiment brings a bold, spicy flavour that cannot be found anywhere else. Hot sauce is one of the best condiments used on chicken wings. Although hot wings taste phenomenal, this condiment can be used with other foods too. Try adding some hot sauce to eggs or steak and see the enticing flavours come to life.
Two words can be used to describe this condiment: sweet and tangy. Barbecue sauce is used to grill food such as chicken, pork and steak. Some people will marinate with barbecue sauce first, and then use it to compliment the finished food product as well. Many regions of the country have a preferred consistency and texture to their barbecue sauce. Some regions prefer thicker, tangier sauces while others prefer their sauce to be thin and mild.
Steak sauce adds boldness and tangy richness to any steak. This condiment is great on any type of meat. It combines unique spices and seasonings to create an ultimate mouth-watering experience. Some people choose to use this condiment to enhance flavours in soups and stews also. Steak sauce has been a favourite among Americans for centuries.
One of the best loved condiments that can be found in any kitchen is the beloved mayonnaise. This condiment is a great addition to any sandwich bringing a distinct flavour many of us have come to know and love. This condiment is also used to make side dishes such as macaroni salad and potato salad. Mayonnaise can also be used as a dipping sauce.
This condiment is great for tenderising meat and enhancing it with flavour. Worcestershire sauce is generally used in grilling foods, but can be used in a variety of ways. Try adding it to soups, stews and sauces for additional flavour.
Soy sauce is a great condiment to use with any type of Asian food. This condiment tastes great in stir fry dishes and accompanies sushi well. Soy sauce can be used to make bland rice taste better, and it can also kick up the flavour of many Asian dishes.
This condiment has become the ultimate "dipping" sauce. Ranch dressing has become very popular with chicken wing lovers. Many love to dip their wings in this delicious dressing. Ranch dressing is also used to dip many other foods, such as celery, carrots and cucumbers.
Relish is another delicious condiment added to enhance the flavour of food. Relish comes in a variety of flavours and can be added to many different types of foods. This condiment brings a sweet, delicious flavour to any ordinary hot dog. Relish can add flavour to hamburgers and tuna fish, also.
Marissa Decker has been writing since 2007. Her most recent articles were published in the "Sun Herald Newspaper." She is currently pursuing her Bachelor of Arts in English from Ashford University.
What Side Dishes Can I Serve With Ravioli?
What sides to eat with chicken wings?
What kind of gravy should I use with ham?
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A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized staff and equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which has an emergency department.Today, hospitals are largely staffed by profesional physicians, surgeons, and nurses.Some patients go to a hospital just for diagnosis, treatment, or therapy and then leave ('outpatients') without staying overnight; while others are 'admitted' and stay overnight or for several days or weeks or months ('inpatients')..So,these are the following list of some popular Hospitals in San Diego,Californa.
This hospitals deal with many kinds of disease and injury.. Hospitals usually are distinguished from other types of medical facilities by their ability to admit and care for inpatients while the others often are described as clinics.
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In the past week the Negotiation Committee has been overwhelmed with the turnouts at the Road Shows! You are coming prepared and you have offered us your feedback on many sections of the TA, but most importantly the 480 accruals as they apply to Sick Leave and Vacation.
In the TA you will find that there is a 12-month “Look Back” for sick leave accruals. What does this mean?
1. Sick Leave Accrual is based on a 12-month “Look Back” and a Flight Attendant must have earned TFP (exclusive of sick leave) and credit from vacation that totals 480 in the previous 12 months.
2. Vacation Accrual is also based on a “Worked” 480 TFP in the calendar year (exclusive of sick leave and vacation).
Based on concerns that FAs have lost 2 months to properly prepare for these changes the Negotiation Committee and management collaboratively worked together to create a fair implementation schedule of the Sick Leave and Vacation accruals.
look back on a pro-rated basis adding months as we go. Remember, sick leave accruals are based on worked TFP, Vacation, and Minimum Pay Rules.
40×12=480. You will have your sick leave accrual for April 2014.
May 1st “Look Back” You will look back to March 2014 and multiply calculated TFP x 6 and look back to April 2014 and multiply calculated TFP x 6 and add those totals.
240+240=480. You have reached the 480 credit for using sick leave in May.
You have reached the 480 credit for sick leave use in June.
If the new sick leave accrual policy is not in place by June, you will continue to calculate your accruals by reducing the multiplier.
July 1, 2014 you will calculate March, April, May and June totals and multiply by 3.
August 1, 2914 you will calculate April, May, June, and July totals by 2.
We will use this pro-rated method until you have a full 12 month look back.
2015 Vacation accrual calendar year starts March 1, 2014 and runs to December 31, 2014. Assuming 40 TFP worked per month this means you need to have 400 TFP worked (including Minimum Pay Rules) in order to receive the full accrual and pay for the 2015 vacation.
Accruals earned in 2015 for use in 2016 will be the first year requiring 480 worked TFP per the Tentative Agreement.
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How much do movers in Newburgh charge? The moving cost depends on the size of your home and how far you're moving.
For example, moving a 2 bedroom home to New York City costs $770 - $940, to Brooklyn costs $780 - $950, to Queens costs $770 - $940, to Manhattan costs $760 - $930, to The Bronx costs $760 - $930, etc.
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Planning a trip to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines?
As in other English-speaking Caribbean countries, the judiciary in St. Vincent is rooted in British common law. There are 11 courts in three magisterial districts. The Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, comprising a High Court and a Court of Appeals, is known in St. Vincent as the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Supreme Court. The court of last resort is the judicial committee of Her Majesty's Privy Council in London.
Carib Indians aggressively prevented European settlement on St. Vincent until the 18th century. African slaves--whether shipwrecked or escaped from St. Lucia and Grenada and seeking refuge in St. Vincent--intermarried with the Caribs and became known as "black Caribs." Beginning in 1719, French settlers cultivated coffee, tobacco, indigo, cotton, and sugar on plantations worked by African slaves. In 1763, St. Vincent was ceded to Britain. Restored to French rule in 1779, St. Vincent was regained by the British under the Treaty of Versailles in 1783. Conflict between the British and the black Caribs continued until 1796, when General Abercrombie crushed a revolt fomented by the French radical Victor Hugues. More than 5,000 black Caribs were eventually deported to Roatan, an island off the coast of Honduras. Slavery was abolished in 1834; the resulting labor shortages on the plantations attracted Portuguese immigrants in the 1840s and east Indians in the 1860s. Conditions remained harsh for both former slaves and immigrant agricultural workers, as depressed world sugar prices kept the economy stagnant until the turn of the century. From 1763 until independence, St. Vincent passed through various stages of colonial status under the British. A representative assembly was authorized in 1776, Crown Colony government installed in 1877, a legislative council created in 1925, and universal adult suffrage granted in 1951. During this period, the British made several unsuccessful attempts to affiliate St. Vincent with other Windward Islands in order to govern the region through a unified administration. The most notable was the West Indies Federation, which collapsed in 1962. St. Vincent was granted associate statehood status in 1969, giving it complete control over its internal affairs. Following a referendum in 1979, St. Vincent and the Grenadines became the last of the Windward Islands to gain independence. Natural disasters have plagued the country throughout the 20th century. In 1902, the La Soufriere volcano erupted, killing 2,000 people. Much farmland was damaged, and the economy deteriorated. In April 1979, La Soufriere erupted again. Although no one was killed, thousands had to be evacuated, and there was extensive agricultural damage. In 1980 and 1987, hurricanes devastated banana and coconut plantations; 1998 and 1999 also saw very active hurricane seasons, with hurricane Lenny in 1999 causing extensive damage to the west coast of the island.
Most Vincentians are the descendants of African slaves brought to the island to work on plantations. There also are a few white descendants of English colonists, as well as some East Indians, Carib Indians, and a sizable minority of mixed race. The country's official language is English, but a French patois may be heard on some of the Grenadine Islands. Nationality: Noun and adjective--Vincentian. Population (July 2009 est.): 104,574. Annual population growth rate (2009 est.): -0.344%. Ethnic groups: African descent (66%), mixed (19%), West Indian (6%), Carib Indian (2%), other (7%). Religions: Anglican (47%), Methodist (28%), Roman Catholic (13%), other Protestant denominations, Seventh-day Adventist, and Hindu. Language: English (official); some French Patois spoken. Education (2004): Adult literacy--88.1%. Health (2006): Infant mortality rate--17/1,000. Life expectancy--men 69 years; women 74 years. Workforce (2006): 57,695. Unemployment (2004): 12%.
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Conferred upon as the Best Golf Course India 2015 by India Golf Awards, Kalhaar Blues & Greens is an idyllic golf course at Ahmedabad, India . Kalhaar Blues & Greens is a world class championship 18 holes, 7425 yards, Par 72 layout, designed by 'Nicklaus Design', a company owned by the legendary golfer and golf icon Jack Nicklaus. 'Nicklaus Design' is a brand recognized around the globe for its premier golf course design work.
Developed by the Navratna Group, the course complies with the United States Golf Association (USGA) specifications as well as the stringent and exacting standards of 'Nicklaus Design', making it one of the most exclusive and prestigious golf courses in the country. The course is spread over 175 acres and plays to 7425 yards from the championship tees, making it one of the longest golf courses in India.
The layout offers unique challenges and aesthetics, such as sand and beach bunkers, and 14 bodies of water that cover over 35 acres. In addition, the course features a scenic ‘Island green’ on Hole No. 7 – a 174 yards, Par 3. The course has been designed to be a cart course.
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How can you save when shopping online? Is it necessary to search for coupon codes and sales all day long? If you hate doing that, take heart. All you must do is read through the following text to figure out what to do next.
Always check for coupon codes before you make a purchase online. Many online retailers offer discounts, and you can locate codes that will let you use these discounts just by searching online. Just search the words “coupon code” along with the website you are buying from and you will get many possibilities to use. This is a great way to save money when you shop online.
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Cortisol is a life-sustaining stress hormone released by your adrenal glands. It follows a diurnal pattern, usually peaking at 8am, and reaching its lowest right around 4am. While it is vital for cortisol to be released during times of stress, it is also crucial that it returns to normal levels. In our high stress culture, the stress response is activated frequently and our body doesn’t have the chance to bring it back down to a normal level. For this reason, it is important to look at how our food choices can affect the release of cortisol so that we can try to support a natural, healthy, rhythm. Breakfast is the perfect time to combat the stress we face throughout the day.
Your morning wake up call should be a cortisol spike. This necessary evil signals the body to get in motion. However, it is important to get the cortisol levels down so that it maintains its diurnal rhythm and doesn't stay elevated all day long. Eating a nutrient dense breakfast helps to reduce the cortisol levels in your blood, getting it back to its normal level. Skipping breakfast or eating one high in sugar both lead to your adrenals drowning your cells in cortisol. This is because low blood sugar, such as that which results from not eating, is perceived as a stress because it can be deadly, and that leads to the release of cortisol. When you consume something that is high in sugar, such as cereal, it leads to reactive hypoglycemia, the crash from high blood sugar levels to extremely low blood sugar levels. If you find you are reaching for that box of cereal in the morning, think again! That choice will leave your cortisol levels high throughout the day, disrupting your body’s natural diurnal rhythm and it will find you wallowing in stress.
In more bad news, what if I told you that leaving protein out of your breakfast routine may contribute to an increase in body fat? By having a high-protein breakfast, you are keeping your blood sugar levels regulated, thus keeping your cortisol levels at a low level. High levels of cortisol caused by early morning carbohydrates and sugar causes the body to store fat. Keep in mind that meals high in carbohydrates and sugars also decrease brain function, leaving you feeling sluggish. You’re eating breakfast so that you and your family can have a productive day ahead, so make sure what you’re putting in it fuels the fire and does not simply douse the flames. One of the most important routines you can design is the one around breakfast!
In addition to these dietary changes to help keep your cortisol levels balanced, try to get 30 minutes of sunlight in the morning hours (ideally within an hour of waking) and avoid blue light (laptops, TV screens, mobile phones) before bed, as light also impacts your body’s ability to communicate effectively via appropriate hormonal signaling. Getting good rest is key for stress management!
Remember that while a few cereals are lower in sugar, they are rarely a good source of a complete breakfast on their own. Try some of these better breakfast recipes to make your mornings the best jumping off point for low stress days!
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I would like to know the methods of religious thought.
What do you mean by religious thought?
Please explain what religious pluralism is and the difference between it and the interpretations of religion.
What are the epistemological applications of religion? What kind of teachings does religion offer that others could not?
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Why do Peridot (Steven Universe) and Tulip look similar? They both have green and black in their design, have eye ware, similar noses and are smart.
I think this is not a coincidence. Gems would most likely need to have infinite memory that stores infinite knowledge to correspond with their infinite life span. Aquamarine said that she had a perfect memory, or an infinite memory.
What if the Infinity Train represents Peridot's mind, and Tulip represents Peridot. In Steven Universe Lapis just left Peridot. Peridot wants to go home, to when she lived with lapis, or when she worked for the Diamonds. Tulip wants to go home.
Wait! What about One-One and the Steward and Corgidia, or the other cars and the hand-number-thing on Tulip's hand! How do they tie into this? you might be screaming at your computer as you read this, or not because normal people don't scream at computers.
Corgidia represents Earth. It is abundant in natural resourses and life. Peridot at first wanted nothing to do with Earth, neither did Tulip. Both eventually liked it.
The hand-number-thing on Tulip's hand could be . . . anything. It does glow green though, so . . . green.
woah... I dont think theres any direct relation to Steven universe ( unless some animators from SU began to work on Infinity train ), but its a huge coincidence , or maybe even more.
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We as cat owners, we love and care for our cats and want them with us for a long time. However, we also want to have an idea of their life expectancy. This is mainly because we are somehow attached to our cats. Consequently, we do not want our cat to leave us when we are not well prepared. Because of this, it is important to know how long do cats live. We need to know the signs that will show us that our cats are almost on their final days. We also need to know the things we can do how to prolong the lives of our cats. But we need to start by knowing the factors that determine how long do cats live.
The surroundings of a cat play an instrumental role in determining the age of the cat. There are cats which live exclusively indoors and there are others which are exposed to the outdoor environment. The ones that live indoor usually live longer than the ones with outdoor exposure. This is attributed to the fact that those living outdoors are exposed to more dangers.
Some of these dangers include accidents where they are run over by cars, being attacked by other animals such as dogs and being infected with different infections which are commonly found in outdoor environments such as Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV). On the other hand the cats that live indoors are protected from most of these dangers and as a result their lives tend to be longer.
The kind of foods that a cat eats also plays an important role in determining how long a cat lives. There are some cat foods that are more nutritious than others. Such foods provide the cats with the necessary nutrients which help them be able to have enhanced immune system and as a result be able to fight infections. There are also foods which are meant for cats of different ages. This means that there are foods which are ideal for kittens, pregnant cats, and even for aging cats. This makes it paramount to make sure that you feed your cat with the right foods so that it can live longer.
The cats which receive proper care usually live longer. This is because if such cats have problems especially with their health such problems are dealt with in the right time. This is important because most health problems that affect the cats can turn to cause major problems if they are not dealt with at the right time. To ensure your cat is properly taken care of you should keep on observing the cat. You should be on the look out for any change in behaviors. You should also ensure that you take your cat to a professional vet on a regular basis. The vet will identify any problem and be able to deal with it at the right time and in the right manner.
While answering the question of how long do cats live it is also important to know how you can keep your cat healthy. Most of the ways to keep your cat healthy are simple and easy to implement.
It is always important to ensure that your cat is vaccinated at the right time. Vaccination always helps the cat be able to deal with different health conditions. The vaccination should be done only by a professional who has the right skills. The professional will even provide professional advice on the most ideal vaccinations that the cat should undergo.
Some cats which are kept as pets usually develop weight problems because they are not physically active and the overeat. Just like humans, such cats are exposed to various health conditions and this might reduce their years. This makes it important to ensure that your cat has a healthy weight. To achieve this you should ensure that your cat is physically active including engaging the cat in moderate play time. You should also watch what you feed your cat so that it does not gain unnecessary weight.
Regardless of how keenly you observe your cat, there are some things which can only be noticed by a professional vet. This is attributed to the fact that professional veterinarians usually have the right skills and amenities to observe the cat effectively. The modern vets are using state of the art amenities which have the ability to detect even the slightest health conditions in cats. Consequently, you should take your cat to the vet regularly regardless of whether the cat is sick or not.
There are certain things that are well known to be ideal for cats. There are also things that are known to be disliked by cats. Because of this, you should ensure that your cat is in an environment where it will be able to enjoy itself optimally. The ideal environment should have enough food and things that the cat can play with. You should also ensure that there is no excessive noise in the place where the cat is staying. It is also paramount to ensure that the cat has the freedom to go where it wants. Furthermore, you should provide the cat with a comfortable place where it can sleep without stress. This is especially important because cats spend most of their time sleeping. You can consult your vet to know the kind of environment that will ensure that the cat is optimally comfortable.
Cats can be stressed or even become aggressive if they are treated harshly. This can affect their health and make their lives shorter. Because of this, you should develop a habit of treating your cat in a humane and polite manner. You should not shout at the cat or kick it. Instead, you should even create time to play with the cat. When the cat wants to rub against your feet you should not react harshly. You should also feed to cat on time so that it does not become stressed. Furthermore, you should teach your cat the right toilet habits. When you treat your cat nicely it will be stress-free and it will become healthier, allowing it to live for longer.
There are certain things which start changing when cats are aging. This is an ideal way of knowing how long do cats live because by seeing these changes you will know that your cat is aging.
Just like humans and any other animals, the immune system of aging cat becomes weaker with age. Weakened immune system means that the cat is aging and it is almost at the end of its life. At this particular time the cat will start getting sick more often because the immune system is unable to effectively deal with infections. This is the time when the cat requires more care. You will need to take your cat for check-ups more regularly. You will also need to feed the cat with better foods especially those that can enhance the immune system. There are special foods that are meant for aging cats and your vet can advise you on the most ideal foods to feed your cat.
Older cats do not groom themselves the same way they used to do when they were younger. Aging cats usually groom themselves much less and this usually cause various skin conditions. The fur of the cat will start matting and the skin will start producing an odor. You might also start noticing inflammation on the cat because of the reduced grooming. You can assist your cat be helping in the grooming. There are specialized ways where you can groom your cat without causing negative effects. This will enhance the health of the cat’s skin and fur consequently resulting in a longer life.
When a cat is aging the claws usually grow longer mainly because the cat is less active. If you are observant you will notice that the claws of your cat are growing longer than they were when your cat was younger. You can deal with this issue by clipping the nails of the cat more regularly.
If you notice that your cat is not hearing well then it is aging and it is almost at the end of its life. The eyes of the cat will also start changing in various ways. There will be a slight haziness on the lens of the eyes even though this does not necessarily affect the vision of the cat. But there are certain conditions that can significantly reduce the vision of the cat and this is one of the primary signs that the cat is aging.
As the cat grows older its teeth and gum will start developing different kinds of conditions. You will notice that your cat does not like eating certain types of foods. This is usually accompanied by a loss of appetite where the cat eats much less than it used to do when it was younger. When this happens you need to start feeding your cat with special foods which are easier to chew and do not cause any upset in the stomach. You should also feed the cat with foods which are less acidic.
Cats are also affected by memory loss when they are aging. This is a common problem in the entire animal kingdom where all animals and humans lose memory when they are aging. Signs that your cat has reduced memory include excessive meowing, wondering, avoidance of social interactions and apparent disorientation. The best way to deal with this is to take greater care of the cat so as to help whenever the cat is unable to remember something.
To know how long do cats live it is important to also know how to prolong the life of the cat. Some cat owners use different methods to make sure that their cats live longer.
There are certain supplements which are specially meant for the aging cats. These supplements are made using ingredients which have the ability to deal with various conditions that usually affect the cats as they age. They contain ingredients which can improve the vision of the cats and also help in fighting different infections. Your vet will advise you on the ideal supplements you need to start giving your cat when you see signs of aging. The vet will also advise you on the ideal ways of administering the supplements.
Just like humans aging cats also need to be loved more. By the time your cat is aging, you must have created a bond with the cat. You must also have known what the cat loves. You need to be close to the cat more so that the cat can feel appreciated and loved. You also need to ensure that the cat is around the things that she loves. This helps a lot because the cat does not feel neglected and will, therefore, have a chance of living relatively longer.
The most common issue with aging cats is developing dental issues. These issues can significantly reduce the lifespan of the cat because the cat might even stop eating completely. This makes it paramount that you ensure that your aging cat has the right and regular dental care. When you do this you will have increased the lifespan of the cat because the cat will be able to eat normally.
An aging cat will want to just rest and as a result, such cat will want to remain asleep for longer. But this can cause the cat to be lazy and therefore age faster. To avoid this you should stimulate your cat mentally. You can achieve this by changing some of the things that the cat is used to. Such things include changing where the cat sleeps and where the cat usually finds its food. This will stimulate the mind of the cat and it will also make the cat more active. You should also engage the cat in various physical activities such as walks so that the weight of the cat can remain in the healthy levels.
Your cat might like being in dangerous situations that can easily cause harm. These include playing outdoors or staying around toxic substance. To prolong the life of your cat you should ensure that the cat does not engage in anything dangerous. You need to ensure that your cat remains indoors unless when you are with the cat. You should also remove any toxic substance that might cause harm to the cat. Therefore, by following the outlined guideline you can know how long do cats live and also know how to prolong their lives.
Cats mature rather quickly during their younger years and reach the equivalent of 24 human years by the time they turn 2 years old. Then they age about eight to five times in human years for each cat years. So a 12-year-old kitty is the equivalent of a 65-year human.
On average, cats have a lifetime of 14 years.
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United States charismatic civil rights leader and Baptist minister who campaigned against the segregation of Blacks (1929-1968) (同)Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King Jr.
Vitamin K1 (phylloquinone) - both forms of the vitamin contain a functional naphthoquinone ring and an aliphatic side chain. Phylloquinone has a phytyl side chain.
Vitamin K refers to a group of structurally similar, fat-soluble vitamins the human body needs for complete synthesis of certain proteins that are required for blood coagulation, and also certain proteins that the body uses to control binding of calcium in bone and other tissues. The vitamin K-related modification of the proteins allows them to bind calcium ions, which they cannot do otherwise. Without vitamin K, blood coagulation is seriously impaired, and uncontrolled bleeding occurs. Low levels of vitamin K also weaken bones and promote calcification of arteries and other soft tissues.
Bacteria in the colon (large intestine) can also convert K1 into vitamin K2. In addition, bacteria typically lengthen the isoprenoid side chain of vitamin K2 to produce a range of vitamin K2 forms, most notably the MK-7 to MK-11 homologues of vitamin K2. All forms of K2 other than MK-4 can only be produced by bacteria, which use these forms in anaerobic respiration. The MK-7 and other bacterially derived forms of vitamin K2 exhibit vitamin K activity in animals, but MK-7's extra utility over MK-4, if any, is unclear and is a matter of investigation.
Three synthetic types of vitamin K are known: vitamins K3, K4, and K5. Although the natural K1 and all K2 homologues and synthetic K4 and K5 have proven nontoxic, the synthetic form K3 (menadione) has shown toxicity.
Vitamin K1 was identified in 1929 by Danish scientist Henrik Dam when he investigated the role of cholesterol by feeding chickens a cholesterol-depleted diet. After several weeks, the animals developed haemorrhages and started bleeding. These defects could not be restored by adding purified cholesterol to the diet. A second compound—together with the cholesterol—apparently had been extracted from the food, and this compound was called the coagulation vitamin. The new vitamin received the letter K because the initial discoveries were reported in a German journal, in which it was designated as Koagulationsvitamin.
The U.S. Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) for an Adequate Intake (AI) of vitamin K for a 25-year-old male is 120 micrograms (μg) per day. The AI for adult women is 90 μg/day, for infants is 10–20 μg/day, and for children and adolescents 15–100 μg/day. To get maximum carboxylation of osteocalcin, one may have to take up to 1000 μg of vitamin K1.
Supplemental vitamin K (for which oral dosing is often more active than injectable dosing in human adults) reverses the vitamin K deficiency caused by warfarin, and therefore reduces the intended anticoagulant action of warfarin and related drugs. Sometimes small amounts of vitamin K (one milligram per day) are given orally to patients taking warfarin so that the action of the drug is more predictable. The proper anticoagulant action of the drug is a function of vitamin K intake and drug dose, and due to differing absorption must be individualized for each patient. The action of warfarin and vitamin K both require two to five days after dosing to have maximum effect, and neither warfarin or vitamin K shows much effect in the first 24 hours after they are given.
In two separate studies in the rat model, after long term administration of warfarin to induce calcification of arteries in the rodents, supplemental vitamin K was found to reverse or prevent some of the arterial calcification attendant on the long-term blockade of vitamin K. A second study found that only vitamin K2 as MK-4, and not vitamin K1 was effective at preventing warfarin-induced arterial calcification in rats, suggesting differing roles for the two forms of the vitamin in some calcium-dependent processes.
Vitamin K1 is found chiefly in leafy green vegetables such as dandelion greens (which contain 778.4 μg per 100 g, or 741% of the recommended daily amount), spinach, swiss chard, lettuce and Brassica (e.g. cabbage, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, and brussels sprouts) and often the absorption is greater when accompanied by fats such as butter or oils; some fruits, such as avocado, kiwifruit and grapes, are also high in vitamin K. By way of reference, two tablespoons of parsley contain 153% of the recommended daily amount of vitamin K. Some vegetable oils, notably soybean, contain vitamin K, but at levels that would require relatively large calorific consumption to meet the USDA-recommended levels. Colonic bacteria synthesize a significant portion of humans' vitamin K needs; newborns often receive a vitamin K shot at birth to tide them over until their colons become colonized at five to seven days of age from the consumption of their mother's milk.
Average diets are usually not lacking in vitamin K, and primary deficiency is rare in healthy adults. Newborn infants are at an increased risk of deficiency. Other populations with an increased prevalence of vitamin K deficiency include those who suffer from liver damage or disease (e.g., alcoholics), cystic fibrosis, or inflammatory bowel diseases, or have recently had abdominal surgeries. Secondary vitamin K deficiency can occur in bulimics, those on stringent diets, and those taking anticoagulants. Other drugs associated with vitamin K deficiency include salicylates, barbiturates, and cefamandole, although the mechanisms are still unknown. Vitamin K1 deficiency can result in coagulopathy, a bleeding disorder. Symptoms of K1 deficiency include anemia, bruising, and bleeding of the gums or nose in both sexes, and heavy menstrual bleeding in women.
Mechanism of action for K1-vitamin.
The function of vitamin K2 in the animal cell is to add a carboxylic acid functional group to a glutamate amino acid residue in a protein, to form a gamma-carboxyglutamate (Gla) residue. This is a somewhat uncommon posttranslational modification of the protein, which is then known as a "Gla protein." The presence of two -COOH (carboxylate) groups on the same carbon in the gamma-carboxyglutamate residue allows it to chelate calcium ion. The binding of calcium ion in this way very often triggers the function or binding of Gla-protein enzymes, such as the so-called vitamin K dependent clotting factors discussed below.
Within the cell, vitamin K undergoes electron reduction to a reduced form called vitamin K hydroquinone by the enzyme vitamin K epoxide reductase (VKOR). Another enzyme then oxidizes vitamin K hydroquinone to allow carboxylation of Glu to Gla; this enzyme is called the gamma-glutamyl carboxylase or the vitamin K-dependent carboxylase. The carboxylation reaction only proceeds if the carboxylase enzyme is able to oxidize vitamin K hydroquinone to vitamin K epoxide at the same time. The carboxylation and epoxidation reactions are said to be coupled. Vitamin K epoxide is then reconverted to vitamin K by VKOR. The reduction and subsequent reoxidation of vitamin K coupled with carboxylation of Glu is called the vitamin K cycle. Humans are rarely deficient in vitamin K1 because, in part, vitamin K 1 is continuously recycled in cells.
Warfarin and other 4-hydroxycoumarins block the action of the VKOR. This results in decreased concentrations of vitamin K and vitamin K hydroquinone in the tissues, such that the carboxylation reaction catalyzed by the glutamyl carboxylase is inefficient. This results in the production of clotting factors with inadequate Gla. Without Gla on the amino termini of these factors, they no longer bind stably to the blood vessel endothelium and cannot activate clotting to allow formation of a clot during tissue injury. As it is impossible to predict what dose of warfarin will give the desired degree of clotting suppression, warfarin treatment must be carefully monitored to avoid overdose.
The following human Gla-containing proteins ("gla proteins") have been characterized to the level of primary structure: the blood coagulation factors II (prothrombin), VII, IX, and X, the anticoagulant proteins C and S, and the factor X-targeting protein Z. The bone Gla protein osteocalcin, the calcification-inhibiting matrix Gla protein (MGP), the cell growth regulating growth arrest specific gene 6 protein (Gas6), and the four transmembrane Gla proteins (TMGPs), the function of which is at present unknown. Gas6 can function as a growth factor to activate the Axl receptor tyrosine kinase and stimulate cell proliferation or prevent apoptosis in some cells. In all cases in which their function was known, the presence of the Gla residues in these proteins turned out to be essential for functional activity.
Undercarboxylated prothrombin (PIVKA-II), in a study of 53 newborns, found "PT (prothrombin time) is a less sensitive marker than PIVKA II", and as indicated above, PT is unable to detect subclinical deficiencies that can be detected with PIVKA-II testing.
but an article by Schurgers et al. reported no correlation between FFQ[further explanation needed] and plasma phylloquinone.
Undercarboxylated osteocalcin (UcOc) levels have been inversely correlated with stores of vitamin K and bone strength in developing rat tibiae. Another study following 78 postmenopausal Korean women found a supplement regimen of vitamins K and D, and calcium, but not a regimen of vitamin D and calcium, was inversely correlated with reduced UcOc levels.
Many bacteria, such as Escherichia coli found in the large intestine, can synthesize vitamin K2 (menaquinone-7 or MK-7, up to MK-11), but not vitamin K1 (phylloquinone). In these bacteria, menaquinone transfers two electrons between two different small molecules, during oxygen-independent metabolic energy production processes (anaerobic respiration). For example, a small molecule with an excess of electrons (also called an electron donor) such as lactate, formate, or NADH, with the help of an enzyme, passes two electrons to a menaquinone. The menaquinone, with the help of another enzyme, then transfers these two electrons to a suitable oxidant, such fumarate or nitrate (also called an electron acceptor). Adding two electrons to fumarate or nitrate converts the molecule to succinate or nitrite + water, respectively.
Bleeding in infants due to vitamin K deficiency can be severe, leading to hospitalization, blood transfusions, brain damage, and death. Supplementation can prevent most cases of vitamin K deficiency bleeding in the newborn. Intramuscular administration is more effective in preventing late vitamin K deficiency bleeding than oral administration.
As a result of the occurrences of vitamin K deficiency bleeding, the Committee on Nutrition of the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended 0.5 to 1.0 mg vitamin K1 be administered to all newborns shortly after birth.
In the UK vitamin K supplementation is recommended for all newborns within the first 24 hours. This is usually given as a single intramuscular injection of 1 mg shortly after birth but as a second-line option can be given by three oral doses over the first month.
Controversy arose in the early 1990s regarding this practice, when two studies suggested a relationship between parenteral administration of vitamin K and childhood cancer, however, poor methods and small sample sizes led to the discrediting of these studies, and a review of the evidence published in 2000 by Ross and Davies found no link between the two. Doctors reported emerging concerns in 2013, after treating children for serious bleeding problems. They cited lack-of newborn Vitamin K administration, as the reason that the problems occurred, and recommended that breast-fed babies could have an increased risk unless they receive a preventative dose.
There is no good evidence that vitamin K supplementation helps prevent osteoporosis or fractures in postmenopausal women.
Although vitamin K deficiency has been linked to a build up of calcium deposits in blood vessels, there is no good evidence that vitamin K supplementation is of any benefit in helping to prevent cardiovascular disease.
Vitamin K has been promoted in supplement form with claims it can slow tumor growth; there is however no good medical evidence that supports such claims.
Vitamin K is part of the suggested treatment regime for poisoning by rodenticide.
In 1929, Danish scientist Henrik Dam investigated the role of cholesterol by feeding chickens a cholesterol-depleted diet. After several weeks, the animals developed hemorrhages and started bleeding. These defects could not be restored by adding purified cholesterol to the diet. It appeared that—together with the cholesterol—a second compound had been extracted from the food, and this compound was called the coagulation vitamin. The new vitamin received the letter K because the initial discoveries were reported in a German journal, in which it was designated as Koagulationsvitamin. Edward Adelbert Doisy of Saint Louis University did much of the research that led to the discovery of the structure and chemical nature of vitamin K. Dam and Doisy shared the 1943 Nobel Prize for medicine for their work on vitamin K (K1 and K2) published in 1939. Several laboratories synthesized the compound(s) in 1939.
The precise function of vitamin K was not discovered until 1974, when three laboratories (Stenflo et al., Nelsestuen et al., and Magnusson et al.) isolated the vitamin K-dependent coagulation factor prothrombin (Factor II) from cows that received a high dose of a vitamin K antagonist, warfarin. It was shown that, while warfarin-treated cows had a form of prothrombin that contained 10 glutamate amino acid residues near the amino terminus of this protein, the normal (untreated) cows contained 10 unusual residues that were chemically identified as gamma-carboxyglutamate, or Gla. The extra carboxyl group in Gla made clear that vitamin K plays a role in a carboxylation reaction during which Glu is converted into Gla.
The biochemistry of how vitamin K is used to convert Glu to Gla has been elucidated over the past thirty years in academic laboratories throughout the world.
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^ a b American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Fetus and Newborn (2003). "Controversies concerning vitamin K and the newborn. American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Fetus and Newborn" (PDF). Pediatrics 112 (1 Pt 1): 191–2. doi:10.1542/peds.112.1.191. PMID 12837888.
^ Logan, S; Gilbert, R (1998). "VITAMIN K FOR NEWBORN BABIES" (PDF). Department of Health. Retrieved 12 October 2014.
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^ Hartley L, Clar C, Ghannam O, Flowers N, Stranges S, Rees K (2015). "Vitamin K for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease". Cochrane Database Syst Rev (Systematic review) 9: CD011148. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD011148.pub2. PMID 26389791.
^ Ades TB, ed. (2009). "Vitamin K". American Cancer Society Complete Guide to Complementary and Alternative Cancer Therapies (2nd ed.). American Cancer Society. pp. 558–563. ISBN 9780944235713.
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Rhéaume-Bleue, Kate (2012). Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox. John Wiley & Sons, Canada. ISBN 1118065727.
Management of dental patients receiving antiplatelet therapy or chronic oral anticoagulation: A review of the latest evidence.
Dézsi CA1, Dézsi BB2, Dézsi AD3.
The European journal of general practice.Eur J Gen Pract.2017 Dec;23(1):196-201. doi: 10.1080/13814788.2017.1350645.
Long-term stroke and bleeding risk in patients with atrial fibrillation treated with oral anticoagulants in contemporary practice: Providing evidence for shared decision-making.
Noseworthy PA1, Yao X2, Gersh BJ3, Hargraves I4, Shah ND5, Montori VM6.
International journal of cardiology.Int J Cardiol.2017 Oct 15;245:174-177. doi: 10.1016/j.ijcard.2017.07.043. Epub 2017 Jul 14.
Blood pressure control in anticoagulated patients with hypertension and atrial fibrillation.
Barrios V1, Escobar C2, Prieto Valiente L3, Lobos JM4, Vargas-Ortega D5, Polo J6, Marin Montañés N7.
Blood pressure.Blood Press.2017 Oct;26(5):279-283. doi: 10.1080/08037051.2017.1313094. Epub 2017 Apr 7.
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0.943874 |
He was born around 1821 at Ironville, a son of William Elliott and Elizabeth formerly Barlow.
In 1841 he was at home with his parents aged 15–19 and born in the county.
He married Ann Dufty in the Belper district in the June quarter 1843. Ann was baptised at Annesley, Notts. 14 January 1821 a daughter of Thomas and Anne Dufty.
In 1851, in Victoria Street, Ironville, Peter was aged 29, an iron moulder, born in Ironville. His wife, Ann, was aged 30, a dress maker born in Annesley. Their children were James W. aged 6 and Peter aged 2, both born in Ironville.
In 1861, at 27 Victoria Street, Ironville, Peter was aged 39, an iron moulder, born at Ironville and his wife Ann was aged 40 and born at Annesley Woodhouse, Notts. Their children were James, aged 16, a pupil teacher, Peter aged 12, a labourer ironworks, Harriet aged 9, Fanny aged 5 and William aged 1, all born at Ironville.
In 1871, at 27 Victoria Street, Ironville, Peter was aged 49, a moulder, born at Ironville. His wife, Ann, was aged 51, a dressmaker and born at Annesley W. Notts. and their children were Peter, aged 22, a labourer in iron, Harriet, aged 19, a dressmaker and Fanny, aged 15, a pupil teacher, all born at Ironville.
There is a suitable death entry for Peter Elliott in the Belper district in the September quarter 1873. He was aged 51.
In 1881, at 27 Victoria Street, Ironville (IGI has Alfreton), Ann was a widow, aged 61 and born at Annesley, Notts. With her were her children Peter, aged 32, a labourer Ironworks, and Fanny aged 25 a private governess (teacher), both born at Ironville.
In 1891, at 27 Victoria Street, Ironville, Ann was a widow aged 70 and born at Annesley Woodhouse, Notts. Her unmarried son, Peter, was aged 42, an iron shearer, born at Ironville.
1. William Henry Elliott, born about 1867 at Chesterfield (there are two registrations for William Henry in the Chesterfield district in 1867, one in the March quarter and the other in the September quarter).
2. Emma Edith Elliott, born about 1875 at Swanwick Alfreton (registered in the Belper district in the September quarter 1875).
3. Mary Louise Elliott, born about 1876 at Swanwick Alfreton (registered as Mary Louisa in the Belper district in the September quarter 1876). She may have married Reginald Lucas in the West Ham district in the June quarter 1901. There is a May (sic) Louise with Reginald Lucas in the Hammersmith, Fulham district in the 1911 census aged 38.
4. Harriet Ethel Elliott, born about 1882 at Burnham, Bucks (registered in the Eton district in the December quarter 1882). A snippet in the Huntingdon Herald for 5 January 1906 refers to the theft of a bicycle worth £10 the property of Harriet Ethel Elliott at Huntingdon on 18 December 1905.
5. James Peter Elliott, born about 1887 at Ramsey, Hunts (registered in the Huntingdon district in the September quarter 1887).
6. Francis Arthur Elliott, born about 1889 at Ramsey, Hunts (registered in the Huntingdon district in the December quarter 1889).
Peter, born about 1846 at Ironville. In 1861 he was at home with his parents, aged 12, a labourer ironworks, born at Ironville. In 1871 he was at home with his parents, unmarried, aged 22, a labourer in iron and born at Ironville. In 1881 he was at home with his mother, unmarried, aged 32, a labourer Ironworks, and born at Ironville. In 1891 he was at home with his mother, unmarried, aged 42, an iron shearer, born at Ironville. He married Susannah Grace Brindley in the Gloucester district in the September quarter 1892. In 1901, at 27 Victoria Street, Ironville, in 4 rooms, Peter was aged 52, an ironworks shearer born in Ironville. His wife, Susannah G. was aged 36 and born in Codnor Park. In 1911, at 27 Victoria Street, Ironville, Peter was aged 62 an iron moulder labourer, born in Ironville. Susannah Grace his wife was aged 46 and born at Codnor. They had been married for 18 years and had no children. He was buried in the churchyard at Ironville and his monumental inscription on kerb stones reads “Peter Elliott died July 24 1912 aged 64 years.” Administration of his estate was granted at Derby 20 August 1912 to Susannah Grace Elliott, widow, and his effects were £345.6s.2d.
1. William Parkin Cotterill (1871 - 1871), born 1871 (September quarter, Belper), and died 1871 (Cottrill, aged 0, December quarter, Belper district).
1. Gladys M Stevens, born about 1895 at Beeston, Notts.
2. Thomas Edward Stevens, born about 1897 at Ironville.
3. Leslie George Stevens, born about 1900 at Huthwaite.
4. William Edgar Stevens, born about 1902 at Stanton Hill, Mansfield.
5. Thomas Parkin Cotterill (1880 – 1937), born about November 1880 at Ironville, and registered in the Alfreton sub-district (December quarter, Belper). In 1901 boarding with a grocer (his brother-in-law, Henry Stevens) in Hucknall under Huthwaite, he was aged 20, a baker bread maker, born at Ironville. His death was probably registered in the Hull district in the June quarter 1937. He was aged 56.
6. Edward Parkin Cotterill (1883 – 1887), born in 1883 (March quarter, Belper) and died in 1887 (4, March quarter, Belper) and registered in the Alfreton sub-district.
7. Harriet Parkin Cotterill (1889 – 1889), born in 1889 (June quarter. Belper) and died in 1889 (0, December quarter, Belper), and registered in the Alfreton sub-district. in the Alfreton sub-district.
8. Son Parkin Cotterill (1891 – 1891), born 1891 and died 1891, and registered in the Alfreton sub-district.
9. Leslie Parkin Cotterill (1893 – 1896), born in 1893 (September quarter, Belper) and died in 1896 (3, December quarter, Belper), and registered in the Alfreton sub-district.
1. Joseph Dooley, born about 1883 and registered in the Belper district in the June quarter 1883.
2. Fanny Ethel Dooley, born 1886 and registered in the Belper district in the June quarter 1887. She married Walter Bailey in the Belper district in the September quarter 1917.
3. Harold Dooley, born about 1889 and registered in the Belper district in the December quarter 1889. He married Maud E. Brentnall in the Belper district in the December quarter 1917.
William, born 1859 at Ironville. In 1861 he was at home with his parents, aged 1 and born at Ironville. His burial was at Christchurch, Ironville, 2 October 1861. He was aged 2.
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0.999819 |
As part of a strategy to combat knife crime, British police have been given more extensive stop-and-search powers in the six areas where knife crime has been most prevalent. Reaction has been mixed. Many police officers have welcomed the powers as a much-needed tool; however, others argue this is not only ineffective but may increase mistrust in the police while overlooking root cause of knife violence.
There is little data analysis to support or reject either position, but research conducted by the College of Policing has set out how stop-and-search could be beneficial.
Incapacitation – Crime may be reduced if an officer arrests an offender as a result of a search and the offender is unable to commit further offences while they are in custody.
General Deterrence – Crime may be reduced if people decide not to commit offences because they perceive the risk of detection is too high.
Maintenance of Order – Crime may be reduced if members of the public feel empowered to assert informal social controls as a result of stop and search, challenging the signs of disorder in a community.
Voluntary Compliance – Crime may be reduced in the longer term if offenders and other people decide not to commit offences because, as a result of fair decision-making and respectful treatment by officers during stop and search, they see the police as a legitimate institution and feel they ought not to break the law.
However, the College also points out that outcomes would be reversed if stop-and-search is seen as unfair and targeted. It concludes that evidence is inconsistent whether stop-and-search has a “meaningful deterrent effect” to reduce knife crime.
Given little evidence to support either position, we have to construct a theory by extrapolating from the past. A 2014 review – when stop-and-search decreased in England and Wales – found that misuse of these powers undermined public trust in policing, particularly among minority ethnic communities who felt disproportionately targeted. The effect was a failure to deal with problems around violence in society because of the lack of trust between law enforcement and the community.
There is also the issue of constitutional protections, even if there is marginal deterrence from increased-stop-and search. Many of the protections that citizens enjoy in robust democracies may make it more difficult to “clear up” crimes. These include the right to silence when arrested, security from unreasonable searches and seizures, the presumption of innocence, and the high evidential threshold used in court proceedings. These may make it harder to convict someone of a crime, with some culprits going free.
However, these rights serve a higher purpose by allowing people to live without the fear of being arbitrarily asked to account for themselves. It is easy to forget that many parts of the world do not have the same basic rights that we often take for granted, and citizens live in fear of arbitrary arrest and trial by State machinery. We must take care not to backslide on our constitutional safeguards, or we risk curtailing our right to be left alone with little benefit from increased State authority.
Police should handle increased powers with caution. Given the extreme pressure to be pro-active in the face of increased knife crime, officers must respect constitutional rights and maintain the trust of the populace.
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0.999992 |
How can large datasets be accessed in a way that lends itself to efficient processing of data in batch mode?
Batch data processing techniques require contiguous blocks of input data to achieve high throughput. However, storing data using databases does not provide such a capability.
A Big Data storage device with streaming data access capability is used.
Streaming data access technology is implemented to store datasets for non-random, simple sequential access, which achieves higher data transfer throughput.
A distributed file system storage device is used to enable streaming data access. When data is required for batch processing, only the start position of the file needs to be found, and then the rest of the file is output as a continuous stream till the end of the file. Although enabling batch data processing, a distributed file system does not support any file search capability. A file can only be accessed based on a known location, and data can only be searched based on a sequential scan of the whole file.
This pattern is generally applied together with the Large-Scale Batch Processing pattern to provide a complete solution.
A storage device that is capable of providing non-random data access is used for storing large amounts in support of batch data processing. Restricting data access to non-random mode enables provisioning of data as contiguous blocks of data without requiring multiple data seek operations.
A distributed file system database is used to store large amounts of unstructured data.
When the data is required for batch processing, the distributed file system only needs to perform a single seek to find the start position of the file. Then, the distributed file system starts streaming the file without any further seeks.
This results in a very high throughput and decreases the time of the overall data processing.
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0.978454 |
Filling out a questionnaire the other day, amidst the formulaic questions, I was struck by one that stood out: What’s your super power, real or imagined? How much easier my days would be if I could blink myself to another location. Or if I could Jedi mind control my boys to getting along with each other. If I could function without sleep (or food or illness) to slow me down. How about twitching my nose and be-witching my way to a completely made meal, perfect in nutrition value and pleasing to the taste.
Alas, I’m just me, plain, ordinary me trying to get through the day. Forget super-powered, lucky at all if I’m not running on fumes. But not one for leaving questions unanswered, I couldn’t stop mulling until I had an answer. If I had to approximate something that’s like a superpower, kinda, I say empathy. Yes, empathy is my imagined superpower.
I feel. A lot. All the time. It’s as if my entire body has feelers that send messages straight to my heart, every bit as real as any sensory input. I anticipate my children's needs before they tell me. I instinctively grab hold of them almost always right before they stumble. I sense my husband's desire without his having to say or do anything. In passing I feel a girlfriend’s tension and touch her arm. I sense another driver’s distraction and make way or slow down, safely avoiding many an accident. When a friend tells me a painful story, tears well up my eyes, even while his stay dry. In a group dynamic, I sense who's holding court, who's into the group think and who's not. And who's left out, that I feel most keenly.
When I stop to think about it, my empathetic power is very real. It has been there with me for as long as I can remember. Throughout childhood, I refrained from group play because I couldn't handle the different signals coming at me all at once. Empathy has repeatedly drawn me to reach out to newcomers or outsiders, my sensing their vulnerable status. Since becoming a mother, I see that my empathetic power has amped way up. I sense even more reflexively and vividly, perhaps biology’s way of helping me move through the vastly different spheres and responsibilities of my life, to nurture all that I care for.
Acknowledging that I have a superpower that’s actually more real than imaginary feels freeing and empowering. I have a secret strength, and it can and has been giving me an edge all along. To my own Peter Parker becoming Spiderman moment - where I go from here all depends on how I wield my empathy. Instead of being oblivious, gonna try leading with it. Gonna try leading myself with it.
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0.944092 |
Who is liable for broken fibula compensation claims that happened outside of a supermarket? I tripped over a cracked pavement stone breaking my leg, but I’m not sure if the supermarket or local council is responsible.
Liability for broken fibula compensation claims will be assigned to those who were responsible for the upkeep of the pavement on which your accident occurred. It is easy for such an injury to occur with window displays distracting shoppers from where they are walking, making it more likely for shoppers to suffer an accident. Particularly in busy areas the identification of such dangers should be done quickly, and warning signs placed around a hazard until it is fixed.
If the local council own the pavement which caused your injury, they could be responsible for any broken fibula compensation claims. They have a responsibility to ensure that areas that are in disrepair are promptly fixed and to ensure that the public are not at risk of sustaining an injury. If the council fail to make repairs to a known hazard within a reasonable space of time, they can be held liable for your injuries due to their negligence to prevent an injury occurring. In this case, you are advised to consult a personal injury* solicitor in order to determine your entitlement to compensation.
However the possibility remains that liability for broken fibula compensation claims lies with the supermarket rather than the council. This will depend on the exact location of where the accident occurred. The leasehold of buildings often includes the front area, and if this is the situation the supermarket may be responsible for the upkeep of the pavement in front. In order to determine who is liable for your injury in this situation, it is necessary to examine the boundaries of the leasehold.
Before initiating a claim for compensation, it should be noted that it may be challenged by the local authority or supermarket that was liable for your accident and injury. Because of this a personal injury* solicitor should be consulted in order to build a strong case for your claim. A solicitor can help determine which party is liable for your injury, the amount of compensation to which you may be entitled and whether your claim is worth pursuing. It should be remembered that a time limit of three years will apply to your claim to compensation as per the statute of limitations. As a claim may take some time to prepare, you are advised to consult a personal injury* solicitor at the earliest opportunity if you suspect you have valid broken fibula compensation claims.
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0.999996 |
Roman A. Sandler, Vasilis Z. Marmarelis; Understanding spike-triggered covariance using Wiener theory for receptive field identification. Journal of Vision 2015;15(9):16. doi: 10.1167/15.9.16.
Receptive field identification is a vital problem in sensory neurophysiology and vision. Much research has been done in identifying the receptive fields of nonlinear neurons whose firing rate is determined by the nonlinear interactions of a small number of linear filters. Despite more advanced methods that have been proposed, spike-triggered covariance (STC) continues to be the most widely used method in such situations due to its simplicity and intuitiveness. Although the connection between STC and Wiener/Volterra kernels has often been mentioned in the literature, this relationship has never been explicitly derived. Here we derive this relationship and show that the STC matrix is actually a modified version of the second-order Wiener kernel, which incorporates the input autocorrelation and mixes first- and second-order dynamics. It is then shown how, with little modification of the STC method, the Wiener kernels may be obtained and, from them, the principal dynamic modes, a set of compact and efficient linear filters that essentially combine the spike-triggered average and STC matrix and generalize to systems with both continuous and point-process outputs. Finally, using Wiener theory, we show how these obtained filters may be corrected when they were estimated using correlated inputs. Our correction technique is shown to be superior to those commonly used in the literature for both correlated Gaussian images and natural images.
A central goal of neuroscience is to answer the question, “what does the underlying neuron or neural population compute?” Because, in most neural systems, the output of the system is exclusively considered to be its spike rate and timing, the above question can be rephrased as “What makes this neuron or neural population fire?” This question, oftentimes referred to as system identification or receptive field identification, has been a major area of research, particularly in sensory neuroscience in which one begins with a strong a priori notion of to what stimuli or stimulus modality the cell is sensitive. Early attempts to characterize neural systems attempted to parameterize their responses to one or two stimuli parameters and then describe the cell response through various forms of tuning curves. Although such tuning curve approaches are useful to gain a first glance approximation of the system, they fail to take into account the full complexity of neural responses and prove woefully inadequate when the input stimuli occupy a high-dimensional space, such as the spatiotemporal receptive fields of complex cells in the visual cortex.
The advancement of random inputs, such as Gaussian white noise (GWN), to characterize systems in the '60s and '70s represented a major advance in the system identification problem (P. Z. Marmarelis & Marmarelis, 1978). Such inputs facilitated the development of nonparametric models whereby the system response to arbitrary stimuli could be predicted with only very minor prior assumptions about the nature of the underlying system. In particular, the Volterra/Wiener framework achieved success in modeling many nonlinear physiological systems, including mapping the nonlinear receptive fields of auditory (Aertsen & Johannesma, 1981; Eggermont, 1993) and vision (Citron & Marmarelis, 1987; Emerson, Citron, Vaughn, & Klein, 1987) neurons. However, perhaps due to the difficulty of interpreting the higher-order Volterra kernels and the need to use many kernels to characterize certain nonlinear systems, the Volterra/Wiener approach never gained the popularity of linear approaches that approximate the underlying nonlinear system with a single linear filter. In sensory neuroscience, this usually took the form of the spike-triggered average (STA; De Boer & Kuyper, 1968). Later the STA approach was expanded by adding a static nonlinearity to map the STA output to the neural response in the so-called linear-nonlinear-Poisson (LNP) model, which was used successfully to characterize the dynamics of retinal ganglion cells (Chichilnisky, 2001).
However, the limitations of STA-based approaches soon became apparent when it was realized that the response of certain neurons were a nonlinear function of multiple linear filters. For example, in the popular Adelson-Bergen energy model, the output is determined by the sum of the square of the outputs of two Gabor filters (Adelson & Bergen, 1985; see Figure 3B); thus, the STA of such a system is zero because it responds equally to positive and negative contrasts. In other less severe cases, the system may be approximated by the STA, but multiple filters would still be required to completely characterize it. The most popular method to obtain these multiple filters is the spike-triggered covariance (STC) method, which builds off the STA framework by taking the covariance rather than the mean of all spike-triggering stimuli. Although other more complex methods have been used to obtain these filters (Paninski, 2003; Pillow & Park, 2011; Rapela, Mendel, & Grzywacz, 2006; Saleem, Krapp, & Schultz, 2008; Sharpee, Rust, & Bialek, 2004), none have been as popular as the relatively straightforward and simple STC method, which has been used in diverse areas such as modeling Hodgkin-Huxley dynamics (Agüera y Arcas, Fairhall, & Bialek, 2001), vision (Fairhall et al., 2006; Rust, Schwartz, Movshon, & Simoncelli, 2005; Touryan, Felsen, & Dan, 2005), audition (Slee, Higgs, Fairhall, & Spain, 2005), insect movement (Fox, Fairhall, & Daniel, 2010; de Ruyter van Steveninck & Bialek, 1988), and olfaction (Kim, Lazar, & Slutskiy, 2011). An excellent review of both STA and STC for characterizing receptive fields appears in Schwartz, Pillow, Rust, and Simoncelli (2006).
Parallel to the development and popularization of STC in sensory neuroscience, the concept of principal dynamic modes (PDMs) was developed in the area of dynamic systems identification as a system-specific linear filter set to efficiently describe the linear dynamics of nonlinear systems (V. Z. Marmarelis, 1997, 2004; V. Z. Marmarelis & Orme, 1993). The PDMs are estimated from a second-order Volterra model and provide a compact representation of the model, which is much more amenable to physiological interpretation. The PDMs have been used to successfully characterize renal autoregulation (V. Z. Marmarelis, Chon, Holstein-Rathlou, & Marsh, 1999), cerebral hemodynamics (V. Z. Marmarelis, Shin, & Zhang, 2012), heart-rate variability (Zhong, Wang, Ju, Jan, & Chon, 2004), spider mechanoreceptor dynamics (V. Z. Marmarelis, Juusola, & French, 1999), the Schaffer collateral pathway in the hippocampus (V. Z. Marmarelis et al., 2013; R. Sandler et al., 2013; R. A. Sandler et al., 2014), and most recently, V1 receptive fields (Fournier et al., 2014). As recently pointed out (Fournier et al., 2014), the PDMs and STC are functionally equivalent as they both aim to identify an efficient linear filter bank for the system under study. The main functional difference is that PDMs, derived from the Volterra framework, can be used for systems with both continuous and point-process outputs, and STC filters, being an extension of the STA approach, are restricted to systems with point-process outputs.
Although the connection between STC and the second-order Wiener kernel is often mentioned in the STC literature (Samengo & Gollisch, 2013; Schwartz et al., 2006), this connection has never been explicitly derived. In this paper, we derive this connection and show that the STC matrix is actually a modified version of the second-order Wiener kernel, which incorporates the input autocorrelation and mixes first- and second-order dynamics. Then, we will show how the STC method can be corrected to obtain the second-order Wiener kernel and PDMs while still retaining its elegance and simplicity. The obtained Wiener kernel, unlike the STC matrix, which is simply an intermediate step, is highly interpretable and provides important information about the system nonlinearity, which may not be apparent from the STC filter bank and associated nonlinearity. To provide guidance for experimentalists, several properties of the PDMs are examined, including their predictive power, robustness to noise, overfitting, and “data-hungriness,” or how much data they need in order to converge. Finally, we show how the obtained PDMs may be corrected when they are estimated using correlated inputs. This is a pertinent issue in sensory neuroscience in which complex correlated inputs, such as natural images, are commonly used to characterize systems. It is shown that the correction procedure advocated here is superior to many of those commonly used in the literature for both correlated Gaussian inputs (such as blurred images) and truly natural images obtained from an existing database.
where in the context of receptive field identification, x[n, t] is the nth pixel of the input image at time t. For the remainder of this section, we will assume a spatial system even though any intuitions may just as easily be applied to temporal systems.
The first-order Volterra kernel, k1[n], can be seen as weighing the contribution of a single pixel of the input to the output. Thus, the first-order Volterra function describes a linear system, and the first-order Volterra kernel is equivalent to the well-known impulse response function in engineering and the STA in neuroscience (see Equation 6). The second-order Volterra kernel, and the first nonlinear kernel, describes second-order nonlinear interactions between two input pixels. Each value of the kernel (depicted as a surface), for instance, k2[n1, n2] at lags n1 and n2, represents the weight (i.e., relative importance) of the product of pixel values x[n1, t]x[n2, t] for spatial systems or time lags x[t – n1]x[t – n2] for temporal systems in reconstructing the system output, y[t]. Thus, a large positive value of k2[n1, n2] implies strong mutual facilitation of the input-lagged values x[t – n1] and x[t – n2] in the way they affect y[t] (V. Z. Marmarelis, 2004). In vision research, second-order dynamics are commonly used to describe center-surround inhibition and phase insensitivity, and in temporal neural systems, they are commonly used to describe paired-pulse facilitation and depression (Krausz, 1975; Song, Marmarelis, & Berger, 2009). Likewise, the qth-order kernel describes the nonlinear interactions between q input pixels.
Although these equations apply only when using GWN inputs, with slight modifications, they can be used to obtain Wiener kernels estimated from a wide class of inputs, such as correlated Gaussian inputs (see section on correcting for correlated inputs), Poisson processes, and uniform inputs (see Discussion) (P. Z. Marmarelis & Marmarelis, 1978; V. Z. Marmarelis & Berger, 2005). Asymptotically, or in the limit of infinite data, the estimated Wiener kernels are the optimal kernels to minimize mean squared error. It should be noted that outside of certain specific cases, such as when the underlying system only has second-order dynamics, the Wiener kernels are not generally equivalent to the Volterra kernels, and equations exist to interchange between the two (V. Z. Marmarelis, 2004). Although many physiological systems do have higher-order dynamics and, thus, theoretically, the Volterra and Wiener kernels are distinct, in practice, due to computational constraints, usually only up to the second-order Wiener model is estimated. In this situation, the obtained Wiener kernels are the best approximation to the Volterra kernels, and thus, this distinction will be ignored for the remainder of this study. Volterra modeling has a long history in neuroscience research in diverse areas, such as the retina (Citron & Marmarelis, 1987; P. Z. Marmarelis & Naka, 1973), the auditory cortex (Eggermont, 1993), the hippocampus (Song et al., 2007), and motor control (Jing, Simpson, Allen, & Newland, 2012).
where Display Formula is the mean of y[t].
Note that this bias actually changes the shape of the STC matrix and the obtained linear filters, highlighting the absolute necessity of demeaning all stimuli when using STC or Wiener approaches. This is distinct from STA, with which not demeaning the input will only change the baseline of the obtained STA filter but not its actual shape.
where Display Formula refers to the second moment expectation of Display Formula The question of whether to use the covariance or second moment of Display Formula is already present in the literature (Samengo & Gollisch, 2013; Schwartz et al., 2006). In fact, another group (Cantrell, Cang, Troy, & Liu, 2010) previously showed that using the second moment of Display Formula (which they referred to as “noncentered STC”) could provide good results when used in the context of high-throughput cell classification but is inferior to standard STC for spike prediction. We hope that this work conclusively shows that although, when used in conjunction with the STA, both the STC and Wiener kernel will yield the same linear subspace, the Wiener kernel adds much interpretability for no theoretical or computational cost.
In the above section, it was shown that the STC matrix is a biased version of the second-order Wiener kernel, h2. This finding, however, does not mean that the linear filters obtained from the STC matrix are biased. To begin the search for an efficient linear filter bank, we note that any arbitrary set of Wiener/Volterra functions can be represented as a Wiener-Bose cascade model composed of a set of linear filter banks followed by a multivariate static nonlinearity (see Figure 1; V.Z. Marmarelis, 2004; Westwick & Kearney, 2003). However, unlike the true Wiener kernels, which have a canonical form from which any deviation will lead to suboptimal predictive power, any Wiener system can be expressed by an infinite number of Wiener-Bose cascades so long as the linear filter banks span the same subspace. Thus, a desirable linear filter bank will be (a) highly predictive or essentially span the same subspace as the equivalent Wiener-Bose cascade, (b) compact or contain as few filters as necessary, and (c) interpretable or facilitate scientific discovery. Our group has attempted to find such a desirable filter bank over the last two decades in the context of dynamic system identification through the use of PDMs (V. Z. Marmarelis, 2004; V. Z. Marmarelis & Orme, 1993; V. Z. Marmarelis et al., 2014). The PDMs are a system-specific and input-independent set of linear filters that aim to compactly describe the dynamics of nonlinear systems and, thus, are functionally equivalent to the STC filters.
(A) Input–output data records were generated by feeding GWN (x[t]) through a second-order Volterra system defined by a first- and second-order kernel (K1 and K2) and thresholding the continuous output to generate the binary output, y[t]. (B) Equivalent Wiener-Bose cascade model of the system shown in (A) composed of three linearly independent filters followed by static quadratic nonlinearities.
where here Display Formula is the nonaugmented input stimuli vector, and ci is the first element of the ith eigenvector. Note that the effect of the ci constant is to offset the parabolic static nonlinearity (see the section on associated nonlinear functions).
The significance of Equation 12 is that it establishes a strong theoretical foundation for the PDM method by showing that the PDMs are actually a compact representation of the estimated second-order Wiener system, which actually becomes equivalent to that system as L is increased. Having established these theoretical underpinnings, other approaches that claim to estimate unbiased linear filters may be considered. Most notably, Samengo and Gollisch (2013) have demonstrated that if one defines the STC filters as the STA and the significant eigenvectors of the STC matrix, these STC filters will span the same linear subspace whether or not the STA is subtracted prior to calculating the STC matrix. Their proof demonstrates that even though modification M1 makes the STC matrix a biased Wiener kernel, the set of linear filters obtained from the STC matrix, provided the STA is included, is itself unbiased.
Nonetheless, although both the PDMs derived from Display Formula and from the traditional STC approach are unbiased, they cannot be described as compact because there is no guarantee they will be linearly independent, i.e., one of the filters may be defined as a linear combination of the others and thus be superfluous. For the PDMs derived from Display Formula , this occurs because while the eigenvectors of Display Formula are, by definition, linearly independent, the PDMs that are the eigenvectors from the second element onward may be linearly dependent. In the traditional STC approach, this occurs because the STA filter may span the same subspace as the significant eigenvectors of the STC matrix. This issue has been brought up previously in the STC literature, and several methods have been proposed on how to efficiently combine the STA and STC eigenvectors (Kaardal, Fitzgerald, Berry, & Sharpee, 2013; Pillow & Simoncelli, 2006). Here, we suggest a method whereby a compact, linearly independent set of filters may be obtained directly from the first two Wiener kernels (or equivalently, the STA and STC matrix) without having to go through the intermediate step of first obtaining the significant eigenvectors of h2 (or STC matrix). This is done by taking the significant singular vectors of the rectangular matrix defined as Display Formula through singular value decomposition (SVD) (V. Z. Marmarelis et al., 2014).
Several methods have been proposed in the STC literature about how to access the significance of the STC filters. Here, we will follow the nested bootstrap approach advocated in Schwartz et al. (2006) whereby confidence bounds are generated for the STC matrix eigenvalues by shuffling the input several times with respect to the output and estimating the distribution of the largest and smallest eigenvalue. If the null hypothesis was rejected, and the largest (or smallest) eigenvalue was found to be significant, it is projected out, and the test is repeated for the next largest or smallest eigenvalue. It was found that all nested tests after the first did not change any significance assessments, so all figures show confidence bounds for the largest and smallest eigenvalue, and any eigenvalues within these bounds are significant. The same approach was used here with the h2 eigenvalues and the [h1, h2] singular values with T = 40 bootstrap repetitions for each hypothesis test.
Finally, it is important to note that here the PDMs may be obtained from the estimated Wiener kernels because for second-order systems, the Wiener kernels are essentially equivalent to the Volterra kernels. However, in systems with higher-order nonlinearities, the estimated truncated second-order Wiener system will be dependent on the specific input used to probe the system, for example, GWN inputs of different power levels will generate different Wiener kernels. In these situations, the PDMs, which are defined to be input-independent, cannot be estimated from these estimated Wiener kernels because they contain input dependencies but only from the Volterra kernels (see Discussion) (P. Z. Marmarelis & Marmarelis, 1978).
Many system identification techniques, including Wiener kernels and STC, were originally developed for uncorrelated (“white”) inputs. However, since then, many methods have been proposed to “correct” systems estimated from these techniques when correlated inputs were used. This is important for two reasons. First, there has been a large trend in sensory neuroscience in the last several years to use naturally occurring stimuli because the system under question was evolutionarily designed for such stimuli, and these stimuli tend to elicit more output spikes, thus facilitating system estimation (Schwartz & Simoncelli, 2001; Touryan et al., 2005). Also, in many situations, the experimenter is unable to stimulate the system and, thus, must rely on spontaneous activity, which generally has correlations (V. Z. Marmarelis et al., 2013; Song et al., 2007).
where, here, Display Formula refers to the second moment matrix of Display Formula (see Equation 9). Although the Koh-Powers correction was derived specifically for correlated Gaussian inputs, we show, in the section on correlated inputs, that it is superior to Equation 14 for both correlated Gaussian inputs and much more complicated inputs, such as natural images. However, it should be noted that taking the inverse of Φx amplifies noise in the input. Thus, the corrected kernel, h2, which is obtained by twice multiplying the biased kernel with Display Formula may be extremely noisy. In order to compensate for this, one should use regularization techniques when taking the inverse (Touryan et al., 2005). In some cases, it may be more effective to only multiply once by Display Formula in a manner similar to that of Equation 14 in order to avoid high levels of noise in the corrected kernel (R. A. Sandler et al., 2015).
where the above quotient is estimated by dividing each filter output into B bins and calculating the proportion of times a spike was elicited when the filter output fell into a specific set of bins (V. Z. Marmarelis et al., 2013; Schwartz et al., 2006). An advantage of this approach is that because the obtained nonlinearity is not constrained to be a polynomial, it can describe many nonlinearities that would otherwise be difficult to characterize with a Volterra approach, such as a sigmoidal nonlinearity (Bartesaghi, Gessi, & Migliore, 1995). However, a major issue with this approach is that the dimension of the nonlinearity is equal to the number of filters. For example, even with three filters, estimating this nonlinearity becomes unfeasible due to the large number of parameters (B3), and even if there was enough data to estimate this nonlinearity, it would be very difficult to visualize and interpret. Some researchers have attempted solve this issue by using a priori assumptions of the underlying physiological system to simplify the high dimensional multivariate nonlinearity into simpler forms (Bialek & de Ruyter van Steveninck, 2005; Rust et al., 2005). Alternatively, many researchers have attempted to get around this “curse of dimensionality” by assuming that the filter outputs are independent of each other, or, equivalently, that there are no nonlinear interactions between the L filters. In such a situation, the output of each filter would be transformed independently by a one-dimensional static nonlinearity, which our group has previously dubbed the associated nonlinear function (ANF) (V. Z. Marmarelis, 2004). Thus, with this “independence assumption,” one would only need to estimate L one-dimensional nonlinearities (ANFs), each with B parameters, rather than one L-dimensional nonlinearity with BL parameters.
The Wiener-Volterra framework of nonlinear systems analysis can provide such guidelines. As shown in Equation 12, in a second-order system, the output is the weighted sum of the square of the PDM outputs. Thus, the PDMs all contribute additively to the output, y[t], and the “independence assumption” is satisfied. If, however, the underlying system has higher-order nonlinearities and the PDMs are acquired from only the first- and second-order kernels (as currently done), then these PDMs may or may not have nonlinear interactions or “cross-terms,” which also contribute to the output, thus violating the “independence assumption.” Our group has developed methods for statistically testing whether such cross-terms exist, and, if they do, how one may characterize the system without resorting to a full multivariate nonlinearity (V. Z. Marmarelis, 2004; V. Z. Marmarelis et al., 2013). In this work, however, all of the prethreshold dynamics of the simulated systems are second order, and thus these methods will not be used. It should be noted that even though the threshold trigger in spiking systems technically makes the nonlinearity “infinite order,” it has been shown that the number of Wiener kernels needed to completely characterize such a system is at most the order of nonlinearity of the prethreshold dynamics (V. Z. Marmarelis, Citron, & Vivo, 1986).
The efficacy of the STC and PDM methods was compared using synthetic spatial and temporal systems in which ground truth was available. In order to study the differences between the two methods more generally, a Monte Carlo approach was used with several trials. In each trial, a physiologically realistic second-order system, such as that shown in Figure 1a was obtained by making the first- and second-order kernels equal to the randomly weighted sum of L = 3 Laguerre basis functions (and for the second-order case, the outer products of these basis functions) (Ogura, 1985). Unless otherwise noted, the first- and second-order kernels were normalized so that their respective output power would be equal. The output was generated by feeding a random Gaussian input through this system and then thresholding the output. The first two thirds of the data was used for model estimation (training set), and the remaining third was used for model assessment (testing set).
The PDM/STC filters were also estimated using correlated inputs in order to test the correction methods described in the section on correcting for correlated inputs. Two forms of correlated inputs were used: correlated Gaussian processes (with only second-order statistical correlations) and natural images. Correlated Gaussian inputs were obtained by feeding GWN though a lowpass filter. Natural images were obtained from the data set used in Touryan et al. (2005) (see Dan, Felsen, & Touryan, 2009).
The area under the curve (AUC) of ROC plots is used as a performance metric of the model and has been shown to be equivalent to the Mann-Whitney two-sample statistic (Hanley & McNeil, 1982). The AUC, which is obtained by numerically integrating the ROC curve, ranges from 0 to 1, with 0.5 indicating a random predictor and higher values indicating better model performance. The second metric used was the Pearson correlation coefficient, ρ, between the estimated prethreshold output, Display Formula and the true output, y[t]. Unless otherwise mentioned, all model assessment metrics were evaluated on the testing set.
In this section, we present three illustrative systems, one temporal and two spatial, in which the STC and PDM methods were compared in terms of their ability to recover the underlying ground truth linear filter bank and their ability to predict the output spike train. In the first case, a GWN input was fed through the second-order Volterra system in Figure 1a and then thresholded to generate the output spike train. As explained in the section on associated nonlinear functions, every second-order nonlinear system can be decomposed into a Wiener-Bose cascade consisting of a linear filter bank followed by independent quadratic nonlinearities. An equivalent cascade model of the previously mentioned system appears in Figure 1b. Note that although both representations of Figure 1 describe the same system, they both showcase different aspects of the system. For example, the large positive central hump negative corners of the second-order kernel in Figure 1a show pairwise facilitation for nearby stimuli and pairwise inhibition for stimuli that are more distally separated. Alternatively, the three linear filters in Figure 1b show three distinct modes, each with their own frequency profiles, which contribute quadratically to the output. Ideally, a researcher would use both representations synergistically to obtain a deeper understanding of the nonlinear dynamics than would be possible from either representation in isolation.
In order to provide intuition on differences between the second-order Wiener kernel, h2, and the STC matrix, Display Formula four methods were used to identify the underlying system from the input and output data records. First, the traditional STC approach was used as defined in Equation 7. The obtained STC matrix is shown in Figure 2ai. As noted previously in Equation 8, this matrix has two modifications from the canonical Wiener kernel, h2 (shown in Figure 1), the addition of the input autocorrelation, MΦ, which can be seen as the “delta function” down the matrix diagonal, and the intermixing of first- and second-order dynamics (M1). These modifications prohibit any straightforward interpretation or prediction from the STC matrix and relegate it to being an intermediate step for obtaining the STC filters, which are predictive and interpretable.
(A–D) Results of four estimation methods to characterize system in Figure 1. Note (ii) shows gray confidence bounds for largest and smallest eigenvalues (see section on PDMs). (E) ROC plots of prediction results using only second-order kernels (Equation 2) before they were decomposed into linear filters and static nonlinearities (Equation 12). (F) ROC plots showing prediction results using estimated linear filters and static nonlinearities. Notice that ROC results for STC and STC-MΦ filters are practically identical because the MΦ modification has minimal effect on the obtained filters when using uncorrelated inputs. In both (E) and (F), the light blue line (TPR = FPR) indicates a model with no predictive power. (G) Projection of spike-triggering stimuli (blue) and non-spike-triggering stimuli (red) onto the first two PDMs (shown in Diii). Note that separation is imperfect even without noise. The third PDM is needed to achieve optimal results. WIEN = Wiener kernel. PDM = principal dynamic mode. All column axes are equivalent.
(A) Schematic representation of Adelson-Bergen energy model. (B) Recovered STA from energy model contains no information. (C) STC eigenvalues and obtained filters. Note only two filters contain information. (C) Wiener kernel eigenvalues and recovered filters.
The eigenvalue distribution of the STC matrix, along with the associated bootstrap confidence bounds for the largest and smallest eigenvalue (shown in gray) can be seen in Figure 2aii. As can be seen, there are clearly three significant eigenvalues (the confidence bounds were also recomputed for the second highest eigenvalue). The set of significant filters, which is defined as the significant STC eigenvectors along with the STA, and their respective associated nonlinear functions are shown in Figure 2aiii and 2aiv.
In Figure 2b, the STC matrix is shown with the input autocorrelation subtracted as was done in Agüera y Arcas et al. (2003); thus, only the M1 modification was present. As can be seen, when the input is uncorrelated (“white”), this modification asymptotically has no effect on the obtained STC filters; when dealing with finite data records, however, it may induce negative artifacts. In Figure 2c, the M1 modification was removed, resulting in a different set of STC matrix eigenvectors. However, as shown by Samengo and Gollisch (2013), when the STA is included, these eigenvectors should span the same linear subspace as the linear filters obtained from the traditional STC matrix. Finally, in Figure 2d, both modifications were removed to obtain the estimated canonical Wiener kernel, Display Formula (to be compared with the true Wiener kernel, h2 in Figure 1a). This is the only kernel whose elements can be interpreted as the weight assigned by pairwise interactions of the inputs. The PDMs, obtained by the SVD method, are shown in Figure 2dii. The method recovered a compact and efficient set of three linearly independent filters. Notice that although the PDMs and STC filters should theoretically span the same subspace, the obtained PDMs much more closely match the linear filters used to generate the output (Figure 1b). The projection of spike-triggering stimuli (blue dots) and non-spike-triggering stimuli (red dots) onto the first two PDMs can be further seen in Figure 2g. As can be seen, the first two PDMs are able to achieve a large degree of separability between the stimuli although inclusion of the third PDM is needed to achieve near perfect separability.
The predictive power of both the kernel models, evaluated using Equation 1, and the Wiener-Bose models (Equation 12) are shown in the ROC plots of Figure 2e and 2f for all four permutations of the STC method. As expected, the estimated Wiener kernels outperformed all other kernel models (Figure 2e). This is because, asymptotically, the Wiener kernels can be shown to be optimal. More interestingly, the PDMs outperformed the STC filters even though they theoretically should span the same subspace (Figure 2f). This occurs because the STA and STC matrix eigenvectors are linearly dependent, and thus, the ANF cannot be calculated independently for each filter. Note that this occurs even though all eigenvectors were deemed significant via the bootstrapping method. In order to avoid this issue, one could use cross-validation rather than the bootstrapping approach to determine which filters to include. Using this method, the third STC matrix filter was shown to offer no additional predictive power and deemed superfluous. This slightly raised the STC filter's predictive power; however, it was still slightly lower than that of the PDMs (AUC = .985 vs. AUC = .991). The three PDMs actually have better predictive power than the corresponding Wiener kernel model from which they were derived (AUC = .991 vs. AUC = .984). This shows that the first three PDMs contain all the information of the second-order Volterra model.
The schematic of this model is shown in Figure 3a. This model is meant to represent the receptive field of an ideal V1 complex cell, whose response incorporates phase invariance. In this model, there are only second-order (quadratic) dynamics. Thus, the STA or first-order Wiener kernel, shown in Figure 3b, is zero. This means that the M1 modification present in the STC matrix is irrelevant, leaving only the input-autocorrelation modification, MΦ. Note that here, unlike in the previous one-dimensional (temporal) example, visually examining the second-order kernel is meaningless because the 2-D (spatial) input was arbitrarily rearranged into a 1-D vector. However, interpretation of the second-order Wiener kernel may still be done by considering only specific parts of it, such as the diagonal (Citron & Marmarelis, 1987). Figure 3c and 3d shows the eigenvalue distribution, linear filters, and nonlinearities of the STC and PDM methods. As can be seen, both methods recover the ground truth filters very accurately. Furthermore, as can be presumed from the similarity of the obtained filters, both methods had roughly equal predictive power. This shows that in the case of uncorrelated inputs, the MΦ modification has an asymptotically negligent effect on the recovered filters. As we shall see later, however, this is not the case for correlated inputs when the input autocorrelation is more complex than a delta function down the kernel diagonal.
In the final illustrative example, a sample V1 cell is constructed with three filters: two filters with the same orientation, but out of phase, and a third filter whose orientation is 180° opposed to the first two (Figure 4a). The recovered STA (Figure 4b) was a jumbled version of both orientations and thus was difficult to interpret. Once again, both the STC (Figure 4c) and PDM (Figure 4d) methods were used to characterize the system from the generated input and output data series. The obtained PDMs had slightly better predictive power than the STC filter set (AUCPDM = .985 vs. AUCSTC = .98). Furthermore, the PDMs were much closer to the original rotation of the ground truth filters, thus facilitating interpretability (see Kaardal et al., 2013, and Pillow & Simoncelli, 2006, which explore this vital issue more deeply).
(A) Schematic of sample nonlinear Gabor model containing three underlying linear filters. (B–D) Same as in Figure 3. Note STC was only able to detect two of the three ground truth linear filters. ANF = associated nonlinear function.
The previous three illustrative examples were meant to provide intuition concerning how the linear filter banks estimated by the PDM and STC methods compared with the underlying ground truth system and how well these methods were able to separate between spike-triggering and non-spike-triggering stimuli (i.e., their predictive power). In this section, Monte Carlo simulations are used to explore more generally how these two methods compare in terms of their predictive power, overfitting, robustness to noise, and convergence or “data-hungriness.” In all these cases, the recovered models were assessed based on their predictive power rather than on how closely they recovered the ground truth system. This is because neither method promises that its recovered filters will be equivalent to the ground truth filters but only that it will span the same linear filter space. This property is implicitly measured by the recovered systems' predictive power because it is reasonable to assume that as the recovered filter space moves away from the true filter space, its predictive power will decline.
The predictive power of the two models was evaluated on T = 30 randomly generated systems with GWN inputs (see Methods, section on simulations and model assessment). As noted previously, all synthetic systems could be presented as a second-order Volterra system, or, alternatively, as a Wiener-Bose cascade consisting of three independent linear filters. In Figure 5a, the predictive power was measured as a function of the number of included filters. For the STC method, the first included filter was the STA. As can be seen, the PDMs modestly outperformed the STC filter set for any amount of included filters. Notably, the first PDM outperformed the STA filter, showing that even in a Wiener-Bose cascade model with a single linear filter, the STA is suboptimal. Furthermore, as suggested by the example in Figure 2, the predictive power of the STC filter set decreased with the inclusion of the third significant STC filter (fourth filter total) due to the linear dependence between the STA and STC filters. This occurs even though the fourth filter was deemed significant by the bootstrap method, demonstrating the need for cross-validation as essential for filter selection. Figure 5b compares the predictive power of the PDM and STC filter sets (with three filters). As can be seen, the PDMs outperformed the STC filters in almost every trial (ρPDM = .843 vs. ρSTC = .815, p < 0.001).
Predictive power of traditional STC versus PDM method. (A) Predictive power as a function of included filters. For STC, the first included filter was the STA. Notice that including the fourth significant STC filter actually slightly reduced predictive power. Error bars show SEM. (B) Predictive power for T = 30 trials. All predictive power results are evaluated on testing set data.
In experimental physiological system identification, the experimenter requires criteria to know how much data is needed to estimate a valid model. Usually, this choice is constrained by the inherent nonstationarities of physiological systems. Model convergence or “data hungriness” describes the amount of data needed to successfully model the system. Overfitting describes how well the model estimated on the given data set will generalize to other data sets acquired from the same system. To assess these properties, N = 30 trials were conducted with randomly generated synthetic systems as described previously. For each synthetic system, the STC and PDM estimation methods were applied to randomly generated training/in-sample data of various lengths from 200 to 15,000 bins. Then the predictive performance of the estimated filters was evaluated on testing/out-of-sample data.
The predictive power of the training and testing sets (solid and dashed lines, respectively) is shown in Figure 6a for the ρ metric. The convergence of the data is described by the shape of the testing set curve in Figure 6a, top, and, in particular, how quickly this curve approaches a steady-state value. In order to facilitate comparisons between the two methods, their predictive power was plotted as a percentage of their maximal value in Figure 6a, bottom. As can be seen, in noise-free conditions, it takes both methods only about 150 spikes to converge to more than 90% of their maximal value. The singular value distribution of the PDM method for a sample system is shown in Figure 6b. As shown by the red line, with only 200 output spikes, the PDM eigenvalues can be distinguished from the remaining eigenvalues.
(A) Convergence and overfitting analysis. Top shows the predictive power of both training (solid lines) and testing (dashed lines) sets for data of various lengths ranging from 20 to 3,000 spikes (200 to 15,000 bins). Bottom indicates the performance of the testing set, normalized by its maximal (steady-state) performance. All points in (A) and (B) were averaged over N = 30 trials. (B) Eigenvalue distribution for a sample system as amount of output spikes are increased. (C) Model robustness measured by predictive power as input noise is increased. % Input noise = (input noise power/total input power) × 100. Same layout as (A). (D) Recovered PDMs of sample system in Figure 1 when the input was composed of 60% noise. Error bars show in (A) and (C) show SD.
In experimental settings, noise is an unavoidable reality, which may arise in a variety of ways, including imperfect instrumentation and/or from unobserved inputs. Thus, any input–output model must be robust, i.e., able to accurately estimate the underlying system even in the presence of noise. Here, the robustness of the PDM and STC methods was assessed by seeing how their predictive power declines as increasing amounts of uncorrelated Gaussian noise was added to the input time series. The results are shown in Figure 6c. Notice that training set prediction results (solid line) rapidly decline with increasing noise because noise was added only to the training input; however, the models estimated from these noisy input–output time series are still good as can be seen by their prediction results on the testing set (dashed line), in which no input noise was added. Both methods proved to be very robust, and their predictive power declined by less than 10% even when 60% of the input power was caused by noise. Figure 6d shows the PDMs obtained from the system in Figure 1 when the input was composed of 60% noise. As can be seen, the obtained PDMs still faithfully represent the ground truth system.
In all of the previous simulations, uncorrelated Gaussian inputs were used to stimulate the model. As discussed previously in Methods, in the section on correcting for correlated inputs, in many situations either the experimenter does not have the luxury of designing the inputs or chooses to use correlated inputs, such as natural images. Such correlated inputs will bias the obtained PDM/STC filters necessitating procedures to correct the estimated filters. In this section, we will present two illustrative examples, one temporal and one spatial, in which the system was stimulated with correlated inputs, and how the correction procedures discussed in the section on correcting for correlated inputs were used to correct the estimated system.
In Figure 7a, a second-order Volterra system was stimulated with a correlated Gaussian process and thresholded to obtain a binary output. Figure 7b shows the kernels obtained through three methods: (a) the biased Wiener kernels obtained through the standard procedure without correction (Equation 4b), (b) the correction approach originally used in Touryan et al. (2005) and later developed in Samengo and Gollisch (2013) (Equation 14), and, finally, (c) the approach originally derived by Koh and Powers (1985) and advocated here (Equation 16, bottom row). It should be noted that in filter set II, the input autocorrelation modification, MΦ, is not removed, which is a serious source of bias when using correlated inputs. These different filter sets will henceforth be referred to as filter set I, filter set II, and filter set III, respectively. Figure 7b through 7d shows the kernels, eigenvalue/singular value distribution, and obtained filters from all three methods. Note that the corrected Wiener kernel from Figure 7di obtained near perfect predictive power (as seen in Figure 7e), thus validating the correction formula from Equation 16. Note that all methods only showed two significant eigenvalues even though there are three ground truth filters. The reason for this is presumably because the third filter is inhibitory, and thus, the application of a relatively high binary threshold may have obstructed its recovery (V. Z. Marmarelis et al., 1986). As mentioned previously, quality of the obtained filter sets must be assessed by their predictive power, which quantifies how closely the obtained filter set spans the true filter space. As can be seen in the ROC plot in Figure 7f, filter set III has a significantly higher AUC value than the other two methods. The superiority of filter set III can also be seen by comparing it with the ground truth filters in Figure 7a. Its two filters match almost exactly the first two filters of the system. The two filters of filter sets I and II, on the other hand, are strongly biased versions of the first two ground truth filters. It should also be noted that recent work by Aljadeff, Segev, Berry, and Sharpee (2013) has proposed alternative methods on how to recover optimal linear subspaces when using highly correlated Gaussian inputs, which may further improve results here and possibly recover the third linear filter.
(A) A correlated Gaussian input was put through sample system and thresholded as in Figure 1. (B–D) Results of three different correction techniques for I/O data of (A) (see text). (E and F) Predictive power of obtained kernels (E) and linear filters (F). (G) Projection f data onto the first two filters of filter set III is able to almost perfectly separate the data.
In the second illustrative example, the Adelson-Bergen energy model of Figure 3a was stimulated with correlated (blurred) Gaussian images obtained using a 2-D Gaussian filter of 10 pixels and 1 pixel variance (Figure 8a) and natural images (Figure 8b). The recovered filters are shown in Figure 8c and 8d. Once again, no method was able to perfectly recover the original filters. However, once again, by using predictive power as a measure for how close the filter spaces are to each other, it can be seen that in the case of blurred images, filter set III almost perfectly spans the ground truth filter space as it achieved near perfect predictive power (AUC = .999). Thus, even though filter set III does not appear visually similar to the ground truth filters, they span the same space.
Results of three different recovery methods onto correlated Gaussian images (A) and natural images (B). (i) Sample input. (ii–iv) Obtained filters of three different methods (see text). (v and vi) Predictive power of kernels and linear filter models, respectively. ROC = receiver operative curve. PDM = principal dynamic mode.
In the case of natural images, filter set III has a much lower predictive power than it did with blurred images; however, it still performs significantly better than the other two methods. This is to be expected because the correction in Equation 9 was derived to be used exclusively with correlated Gaussian inputs such as those in Figure 8a. In fact, the use of STC with non-Gaussian inputs, the obtained biases, and possible solutions have been previously discussed in the literature (Fitzgerald, Rowekamp, Sincich, & Sharpee, 2011; Pillow & Park, 2011; Rajan & Bialek, 2013). What we have demonstrated is that, at least in the example presented here, the method still works well even with highly non-Gaussian inputs, such as natural images. Even better results were obtained with uniform and tertiary inputs put through a lowpass filter (results not shown). We should note, however, that strong regularization was needed to obtain good results with natural images. In certain very noisy systems, the methods used to obtain filter sets I and II may be more appropriate. Once again, the practitioner is advised to use the predictive power of the obtained filters to validate whatever method they choose to use.
STC is currently the standard technique in sensory neuroscience for characterizing nonlinear systems whose output is a nonlinear function of the outputs of multiple nonlinear linear filters/receptive fields. In this work, the STC method is examined through the Voltera/Wiener framework of characterizing nonlinear systems by explicitly deriving the relationship between the STC matrix and the first two Wiener kernels (Equation 8). Our main finding is that the STC matrix is actually a modified version of the second-order Wiener kernel, which incorporates the input autocorrelation (MΦ) and mixes first- and second-order dynamics (M1). Furthermore, it is shown how one may obtain the Wiener kernels while preserving the simplicity and elegance of the STC method and with no additional computational expense, i.e., for free (see Equation 9).
Parallel to the popularization of the STC method in sensory neuroscience, the PDMs were developed in nonlinear dynamical systems identification as an efficient filter set to describe the linear dynamics of nonlinear systems (V. Z. Marmarelis, 2004). Functionally, the PDMs are equivalent to the STC filters. However, perhaps because the PDMs have largely (although not exclusively) been used to characterize continuous dynamical systems, such as cerebral hemodynamics, in which the context of a “receptive field” is not applicable, they have largely escaped the attention of sensory neurophysiologists. The PDMs are obtained from a second-order Volterra system and attempt to answer an open question in the STC literature: how to combine the STA and STC to obtain the optimal set of linear filters for the system.
Although the STC matrix can be considered a “biased” Wiener kernel in the sense that it is suboptimal to use in Equation 2 (see Figure 2), the STC filter set, which is derived from the STC matrix and is composed of the STA and significant STC eigenvectors, is nonetheless unbiased and asymptotically spans the same subspace as filters derived from the Wiener kernels, i.e., the PDMs. Given the correspondence between these two filter sets, the question may be asked what benefit one gains by using the Wiener kernel/PDMs over the STC matrix/filter set or at least of establishing the relationship between the two. We suggest the following: First, unlike the STC matrix, which is only an intermediate step to acquire the STC filter set, the Wiener kernel is highly interpretable and may reveal information about the system not apparent from simply examining the linear subspace. Second, the Wiener/PDM method, unlike STC, allows a single unified framework to be applied to systems with both continuous and binary outputs—or, for the neuronal case, to both subthreshold and suprathreshold dynamics (see Fournier et al., 2014). Third, one may apply the vast body of theory developed for Wiener/Volterra kernels, particularly their convergence properties, to STC (see below). Finally, the PDM extraction method presented here allows one to recover a linearly independent filter set in a single step rather than first obtaining the significant STC filters and then combining them with the STA. Furthermore, the PDMs are shown to have slightly better predictive power than the STC filters and, in many cases, may be more interpretable (see Figure 4 and Cantrell et al., 2010).
By explicitly establishing the relationship between the STC matrix and the second-order Wiener kernel, one gains “for free” all the prior theoretical work done on Wiener theory. For example, it was believed for a long time that the STC method is only valid for Gaussian inputs (Paninski, 2003). Very recently, it was shown that the STC is actually consistent for arbitrary spherical inputs (Samengo & Gollisch, 2013). This result is corroborated by noting that the first two Wiener kernels are very similar for a wide range of inputs, including uniform and discrete-level inputs (such as binary and tertiary); the only differences would be along the second-order kernel diagonal, which involves fourth-order moments of the input used (P. Z. Marmarelis & Marmarelis, 1978). However, it can be shown that if systems with higher-order nonlinearities are estimated with a “truncated” second-order model, the projection of the higher-order nonlinearities onto the first two kernels will differ based on the statistical properties of the input used. Thus, even though the kernels estimated from Equation 4 are the best possible kernels for a wide range of inputs, they will differ depending on the specific input used, based on how this truncation bias expresses itself (P. Z. Marmarelis & Marmarelis, 1978). The same comments would apply to any linear filter bank estimated from the Wiener kernels because it would simply be a compact representation of the latter (see Equation 12). Furthermore, Wiener kernels have been derived for Poisson inputs, which are not symmetrical (V. Z. Marmarelis & Berger, 2005; R. A. Sandler et al., 2015). These Poisson Wiener kernels are particularly important when one wishes to characterize neurons whose only identifiable inputs are the spiking history of their input neurons rather than external stimuli, such as images or sound (Berger et al., 2012; Song et al., 2007; Zanos et al., 2008). Perhaps the most important gain from Wiener theory is how to correct Wiener kernels estimated from correlated Gaussian inputs (Equation 15). This correction scheme was used here and found to be superior to commonly used previous methods both for correlated Gaussian inputs and natural images (Figures 7 and 8) although it should be noted that for natural images with higher-order correlations, recently proposed methods may further improve STC results (Aljadeff et al., 2013).
In this work, in order to emphasize the relationship between the PDMs and the STC filters, the PDMs were derived from Wiener kernels estimated using the cross-correlation technique (CCT; Lee & Schetzen, 1965). However, several improvements have been made to the PDM method, which make the PDMs used in practice far superior to those presented here. First, the CCT is largely obsolete as a method of estimating the Wiener/Volterra kernels (Korenberg, Bruder, & McIlroy, 1988). Rather, current practice in our group is to estimate the Volterra kernels by first projecting the input onto a set of efficient basis functions, such as the Laguerre basis set (V. Z. Marmarelis, 1993) or b-splines (Song et al., 2013) and then estimating the kernel coefficients through least squares estimation or generalized linear models (V. Z. Marmarelis, 2004; Song et al., 2007; Truccolo, Eden, Fellows, Donoghue, & Brown, 2005). The obtained kernels are found to be much more robust than the corresponding CCT kernels and can be estimated using much less data. Most importantly for sensory neurophysiologists, these kernels can be estimated from highly correlated inputs, such as natural images without having to apply any further correction schemes (V. Z. Marmarelis, 1994). Furthermore, the static nonlinearity can also be estimated much more efficiently by expanding it on a polynomial basis (V. Z. Marmarelis, 2004). We have found that a cubic (third-order) polynomial is sufficient to model the nonlinearity of most physiological systems. Another advantage of these estimation techniques is that they enable one to explicitly include interneuronal and spike-history effects, such as bursting and the after-hyperpolarization into the model (Eikenberry & Marmarelis, 2013; Song et al., 2007). Most neurons are influenced by these effects, and thus any STC filters obtained without considering them will be biased as has been shown in Pillow et al. (2008). In the future, we hope to apply these techniques to the receptive field identification problem.
We wish to thank Arvind Iyer for his helpful discussions and the anonymous reviewers whose thorough comments were unusually helpful in bettering this manuscript. This work was supported by NIH grant P41-EB001978 to the Biomedical Simulations Resource at the University of Southern California.
Corresponding author: Roman A. Sandler.
Address: Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
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0.97521 |
Due to so many young people dropping out from schools, the rate of unemployment is increasing and it affects our society in different ways.
In your opinion, how can this situation be improved?
An increasing number of young students drop out from schools, sometimes to earn to support the family and sometimes due to reasons not rational, and this has a severe consequence in a long run. Not always those students are to blame and this is not the context of this discussion. Rather the state should revise the way it runs schools and arrange re-schooling facilities and the school authority should arrange some paid jobs to needy students to mend this situation.
To begin with, a young pupil drops out from a school mainly to earn a wage to support his family and this is more common in developing and poor countries. According to a recent report, more than 30% students leave schools in South Asian countries due to financial hindrance. The government in such a country should focus on developing condition of parents who have school-going offspring. The education should be free and some subsidies should be provided to poor students. Besides, the government's initiatives to create more jobs would also improve this situation. However, the greatest step the government should and can take is arranging re-schooling facility for those disarrayed pupils with some incentives and job provisions.
Moreover, the school authority should make education more fun in school to retain young students. For instance, some of the Japanese schools use interactive and fun methods to teach young minds and this has increased students’ school attendance dramatically. Such initiatives should be welcomed and more widely used. Besides, the school authority can arrange some clerical jobs to needy students to help them continue their studies.
To conclude, education is the most important pillar for the development of a nation and the state and school authority should help students stay in schools and finish their academic years. Without having an educated nation, the crime and unemployment would skyrocket to push the society to a complete chaos.
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0.963617 |
We know the constant term is negative, so the binomials have a different operation in each (adding or subtracting), since a positive times a negative will give a negative result.
Since the middle term is negative, we need the "larger" factor to "outweigh" the "smaller" by , and be negative.
The constant term has factorizations of , , , and .
But since the middle term is positive, both binomial factors must contain addition. And .
The expression is not factorable.
First, factor out the greatest common factor (GCF), which here is . If you don't see the whole GCF at once, factor out what you do see (here, either the or the ), and then check the result to see if any more factors can be pulled out.
Then, to factor a quadratic trinomial, list factors of the quadratic term and the constant (no variables) term, then combine them into binomials that when multiplied back out will give the original trinomial.
To factor , we use the "reverse-FOIL".
No factor pair of 24 has sum 12, so cannot be factored. The correct response is that none of the four binomials is correct.
Which of the following is a prime polynomial?
The polynomials in all four of the other choices are prime.
The sum of two squares is in general a prime polynomial unless a greatest common factor can be distributed out. is the sum of squares, and its terms do not have a GCF, so it is the prime polynomial.
is equal to ; as the difference of squares, it is factorable.
is equal to ; this fits the pattern of a perfect square quadratic trinomial, and is therefore factorable. is factorable for a similar reason.
How many ways can a positive integer be written in the box to form a factorable polynomial?
Let be the integer written in the box.
If is factorable, then its factorization is , where and . In other words, must be the positive difference of two numbers of a factor pair of 7. 7 has only one factor pair, 1 and 7, so the only possible value of is . The correct choice is one.
Which of the following is a factor of ?
cannot be factored further. Of the five choices, is the only factor.
A quadratic trinomial of the form can be factored by splitting the middle term into two terms. The two coefficients must have sum and product .
Each polynomial with one of these four integers as its linear coefficient can be factored. The odd one out is , since there is no factor pair of 24 whose sum is 20. This is the correct choice.
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0.996904 |
In order to build healthy relationships, we need to have the right tools in our toolbox. As with anything we build, if we don't have the correct tools, building healthy relationships becomes much more difficult and takes longer. To have a good foundation for our relationships, the right tools are trust, honesty, and commitment.
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0.987141 |
This article is about an alien language. You may be looking for the alien species speaking it or its planet..
Krish was the native language of the Krish species from Sanza. Most Krish were fluent in both Krish and Basic, although only literate in their own language.
Krish was formed of grunts, bellows and crude vocalizations.
The written form of this language included different alphabet confusingly mixed in words that had the minimum available amount of syllables.
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0.976772 |
What Are the Benefits of Talk Shows?
Talk shows often receive a bad reputation—and in light of Jerry Springer and his ilk, they may deserve it. But talk shows also serve positive functions as well as negative, and while it can be hard to spot the benefits during their worst moments, they deserve credit for the good they sometimes do.
Talk shows are an excellent format for discussing topics that viewers might not otherwise be exposed to. For example, zoologist Joan Embry's appearances on The Tonight Show often served to educate people about biology and conversation.
The popularity of talk shows allows them to deliver messages to millions of households. While critics blanch at such influence, it has the ability to galvanize people towards positive ends.
Sometimes, events that take place on talk shows reverberate outwards towards the larger culture. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, used The Tonight Show to announce his candidacy for governor, and Jon Stewart's 2004 appearance on Crossfire sparked a national debate on media responsibility.
While political discussions on talk shows can often descend into partisan brawling, talk shows representing a more responsible mindset can debate issues in an enlightening and informative manner.
Above all, talk shows posses the ability to amuse and entertain viewers in a wide variety of ways. Their format allows them to shift gears and present unique or unusual forms of entertainment in ways other shows cannot.
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0.94467 |
Bitcoin (BTC) has continued to range in a tighter and tighter zone over the past few months with 30, 60, and 120-day volatility pushing yearly lows. The market cap stands at US$112.37 billion, with US$1.42 billion traded in the past 24 hours.
The number of Bitcoin transactions per day has slowly increased since April, and has averaged between 180,000 and 230,000 since June. This key metric has declined significantly for almost all cryptocurrencies throughout the year. In contrast, the Visa payment network, VisaNet, handles an average of 150 million transactions per day and is capable of handling more than 24,000 transactions per second.
Transaction costs have also declined significantly, averaging US$0.59 per transaction, which is almost a two year low. In December, high network volume brought transaction costs to meteoric heights. The transaction cost reduction can be attributed to; the decline in the price of Bitcoin, the decline in total transactions per day, Transaction Batching, SegWit, and use of the Lightning Network.
Transaction Batching, or sending one transaction with many outputs instead of sending each transaction individually, has greatly contributed to network efficiency. The ratio of outputs per transactions, or batching ratio, has averaged ~2.7 outputs per transaction over the course of the year, suggesting the practice has become a mainstay. In May, a study found that ~12% of all transactions were batched, accounting for between 30–60% of all transactional value.
Although the batching ratio has trended downward since February, there have been several days where the ratio has spiked far above average. Overall, this indicates a cognizant industry wide effort towards increasing transaction efficiency. Unfortunately, a significant drawback of batching is decreased transaction privacy, which is currently at the forefront of Bitcoin research and development.
BIP141, or the soft fork protocol upgrade activated on August 23rd, 2017 known as SegWit, currently accounts for ~41% of transactions. A SegWit transaction occupies less block space than a traditional transaction, allowing SegWit users to pay less in accumulated fees to achieve the same number of transactions. SegWit also allows for an effective blocksize limit above 2MB. SegWit adoption has continued to increase despite an overall decline in transactions per day throughout the year.
SegWit also enabled the possibility of further second layer network upgrades like the decentralized Lightning Network (LN), which facilitates trusted, bidirectional, off-chain, hub and spoke payment channels. LN also paves the way for the possibility of instant payments, microtransactions, and increased scalability.
Since going live on March 15, 2017, the LN has continued to gain traction. There are now more than 12,000 available channels. The channels work much like a tab at a restaurant, which remains open until the client settles the bill. This format allows for numerous transactions to occur without a network fee, until the channel is closed.
In August, downloads of Square’s cash.app exceeded Venmo, a mobile payment service owned by PayPal. The cash.app team also recently announced Bitcoin purchases in all 50 states. Square also received approval for a cryptocurrency merchant gateway patent. Down the road, Square, the cash.app, and potentially Twitter, may integrate LN for certain BTC payment transfers.
Jack Mallers and the Zap team also continue to release updates for their LN wallet. Zap previously worked for WooCommerce payments, an eCommerce plugin for WordPress, which accounts for more than 28% of all online stores.
During 2018, unconfirmed transactions have declined dramatically, averaging below 5,000. Unconfirmed transactions peaked well above 180,000 in December, when SegWit usage and Transaction Batching was far less common. The pending transaction fees associated with these transactions have also dropped, averaging far below 1BTC per block, with the mempool averaging between 2.5-5.0MB. The size of the entire blockchain is currently above 182GB, with the average block size over the past 30 days just above 1MB.
The 30-day Kalichkin network value to transactions ratio (NVT) continues to increase (line, chart below), breaking multi-year highs. Inflection points in NVT can correlate with extreme highs or lows in price. NVT is difficult to compare between coins that use different transactions types, but the ratio can be used to assess a network’s relative utility over time. However, Kalichkin’s NVT does not account for inflation or the use of off-chain LN transactions, which would decrease NVT overall.
Daily active addresses (DAA) have increased (fill, chart below) since April, but remain down significantly from highs in January. A large uptick in DAA should be seen as a bullish indicator of price, as it suggests an increase in demand. There are also currently over 28 million user wallets.
NVT is also related to Bitcoin days destroyed (BDD), which has continued to decline, suggesting that long term holders with significant amounts of BTC are keeping funds dormant. This metric can be used to analyze early adopters cashing out or moving coins between wallets. For example, if someone has 10BTC that they received 10 days ago and then they spend it, 100 bitcoin days have been destroyed.
BDD increased slightly in August, potentially related to an old wallet associated with Mt. Gox and Silk Road moving 111,000 BTC, some of which ended up on Bitfinex and Binance.
The months with the highest BDD have historically correlated with highs or lows in price. A spike in BDD in July 2017 was likely related to the Bitcoin Cash hard fork in August. On June 20th, a spike in BDD preceded a drop in Bitcoin price two days later. However, this should not be seen as a 1:1 correlation. A rise in BDD can also represent custodial providers moving coins between wallets, which is typical of major exchanges or OTC brokers.
Turning to other key network metrics, the network hash rate and difficulty continue to post record highs, pushing mining profitability toward record lows. Continued increases in difficulty signify more and more hashrate being added to the network. Difficulty, which adjusts every 2016 blocks, has only had eight decreases above 1% since 2016, all of which correlate with an increase in BTC price shortly thereafter.
The core of mining is solving Proof of Work (PoW), which has lead to ASIC proliferation throughout the network. ASIC farms gravitate towards cheap land and cheap power with several recent stories of new North American farms being built, including; Canada, Washington, Oregon, New York, Virginia, and Texas.
While many factors influence mining profitability, such as price, block times, difficulty, block reward, and transaction fees, decreasing profitability adds to the risk of further centralizing mining, both through mining pools and geographically. The next Bitcoin block reward halving is slated for May 2020.
BTC exchange traded volume over the past 24 hours has been led by the Tether (USDT) and the United States Dollar (USD) markets, mostly on Bithumb, Binance, OKEx, and Huobi. In Asia, volume on the Japanese Yen (JPY), Korean Won (KRW), Chinese Yen (CNY) pairs have remained subdued throughout the year.
Avenues to purchase Bitcoin, or participate in the price action, continue to increase. On August 31st, the Yahoo! Finance app, with a reported 70 million unique visitors each month, enabled BTC trading. Morgan Stanley also announced this week that they will enable swap trading tied to the CME Bitcoin futures contract. Morgan Stanley manages over US$2 trillion, including funds from more than 3.5 million households in the U.S. alone. Wirex also announced expansion of its services throughout Canada, while Overstock.com will enable BTC purchases in 2019 through the biometric Bitsy wallet.
Global over the counter (OTC) volume, from LocalBitcoins.com, had a significant increase over the past week. The biggest increases in notional value globally came from many South American countries, including; Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela. These notional increases are likely fueled by inflation in Argentina and hyperinflation in Venezuela. OTC volume has also increased in Iran, where resumption of U.S. sanctions has encouraged the use of alternative forms of payment.
Comparing Q4 BTC price action over the past five years suggests a large move in the making. All but Q4 2014 saw bullish price action and all have had moves above 50%, accounting for the decline throughout January 2015. The leading bias of any upcoming move, as well as a bullish and bearish roadmap, can be determined using the Wyckoff Method, chart patterns, Pitchforks, exponential moving averages, and the Ichimoku Cloud. Further background information on the technical analysis discussed below can be found here.
Long/short open interest on Bitfinex remains net short, following a sharp bump in bearish positions pushing shorts to near record highs. There is a strong possibility of a short squeeze if price moves higher, where open short positions are forced to buy back into the market to cover their positions. Total open interest is also nearing record highs suggesting that a move in either direction will be exaggerated by margin positions.
The Wyckoff Method can be used to help determine where price sits within a cyclical pattern. Price structure on the daily chart continues to correlate highly with a typical Wyckoff Accumulation phase. An accumulation phase occurs before a new markup phase. BTC experienced one of these classic accumulation periods throughout 2015. A successful accumulation period would be highly indicative of a prolonged bull trend with another accumulation period around the yearly pivot at US$11,000.
Price also sits within a large Falling Wedge, making successive lower highs and lower lows. This pattern can precede bullish reversal, and typically resolves when 75% full, experiencing a more explosive move when 80% complete. Using Bulkowski’s measure rule, a bullish target of US$11,000 and a bearish target of US$4,200 are projected. There are no active bearish RSI divergences on the daily timeframe as RSI has begun to coil with price.
Alternatively, price may have formed a Descending Triangle, which holds a bearish bias if the pattern forms following a downtrend. As with all triangles, a breakout is expected when the pattern is at least 75% full, experiencing a more explosive move when 80% complete. The triangle will be 80% complete on September 22nd. Using Bulkowski’s measure rule, a bullish target of US$13,000 and a bearish target of US$1,880 are projected. The 1.618 fib extension of the triangle width paints a bullish target of US$16,729 and a bearish target of US$2,079.
Price remains near the median channel in the upward trending pitchfork which started in 2015, with anchor points in January, May, and August of that year. Price will continually attempt to return to the median line (yellow) throughout any given trend. A price rise above the median line would likely have a maximum upside target of ~US$12,000-US$16,000 by end of year. Price will need to maintain a range of US$4,400-US$6,000 in order for the PF to remain valid. The 50/200EMAs are currently bearishly crossed, but may form a bullish Golden Cross in the coming weeks, suggesting further upside.
On the Ichimoku Cloud, there are four key metrics; the current price in relation to the Cloud, the color of the Cloud (red for bearish, green for bullish), the Tenkan (T) and Kijun (K) cross, and the Lagging Span. The best entry always occurs when most of the signals flip from bearish to bullish, or vice versa.
On the daily chart, the Cloud metrics are bearish to neutral; price below the Cloud, Cloud is bearish, the TK cross is bearish, and Lagging Span is above price and below Cloud. A long entry based on traditional Cloud strategy would not be warranted until price breaches the Cloud. The long flat Kijun at US$7,865 represents a magnet for price. The Cloud continues to thin, suggesting an opportunity for a bullish Kumo twist and bullish Kumo breakout within the next few months.
On the four hour chart, the cloud metrics are bullish; price is below Cloud, Cloud is bearish, TK is bullish, and Lagging Span is above price and below Cloud. Again, a long entry based on traditional Cloud strategy would not be warranted until price breaches the Cloud. The long flat Kumo at US$6,760 should act as a magnet for price.
Lastly, the opening and expiration dates of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) BTC futures contracts typically have a significant impact on price. The CME facilitates trading in the largest portion of derivatives contracts in the world. The most recent September 4th contract opened at almost exactly the top of the current price range. A six month contract is set to close on September 28th with a new Q4 contract opening on October 1st, which may provide a substantial increase in volume.
Network fundamentals continue to suggest a vast improvement in scaling capacity and stewardship by the entire industry. Increases in both interest and access to Bitcoin at the retail and institutional levels continue to pave the way for further adoption and understanding. Increases in OTC emerging markets globally, in the setting of both inflation and sanctions, suggest a move away from government-backed fiat currency towards deflationary, peer-to-peer, uncensorable, and permissionless digital assets.
Technicals, including historical volatility and price action, suggest at least a 50% move over the next three months. Overall, indicators lean bearish to neutral over this time period. Key indicators for bullish price action include price above the; multi-month diagonal resistance of both triangle chart patterns, multi-year bullish pitchfork median line, daily 200EMA, and/or daily Cloud. Key indicators for bearish price action are much simpler, closing below the US$5,800-US$6,000 zone would likely result in bearish follow-through.
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Is coconut milk kosher for Passover?
Milk from a fresh coconut is acceptable for Passover. There are packaged coconut milk products that are acceptable for Passover, however you must look for the Passover certification mark on the label.
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In order to promote Buddhism, benefit sentient beings and liberate them from the suffering sea of reincarnation, His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche presides over the Great Indiscriminate Amitabha Puja for Transferring Consciousness of the Drikung Kagyu Order in Taiwan every year. His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche is the abbot-guru of the Glorious Jewel Buddhist Center in Taiwan, as well as the only ngakpa guru of Han lineage in the Drikung Kagyu Order who has attained fruition through a lifetime of genuine cultivation. In 1988, Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche took refuge under His Holiness the Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang, and has been practicing Buddhism diligently under the guidance of His Holiness the Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang ever since. In 1997, His Holiness the Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang held a grand enthronement ceremony for Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche, certifying Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche as a vajra guru of the Drikung Kagyu Order. In the same year, Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche founded the Glorious Jewel Buddhist Center. In 2007, he was bestowed the Dharma name of “Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche” by His Holiness the Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang. “Rinchen” represents the essence of countless treasures; “Dorjee” stands for vajra; so “Rinchen Dorjee” means Treasure Vajra, referring to the mind for promoting of Buddhism and benefiting sentient beings being as solid as a vajra that would remain constant forever.
His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche has cultivated compassion and wisdom of emptiness, and his compassion goes to sentient beings that suffer or die from natural disasters, accidents, war, and diseases. With the grand aspiration, the guru has been presiding over the Great Indiscriminate Amitabha Puja for Transferring Consciousness of the Drikung Kagyu Order in Taiwan every year, liberating sentient beings from the suffering sea of reincarnation and praying for blessings for countless sentient beings and the land of Taiwan as well as the world.
The Great Dharma of Amitabha for Transferring Consciousness performed by Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche is the auspicious Earth Terma Tantra of the Drikung Kagyu Order. The practitioner must have gone through rigorous cultivation stages in order to perform this Dharma. That is why it is particularly auspicious and powerful when the Dharma is being performed. The practitioner performing the Great Dharma of Amitabha for Transferring Consciousness must have the foundation of at least 10 years of practicing in Exoteric Buddhism before he could practice the Vajrayana. Before practicing the Vajrayana, he has to perfect the Four Preliminary Practices before he could receive the Amitabha Empowerment. With that achieved, he then must go into retreat under the guidance of his guru, chant in the retreat room the Amitabha Heart Mantra at least one million times, and have attuned to the yidam. Upon perfect completion of the retreat, he then would cultivate to master the Phowa, which liberates the deceased to the Pure Land. With such accomplishments, the practitioner then could perform the Great Dharma of Amitabha for Transferring Consciousness. Additionally, the presiding practitioner must also have attained the fruition of a Rinpoche, with compassion of emptiness and the mind that has no desire for fame and profit for himself but for benefiting all sentient beings, helping them attain happiness and liberating them from suffering. Only thus would he be helpful to sentient beings. This tantric Dharma was personally and individually transmitted to Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche by His Holiness the Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang through the Four -Tantra Empowerments. Consequently, we know that the Great Dharma of Amitabha for Transferring Consciousness is a grand Dharma that is extremely rare and precious. Because of the great accomplishments of Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche through his continuous diligent cultivation and compassionate aspiration to promote Buddhism and benefit sentient beings, every year, this grand event not only is bestowed special permission by His Holiness the Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang, but also receives best wishes and blessings from many accomplished practitioners within the Drikung Kagyu Order.
Before the Great Puja for Transferring Consciousness, His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche would go into retreat for several days, while instructing all the disciples to practice the ritual of Dharma Protector Achi at the Glorious Jewel Buddhist Center for a week, praying for blessings for a smooth and perfect Puja. On the other hand, His Holiness the Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang would also lead the lamas in India in performing the Dharma and praying for blessings for the Grand Puja. So the sentient beings with the affinity to attend this Grand Puja indeed have the causal conditions and blessed rewards that are difficult to obtain.
Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche once said: If a practitioner who presides over the Great Indiscriminate Amitabha Puja for Transferring Consciousness does not have grand compassion and capability, he would not be able to liberate the participating sentient beings of such a Puja. These sentient beings would follow the presiding practitioner, who, over time, will have physical condition that would prevent him from presiding over the Puja any longer. Over the past few years, however, has seen Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche perform the Dharma with great perfection, with more and more people attending the Great Puja for Transferring Consciousness, and each year the speed at which enrollment of the maximum number of participants is reached faster than the year preceding it. This shows that the Great Puja for Transferring Consciousness has been perfectly successful each and every year. Countless sentient beings who have come to be liberated have received help from Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche without hindrance.
In Tibet, it usually takes one entire day to complete the Great Dharma of Amitabha for Transferring Consciousness. Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche, out of sympathetic consideration for the suffering sentient beings, finishes performing this Great Dharma with incredible power of meditation in just a little more than three hours. Moreover, from 2010, upon perfect completion of the Dharma, Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche would stand on an electric vehicle to go back and forth through the entire venue, purifying and blessing over 20,000 attendees with nectar water, cleansing their bodies, speech, and mind. During each purification process, the kusha-grass in Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche’s hand would become very heavy after it is soaked with nectar water. In spite of this, Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche would keep spraying the purified nectar water to the attendees who have been looking forward to this moment. Such physically demanding motion is repeated for over 40 minutes. His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche completely disregards the fact that he is a man of over 60 years old, that he has cervical dislocation, lumbar scoliosis, and pain in elbow and wrist joints, and that he has no synovial sac in the right shoulder, in order to fulfill sentient beings’ earnest desire. This selflessness and devotion to benefiting sentient beings with his entire life shows that His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche is truly a meritorious grand practitioner.
His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche spraying the purified nectar water to the attendees who have been looking forward to this moment, cleansing their bodies, speech and mind.
In order to help more believers fulfill their wish to attend the Great Puja of Transferring Consciousness, in 2006, Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche moved the venue of the Puja from the National Taiwan University Sports Center to Taipei Arena until 2010, when he moved it again from Taipei Arena to the Taipei World Trade Center Nangang Exhibition Hall. The numbers of attendees have increased from 5,000 at the beginning to 10,000, and then to as many as 22,000 in 2011. Every year, no publicity of any form is made to promote the Great Puja of Transferring Consciousness. Nor is there any billboard or advertisement posted. Yet the Puja sees a full house every year just based solely on the word of mouth among the disciples of the Glorious Jewel Buddhist Center, sharing with others about Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche’s great compassion and aspiration. Among the attendees are many on wheelchairs who have lost mobility or have been bedridden due to grave illness, as well as believers who come for the Puja from across the world, including Japan, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, France, India, New Zealand, the United States, Britain, Philippines, Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia, mainland China and so on. In addition, there are also ngakpas, geshes, khenpos, lamas, and nuns from different Orders of Tibetan Buddhism, such as Drikung Kagyu, Drukpa Kagyu, Nyingma, and Gelug, as well as monks and nuns of Exoteric Buddhism who come to attend the Puja. Since 2005, the Great Puja of Transferring Consciousness has seen more than 170,000 attendees, and more than 600,000 names have been registered on the list for liberation. Though there are such a huge number of people attending the Puja every year, with the amazing all-embracing power of Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche, the Puja is solemn and orderly.
With the all-embracing power of Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche, the Puja is solemn and orderly.
His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche said: The word “Indiscriminate” in the Great Indiscriminate Puja for Transferring Consciousness refers to the fact that no special board is established in honor of “major donors” and merits of sentient beings are not measured based on money or status. All sentient beings who have the affinity to attend the Puja are able to receive blessings and protection from the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas on an equal footing. In this spirit, there are no specially designated people to make mandala offerings to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas as well as the presiding guru. Instead, all representatives, including 2,000 people who light up and offer the lamps to the Buddhas, are randomly selected from the attending believers by drawings lot at the venue. Ever since 2005, Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche has presided over ten Great Pujas of Transferring Consciousness on an annual basis in Taiwan. No fees are charged for any such Puja, nor are commercial activities such as charity sales allowed in order to maintain the purity of the Puja. All costs required for the Puja are shared by the members of the Glorious Jewel Buddhist Culture Exchange Association under the supervision of Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche. Neither public fundraising is conducted nor public donations are accepted. Furthermore, each year upon perfect completion of the Great Puja of Transferring Consciousness, His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche would donate all monetary offerings from all the attendees to the Department of Social Affairs of the Ministry of the Interior as funds for charity and social welfare to help the socially disadvantaged and needy people, vastly connecting virtuous affinity on behalf of all sentient beings. In 2009, His Holiness the Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang also instructed Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche to make a donation of NT$2,000,000 on his behalf through the Great Puja of Transferring Consciousness to the Department of Social Affairs of the Ministry of the Interior, as reconstruction fund in the aftermath of Typhoon Morakok. Over the past several years, the total amount donated by His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche has reached more than NT$73 million. The Ministry of the Interior sends a special letter of appreciation to His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche every year.
During the Great Indiscriminate Amitabha Puja for Transferring Consciousness, with his immense compassion, infinite merits and tremendous energy derived from his accomplishment in cultivation of Tantra, His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche helps the deceased that participants desire to have liberated and all sentient beings in the void be reborn into the virtuous realm and even Amitabha’s Pure Land so that they don’t fall into the evil realms. Attendees with faith and reverence also may increase their blessed rewards and merits. The number of sentient beings of the Six Realms who have been helped through the auspicious Tantra performance by His Eminence Rinchen Dorjee Rinpoche’s during the Great Puja of Transferring Consciousness is indeed immeasurable!
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And if we have tech companies using the powers of monopoly to censor political speech I think that raises real [UNKNOWN] trust issues. Nobody knows how many speakers Twitter is blocking, how many speakers Facebook is blocking Nobody knows what the raw data is in terms of bias. So one of the first things that this hearing seeks to accomplish is simply move us towards transparency. Let me be clear about an important and founfational fact. Twitter does not use political viewpoints, perspectives or party affiliation To make any decisions, whether related to automatically ranking content, or how we enforce our rules, the notion that we would silence any political perspective is antithetical to our commitment to free expression. Every day, we see hundreds of millions of tweets and thousands of violations of our policies. We try to get each one of those right But we do make mistakes on all sides of the political spectrum and all around the world. We will consistently work to get better and to be more transparent about our efforts. Twitter wouldn't be Twitter if everyone had the same viewpoint. We strive to balance safety and freedom of expression every day. We believe strongly in being impartial and we endeavor to enforce our rules dispassionately. We work extremely hard to make sure our algorithms are fair and aim to be transparent and fix issues when we make mistakes, in order to maintain the trust of our users, advertisers and the general public. My name is Neil Potts and I'm a director at Facebook with oversight of our community standards. I would like to make one point clear: Facebook does not favor one political viewpoint over another, and we do not suppress conservative speech. We are committed to encouraging dialogue and the free-flow of ideas by designing our products to give people a voice by implementing standards and to ensure fair, transparent processes for removing content that does not belong on Facebook. created our community standards, and standardized our confident removal decisions so they can be applied consistently, fairly, neutrally to a community that transcends regions, cultures, religions and languages. We take neutrality seriously. Our artificial intelligence algorithms have been designed, and our human content reviewers have been trained to ensure that content is reviewed in a neutral, Unbiased way. And we're really focused on what's needed to keep our users safe. Our [UNKNOWN] keep users from discussing controversial topics or supporting a debated point of view. In order they favor opinions on one end of the political spectrum or another. [BLANK_AUDIO] Given the fast amount of content we have on our platform, our reviewers have to respond to millions of reports each week from people all over the world. And we don't always get it right. We know there have been a number of high-profile content removal incidents and we're taking several steps to respond to those concerns raised by the subcommittee and others. First we publish a community standard enforcement report twice a year. That report describes the amount and type of content we're taking action against. We publish comprehensive guidelines providing more priority around content moderation decisions. Second. We've solicited external feedback on our content moderation policies and sources across the political spectrum. For example, former senator Kyle, he is leading a team gathering insights from members of Congress, a number of conservative groups, assessing whether there are any ways which the company is unintentionally biased against conservative points of view. Third, We've created an appeals process for content that's been removed from our platform as hate speech. We're working to extend that process further by creating an independent oversight board of experts on free speech and safety. And finally we're continuing our work to enhance the quality of our machine learning. The machine learning which is our first line of defence. The contact assessment on our platform. Mr Potts should Facebook promote spirited debate on all sides of the political spectrum and which of these is yes or no? Thank you, Senator, yes, we allow security debate on all threats. Okay, Mr Monje, same question. Yes, ma'am. Mr Potts, should Facebook allow ads urging that we save sea turtles or baby seals? I believe that would be fine. Mr Monje, should Twitter allow ads that denounce Planned Parenthood for selling baby body parts? Ma'am, thank you for that question. And I, I'd like to get apologize for Yeah. Every every ad is is judge. Yes. That was good. And we made a mistake on your end. I apologize. Okay, Mr. [UNKNOWN] should Twitter allow ads from Starbucks and Patagonia. If they follow our terms of service. And mister Potts, should Facebook allow ads from Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby? If they follow our ads policies. Okay. And who sets those policies? Teammates of mine, we have separate teams that work on ads policies. Are they subjective? They're objective. They are meant to be objective, Senator. They're meant to be objective. They are- Do people bring their attitudes to work with them, their political attitudes to work with them? I was incorrect in my statement. They are objective and we try to strive for equal [UNKNOWN]. Okay, Mr Mundi, should Twitter equally provide Democrats and Republicans in search rankings? Yes, and we strive to. Mr Potts, same question. I'm sorry, Senator.>> Should you equally promote Democrats and Republicans in the search rankings? Yes, Senator. Okay, and Mr Potts, should Facebook equally promote articles from all news sources, whether they're from The Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post? yes, yes [INAUDIBLE] Okay. We've got a presidential year coming up in 2020. So Mr. [UNKNOWN], please tell me what Twitter is doing to prepare its platform for censorship-free debate. Thank you so much, Senator. People come to Twitter to figure out what's going on in the world and never is that more important than during elections. We spent a great amount of time in the lead up to the midterm elections, which were the most tweeted about elections in history. We dramatically improved our ability to find efforts of disinformation, improved our partnerships with all the major parties, with the government and with NGOs to figure out vectors of threats. And we had what we believe was an incredibly clean election. And as the world turns there are additional elections in EU, in Japan, in India, in Israel yesterday. And we're gonna continue to try to improve our systems, to find this information to make sure that there's greater context about [UNKNOWN]- I know Facebook is hard on news, Director. Have you All hired news directory. We are structured diferently than Facebook we do, as a platfrom we are running towards news and work with news publishers of all sorts and to make sure that they can get their products out on our platform. Okay and Mr Potts and Facebooks plan? Their strategy for 2020. Thank you, Senator, we've hired over 30,000 people to focus on safety and security. We've made significant investments in what we call our election integrity. We have full-time standing teams that are now focused on many of the elections going on in the world, whether it be BEU, India, Israel, as we'd mentioned yesterday. But definitely focused on 2020 within the United States to insure that we are out in front to prevent any abuse that could occur on the platform.
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Journey is an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1973, composed of former members of Santana and Frumious Bandersnatch. The band has gone through several phases; its strongest commercial success occurred between 1978 and 1987 when Steve Perry was lead vocalist. During that period, the band released a series of hit songs, including "Don't Stop Believin'" (1981), which in 2009 became the top-selling track in iTunes history among songs not released in the 21st century. Its parent studio album, Escape, the band's seventh and most successful, reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and yielded another of their most popular singles, "Open Arms". Its 1983 follow-up album, Frontiers, was almost as successful in the United States, reaching No. 2 and spawning several successful singles; it broadened the band's appeal in the United Kingdom, where it reached No. 6 on the UK Albums Chart. Journey enjoyed a successful reunion in the mid-1990s and later regrouped with a series of lead singers.
Sales have resulted in two gold albums, eight multi-platinum albums, and two diamond albums (including seven consecutive multi-platinum albums between 1978 and 1987). They have had eighteen Top 40 singles in the U.S. (the second most without a Billboard Hot 100 number one single behind Electric Light Orchestra with 20), six of which reached the Top 10 of the US chart and two of which reached No. 1 on other Billboard charts, and a No. 6 hit on the UK Singles Chart in "Don't Stop Believin'". In 2005, "Don't Stop Believin'" reached No. 3 on iTunes downloads. Originally a progressive rock band, Journey was described by AllMusic as having cemented a reputation as "one of America's most beloved (and sometimes hated) commercial rock/pop bands" by 1978, when they redefined their sound by embracing pop arrangements on their fourth album, Infinity.
According to the Recording Industry Association of America, Journey has sold 48 million albums in the U.S., making them the 25th best-selling band. Their worldwide sales have reached over 75 million records, making them one of the world's best-selling bands of all time. A 2005 USA Today opinion poll named Journey the fifth-best U.S. rock band in history. Their songs have become arena rock staples and are still played on rock radio stations across the world. Journey ranks No. 96 on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
The original members of Journey came together in San Francisco in 1973 under the auspices of former Santana manager Herbie Herbert. Originally called the Golden Gate Rhythm Section and intended to serve as a backup group for established Bay Area artists, the band included Santana alumni Neal Schon on lead guitar and Gregg Rolie on keyboards and lead vocals. Bassist Ross Valory and rhythm guitarist George Tickner, both of Frumious Bandersnatch, rounded out the group. Prairie Prince of The Tubes served as drummer. The band quickly abandoned the "backup group" concept and developed a distinctive jazz fusion style. After an unsuccessful radio contest to name the group, roadie John Villanueva suggested the name "Journey". The band's first public appearance came at the Winterland Ballroom on New Year’s Eve, 1973. Prairie Prince rejoined The Tubes shortly thereafter, and the band hired British drummer Aynsley Dunbar, who had recently worked with Frank Zappa. On February 5, 1974, the new line-up made their debut at the Great American Music Hall and secured a recording contract with Columbia Records.
Journey released their eponymous debut album in 1975, and rhythm guitarist Tickner left the band before they cut their second album, Look into the Future (1976). Neither album achieved significant sales, so Schon, Valory, and Dunbar took singing lessons in an attempt to add vocal harmonies to Rolie's lead. The following year's Next contained shorter tracks with more vocals, and featured Neal Schon as lead singer on two of the songs.
Journey's album sales did not improve and Columbia Records requested that they change their musical style and add a frontman, with whom keyboardist Gregg Rolie could share lead vocal duties. The band hired Robert Fleischman and transitioned to a more popular style, akin to that of Foreigner and Boston. Journey went on tour with Fleischman in 1977 and together the new incarnation of the band wrote the hit "Wheel in the Sky"; however, management differences resulted in Fleischman leaving within the year.
In late 1977, Journey hired Steve Perry as their new lead singer. Herbie Herbert, the band's manager, also hired Roy Thomas Baker as a producer to add a layered sound approach as Baker had done with his previous band, Queen. With their new lead singer and new producer, Journey released their fourth album, Infinity (1978). This album was their first RIAA-certified platinum album, and with their hit song "Wheel in the Sky" (#57 U.S.), Journey set on a new path with a more mainstream sound to make their highest chart success to date.
In late 1978, manager Herbie Herbert fired drummer Aynsley Dunbar, who joined Bay Area rivals Jefferson Starship shortly thereafter. He was replaced by Berklee-trained jazz drummer Steve Smith. Perry, Schon, Rolie, Smith and Valory recorded Evolution (1979), which gave the band their first Billboard Hot 100 Top 20 single, "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin'" (#16); and Departure (1980), which reached No. 8 on the album charts.
Journey's newfound success brought the band an almost entirely new fan base. During the 1980 Departure world tour, the band recorded a live album, Captured.
Keyboardist Gregg Rolie then left the band, the second time in his career he left a successful act. Keyboardist Stevie "Keys" Roseman was brought in to record the lone studio track for Captured, "The Party's Over (Hopelessly in Love)," but Rolie recommended pianist Jonathan Cain of The Babys as the permanent replacement. With Cain's replacement of Rolie's Hammond B-3 organ with his own synthesizers, the band was poised for a new decade in which they would achieve their greatest musical success.
With Cain on board, the band began writing material that would eventually lead up to Journey's biggest studio album, Escape. Recording sessions began in April 1981, and lasted until the middle of June. Escape was released on July 31, 1981, and immediately the album became a mainstream success. The album, which has thus far sold nine times platinum, went to number one on the album charts later that year, and included three top-ten hits: "Who's Cryin' Now", "Don't Stop Believin'" and "Open Arms". The last is Journey's highest-charting single to date, staying at No. 2 for six consecutive weeks and ranking at No.34 on Billboard's 1982 year-end Hot 100. MTV videotaped one of their two sold-out shows in Houston on November 6, 1981, in front of over 20,000 fans.
This success was met with criticism. The 1983 Rolling Stone Record Guide gave each of the band's albums only one star, with Dave Marsh writing that "Journey was a dead end for San Francisco area rock." Marsh later would anoint Escape as one of the worst number-one albums of all time.
Journey's next album, Frontiers (1983), continued their commercial success, reaching No. 2 on the album charts, selling nearly six million copies. The album generated four Top 40 hits, "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)", which reached No. 8, "Faithfully", which reached No. 12, "Send Her My Love" and "After the Fall", both of which reached No. 23. By this time, Journey had become one of the top touring and recording bands in the world. During the subsequent stadium tour, the band contracted with NFL Films to record a video documentary of their life on the road, Frontiers and Beyond. Scenes from the documentary were shot at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with more than 80,000 fans in attendance.
After the Frontiers stadium tour, Journey decided to take some time off. Lead singer Steve Perry and guitarist Neal Schon both pursued solo projects between 1982 and 1985. The band released two songs previously intended for Frontiers: "Ask the Lonely", on the soundtrack to the movie Two of a Kind (1983); and "Only the Young", on the soundtrack to the movie Vision Quest (1985). "Only the Young" reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. When Journey finally returned to record their album Raised on Radio (1986), bass player Ross Valory and drummer Steve Smith were fired from the band for musical and professional differences. Bassist and future American Idol judge Randy Jackson, bassist Bob Glaub, and established drummer Larrie Londin handled the two vacant slots. The album went multiplatinum, selling over two million copies. It also produced four top 20 singles, "Be Good to Yourself" (#9), "I'll Be Alright Without You" (#14), "Girl Can't Help It" and "Suzanne", both of which reached No. 17. The tour featured Jackson on bass and Mike Baird on drums, and was videotaped by MTV and made into a documentary, which included interviews with the band members. But with Perry unable or unwilling to remain actively involved, the band cancelled the rest of the tour and went on an extended, indefinite hiatus.
Schon and Cain spent the rest of 1987 collaborating with artists such as Jimmy Barnes and Michael Bolton before teaming up with Cain's ex-Babys bandmates John Waite and Ricky Phillips to form the supergroup Bad English with drummer Deen Castronovo in 1988. Steve Smith devoted his time to his jazz bands, Vital Information and Steps Ahead, and teamed up with Ross Valory and original Journey keyboardist Gregg Rolie to create The Storm with singer Kevin Chalfant and guitarist Josh Ramos. On November 3, 1991, Schon, Cain, and Perry reunited to play several songs at the Bill Graham tribute concert. To date this is the last time Perry would sing in concert with former Journey bandmates.
After the breakup of Bad English in 1991, Schon and Castronovo formed the glam metal band Hardline with brothers Johnny and Joey Gioeli, before joining Paul Rodgers' backing band in 1994. Cain spent the next few years focusing on his solo career.
Between 1987 and 1995, Columbia Records released three Journey compilations, including the 1988 greatest hits album, which remains the band's best-selling record. It continues to sell 500,000 to 1,000,000 copies per year. By December 2008, it was the sixth best-selling greatest hits package in the United States, and by 2014 had spent 300 weeks on the Billboard 200 (one of only five albums to do so).
In 1995, the Escape and Frontiers lineup (Perry, Schon, Cain, Valory and Smith) reunited under new management, signing with Irving Azoff, longtime Eagles manager. Trial by Fire, released in 1996, included the hit single "When You Love a Woman", which reached No. 12 on the Billboard charts, ranked at No. 36 on the 1996 year-end Hot 100, and was nominated in 1997 for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. The album also produced three top 40 mainstream rock tracks, "Message of Love" reaching No. 18, "Can't Tame the Lion" reaching No. 33, and "If He Should Break Your Heart" reaching No. 38.
Plans for a subsequent tour ended when Perry injured his hip while hiking in Hawaii in the summer of 1997, and could not perform without hip replacement surgery – which for some time he refused to undergo. He later announced that he was permanently leaving the band. In 1998, Schon and Cain decided to seek a new lead singer, at which point drummer Steve Smith left the band as well.
In 1998, after auditioning several high-profile candidates, including Geoff Tate and John West, Journey replaced Perry with Steve Augeri, formerly of Tyketto and Tall Stories. The band hired drummer Deen Castronovo, Schon's and Cain's Bad English bandmate and drummer for Hardline, to replace Steve Smith. In 2000, the band released their next studio album, Arrival in Japan. A US release followed in 2001. "All the Way" became a minor adult contemporary hit from the album. In 2002, the band released a four-track CD titled Red 13, with an album cover design chosen through a fan contest. In 2005, the band was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, embarked on their 30th anniversary tour, and released their twelfth full-length studio album, Generations, in which each band member performed lead vocals on at least one song.
In July 2006, Steve Augeri was dropped from the band while they toured with Def Leppard, the official site referring to a "chronic throat infection." Augeri had been suffering from vocal attrition problems since 2003 and Journey had been accused of using pre-recorded lead vocals. For nearly a year, Jeff Scott Soto from Talisman filled in with the band for several months referring to him as their official lead singer. However, in June 2007, the band announced that Soto was no longer with them. That spring, HBO aired the finale of the series The Sopranos, concluding with Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" emanating from a diner jukebox. Without a lead singer, the band found itself unable to tour to capitalize on the heightened nostalgia for 1980s music demonstrated by the series.
In the summer of 2007, Jonathan Cain and Neal Schon began searching YouTube for a new lead singer. They auditioned Jeremey Hunsicker of the Journey tribute band Frontiers, with whom they co-wrote "Never Walk Away", for their next album.[unreliable source?] Ultimately the band hired another YouTube find, Filipino singer Arnel Pineda of the cover band The Zoo. Although Pineda was not the first foreign national to become a member of Journey (former drummer Aynsley Dunbar is British), nor even the first non-Caucasian (former bass player Randy Jackson is African-American), the transition resulted in what Marin Independent Journal writer Paul Liberatore called "an undercurrent of racism among some Journey fans". Keyboardist Jonathan Cain responded to such sentiments: "We've become a world band. We're international now. We're not about one color."
Journey's first album with Pineda, Revelation, debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard charts, selling more than 196,000 units in its first two weeks and staying in the top 20 for six weeks. As a multi-disc set (2-CD) each unit within that set counts as one sale. Journey also found success on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart where the single "After All These Years" spent over 23 weeks, peaking at No. 9. Receipts from the 2008 tour made Journey one of the top-grossing concert tours of the year, bringing in over $35,000,000. On December 18, 2008, Revelation was certified platinum by RIAA. The band's second album with Pineda, Eclipse, was released on May 24, 2011, and debuted at No. 13 on the Billboard 200 chart. In 2011, the band also released Greatest Hits 2.
In 2015, Deen Castronovo was arrested and charged with fourth-degree assault and menacing after police say he physically injured a woman. As a result, he was fired by Journey from upcoming performances and was ultimately replaced by Omar Hakim on the band's 2015 tour. In 2016, Steve Smith again returned as Journey's drummer, reuniting all of the members of the Escape-Frontiers-Trial by Fire lineup except lead singer Steve Perry.
After featuring the members of the band in various poses for the first three studio albums, in 1980 Journey adopted the logo of the scarab beetle, a symbol borrowed from Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Over the years, Journey songs have been heard or referred to in numerous films, television series, video games, and even on Broadway. The band's songs have been covered by multiple artists and adopted by sports teams. In particular, "Don't Stop Believin'" was heard in the final episode of The Sopranos, adapted by the television series Glee, sung by the Family Guy cast, adopted as the unofficial anthem of the 2005 and 2010 World Series champion baseball teams, performed by The Chipmunks in their album Undeniable (2008), and sung by the cast of the Broadway musical Rock of Ages. On March 8, 2013, a documentary, Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey, was released. The movie, directed by Ramona S. Diaz, chronicles the discovery of Arnel Pineda and his first year with Journey.
^ Bashe, Philip (1985). Heavy Metal Thunder: The Music, Its History, Its Heroes. Doubleday. p. 33. ISBN 978-0-3851-9797-7.
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^ McCormick, Neil (January 9, 2014). "The greatest American rock band of all time? Surely not Guns N' Roses". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved September 16, 2017.
^ George-Warren, Holly; Romanowski, Patricia, eds. (2001). The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (3rd ed.). Fireside. p. 511. ISBN 0-7432-9201-4.
^ Lynskey, Dorian (December 16, 2010). "Don't Stop Believin': the power ballad that refused to die". The Guardian. Retrieved September 17, 2017.
^ "Gold & Platinum Searchable Database". Recording Industry Association of America. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved April 18, 2014.
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^ "Interviews:". Melodicrock.com. Retrieved March 1, 2011.
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^ Captured re-issue (2006) liner notes, p. 15, lines 8–9; Time (Cubed) liner notes pp. 11–14.
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^ "Discography". Journeymusic.com. Archived from the original on February 3, 2008.
^ "2001 Herbie Herbert Interview with Matt Carty, pp. 13–14". Members.cox.net. Archived from the original on October 23, 2011. Retrieved September 10, 2010.
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^ "39th Annual Grammy Award Winners and Nominees for 1997". Rock on the Net. February 26, 1997. Retrieved September 10, 2010.
^ "Behind the Music: Journey". Vh1. Retrieved September 10, 2010.
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^ "Melodicrock Interviews: Neal Schon". melodicrock.com. Retrieved September 10, 2018.
^ "A Personal Journey Chapters Six, Seven, and Eight". Journey-zone.com. Retrieved September 10, 2010.
^ "'Journey names Jeff Scott Soto official new lead singer' at". Punktv.ca. Retrieved September 10, 2010.
^ "'Journey announces departure of Jeff Scott Soto' reprinted from journeymusic.com at The Journey Zone". Journey-zone.com. Retrieved September 10, 2010.
^ Dickens, Tad (January 9, 2008). "His new Journey leads to old Frontiers". Roanoke Times. Archived from the original on February 1, 2013.
^ "Jeremey Hunsicker - Different Guy, Same Ol' Sound." Yahoo Voices. April 7, 2008. Archived from the original on July 28, 2014. Retrieved April 18, 2014.
^ Liberatore, Paul (December 27, 2007). "An incredible journey for band's new frontman". Marinij.com. Retrieved September 10, 2010.
^ "Three Lions (Frontiers, 2014)". Melodicrock.com. Retrieved April 18, 2014.
^ "Certification Criteria". Recording Industry Association of America. Retrieved April 18, 2014.
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^ "Top 25 Tours - Billboard Year In Music 2008". Billboard. November 11, 2008. Archived from the original on May 20, 2009.
^ "Gold & Platinum Searchable Database". Recording Industry Association of America. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved September 10, 2010.
^ "Madonna still tops the list of the top-grossing concert tours". Jam!. December 3, 2008. Archived from the original on December 5, 2008.
^ "The Billboard 200 for the 6/11/2011 issue". Reuters. June 3, 2011. Retrieved April 18, 2014.
^ "Journey Welcome Back Drummer Steve Smith, Announce 2016 Tour With Doobie Brothers". Ultimate Classic Rock. November 24, 2015.
^ "Journey Members Reflect on Importance of 'Sopranos' and 'Glee,' Talk PBS Doc". hollywoodreporter.com. August 6, 2013. Retrieved August 6, 2016.
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Journey (musical group).
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Consider this construct a commentary on the ineffectiveness of punishing retaliation reactions with irrational and endless social sanctions. In jargonizing this construct, I have had a lot of success in uniting message receivers behind the idea that their history of treatment experiences basically feel like punishment. Sure some can evade it. Too often this takes privilege or gifted abilities. But those of us who have made it to social rehabilitation might need to acknowledge the advantages we had, advantages that we may have taken for granted during the process due to our intense suffering. And additionally it can help to know ways that you are gifted. Doing this helps one be helpful to others.
Whether primarily appearing to be paranoid, grandiose, somatic, spiritual, religious, catatonic, disassociated or other the tendency of the mainstream to disagree and reject divergent views hurts message receivers in a way that may even open old wounds. And the goal of getting the person into a hospital or a jail and medicated feels initially like suppressive cruel and unusual punishment.
In my experience many in the group will have an acceptance of these suppressive realities have learned that they improve with them. Often they may be homeless or institutionalized in circumstances that are worse, or find their message experience itself so unbearable they already feel a strong sense of deprivation or dehumanization. But still they can relate to feeling punished in some way. Usually, if a person says that a hospital or medication is not so bad they have a much deeper story of feeling punished to tell. All the helper has to do is inquire and learn.
The argument here is that if treatment were to be defined as ongoing efforts to social control and punish people who are different, it would be not only more transparent, but help people successfully adjust to without getting hurt and causing further brain damage. After all, punishment is a message that says: don’t do that or else . . . For message receivers already inundated with messages from varying origins, it is unreasonable to presume that they will take the punishment message the way it is intended.
Perhaps, the inherent flaw in the system of treatment is that special messages aren’t voluntary and that there is no way out but be punished when you are a message receiver. The famous work of Gregory Bateson and the double bind, the idea that there is no direction the subject can go without feeling punished, emphasizes this point. I believe that it takes a markedly different culture to create no-way-out but win situations for a long time to counter the damage that the mainstream one does.
Special message groups are the effort to create such an environment. In being prepared to review this construct the group needs to have enough strength to hold and manage trauma. Stories of feeling punished and othered for having these experiences may go back a long way for group members. Simply put, it takes a group that distinguishes itself from others to bring many people out of their shells. Historically I come equipped to distinguish every group I do by normalizing divergent views, asking questions that inquire about message experience, the sharing of my own lived experience, the ability to define associated constructs like sleuthing, theories, and tricksters, and by tolerating the confusion and tangents of those who act out retaliation reactions. Once these processes are reinforced people start to open up about things they’ve kept silent. When we discuss the reason many are so initially silent about their experiences social sanctions naturally social sanctions come up as an explanation.
Social sanctions may go back a lot farther in a message receiver’s consciousness than the first run in in the system and are vastly different for different individuals. I will trace an evolution of social sanctions as they follow a very general pattern involving: 1) early impressions; 2) observing social norms develop; and 3) relationship with first responders. I will start by openly using my own frame of reference, but I will also consider alternate cultural considerations as the experience and views of message receivers is in fact extremely diverse.
Early impressions are the foundation around which social sanctions take root. For me, it was the librarian in my third grade who first introduced me to the concept of Schizophrenia in a pamphlet. I have come to best see those early impressions as lies regarding incurable brain disorder that is very rare. At the time subsequent interfacing did a lot to diminish my sense of humanity for those who suffer with this. It was somehow okay to throw them away because there was nothing that could be done. Oh, for sure it was sad, kind of like when someone dies in an earthquake.
But having this early impression reinforced persistently through early experiences in hospitals for eating disorders, in Abnormal Psychology text books in college, and as a young professional in the mental health field did a lot to make me feel punished when I received the diagnosis. None of the trauma that I had been through mattered, only that early impression of what the “disease” was.
Early impressions of “psychosis” for those who have parents who struggle from it are going to be very different. Targeted abuse from symptoms or the outside world may result in innocent suffering and form a starkly different impression. Likewise, individuals who grow up in rural, urban, or differently zoned areas than I, where mentally ill people are housed or warehoused, are likely to develop very differing impressions of mental health in very different sets of circumstances. They may not be so book focused. They may have more or less humanity in them. Nevertheless, I would argue that early impressions start a process of hurt and misunderstanding in many individuals’ experience.
The second part of social sanctions is the development of a social sense of what normal is. Though there are a great many ways people are different, children norm up and develop different perceptions on issues such as popularity, conformity, and authority. Bullying starts to happen and directs children in very different directions. But early impressions of what it feels like to be part of a group and what it feels like to be hurt by others along with senses of dominance and submission, have a lot to do in developing what it feels like to be socially sanctioned.
I myself quickly found myself not fitting in when I was not allowed to wear popular clothing. Perhaps my parents wanted me to go through this as they had and develop a sense of character. But I quickly found myself not fitting in and was easily hurt by the exclusion, not having the same skills to build my sense of character. I responded with hatred and isolation and lacked a place where I had a sense of belonging. This was the times when I first experienced issues such as abandonment, rejection, failure to be acknowledged, slander ridicule, intense criticism, issues that would become part of my experience with messages. While it is clear that not everyone with messages experiences this kind of early sense of bullying or feeling unaccepted, they may develop impressions about these kinds of issues that will affect them when they run into being different later on.
The third part of social sanctions are the quality of the support they receive from first-responder people who intervene when they are different. Do those people staunchly defend the norms as they guide the message receiver towards them? Do these people respect and honor the individual’s strengths when they show sign of having message experiences?
Not everyone is so lucky as to have a headshrinker help them along on this path. Early responders can be parents, outside family members, spiritual affiliates, teachers, coaches. I personally had a series of therapists who did not have a track record for accepting who I was and the gifts that I presented with. Yes, I did what they said and I became more normal, but as they noticed that I wasn’t willing or able to norm up and they recognized my message tendencies, the forecast became negative and the support was very poor.
I feel this is largely reflective of society’s vision of Schizophrenia and brain disorder. There was no one teaching me that there were mentors and people who I could relate to who had the same sense of things that I did. Even though I maintained a career and got an advanced degree education, my headshrinker, unbeknownst to me, did not think I could do it repeatedly. I have been through training in psychotherapy and the standard of care that was taught to me was, to get the message receiver into the hospital and medicated, that therapy is not the place for them. Programs, institutions, and warehousing appear to be the only options to many first responders.
It is true institutions vary a great deal, state to state, county to county, private to public, and jail to prison. As a result, it is very hard to characterize what punishment is like across the board. Again, I will limit what I say throughout to my own frame of reference that spans different states, three decades, and experience both as staff and as patient. As I do this I will do my best to allude to and consider what other people from different backgrounds may go through. Sure, what follows is limited and generalized. However, as a group leader, I argue that the leader needs to be prepared to explore social sanctions in distant epochs and across distinctive locales and institutions. Thus, as I have practiced in California, I have been called on to bear witness to stories about jail and prison and will make an effort to depict them as they do impact public mental health facilities in significant ways.
I understand the desire to move away from the constant message from family, peers, and society that your suffering is because you aren’t trying hard enough, are too weak, or you’re exaggerating. But I don’t find the medical model less punishing or less invalidating— it just attacks from a different angle. Professionals tend to tell some version of the same story – due to your genes, your brain, or your brain chemicals, you had a biological propensity for mental illness and once diagnosed with this ‘disease’ you’re usually told it’s not curable (but manageable); you’ll probably need to be on medications and in treatment for the rest of your life, and may be limited in your functioning academically, occupationally, and socially. The medications they insist are necessary usually have side effects (ranging from uncomfortable to intolerable), but stopping them will result in relapse of symptoms and drop in functioning.
So instead of feeling your character being attacked (as lazy, weak or overdramatic), we switched to a model that can make you feel inherently flawed biologically. While the message may seem better because it appears on the surface to be less judgmental (ie. you can’t help it, it’s a brain disease), it carries with it a message that you couldn’t change it even if you wanted. It leaves people feeling helpless and hopeless, not wanting to try to recover because the professionals told them there’s no cure.
It’s not usually that the psychiatrists and other mental health professionals intend to convey hopelessness or think of what they do as inflicting punishment. It’s often well intended, with the desire to help. But our field is one with a bad track record of mistreating people while thinking that they are helping (forced institutionalization, solitary confinement, physical and chemical restraint, lobotomies, fever therapy, insulin/come therapy, electro shock therapy, etc). Most of the people implementing treatments that were later seen as barbaric thought they were helping. This does not inherently mean that current methods will follow the same pattern of later being viewed as barbaric, but it does suggest that your motivation being pure doesn’t protect you from causing more harm than good.
Your post is a good reminder that the perception of treatment from each side of the therapy couch can be extremely different. To lose sight of our impact (intentional or not) is to lose sight of the people we would like to help.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. It is good to be reminded that the medical model views were meant to be less stigmatizing.
What you’ve said help me reflect on the reality I encounter, that people become very unmotivated to be in relationship with others. It is easy to blame the medical model for that when really it is the fact that society doesn’t respect encourage or teach people to accept and be in relationship with people who are experiencing these things.
I feel the experiences have value and can help people contribute in unique ways, but too often people end up being so shamed they cannot share their experiences and thoughts with anyone. I tend to believe that the medical model makes people less communicative and makes people give up any hope for connection. It can justify poverty and warehousing. I tend to rebel against that.
My work is an attempt to create a more accurate picture that can promote inclusion, but ultimately I don’t know that it will get anywhere and if it does that it will not create new problems for people who are different.
Absolutely. I join you in the rebellion against the medical model and its various forms of dehumanizing people. And I also see it is one of many tools that people (scientists, doctors, mental health professionals, and loved ones included) use to try ease their own discomfort with someone else’s unfamiliar experiences. Labels, categories and research with the intent to ‘understand’ sounds good, but too often this desire to understand is really motivated by the fear of experiences that are different than their own. What I’ve noticed in this field, is as soon as the focus shifts to easing the therapist’s discomfort with the client’s suffering, walls are created blocking the ability to actually connect and understand. So I agree with you completely that the medical model is only one of the more recent forms of inability or unwillingness to relate and connect to people.
I guess it’s always possible our efforts at connecting, respecting, and valuing people will ultimately go nowhere, but I have hope that as these ideas grow in pockets around the world, that they may eventually make a dent. Maybe it’s me being overly idealistic and naive? But I believe that in the short term, you and I (and the many other rebels) can have positive and meaningful connections with people even as they are stigmatized and dehumanized by others. And that those moments in which someone feels no judgment or urging to be different than they are and instead consist of humans being vulnerable and genuine, with all their flaws and their gifts, trying to understand each other — those are worth it regardless of whether the system at large is still crappy.
I noticed when working with you a few years back that your clients could tell you wanted to actually connect to them and that you valued their experiences and their perspective of the world. Seeing you convey a genuine belief in their value and the unique abilities they bring to the table that early in my career gave me hope that there were positive ways to connect to people even within a system that does’t encourage it.
Thanks for the kind words. Your blog has been helpful in sparking my thoughts about treatment, therapy, madness, etc and it’s always nice to remind each other we’re not alone in the fight!
Yes indeed! Nice to know!
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Sound is an interesting word because, despite its relative simplicity, it carries a number of extremely divergent meanings. As is often the case with English homonyms, this is due to words entering the language from other languages with which it came into contact. In the case of sound, this would be Norman French and Old Norse.
When considering sound in a modern context, three potential meanings quickly come to mind. The first, and native English, meaning is to be whole or healthy. The word is still used in this context relatively often (e.g., in phrases like of sound mind) and in phrases relating to inanimate objects (e.g., determining that a set of stairs is sound.). As might be expected, there are strong cognates in German (gesund, Gesundheit) and Dutch (gezond, gezondheid).
The second meaning that comes to mind easily is something that is heard. This meaning came into English via French (son), itself derived from the Latin sonus, which both carry this meaning. The word morphed in Middle English into soun and from there seems to have been modified further into a more familiar form by adding a ‘d’. In this case the equivalent terms in German and Dutch (klingen and klink, respectively) do still have a cognate in English, which is clink. Clink, however, also seems to have been borrowed from Dutch and refers in English to a specific type of sound and not sound in general.
The third meaning of sound that comes to mind immediately is of a narrow body of water, either between two landmasses or between an island and the mainland. Two well known examples from the United States are Puget Sound and Long Island Sound. This meaning comes from the Old Norse word sund, which was used to describe just such a body of water. The same word also exists in Old English, but seems to be indirectly related, as it holds a meaning related to swimming. As with the Latin-derived term described above, there seems to have been an effort to make the word conform to comfortable patterns by changing the spelling and pronunciation, in this case by adding a vowel.
English is perhaps uniquely susceptible to these types of overlaps and inconsistencies due to the amount of borrowing that has gone on from other languages over the centuries. However, the issue has been exacerbated by the fact that, unlike other languages such as French, German and Afrikaans to name a few, there is no board or commission designated to oversee the language and institute rational reform or even consistency within the language.
As a native English speaker, I recall being baffled as a child at English spelling conventions such as pronouncing “laugh” as “laf” and I have always marvelled at the ability of people around the world to learn what to me seems to be a largely non-sensical and capriciously structured language. Having spent a considerable amount of time studying other languages, I find that it is hugely helpful to have reliable rules and phonetic spelling applied to a language and I believe English could benefit greatly from this.
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There are many architectural structures around the globe which can be considered as the oldest. This piece of writing provides information about some of the most ancient buildings in the world.
There are different opinions about which is the oldest building on Earth. The questions about the antiquity of buildings can be presented in different ways.
The term 'oldest building' can refer to the remains of ancient structures or old constructions that are still being used. The debate about which is the most ancient building in the world would, therefore, continue without any concrete or true answer.
Which is the Oldest Building in the World?
It is a commonly accepted fact that temples of Malta are the oldest man-made structures found in the world. These temples on the islands of Malta, located in the middle of the Mediterranean sea, were unearthed in the year 1980 CE. They are constructed with limestone slabs and date back to around 3000 BCE.
Although the temples of Malta are considered to be the oldest, there are many more buildings and smaller constructions that compel us to carry out much more research on the topic of oldest structures around the world.
In recent times, much older buildings (older than the temples of Malta) have been discovered in the ancient city of Eridu, in what is now known as Tell Abu Shahrain, in Iraq. Buildings excavated at this place date back to about 5000 BCE. Old structures are also found in the city of Ur (the modern-day Tell el-Mukayyar).
A square-shaped temple at this place, which dates back to around 4500 BCE, was built by the Sumerian King Aannipadda of Ur. This city was excavated under the supervision of Sir Charles Leonard Woolley, director of the expedition jointly conducted by the University of Pennsylvania Museum and the British Museum.
The Hagar Qim on the island of Malta is probably the oldest structure that is still in use. It was built in 3000 BCE. It is a megalithic temple complex, and it features amongst the most unique masterpieces recognized by the World Heritage Sites committee.
Pantheon, the temple to all the gods of the Roman mythology, in Italy's capital city, Rome, speaks a lot about the history of Italy. This building can be termed as the oldest man-made structure in continuous use after its construction.
The structures found in Village des Bories, near the modern-day village of Gordes in France, are actually huts with fireplaces inside them.
Apart from the outlines of these huts, not much can be discerned about them. These constructions are known to be from a period dating back to 120,000 BCE. In the continent of Africa, circular structures erected with stone blocks are older than these French huts and date back to the period of 1,750,000 BCE. Thus, the African history and culture is much older.
There have been much older civilizations in the past. The wheel of time moves continuously, and it gives rise to new civilizations and destroys the older ones.
The fact that we have limited access and means to find about much older civilizations forces us to accept these as the oldest buildings, and the question about which is the oldest building in the world, therefore, remains unanswered.
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Unifying five companies in a single, dynamic workspace.
To move the five individual companies that make up the unique and forward-thinking financial services company, Mako Group, into a new, single-storey office space.
Collegial Empowerment: the creation of a dynamic environment that breaks away from stereotypical workplaces by creating a vibrant, energetic, entrepreneurial and collaborative space – with a design that clearly suggests a well-established company. The aims were to make everyday business easy for employees and visitors alike, create a strong welcome for visitors, instill employee pride and also to give back to staff, who work long hours, through facilities such as an integrated bar and gym, massage and break-out areas. Space planning was key to creating a collegial heart to the business and bringing people together from the Group’s different businesses as a single, streamlined family, made up of different individual personalities. The new workspace has a sharp, cutting-edge and boutique feel, with proper social spaces for evening relaxation and events. Standout design features range from giant fish tanks to a wall inspired by the shape of a shark’s fin.
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What were the Triassic plants and Triassic animals?
Triassic period starts after the Permian extinction 251 million years ago.
The climate was getting warmer, and vegetation was more diverse than during Permian.
While the eastern coast of Australia had a warm and wet climate, the inland was much drier, exactly as it is today.
The plants included ginkgos and conifers, ferns with large fronds, horsetails; reed-beds were around water-logged areas and lycopods and the large, herb-like Dicroidium formed heaths.
Animals included snakes and lizards, frogs and insects, until towards the end of Triassic, the first dinosaurs, and about 10 million years later, the first mammals evolved. Mammals were small and didn't have a chance to evolve as dinosaurs were much more successful. The new feature dinosaurs had was a specialised ankle joint (and a large tail to balance to body) that enabled dinosaurs to walk upright.
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This article is about the Colombian city. For the U.S. State sometimes known as "Cali", see California. For other uses, see Cali (disambiguation).
"The Salsa capital of the world", "Capital of Happiness", "Sports Capital of Colombia", "Branch of heaven"
Santiago de Cali (Spanish pronunciation: [sanˈtjaɣo ðe ˈkali]), or Cali, is the capital of the Valle del Cauca department, and the most populous city in southwest Colombia, with an estimated 2,319,655 residents according to 2005-2020/DANE population projections. The city spans 560.3 km2 (216.3 sq mi) with 120.9 km2 (46.7 sq mi) of urban area, making Cali the second-largest city in the country by area (after Bogotá) and the third most populous (after Bogotá and Medellín). As the only major Colombian city with access to the Pacific Coast, Cali is the main urban and economic centre in the southwest of the country, and has one of Colombia's fastest-growing economies. The city was founded on 25 July 1536 by the Spanish explorer Sebastián de Belalcázar.
Cali is also a centre for sports in Colombia, and is the only Colombian city to have hosted the Pan American Games (in 1971). It hosted the 1992 World Wrestling Championships, the ninth edition of the World Games in 2013, the UCI Track Cycling World Championships in 2014 and the World Youth Championships in Athletics in 2015. Cali will host the first ever Junior Pan American Games in 2021.
Cali is the shortened form of the official name of the city: Santiago de Cali. "Santiago" honours Saint James whose feast day is celebrated on the 25th of July. The origin of the word "Cali" comes from the local Amerindians the "Calima".
Before the arrival of the Spaniards, the region was inhabited by indigenous tribes, mostly speakers of Cariban languages. In the region between the Cauca River and the Western Cordillera, the Gorrones established themselves between the present day Roldanillo and Santiago de Cali. The biggest town of the Morrones was sited on the River Pescador near the present-day towns of Zarzal and Bugalagrande. The Morrones traded with the Quimbayas who inhabited the north of the Valle del Cauca.
On his way to Cali, Sebastián de Belalcázar first met the Timbas who ran away before the arrival of the men, leaving behind gold. After the Timbas, towards the north, the Spaniards entered the territory of the chief Jamundí and his tribe, the Jamundíes, between the rivers Pance and Jamundí. This tribe offered a strong resistance to the invaders, fighting with poisonous darts and arrows against the arquebuses and swords of the Spaniards. Eventually, the Spanish prevailed in the struggle over the central valley.
Before taking control over the region, the Spaniards had to defeat the chief Petecuy, whose tribe inhabited the area between the river Lilí and the Western Cordillera. Petecuy formed a big army with many tribes and fought the Spaniards on Holy Tuesday of 1536. The natives lost to the Spaniards and the region was divided in encomiendas.
Santiago de Cali was important for Belalcázar because it was outside the Inca empire. After the capture and execution of the Inca Atahualpa at Cajamarca, Francisco Pizarro had sent Belalcázar to take possession of Guayaquil and Quito on his behalf, but Cali, being outside the Quechua empire, was claimed by Belalcazar as his own territory. After his death, his descendants maintained possession of much of the land until the war of independence against Spain.
The founder of Cali, Sebastián de Belalcázar, came to the American continent in the third voyage made by Columbus in 1498. In 1532, after serving in Darién and Nicaragua, he joined Francisco Pizarro in the conquest of Perú. In 1534, Belalcázar separated from Pizarro's expedition to find the city of Quito, and later in his search of El Dorado he entered the territory of what is now Colombia, founding the cities of Pasto and Popayán.
Belalcázar founded Santiago de Cali on 25 July 1536, a few kilometres north of its present location, near what are now the towns of Vijes and Riofrío. Under the orders of Belalcázar, captain Miguel Muñoz moved the city to its present location in 1537, where the chaplain Brother Santos de Añasco celebrated a mass in the place occupied by the Church La Merced today, and Belalcázar designated Pedro de Ayala as the first municipal authority.
During the Colonia (colonial period), Santiago de Cali was part of the gobernación of Popayán, which was part of Quito's Audiencia. Although initially Cali was the capital of Popayán's gobernación, Belalcázar moved this function to Popayán in 1540, owing to "better" weather there.
Until the 18th century most of the territory of what is now Santiago de Cali was occupied by haciendas (cattle farms and plantations of food, with some sugar cane), and the city was only a small town near the Cali River. In 1793, Santiago de Cali had 6,548 inhabitants, 1,106 of whom were (African) slaves. The haciendas were the property of the dominant noble class with many slaves dedicated mostly to stockbreeding and raising sugar cane crops. Many of these haciendas became zone of the present city like Cañaveralejo, Chipichape, Pasoancho, Arroyohondo, Cañasgordas, Limonar and Meléndez. Santiago de Cali was strategically positioned for trade, centrally located in relation to the mining regions of Antioquia, Chocó, and Popayán. In the colonial period, the first trail for mules and horses between Santiago de Cali and the port of Buenaventura was completed.
On 3 July 1810 Santiago de Cali refused to recognize the Council of Regency of Spain, and established its own junta. This local uprising predates the national one in Bogotá by 17 days. The Governor of Popayán, Miguel Tacón organized an army to control the uprising. The people from Cali called for help to the "Junta Suprema" in Bogotá, which sent a contingent under colonel Antonio Baraya to support the independence cause. For mutual defense, Cali also formed, with Anserma, Cartago, Toro, Buga and Caloto, the Confederated cities of the Cauca Valley, which declared independence from the Governorate of Popayán on 1 February 1811, although they continued to recognize the absent Ferdinand VII as their head of state. On 28 March 1811 in the battle of Bajo Palacé, the first in Colombia´s Independence, the royalist Spanish army was defeated by the revolutionary army commanded by colonel Antonio Baraya with a detachment of 120 soldiers from his native Cundinamarca and a huge garrison of 1.080 men from Valle del Cauca led by brothers Miguel and Francisco Cabal Barona.
In the following years there were many battles between royalists and local militia. After having been released from captivity by Napoleon, Ferdinand VII sent a large army under the command of the "Pacificador" (Pacifier) Pablo Morillo who restored royalist rule in the area by 1816.
In 1819 after Simón Bolívar defeated the bulk of the royalist army in the Battle of Boyacá, there were new uprisings in the Valle del Cauca and the Criollos took control permanently. In 1822 Bolívar arrived in Santiago de Cali. The city was an important military outpost and the region contributed many men to the war of independence that liberated the nations in the south.
Map of Cali in about 1882-1884, Spanish edition.
In the 19th century Cali, capital of the Valley of the Cauca department, was a quiet community with no more than 20,000 inhabitants. The urban center of the city was around the neighborhoods of Altozano and San Antonio.
Outside the city there were mango plantations, pastures and communal land that were transferred from the Spanish Crown to the working classes. From the market gardens on this land the city was supplied with food. The economy centered around livestock, sugar cane, beef, panela (Jaggery; a sugar derivative), cheese and gold mined in the Pacific; there was also a small but growing industrial and financial sector.
Jewish entrepreneurs came during the 18th and 19th centuries and achieved prominent positions in the city. Some married local women and felt they had to abandon or diminish their identity. These included author Jorge Isaacs of English Jewish ancestry, the industrialist James Martin Eder (who adopted the more Christian name of Santiago Eder when he translated his name to Spanish) born into the Latvian Jewish community, as well as the De Lima, Salazar, Espinoza, Arias, Ramirez, Perez and Lobo families from the Caribbean. Over the generations most of their descendants were raised as secular Christians.
Portrait of Jorge Isaacs. Colombian Jewish writer and intellectual.
Around 1890 the Company of Public Works of Cauca, a private venture, built the market plaza. This spurred commercial development and it transformed into the Plaza Mayor or Plaza de Caycedo. In 1921, the market was sold to the Cali municipality. Very close to the 9th street was the principal station of the tranvia of Cali, a system of public transportation that linked the city with suburban areas.
On 7 August 1956 at around 1 a.m., seven Colombian army trucks filled with 42 tons of dynamite exploded near the train station, destroying around eight city blocks. A nearby army barracks was instantly destroyed, killing all 500 soldiers. Windows were shattered for miles. More than 1,000 people were killed and several thousand injured (see Cali explosion).
In 1971, Santiago de Cali hosted the Pan American Games, an event which is considered by many as the height of the city's golden age as a model of civic orderliness: following it, Cali was named the Sports Capital of Colombia. In 1982, the government of Cali inaugurated what is now the city's largest building and the third-largest in the Republic of Colombia—"La Torre de Cali", or The Cali Tower. It stands 42 stories tall and houses a hotel, offices and apartment complexes.
On 20 December 1995, American Airlines Flight 965 crashed in the mountains near Buga (a city located 46 miles (74 km) from Cali), killing 159 out of the 163 people on board.
Cali is located on the Cauca Valley to the west of the Cauca River and to the east of the Western Mountain Range near the hills known as Farallones de Cali. The city rests approximately 1,000 metres (3,281 feet) above sea level. Approximately 100 kilometres (62 miles) west of Cali and over the Western Cordillera, lies the port city of Buenaventura on the Colombian Pacific coast. To the northeast are the manufacturing center of Yumbo and Cali's international airport, the Alfonso Bonilla Aragón (CLO). It is Colombia's third largest airport in terms of passengers, transporting 2,667,526 in 2009.
Santiago de Cali is located in a valley. The city is completely bordered by mountains to the West; the Farallones de Cali mountains are the closest to the city. The Eastern part of the city is bordered by the Cauca River. To the north and south are extended plains. In the first one you can find the industrial city of Yumbo which is part of Cali's metropolitan area, to the south you can find Jamundí, also part of the metropolitan area. The city is mainly flat, but there are areas mostly to the west that are mountainous, like San Antonio and La loma de la Cruz, which are both tourist sites. There are several rivers that descend from the Western Mountain Range and empty into the Cauca River, passing through the metropolitan area of Cali. In the western part of the city the Aguacatal River flows into the Cali River, which continues on to the Cauca River. In the south the rivers Cañaveralejo, Lilí, and Meléndez flow into the CVC south channel which also empties into the Cauca River. Farther south, the banks of the Pance River are a popular place for recreation and leisure.
Under Köppen's climate classification, Cali features a tropical savanna climate. The Western Mountain Range rises from an average of 2,000 m (6,562 ft) above sea level in the northern part of the city to approximately 4,000 m (13,123 ft) to the south. Because of this variation in altitude, the weather in the northwest portion of the city is drier than in the southwest. The average annual precipitation varies between 900 to 1,800 mm (35 to 71 in) depending on the metropolitan zone for a citywide average of approximately 1,000 mm (39 in). Cali's average temperature is 25 °C (77 °F) with an average low temperature of 18.5 °C (65 °F) and a high of 31 °C (88 °F).
Owing to its proximity to the equator, there are no major seasonal variations in Cali. However, locals refer to the dry season as the city's "summer", in which temperatures can rise to 34 to 36 °C (93 to 97 °F) and go down to 18 to 19 °C (64 to 66 °F) at night. During the rainy season (or "winter") temperatures can rise to 28 to 29 °C (82 to 84 °F) and go down to 16 to 17 °C (61 to 63 °F) at night. There are typically two rainy seasons: from March to May and from October to November. However, rain can be expected to fall at any point during the year, nourishing the city's permanent green and lush vegetation. The highest temperature ever recorded was 36.6 °C (98 °F) in July 1997, and the lowest temperature ever recorded was 13.4 °C (56 °F) in August 1978.
Santiago de Cali offers historical areas with cultural variety and other attractions. In downtown Cali there are many historic churches such as La Merced and La Ermita. Cali contains a well-preserved historical center. The most important zone is La plaza de Cayzedo, considered the center of the city, which is a square surrounded by many historical and modern buildings like El edificio Otero, La Catedral and El Palacio de Justicia. This plaza is close to other tourist places, like The Saint Francis church (in Spanish, Iglesia de San Francisco), the municipal theater and La Merced church. The city is also rich in monuments, parks, squares and museums. The most emblematic sculptures are Cristo Rey, located upon a mountain range; Sebastian de Belalcazar, founder of the city; and Las tres Cruces, a place of pilgrimage during the days of the Holy Week.
Church La Merced, Sede Banco de Occidente al fondo.
Plaza de Cayzedo (Cayzedo Square).
Salsa show at the XIII International Art Festival Cali.
Plaza de Cayzedo: The main square of the city, located in downtown Cali. The plaza is named after Cali's hero, Joaquín de Cayzedo y Cuero.
Parque del perro: Located in the San Fernando neighborhood, this is one of the most popular areas in the city. It is full of restaurants and bars. The park gets its name because it has a dog monument in the middle of it.
Avenida San Joaquín: Located in the Ciudad Jardín, it is a popular place in the city.
Sebastian de Belalcázar's monument: It is the most visited and popular monument in the city located in the hills overlooking the city. The monument is famous due to its pointing finger which is pointing to the opposite direction of the valley, while its face is looking down at the city.
Cali River: One of the most peaceful zones in the city, the river is located in the west and is surrounded by restaurants, hotels and museums like "La Tertulia", an art museum.
Cristo Rey: A religious monument located on a hill that offers the best view of the city. It is 31 m high, of which 5 m belong to the base.
Boulevard del río Cali: (Colombia Avenue Boulevard) is located by the Cali river side in the historic center of the city of Santiago de Cali, Colombia. It carries the name of the avenue where vehicles used to transit but today is the boulevard where there is a tunnel located directly below it. This boulevard is about 980 meters long.
San Antonio: This is the most traditional neighborhood of Cali. In the colonial age, it was the extension of the downtown. Although it was split off by 'La calle Quinta' (Fifth street),. The entire neighborhood is on a hill, and at the top you will find the San Antonio Park.
Juanchito: Host to a large number of discothèques dedicated to salsa music, motels offering hourly rates, and adjacent to some of the poorest areas of the city. Technically, it belongs to another municipality, but is often visited by and associated with citizens of Cali.
Farallones de Cali: A part of the city sits on hills belonging to the Colombian western mountain chain. Beyond these hills is Farallones de Cali national park.
La Ceiba: A large and old Ceiba tree on a street corner at the west of the city.
Orquideorama Enrique Perez Arbeláez: This wooded park, at AV 2 N #48-10, is the site of the large orchid show hosted each fall by Asociacion Vallecaucana de Orquideologia. In 2011, the show was to be held from 21 to 25 September and was to include international judging by the American Orchid Society. It is also a good place for birdwatching.
According to recent Lonely Planet guides of Colombia, Cali has recently become famous for being a prime destination for people seeking cheap cosmetic surgery. There have been no significant reports of problems in this area, but Lonely Planet advises proper research before pursuing such an idea. In the city of Cali about 50,000 (2010) cosmetic surgery procedures occur per year, of which around 14,000 involve patients from abroad.
Santiago de Cali is served by Alfonso Bonilla Aragón International Airport (IATA: CLO, ICAO: SKCL), located in the City of Palmira. It is Colombia's third largest airport in terms of passengers (transporting 3,422,919 in 2010) and fourth in cargo. Alfonso Bonilla Aragón is located in a long, narrow valley that runs from north to south, and is surrounded by mountains up to 14,000 feet (4,300 m) high. The airport is connected to the city by a highway known as the "recta a Palmira", that in the last few years has been upgraded to make the airport more accessible to Cali and the surrounding city centers in the region. The airport has also been remodeled recently; some of the last significant events in those terms were the inauguration of the VIP room in the National terminal and the installation of a main electronic screen in the center of the check-in area.
The Marco Fidel Suárez Air Base is a military airport close to the city's downtown. It is located in the east side of the city and belongs to the Colombian Air Force. It is used as one of the main training centers for the country's fighter pilots.
The city of Cali offers a variety of ways to move through the city; in March 2009, The Masivo Integrado de Occidente (MIO) began operations. It is planned to be the primary system that connects the city. Taxis and old buses are the secondary way to get around. Taxis are one of the best systems that tourists can use, as they are relatively inexpensive and are more secure. Non-MIO buses round out the system and are used primarily by the working class to get around and are less expensive to use. Buses are secure but not at the same level as taxis. This part of the transport in the city is awaiting a needed reorganization of routes.
Masivo Integrado de Occidente (MIO): Is a bus rapid transit system of articulated buses that run on dedicated bus lanes in the middle of major thoroughfares, with stations connected to sidewalks by dedicated pedestrian crossings or bridges. The system layout is 243 kilometres (151 miles) and is distributed in a main trunk, pre-trunk and complementary corridors. The system also integrated the renovation and recuperation of the public space. The MIO system was not only designed for the public transport, but built for public use with extensive new sidewalks, parks, gardens and public squares for the public to enjoy.
The system also consists of a cable car, the so-called MÍO Cable, which is fully integrated with the city's public transportation network and directly serves the residents of the district Siloé.
More information about El MIO is in the official web site of Metrocali.
Cali is served by over 20 coach companies which gather in the Central Bus Station. The Station is centrally located near the old (now redundant) railway station, which serves now as Metrocali's headquarters. Depending on the company and the destination, the vehicles range from minibuses to large coaches. Recently, in their last float renovation wave, Colombian coaches operators have opted for Brazil's Marcopolo buses. Informal stops exist for the short destination rides all along the way from Central Station to the town of destination. In some cases, it is enough for a passenger to ask to get off the bus for the bus to stop.
The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Cali, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 88 min. 23% of public transit riders, ride for more than 2 hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 21 min, while 43% of riders wait for over 20 minutes on average every day. The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 5.6 km, while 3% travel for over 12 km in a single direction.
Cali and Valle del Cauca constitute the third largest economic center of Colombia, being about national and international economic exchange. The City is a must from / to the south and the border with Ecuador, and is connected with the world through the seaport of Buenaventura.
Building of Banco de Occidente.
The economic transformation of Cali and the Valle del Cauca during the twentieth century and its crisis of the century, and the outlook to the new century have been the subject of deep analysis of financial and academic institutions. This section is based on the analysis and recommendations of the report Cali Colombia – Toward a City Development and Strategy published by the World Bank in 2002, and the Regional Economic Situation Reports (ICER) published quarterly by the DANE.
Traditionally, Cali and the department have been space farm, the same as during the colonial times out with the mines, production shaft. In the early twentieth century the city's economy was concentrated in the production of sugar, based on an agricultural model in which large tracts of land were cultivated with minimum use of labor. As a result, a few families owned vast areas of land in one of the most fertile regions of the country. This was an important factor in determining the power relations and the organization of the city through the twentieth century.
In the period 1910–1930 the city's economy shifted its focus from an agricultural model to become a commercial node at the national level through the development of basic infrastructure such as construction of the railway to Buenaventura and the creation of the department of Valle del Cauca with Cali designated as its capital.
Although the industrial vallecaucana revolution of Cali did not begin until the third decade of the twentieth century, some companies had already begun to build the industrial development of the region, as the printing company Carvajal y Cia (which began operations in 1904). In 1929 there is the creation of Soap Varela Hermanos, in the 1930s other industries begin to grow as large scale factories of gas and beer, printing and cigarettes. Smaller companies also appeared focusing on textile clothing, chemicals, chocolates, building materials, leather articles and furniture.
In 1940 Cali had already ceased to be a single point of trade and its economy was focused on industry. A few years before the decade began a major investment of foreign capital led to the establishment of many factories and local business grew to multinational corporations; as Croydon in 1937, Cementos del Valle in 1939, and Carton Colombia in 1941; Goodyear and Colgate-Palmolive came from the US in 1941. Later came other corporations like General CEAT (Centelsa) in 1955, and pharmaceutical laboratories were based in the Cauca Valley between 1940 and 1960, as Tecnoquímicas and Baxter.
The flourishing industrial city attracted waves of immigration in the 1950s and 1960s. In these decades there were important partnerships between the public and private sectors, as productive sector support to programs of business administration at the University of Valle. The growth of the University training professionals and technologists, as well as infrastructure development, were crucial for the further development of industry and trade in the Valle del Cauca. This trend continued in the 1970s and early years of the next decade. Public investment in infrastructure reached significant levels benefiting not only the production sector but also the growing population, this made Cali and Valle del Cauca models further development across the country.
In 1998, when the economic crisis became apparent, the national government could not respond to the call of the local politicians and mayors had to introduce austerity measures under pressure from creditors, which caused the vallecaucano development model to collapse. Additionally, the tightening of the country's internal conflict required a tax increase aimed at national war spending, leaving less room for local governments to collect, through taxes, the money required for their development plans.
According to statistics by DANE, in 1995 the annual growth of GDP of the Valle del Cauca region was almost twice the national rate. For 1997, GDP increased marginally vallecaucano even 1%. In 1999 the country's economic recession was felt with a depression that made the economy were reduced showing GDP growth of 4%. Since then GDP has grown Valley ups and downs, but its percentage share nationwide has been falling since 1995 as shown in the graph.
The department contributes significantly to the national economy. According to statistics for the year 2005 as agricultural Valley contributes 5.37% of the national production, which is relatively low compared with Antioquia (15.48%) or Cundinamarca (12.81%). In fisheries products, the region ranks first with vallecaucana contributing 36% of the country's total production. As for mining, the Valley is not a metal region; however, in terms of non-metallic minerals the department contributes 8.15% of the value added across Colombia.
A 2007 panoramic showing Cali, main city in western Colombia.
The industry vallecaucana contributes 13.81% of the national value added, second only to Bogotá with a 25.39% and 18.20% with Antioquia. Particularly, the industries of food, beverages and snuff are important items of the Valley's economy contributing 16% of national value added, equaled or surpassed only by Antioquia and Bogotá. On trade, nationally Bogotá has a 32.22%, 13.25% Antioquia and Valle 11.34%. In the Valley transportation services has 12.52% of value added.
The Consumer Price Index (IPC) of Cali has been since the last decade one of the lowest among Colombian cities. About 78% of Cali's people are of working age (over 18 years). In 2005 for the first time in six years the city presented an occupancy rate above 60%, which confirms the good state of the economy, led primarily by growth in manufacturing, agriculture and trade among others.
Drogas La Rebaja, one of Colombia's largest pharmacy store chains, is based in Cali. Banco de Occidente,A Grupo Aval company, has head office in cali.
In 2014 Cali suffered 1,545 murders at a rate of 66.4 per 100,000 inhabitants, and had a further reduction to 51.5 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2017. In 2006 the budget for security in Medellín was more than four times higher than in Cali, and in Bogota (which is 3.5 times more populous) the budget was more than 7 times higher.
Between 1 January and 1 December 2011 there were 1870 intentional homicides in the municipality of Cali, which is considered a 5% increase compared to 2010. The surge in violence in Cali in 2011 has partly been attributed to what has been described as an ongoing 'mafia war' between the 'neo-paramilitary' groups Los Rastrojos and Los Urabeños, both involved in drug trafficking. Los Rastrojos are considered the 'heirs' of the Cali Cartel and Los Urabeños have their roots in Colombia's coast. Los Rastrojos are accused of committing at least 80 murders in Cali in 2011. According to Colombia's most influential weekly magazine, Semana, there are over 1,700 assassins working for various groups in the city. 3.8 percent of street addresses account for 100 percent of homicides.
During 2012, there was a decrease in homicides, with 24 cases fewer than for the same period last year, and there were 294 fewer people injured, which means a reduction of 8% from a year previous. There were 323 fewer car thefts, i.e. a decrease of 21% over the same period of 2011. There were 152 fewer residential burglaries, which means a reduction of 17% from the same period of 2011. There was also strengthening in technology citywide by the installation of 254 security cameras.
Concejo de Cali (City council).
Cali is governed by a mayor who is elected for a four-year term. Under the mayor, there are several administrative departments and secretaries. Mayor's elections started in 1986, followed by Governors' in 1992. Before these dates, all Colombian regional executive-branch leaders were appointed by the President himself. The first elected mayor was Carlos Holmes Trujillo of the Liberal Party. Unlike other Colombian cities, Cali has not properly adapted to the quite new Mayor's election system. The city has had some unsuccessful stories with some of its elected mayors, two of them being removed from office. Some argue this is caused by Aguablanca's huge mass population often driven to vote based in small short-termed gifts from populist candidates fully aware of this District needs. There were recorded cases of candidates giving bricks, cement and other stuff to the District's leaders in exchange for shifting votes to their campaigns.
The City Council is composed of 21 members, elected by citywide circumscription for four-year terms. There is no relation between the number of City Counselors and the number of 'comunas' of the city, which is a merely administrative division created to facilitate the city's management.
EMCALI: Energy, telecommunications, aqueduct and sewage systems services.
Emsirva: Public waste management company for the city of Cali.
A large part of the population relies on the public educational system, which is underfunded and in some cases improperly managed. Schools are under municipal or departmental management, the former being the most common. The Municipal Secretary of Education manages a large part of the city's budget, which has brought some politicians to try to control it as their personal organization.
The city is endowed with the most sophisticated and high-quality secondary education institutions and universities in the region. Most universities are located in the south part of the city. Among the most prestigious are University of Valle (Public), Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Private), and Universidad Icesi (Private).
University Autónoma of Occidente (UAO).
University Icesi and farallones of Cali.
University of Valle. (Public) It is the largest higher education institution by student population in the southwest of the country, and the third largest in Colombia, with more than 30,320 students. Its Faculties of Medicine, Engineering, Sciences, and Social Sciences rank as the best of the region. The first three rank at the top in the national level. Unlike every other Colombian public university, Univalle does not have a Law School.
Universidad Autónoma de Occidente. (Private) Founded in 1975, this private institution has more than 7,400 students.
Pontifical Xavierian University. (Private) Founded in 1970, Pontifical Xavierian University Seccional Cali serves as the sectional campus of the Pontifical Xavierian University of Bogotá. PUJ (by its Spanish acronym) is a private higher education institution which currently has more than 5,700 students enrolled in its seventeen undergraduate and twenty graduate programs offered by its faculties of engineering, economic and administrative sciences, humanistic and social sciences and health sciences. With over 36,000 printed books spanning a wide array of academic topics, the university's library is one of the biggest in the city. Beginning in 2010 the university will inaugurate its Medicine school bringing its total number of undergraduate degrees to seventeen. Pontifical Xavierian University is one of the most prestigious universities in the city of Cali offering first class education through its accredited and award-winning programs.
Universidad Icesi. (Private) University ICESI was founded in 1979 by regional entrepreneurs looking to solve the lack of highly skilled professionals in the areas relevant to their business. It offers undergraduates programs, specializations and masters. It has more than 2,950 students and a library with over 30,000 books. On the 2nd semester of 2009, the university started its highly anticipated Medicine School, which will use the Valle del Lily Health Center as its training and educational facility.
Universidad San Buenaventura. (Private) Founded in 1970 by the Franciscan Order, it's a private institution of higher education that serves like sectional for University of St. Buenaventura of Bogotá.
Universidad Santiago de Cali. (Private) The University Santiago de Cali also known as La santiago or USC is a private corporation and institution of higher education founded in 1959.
Escuela Nacional Del Deporte. (Mixed) Founded in 1984, the Escuela Nacional Del Deporte (Sports National School) is, along with Politecnico Jaime Isaza Cadavid (Medellín), the most important institution in Colombia for physical activity, physical therapy and sports science.
La Manzana del Saber. Located in the south of the city, La Manzana del Saber is today the most important educational project in Cali. There is already the Natural Science Museum, the "Abracadabra" Interactive Museum, the Jorge Garcés Borrero public library and the Pedagogical Research and Innovation Centre. The project construction phase has taken many years, the demolition of a whole block of the city will be undertaken to build the complex.
Casa de la cultura Proartes. Since 1871 this house has been a great influence in the culture in Cali. The building was restored in 1991 and it contains exhibition saloons, scenarios and a cinema.
Centro cultural de Cali. Its design was under the charge of the famous Colombian architect Rogelio Salmona, who built as well the Torres del Parque in Bogotá and several other buildings. Since 1997 it is considered the cultural center in the city and headquarters of the Municipal secretaries of tourism and culture.
Lugar a Dudas. The cultural center dedicated to contemporary art was created under the direction of Oscar Muñoz. It's a place offering exhibition saloons, weekly film screenings, a contemporary art focused library and residencies for both local and international artist, amongst many other things.
"La Feria de Cali" is the main cultural event in the city. It is a fair that has been celebrated since 1957. The fair is celebrated from December 25 to the 30th. The fair is known also as "La Feria de la Caña" (sugar cane fair) and "La Feria de la salsa" (Salsa fair). People enjoy many activities like the tascas, salsa concerts, bullfights, parades, athletic activities, competitions and cultural exhibitions.
Cali is also known as the Salsa Capital "Capital de la Salsa" given the city's love for that genre of Afro-Caribbean music. In early July there is the Summer Salsa Festival which lasts for one week. It usually includes concerts by some of the world's great salsa bands as well as dance shows and "melomano" competitions in which salsa connoisseurs try to outdo each other by digging deep into the archives of salsa music and related sounds to find and reveal long lost tunes. On any night of the week small salsa clubs offer a variety of Afro-Caribbean beats. Furthermore, the last Friday of every month, the city has an event known as "Delirio", already internationally known with the most spectacular salsa shows presented, "Las Vegas" style. It has become a very important attraction for tourists to visit the city.
At a professional level, Cali hosts only football teams. At the amateur level there are Basketball, Football, Volleyball, and other sports. Nationally, Cali's athletes compete with Bogotá's and Medellín's in most sport tournaments and championships.
Cali has two main athletic events, a mid-year half marathon ½ Maraton de Cali and a December 10k race called Carrera del Río Cali.
Pascual Guerrero Stadium seen from the Cristo Rey.
Estadio Olímpico Pascual Guerrero Cali, during 2011 FIFA U-20 World Cup.
Opening Ceremony in 1971 Pan American Games.
Santiago de Cali is recognized as the sports capital of Colombia. It is the first Colombian city to have hosted the Pan American Games (see 1971 Pan American Games), and has also won the National Olympic Games more than any other region in Colombia. The city also counts with one of the most developed sport infrastructures in the country. Many sporting events have taken place in the city.
Cali has one football stadium: Estadio Olímpico Pascual Guerrero, which is currently home of América de Cali and Atlético F.C., and was home of Deportivo Cali until 2015 when they moved to Estadio Deportivo Cali, located in nearby Palmira. Deportivo Cali is the only Colombian football club that owns its stadium, since all other football stadiums in Colombia are government-owned. Other important places of sporting activity in the city are "Coliseo El Pueblo", a covered arena center used for all types of events which hosted the 2016 FIFA Futsal World Cup, and Coliseo Evangelista Mora, mainly used for basketball. Cali will host the inaugural Junior Pan American Games in 2021.
Cali's infrastructure has permitted it to host several major international sports competitions such as the 1971 Pan American Games, numerous Games of the Pacific, the final phase of the 1982 World basketball championship, the 1999 World's Roller Hockey Championships, women's basketball and swimming events, Pan American Speed-Track Cycling Championships, and most recently the World's Roller Speed Skating Championships. Cali was the host city of the World Games 2013.
Santiago de Cali is home of Colombia's Deportivo Cali and América de Cali football clubs. Many well-known football players were either born in Cali or have played in one of its clubs. Willington Ortiz, Carlos Valderrama, Ántony de Ávila, Álex Escobar, Julio César Falcioni, Jorge Orosmán da Silva, Jorge Bermúdez, Giovanni Hernández, Hugo Rodallega, Mario Yepes, Faryd Mondragón, Adolfo Valencia, and Óscar Córdoba are a sample of them.
According to CONMEBOL, América ranks 2nd and Deportivo Cali 3rd in the Colombian national ranking, which ranks itself 3rd in the CONMEBOL ranking. América was ranked as the world's 2nd best club in 1996 by the IFFHS (International Federation of Football History & Statistics) and 35th in the All-Time Club World Ranking of the IFFHS. Cali is the Colombian city having hosted the most Colombian first division finals, with 40 matches being played in the stadium. América has won 13 titles, and has been runner-up 7 times. Deportivo Cali has won 9 titles and ended as runner-up 14 times. They have played finals against each other three times. In the early 50's, current amateur team Boca Juniors lost two finals.
Though there is no current basketball team that calls Santiago de Cali home, basketball is the second-most played sport in the city. Basketball is a preferred sport at the city center location "La Carrera del Cholado". Football still surpasses basketball in sport popularity. Bullfighting is staged during the Cali Fair which is held in December. It is anticipated by many citizens in Cali, as well as by many people in all Colombia. The bullfighting ring is called La Plaza de Toros de Cañaveralejo, located southwest of Cali.
Rugby, tennis, swimming, archery, and ultimate are also played in Cali. The IAAF World Youth Championships in Athletics was hosted in Cali in July 2015. Cali also hosted the 2015 Underwater Rugby World Cup.
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This article is about the city in Colombia. For the country, see Armenia. For other uses, see Armenia (disambiguation).
Armenia (Spanish pronunciation: [aɾˈme.nja]) is the capital of Quindio Department. It is one of the main centers of the national economy and of the Colombian coffee growing axis. Armenia is a medium-sized city and part of the "coffee triangle" with Pereira and Manizales.
The city was founded on October 14, 1889, by Jesús María Ocampo, also known as "Tigrero" (translates to "tiger killer") due to his love of hunting jaguars, known locally as tigers. Ocampo came from Anaime, Tolima, looking for shelter in the mountains of Quindío because he was running away from General Gallo. He paid one hundred pesos in gold coins to Antonio Herrera for the land on which to build a fonda, or trade center, not only for himself but also for other colonists who came from Salento, Antioquia, Manizales, and areas surrounding the Quindío River and La Vieja River. Ocampo then proceeded to sell land for settlement. To encourage settlement, Ocampo returned to Anaime to ask for the help of his friend Juan de la Cruz Cardona and to marry thirteen-year-old Arsenia Cardona. Six months after its founding, in August 1890, Armenia had reached a population of 100 people, allowing it to gain legal recognition by the government. The city was initially called Villa Holguín, in honor of Carlos Holguín Mallarino, the then-current president of the country. It is believed that the name was changed to Armenia after the country of the same name, in memory of the Armenian people murdered by the Turkish Ottomans in the Hamidian Massacres of 1894–97 and later the Armenian Genocide of 1915–23. It is also known by its nickname, "Ciudad Milagro" (Miracle city).
Despite Armenia's quickly expanding economy at the time, the means of transport were still very limited. The main form of transporting people and merchandise was by mule, due to the mountainous terrain surrounding the city. It was not until the construction of the first asphalt road—in 1927 to Zarzal in the Department of Valle del Cauca—that transport was improved.
Nowadays, the city combines its contemporary development with all of the traditional ways of its forefathers' heritage, like the historic Liberator Pathway, the path used by Colombia's 19th century liberator Simon Bolívar to move his army between the west of the country and Santa Fe de Bogotá during his successful independence campaign from Spain, currently one of the top-two tourist destinations in Colombia. Due to its namesake, many Armenian tourists also visit the city.
It is estimated that a large earthquake, approximately 6–7 in magnitude, will hit this area every 20 years due to high seismic activity. It can be explained by the Galapagos Triple Junction, which is located at the northwest corner of the South American Plate where the Nazca, Cocos, and Pacific plates converge.
Due to the link with the country Armenia, a memorial for the victims of the Armenian Genocide was built in the city. This is the only Armenian Genocide memorial in Colombia.
The city of Armenia is located 290 kilometers southwest of Bogotá at a height of 1,483 m., Geographical coordinates, the following: 4.3270° north latitude 75.4120° west longitude. It has an area of 121 km2 (47 sq mi). It limits the north with the municipalities of Circasia and Salento, west to the town of Montenegro, east to the town of Calarcá and south with the municipality of La Tebaida. Armenia is situated close to the center Cordillera about 35 km (22 mi) from the top of the line. The climate of the city of Armenia is varied, the average temperature ranges between 18–23 °C (64–73 °F).
Armenia is often referred to as "Ciudad Milagro" (Miracle City) due to its fast urban growth and development. The city center includes a nine block pedestrian walkway, lined by shops and restaurants, through the center of the city and connecting two of the city's plazas. The local economy main trade is still based on the production of coffee, plantains, and bananas. To the south of the city as it gets closer to sea level, the temperature favors not only Quindio's agricultural economy, but a renewed tourist industry in the shape of villas for rent, theme parks, eco-hotels and family day leisure centers, not excluding all-time favorites like local cuisine restaurants, exhibition centers and country clubs specializing in fishing, tennis, golf, cart racing and other sports. Many traditional plantations still exist in the surrounding area and many offer bed and breakfast accommodation and "ecotourism" packages. The city has a modern international airport El Edén International Airport with daily links to Bogotá, Cartagena de Indias, Medellín and Fort Lauderdale which make the city a convenient choice for conferences, meetings, business and social events.
El Edén International Airport is nearby.
The renewed tourist industry has activated the popularity of the city and its surrounding areas. The region's northern area is the gateway to Los Nevados national park, where the highest peaks in central Colombia rise to perpetual snows at more than 4,500 metres. At the Quindio side of the foothills of this national park, lies the Cocora Valley, where the National Tree of Colombia, the wax palm grows, and whose municipality of Salento is a tourist destination known for its culinary delicacy (fried river trout), for its guadua crafts and furniture (the strong native bamboo cane), its art galleries and its position as a bohemian centre of regional artists. Tourists and hikers walk from here to reach the views of the park.
The Chapoleras beauty pageant, with costumes depicting the traditional coffee harvesting dress in the fashion of late 19th century, and the various dances, is known in the entire country.
Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Armenia (Colombia).
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Armenia, Colombia.
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Here is a list of the potential winners and losers based on Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposed 2019-20 budget. The actual winners and losers will depend on negotiations between the General Assembly and governor. Negotiations usually end in June.
Taxpayers: No increases in state income or sales taxes.
School districts: $200 million more for basic public school education, $50 million more for special education and $50 million for early childhood education.
$13 million of the new basic education money would pay for raising the minimum starting teacher salary to $45,000. Many districts, including Scranton, have starting salaries well below that.
Low-wage earners: Wolf proposes boosting the hourly minimum wage from $7.25 to $12 on July 1 and by 50 cents an hour more each July until it reaches $15.
Job seekers: The budget has a heavy emphasis on preparing state workers for available jobs through training, tuition aid and other means.
Large corporations: They could see their net income tax drop from 9.99 percent to 5.99 percent by 2024, but that happens only if the assembly fully closes their Delaware tax loophole.
Overdose victims: $1.5 million more to get naloxone to emergency crews responding to opioid overdoses.
Senior citizens: Another $6.1 million for attendant care services for physically impaired senior citizens and $2.8 million more for investigations into elder abuse.
Community college students: About $8 million more to help with their tuition.
Farmers: About $2 million to establish a center to develop business for farmers, $6 million more to encourage best farming practices, $1 million to increase awareness of farming jobs because of expected upcoming retirements, $5 million for quicker responses to farming disasters and $1 million for urban farming collaboration and growing industries like hemp, hops and hardwoods.
State police: They get almost $9.7 million for three new cadet classes to help deal with staffing shortages. The state also begins to charge the 1,700 municipalities without police forces a fee to help pay for state police protection.
$7 million increase in funding, about 1.5 percent.
Liquor drinkers: Wolf ups the state liquor store budget for buying inventory $18.1 million.
Property taxpayers: Unlike in his first budget, Wolf does not try to swap higher sales and income taxes for lower school property taxes. The Republican-led assembly has been unable to muster enough votes for cutting property taxes.
Business owners: Any business owners who do not pay at least $12 an hour could have to hike the wages of their employees.
Towns lacking police forces: Wolf proposes charging them for state police protection.
State-related universities: The same funding as last year for Temple, Lincoln, Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh.
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Common belief has that in Court a person is innocent until proven guilty .Less known fact is that in Queensland legal system the prosecution can throw at the accused person , with impunity , any lie they think may stick ( adversary system ) and it is the job of the accused ( or his lawyer ) to prove that a lie is the lie .
Even the fact of being in the dock is prejudicial because due to the influence of the propaganda popular belief is that the police and prosecution would not charge not guilty person and members of the jury go with the flow as well , not to mention the fact of the manipulation of the court process by a trial judge , creating distractions and confusion .
In the court the most blatant lies were thrown at me ( I point some of them in ISSUE 3 ) , again possibly with the encouragement of police and prosecution themselves , who are only interested in improving the statistics of ' solving the crimes ' and having ' the successful prosecution ' .
a determined and experienced liar has a distinct advantage .
If you have lots of money for the top silk or are lucky enough to find an honest and decent lawyer you may get away . Otherwise , the system is in place to destroy you while maintaining the pretences of the ' rule of law ' and ' fair trial ' .
Being aware of that outlook at my situation I wonder if ever there was a case of a self represented person having his arguments accepted by Australian courts .
In trying to bring issues , ' omitted ' by my treacherous legal representation , to the HC judges attention I have been faced with red tape farce which is supposed to exist only in other allegedly corrupt legal system .
- not acknowledging own mistakes .
There is the officially sanctioned shameful discrimination and prejudice against people daring to represent themselves in courts .
Self represented people in Australia do not have the same rights as the people who can afford to hire a good lawyer – High Court rule 41.10.5 - they have to go through the filtering and censoring process before being allowed to reach the High Court appeal procedure .
By contrast , people with money who can afford to hire a good lawyer , go directly to the High Court formal proceedings .
Therefore , the preferential treatment is given to people with money resulting in unequal justice for the citizens of the same country , because it depends on financial circumstances .
Awarding one group of citizens certain legal rights and disallowing the same rights to others is also a clear violation of Human Rights Declaration , articles 2 and 7 – and that is also overlooked by Australian legal industry because it happens in Australia and not in China , Russia , Burma or Iran.
the Registrar to draw up , sign and seal an order dismissing the application .
Such situation is tolerated by the same people who are so eager to patronise and lecture those in other jurisdictions about ' justice ' , ' rule of law ' ,' fairness ' , ' integrity ' and ' honesty ' .
In reality , when it comes to Australian citizens facing Australian legal system , there is blatant disregard for procedural fairness , there is abuse of legal process , violations of principles of natural justice and contempt for the equality before the law .
After several months of haggling I was allowed to present my written application to the panel of two judges acting as censors , who dismissed it as not valid for the HC to consider .
I have great respect for the High Court as the highest legal institution in this country , however few statements in relation to my application necessitate response .
Some of the HC judges reasoning was that few issues I am raising were not presented to the Supreme Court Appeal judges by my legal representation , therefore the HC judges cannot look at them .
That is in spite of the fact that in my application I indicated to judges that some issues were not raised by my legal representation for the Supreme Court appeal . I indicated to them that it was beyond my control and against my specific instructions to the lawyer in writing .
The judges chose to comment on one of issues saying that the selection as the trial judge of the person who was involved in my prosecution as the director of Qld DPP was OK .
( and how do they know that she was not ! ).
- The level of trial judge personal involvement in my prosecution , while the director of Queensland DPP , can only be established by the enquiry or investigation and not the conjecture.
- in the view of commonly held belief ( supported by statements by politicians , persons of influence , lawyers and judges themselves ) of the idea that the Australian judiciary is independent , that there is demarcation , very strict separation between the judiciary and other powers of the state to preserve the independence of the judiciary – the fact of the association of the member of judiciary with the persecuting section of the state machinery , in relation to the same matter , obliterates the motion of the independence of judiciary .
There are some very limited statements concerning the other issues raised by me relating to the conduct of the trial judge during the trial and to the issue of DPP using the fabricated evidence to secure conviction .
and saying to them – ' you boys and girls can do whatever you like , any lie and any perfidy is acceptable ' . So much for the claimed and professed ' ethics ', ' integrity ' and ' rule of law ' .
If it happened in any other non anglo country lawyers and judges here would be jumping up and down full of indignation at the blatant abuse of the fair trial principle .
I brought the omission of that issue for the appeal , by my treacherous legal representation , to the attention of Legal Services Commissioner and then in the Supreme Court of Queensland trying to overturn his decision not to investigate lawyer Peter Russo.
- Is it ' professional courtesy ' of not bringing such issues in courts ?
- Is it an appalling concept that Qld DPP would be suspected of such conduct ?
- Is it a ' code of silence ' ?
The issue of the trial judge denying me the submission , to examine the accuser in court by the doctor to determine the truth behind his statements , was rejected as not valid as well .
Those 2 HC judges concluded that the trial judge had the right to exercise her discretion .
However , as the result of that trial judge ' discretion ' the prosecution avoided having their witness being exposed as liar , shown as committing perjury and discredited in front of jury and I lost the opportunity to show that I was not the person who attacked first .
The accuser was granted the privilege to lie .
So where is my right to fair trial and the right to defend myself effectively in court against false accusations ? Isn`t it the human rights abuse by depriving me the right to a ' fair trial ' ?
How can the truth be shown in courts if the trial judge ( a person who just few months before was herself a director of Queensland DPP ) is openly protecting the prosecution case against me ? For mere mortals it would be called ' aiding and abetting ' .
- Trial judge blatantly protects the prosecution case against me and the prosecution witness from being shown as a liar in court .
- Lawyers , specifically asked to bring that issue before the appeal judges attention treacherously avoid doing that .
- The appeal judges obviously cannot discuss issues which were not brought before them .
- High Court judges are not interested in the case of the mockery of justice .
What has been done to me by all elements of the legal system is not ' just ' .
I believe that miscarriage of justice had happened by my persecution in the situation when I was lawfully defending myself against an armed attacker .
Outcome of the trial and the conviction was also the result of me being incompetent own counsel , overwhelmed by the lack of knowledge of legal procedures , manipulation and mental distress due to personal involvement .
However , those facts are completely disregarded in Courts where only ' points of law ' have legitimacy .
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Escape from a domain of attraction, or more generally the transition between two deterministic steady states driven by fluctuations, has wide applicability in biology, chemistry, economics, engineering, and physics (Klein 1952, Brinkman 1956, Kubo et a/. 1973, Arnold 1974, van Kampen 1977, Schuss 1980, Ricciardi and Sato 1990). Many of the ideas go back to Hans Kramers, a master of modern physics (ter Haar 1998) who modeled chemical reactions as Brownian motion in a field of force (Kramers 1940). Other introductions to the problem from the perspective of physics or chemistry can be found in van Kampen (1981b), Gardiner (1983), Gillespie (1992) and Keizer (1987). In biology, the classic paper of Ludwig (1975) brings to bear many of the tools that we have discussed. The more mathematical side of the question is interesting and challenging because the problems involve large deviations (Bucklew 1990). There are ways to use the method of thinking along sample paths to understand the general problem (Freidlin and Wentzell 1984), but the mathematical difficulty rises rapidly.
The Theory of Is/and B/ogeography spawned an industry (a good place to start is Goel and Richter-Dyn (1974)). Indeed, the late 1960s were heady times for theoretical biology. In the remarkable period of the late 1960s, optimal foraging theory (MacArthur and Pianka 1966, Emlen 1966), island biogeography (MacArthur and Wilson 1967), and metapopulation ecology (Levins 1969) developed. The theories of optimal foraging and island biogeography developed rapidly and led to experiments, and the development of new fields such as behavioral ecology. On the other hand, metapopulation theory languished for quite a while before a phase of development, and the subsequent development in the 1980s was mainly theoretical (see, for example, Hanski (1989)). The rapid success of island biogeography and optimal foraging theory relative to metapopulation ecology teaches us two things. First, the developers of optimal foraging theory and island biogeography provided a prescription: (i) measure a certain set of empirically clear parameters, and (ii) given these parameters, compute a quantity of interest. Levins did not do this as explicitly. For example, in classical rate-maximizing optimal foraging theory as we discussed at the start of the book, one measures handling times of, energy gain from, and encounter rates with, food items, and then is able to predict the diet breadth of a foraging organism. In classical island biogeography, one measures per capita birth and death rates and carrying capacity of an island and is able to predict the mean persistence time. On the other hand, it is not exactly clear what to measure in metapopulation theory or how to apply it. Indeed, authors still revisit the original Levins model trying to operationalize it (Hanski 1999). Second, Levins published his seminal paper in an entomology journal and on biological control. In the heady times of the late 1960s, such ''applied'' biology was scorned by many colleagues. A very interesting discussion of the role of theory in conservation biology is found in Caughley (1994), which caused an equally interesting rejoinder (Hedrick et a/. 1996).
Catastrophic changes in population size can occur for many reasons, and in the past decade or so there has been increasing recognition of the role of catastrophes in regulating populations. Connections to the literature can be found in Mangel and Tier (1993, 1994), Young (1994), Root (1998), and Wilcox and Elderd (2003).
Mangel and Tier (1993) show that the second moment of the persistence time satisfies S(n) = — 2M—11T(n) from which the variance and coefficient of variation of the persistence time can be calculated. By using that calculation, they conclude that persistence times are approximately exponentially distributed. Ricciardi and Sato (1990) provide a more general discussion of first-passage times.
Figure 4). It is worthwhile to wonder when the diffusion approximation gives valid conclusions for life histories that do not meet the assumptions of the model (Wilcox and Possingham 2002).
In general, we will need to estimate extinction risk and mean time to extinction from time series that may often be short and sparse. This presents new challenges, both conceptually and technically (Ludwig 1999, Hakoyama and Iwasa 2000, Fieberg and Ellner 2000, Iwasa et a/. 2000).
As with some of the other topics in this book, there are probably 1000 papers or more on punctuated equilibrium, what it means, and what it does not mean (Gould and Eldredge 1993). A recent issue of Genet/ca (112-113 (2001)) was entirely dedicated to the rate, pattern and process of microevolution (see Hendry and Kinnison (2001) for the introduction of the issue). Pigliucci and Murren (2003) have recently wondered if the rate of macroevolution (the escape from a domain of attraction) can be so fast as to pass us by. West-Eberhard (2003) is a grand source of ideas for models (but not of models) in this area. The calculation by Lande (1985) using a very similar approach to the one that we did, with a quantitative genetic framework, warranted a news piece in Science (Lewin 1986). Jim Kirchner (Kirchner and Weil 1998, 2000; Kirchner 2001, 2002) has written a series of interesting and excellent papers on the nature of rates in the fossil record.
That is, the population declines exponentially and the coefficient of mortality characterizing the decline grows exponentially. However, in the past twenty years many studies of the oldest members of populations (see, for example, Vaupel et al. (1998)) have shown that mortality rates may not grow exponentially in the oldest individuals, but may plateau or even decline. Why this is so is not understood and is an area of active and intense research (Mueller and Rose 1996, Pletcher and Curtsinger 1998, Kirkwood 1999, Wachter 1999, Demetrius 2001, Mangel 2001a, Weitz and Fraser 2001, de Grey 2003a, b).
the portfolio grows at the same rate as the riskless investments, so that dn = rn dt. These conditions are sufficient to allow one to derive the diffusion equation for the price of the option. See Wilmott (1998) for an excellent introduction to such matters. Another terrific book on these topics, and which will seem familiar to you technically if not scientifically, is Dixit and Pindyck (1994).
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0.999998 |
How many wars did America lose and how many other countries were invaded by America?
I genuinely cannot understand how people can claim that Vietnam was not a defeat.
Failed to achieve military objectives.
Failed to achieve political objectives.
Failed to conduct the war in a moral fashion.
Claiming that it was only a "political" defeat implies that victory might have been achieved if the military had stuck it out.
The US dropped more bombs than all of WW2 and still couldn't win.
They killed around 2 MILLION people and still couldn't win.
American analysts at the time stated openly that victory was difficult to achieve because the "North" Vietnamese enjoyed ‘massive popular support'.
And that's just another way of saying that the people of the country wanted America out.
Which makes sense, since just a few years previously the two countries had been one.
Vietnam was colonised by France.
The Vietnamese forced France out.
The US split Vietnam into two sections.
The people of Vietnam objected, and forced America out.
Vietnam was repaired from being artificially split in two.
You can't win a war against against an entire population without resorting to genocide. And while US troops did try their hands at a little ‘light genocide' in civilian enclaves it thankfully did not become policy.
In every sense that matters it was a loss.
Then there's the Korean War which ended in a tie with China.
And if one looks at all of the proxy wars and terrorist actions the US conducted against countries all over the world, primarily in South America, then the list grows ever larger and more blood-soaked.
Americans will sometimes try to get around this by claiming theses "weren't really wars".
But here's the thing: the Vietnam was was primarily a war against an insurgency. And it was definitely war.
Therefore, other conflicts that were primarily fought against insurgencies can also be called ‘wars', and rightly so.
And many of these actions (for example the ‘Bay of Pigs' debacle) were definitely "losses".
Of course, when one looks at wars fought by US-backed fascists and terrorists one finds that those wars were usually won by America and its allies.
Guatemala: popular democratic government destroyed by US-backed fascists to protect the profits of US companies that pretty-much enslaved the population.
Iran: democratically-elected socialist government overthrown by the CIA, replaced by the Shah who sold out his country and oppressed its populace until replaced by the Ayatollah Khamenei. At which point things got even worse, for everyone.
Haiti: the CIA helped a brutally repressive dictator (Duvalier) to create a massive deathsquad that was even larger than the country's army. It murdered thousands of civilians in a reign of terror that paralyzed the country, and supported US interests.
Brazil: democratic government ousted by CIA-backed coup. Leading to the largescale looting of the economy by US companies and brutal repression of the population.
So yes, the USA usually wins their wars to support fascists, dictators, and terrorists.
USA did not lose any war, militarily. War of 1812 came close. Vietnam was not a military failure, but political defeat.
I am trying to be chronological here and avoiding most minor actions and CIA induced military coups..
2. Several Indian nations. They were not part of USA, untill Indians were killed by US infantry and territory taken.
9. Military involvements in Nicaragua, Honduras, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Panama, and Cuba.
14. Bombing against Laos and Cambodia.
The Vietnam War - yes, we won most of the battles (those who think we never lost a battle need to look at battles such as Landing Zone Albany following the Battle of the Id Drang), but we lost the war. Wars are more than military exercises, but are also exercises in politics and economics. We lost the war politically and a political loss is still a loss, even when you inflict much greater casualties on the enemy and win most of the battles.
The War of 1812 - If the British wanted to they could have recolonized the United States. Warfare in 1812, 1813, and 1814 produced a series of very bad military disasters. Our attempts to invade Canada were nothing more than comical, with American militia commanders refusing to cross international borders during a time of war. The Races at Bladensburg should still be remembered as a national disgrace as the American army fleeing at the sight of the British army resulted in the burning of Washington, D.C. And, our best win - the Battle of New Orleans - came two weeks after the peace treaty ending the war was signed in Paris. Luckily, for the United States, England was in a series of minor disagreements with this French chap named Napoleon. Although the British would beat Napoleon, the wars financially broke the British government and England was generally weary of war by 1815. As a result, the British, who dominated the War of 1812, let everything return to the status antebellum.
Red Cloud's War - fought shortly after the end of the American Civil War, the Sioux forced the United States to recognize their sovereignty over the Powder River Valley. About a decade later, the Sioux would lose the Powder River.
Second and Third Seminole Wars - the United States tried to evict the Seminoles from Florida, but the tribe retreated deeper into the Everglades. American commanders eventually declared victory and left the tribe in place.
Various Indian wars, particularly against the Comanche and Apaches in the Southwest. From the 1820s onward, white settlers fought against tribes in the Southwest, with the tribes frequently winning. It wasn't until the 1870s that the United States was able to control those areas.
As I recall the British tried to take America back after the Canadian offensive and were repulsed during the War of 1812. The War of 1812 was a draw until the Battle of New Orleans in which the British were soundly defeated. That basically gave the War an air of of American Victory. Even today when I talk to British Soldiers they even admit being defeated twice.
The problem with the Vietnam War was that it had a flawed body count strategy.
Sure we dropped more bombs on SE Asia then all of WW2. But that was mostly on empty jungle. North Vietnamese Cities barely sustained any damage. It wasn't a city carpet bombing war like WW2. Cut off the supply trails in Laos and Cambodia with troops holding grown and obliterate North Vietnamese Cities without pause and the War would have been won. Even NVA Commanding General Giap said so in his Biography. That's why the Wars outcome is so hard to except. Polticians and poor strategy kept the Americans from accomplishing Victory. After the major Communist Defeat during Tet 1968 and the Easter Offensive 1972 it would have been difficult for the NVA to have obtained victory if it had not been for the US Congress cutting off all military aid to South Vietnam in 1974.
What is nightlife like in Caracas, Venezuela?
You go out at your own risk. You better stay home if you love your life.
8147 | Does life have a reason?
9062 | What is socially acceptable today, but would have been horrifying during the Colonial era?
9640 | Is there still a British minority in India, and if there is do they have any different names?
7302 | What kinds of culture shock did you experience after you moved to Seattle?
8685 | What are some tips for a U.S. citizen visiting Japan for the first time?
1575 | If every country you have been to is represented by one tourist attraction, what would they be?
9586 | What is your biggest culture shock from leaving America?
1190 | What are the rules regarding where you can put tiny homes?
Which is the best place to visit in June 2018?
Does one need to get shots before traveling to India?
What is the naughtiest experience you've had while hiking?
As a nurse, what is the most attached you have ever gotten to a patient?
What is the most salacious thing that you've seen in public?
Did you visit Rajasthan during your visit in India?
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0.999943 |
Imagine you are lost in the woods with no cell reception. On what was supposed to be a pleasant hike through the wilderness, you find yourself lost with nothing but your camera equipment. You got turned around because you could not orient yourself to the environment, and got lost in the moment.
Positively ID everyone in your party in case you are separated.
Snap a picture of a trail or region map before you head out.
Document a survival journal of what you do and who you are with.
Photograph landmarks and other features to orient yourself when lost.
Make a travel atlas of emergency rooms and shelters as you travel your route.
Take a shot of people you meet to help authorities understand who is injured, dead, or missing.
Prove ownership of evacuation gear by taking a picture of your kit.
Take down bulletin information at an emergency shelter.
If you realize you might ever be lost in the woods or forced to evacuate your home, a camera could be a useful addition to your bug out bag, but you will have to consider which cameras are strong enough to assist your survival.
In an emergency or survival situation, you may have limited access to networks or power outlets. For this reason, a budget camera ideal for travel will be durable, relatively light, and extremely efficient at conserving energy.
Because travel cameras are so effective and sometimes necessary for documenting unfolding crises, taking inventory of survival gear, and identifying those you encounter along the way, you might want to add one to your bug out bag. In times that cause confusion and catastrophe, you do not want to rely on your memory and testimony to prove what damage was caused or who is still out there needing to be rescued.
A budget camera for travelling is a welcome addition to your emergency preparedness. Usually, they feature compact lenses and feather-weight design, but the best travel camera on a budget will go even further with HD video and up to 50 times optical zoom.
In a slim metal chassis, the Sony Cybershot offers 40 times optical zoom through a Clear Image Zoom G lens. Small, but not while sacrificing quality, this camera allows you to keep subjects in focus with a Lock-On feature that targets subjects even while they are in motion.
Its most noticed feature for survival is the ability to take excellent shots in low light conditions, so your images always come out crisp and clear of noise. Making it useful for everyday shots as well, the Sony Cybershot can easily connect to your home Wi-Fi or use NFC to pair with your phone.
Canon has designed a close- and a far-shot camera that features intelligent zooming and framing assistance to keep your photography sharp—even under pressure. The lens incredibly allows for a 50 times optical zoom while it captures full HD video under all lighting conditions.
For traveling, the camera was designed with an ergonomic fit and a premium feel that will encourage you to bring it everywhere. In everyday use, the camera is fully-featured, allowing you to easily connect to your wireless network for seamless and simple sharing.
Coming with a deluxe and compact travel bag, the ergonomic and boldly-colored Nikon COOLPIX can zoom an impressive 80 times while reducing handshaking with smart steadying. A 3-inch back display captures everything with clarity through nearly 1 million LCD pixels.
When traveling, nothing is out of sight for 80 times optical zoom. For everyday use, the camera simply connects to your network or phone using NFC and built-in Bluetooth.
Weighing just 1 pound, the Rebel by Canon is light on its feet and easy on your neck while boasting 18-megapixel capturing and a standard SLR Zoom. Fitting comfortably in the hand, the Rebel offers a liquid crystal monitor for viewing its full HD video quality and continuous shooting up to 3 frames per second.
Light enough for a trek through the wilderness and robust enough for everyday use, the Rebel is the complete package at an affordable price point.
For those seeking the simplicity and convenience of a point-and-shoot experience, the PowerShot ELPH by Canon is a sure bet with a unique combination of great power and low price. Capable of 10 times amplification with image stabilization, this camera intelligently selects the best settings based on your environment and light conditions.
With HD video quality and a 20-megapixel sensor, the Canon PowerShot offers the traveler all the ease of point-and-shoot with intelligent capturing for the everyday photographer.
Whether you are forced to evacuate, lost in the wilderness, or simply need to document your travels, there is a camera with power, style, and proficiency. Such a camera can help you when there is a need to document your experience, identify your fellow survivalist, and to prove your property—to name just a few uses.
All of these budget-friendly cameras were selected because of their advanced feature sets and lightweight profile for the traveler. It does not matter if you are seeking a point-and-shoot or need the best in crystal-clear quality, these are the best budget cameras for traveling. Give one of them a try through the links above.
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0.999975 |
What does a team leader do in Chick-fil-A?
Due to unemployment and the economy, it is good to know that there are decent jobs that still have good opportunities.
The team leader is doing a great job at Chick-fil-A if you're as energetic as people and want a well-thought out experience in the restaurant business. Chick-fil-A is a fast-food restaurant and regular restaurants for dining and service quality.
Team leader alone does not work at Chick-fil-A with a franchisee who owns the business and has the right to name the company and offers products in a unique menu in Chick-fil-A.
It's good to be a result-oriented and remain outstanding in all areas of service as the restaurant is constantly evolving to achieve perfection. Excellent written and verbal skills are also needed, as the staff of others will be directed and communicated the restaurant procedures.
So if you're planning a career in a restaurant industry and thinking about Chick-fil-At, remember, though, "Team Leader," you have to design a slightly dirty hands and lead a high-quality group high-quality foods and great services.
Job prospects can become a career and unemployment is very bad these days so consider this information if you are considering dining in the restaurant.
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0.999985 |
Ask Kate: When is it smart to refinance a home mortgage My husband and I bought our house in December 2006 with a 6.25% 30 year fixed rate, $200,000 loan with no points. We put 20% down, and with our renovations we estimate we have $60,000 to $80000 in equity.
We plan on owning the home for the next 10 to 15 years, when we plan to downsize once the kids graduate.
We recently found we could get a 5.25% rate, with no points and around $2000 in closing costs that could be rolled into the loan.
This would bring the loan back to nearly the $200,000 mark. Is one percent difference enough of a savings to refinance?
You be the judge! Based on what you just told me, after you refinance your home mortgage, it will take a year or so to reduce your mortgage balance back to where it is today.
I'm guessing by a 5.25% rate that you are going to switch from a 30 year fixed rate mortgage to a 15 year fixed rate mortgage. If that is the case, you will have your mortgage paid off before you downsize once your children graduate.
Another great choice for building equity faster is the 20 year fixed rate mortgage.
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0.923617 |
Hillary Rodham Clinton (born October 26, 1947) is a former First Lady (wife of former President Bill Clinton), currently serving New York in the United States Senate. Ms. Clinton and her husband have one child, Chelsea Clinton.
Born Hillary Diane Rodham in Chicago, Illinois and growing up in Park Ridge, Illinois, she attended Wellesley College and later Yale law school. She became a successful lawyer, and amongst other charity work chaired the Children's Defense Fund. She was a junior legal member of the Watergate investigation team and is a former lawyer for Wal-Mart. Just as her husband was the first President from the Baby Boom generation, she was its first First Lady. She is the first First Lady to hold the Master of Science degree (the second being Laura Bush).
Her early years in office are most associated with her saying that "It takes a village to raise a child". Her views have been frequently accused of being socialistic by Republicans who oppose Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Like her husband, she has been investigated for numerous alleged scandals; in every case, the investigations subsequently led to no criminal charges. She was widely criticized for interfering with the initial investigation of the death of Vince Foster. On January 26, 1996, she testified before a grand jury concerning the Whitewater scandal. She has also been labelled by her critics with a variety of nicknames.
When her husband was elected to the presidency in 1992, she was undoubtedly the most overtly political First Lady ever. President Clinton appointed her to a task force to devise reforms to America's health system which ultimately failed to pass through the Congress, even though both Houses were dominated by President's own party, the Democrats. Some would argue that strong public opposition to the proposed health care plan helped Republicans gain control of both Houses of Congress in the 1994 election.
After this failure and the succession of scandals surrounding the property dealings of the Clintons, she took a less prominent role.
During the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the last years of Clinton's presidency, Ms. Clinton publicly stuck by the President, initially claiming that the allegations of Bill's infidelities were the result of a "vast right-wing conspiracy", and even when they were confirmed, remaining by his side. The state and nature of their marriage has been the subject of much speculation, with some claiming it is a purely political arrangement and widespread stories about their regular arguments. They have however remained together (and whilst spending extended periods apart still vacation together, apparently) long after the political necessity for the marriage to stay together passed.
After a long "phoney war" and in a blaze of international media publicity, Ms. Clinton ran for the New York senate seat in 2000. Initially expected to face Rudy Giuliani, his cancer scare prevented one of the most eagerly anticipated political contests of the election cycle and instead she faced an inexperienced Republican opponent, Representative Rick Lazio. Despite considerable efforts by the Republican party to defeat her, and allegations of anti-Semitism, she comfortably won the traditionally Democratic seat on November 7, in part by campaigning extensively in traditionally Republican areas of Upstate New York. In winning her seat, she became the first-ever first lady to win elected office in the United States.
In 2001, Clinton received a record $8 million advance with Simon & Schuster for a book of her memoirs. The book was released in June 2003 and titled Living History (ISBN 0743222245).
There are many rumors that Senator Clinton may one day run for President. She is considered by many political analysts to be one of the most successful women politicians in American history, and has very high levels of name and image recognition, as well as previous White House experience. Sen. Clinton has denied she intends to run, and did not express any interest in running for the Democratic Party nomination in the U.S. presidential election, 2004, though she was urged to by many. Her critics allege this was due to the popularity of incumbent George W. Bush, who was too popular. It is thus believed that she may chose to run in the U.S. presidential election, 2008 assuming Bush would win re-election.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Living History, ISBN 0743222245. An autobiography.
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0.999848 |
Two output file names resolved to the same output path: "obj\Debug\Project1.Form1.resources"
This error comes while trying to run a windows form application I created. Some searches showed me that this occurs due to the occurrence of two .resx files. I have two .resx files in my application. Also I have two forms in my application. I created the second form by copying the first form and renaming and modifying the copy. The two .resx files are form1.resx and form2.resx. How can I remove this error?
Also copy the part below InitializeComponent.
Now this is very basic syntax. you might want to have a master form that holds all the forms so you won't create over and over new forms.
The design is up to you. this example will give you basics on how to open and close forms.
Im developing an android app using c# and it initially was building perfectly. I closed down Visual Studio 2015 and re-opened it, tried to build and I am now presented with the following error The file "obj\Debug\android\bin\packaged_resources"
Minimal working example that shows this error: from os import listdir, getcwd from os.path import isfile, join, realpath, dirname import csv def gd(mypath, myfile): # Obtain the number of columns in the data file with open(myfile) as f: reader = csv.
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0.777209 |
South African born John Chalsty, once described in Harvard Today as 'chair of (investment bank) Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette and member of everything else', has made a considerable mark on the work of finance in the United States since he left South Africa, for two years, to study at Harvard.
Born in Port Elizabeth in 1933, John Chalsty, an only child, moved with his parents to Pretoria at the age of five. There he attended CBC until he reached standard 8, then became a boarder at CBC Kimberley, from which he matriculated.
He chose to study at the University of the Witwatersrand because 'it was simply the best' and graduated with a BSc in chemistry and physics in 1952, a BSc(Hons) in 1953 and an MSc in Chemistry in 1954,alternating his studies with demonstrations of his talent for various forms of sport, particularly rugby. He was a member of the Wits First XV and the Wits Under-19 team and played a season with the Transvaal Under-19 team along with such national greats as Wilf Rosenberg, Clive Ulyate and Joe Kaminer.
At the end of 1954 Chalsty won the Stanvac Scholarship, which was open to all South African graduates, for study in the United States. He attended the Harvard Graduate School of Chemistry for one semester in 1955 and the Harvard Business School (HBS) for two years, starting in April 1955 and graduating with High Distinction in 1957. He was also a Baker Scholar (in the top 3% of the class).
In July 1957 John Chalsty took the first steps in the career that was to propel him to great heights in the corporate world of the United States, give him wealth of business building experience and ensure his position as a prominent and respected figure in the investment banking and securities industry. He joined Standard Oil (New Jersey) - now Exxon - where he worked for twelve years, the last five in Holland and London.
On his return to the US in 1969 he joined Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (DLJ) as a research analyst, going on to become Head of Research, Head of Investment Banking and, in 1986, President and Chief Executive Officer. In 1996 he became Chairman of DLJ and retained that position until 2000. DLJ was sold to Credit Suisse First Boston. He is now Chairman and co-owner of Muirfield Capital Management, a private hedge fund investment firm.
During his time with DLJ it grew from a small firm with 140 employees to become one of America's most successful investment banks, with more than 11 000 employees and a worldwide presence. With John Chalsty at its head, though, success did not mean all work and no play - he has a reputation for wanting people to have fun - and his personal style engendered loyalty and real affection in his employees.
Chalsty has been described as 'an internationalist with strong connections in the corporate and philanthropic communities' and his interests and involvements range far wider than his professional commitments. He is president of Lincoln Centre Theatre, vice-chairman of the Business Committee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a member of the boards of St. Barnabas Medical Centre, Colombia University, the American Ballet Theatre, the New York Philharmonic, the Hugh O?Brien Youth Foundation, and Executive Council on Foreign Diplomacy. He served as vice-chairman of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) from 1990 to 1994 and as a NYSE director from 1988-1994.
He is a member of the Board of Directors of Occidental Petroleum Corporation; Metromedia International Group, Inc and Creditex. He is also a member and past president and director of the Financial Analysts Federation. He was also a member of the board of Sappi Ltd.
In 1995 he was chairman of the New York Host Committee for the 50th anniversary of the United Nations.
When he stepped down as CEO of DLJ his colleagues commemorated his nearly thirty years of distinguished service to the firm by establishing the John S and Jennifer A Chalsty Fellowship at the Harvard Business School. The fellowship will be used to support black South African MBA students with the intention, says Chalsty, of helping 'young black South Africans enjoy the privilege of a HBS education' and giving them 'an opportunity to carry its message back to their country'.
Chalsty has bee honoured in numerous ways for his wide-ranging contribution to corporate and civic life in the United States. Among these acknowledgements is the Ellis Island Foundation's Medal of Honor. He has also been honoured by the Citizens Committee for New York City and by the President's Medal for Excellence awarded by Boston College to individuals who have distinguished themselves through personal of professional achievements which exemplify the ideal proclaimed in the University's motto, 'Ever to Excel'.
In 2001 he became Chairman of the United Nations Association of the USA, the nation?s largest grassroots foreign policy organization and the leading centre of policy research on the United Nations and global issues.
In recent years John Chalsty has reconnected with his original alma mater, assuming the chairmanship of the Mandela Institute's USA Advisory Board and extending his philanthropic embrace generously to Wits itself. He was also a supporter of the University of the Witwatersrand Fund, Inc (the USA charitable entity) and chaired, on behalf of the Mandela Institute, a major symposium on capacity building that was attended by representatives of prominent US institutions.
The University takes great pride and pleasure in conferring on John Steele Chalsty the degree of Doctor of Commerce, honoris causa.
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0.998559 |
We're big Jamie Oliver fans in our household, so we were looking forward to watching the new second season of Food Revolution, which begins with Jamie trying to bring his healthy eating campaign into the Los Angeles schools. Our 8-year-old second grader was also excited to watch -- but mostly, I think, because he wanted to stay up past his bedtime.
I was curious, though, about what sort of impact the show and Jamie's approach would have on my son too, so I decided to let him do the recap of the show.
Here's the play by play of the first episode of Season 2, as recapped between commercials by my second grader. I think you'll learn everything you need to know about the show right here.
Act 1: They had donuts and stuff and they had plastic on them. That's how my school is kind of. My school does have lots of plastic food.
The takeaway: Parents don't let your babies grow up and eat junk food.
Act 2: Meat is not good. It has chemicals in it. They put ammonia in it. I don't want a hamburger!
The takeaway: Don't eat stuff that's made out of pink slime.
Act 3: He went to the place. He waited. He spoke.
The takeaway: He still doesn't get to go to any schools.
Act 4: Jamie went to the fast food place, and he was saying, "What's in the burgers? What's in the shakes? Where do you get the food from? Could you take something off the menu?"
The takeaway: The guy is mad because he doesn't want to take stuff off his menu.
Act 5: Jamie Oliver made a hamburger. This [customer] tried both of them, and he liked the one from Jamie Oliver better than the one from the shop. Jamie made a milkshake with fruit and yogurt. The guy really didn't like the fruit yogurt one. He said, "This is not a milkshake. It's a smoothie!"
The takeaway: I would order the milkshake.
Act 6: Jamie got a bus. He got all the sugar in sugar milk and poured it in the bus because he wanted to show the parents how much calories their kids are getting. Lots and lots and lots of sugar.
The takeaway: Don't have sugar milk from L.A.
Overview: Jamie Oliver's trying to tell kids not to eat bad foods like cows and sugar milk and stuff like that. Why can't he go into the schools? Do you want kids to be healthy or not? Or are you just working to get money? That's what I think.
Did you watch the first episode of Food Revolution, Season 2? Did your kids watch? What was everyone's reaction?
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0.999981 |
On a hot summer day while boating on a lake, Luke's dad asks, "Luke, do you want to learn to waterski today?".
"Yes", says Luke. Luke's dad retrieves the waterskis, towing rope, and life jacket from the front of the boat. Luke puts on the life jacket and jumps into the lake water.
He slips on each ski and holds the rope handle while his dad provides instructions.
"When you're ready to ski, just say "Go!" And hold on tight!" says dad. Luke nervously hangs onto the rope, trying to keep his ski tips up. With mom watching from the boat, Luke yells "Go!".
Dad moves the boat slowly at first (to get the tow rope tight), then causes the boat to go faster. Luke holds on tight as he's lifted out of the water.
"I did it!" screams Luke as he glides across the top of the water. "I'm skiing!"
What is the temperature in this story?
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0.999702 |
Here's an example of how this happens: Suppose you have a word processing document, which you open in the application and to which you add some content. If the machine crashes before you save the file, you have lost all your changes but your original file will still be okay. If the machine crashes after you save the file, then you really haven't lost anything except the time it takes to reboot and reload the program. But what happens if the machine crashes during the exact moment when the disk is being written?
The answer is, "Things get very ugly." Since the new version of the file is physically overwriting all or part of the old version, the data can have some of each at the moment the drive stops writing. You end up with a file that you can't open because the internal format of its data is inconsistent with what the application expects.
This gets even worse if the drive was writing the metadata areas, such as the directory itself. Now instead of one corrupted file, you have one corrupted filesystem -- in other words, you can lose an entire directory or all the data on an entire disk partition. On a large system this can mean hundreds of thousands of files. Even if you have a backup, restoring such a large amount of data can take a long time.
Most PC operating systems have no good way to prevent the loss of a single file that was being written during a system failure. Modern systems, such as Linux, OS/2, and NT, however, do make an attempt to prevent and recover from the horrible metadata corruption case. To accomplish this, the system performs an extensive filesystem analysis during bootup. Well-designed filesystems often incorporate redundant copies of critical metadata, so that it is extremely unlikely for that data to be completely lost. The system figures out where the corrupt metadata is, and then either repairs the damage by copying from the redundant version or simply deletes the file or files whose metadata is affected. Losing files this way is bad, but it is much better than losing the whole partition.
Unfortunately, such an extensive diagnostic analysis requires a great deal of time. Even on a very fast PC, a large and heavily-used partition can require several minutes to check. Most of the time, however, the check is not really needed because the system was shut down normally, without a sudden crash. To prevent unnecessary delays, the operating system's normal shutdown process puts a status flag on the filesystem as it is unmounted, marking it as a "clean" filesystem. If a crash happened, the system never has the chance to mark the filesystem as "clean" and the bootup process knows that it needs to run the extensive filesystem tests just to be safe. A filesystem that has not been shut down cleanly is called, appropriately enough, a "dirty" filesystem.
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0.999795 |
Why it has taken EMI so long to release Boult's penultimate recording of The Planets, I have no idea. It may be because EMI has already released two of Boult's recordings of Holst's masterwork onto compact disc. Boult recorded this work no less than five times, three alone for EMI and once for Decca and once for Westminster. Each version of the work is distinctive and well worth hearing but it is his final EMI recording from 1979 in late analogue sound that has been the favorite of most critics. It is certainly his best recorded and probably best played performance (although the BBC Symphony in Boult's EMI 1944 recording plays quite stunningly) but I have always found this New Philharmonia recording from 1966 to be the most magical of all Boult's Planets, indeed I can't think of a single recording among the legion that have been made of this work that is superior.
The field is intensively competitive when it comes to The Planets. Star conductors who ignore Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten have added The Planets to their repertoire and bad performance of The Planets have been relatively rare. Some recordings suffer from being bland (Previn's Telarc remake) or slick (James Levine and Herbert Von Karajan both on DG). My least favorite recording is the bizarre and plodding Phase 4 Decca recording made by Bernard Herrmann. Stokowski's EMI recording from the late 1950s is, well, Stokowski. It's a poor representation of Holst but a fascinating document of how Stokowski could shape (and sometimes distort) a work to give it his distinctive sound. The approach taken by most British conductors has been comparatively straight and this has often resulted in very fresh interpretations including those by James Judd on Denon, Sir Alexander Gibson on Chandos and Vernon Handley on Tring. My three favorite non-Boult recordings are, however, by non-Brits. The Previn EMI from 1974, the Haitink Philips from 1971 and the Dutoit's Decca 1985 have just that extra amount of personality to set them apart from the competition. Some may question Haitink's choice of a very slow and steady tempo for Mars but no one can deny its impact or the dedication of the music making.
For authenticity, most listeners turn to Boult or Holst himself. Holst's two recordings of the work are interesting but not satisfying musically. Whether that's because of the primitive conditions under which the recordings were made or Holst's inabilities as a conductor is unknown to me. His performances sound too perfuntory for a work loaded with such brilliant color. Boult studied the work with Holst and I assume his recordings are the most faithful representations of all. Among his five recordings, only one is less than great. His recording for Westminster suffers from some indifferent orchestral playing. There is nothing to fault in his BBC recording except, perhaps for the very good but still archaic 78s mono sound. Boult's final recording with the LPO is the best recorded and contains an absolutely shattering interpretation of Mars as well exuberant interpretations of Jupiter and Uranus. Where this performance falls flat, in my opinion, is in the comparatively rushed accounts of both Venus and Saturn. Venus is taken at such a swift pace that it could almost be mistaken for Mercury and the closing pages of Saturn are not as contemplative or calm as the music requires.
the work truly never ends. But it is Boult's performance of Saturn that distinguishes this performance from all others. The opening tread of those flute and harp chords is slow and absolutely bone chilling. Boult creates a mood of dreadful expectation. The works continues its inevitable dissent toward that horrific climax with a tempo that is steady and unrelenting. Those tinny bells and brass clang out with tremendous force and all seems death and decay until the music gives way into music of profound peace and resignation. Boult's approach is dead-serious and it is his obvious dedication that convinces more than in any other recording that this is great and deeply profound music.
The Planets occupies a strange place in British music. It is the only "hit" score by Holst. Its overwhelming success at the expense of his other music has given the impression that Holst was a "one-work" composer. This is emphatically not the case and the compact disc has helped to change that impression. The extra playing time allowed on the CD has meant that each new recording of The Planets has had room for a companion which, more often than not, has usually been another work by Holst. This particular disc includes one of Holst's most exhilarating scores, The Perfect Fool ballet music along with that great masterwork of British music, Egdon Heath. These are Andre Previn's recordings from the mid '70s and they sound astonishingly fresh in this transfer. Previn has great feeling for both works and indeed, you are likely never to hear a more desolate sounding Egdon Heath. Boult on Decca and Lloyd-Jones on Naxos are perhaps better at moving the music along while at the same time maintaining that the same foreboding atmosphere. Nevertheless, Previn exhibits much the same seriousness of purpose and dedication that makes Boult's recording of The Planets so unforgettable. This is the recording I would recommend for The Planets and the inclusion of two beautifully played Holst rarities makes it all that more indispensable. Plus you have Sir Adrian's own notes on The Planets that accompanied the original LP.
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0.932018 |
What return on equity do investors seem to expect for a firm with a $50 share price, an expected dividend of $5.50, a ? of .9, and a constant growth rate of 4.5%?
Answer (B) is correct. Dividing the $5.50 dividend by the $50 share price produces an 11% dividend yield. Adding the 11% yield to the 4.5% growth rate produces a total return of 15.5%. The beta coefficient is irrelevant.
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0.998285 |
In order to avoid complications of pregnancy and childbirth and to ensure the proper growth of the fetus, the body needs more minerals, vitamins and nutrients during pregnancy, and the body needs more calories up to 500 calories In a single day, especially in the last two thirds of the pregnancy, while at the same time be careful to get a balanced diet contains appropriate amounts of proteins, fats, sugars.
Because eating large amounts of food can lead to weight gain significantly, which may increase the chance of gestational diabetes, and the occurrence of complications of pregnancy and childbirth, it is worth mentioning that weight increase in a specific rate is normal during pregnancy, Blood and the ability of the body to absorb iron during pregnancy, so be careful to eat meals rich in iron to ensure that the body of the mother and fetus enough amounts of it.
As mentioned above, the pregnant mother should have a healthy and integrated diet. Here are some useful foods during pregnancy that provide many important nutrients for the pregnant mother.
Dairy products contain adequate amounts of important proteins such as casein, whey, and other important nutrients such as calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc, and a variety of different vitamin E.
are important foods for pregnant mothers because they contain many different nutrients that are important for maternal safety and fetal development, such as choline, which is essential for many tasks in the body, such as brain growth.
Legumes are important sources of many essential nutrients during pregnancy, such as fiber, proteins, calcium, iron, vitamins, and vitamin B9, known as folic acid, a very important element of maternal and fetal safety, especially during The first stages of pregnancy.
Sweet potatoes are a rich source of fiber that helps eliminate digestion problems, helps maintain blood sugar levels. Sweet potatoes are also a source of beta-carotene, It is important to avoid the intake of large amounts of vitamin A source that come from meat because of some toxic effects that may occur as a result of high vitamin A high degree in the body.
Fish oil contains many important nutrients during pregnancy, such as vitamin A, vitamin D, and omega-3 fatty acids, which is essential for fetal growth and brain development. Pregnant mothers with low amounts of vitamin D during pregnancy are at risk of preeclampsia or preeclampsia, a serious complication associated with the appearance of protein in the urine, swelling of the hands and feet, and high blood pressure in the pregnant mother.
Pregnant women should avoid eating raw meat or uncooked meat because of the risk of containing some bacteria and viruses that may lead to food, poisoning, and should avoid eating cold meat such as luncheon meat because of the risk of infection with bacteria Listeria Which may across the placenta and cause infection in the fetus, which may expose the mother to the risk of miscarriage.
These products can contain the bacteria mentioned in Listeria, so be careful to eat pasteurized or sterilized milk and its derivatives only.
such as potato chips, desserts, and biscuits, because they contain large amounts of sugars and fats, and do not contain sufficient nutritional value, which may increase the weight of the pregnant woman.
Previous articleAll these benefits in apple cider vinegar?
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0.929896 |
1) The Bundy Ranch: On one hand, a large group of armed white men marched in a line of battle while at least one civilian rifleman in a sniper's perch trained his weapon at Bureau of Land Management officials. In reaction, the government didn't fire a single round or canister of tear gas, and eventually retreated, conceding the disputed ground to the Bundy militias. It's important to note that the protesters turned out in support of a man who refused to pay his taxes and grazed his cattle without paying the accompanying fees. This man, Cliven Bundy, and his supporters threatened secession and armed revolt against the United States goverment.
2) Ferguson, Missouri: On the other hand, unarmed African American protesters in Ferguson, enraged and grieving from the death of an (again) unarmed black man named Michael Brown who was shot in the back by a police officer, have been confronted for several days now by police in full military regalia. This time, the rifleman in the sniper's perch is a police officer — his scope trained on the protesters.
In Ferguson, law enforcement is vastly overreacting in the face of peaceful protesters, while at the Bundy Ranch, law enforcement vastly underreacted in the face of armed secessionists and scofflaws.
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0.974498 |
What's scarier at night than a graveyard? One that's haunted. Across Washington, there are numerous cemeteries that are believed to be haunted, where spirits reportedly lurk at night, and refuse to accept their grave as a final resting place. If you're feeling brave, you might want to go on a ghost tour of a local cemetery, where an expert can tell you all about the spirits that have been known to haunt your local graveyards, as well as the haunted history of the location.
Note: Washington Haunted Houses would like to remind all Haunt Seekers to be respectful of Cemeteries & Grave Sites when visiting.
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0.9994 |
Where can I locate my offers in the app?
On the main screen of the app, navigate to "Inbox" and your current and past offers should be located in the respective "Active Offers" and "Past Offers" tabs. You can also view current offers on the app main screen itself.
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0.967315 |
ollowing the recent release of her new musical romantic drama film A Star is Born, I'm taking a look at American singer and actress Lady Gaga's career history and my favourite Gaga hits.
Born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta on 28th March 1986 in New York City, US. Now famously known as Lady Gaga, she began performing as a teenager, singing at open mic nights and acting school plays. After dropping out of Arts College she went on to pursue her music career. Gaga worked as a songwriter for Sony/ATV Music Publishing in 2007. The following year she released her electro-pop debut album, The Fame, which included the chart-topping singles Just Dance and Pokerface. The album reached number one in multiple countries including Austria, Canada and the UK. It's first two singles Just Dance and Pokerface also reached number one in these countries.
In February 2011, Lady Gaga released Born This Way, the lead single from her studio album of the same name.
She's won multiple music awards including MTV Video Music Award for Best Video of the Year 2010 and Grammy Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal album 2015.
Here are my top three Lady Gaga tracks.
This song was Gaga's debut single back in April 2008. She co-wrote it with American singer Akon. Gaga wrote the song in ten minutes as a happy record. It also has influences of R&B and lyrically speaks about being intoxicated at a club.
From her debut studio album, The Fame, this track was released in September 2008. It topped the charts in 20 countries including the US and the UK. It is the best selling single of the year 2009 worldwide, selling over 9.5 million sales in 2009, making it one of the best selling singles of all time, having sold over 14 million copies. It was nominated for Song of the Year and Record of the Year at the 52nd Grammy Awards and won the award for Best Dance Recording.
My third and final top pick is Paparazzi. This song was also on her debut album. Gaga wrote and produced the song with Grammy-winning producer and songwriter, Rob Fusari. The song is about Gaga's struggles with the quest for fame and balancing success and love. It's an uptempo techno-pop and dance-pop song with lyrics describing a stalker following somebody to grab attention and fame.
Her other achievements include several Guinness World Records and her new musical romantic drama film, A Star is Born, which sees Lady Gaga play a struggling vocal artist. She has also contributed to the soundtrack for the film. I'm also looking forward to seeing it, maybe a blog in the making?
If you have had the chance to see the film, we would love to hear what you think of it.
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0.989478 |
Where Qy is the quantity demanded of good Y, Py is the price of good Y, I is the income of the consumer, Px, Pw and Pz are the prices of good X, W and Z respectively. Py = 100, Pw = 300, Pz = 400, Px =100 and M = 40,000. Compute income elasticity of demand, own-price elasticity of demand and the three cross-price elasticity of demand.
Where Qy is the quantity demanded of good Y, Py is the price of good Y, I is the income of the consumer, Px, Pw and Pz are the prices of good X, W and Z respectively.
Py = 100, Pw = 300, Pz = 400, Px =100 and M = 40,000.
To compute income elasticity of demand we need to know the income I, which is not provided.
Own-price elasticity of demand is Q'(Py) = -1, so the demand for good Y is unit-elastic.
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0.977359 |
Get tips on staying acne-free.
Acne care for Asian skin is not complicated. However, there are a few special factors to consider when preventing and treating blemishes on a person with Asian skin.
Asians are known for their flawless porcelain skin. While it's true that Asian skin tends to be smoother, what most people don't realize is that many Asians actually have large pores. Consequently, Asian skin is more prone to irritation and acne. For this reason many dermatologists recommend that people of Asian descent exfoliate their skin on a daily basis to minimize the appearance of pores and even out skin tone and texture. People of Japanese decent have the lightest Asian skin tone and are therefore more susceptible to skin redness. Since Asian skin irritates more easily, many traditional skin care products, such as alcohol, preservatives and fragrances, are not suitable for daily skincare maintenance.
Another factor that differentiates Asian skin is that it tends to spot and scar easier, especially after blemishes heal. These marks, sometimes referred to as post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, are treatable, but the best way to remain scar- and spot-free is to prevent acne breakouts to begin with.
Acne is an equal opportunity condition. Pimples, blackheads and whiteheads can occur on people of every nationality. Individuals of Asian descent are not immune from acne breakouts. In fact, most Indians, Filipinos and Koreans with darker skin have to be even more vigilant about skin care because they are at higher risk for developing dark spots after an acne lesion goes away.
Dermatologists recommend that people of Asian descent wash their face at least once a day. A high percentage of Asians have oily skin, so consistent washings help eliminate the buildup of dirt and oils that cause acne breakouts. In addition, if you have oily Asian skin, then choose a cleanser that's designed specifically for your skin type. People with oily skin should look for soap that strips away surface oils. However, if you have dry, sensitive skin, then choose a moisturizing cleanser. People with Asian skin should also shy away from cleansers that are scented or have an excessive amount of alcohol in them. Unknown fragrances and preservatives can damage sensitive Asian skin.
If you suffer from dry skin during the winter months, then apply a moisturizer two to three times per day as needed. However, since Asians are susceptible to skin irritation, consider using a non-comedogenic moisturizer. Vaseline-based skin care products are not recommended since their greasy ingredients can cause acne.
Acne breakouts on Asian skin can be effectively treated with topical medications such as benzoyl peroxide, and in severe cases, with oral medications like Accutane. If you live in a climate that tends to dry out your skin, then avoid vitamin A or retinol for their drying properties. In addition, excessive use of over-the-counter acne products that aggravate sensitive Asian skin can lead to unsightly brown spots.
If acne or dark-spot discolorations persist, consult a dermatologist. The earlier you get professional help, the greater the chance of eliminating blemishes that can lead to unwanted spots and marks. In addition, a skin care expert can help recommend a new routine, or fine-tune an existing one, that will help you prevent future acne breakouts.
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0.988145 |
Keeler, originally known as Hawley was established on the shore of Owens lake in the early 1870's as a competing freight terminal for steamship travel over Owens Lake. The original terminal was six miles north at the town of Swansea.
Other sources have reported that Keeler was established after the March 1872 Lone Pine earthquake changed the location of the shoreline at Swansea. However, the wharf at Swansea was extended approximately 200 feet after the quake, and freighting resumed from the location.
The real story of Keeler is that of a business rivalry between Mortimer Belshaw, prominent mine and smelter owner in Cerro Gordo, and the Owens Lake Silver-Lead Company which operated a smelter at Swansea.
In 1873 Belshaw bought the steamship Bessie Bradie, the only steamer running in Owens Lake, and built his own wharf at the site that would become Keeler. The wharf was moved to bypass the smelter at Swansea, which was a crippling blow to the already-struggling Owens Lake Silver-Lead company. Swansea was a shell of a town when in early 1884, a summer cloudburst caused a debris flow that buried the town site.
Through the 1870's Keeler, then known as Hawley, was merely a freighting terminal and wasn't much of a town. That changed with the arrival of Julius Keeler in 1879. The mines of Cerro Gordo were experiencing a resurgence in 1880 and Keeler made plans to build ore mill and layed out a townsite. The mill opened in 1881 and began processing low-grade ore from the Cerro Gordo mines.
In 1882 Keeler invested heavily in refurbishing the Bessie Brady steamship, only to have it consumed by fire shortly after the work was completed. This marked the end of freighting by steamer on Owens Lake.
Keeler would again become a freight hub in 1883 with the arrival of the Carson and Colorado Railroad. Mining in the area waned throughout the 1880s and 1890s, and both the mill and railroad struggled to stay in business.
In the middle part of the first decade of 1900 there was renewed interest in the mines around Cerro Gordo. In 1906 a smelter was built at Keeler to again process low-grade silver ores.
The year 1907 would see the first interest in zinc mining in the district. In 1908 a new zinc smelter was constructed at Keeler, and an aerial tram was built connecting the mines of Cerro Gordo with the new smelter. In 1915, an improved tram was built, and the tram towers from this second build, complete with cables and an occasional bucket, can still be seen above the road to Cerro Gordo.
Mining in Cerro Gordo experienced several more periods of activity that kept Keeler alive through the 1920's. By 1933 the mines at Cerro Gordo finally shut down permanently, and Keeler would no longer be a milling or smelting town.
Starting in 1913, water from the Owens Valley was diverted into the Las Angeles Aqueduct, causing Owens Lake to dry up by 1926. Soda processing from the dry lake became an industry in Keeler that would help it survive the closing of the Cerro Gordo mines.
Ultimately, the mineral industries could not sustain Keeler forever and in 1960 the railroad terminal closed. In 1961 the tracks were removed and Keeler's role as a freighting center came to an end.
Today Keeler is a town of a few dozen people and no operating businesses. The Keeler Cemetery can be viewed just across the highway from the town.
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0.964109 |
which warms faster, water or soil? need ideas regarding the materials and procedure to carry the project out.
So for your experiment, pick an optimum temperature for a theoretical crop you want to plant, and then design an experiment to compare differences in temperature. You might set up several shallow boxes of potting soil in the same location with all conditions controlled (sunlight, moisture, type of soil, thickness of soil, etc) and then try to heat up the soil using different methods. You could cover one box with thin black plastic, one with thick black plastic, one with clear plastic, add some manure to one box (source of exothermic bacterial fermentation), or anything else you could think of. What would you use as a control? Be creative and do as many variations as you can think of. Then measure the temperature (in degrees Centigrade) of each box once or twice a day for a week. You will need to evaluate the way you measure the temperature and make sure your method is accurate and reproducible, since this is for a science fair project.
If you wanted to work with water samples, you could do a similar experiment and see how long it would take to warm a body of water up to a temperature that would be comfortable for swimming, for example. I can't really think of a purpose for comparing soil and water, but perhaps you had some reason for picking the topic. I think it will be sufficient for the project if you just work on one subject type, although it might be interesting to compare two different types of soil, or two types of water (e.g. fresh vs. ocean). Or, it might be interesting to set up a duplicate set of boxes and actually plant your crop and see if the theoretical temperature target matches the optimum germination rate. However, if you have limited time and resources, just limit yourself to one experiment and do a really thorough job on it.
Now, your project deadline is coming up very soon, so try to set up your experiment today or tomorrow. Allow at least a week to write up your board.
Please do let us know if you have any questions about these suggestions. And, if you did have a purpose for comparing soil and water, let me know and I'll try to think of a different experiment.
this was given to me by the teacher. i had no choice of science experiment.
1. Place an equal volume of dry soil and water in identical containers. It would probably be best to use containers with a volume of a liter or larger and several centimeters deep. Place a thermal probe with a tip near the bottom of each container, ideally with a read out that you can read and record results over time. If you can get 4 temperatures probes, it would be even better if you could place a temperature probe at the top and at the bottom of each container. You can get a suitable temperature probe at a hardware store, or any large variety store that has a heating/air conditioning section. You will want to record results in degrees Centigrade, but you can convert from Fahrenheit if you have to.
if the soil or water gets hotter faster.
Now, for the science part.
In your experiment, you are using radiant energy from the heat lamp to transfer energy to the soil and water. The heat transferred to the water will be mixed by a process call convection when cooler liquid moves towards warmer liquid. Convection currents are circular.
The soil is a solid, and is a not a good conductor of heat energy. Materials that do not conduct heat energy are called insulators. It will probably take a lot longer for the bottom of the soil to reach the same temperature as the water sample.
If you want to get extra credit for your project, then you can repeat the experiment and cover both samples with black plastic, and white plastic.
If you want to make the experiment quantitative, you can measure the kilojoules of energy absorbed by the water. A Calorie is the amount of heat is takes to increase the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree Centigrade. A Calorie is 4,184 Joule. However, in order to measure the amount of heat exactly, you would need to do the experiment in a completely insulated container, so you would have to devise a different heat source, other than a heat lamp.
Remember when you do your experiment to be very careful and precise when making your measurements.
Please double check with your teacher before you proceed to make sure this is what was intended with the assignment. If this is not a chemistry project, then I may still be off-track in my advice to you. If you need more information about energy transfer or Joules, let me know.
Here's a web page with some additional info about thermal conductivity (ability of a material to transmit thermal energy) and heat capacity (ability of a material to absorb thermal energy) of different materials, including water and various types of soil.
These sorts of issues are very important in environmental science. For example, by measuring the temperature in a stream bed, you can determine the rate of flux from the stream to groundwater or vice versa.
There are many other applications.
how do you carry out an experiment?
But you should read all of the information provided. Hopefully, this will help!
1) Please post your questions under a new thread to begin with, and then continue to use that same thread to post all other responses. This helps keep things together for students and experts alike who are trying to read what your project involves. Posting under a thread that has already started or is unrelated to your project (or a new thread each time) makes things difficult to follow.
2) Please do not expect an immediate response from this forum. Experts typically take 12-24 hours to respond, and maybe even longer at times. We will do our best to respond to your needs, but we do not continuously monitor this board - we all have jobs!
I hope this helps, and if you have a specific question for us, please be sure to post back under the relevant section.
I agree with Geoff; we can help better if you let us know what your project is about this year. And you should go to the science buddies website and start a new inquiry for this year. After you read through the science buddies information for setting up an experiment, let us know what your independent and dependent variables are. Don't forget to include a control in your experiment! We'd be happy to make suggestions if we know what you are doing.
Is this the science fair project you were wanting to do?
If so, all of the materials and experimental procedures that you asked about are contained within this link. I am unsure what it is that you are specifically requesting that is not covered. What do you expect this experiment to show, based on your background research?
Please start a NEW THREAD outlining your intended science fair project and what, specifically, you do not understand. The more information you give us, the more we will hopefully be able to help.
I copied your answer over there, since it contained information about the project.
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0.815505 |
Why you should not 'use' (i.e., be used by) Facebook.
I have never had a Facebook account. There is a Facebook account called "Richard Stallman", but it is an impostor.
Putting the photo of someone on Facebook (or Instagram) contributes to surveillance of that person. Please don't post any photos there that include me, and I suggest you avoid posting photos of anyone else too.
If you feel your organization needs a "presence" in Facebook see this page.
If you feel you need to be used by Facebook to find out about parties at your school, you might look for someone in your circle who isn't ready to break ties with Facebook, but who is willing to take note of parties via Facebook and send messages to a list of Facebook-rejecting friends to inform them.
Here's a good article to present many of Facebook's injustices to your friends.
Facebook Allowed Violent Posts by Man Charged with Ilhan Omar Death Threat.
Facebook imposes bias on showing housing and employment ads even if the advertiser does not ask for any.
I think Facebook should be eliminated entirely and replaced with an index of people. People would create records in the index under their names. Your record — if you make one — would give other people a way to contact you through various methods of messaging.
You could include a small amount of information about yourself to help people tell if you are the person they are seeking to contact, rather than another person with a similar name. Their messages to you would carry various contact coordinates in case you decide to respond.
It would do nothing more than that. It would not be allowed to do anything more, or have a special relationship with any other communication system.
This would provide a chance to decentralize the web again — but taking advantage of that chance would require other changes.
Facebook requires useds to use their 'real' (the name they normally go by as defined by Facebook) on the site or risk having their accounts suspended.
Facebook is not your friend. Its 'real name' policy is enough reason to refuse to let it use you, but there is so much more nastiness in Facebook.
Even as Facebook oppresses real useds with its "real name" requirement, it is easy to buy and run a realistic Facebook account that is completely fake.
Facebook spontaneously asked its useds questions trying to expose useds who had not given their real names.
Facebook with its 'real name' policy makes itself the arbiter of other people's selves.
Under pressure from cross-dressers, Facebook said it would relax the 'real name' policy and allow people to use aliases, but only if they are generally known by those aliases or if they were victims of certain types of abuse or stalking.
This relieves a very specific acute problem, but does not enable ordinary people to use Facebook without being tracked.
However, reportedly Facebook has not really changed the policy.
Even if Facebook makes this change, it will be unacceptable because companies and the state will be able to connect the account with your real identity. In order for the site not to mistreat people, it must let you have one account to show your boss and your parents, another for your friends, and others for various kinds of political activism.
Facebook continues to close the accounts of people who go by unofficial names.
What happened to Koko the clown demonstrates why it is very foolish to talk with your clients through Facebook or to keep any important information in a Facebook account.
Facebook makes a practice of asking its useds* to rat on their friends who use aliases.
People who don't dare identify themselves feel compelled to be used by Facebook, so they register under pseudonyms, which makes them vulnerable to blackmail by those who threaten to report their real names to Facebook.
These people feel compelled to be useds of Facebook because their friends and relatives are useds of Facebook. In other words, their friends and relatives are victim-coperpetrators: initially victims of Facebook, they contribute to its wrongs by pressuring others to be useds of Facebook.
Don't do this to others — don't be used by Facebook yourself!
Facebook silently changed its search system to expose the existence of hidden accounts.
The depressive effect of being used by Facebook is directly traceable to its "real name" requirement and stopping people from having multiple accounts.
Young People Hate Facebook Because It Forces Them to Have a Single Identity.
Facebook has frequently removed postings about protests (both planned and ongoing), political satire, and various political issues. Specific examples are given below.
Facebook has imposed political censorship on Instagram, bowing to Russia.
Israel bullied Facebook into imposing tight censorship on criticism of the occupation of Palestine.
Facebook deleted the news item announcing a major protest against Monsanto.
Facebook blocked a page announcing a protest in Russia obeying orders from the Russian government.
The order says the protest is illegal. In a tyrannical state, protests are generally illegal.
Facebook has yielded to Turkey's religious censorship, just as previously it yielded to China's political censorship.
Facebook has developed software to allow various countries to directly control censorship of what useds in that country can see.
Jim Wright forcefully condemned the pressure put on Americans to endorse all the bellicose or dangerous "responses" to the September 11 attacks. Facebook censored it, apparently for political reasons.
This shows the danger of depending on facebook.
Facebook deleted without explanation the page of a publisher in the UK that had posted articles about publications that criticize Erdoğan.
The article shows that Facebook has censored on behalf of Erdoğan before.
Facebook has a history of blocking the posting of links about certain controversial political issues.
Facebook blocked the account of activist Shaun King after he posted a racist email that was sent to him.
2018: A black manager for Facebook quit, and posted on Facebook that Facebook had treated black useds and black staff badly and had censored blacks' postings.
Facebook deleted his post, saying it went against "community standards".
Algorithmic filtering can affect history, not just hide history. Facebook's filtering algorithm suppressed news about the riot by uniformed thugs in Ferguson until after it became national news.
Facebook censorship guidelines have been leaked. They include political censorship catering to various countries that do not respect freedom of speech.
Facebook has censored political satire aimed at the UK unemployment agency and associated organizations, apparently at the request of a target of the satire.
Facebook deleted posts that presented evidence of individuals' use of shell companies, evidence coming from the Panama Papers.
This resembles Amazon, which famously shut down Wikileaks' virtual server because Wikileaks didn't have US government authorization to publish leaks.
Facebook has censored a number of French anti-racist campaigners.
Sincere and honest political activists talk about Facebook's shutdown of their pages, which were labeled as spam.
Facebook took down a negative movie review because the movie company claimed the review was copyright infringement.
Facebook banned a video made by the Swedish Cancer Society about breast cancer because it showed cartoon figures with circles as breasts.
It got Facebook to accept the video by putting in squares for the breasts.
The real problem here is not that Facebook draws the line at the wrong place (though it does). It is that Facebook has so much influence that organizations such cancer charities feel obliged to publish through Facebook.
Facebook censored an ACLU post about censorship.
Facebook deletes postings for obscure reasons, and even denies deleting them. It is not safe as a platform for journalism.
By the way, I cannot understand why people make a fuss about just how they find out that someone they loved is dead. Compared to the fact of that person's death, such details seem insignificant.
If Facebook achieves its goal of becoming the main publication site for journalism, it will be a new chokepoint for censorship.
Facebook wants to present itself as a virtual town square … a censored one.
Facebook deleted a statement by a human rights group, then said that was a mistake.
That Facebook invited the group to post the statement again — instead of undoing the deletion — demonstrates arrogance.
However, the problem here goes deeper. It is not good for human rights groups' (or anyone's) statements to be posted using a platform where statements are censored.
Whistleblower Christopher Wylie exposed how Cambridge Analytica misused the data Facebook gave it, so Facebook shut down his account.
How Facebook's algorithm for what articles to show to each used are chosen to increase profits, but they systematically disfavor thoughtful criticism of anything, if posted by those who can't pay to get it seen.
I agree that Facebook should be regulated, but the purpose of the regulation should be to ensure that not very many people read news or commentary through that site. Or any other specific site.
Facebook arbitrarily censors and closes the accounts of prisoners.
Facebook did an experiment in biasing the filtering of useds'* news feeds (which are always filtered by Facebook in other ways) towards the emotionally positive or the emotionally negative. This experiment was widely condemned as "unethical" based on details, but this criticism was naive in that it disregarded the fundamentally unethical nature of Facebook.
Facebook deleted a photo of two men kissing, which was used to support a kiss-in in a pub that had shown bias against gays.
The person who posted it thinks that Facebook is not anti-gay, but rather than it is quick to censor whatever someone complains about.
While it might seem that the former would be worse, I think the latter makes Facebook really dangerous. Don't use Facebook as a substitute for your own web site!
Facebook censored a photo of two men kissing, posted as a protest against India's criminalization of homosexuality.
Facebook's censorship rules are sometimes incomprehensibly strict. Many women's accounts have been turned off for posting "men are scum".
Some men are scum, but not all. It is unfair to generalize that statement to all men. People should ideally know better than to be sloppy in generalization, even if they are justifiably angry at grave crimes.
However, is it right to gag people for unkind sloppiness like that? Clearly not.
There's more about Facebook censorship.
Reportedly it is possible to actually delete a Facebook account.
I would not suggest trusting Facebook to delete all the data it has about you, but you may as well try.
Facebook buys personal data from various data brokers, and correlates that with what it figures out directly about its useds.
Facebook advises useds that they can tell the data brokers to stop collecting data about them, but it doesn't ensure that this really works. After all, no one will punish Facebook for false claims of that sort.
Facebook snoops on surfers via disqus comments: when a page uses disqus for comments, the proprietary disqus software loads a Facebook software package into the browser of every anonymous visitor to the page, and makes the page's URL available to Facebook.
Facebook claimed to support "closed" groups and said it would not release the names of the members. Meanwhile, companies could get their names, and other personal data.
Facebook provided personal data to Mastercard.
The data was provided in anonymized form, but Mastercard could reidentify the data by correlating it with other data.
Facebook made a deal with Huawei to give it access to personal data of Facebook useds. This included useds who were customers of Huawei, and their "friends". This even though the US government considers Huawei a spy for China.
Facebook did the same thing for other phone manufacturers such as Apple and Blackberry.
Facebook's "conversation topics" experiment actively shows certain selected useds everything that their "friends" are doing.
A detailed, long list of the data Facebook collects about each used, for targeting ads. Facebook may collect other information which is not used for targeting ads.
Look at the way the article ends by considering it incredible that someone might not submit to this. Maybe Facebook has Peter Eckersley, but it doesn't have me. Don't be a used of Facebook!
Facebook useds who download "all their data" are astounded by some of the kinds of data they find.
Facebook bought WhatsApp and committed not to combine that data with Facebook's other data. Now it is going to do just that.
For Facebook, any commitment is meant to be broken, after a delay for people to forget about it.
The Facebook app obtained useds' whole contact lists, either directly grabbing them or by tricking useds into agreeing without knowing it.
You have to expect a nonfree program to be malicious.
Facebook's app has started scanning photos people take with their phones.
The article says "camera", but that word is misleading; cameras do not have a Facebook app installed in them. This applies only to phones and tablets.
I suspect the face recognition is done by sending the photos to a Facebook server. If so, the server could do other things with those photos. It could save them and send them to Big Brother. From now on, when people want to snap me with a mobile, I will verify it does not have a Facebook app installed before I say yes.
Facebook's mobile app snoops on SMS messages.
Using the Facebook app on a portable phone tells Facebook about any phone calls and texts.
When useds log in to a site through Facebook, Facebook gives the site access to lots of information about the used.
If this is what a site demands from you, you should not touch it anyway!
Facebook, as an 'experiment', collected the text its useds started to enter as status updates and ultimately did not send.
Facebook also announced it planned to track mouse movement even in the absence of a click.
Pages that contain Facebook "like" buttons enable Facebook to track visitors to those pages. Facebook tracks Internet users that see "like" buttons, even users who never visited facebook.com and never click on those buttons.
The ACLU has a way of enabling users to click a Facebook "like" button, which avoids this problem. Its pages have a link called "like us on Facebook" that leads to a Facebook page where it is possible to push a "like" button for the ACLU. But if you don't follow that link, Facebook gets no information about your visit to the ACLU page.
This page gives details about how much Facebook tracks people's browsing, which applies even to people that don't have Facebook accounts.
Facebook's tracking of useds through cookies combined with Like buttons violates EU law.
Facebook has turned on automatic face recognition on photos.
Facebook says that it only suggests identifications for faces in photos for people who are the used's friends. However, it might run the algorithm over every photo posted and not publicly announce the results.
I ask people not to post photos of me on Facebook. You might want to make the same request, for you and your children.
Facebook goes to great lengths to hide some privacy settings. Apparently it wants to claim useds have that option while making it so hard to find that people won't use it.
Facebook exposes lovers to lots of information about each other which can stimulate jealousy.
Innocent-seeming text posted on Facebook could cause you lots of trouble, due to development of systems to deduce things about you.
Facebook has automatically pushed useds' @facebook.com email addresses (which they never asked for) into the contact lists in other people's phones.
The lesson here is that it is a fundamental mistake to trust a company such as Facebook to give anyone data about you. It will give them the data it wants them to have, not the data you want to give them.
Facebook collected its used's phone numbers for "security" but uses them for advertising.
How did Mari Sherkin end up on a dating site unwillingly? Facebook opens browser windows showing other companies' sites, which trick Facebook useds* into agreeing to let those companies get their personal data from Facebook.
Facebook's app listens all the time, to snoop on what people are listening to or watching. In addition, it may be recognizing their conversations.
Cambridge Analytica collected data about 50 million useds of Facebook and used them in violation of Facebook's rules, and perhaps in violation of British data protection law.
Rules are frequently broken; therefore, any organization that collects personal data which then are misused cannot excuse itself by saying "That was against our rules".
Facebook looks at Facebook Messenger chats, but that's supposed to be ok since it is only for certain purposes.
Facebook saves all videos that useds make — even videos they say to delete.
Facebook asked US hospitals to give patients' data to Facebook.
The data was going to be "anonymized", but Facebook planned to "match it up" with other data — which probably means to reidentify it.
Facebook and Google joined with ISPs to defeat a privacy initiative in California.
Facebook made deals for phone and computer manufacturers including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Samsung to access data about its useds and their friends as well. These deals seem to still be operative.
When Zuckerberg testified to Congress, he said Facebook had stopped doing this years ago. Apparently he lied.
Facebook erroneously made millions of users' private postings visible to all useds.
Everyone makes mistakes, so I won't reproach Facebook for the mistake itself. However, this mistake demonstrates the folly of using a single system for both publication and private communications. They ought to be separate systems.
Facebook's new "smart camera" offers people the opportunity to completely surrender the privacy of their home to that company. Perhaps it will help others wake up to the danger.
Internal Documents Show Facebook Has Never Deserved Our Trust or Our Data.
No system deserves such trust.
Facebook used trickery to get personal data of Android users.
Facebook got "consent" to upload call logs automatically from Android phones while disguising what the "consent" was for.
Facebook imposes location tracking on its useds, and location-based advertising too.
In my view, the mere fact that a used of Facebook cannot prevent Facebook from finding out per location and putting it in a data base is an injustice, a threat to the used's human rights, and in some cases even per safety.
Facebook made a secret deal with Amazon to give Amazon access to Facebook's data about users. A plague on both of those companies!
Facebook says its useds "own their own data", but "their own data" doesn't mean what you would think. It includes only some of the data Facebook keeps about its useds.
This is one reason why the demand that users "own their data" is fundamentally inadequate.
Facebook plans to integrate its three mouths — the services Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — so all the data they swallow goes to the same stomach.
Around 40% of gratis Androids apps report on the user's actions to Facebook.
Often they send the machine's "advertising ID", so that Facebook can correlate the data it obtains from the same machine via various apps. Some of them send Facebook detailed information about the user's activities in the app; others only say that the user is using that app, but that alone is often quite informative.
This spying occurs regardless of whether the user has a Facebook account.
Facebook allowed big companies (including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Sony) special access to its useds' personal data, setting aside its supposed rules for use of that data.
Facebook may be able to identify whether each of its useds is mentally ill or not.
Facebook can tell when its useds are asleep. Via Facebook, others can tell that too.
When Facebook sees two useds are in the same physical location, it may suggest that the two 'friend' each other.
This can cause lots of trouble for people in certain circumstances. But remember that the NSA is doing the same thing, and doesn't let you opt out — except the way I do, by not carrying a mobile phone.
Facebook and Master Card will join forces to profile Master Card customers so banks can push them to spend more.
By doing this, Master Card is ratting on its customers. This reinforces the point that using a credit card enables others to take advantage of you. It also interferes with your efforts to limit your spending.
Don't be tracked — pay cash.
Many things can be determined about a Facebook used*, with pretty good accuracy, from the used's published list of "likes".
If you do as I do, and reject Facebook, you are safe from this form of snooping.
How can we get the news items that interest us, without telling a server what criterion to use? Simple: download lists of items, and have software on our own machine decide which articles to show. This software can fetch additional articles (which it doesn't actually show us) just to create a false trail.
Facebook's new patent suggests that Facebook may be planning to use the computer's camera to detect its useds' emotions. It might already be doing so.
Facebook increased its visible use of face recognition.
Nothing stopped, or stops, Facebook from privately recognizing all the faces in photos, and selling that data as part of "anonymizied" records to other companies that can reidentify them.
Facebook facilitates age-discrimination in employment ads. Facebook has been sued for this.
Workers are suing Facebook for its age-discriminating job ads, as well as the companies that buy the targeted ads.
Facebook compiles extensive profiles about people that are not its useds.
If you resist other forms of profiling, such as carrying tracking devices, identifying yourself to web sites, and paying other than with cash, you will deny lots of data to Facebook as well as to the others that accumulate that data. What data nobody collects, nobody can get.
Facebook leads its useds into joining "private" medical patient support groups, but "private" is misleading since they aren't safe from being profiled based on this.
Facebook predicts who new useds* know, based on their phone lists and email address lists. Along with the phone and email lists of all the other useds.
This is a measure of how complete and dangerous Facebook surveillance is.
It implies that giving your email or phone list to a company is mistreatment of everyone in that list!
The NSA tracks Americans' social networks, and Facebook is just one of its sources.
Thus, if you talk about your friends in Facebook, you're ratting on them. If you say that you saw John and Arthur, you tell the NSA that John knows Arthur. If John and Arthur are dissidents, or journalists, your information will help the government suppress dissent or journalism.
Facebook invites useds* to nag other useds to fill in their profiles with all sorts of personal information.
Facebook has a new trick to get people to identify their spouses and babies in photos.
Facebook asks its useds to provide their entire list of other people's email addresses.
This by itself is surveillance of those other people, but Facebook uses it to go further and try to guess the relationships of people who are not Facebook useds* (along with collecting their phone numbers, and email and postal addresses).
That information must be worth some money to companies. It is surely worth money to the secret police of any country that isn't democratic enough.
However, the principal wrong here is not that Facebook can guess which non-useds know you or me. It is that Facebook collects information from its useds about whether they know you or me.
I think we can formulate the principle that any social network that asks its members for information about other people is abusive.
Facebook apps have access to that used's* information — and the useds' "friends'" information, too. Thus, if you make the mistake of using Facebook, even if you don't let a company access your data, any of your "friends" can give the company access to your data.
Facebook exploits its useds* by conscripting them for ads.
Facebook settled a lawsuit by promising useds will be able to 'limit' this use of their names and photos in ads shown to other useds. However, since this is "opt-out", by default useds will still be exploited. What's more, it may not even be a complete opt-out.
Facebook will no longer allow useds to decline to let their names be used in advertisements. More than ever, Facebook is really Suckerberg.
In addition, Facebook secretly collects useds' phone numbers. The article says it is not clear why. Perhaps it's a favor for the NSA.
Facebook Messenger will show ads to users as they talk with each other.
Did the vegetarian used of Facebook* really "like" McDonalds, or did Facebook make it up? In fact, Facebook invents phony "likes", and worse, falsely suggests people liked specific text that they had never even seen.
Facebook publishes ads citing specific useds as if they endorsed the ads. Martin Lewis is suing Facebook for misrepresenting him this way.
Facebook sends political messages as coming from people who have clicked Like buttons.
Facebook recently settled a lawsuit, promising to stop a very similar practice involving ads, but these political messages are not considered "ads" and Facebook continues to send them.
Facebook developed algorithms to detect teenagers that are in a vulnerable or susceptible state, to target them with ads.
Aside from all the ethical reasons not to let Facebook use you, there is a practical reason small businesses might care about: advertising there is ineffective for them.
Facebook "support groups" must be a windfall for Facebook's profiling and advertising. They are also used to lure people into expensive "therapy".
Facebook cuts some useds off from in-person interaction with their friends and family.
Tricks that Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat use to make people feel anxious and spend time there.
Facebook Helped Advertisers Target Teens Who Feel "Worthless".
Heavy use of Facebook tends to make some people feel worthless.
Facebook lurkers are likely to feel happier if they stop being used by Facebook for at least a week.
If you want to "engage with others" more, how about doing it outside of Facebook? That would provide the same benefits and would avoid giving Facebook any more information about you or the others you engage with.
A study found that people get measurably happier (on the average) if they stop being used by Facebook.
Being used by Facebook tends to be bad for your mental health.
Facebook tends to lead its useds into a sort of trance in which they believe, more or less, whatever comes up in the feed.
Facebook makes it easy to say different things to different groups of people, which has the effect of breaking up the common culture of any society.
Reading the feed on Facebook makes many useds feel envy and sadness.
They can reduce these feelings by posting more about themselves. Thus, the system (Facebook and the used) pressures the used into giving Facebook more personal data.
In some regions, 10% of Facebook useds don't realize that talking to Facebook is using the internet. And Facebook is directing millions of people into having no internet access except to Facebook.
This is the sort of thing that a democratic society should prohibit, for the same reason we prohibit other kinds of monopolies.
Why Facebook Is the Junk Food of Socializing.
Parents should regard Facebook as a sort of gang that you don't want your kids to get mixed up in.
The competition for "likes" on Facebook lures teenagers to procure "likes" by any means necessary, and no means is too sleazy. The way a player scores in this game is by selling the list of people who "liked" him to a company, thus paying back favors with abuse; but these useds* have adopted an amoral attitude in which they no longer try to judge exploitation ethically.
This competition inculcates an amoral attitude in which nothing is genuine and the only value is success. I don't think that the desire to build a career (no matter what kind) excuses this behavior.
A person's number of 'friends' on Facebook measures narcissism.
Facebook is designed to get useds* addicted to vanity.
One used writes that Facebook led her to be in love with "the projection of [her] own desired life".
Social networks, for lonely people, may only show them how lonely they are.
A study found that being heavily used by Facebook tended to make people sad, independent of how the useds felt at the start of the study.
The study eliminated the hypothesis that people let Facebook use them more because they were sadder to begin with.
This is not yet proof, but given so many other reasons to avoid Facebook, why not take this precaution?
Another study shows that being used a lot by Facebook encourages depression; since people generally post an exaggerated positive picture of their lives, their lives appear to be better than your own.
Allowing yourself to be used frequently by Facebook promotes eating disorders.
Facebook (along with Twitter and Snapchat) uses tricks to make people feel anxious and spend time there.
Facebook is a tax dodger.
Of course, it's not the only one, but that is no excuse.
Facebook guesses the race of each used, and companies use this to show people different ads.
Facebook has introduced a racial discrimination feature that lets advertisers direct ads at people selected by race.
In response a group of Facebook useds have filed a lawsuit, which has led Facebook to stop allowing discrimination, although only in the specific areas where that is illegal in the US.
In other words, Facebook supports racism as far as the law allows.
Facebook is effectively racially profiling its useds, in an indirect and deniable way.
How "personalization" done by Facebook, presented as a feature, turns into a dangerous because it is done corruptly.
Facebook still allows housing advertisements to be targeted in discriminatory ways.
Facebook continues to facilitate racial discrimination in housing ads, according to a 2018 lawsuit.
Facebook faces a US government complaint for racial discrimination in housing advertisements.
Facebook threatens to subsume newspapers and magazines, gaining unprecedented power.
When a company has dangerous power, it is irrelevant whether it got that "fairly" in a "in a competitive open market". We should not let that irrelevance distract us from what matters: protecting ourselves from their power.
The Facebook news feed, seen as an instance of the AI apocalypse.
It is important to keep in mind that Facebook is bad for many other reasons. This is one more reason to oppose it, but we had plenty already.
It is unfortunate that the article uses the term "content" to refer to published text. Just because CNN does that is no reason why we should follow its example.
Facebook's automated "trending news stories", not edited by human minds, include bogus stories, clickbait and disinformation.
Facebook Is Eating the Internet.
Facebook's corporate-only news feed both directs useds away from independent journalism and tracks their reading.
Twitter told people about protests and the uniformed thugs' violence in Ferguson (those who were interested), while Facebook mostly steered people away.
A convicted blackmailer who helped Putin crush independent media in Russia now owns a large stake in Facebook.
Facebook tries to discourage useds* from visiting other web sites.
To free writers and publishers from the power of Facebook, don't let Facebook direct what you read or watch.
You will do this automatically if you refuse to be a used of Facebook. I don't have a Facebook account, so Facebook doesn't know what I read, and has no direct influence on my choices.
Facebook Helped Consolidate Power for Cambodia's Dictator and His Attack-Dog Media, Then Killed the Independent Press's Platform.
To some extent the Cambodian government figured out how to use the policies that Facebook had anyway. However, some of the methods described in the article show that Facebook went out of its way to cooperate.
Facebook offers unaccountable access to people's attention, enabling disinformation campaigns to affect elections. Facebook's detailed profiling of its useds enables both political campaigns and outside groups to influence the voting behavior of specific types of people.
For manipulating Americans, Facebook is the platform of choice.
Don't be so easy to manipulate — stop being a used of Facebook!
A special unit in Facebook actively aids political campaigns in the US and other countries. These politicians are likely subsequently to protect Facebook from regulation afterwards.
Facebook advertises based on its capacity to swing the results of elections.
By not letting it use us, we reduce that capacity.
It appears Russians used Facebook to recruit people for the troll's rallies during the election campaign.
Allowing them to do this fits Facebook's stated mission, "Bringing the world closer together".
Facebook was compelled to offer some additional options to limit use of certain kinds of personal data. So it designed the user interface to discourage people from using them.
Facebook plans to work with a right-wing think-tank funded by rich fossil fuel interests, supposedly to "protect" democracy.
The funding suggests that what they plan to protect is plutocracy.
Facebook draws useds by promising interoperability, then eliminates the interoperability once it gets them hooked. Here's how it did that with XMPP for messaging.
The writer of that page has recognized that the power Facebook has over its useds is dangerous, but hasn't thought it through to the conclusion that we shouldn't let Facebook use us.
Facebook measured the depth of its grip over its useds by trying to drive them away with malfunctioning apps. No matter how bad things got, the useds would not be driven away.
It is very important for you personally to refuse to use Facebook, especially if some of your friends do (or might), because that's how you influence them, for good or for ill.
Facebook keeps track of how long people look at an item.
Unfriend Facebook now — you are its product, not its customer.
Facebook says that a used can't have Facebook's data about him, because it's a trade secret.
A German regulator says that Facebook's face recognition is illegal.
It appears Facebook spontaneously sends phone messages to people in India who have had no connection with Facebook. This person is trying to find out why.
Facebook has put an outrageous trademark claim on the word "book" into its terms of service.
To be dependent on Facebook, or any other specific company you could not replace with another, is to make yourself vulnerable to unbounded legal aggression. Don't be a fool — unfriend Facebook today rather than accept these terms.
A credit agency in Germany plans to evaluate people's creditworthiness by who their 'friends' are on Facebook.
The lesson is that we should make sure that no activities collect information about lots of people's social networks.
Facebook is attempting to gouge companies and web sites that use it to keep in touch with their customers.
The attitude of this criticism is too narrowly commercial for me to sympathize fully with it, and I expect that Facebook will reduce this charge so as to avoid driving these customers away. I am also repelled by the shallowness that leads to thinking that Facebook in April 2012 was good merely because it aided their commercial goals.
Nonetheless, this demonstrates the arrogant way Facebook treats anyone that deals with it, which is a reason not to be one of them.
Parents of children used by Facebook are suing for a refund of money Facebook let the children spend using the parents' credit cards.
Facebook: the most congenitally dishonest company in America.
Lauren Weinstein: Fixing Facebook May Be Impossible.
If so, we must make it go away.
When useds of Facebook stop logging in, Facebook sends them emails to manipulate them to come back.
This does no direct harm to the used, but demonstrates how manipulative Facebook is in general.
Your real friends will keep in touch in some other way. Your other "friends", you can do without.
Facebook protects far-right activists even after rule breaches.
Facebook pays its subcontracted workers very little, and treats them in a way that is cruel if not fraudulent. When they demanded better treatment, the subcontractor told them to shut up or quit.
Subcontracting enables Facebook to disclaim legal responsibility for all of this, but morally Facebook is entirely responsible.
If company A buys goods or services from company B, and none of the workers of B are particularly associated with company A's purchase, there is usually no reason to hold A responsible for how B treats workers. But when B is hired to provide people to work for A, morally speaking they are working for A. We should change the law to match the morality.
Facebook staff discussed in a tone of cupidity how they were leading minors to spend their parents' money playing games. Facebook kept the parents confused about the situation, too.
* We call them 'useds' rather than 'users' because Facebook is using them, not vice versa.
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What do we mean by Deep Sky Observing, everything in space is a long way away compared to distances on planet Earth and even within our own Solar System? Well in this article we mean anything that is outside our own solar system, this includes every star apart from our own Sun, great big clouds of glowing gas called nebulae, double stars, open star clusters, globular star clusters, planetary nebulae, dark nebulae and galaxies. Many astronomers would argue that stars should not be included in this list but there are some very pretty double stars that are well worth observing and some of these can be as challenging as the 'faint fuzzies' which is very descriptive of most Deep Sky Objects or DSOs for short. The DSOs we shall be discussing here are much fainter than the planets like Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn so do not expect to see them in glorious full techni-colour (apart from double stars) unless using long exposure photography, as the eye is too insensitive to colour.
The easiest way to start observing DSOs is with your naked eye or with a pair of binoculars (bins). To start with you need to find your way around the night sky and to do this there is no better way than to take a look at one of the astronomy magazines and look up its star chart for the month or buy a 10inch (254mm) planisphere and then start by finding some of the circumpolar constellations like Cassiopeia and The Plough asterism (informal grouping of stars) which forms only part of the constellation Ursa Major. Then depending on the time of year you are observing, look for some of the brighter more recognisable constellations like Orion, Taurus, Gemini, Cygnus, Aquila, Virgo, Lyra and the faint white band of the Milky Way as it runs across the sky from Cassiopeia through Cygnus and on down to Sagittarius.
Once you start to be able to find your way around the constellations you will find it easier to use the lists of DSOs in the astronomy magazines and on websites as these tell you which constellation the objects lie in as well as giving their celestial coordinates and brightness (magnitude). Using free software like Stellarium will allow you to check the positions of many DSOs but there are so many to observe where should you start? The answer is the brightest! Then as you start to develop your skill as an observer and/or get a larger telescope, you can head for the fainter ones with confidence.
As previously discussed, many DSOs can be seen using the naked eye and binoculars. However, the true splendour of almost all DSOs requires a telescope to be fully appreciated. The main consideration when observing DSOs is their faintness. Therefore the larger the aperture of the telescope the better, a telescope with twice the diameter will actually capture four times more light from the DSO. This will normally mean using a reflecting telescope of some kind, either a large Dobsonian or a smaller GOTO telescope like a Maksutov or Schmidt-Cassegrain. However, if you are intending to start using a camera for long exposure astrophotography then smaller, shorter focal length refractors can be used to great advantage.
The visibility of all DSOs is greatly impacted by any form of light pollution caused by things such as street lights but also the light of the Moon. This doesn't mean that you have to have perfectly dark skies but try to do your DSO observing when the Moon is between third quarter and first quarter, so that it is less bright and also out of the sky for the majority of the night. From first quarter to third quarter Moon it's best to either observe the Moon itself or any planets that are in the sky. There are however a few notable exceptions to this rule as we shall find out!
Due to the faintness of all DSOs apart from double stars there are a few techniques that seasoned observers use to glimpse the finer details of their targets.
Probably the number one rule for observing DSOs is to observe them when they are high in the sky. As the Earth spins on its axis, all astronomical targets appear to rise in the East traverse the sky and set in the West. Because of the tilt of the Earth's axis (23.4 degrees), objects appear at their highest above the horizon when they cross the meridian (the line running North-South through your position) and are due South of you. The reason for observing when the object is highest in the sky is because you are looking through less of the Earth's atmosphere. When viewing below 30 degrees you are looking through twice the thickness of atmosphere as when observing at the zenith (the point directly above your head). You can see this for yourself by looking at the sky overhead and then gradually looking downwards towards the horizon, you will notice that there always appears to be a layer of fog down close to the horizon. Therefore when planning any observing it is best to consult tables or astronomy software like SkyTools that tell you what time of year the object will be in the sky (due to the season) and when it will be at its most favourable for observing (time of night).
Dark adaption of the eye happens over a period of 20 minutes or more and is the eye's way of seeing in lower light levels. It is a twofold process that increases the size of the pupil letting more light into the eye and a chemical change that makes the retina more sensitive. Before starting a search for any DSOs it is best to go outside 30 mins before you want to observe and then DO NOT USE any white lights. Use a red torch or head lamp while setting up your scope ready for the night's observing, remember red light will not impact your night vision as much as white light. This is why it is frowned upon to use a white light at Star Parties!
Using averted vision is a technique of looking just off to one side of the object, either through the eyepiece of a telescope, binoculars or naked eye. This causes the image of the object to form on the eye's retina in an area that is covered with the black and white light receptors called Rods that are much more sensitive and packed more densely than the colour receptors called Cones which cover the central part of the retina. This technique can be a little difficult at first because you suddenly see more of the object and then your eye re-centralises the object, so you lose it again. Persevere and practice because averted vision will enable you to see fainter objects than normal. Three good examples of this, using the naked eye are: The Andromeda Galaxy M31 (late Autumn); The Double Cluster NGC869 and NGC884 (all year); and the Beehive Cluster M44 (late Winter). Look at any of these directly and you will be lucky to see them but look slightly off to one side and they will pop into view!
Nudging the telescope's Optical Tube Assembly (OTA) can be a good way to determine whether you can really see something in the eyepiece or not. Sometimes DSOs are barely perceptible against the background sky in the field of view of the eyepiece but if you gently tap the OTA then the target's image wobbles which makes it more discernible.
Being patient and allowing an image of a centred DSO to build up on your retina is good advice. It is very tempting to rush around the night sky, looking at one DSO after another to see what they all look like in a single evening. This is great fun and will wow all your friends but later go back to each DSO again and spend more time observing it. Certain DSOs like the Hercules Cluster M13 (Summer) that has hundreds of thousands of stars grouped into a globular cluster that really sparkle in larger telescopes and look good even in a smaller scope, really benefit from patience.The longer you look (at least 5 minutes), the more you will see! This is true of all DSOs.
The sky conditions are obviously beyond the observer's control but make the most of the nights of really great transparency and seeing. Astronomical seeing refers to the steadiness of the Earth's atmosphere that we are attempting to look through. Unsteady atmosphere causes the stars to twinkle as the refractive index of the atmosphere changes above our heads. The better the seeing the higher magnification that can be used. Often when it has been raining all day and the sky has been washed clean of all the pollution, the sky will be really transparent and will appear crystal clear with jet black background and bright stars. When good seeing and transparency occur at the same time, don't waste a second as it doesn't happen very often in the UK! Make the most of these rare opportunities and you will be glad you did. Take the chance to look at some of the smaller DSOs as you will find that you can push the magnification above the normally recommended maximum of once times the telescope's aperture in millimetres, sometimes up to as high as twice that.
• New General Catalogue (NGC numbers) - The New General Catalogue is a catalogue of Nebulae and star clusters compiled by John Louis Emil Dreyer in 1888.
• Barnard Catalogue (B numbers) - compiled by the astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard in the early 20th century contains a list of 'Dark Markings in the Sky'.
Most GOTO telescopes will have the first three catalogues programmed into their hand controllers.
Below is a list of some suggested DSOs for beginners broken down into three main groups that can be viewed: all year round; during the Winter months; and during the Summer months. Each group is then further broken down for viewing either using naked eye, bins or telescope. The best seasons to observe DSOs are late Autumn, Winter and early Spring as the sky is actually darker at night than during the Summer months which makes the fainter DSOs easier to see during this time of year. This is caused by the tilt of the Earth's axis pointing the northern hemisphere towards the Sun in Summer and away from the Sun in Winter. The Sun therefore drops further below the horizon during Winter months, resulting in darker skies. Obviously some of the DSOs can only be viewed during the Summer months due to the Earth's annual orbit around the Sun, so observing them, is best done near midnight (GMT) as they cross the Meridian. Suggested best observing months are enclosed in [square brackets] but do not have to be stuck to rigidly.
The DSOs in this section are circumpolar from northern latitudes of 50 degrees or more. This means that they can be viewed at any time of year but will be found in a different place each month as the Earth progresses around its orbit of the Sun. These give you the chance of getting started straight away with Deep Sky Observing, no matter what the season!
The above can only ever be an introduction to Deep Sky Observing and DSOs. Every astronomer has a different list of favourite DSOs and as you get more practiced you will develop a list of your own which will probably include one of the very first DSOs you ever observed. It is hoped that the above list will give you some ideas and the enthusiasm to get out under the night sky and enjoy Deep Sky Observing, it can be challenging but also very rewarding!
With all DSOs, knowing what you are looking at, adds to the enjoyment of the observing. However, try to observe the object first before looking at high resolution photos taken by the likes of the Hubble Space Telescope so as not to 'see' things that you can't possibly be seeing through your own equipment. Then read up about the object you have just observed from reference books and also Wikipedia but remember to always double check the facts from at least two different sources as they can sometimes be wrong!
Deep-Sky Companions: The Caldwell Objects and The Messier Objects by Stephen O'Meara. By using sketches, the author actually attempts to portray how these DSOs will look in amateur telescopes, albeit under pristine skies. These are good books to have with you at the telescope.
Collins Stars & Planets by Ian Ridpath and Wil Tirion is a guide to stars, planets, galaxies and the Solar System. It includes all 88 modern constellations including those in the southern hemisphere.
One very good piece of free software is SkyTools-3 Starter Edition. This software will generate an observing list showing which Messier objects are best visible that night and takes into account the phase of the Moon etc. It will also rank the objects from easy to hard, through both binoculars and small telescopes. Purchase an upgrade to get many more object catalogues and larger telescopes included.
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What is the best way to charge shipping to a customer? Is there an automated way to charge shipping based on home delivery or in-store pick-up?
Another option would be to add an 'Other' type item that can be added to the customer's order. Go to the Inventory Tab in the Main Menu and click Add Item.
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Physical cosmology is the study of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the Universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its origin, structure, evolution, and ultimate fate. For most of human history, it was a branch of metaphysics and religion. Cosmology as a science originated with the Copernican principle, which implies that celestial bodies obey identical physical laws to those on Earth, and Newtonian mechanics, which first allowed us to understand those physical laws.
Physical cosmology, as it is now understood, began with the development in 1915 of alternative cosmologies; however, most cosmologists agree that the Big Bang theory explains the observations better.
Dramatic advances in observational cosmology since the 1990s, including the cosmic microwave background, distant supernovae and galaxy redshift surveys, have led to the development of a standard model of cosmology. This model requires the universe to contain large amounts of dark matter and dark energy whose nature is currently not well understood, but the model gives detailed predictions that are in excellent agreement with many diverse observations.
Cosmology draws heavily on the work of many disparate areas of research in theoretical and applied physics. Areas relevant to cosmology include particle physics experiments and theory, theoretical and observational astrophysics, general relativity, quantum mechanics, and plasma physics.
Modern cosmology developed along tandem tracks of theory and observation. In 1916, Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity, which provided a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time. At the time, Einstein believed in a static universe, but found that his original formulation of the theory did not permit it. This is because masses distributed throughout the universe gravitationally attract, and move toward each other over time. However, he realized that his equations permitted the introduction of a constant term which could counteract the attractive force of gravity on the cosmic scale. Einstein published his first paper on relativistic cosmology in 1917, in which he added this cosmological constant to his field equations in order to force them to model a static universe. However, this so-called Einstein model is unstable to small perturbations—it will eventually start to expand or contract. The Einstein model describes a static universe; space is finite and unbounded (analogous to the surface of a sphere, which has a finite area but no edges). It was later realized that Einstein's model was just one of a larger set of possibilities, all of which were consistent with general relativity and the cosmological principle. The cosmological solutions of general relativity were found by Alexander Friedmann in the early 1920s. His equations describe the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker universe, which may expand or contract, and whose geometry may be open, flat, or closed.
History of the Universe – gravitational waves are hypothesized to arise from cosmic inflation, a faster-than-light expansion just after the Big Bang (17 March 2014).
In the 1910s, atom"—which was later called the Big Bang. In 1929, Edwin Hubble provided an observational basis for Lemaître's theory. Hubble showed that the spiral nebulae were galaxies by determining their distances using measurements of the brightness of Cepheid variable stars. He discovered a relationship between the redshift of a galaxy and its distance. He interpreted this as evidence that the galaxies are receding from Earth in every direction at speeds proportional to their distance. This fact is now known as Hubble's law, though the numerical factor Hubble found relating recessional velocity and distance was off by a factor of ten, due to not knowing about the types of Cepheid variables.
Given the Fred Hoyle's steady state model in which new matter is created as the galaxies move away from each other. In this model, the universe is roughly the same at any point in time.
For a number of years, support for these theories was evenly divided. However, the observational evidence began to support the idea that the universe evolved from a hot dense state. The discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1965 lent strong support to the Big Bang model, and since the precise measurements of the cosmic microwave background by the Cosmic Background Explorer in the early 1990s, few cosmologists have seriously proposed other theories of the origin and evolution of the cosmos. One consequence of this is that in standard general relativity, the universe began with a singularity, as demonstrated by Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking in the 1960s.
An alternative view to extend the Big Bang model, suggesting the universe had no beginning or singularity and the age of the universe is infinite, has been presented.
Light chemical elements, primarily hydrogen and helium, were created in the Big Bang process (see Nucleosynthesis). The small atomic nuclei combined into larger atomic nuclei to form heavier elements such as iron and nickel, which are more stable (see Nuclear fusion). This caused a later energy release. Such reactions of nuclear particles inside stars continue to contribute to sudden energy releases, such as in nova stars. Gravitational collapse of matter into black holes is also thought to power the most energetic processes, generally seen at the centers of galaxies (see Quasar and Active galaxy).
Cosmologists cannot explain all cosmic phenomena exactly, such as those related to the accelerating expansion of the universe, using conventional forms of energy. Instead, cosmologists propose a new form of energy called dark energy that permeates all space. One hypothesis is that dark energy is the energy of virtual particles, which are believed to exist in a vacuum due to the uncertainty principle.
There is no clear way to define the total energy in the universe using the most widely accepted theory of gravity, general relativity. Therefore, it remains controversial whether the total energy is conserved in an expanding universe. For instance, each photon that travels through intergalactic space loses energy due to the redshift effect. This energy is not obviously transferred to any other system, so seems to be permanently lost. On the other hand, some cosmologists insist that energy is conserved in some sense; this follows the law of conservation of energy.
Thermodynamics of the universe is a field of study that explores which form of energy dominates the cosmos – relativistic particles which are referred to as radiation, or non-relativistic particles referred to as matter. Relativistic particles are particles whose rest mass is zero or negligible compared to their kinetic energy, and so move at the speed of light or very close to it; non-relativistic particles have much higher rest mass than their energy and so move much slower than the speed of light.
As the universe expands, both matter and radiation in it become diluted. However, the energy densities of radiation and matter dilute at different rates. As a particular volume expands, mass energy density is changed only by the increase in volume, but the energy density of radiation is changed both by the increase in volume and by the increase in the wavelength of the photons that make it up. Thus the energy of radiation becomes a smaller part of the universe's total energy than that of matter as it expands. The very early universe is said to have been 'radiation dominated' and radiation controlled the deceleration of expansion. Later, as the average energy per photon becomes roughly 10 eV and lower, matter dictates the rate of deceleration and the universe is said to be 'matter dominated'. The intermediate case is not treated well analytically. As the expansion of the universe continues, matter dilutes even further and the cosmological constant becomes dominant, leading to an acceleration in the universe's expansion.
The history of the universe is a central issue in cosmology. The history of the universe is divided into different periods called epochs, according to the dominant forces and processes in each period. The standard cosmological model is known as the Lambda-CDM model.
The equations of motion governing the universe as a whole are derived from general relativity with a small, positive cosmological constant. The solution is an expanding universe; due to this expansion, the radiation and matter in the universe cool down and become diluted. At first, the expansion is slowed down by gravitation attracting the radiation and matter in the universe. However, as these become diluted, the cosmological constant becomes more dominant and the expansion of the universe starts to accelerate rather than decelerate. In our universe this happened billions of years ago.
Particle physics is important to the behavior of the early universe, because the early universe was so hot that the average energy density was very high. Because of this, scattering processes and decay of unstable particles are important in cosmology.
As a rule of thumb, a scattering or a decay process is cosmologically important in a certain cosmological epoch if the time scale describing that process is smaller than, or comparable to, the time scale of the expansion of the universe. The time scale that describes the expansion of the universe is 1/H with H being the Hubble constant, which itself actually varies with time. The expansion timescale 1/H is roughly equal to the age of the universe at that time.
Observations suggest that the universe began around 13.8 billion years ago. Since then, the evolution of the universe has passed through three phases. The very early universe, which is still poorly understood, was the split second in which the universe was so hot that particles had energies higher than those currently accessible in particle accelerators on Earth. Therefore, while the basic features of this epoch have been worked out in the Big Bang theory, the details are largely based on educated guesses. Following this, in the early universe, the evolution of the universe proceeded according to known high energy physics. This is when the first protons, electrons and neutrons formed, then nuclei and finally atoms. With the formation of neutral hydrogen, the cosmic microwave background was emitted. Finally, the epoch of structure formation began, when matter started to aggregate into the first stars and quasars, and ultimately galaxies, clusters of galaxies and superclusters formed. The future of the universe is not yet firmly known, but according to the ΛCDM model it will continue expanding forever.
The early, hot universe appears to be well explained by the Big Bang from roughly 10−33 seconds onwards, but there are several problems. One is that there is no compelling reason, using current particle physics, for the universe to be flat, homogeneous, and isotropic (see the cosmological principle). Moreover, grand unified theories of particle physics suggest that there should be magnetic monopoles in the universe, which have not been found. These problems are resolved by a brief period of cosmic inflation, which drives the universe to flatness, smooths out anisotropies and inhomogeneities to the observed level, and exponentially dilutes the monopoles. The physical model behind cosmic inflation is extremely simple, but it has not yet been confirmed by particle physics, and there are difficult problems reconciling inflation and quantum field theory. Some cosmologists think that string theory and brane cosmology will provide an alternative to inflation.
Another major problem in cosmology is what caused the universe to contain far more matter than antimatter. Cosmologists can observationally deduce that the universe is not split into regions of matter and antimatter. If it were, there would be X-rays and gamma rays produced as a result of annihilation, but this is not observed. Therefore, some process in the early universe must have created a small excess of matter over antimatter, and this (currently not understood) process is called baryogenesis. Three required conditions for baryogenesis were derived by Andrei Sakharov in 1967, and requires a violation of the particle physics symmetry, called CP-symmetry, between matter and antimatter. However, particle accelerators measure too small a violation of CP-symmetry to account for the baryon asymmetry. Cosmologists and particle physicists look for additional violations of the CP-symmetry in the early universe that might account for the baryon asymmetry.
Big Bang nucleosynthesis is the theory of the formation of the elements in the early universe. It finished when the universe was about three minutes old and its Ralph Asher Alpher, and Robert Herman. It was used for many years as a probe of physics at the time of the Big Bang, as the theory of Big Bang nucleosynthesis connects the abundances of primordial light elements with the features of the early universe. Specifically, it can be used to test the equivalence principle, to probe dark matter, and test neutrino physics. Some cosmologists have proposed that Big Bang nucleosynthesis suggests there is a fourth "sterile" species of neutrino.
The ΛCDM (Lambda cold dark matter) or Lambda-CDM model is a parametrization of the Big Bang cosmological model in which the universe contains a cosmological constant, denoted by Lambda (Greek Λ), associated with dark energy, and cold dark matter (abbreviated CDM). It is frequently referred to as the standard model of Big Bang cosmology.
The cosmic microwave background is radiation left over from decoupling after the epoch of recombination when neutral atoms first formed. At this point, radiation produced in the Big Bang stopped Thomson scattering from charged ions. The radiation, first observed in 1965 by Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson, has a perfect thermal black-body spectrum. It has a temperature of 2.7 kelvins today and is isotropic to one part in 105. Cosmological perturbation theory, which describes the evolution of slight inhomogeneities in the early universe, has allowed cosmologists to precisely calculate the angular power spectrum of the radiation, and it has been measured by the recent satellite experiments (COBE and WMAP) and many ground and balloon-based experiments (such as Degree Angular Scale Interferometer, Cosmic Background Imager, and Boomerang). One of the goals of these efforts is to measure the basic parameters of the Lambda-CDM model with increasing accuracy, as well as to test the predictions of the Big Bang model and look for new physics. The recent measurements made by WMAP, for example, have placed limits on the neutrino masses.
Newer experiments, such as QUIET and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, are trying to measure the polarization of the cosmic microwave background. These measurements are expected to provide further confirmation of the theory as well as information about cosmic inflation, and the so-called secondary anisotropies, such as the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect and Sachs-Wolfe effect, which are caused by interaction between galaxies and clusters with the cosmic microwave background.
On 17 March 2014, astronomers at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced the apparent detection of gravitational waves, which, if confirmed, may provide strong evidence for inflation and the Big Bang. However, on 19 June 2014, lowered confidence in confirming the cosmic inflation findings was reported.
The Lyman-alpha forest, which allows cosmologists to measure the distribution of neutral atomic hydrogen gas in the early universe, by measuring the absorption of light from distant quasars by the gas.
Only one universe will ever exist and there is some underlying principle that constrains the CC to the value we observe.
Only one universe will ever exist and although there is no underlying principle fixing the CC, we got lucky.
Lots of universes exist (simultaneously or serially) with a range of CC values, and of course ours is one of the life-supporting ones.
Other possible explanations for dark energy include quintessence or a modification of gravity on the largest scales. The effect on cosmology of the dark energy that these models describe is given by the dark energy's equation of state, which varies depending upon the theory. The nature of dark energy is one of the most challenging problems in cosmology.
The equivalence principle, whether or not Einstein's general theory of relativity is the correct theory of gravitation, and if the fundamental laws of physics are the same everywhere in the universe.
^ e.g. This argues cogently "Energy is always, always, always conserved."
Introductory cosmology and general relativity without the full tensor apparatus, deferred until the last part of the book.
An introductory text, released slightly before the WMAP results.
For undergraduates; mathematically gentle with a strong historical focus.
The classic reference for researchers.
An introduction to cosmology with a thorough discussion of inflation.
Discusses the formation of large-scale structures in detail.
An introduction including more on general relativity and quantum field theory than most.
The classic work on large-scale structure and correlation functions.
A standard reference for the mathematical formalism.
Benjamin Gal-Or, "Cosmology, Physics and Philosophy", Springer Verlag, 1981, 1983, 1987, ISBN 0-387-90581-2, ISBN 0-387-96526-2.
Center for Cosmological Physics. University of Chicago, Chicago.
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What are the Best Places to Visit in Europe during Fall?
If you have seen the hit series Game of Thrones, then you have seen Dubrovnik in the background. The beautiful baroque buildings in the city center are recognizable, drawing in thousands of tourists every year.
One of the only problems with traveling to Dubrovnik involves all of these tourists and the crowds that gather there, but you don’t have to worry about that at all during the fall. You can see everything that you want to see without having to battle your way through masses of people. This enables you to have a much more immersive experience.
If you want to catch some sunshine before the winter sets in, then this is the place to be. Remember that the temperature in fall ranges from 18 – 22 degrees during the day, so you don’t even have to worry about packing all of your warm clothes.
Any music lover would benefit from visiting Prague in the Czech Republic during the fall season. You can find everything from the Sacred Arts Music Festival and the gospel joys that can be heard there at the International Jazz Festival, a style of music that is popular across the city. You don’t even need to worry about the crowds of tourists that would usually gather at events like these, as most tourists visit Prague during the summer.
It is worth remembering that a lot of mainland Europe starts to get cold during fall, and Prague is no exception to that. The weather has the potential to be chilly, and it could start to rain. Remember to pack smartly, taking the best Gore Text poncho or fully-waterproof jacket that you can find.
There are specific destinations that can be found across the world that you can visit regardless of the time of year, Budapest is one of those destinations. Fall is a favorite for some travelers, as Hungarians begin to celebrate the season.
These celebrations involve some different festivals featuring a large number of local beverages and food types. You can also find a variety of various attractions and even some different activities for people of all age ranges to participate in.
You should anticipate a little bit of rainy weather during a trip to Budapest, but not enough to require anything more than a fleece jacket. If you are planning on attending some of the local festivals, then it is worth learning how to wash fleece jacket, so that you can get clean as quickly as possible afterward.
Hikers and nature lovers would benefit from visiting Oslo during the fall season. The city itself is surrounded by some beautiful mountains and hiking trails, each one waiting to be explored. The colors that come with the season make everything twice as picturesque and pleasant.
Remember that this is the harvest season in Norway when rowanberries can be found hanging off of bushes. You will pass children selling fruit on the side of the road and people with stalls jam of sale. Seasonal food is a real gem of traveling at this time of year, so you should aim to make the most of it.
No list dedicated to places to travel to during the fall season would be complete without mentioning Germany. Oktoberfest is something that every traveler should experience if they like a drink, featuring sights that include the famous stein glasses, brightly colored carousels and tents full of people enjoying delicious beverages.
You should still visit Munich if you don’t like to drink. The Kunstareal museum quarter is full of history and culture, the perfect environment for getting lost in. It does tend to rain on and off for around half of the days that make up each month, so don’t forget your coat!
Unlike the temperatures that can be found across a significant portion of mainland Europe, Transylvania remains relatively warm throughout the fall season. Rain only falls for a handful of days each month, so you don’t have to worry about the weather potentially ruining your trip.
The colors that come with the season turn the area surrounding Transylvania into something that resembles an oil painting, full of festivals and happy people who are looking to make the most out of the beautiful weather before the winter chill arrives. The area draws tourists in for some reasons. You could go and investigate the legend of Vlad the Impaler, or you could go searching for an elusive bear or lynx.
If you want to go further out, Belgrade in Serbia is beautiful. It is best to visit the city early in fall before the winter chill starts to set in. You could also try and time a trip to Belgrade to match an event that you want to go to, as events occur there throughout the year.
Anyone with interest in classical music would benefit from going to Belgrade in October when the classical music festival is held. The area surrounding the city is also perfect for people who love the great outdoors. Remember that while Belgrade is a center of culture and history, it also has one of the most prevalent music scenes in the whole of that area of Europe.
If you have ever traveled to Barcelona during the summer months, then you will probably have noticed that you saw less local people than you thought you would. This is because the humidity dies down in the fall, so it is like the start of the year for locals.
Due to this, everything starts off fun. Photography is a significant feature of the fall season in Barcelona, so is music. The International Jazz Festival of Barcelona is a lot of fun and the lack of humidity, and immense crowds of tourists make it even more enjoyable.
Edinburgh is known to be cold and chilly in the later months of the year, with an average daytime temperature of around 10 – 12 degrees in the fall season. But, regardless of the cold, Edinburgh is the perfect city to explore at this time of year.
You get to explore the beautiful, atmospheric city without all of the crowds that would be present in summer. Accommodation is also a lot more affordable when the peak season finishes. Some fantastic festivals pop up in the city in fall too, like the International Storytelling Festival, celebrating both traditional and contemporary storytelling.
While fall season in Lake Como might not bring the sunbathing weather that you were hoping for, it can bring with it an extraordinary level of beauty and fun. All of the charming restaurants and shops remain open once the masses of tourists have left, but it is much easier to relax in the home of lakefront romances without the massive crowds.
This is also the best time for participating in adventure sports around and Lake Como. You could go windsurfing or water-skiing around the immediate area, or you could venture a little bit further out to trundle down hiking trails or visit world-class golf courses.
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When discussing dentistry as a possible career option, use the following checklist to ascertain whether a student might be a good fit.
Comfortable with close, personal contact?
Caring and considerate of how others feel?
Comfortable making decisions on your own?
Passionate about transforming the lives of people in need?
Excited to be on the forefront of diagnosing health conditions?
Seeing the immediate results of your work?
Experiencing new challenges each day?
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Analysis of "Oedipus the King" as a Tragedy - Oedipus the King tragedy of blood or not?
Oedipus the King themes: Tragedy is one of the most prevalent and most applauded forms of drama. The Greek play "Oedipus the King" by Sophocles is an excellent manifestation of the literary device, tragedy. Oedipus, the principal character in the play unknowingly kills his father and marries his widowed mother while he was on an attempt to explore his identity. Oedipus is a tragedy of blood. Sophacles’ Oedipus the King is a perfect example of classical Greek tragedy. The philosopher Aristotle, in his book The Poetics, explained the criteria for a work to be a tragedy. According to him, for a play to be a tragedy it should awaken emotions like wonder, awe, fear, or pity in the minds of the audience. Apart from this, for a tragedy the plot must be complex and a major character should experience a great fall from prosperity (and fame) to misfortune because of a particular mistake he commits. Classical tragedy also includes the depiction of a reversal of a situation, an unexpected turning. It can be human suffering or self recognition of the principal character. The three unities, an unexpected turn in the end, a complex plot and noble characters are some of the characteristics of a tragedy that are found in “Oedipus the King."
Oedipus Rex – the Greek tragedy with all the characteristics of a tragedy: Oedipus Rex, no doubt, is a classic example of Greek tragedy. The play is deemed as a tragedy as it perfectly meets all the five criteria of a good tragedy; a tragic hero who is of noble birth, a tragic fault, a big fall from grace, a point of remorse or regret, and finally a catharsis. Oedipus Rex of "Oedipus the King" is the perfect sum all these criteria. His life was exactly that of a tragic hero. The tragic life of the hero made the novel a tragic novel. His nobility is the first feature that characterizes Oedipus as a tragic hero. He was of noble blood being born as a noble. He was destined to be a king in his very birth and could not escape from being a king. Even though he was attempted to be killed, destiny did not allow it and made him to be raised up by a king and queen of a different land. Nobility that fits a real hero is thus inherent in the blood of Oedipus Rex. He is a proven hero who heroically frees Thebes from the Sphinx. His heroic efforts made him to be declared as the hero who is still the favorite play character of all generations.
Hamartia is the tragic flaw of Oedipus the king even though it did not lead to his death. He was filled with pride and temper which turned out to be his biggest mistake. We find the blind temper of Oedipus as he kills Laios and the other travelers with him. We find him saying that “Swinging my club with this right hand I knocked him out of his car, and he rolled on the ground. I killed him I killed them all” (Sophocles 765-72). Even though Oedipus did not know that the old man in the chariot was the Laius, king of Thebes (who was actually his father), he did a big mistake killing the old man mercilessly. The fury of Oedipus is also evident in his words to Teiresias who reveals his fate and reply the questions posed on Thebes. Pride and arrogance made him shout “Damnation Take you! Out of this place! Out of my sight!” (Sophocles) The anger of Oedipus made him commit the tragic mistake of killing his very father Lauis, and marry his mother Jocasta. We find Oedipus and others discovering this mistake that was performed long back.
Oedipus Rex’s big fall from grace strengthened the cause of the drama as a great tragedy. This fall from grace happens as Oedipus, Jocasta and all others realize that Oedipus had killed none but his father and took his mother as his wife. This tragic moment of realization that makes everybody astonish is at the end of the play. Audience’s label the drama "Oedipus the King" as a tragic drama in this very point of realization. The moment of regret in the drama arrives at the end of the story as one of the servants who was with Laius the king during his death come and reveals his experience to Oedipus. He had accompanied Laius on that final journey and had survived the attack. He revealed the truth that Laius was killed by a single man and not a gang of robbers. He pointed out Oedipus as the murderer of Laius. This news made Oedipus shattered to pieces and Jocasta hang herself. Oedipus stabs off his eyes with the pins from his dress and punished himself.
The next feature of the drama, Catharsis or the emotional cleansing of the audience is found along with the same time of remorse. The audience develops pity for unfortunate Oedipus who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. Jocasta too was guiltless in the eyes of the audience as she was just an innocent bystander in the whole show. The people of the land also gather sympathy of the audience as they were suffering because of the terrible curse happened because of the terrible act. Catharsis is perfectly accomplished at the end of the play that makes it a tragedy.
The play "Oedipus the King" includes a complex plot. There also happens an abrupt reversal of the topic with respect to the principal character Oedipus. We find him telling “Ah God! It was true! All the prophecies! -Now, O Light, may I look on you for the last time! I, Oedipus, Oedipus damned in his birth, in his marriage damned, Damned in the blood he shed with his own hand! (Sophocles).” He utters this once he understands that the prophecies told to him (at the Oracle) came true. The prophesies about him reached its fulfillment. Oedipus had to encounter that unexpected turn. This alone is sufficient to prove that the play turned out to be a tragedy.
Sophocles’ "Oedipus the King" is a thus a perfect tragedy that meets all the criteria for a tragedy. "Oedipus the King" otherwise also is a tragedy as it ends in a sorrowful event. Even a layman with the least knowledge of literary devices of a drama would recognize "Oedipus the King" as a tragedy. A drama that ends with the death of a principal character and with the shame, misery and self-exile of another major character is what else other than a tragedy? No listing of criteria is required to brand "Oedipus the King" as a tragedy. Moreover it is not just the tragic incident of the play that makes it a tragedy, but the way in which the plot is developed. In the play "Oedipus the King" the story line proceeds as if the audience is ‘unpeeling an onion’. The culmination to the surprising climax also made "Oedipus the King" one of the best tragedy of all times.
this tragedy is one of the masterpiece of Sophocles.Oedipus was a true tragic hero.
sophocles was a man of letter.how beautifully he wrote in a really grand style.hero is a tragic hero,nd at the it makes audience weep.people feel sympathy 4 jocasta nd oedipus.
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Home » Browse » Academic journals » Ethnic, Cultural, and Area Studies Journals » Hmong Studies Journal » Article details, "From Kwvtxhiaj and PajNtaub to Theater and..."
International migration creates numerous challenges for immigrants and refugees, including political insecurity, economic disadvantage, familial conflict, and racial prejudice and discrimination. Despite these high priority hardships, a growing literature reveals that international migrants avidly participate in the arts in Europe (Costanzo and Zibouh, 2013; Delhaye, 2008; Escafré-Dublet, 2010; Orlando, 2003; Rogstad and Vestel, 2011; Soysal, 2004), Australia (Ram, 2005; Tabar, 2005), and the US (Fernández-Kelly, 2010; Jamal, 2010; Leonard and Sakata, 2005; Wilcox, 2011). The Hmong followed this pattern when they arrived in the US as refugees from Laos after the Vietnam War. Hmong refugees dramatically expanded their artistic expressions from traditional kwvtxhiaj andpajntaub to books, plays, paintings, and other creative genres. Why do immigrants and refugees like the Hmong invest so much of their scarce time and resources in art when they are still busy meeting basic needs and confronting oppression in their new society?
Marginalized groups, according to some scholars, use art to resist racial oppression. In the US, blacks often feel excluded from art events organized by whites (Shaw and Sullivan, 2011). Among both disadvantaged (Beighey and Unnithan, 2006) and middle-class African Americans (Banks, 2010:5), black art is "rooted in the desire to respond to and rectify legacies of black marginality as well as continuing black inequality." For example, middle-class African Americans who moved back to Chicago's poor Bronzeville neighborhood used public art as a means of "reclaiming a geographic and historic space for black culture" (Grams, 2010:191).
Asian American art shows strong parallels with the anti-racism oppositional consciousness in Black art (Chon-Smith, 2014). Like blacks, Asian Americans also experience racial oppression because they are less likely to have their ethnic identities recognized by the dominant group and more likely to be grouped together based on physical features (Kibria, 2003; Tuan, 1998). Vietnamese Americans, for instance, have used art to contest the representation of the Vietnam War in US popular culture and historical memory (Espíritu, 2010; Pham, 2001). Similarly, South Asian and Chinese American youth create music adapted from African American rap to express a subcultural citizenship that challenges the assimilationist identities required for upward social mobility (Maira, 2010; Wong, 2010).
Other scholars, however, argue that tensions within the ethnic community are the catalysts for artistic expression by immigrants, refugees, and their descendants. Rather than a response to racial oppression by a dominant group, communities created through international migration use art to adjust to their new transnational lives (Wilcox, 2011). The experience of Bengali immigrants in the US exemplifies this view of art as the expression of changing identities under diaspora conditions (Niyogi, 2011). They engage in artistic innovation to express new ethnic identities (such as the fiction of Jhumpa Lahiri) even though they have a rich Bengali literature in India (such as Tagore's prose and poetry). Similarly, China has three official dance forms (classical, folk, and ethnic); yet, Chinese Americans still construct a "Chinese" identity through dance performances in order to combine first and second-generation interpretations of Chinese culture (Wilcox, 2011).
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Isabel is a town in Dewey County, South Dakota, United States. The population was 135 at the 2010 census.
Isabel was laid out in 1910, and named in honor of a certain railroad employee's daughter.
Isabel is located at 45°23′38″N 101°25′50″W / 45.39389°N 101.43056°W / 45.39389; -101.43056 (45.393756, -101.430471).
According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 0.91 square miles (2.36 km2), all of it land.
Isabel has been assigned the ZIP code 57633 and the FIPS place code 32140.
As of the census of 2010, there were 135 people, 55 households, and 38 families residing in the town. The population density was 148.4 inhabitants per square mile (57.3/km2). There were 69 housing units at an average density of 75.8 per square mile (29.3/km2). The racial makeup of the town was 75.6% White, 23.0% Native American, and 1.5% from two or more races.
There were 55 households of which 29.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 47.3% were married couples living together, 14.5% had a female householder with no husband present, 7.3% had a male householder with no wife present, and 30.9% were non-families. 27.3% of all households were made up of individuals and 23.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.45 and the average family size was 2.95.
The median age in the town was 46.5 years. 20.7% of residents were under the age of 18; 8.9% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 17.8% were from 25 to 44; 24.5% were from 45 to 64; and 28.1% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the town was 44.4% male and 55.6% female.
As of the census of 2000, there were 239 people, 89 households, and 59 families residing in the town. The population density was 269.1 people per square mile (103.7/km²). There were 125 housing units at an average density of 140.7 per square mile (54.2/km²). The racial makeup of the town was 66.1% White, 33.1% Native American, 0.42% Pacific Islander, and 5.4% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.42% of the population.
There were 89 households out of which 34.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 49.4% were married couples living together, 10.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.6% were non-families. 31.5% of all households were made up of individuals and 22.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.69 and the average family size was 3.38.
In the town, the population was spread out with 33.9% under the age of 18, 5.4% from 18 to 24, 24.7% from 25 to 44, 16.7% from 45 to 64, and 19.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 90.4 males.
The median income for a household in the town was $14,643, and the median income for a family was $18,750. Males had a median income of $23,438 versus $18,125 for females. The per capita income for the town was $7,919. About 28.3% of families and 36.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 52.2% of those under the age of eighteen and 29.0% of those sixty five or over.
^ "SD Towns" (PDF). South Dakota State Historical Society. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-02-10. Retrieved 2010-02-13.
^ Federal Writers' Project (1940). South Dakota place-names, v.1-3. University of South Dakota. p. 43.
This page was last edited on 12 May 2018, at 00:31 (UTC).
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Tips to Consider When Choosing Window Treatments If you want to give your home a new look, consider installing some window treatments. When you get the right treatment, your home will not only be elegant, but can also enjoy benefit in various ways. For example, the treatment can bring out a specific theme you would like in your home. There are various type of window treatments you can choose from. Determining the right treatment to go for can be quite a task. When choosing window treatments, majority of homeowners think of the price. However, to end up with the right window treatment, you need to consider more than simply price when choosing from the options available. Other things you should consider include the following: Consider their Functionality Functionality is one of the important things you should consider when looking for drapes or shades. Depending on whether you want windows with obstructions, have uniquely shaped windows or want dressing windows, you can go for tilting, side to side or up and down shades or drapes.
Up and down treatments can be used on many types of windows, including Cellular Shades, Solar, Romans, and Rollers. For Vertical Blinds and Drapes, the best option for them are side to side controls. Side to side options work excellently for dressing sliding glass doors and large expanses of windows. Finally, the tilting options works best for Metal Blinds and Wood Blinds. You can open then blinds with a pull or twist of a wand if they have been dressed using a tilt option.
Extent of Privacy You Need When evaluating window treatments to go for, it’s also important to consider privacy. Ask yourself what kind of privacy would you like the treatments to provide. In most cases, how close your house is to your neighbors will determine the extent of privacy to go for. How much natural light you would like to allow in your home and the view from the window are other things you should keep in mind when evaluating the treatments to use for privacy purposes. Blinds that offer full blackout are the best if you are looking for complete privacy. For moderate privacy, you want a blind that allows light filtering. Finally, to maintain the view in your home, go for blinds that offer minimal privacy. If you are interested in minimal privacy, you can go for Solar Shades. When you install these treatments, you will still have a beautiful view of the outside but UV rays will be blocked from getting in your house. If you do not want Solar Shades, you can go for Sheer Shades or Drapes to achieve the same benefits. To ensure you get sunlight in your house and still have privacy, go for light filtering treatments. Finally, for complete privacy, the best treatments to install would be Blackout Shades. The treatments will completely block out light from entering your home.
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What's the fuss about hashtags?
A hashtag is a word or an unspaced phrase prefixed with the number sign "#". It is a form of metadata tag. Words in messages on microblogging and social networking services such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest, VK or Instagram etc may be tagged by putting "#" before them, either as they appear in a sentence, e.g. "New artists announced for #SXSW2014 Music Festival" or appended to it. The term "hashtag" can also refer to the hash symbol itself.
Hashtags make it possible to group such messages, since one can search for the hashtag and get the set of messages that contain it. A hashtag is only connected to a specific medium and can therefore not be linked and connected to pictures or messages from different platforms.
Because of its widespread use, the word was added to the Oxford English dictionary in June 2014.
Okay, so now that I have given you the Wikipedia definition, let me discuss with you why it is imperative for you to include hashtags in your postings, as well as take advantage of hashtag postings across the Internet.
Should you schedule tweets on Twitter?
When it comes to social media, there are a few characteristics which set Twitter apart from other forums. Opinions vary as to whether or not one should schedule tweets on Twitter. My opinion is that one should. It is an opinion that I have derived from personal experience and I will try and articulate this in the article to follow.
As a social media professional, one undoubtedly makes use of a variety of platforms and forums to not only engage with one's audience, but also to get a better understanding of what it is that one's potential client expects from one's brand. One needs to consider the following; the lifespan of the post, the demographic / geographic breakdown of one's audience, and the behaviour of one's audience in terms of brand loyalty in real time.
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In all my years selling furniture, I often get asked the question 'Well is this seat good quality?'. While differences may exist between models within a brand, the brand itself will most likely carry the quality across all models. What is the quickest way to answer this question?
Ask about the manufacturer's warranty - that is the answer! The warranty is the testament of the brand to stand behind the quality of the product. If the brand knows that the product quality is strong, then they will grant it an excellent warranty. It's quite logical - who knows the quality of the product better than the people that make it.
Marketing can promote a brand as being of a high standard but reading between the lines is done by reading the warranty. The fine print there will tell the truth.
Good furniture warranties today include at least a limited lifetime on the frame and reclining mechanism. Limited lifetime means for the life of the furniture which is most often regulated from 7-10 years. Another important clause is the warranty coverage of the padding and frame - these should be at least 3 years. Finally, the material also needs a warranty and the norm for that in the industry is 1year.
Using these few guidelines will help one filter through the marketing and get to the reality of the product.
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The Big Apple Circus is a circus that is located in New York City. Opened in 1977, it has become a tourist attraction as well. It has been highly influential towards the creation of Cirque du Soleil, as well as Ringling Bros. tent-based circuses (like the now-defunct Kaleidoscape) and smaller non-profit shows, such as Circus Flora.
Paul Binder and Michael Christensen were a pair of American street jugglers who, after meeting in San Francisco, decided to travel to Europe in the early 1970s. During 1974, while in Kent, England, they decided to tour around Europe with their act. Eventually they would also participate in the prestigious Nouveau Cirque de Paris, in France. By the time they had decided to return home in 1976, they had already gained some celebrity in Europe.
The idea of starting a circus school to train future "first" generation circus performers was the innovation of Russian born Gregory Fedin and his then wife Nina Grasavina. The school had a humble beginning working out of a Lower Manhattan loft.
The circus couple collaborated with the Paul and Michael to develop the Big Apple Circus following the European style "one ring" circus tradition. In 1977, they located and secured an open grounds area where they could debut the Big Apple Circus. The small green tent was filled with big hearts of performers, families and circus enthusiast the summer of 1977. Headlining that show was Paul Lubin (Single Trapezist) , Ethel Janneir (Dog Act) a tight wire number, Michael and Paul (Jugglers and Clowns), the Back Street Flyers, Mia and Jesse (double trapeze) and a host of performers. This area was located at Battery Park, in New York.
During 1978 the circus moved from Manhattan. By 1979, two circus arts schools had been opened with money raised from the circus shows.
The Big Apple Circus began the 1980s decade with a lot of media attention, having established a special holiday celebration in honor of the circus and its staff, and then appearing in a Hollywood film.
In 1981, the circus began performing at Damrosch Park of Lincoln Center for the first time. Its winter season has been at Damrosch Park ever since.
In 1982, the circus won a silver medal at a circus performing competition held in Paris.
1983 saw the circus begin to tour, as tours across New England began to be arranged. The circus also received an Obie award that year.
By 1984, the New York School for Circus Arts/Big Apple Circus relocated to East Harlem (1 East 104th Street) . The New York School for Circus Arts inconjunction with the NYC Public School system and ArtsConnection established the Young Talent Circus Training Program (Mr. Richard Levys' brainchild). The circus program mission was to teach talented children of diverse economic communities circus arts. One of the goals was to nurture and develop talent into potential circus performers. A core group of young circus "talent" participated in a circus competition resulting in a "Gold Medal" award. Three years later another group from the pre-professional circus program (located in the Harbor School for the Performing Arts in East Harlem) would compete in the II Rampe International Circus School Competition in Monte Carlo, Monaco. These students were awarded the Junior Jury and Nice Marin Awards. The New York School for Circus Arts techncial and artistic faculty included: Mr. Philip Beder (trampoline, tumbling, acrobatics and gymnastics))Mr. Abel Shark (Back Street Flyer) Mrs. Irina Goldstien (trapeze, acrobatics) and Ms. Rosalinda Rojas (aerial, ground acrobatics and choreographer) and Mr. Sasha Pavlata guest instructor and circus specialist. In 1985, the famous Boston Pops teamed up with Big Apple Circus for an extraordinary collaboration and live performance. That same year (1985) and for the next few years performers (Michael Christenson (Big Apple, Deni LaCombe (Big Apple and Cirque Du Soleil), Carlos Guity (Big Apple), Rosalinda Rojas (Big Apple and NYSCA) appear as guest artists with the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center (Manon, Turandot and Macbeth).
One of the biggest steps in the institution's history was taken in 1986, when the circus opened the clown care unit, a group of professional clowns, trained extensively in hospital procedures, circus skills, and improvisation, make rounds as "clown doctors."
1987 marked the circus' tenth anniversary, and big time celebrations were held during the entire year. A new tent and seating system was bought. Topping the tenth anniversary celebrations was a prestigious silver crown, which the circus won in Monte Carlo, Monaco. This year six acrobats/ jugglers showcased their talent at the International Circus School competition in Monte Carlo. The creative and technical (dance and acrobatic) projected was headed by Rosalinda Rojas. Carlos Guity and James Clowny were the two lead pre professional competitors. Many of these New York School for Circus Arts students advanced to international professional circus careers.
During 1988, the Big Apple Circus once again made headlines, when the company participated in the first circus collaboration between China and the United States in history. "East Meets West " debut at the Lincoln Center Damrosch Park Winter Season. Paul Binder received an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Dartmouth College that year.
In 1989, NYNEX started to sponsor metropolitan New York tours to residents of the area and tourists as well. The tour included a trip to the Big Apple Circus' grounds. Michael Christiensen received the Raoul Wallenberg humanitarian award that year for the creation, three years before, of the retired clown's pension program. The same year, the circus and some of its performers were showcased on a Woody Allen movie, Alice . In 1989 also, the circus surpassed the amount of one million dollars in fund raising for the first time.
By 1996, there was increased interest in Big Apple Circus and its performers in cities outside the New York/New England area. This was in part due to the circus' exposure in the Allen film, as well as a result of all the diverse achievements the circus. So, that year, Chicago and Columbus were included in the circus' yearly tour, with those two cities becoming the first two cities outside New York/New England where the circus performed. Michael Christensen received two more awards, including one named after Red Skelton.
The Harlem Hospital Center, founded with funds that came from the Big Apple Circus, was opened that year, and the hospital's pediatric area in particular became a headlining facility, as professional performers specially trained as "clown doctors" would visit perform for patients. HBO aired a special documentary about the circus that year also.
In 1991, Big Apple Circus' performers participated in a collaboration between American and Russian circus performers. That same year, Paul Binder was given a presidential medal of achievement by Dartmouth, as well as a doctorate in fine arts by the Pratt Institute.
In 1993, the circus set a new attendance record. A new tent was purchased, and Michael Christensen was given a Parenting Achievement award by Parents magazine, to recognize his work with the Clown Care Foundation.
Gary Dunning became the Big Circus' executive director in 1994. Meanwhile, Christensen received another award, this one the "Sullivan Trail Sertoma's Club Service to Mankind Award". A creative Center campaign was announced, the coffee brand Chock full o'Nuts began sponsoring the circus, and a new mark was set as far as most funds received during one year.
Peter T. Grauer became the circus' Chairman in 1995, replacing Patricia Rosenwald.
In 1996] the circus' Art in Education program began to work in different grade schools. Clown Care continued to develop, opening chapters in Washington, D.C. and in Connecticut.
1997 saw new attendance records set, as an estimated 170,000 people went to see the circus' "Medicine Show" production over a total of 114 New York City performances. Clown Care completed 150,000 hospital visits in one year for the first time in the program's history, and Paul Binder received an honorary doctorate from Rhode Island College.
During 1998, the circus was able to break attendance records again, as it celebrated twenty years of operation with engagements at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and in Boston. The Boston engagement was particularly pleasant for the circus' performers, as it was one of the longest stays in that city that they had ever experienced. TJ Maxx, a major American company, began to sponsor Big Apple Circus appearances in Chicago and in Atlanta by bringing the circus' "Circus of the Senses" to those cities. Circus of the Senses is a circus performance specifically geared towards children with special needs. Sign language interpreters and sound augmentation for deaf patrons allow the audience to experience the circus as never before. In 1999, over 6,000 children took advantage of these performances.
That same year (1999), Michael Christensen was inducted into Miami's Ambassador David A. Walters pediatric Hall of Fame, for his "contributions to pediatrics" by way of the circus and its different programs.
In 2000, Binder and Christensen continued garnering awards, being declared "Living Landmarks" by the New York Landmarks Conservancy. Once again, "Circus of the Senses" attracted a large number of special children, with 9,000 kids participating.
The Circus dropped plans for a second unit that was to play in theaters after less than successful financial results during a trial run.
2001 saw the circus' best known performer, clown "Grandma" (Barry Lubin), inducted into the International Clown Hall of Fame. A new seating system was installed in the circus big top, and, after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the circus opened its "Dreams of a City" show, which was dedicated to the City of New York.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg proclaimed November 1, 2002, as "Big Apple Circus Day". A newsletter, "The Ringside Report", was produced and sent exclusively to circus members and donors, and a Clown fashion show raised more than one million dollars, which were promptly transferred to the circus' various charity programs. The circus celebrated its 25th anniversary with a documentary film about the creation and production of that year's show.
Carnival show actors and circus performers Pedro Carrillo and Aleysha Goulevich entered the Guinness Book of World Records when, in 2003, they set records, at the same moment, in their different specialties: Carrillo skipped a rope on the high wire 1,323 times in a row, and Goulevich twirled 99 hula hoops at the same time.
"Circus to Go," a traveling stage show, allowed Big Apple Circus to reach new communities. The company ventured to the American Western states for the first time. Michael Christensen, meanwhile, received another honorary certificate, when he was given the "Distinguished Alumni Award" by the University of Washington's arts department. He was also given an award by Exceptional Parents magazine, presented during a Baltimore Orioles baseball home game.
In 2004, the TV documentary created by ABC TV on the Circus received an Emmy award in the "Outstanding Entertainment in Programming Single Program" category.
2005 saw the introducution of a new big top tent. Clown Barry Lubin collaborated with Steve Smith to produce a show entitled "Grandma Goes To Hollywood".
On December 2, 2008, Britney Spears performed her hits Circus & Womanizer in a televised promotion concert on Good Morning America at the Big Apple Circus. The Big Apple Circus went on to become the opening act on part of the North American and European leg of the phenomenally successful The Circus Starring: Britney Spears world tour.
The Circus operates a special program serving 19 pediatric hospitals in seven cities called Clown Care and works with seniors in elder care settings in Chicago in a program called Vaudeville Caravan.
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The insect type, that has one pair of wings are insects like crane flies, flies, mosquitos, etc. The two paired winged insect includes moths and butterflies. The ones with transparent wings include insects like bees and wasps and ants with wings. the feature in this type of insects is the antennae are normally smaller than the insect's body.
The insect type that is wingless is most to be found.They include nonparasitic and the parasitic type of insects.The parasitic insects are often found living in mammals. The more common ones are lice and the flea.
There are also modified winged type of insects like the beetle which are its most common form. Additionally, there are various other insects like cockroaches, walking stick, crickets, grasshoppers, and so on.Beetles are the unique species of insect which are found in this category.
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Why is the kitchen such a hard place to deal with when it comes to flooring? Well, it's certainly one of the busiest rooms in the house with lots of cooking, cleaning and moving around. For this reason, it must be able to handle all the rumble and tumble while standing out aesthetically. Going for tiles on the kitchen floor is a splendid idea for attaining both functionality and aesthetic appeal.
Like clothing, hairstyles and music, building design has trends that come and go, gradually shifting over time to become characteristic of a certain period. Unlike fashion and entertainment, however, architecture is usually fairly permanent, so there's a tendency for designers to strive for timelessness while remaining distinctive and up-to-date. Because of this, building design trends evolve more slowly than others, and you won't normally see such dramatic changes from one year to the next.
The use of timber wall frames to construct buildings has become commonplace in the Australian construction industry today. One major reason for this trend is that these building construction products are regarded as a sustainable choice of building material. Given the growing pressure on building owners and builders to use environmentally friendly building materials, building with timber wall frames helps achieve this goal in so many different ways that other materials cannot.
If your home's foundation is unstable, you may need to hire someone to do underpinning to strengthen the foundation so it's sturdy enough to hold up your home. There are a number of situations in which underpinning may be essential, but subsidence, changes to the elevation of the land, can definitely require you to need underpinning. If you're worried about subsidence, there are several things you may want to investigate. All of the issues below are potential signs that your area may have an increased risk of subsidence, and as a result, you may want to set up a savings account in case subsidence occurs and you need to put underpinning on your home.
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Veneration (Latin veneratio or dulia, Greek δουλεία, douleia), or veneration of saints, is the act of honoring a saint, a person who has been identified as having a high degree of sanctity or holiness. Angels are shown similar veneration in many religions. Philologically, "to venerate" derives from the Latin verb, venerare, meaning to regard with reverence and respect. Veneration of saints is practiced, formally or informally, by adherents of some branches of all major religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism.
Within Christianity, veneration is practiced by groups such as the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic, and Eastern Catholic Churches, all of which have varying types of canonization or glorification procedures. In the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, veneration is shown outwardly by respectfully bowing or making the sign of the cross before a saint's icon, relics, or statue, or by going on pilgrimage to sites associated with saints. In general, veneration is not practiced by Protestants.
Hinduism has a long tradition of veneration of saints, expressed toward various gurus and teachers of sanctity, both living and dead. Branches of Buddhism include formal liturgical worship of saints, with Mahayana Buddhism classifying degrees of sainthood.
In Islam, veneration of saints is practiced by many of the adherents of traditional Sunni Islam (Sunni Sufis, for example) and Shia Islam, and in many parts of places like Turkey, Egypt, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Other sects, such as Wahhabists etc., abhor the practice.
In Judaism, there is no classical or formal recognition of saints, but there is a long history of reverence shown toward biblical heroes and martyrs. In some regions, for example within Judaism in Morocco, there is a long and widespread tradition of saint veneration.
Both main branches of Buddhism, Theravada and Mahayana, recognize those who have achieved a high degree of enlightenment as an Arhat. Mahayana Buddhism particularly gives emphasis to the power of saints to aid ordinary people on the path to enlightenment. Those who have reached enlightenment, and have delayed their own complete enlightenment in order to help others, are called Bodhisattvas. Mahayana Buddhism has formal liturgical practices for venerating saints, along with very specific levels of sainthood. Tibetan Buddhists venerate especially holy lamas, such as the Dalai Lama, as saints.
As St. Thomas Aquinas once explained, adoration, which is known as latria in classical theology, is the worship and homage that is rightly offered to God alone. It is the manifestation of submission, and acknowledgement of dependence, appropriately shown towards the excellence of an uncreated divine person and to his absolute Lordship. It is the worship of the Creator that God alone deserves. Although we see in English a broader usage of the word “adoration” which may not refer to a form of worship exclusive to God—for example, when a husband says that he “adores his wife”—in general it can be maintained that adoration is the best English denotation for the worship of latria.
Veneration, known as dulia in classical theology, is the honor and reverence appropriately due to the excellence of a created person. Excellence exhibited by created beings likewise deserves recognition and honor. We see a general example of veneration in events like the awarding of academic awards for excellence in school, or the awarding of olympic medals for excellence in sports. There is nothing contrary to the proper adoration of God when we offer the appropriate honor and recognition that created persons deserve based on achievement in excellence.
We must make a further clarification regarding the use of the term “worship” in relation to the categories of adoration and veneration. Historically, schools of theology have used the term “worship” as a general term which included both adoration and veneration. They would distinguish between “worship of adoration” and “worship of veneration.” The word “worship” (in a similar way to how the liturgical term “cult” is traditionally used) was not synonymous with adoration, but could be used to introduce either adoration or veneration. Hence Catholic sources will sometimes use the term “worship” not to indicate adoration, but only the worship of veneration given to Mary and the saints.
In the Syriac Orthodox Church liturgical service, the Hail Mary is pronounced as a prefatory prayer after the Our Father, and before the priest's entrance to the chancel. The name of the Blessed Virgin Mary has also been probably used for the sanctification of altars, above the name of all other saints.
Church theologians have long adopted the terms latria for the type of worship due to God alone, and dulia and proskynesis for the veneration given to angels, saints, relics and icons. Catholic and Orthodox theologies also include the term hyperdulia for the type of veneration specifically paid to Mary, mother of Jesus, in Catholic and Orthodox traditions. This distinction is spelled out in the dogmatic conclusions of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787), which also decreed that iconoclasm, i.e. forbidding icons and their veneration, a dogma central to the Iconoclastic controversy, is a heresy that amounts to a denial of the incarnation of Jesus.
Now, the Roman Catholic tradition has a well established philosophy for the veneration of the Virgin Mary via the field of Mariology with Pontifical schools such as the Marianum specifically devoted to this task..
Assumption (in body and soul to Heaven).
The special graces accorded by God to Mary motivated her title of Mediatrix of all graces to the human kind, her intercessory power to Jesus Christ God about the believers'intentions of prayer, and lastly the special veneration that the Roman Catholic and Oriental Orthodox Churches -sharing the same dogmas- tribute to her, in comparison with all other saints.
In Protestant churches, veneration is sometimes considered to amount to the heresy of idolatry, and the related practice of canonization amounts to the heresy of apotheosis. Protestant theology usually denies that any real distinction between veneration and worship can be made, and claims that the practice of veneration distracts the Christian soul from its true object, the worship of God. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin writes that "(t)he distinction of what is called dulia and latria was invented for the very purpose of permitting divine honours to be paid to angels and dead men with apparent impunity".
Hinduism has a longstanding and living tradition of reverence toward saints, with the line often blurring between humanity and divinity with some Hindu deities. The bhakti movements helped to popularize the veneration of saints and gurus as models showing the way to liberation.
Islam has had a rich history of veneration of saints (often called wali, which literally means "Friend [of God]"), which has declined in some parts of the Islamic world in the twentieth century due to the influence of the various streams of Salafism. In Sunni Islam, the veneration of saints became a very common form of religious celebration early on, and saints came to be defined in the eighth-century as a group of "special people chosen by God and endowed with exceptional gifts, such as the ability to work miracles." The classical Sunni scholars came to recognize and honor these individuals as venerable people who were both "loved by God and developed a close relationship of love to Him." "Belief in the miracles of saints (karāmāt al-awliyā��) ... [became a] requirement in Sunni Islam [during the classical period]," with even medieval critics of the ubiquitous practice of grave visitation like Ibn Taymiyyah emphatically declaring: "The miracles of saints are absolutely true and correct, and acknowledged by all Muslim scholars. The Quran has pointed to it in different places, and the sayings of the Prophet have mentioned it, and whoever denies the miraculous power of saints are innovators or following innovators." The vast majority of saints venerated in the classical Sunni world were the Sufis, who were all Sunni mystics who belonged to one of the one of the four orthodox legal schools of Sunni law.
Veneration of saints eventually became one of the most widespread Sunni practices for more than a millennium, before it was opposed in the twentieth century by the Salafi movement, whose various streams regard it as "being both un-Islamic and backwards ... rather than the integral part of Islam which they were for over a millennium." In a manner similar to the Protestant Reformation, the specific traditional practices which Salafism has tried to curtail in both Sunni and Shia contexts include those of the veneration of saints, visiting their graves, seeking their intercession, and honoring their relics. As Christopher Taylor has remarked: "[Throughout Islamic history] a vital dimension of Islamic piety was the veneration of Muslim saints…. [due, however to] certain strains of thought within the Islamic tradition itself, particularly pronounced in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries ... [some modern day] Muslims have either resisted acknowledging the existence of Muslim saints altogether or have viewed their presence and veneration as unacceptable deviations."
While orthodox and organized Judaism do not countenance the veneration of saints per se, veneration and pilgrimage to burial sites of holy Jewish leaders is an ancient part of the tradition.
Today it is common for some Jews to visit the graves of many righteous Jewish leaders. The tradition is particularly strong among Moroccan Jews, and Jews of Sephardi descent, although also by some Ashkenazi Jews as well. This is particularly true in Israel, where many holy Jewish leaders are buried. The Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem and that of Maimonides in Tiberius are examples of burial sites that attract large pilgrimages in Israel. In America, the only such example is the grave site of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, at the Ohel, in the cemetery in Queens where he is buried alongside his father-in-law. During his lifetime, Schneerson himself would frequently visit the gravesite (Ohel) of his father-in-law, where he would read letters and written prayers, and then place them on the grave. Today visitors to the grave of Schneerson include Jews of Orthodox, Reform and Conservative background, as well as non-Jews. Visitors typically recite prayers of psalms and bring with them petitions of prayers written on pieces of paper which are then torn and left on the grave.
^ a b c d e f g h Lindsay Jones, ed. (2005). Thomson Gale Encyclopedia of Religion (in Tajik). Sainthood (Second ed.). Macmillan Reference USA. p. 8033.
^ a b c "Veneration of saints is a universal phenomenon. All monotheistic and polytheistic creeds contain something of its religious dimension... " Issachar Ben-Ami (1998). Saint Veneration Among the Jews in Morocco. Wayne State University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-8143-2198-0. Retrieved 7 September 2012.
^ a b c d e f Werner Stark (1966). Sociology of Religion. Taylor & Francis. p. 367. GGKEY:ZSKE259PDZ9. Retrieved 7 September 2012.
^ Florian Pohl (1 September 2010). Modern Muslim Societies. Marshall Cavendish. pp. 294–295. ISBN 978-0-7614-7927-7. Retrieved 7 September 2012.
^ "Sufi Islam". Although frequently characterized as the mystical component of Islam, there are also "Folklorist" Sufis, and the "Traditional" Sufis...Sufism is characterized by the veneration of local saints and by brotherhoods that practice their own rituals.
^ "Of saints and sinners: The Islam of the Taliban is far removed from the popular Sufism practised by most South Asian Muslims". The Economist. December 18, 2008. In its popular form, Sufism is expressed mainly through the veneration of saints...South Asia is littered with the tombs of those saints. They include great medieval monuments, like the 13th-century shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, founder of South Asia’s pre-eminent Sufi order, in Ajmer. But for every famous grave, there are thousands of roadside shrines, jutting into Delhi’s streets, or sprinkled across the craggy deserts of southern Pakistan.
^ Kim Murphy (2003-05-08). "Saudi Shiites Take Hope From Changes Next Door". Los Angeles Times. while most Sunnis view them as fellow, though possibly misguided, Muslims, Shiites are regarded as infidels by the Saudi religious establishment, which adheres to the ultraconservative and austere variation of Sunni faith known as Wahhabism. Saudi religious leaders see the Shiite veneration of saints and shrines, celebration of the prophet Muhammad's birthday and other rituals as sinful.
^ Miravalle, Mark (November 24, 2006). "What Is Devotion to Mary?". Mother of all peoples. Retrieved November 2, 2013.
^ Jaison Jacob. Holy Qurbana Kramam: Malankara Orthodox Church. Diaz Xavier. p. 275. Archived from the original on Jan 15, 2019.
^ "Our Lady Mary, Mother of God, mediator for all grace and advocate for all the devotees before God". St. Baselios Indian Orthodox Church. Malankara. Archived from the original on Jan 15, 2019. Retrieved Jan 15, 2019.
^ a b s.v. dulia, Cross, F.L.; Livingstone, E.A., eds. (1997). The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Third Edition. Oxford University Press. p. 513.
^ Casiday, Augustine, ed. (2012). The Orthodox Christian World. Routledge. p. 450.
^ "Veneration of Images". New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia.
^ s.v. Images, Veneration of, Elwell, Walter A., ed. (2001). Evangelical Dictionary of Theology. Baker Academic. p. 594.
^ "Mariological Society of America". Mariologicalsocietyofamerica.us. Retrieved 2012-01-26.
^ "....the veneration of, and pilgrimages to, saints were part of an ancient Jewish tradition." Sharot, Stephen (1976). Judaism: A Sociology. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers. p. 42.
^ "The life of these, mainly Sephardi and Oriental (Mizrahi) communities, is marked by an unself-conscious and unquestioning commitment to deeply rooted values, where legalism often yields to common sense, and mystical piety plays an integral part, visible in such practices as veneration of tombs of patriarchs and saints, often associated with pilgrimage." De Lange, Nicholas (2000). An Introduction to Judaism. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 69.
^ Kilgannon, Corey (20 June 2004). "Lubavitchers Mark 10 Years Since Death of Revered Rabbi". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 January 2010.
^ Horowitz, Craig (19 June 1995). "Beyond Belief". New York Magazine: 42. Retrieved 20 February 2012.
^ Identifying Chabad : what they teach and how they influence the Torah world (Revised [ed.]. ed.). [Illinois?]: Center for Torah Demographics. 2007. pp. 81, 103, 110, 111. ISBN 978-1411642416.
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The Eurostars project ImageREPORT is an innovative system is to improve radiology and the result of the combination of an automated medical image analysis and structured reporting. This project is founded upon the cooperation between Smart Reporting, Radboud UMC and Thirona.
Current practice for radiologists is to manually analyse medical images and write a text report, which is very time-consuming, and can lead to user-driven errors and inconsistent reports. Previous CAD software has not reached a sufficient accuracy for widespread implementation in clinical practice. ImageREPORT now significantly improves CAD accuracy through deep learning-based technology, while structured reporting improves communication and facilitates implementation in clinical practice. There is a growing awareness that structured reporting improves intra-hospital communication and confidence in clinical decisions by referring physicians. In addition, Computer-Aided Detection (CAD) methods, which automatically analyse and interpret large sets of medical images, increase detection accuracy and reduce interpretation time. However, previously developed CAD solutions show a high rate of false positive readings (up to 40%), severely hampering clinical usefulness. Recent developments in deep learning technology enabled development of improved CAD software, equalling experienced radiologists with respect to report quality. Radiology departments encounter an increasing volume of medical imaging data, particularly since novel high resolution imaging modalities, like helical CT scanners, result in a large number of images that must be manually inspected. Between 1999 and 2010, this led to a 10-fold increase in the number of images that need to be interpreted, with the number of imaging procedures increasing at a twofold rate in the same period.
The developed platform incorporates highly accurate CAD algorithms for automated analysis of chest CT-scans and chest X-rays (40% of the work load for the average radiology department) using deep convolutional neural networks, a type of deep learning technology. These results feed into a complementary reporting structure on the platform to ensure a seamless integration. In a nutshell, the project will result in an integrated radiology image analysis and reporting system that can be installed locally in hospital radiology departments.
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Historical Context: PPI has its roots in the socialist Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair (HH) – “The Young Guard,” and its related adult organizations–Progressive Zionist League and Americans for Progressive Israel, together with two entities formed in support of the agenda of the Israeli political party Ratz, known in English as the “Movement for Civil Rights and Peace,” and famously headed by Shulamit Aloni.
HH began in Central and Eastern Europe. It was a socialist-Zionist youth movement, with a branch formed in North America in the early-1920s.
Members of HH founded kibbutzim in Mandatory Palestine as early as 1919. In 1927, the four HH kibbutzim formed the Kibbutz Artzi [National] Federation, (which grew to 85 in the 1990s and later merged with the United Kibbutz Movement to comprise 275 kibbutzim today). The movement also founded a political party that shared the name HH, advocating a bi-national state with equality between Arabs and Jews.
In 1936, the HH party launched the Socialist League of Palestine, representing non-kibbutznik city and town dwellers that shared HH politics. The Socialist League was the only Zionist political party within Palestine to accept Arab members as equals, and to support Arab rights and the call for a bi-national state.
In January 1948, shortly before Israel’s independence, HH and the Socialist League merged with another leftwing party, Achdut Avoda (“Unity of Labor”), to form Mapam, the United Workers Party of Israel. Mapam was Israel’s second largest party in the early 1950s, and the first major party to advocate negotiating directly with the Palestinians. In 1992, the Mapam, Ratz and Shinui (“Change”) parties formed a single national electoral list, known as Meretz (“Energy”), and served as Yitzhak Rabin’s primary (and later, only) coalition partner.
Back in the US, in the 1950s,he Progressive Zionist League (created by alumni of HH who did not make aliyah) formed an organization open to people who had not grown up in “the movement” — Americans for Progressive Israel (API). In Nov. 1952, the PZL launched its monthly journal, Israel Horizons. IH continued as the official publication of API, which took on the name of “Americans for Progressive Israel-Hashomer Hatzair” in 1955.
In 1997 American Friends of Ratz (which was formed to support the Israeli political party), the Education Fund for Israeli Civil Rights and Peace (an overlapping organization formed to promote Ratz’s agenda, but not to support the party per se) merged with API-HH to become “Meretz USA, for Israeli Civil Rights and Peace.” This merger was prompted by the parallel unification in Israel (also in 1997) of Mapam, Ratz and half of Shinui into a single political party, still called Meretz. In 2011, Meretz USA changed its nameto Partners for Progressive Israel . Also in 2011, PPI discontinued its publication of Israel Horizons – then a quarterly, which it had taken over from API-HH — to focus more energy on the Web.
Activism Strategy: PPI represents a progressive Zionist position on two-states in the many national and international organizations with which it is connected; it also seeks to encourage progressive Zionism through education and activism.
Membership/Chapters: PPI’s national office is in New York City, with board members and supporters in many places across the United States. .
Periodic policy statements on current events.
PPI activists promote organized demonstrations and an ongoing boycott of settler products. The group is affiliated with the American Zionist Movement, World Union of Meretz (WUM), an international association of like-minded left-Zionist groups, the Jewish National Fund of America, and the Jewish Labor Committee. PPI participates in elections for, and sends delegates to, the World Zionist Congress, where they are part of the left-leaning WUM faction.
Contributions: Many PPI members have made a lifelong commitment to dovish pro-Israel activism and are active in their organizational affiliates as well as in many other efforts to promote a progressive Israel.
© Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, 2019.
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What are the best unethical hacks for life?
Get a free drink at Starbucks by pretending your order was taken.-Have your friend order a drink at Starbucks and pick up their drink and leave. After a few minutes, have the friend walk to the counter and say they never got their drink so they make another one. This might not work always and may be not at all the starbucks.
Take advantage of "grace periods" in ticket-entry car parking- Most of these Parkings will have a grace period so that if you pull in but you didn't really ‘park,' you can leave and pay nothing. Next time you park in one of these Parkings, grab a ticket like normal and go park. When you're ready to leave, pull your car close to the entrance, and go push the button to get a fresh entrance ticket, time stamped to that moment (when you're ready to leave). Then, just go to the exit and put your brand new ticket in the machine or hand it to the person. If you're within the grace period, you will be charged nothing and you can leave. Even if you're a few minutes over, you're paying for minutes rather than hours or days.
Buy an appliance that's identical to the one you broke, swap them out, and then return the broken appliance for a refund.
Get a free extra carry-on by asking for the airport gift shop's gift bag- For extra carry-ons at no charge, go the airport gift shop and ask for a gift bag, and stuff your stuff into it. Because it looks like you purchased it at the airport, the flight will (allegedly) let you bring it on free, even if it's over your carry-on limit.
Whenever you go to a big chain movie theatre, always get your tickets from those electronic kiosks they have at the front, and buy the child's price tickets. They're cheaper (Not everywhere though).
Get a Cab if you do not have a Cab app installed and there is no Internet data - Drinking in the city and can't get a cab?, walk into a fancy hotel lobby, and call a cab. They'll assume it's a posh person going to the airport, and they'll be there in a flash.
Meeting Someone - When meeting someone, tell them you are twice as far away from them as you actually are, and are willing to meet halfway, i.e. if you are 10 KM away tell them you are 20 km.
When running Late- "When I know I'm going late to be for something, I'll call ahead and tell whomever I'm meeting that I was just pulled over for speeding. Thus giving myself an excuse for being late, and demonstrating my commitment to whatever it is I'm late for. Only works once, but it usually works pretty well."
Shoplift - If you are trying to shoplift, time your exit of the store with that of a minor. If the alarm goes off the security gueard will probably check the minor.
Dress for a special occassion - You have 2 functions / events to attend. Go to a store and after a hefty amount of time purchase a dress but tell them if you do not like it you will return it. Wear it for one function and then exchange it for another brand new piece saying you did not like it.
If you want to slack off at work, slack off but act annoyed/frustrated around your boss which will give the impression you're working hard. It hasn't failed me yet.
Free Lunch - Want free lunch or even to make a few extra dollars and look like the office hero? When flyers for various restaurants come out they often have buy 1 get 1 free coupons in them. Tell everyone in the workplace you are going to go to [insert restaurant name here] to pick up lunch. Take orders and money for said orders. Use 2 for 1 coupons. Pocket the difference with the hate of your colleagues when they find out.
I will be very bad in answering this question.
I have stolen napkins, sauce pouches, Chilli flakes, oregano, straws,etc. these things have helped me in adding taste to my boring chapatis and other things.
Once I didn't wore my helmet while driving, so I saved myself by going on foot and thinking that if the cops will stop me I will tell them that my scooty needs to be repaired.
I have never cheated in exams in school(besides asking questions from friends, I don't consider as cheating :P) but let me tell you, I have seen purest soul of cheaters who have copied 85 marks of paper just by peeking.Sorry! no hack for this you have to adopt that talent, moreover you can keep your books in washroom.
Once I read somewhere on quora, you add products to the cart and go to the checkout page, and without checking out just quit the app or website unusually, after some days you will get the discount coupon from their side.
Girls who face problem in traveling in public conveyances, annoy them by safety pins.
Does a cell phone battery have a circuit inside?
1536 | Will there ever be another tech company as big as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, or Microsoft?
852 | How is your life? Is it good or bad?
7191 | Who invented the light bulb?
8868 | What happens when a rental car company reports a rental car stolen?
4680 | Who are most influential people in Big Data/Data Science?
5724 | Is it hard living on a high school teacher salary?
8254 | Why is Apple successful in China?
5081 | Who see's the written review you leave about an Uber driver?
Why can't teachers control their classroom nowadays?
Which things make a life very happy?
What is the best part about driving?
Which company has the best technology for speech to text - Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, or IBM?
What was the best pickup truck ever made?
What are some cool dark web websites?
Can one cell phone use two different numbers/accounts?
Does the average accountant get paid more than the average software engineer?
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What will I learn from the English lesson list of idioms beginning with K?
keep under one's hat - They tried to keep it under their hat but it soon became obvious that she is pregnant.
Know something inside out - I studied and studied for my drivings test until I knew all the rules inside out.
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260902, 270301 - Plain single line squares. Geometric figures forming letters or numerals, including punctuation.
The mark consists of a stylized letter "F" appearing inside of square with rounded corners.
038 - Telecommunications. - Telecommunications.
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Assign a value to each letter of the alphabet using the trivial forward assignment: A=1, B=2, ..., Z=26. Let the value of a word be the sum of its letters. For example the value of 'example' would be 5+24+1+13+16+12+5 = 76.
In contrast, assign the values backwards: A=26, B=25, ..., Z=1. Then 'example' would have a value of 22+3+26+14+11+15+22 = 113.
Most words will have different forward and backward values. One exception is the word 'by': it has a value of 27 both forward and backward. Can you find longer words whose forward and backward values are the same?
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Essay on Entrepreneurship: Concept and Broad Aspects of Entrepreneurship!
Entrepreneurship is the process of searching for opportunities for gain through environmental analysis; and exploiting such opportunities by converting them into a profitable business enterprise.
In short, an entrepreneur is a grand personality, assuming the roles of a risk-taker, a resource assembler, an innovator and an organizer – all combined into one.
The very first step in entrepreneurship is generation of some idea/ideas; which can be converted into profitable business opportunities. Following are suggested be some good sources, out of which an entrepreneur can steal ideas for initiating new business enterprises.
Through market surveys, an entrepreneur may gather ideas for starting a new business venture.
4. Likely trends in demand/supply of popular products etc.
The entrepreneur, on the basis of market surveys, can discover what gaps do exist in the supply position of certain products; which he can plan to fill up through his pioneering efforts. In this process of filling supply gaps, the entrepreneur may seek advice and consultations of business leaders, distribution channels, commercial consultants etc.
Consumer is the foundation of business. By having contacts with some prospective consumers, the entrepreneur can gain useful information about the types of products and services which they want; and which are not available in the market so far. He can get an idea of their tastes, preferences, habits, income etc.; on which bases he (the entrepreneur) can develop his own product idea.
Project reports of researchers vis-a-vis various industries may provide useful ideas to an entrepreneur to plan which industry he can enter with promising business opportunities. Likewise, governmental publications on trade and industry can be useful to the entrepreneur in discovering business ideas.
However, in finalizing business opportunities on the basis of project reports and publications, the entrepreneur will do well to consult technical, financial and other experts; who could guide the entrepreneur as to the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of various business propositions.
Trade fairs and exhibitions are a good source of businesses ideas. These give an idea of the diversity of products, the number of competitors in a field, popularity of various products and their manufacturers, reaction of general public’s to products of various manufacturers etc.
The most importance source of business ideas is entrepreneur’s own talent of creativity. Creativity is an ability of mind to extract something from an environment which apparently may seem to consist of nothing. Creativity depends on one’s imagination to contemplate new and better ideas, leading to innovations on the part of the entrepreneur. Such innovations may provide seeds to plant the tree of a new business venture.
However, innovation is not the same thing as invention. Invention means producing or designing something which has not existed before; whereas innovation means introduction of new things, new ideas or new ways of doing something which has already been discovered.
Innovation may not only provide business ideas to an entrepreneur; but also enable him to gain a competitive edge for survival and growth in the present-day economy which is globalized and characterized by intensely increasing competitive conditions.
1. Developing new and unique products on the basis of the inferiority of existing products in the market i. e. capitalizing on the inferiority of existing products and coming out with own superior products.
7. Converting own hobby into business venture. For example, hobbies like interior decoration; fashion designing may be developed as profitable business ventures.
(II) Ideas must not be inconsistent with governmental regulations and business policies.
1. What is the most appropriate technology required for the particular business project; including contractual aspects of technology licensing?
2. What type of plant and equipment are available for being operated according to the selected technology?
3. What is the most economical technological size of the plant; and whether that size is practicable in view of demand constraints for the product to be turned out by the plant?
4. Whether necessary inputs – raw-materials, power, water, gas etc. are available for operating the plant, according to the selected technology?
5. Whether necessary manpower (managers, workers etc.) are available – quantitatively and qualitatively – for operating plant, according to technology?
6. What facilities are available for treatment and disposal of effluents without causing harm to the environment? Etc.
1. Manufacturing cost of production, for a period ranging from 5 to 10 years.
2. Existing demand for the product; and the demand potential in future.
4. Industry forecasts – future outlook and trends etc.
4. Investment-profitability analysis based on methods like play back period, simple rate of return, net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR) etc.
In case of private sector projects, evaluation is done in technical, commercial and financial terms. However, it is desirable to judge the proposed business idea, from the social perspective also.
3. Improvement in the quality of life, as a result of the product/service, produced/generated by the business project, etc.
After conducting the feasibility study of the proposed business idea, the findings are presented in the form of a report known as the feasibility report or the project report. This report provides a basis for investment decision in a business project. It is equally needed to get sanction of the project from government, financial institutions etc.
Product name, chemistry of the product, specifications, applications and uses of the product etc.
5. Man-power requirements (managerial and operative), to operate plant.
6. Arrangements for disposal of effluents etc.
2. Demand – existing and potential, for few years.
6. Projected Income Statements and Balance Sheets, for some 5 years or so. etc.
2. Improvement in standard of living of people etc.
(iv) Research data – collected and utilized etc.
After the feasibility report is approved and accepted by government, financial institutions etc.; the next step for the entrepreneur would be to prepare a business plan, which, when put to implementation, would result in the emergence of a business venture.
1. It provides guidance to the entrepreneur in organizing his work.
2. It is required by suppliers, with whom the entrepreneur is likely to finalize contracts for various purposes.
The entrepreneur prepares the business plan in consultation with technicians, engineers, architects, accountants, financial experts, marketing, experts etc.
(i) Form of ownership organisation i. e. sole proprietorship, partnership, private company or public company.
(v) Plan for registration of company etc.
(i) Type of organisation – line and staff, project, matrix etc.
(ii) Span of management and number of organizational levels.
(ii) Requirements of plant and machinery for preselected technology.
(v) Agreements with engineers, contractors, architects etc.
(i) Comprehensive production budget with sub-budgets of raw-materials, labour, overheads etc.
(v) Agreements with suppliers of raw-materials etc.
(v) Agreements with banks, financial institutions, underwriters etc.
(vi) Agreements with key managerial personnel etc.
(v) Agreements with distribution channels etc.
According to Dr. J. E. Stepenek, “Entrepreneurship” is the capacity to take risk; ability to organise and desire to diversify and make innovations in the enterprise.
There is a vast difference between owner-manager and professional-manager. The owner — manager is identified with individuality, flair, strong motivation to achieve success and prosper, while the professional-manager is concerned with the planning, organising, motivating and controlling. Owner-manager builds the organisation, assumes all business risks, and also loses his reputation and prestige in the event of failure of business, whereas professional-manager is not exposed to such risks.
Period of one year to five years are regarded as a medium — term. These are generally required for permanent working capital, small expansions, replacements, modifications etc. These can be raised by issue of shares and debentures, borrowing from banks and other financial institutions, ploughing back of profits.
(ii) Loans from L. I.C. and Provident Fund Account.
In addition, the Reserve Bank of India gives credit guarantees and the ECGC gives export guarantees to the small-scale sector. Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI), by its refinance operations, plays a significant role in the promotion of the small scale — sector. The National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC) offers financial assistance in the form of its hire-purchase schemes.
Entrepreneurship is the key to economic progress of a nation. Development of entrepreneurs leads to rapid industrialization and hence improved well being of a country. Entrepreneurs are therefore called the wealth creators. Traditionally it was believed that entrepreneurial talent is an innate trait which one inherits through his birth.
Traditional business communities used to enter into the world of business with the requisite skills. But entrepreneurial growth requires focus on human resource development and its proper utilization and motivation for entrepreneurial initiatives.
Innovations in behavioral sciences have enabled us to look into the mental facets and develop, ways to change the attitude, inclination and interest of individuals in the desired direction.
There has been a felt need for concerted and systematic effort to identify, develop, nurture and sustain entrepreneurial talents in the interest of the national development.
Exclusive training based interventions have proved to be beneficial in stimulating, supporting and supporting entrepreneurial initiatives.
Entrepreneurial development programme is a systematic and an organized development of a person to an entrepreneur.
The development of an entrepreneur refers to inculcate the entrepreneurial skills into a common person, providing the needed knowledge, developing the technical, financial, marketing and managerial skills, and building the entrepreneurial attitude.
The concept or entrepreneurial development involves equipping a person with the required information and knowledge used for enterprise building and polishing his entrepreneurial skills.
In these days, entrepreneurial development programmes are treated as an important tool of industrialization and a solution of unemployment problem of India.
The overall aim of an entrepreneurial development programme is to stimulate a person for adopting entrepreneurship as a career and to make him able to identify and exploit the opportunities successfully for new venture.
“Entrepreneurial development programme may be defined as a programme designed to help an individual in strengthening his entrepreneurial motive and in acquiring skills and capabilities necessary for playing his entrepreneurial role effectively.
It is necessary to promote this understanding of motives and their impact on entrepreneurial values and behavior for this purpose”.
“It is an attempt to develop person as entrepreneur through structural training. The main purpose of such entrepreneurial development programme is to widen the base of entrepreneurship by developing achievement motivation and entrepreneurial skills among the less privileged sections of society”.
Enhancing the motivation, knowledge and skills of the potential entrepreneurs.
Arousing and reforming the entrepreneurial behavior in their day-to-day activities.
Assisting them develop their own ventures or enterprise as a sequel to entrepreneurial action.
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Lark Kwon Choi, Alan C. Bovik, Lawrence K. Cormack; The effect of eccentricity and spatiotemporal energy on motion silencing. Journal of Vision 2016;16(5):19. doi: 10.1167/16.5.19.
The now well-known motion-silencing illusion has shown that salient changes among a group of objects' luminances, colors, shapes, or sizes may appear to cease when objects move rapidly (Suchow & Alvarez, 2011). It has been proposed that silencing derives from dot spacing that causes crowding, coherent changes in object color or size, and flicker frequencies combined with dot spacing (Choi, Bovik, & Cormack, 2014; Peirce, 2013; Turi & Burr, 2013). Motion silencing is a peripheral effect that does not occur near the point of fixation. To better understand the effect of eccentricity on motion silencing, we measured the amount of motion silencing as a function of eccentricity in human observers using traditional psychophysics. Fifteen observers reported whether dots in any of four concentric rings changed in luminance over a series of rotational velocities. The results in the human experiments showed that the threshold velocity for motion silencing almost linearly decreases as a function of log eccentricity. Further, we modeled the response of a population of simulated V1 neurons to our stimuli. We found strong matches between the threshold velocities on motion silencing observed in the human experiment and those seen in the energy model of Adelson and Bergen (1985). We suggest the plausible explanation that as eccentricity increases, the combined motion-flicker signal falls outside the narrow spatiotemporal frequency response regions of the modeled receptive fields, thereby reducing flicker visibility.
The salient changes of objects in luminance, color, size, or shape may appear to reduce or to cease altogether when the objects move rapidly and collectively (Suchow & Alvarez, 2011). In the study by Suchow and Alvarez (2011), 100 small dots were randomly arranged in a ring-shaped pattern around a central fixation mark (the illusion may be viewed at http://visionlab.harvard.edu/silencing/.). When the dots are stationary, continuous changes over time in luminance, color, size, or shape are obviously noticeable; however, when the dots are suddenly sent into continuous rotational motion, the changes become imperceptible. This motion-induced failure to detect change, known as motion silencing, shows that motion can disrupt the perception of changes in visual objects.
Motion silencing clearly depends on the velocity of motion (Suchow & Alvarez, 2011), and it has since been shown that motion silencing also depends on dot spacing in a manner consistent with crowding (Turi & Burr, 2013) and on flicker frequency combined with motion and dot spacing (Choi, Bovik, & Cormack, 2014). Turi and Burr (2013) proposed that the combination of global motion and crowding results in motion silencing and presented evidence that silencing depends on target-flanker spacing with a critical spacing of about half eccentricity, consistent with Bouma's law (Bouma, 1970) and on contrast polarity. Choi et al. (2014) suggested that a spatiotemporal filter-based flicker detector model can explain motion silencing as a function of stimulus velocity, flicker frequency, and spacing between dots. Peirce (2013) examined whether the awareness of motion signals can be silenced by coherent changes in color or size and whether coherence was a necessary component of motion silencing. His results suggest that neither motion nor grouping is required to induce silencing and that silencing can be generated from other significant visual changes (Peirce, 2013). Although these studies have substantially contributed to our understanding of what factors contribute to motion silencing, the effect of eccentricity on motion silencing has not yet been extensively studied. Because silencing is largely a peripheral effect, the role of eccentricity is highly relevant. Thus far, eccentricity has been used only in a subsidiary manner, for example, to scatter random dots over a limited range of eccentricities (from 5° to 8° in Suchow & Alvarez, 2011), to measure critical spacing in crowding experiments (at 3.5° and 7° in Turi & Burr, 2013), or to circularly distribute dots at a specific eccentricity (6.42° in Choi et al., 2014). Understanding the effect of eccentricity on motion silencing is important for making the connection between the awareness of object appearance and motion in peripheral vision. Given the large changes in receptive field (RF) characteristics with eccentricity, we felt that parametrically varying them might reveal something about the mechanism underlying silencing.
Fifteen University of Texas students served as naïve observers. They ranged in age from 20 to 33 years and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Six of the observers were female. This project was approved by the Institutional Review Board at The University of Texas at Austin.
The experiments were programmed using MATLAB and the Psychophysics Toolbox (Brainard, 1997). The Psychophysics Toolbox interfaced with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 graphics card in a Windows 7 computer. The experiment was conducted using a 24-inch liquid crystal display (LCD; ASUS, Model VG248QE, Fremont, CA). The spatial resolution was 1,920 × 1,080, with a pixel density of 94.34 ppi. The LCD refreshed at 120 Hz and was illuminated by a light-emitting diode backlight. Response time was 1 ms. We measured the display with a V-lambda–corrected fast photocell (United Detector Technologies PIN-10AP) and confirmed that the display consistently and correctly presented single-frame stimuli and was additive over frames with no interaction (so that a three-frame stimulus, for example, was just a repeated longer version of a one-frame stimulus at a 120-Hz temporal frequency response). The viewing distance was approximately 57 cm.
We used stimuli similar to those of Turi and Burr (2013) in the eccentricity study. The original demonstration used 15 dots at one eccentricity; therefore, the angular spacing was 2π/15. We propagate the same angular spacing to four eccentricities (4°, 7°, 10°, and 13°) by replicating and extending Turi and Burr's (2013) eccentricity range. The stimulus consisted of four concentric rings of dots at eccentricities of 4°, 7°, 10°, and 13° as shown in Figure 1, Supplementary Movies S1–S6, and http://live.ece.utexas.edu/research/motion_silencing/eccentricity.html. Four rings of dots were simultaneously present to minimize the influence of factors other than eccentricity on the motion-silencing illusion. For example, if only one ring at different eccentricities was used, two difficulties might occur. First, each ring might have a different dot spacing given the same number of dots across eccentricities. Different dot spacings may influence the strength of the motion-silencing illusion, as we reported in previous work (Choi et al., 2014). Second, increasing the number of dots to maintain the same dot spacing at larger eccentricity might induce a different density factor that could affect the overall results, as reported in Anstis and Ho (2014), in which the apparent speed of rotating dots was observed to increase with dot density. Hence, we used stimuli consisting of four concentric rings of dots having the same number of dots on each ring and flickered the dots of no more than one ring at a time.
(a) Illustration of experimental setup. Prior to data collection for each test set, observers executed a short training session of 20 trials, in which the stimuli were similar to a real test but with different flicker frequency, velocity, eccentricity, and dot spacing. Observers first participated in a pilot session to find five stimulus velocities that were used in test sessions at eccentricities 4°, 7°, 10°, and 13°, then performed a series of test sessions for data collection. (b) Example of stimuli used in the human psychophysical experiment. Stimulus consisted of four concentric rings of dots at eccentricities 4°, 7°, 10°, and 13° in a regular array of uniform angular spacing 2π/15, which rotated around a central fixation mark. Each dot was 0.92° visual angle in diameter. The luminance of each dot was chosen randomly from a range falling between black (0.92 cd/m2) and white (344.40 cd/m2) against a gray (50.59 cd/m2) background. The four rings of dots continuously rotated together at a given velocity, whereas the dots on no more than one of the four rings changed in luminance with a sinusoidal variation of frequency 1/4 Hz.
A red fixation mark was used at center. The diameter of each dot was 0.92° visual angle. The initial luminance of each dot was chosen randomly from a uniformly distributed eight-bit gray scale ranging from “black” at the weakest intensity to “white” at the strongest. Once the presentation commenced, the luminance of each dot of a selected ring changed sinusoidally against a gray background. The luminances of the black dots, white dots, and the gray background were 0.92, 344.40, and 50.59 cd/m2, respectively. The four rings of dots continuously rotated in either a clockwise or a counterclockwise direction; the direction was alternated between clockwise and counterclockwise (i.e., clockwise, counterclockwise, then clockwise and counterclockwise). We did this to minimize any direction-specific motion adaptation in the subjects. The rotational velocity of the rings was the instantaneous tangential speed of a dot as it followed its circular trajectory on the screen, which was expressed in terms of angular degree per second (angular degree/s). The range of rotational velocities was from 40 to 350 angular degree/s based on pilot data, and the initial velocity did not change during each trial. In each presentation, the dots on no more than one of the four rings changed in luminance, at a flicker frequency that was fixed at 1/4 Hz. The dots in the other three rings remained at fixed luminances.
Observers were asked to indicate whether or not the dots in any of four concentric rings were flickering (i.e., changing luminances), as distinct from the other dots whose luminances remained constant. During the experiments, the observers were asked to hold their gazes on a red central fixation mark.
The stimulus velocity was varied over five values at each eccentricity, where the particular velocities were chosen per observer to produce a good psychometric function based on pilot data (with good meaning spanning the ascending part of the function without unduly sampling the tails). For each stimulus velocity, 30 trials were executed, 15 of which presented flickering dots and the remaining 15 did not.
For each trial, a “yes/no” procedure was used, in which “yes” corresponded to “I think the dots are flickering” (because half the trials were catch trials, chance performance was 50%). Each stimulus was presented until observers made their judgment (average response time was approximately 3 to 5 s), and the following trial was automatically initiated after recording the response. To minimize the effects of observer fatigue and eye strain, the observers were required to rest for as long as needed (at least 2 min) after finishing every 100 trials. After completing the first set (four eccentricities × five velocities × 30 trials), each observer repeated the test set twice more, for a total of three sets (4 × 5 × 30 × 3, or 1,800 total trials per observer). Observers had enough rest before executing the next set (e.g., 1 day). The order of all trials was randomized. Prior to data collection for each set, a short training exercise including 20 trials was conducted, which was similar to a real test but with a different flicker frequency, velocity, eccentricity, and dot spacing of the visual stimuli.
A pilot session was executed to find five stimulus velocities to be used in the test sessions at each eccentricity per observer using pilot data from a set of 600 trials (four eccentricities × five velocities × 30 trials). Table 1 shows the five pilot velocities and the variabilities of the velocities chosen across the observers on the actual test at eccentricities 4°, 7°, 10°, and 13°. After shifting five pilot velocities together by a unit of 10 angular degree/s, to obtain a good psychometric function, the changed velocities were chosen as the five velocities deployed in the actual test. When there was no velocity change from the pilot velocities, the result of a pilot session was used as the result of the first test set, and then each observer executed the test set twice more; otherwise, the observers executed three test sets with the changed velocities.
Pilot velocities and the variabilities of the velocities chosen across the observers on the actual test at eccentricities 4°, 7°, 10°, and 13°.
Figure 2a shows psychometric curves (Weibull, 1951; Wichmann & Hill, 2001) as a function of velocity for an observer at eccentricities 4°, 7°, 10°, and 13°, respectively. The error bars using the binomial distribution with 68% confidence intervals are also shown. All observers executed the experiment in a similar manner. The velocity corresponding to a probability of detection equal to 0.75 (a thick, horizontal dashed line in Figure 2a) was chosen as the threshold velocity for motion silencing. As eccentricity increased, the psychometric curves shifted to the left, decreasing the threshold velocity for motion silencing, which indicates that motion silencing clearly depended on eccentricity.
(a) Psychometric data fitted to the Weibull function of one observer to investigate the effect of eccentricity on motion silencing. The combined motion-flicker stimuli were shown at various velocities across eccentricities 4° (•), 7° (▪), 10° (▴), and 13° (★). The velocity corresponding to a probability of detection equal to 0.75 (a thick, horizontal dashed line) was chosen as the threshold velocity for motion silencing. Error bars using the binomial distribution with 68% confidence intervals are shown. (b) The average of the threshold velocities for all observers as a function of log eccentricity when motion silencing occurs. Error bars are shown with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). A least-squares fit of the human data is shown with 95% CI together. The threshold velocity for motion silencing almost linearly decreased when log eccentricity increased.
Figure 2b shows the average of the threshold velocities for all observers as a function of log eccentricity when motion silencing occurred. Error bars are shown with 95% confidence intervals. The threshold velocity for motion silencing linearly decreased when log eccentricity increased. The average of the threshold velocities was 240.3, 165.0, 115.0, and 97.8 angular degree/s at eccentricities of 4°, 7°, 10°, and 13° (corresponding log eccentricities were 1.39, 1.95, 2.30, and 2.56), respectively. The slope of the least squares fit for the measured data from observers was approximately −124.59. The linear fit of the data is shown using a straight line, whereas 95% confidence intervals are shown using dashed lines in Figure 2b. The strong and consistent decrease of the threshold velocity suggests that there exists a significant effect of eccentricity on motion silencing.
A total of 720 stimuli were created similar to those shown to the human observers (Figure 1). However, a wider range of velocities was used: four eccentricities (4°, 7°, 10°, and 13°) × 18 velocities (20, 40, … , 340, and 360 angular degree/s) × 10 times. In each trial, the luminances of dots were randomly selected, and the dots on exactly one of the four rings always changed in luminance while rotating in a clockwise direction.
To separately quantify collective motion and the local flicker frequency of the dots across eccentricity, we first constructed a two-dimensional (2D) space-time diagram (indexed array) from the continuously moving stimuli and represented it as an image (Choi et al., 2014). As shown at the top of Figure 3a, we used a circle passing through the center of each dot in each ring of the visual stimuli to generate the 2D diagram (a circular trace). The luminance along the length/circumference of each ring was straightened into a horizontal row or vector starting at a fixed angle (0°) and continuing in a clockwise direction. These circular traces through the luminance changing dots constituted the rows of the space-time diagrams displayed in the bottom of Figure 3a. Uniformly sampling the luminance over time at 120 Hz generated additional rows, the stack of which constituted the space-time diagram. Thus, vertical columns of the space-time diagram contained temporal luminance variances at fixed spatial positions on a circle in the video.
(a) Space-time diagram of stimuli. Top: Circles overlaid on dots shown in Figure 1 measure luminance along the ring at each eccentricity: Note: The red dot in the middle of this panel has been enlarged so as to display within the article. It does not represent the size used in the stimuli. Bottom: Space-time diagrams displayed as images under various eccentricities. The arrow on the bottom indicates the increase of eccentricity. (b) Spectral signatures of stimuli. Top: Space-time diagrams at specified velocities (20, 100, and 200 angular degree/s from left to right) and at eccentricity 4°. Bottom: The discrete Fourier transform (DFT) magnitudes (centered and logarithmically compressed to reveal the DFT structure) of space-time diagrams shown at the top. The arrow at the bottom indicates the increase of velocity. The energy levels of the spectral signatures are rendered from cool (low energy) to hot (high energy).
The spectral signatures of the stimuli (bottom of Figure 3b) were created from the 2D space-time diagram (top of Figure 3b) using the discrete Fourier transform (DFT). The orientation of high-energy spectral signatures rendered in hot (red or yellow) consistently increased with respect to the horizontal when velocity increased (bottom of Figure 3b). The DFT of the space-time diagram of the stimulus was used as an input to a spatiotemporal filter-based energy model of the population responses of neurons in the primary visual cortex (V1).
We used a spatiotemporal filter model (Adelson & Bergen, 1985; T. I. Baker & Issa, 2005; Hubel & Wiesel, 1962; Mante & Carandini, 2005; Movshon, Thompson, & Tolhurst, 1978; Rasch, Chen, Wu, Lu, & Roe, 2013; Watson & Ahumada, 1985) of the responses of neurons in V1 as a function of eccentricity. In this model, the shape of a filter is identified as the RF of a neuron. This model assumes that the firing rate of a single neuron can be expressed as the filtered version of the spectral signatures falling within its RF. The population responses of neurons in V1 can be modeled as the sum of the squares of quadrature-pair Gabor filter outputs. We implemented such a Gabor filtering model similar to spatial models (Bovik, Clark, & Geisler, 1990; Clark & Bovik, 1989; Daugman, 1985; Jones & Palmer, 1987) but also modeling the spatiotemporal energy capturing mechanism in Adelson and Bergen (1985). Gabor RFs were tuned to peak spatial and temporal frequencies and bandwidths across eccentricity. Because the size of the space-time diagram of stimuli varied with eccentricity as shown in Figure 3a, the summed product of each Gabor filter and the 2D DFT of the space-time diagram was divided by the size of the space-time diagram.
We implemented the RFs of an energy model based on measured spatiotemporal selectivity of V1 neurons in macaque monkeys (De Valois, Albrecht, & Thorell, 1982; Foster, Gaska, Nagler, & Pollen, 1985; Schiller, Finlay, & Volman, 1976; Tootell, Silverman, Hamilton, Switkes, & De Valois, 1988; Xu, Anderson, & Casagrande, 2007) and humans (Henriksson, Nurminen, Hyvarinen, & Vanni, 2008; Sasaki et al., 2001; Singh, Smith, & Greenlee, 2000). Because there are differences in the measurements of the average peak spatial frequencies across eccentricity between macaques and humans, we tested the RF parameters from both macaques (Test 1) and from humans (Test 2). In macaques, the average preferred peak spatial frequencies was 2.2 cycles per degree (cpd) at parafoveal (De Valois et al., 1982; Foster et al., 1985) and approximately 0.5 cpd at eccentricity of 20° (Pack, Conway, Born, & Livingstone, 2006), whereas the median bandwidth was 1.32 octaves. In humans, the average preferred peak spatial frequencies measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging was 1.2, 0.68, 0.46, 0.40, and 0.18 cpd at eccentricities 1.7°, 4.7°, 6.3°, 9°, and 19°, respectively (Henriksson et al., 2008). The average preferred peak temporal frequency was 3.7 Hz, whereas the average temporal bandwidth was 2.9 octaves at parafoveal in macaques (Foster et al., 1985). We used Foster et al.'s measurements for both Test 1 (macaques) and Test 2 (humans) because Foster et al.'s results were consistently found in Kelly's (1979) psychophysical data (peak temporal frequency between 3 and 5 Hz; peak 3.2 Hz) and Watson and Turano's (1995) results (the optimal motion stimulus found at 5 Hz) as well as being used widely in the literature, although some studies reported an average peak temporal frequency of 10 Hz (Anderson & Burr, 1985; Hawken, Shapley, & Grosof, 1996).
The population of neurons in our experiments covered four peak spatial frequencies and four peak temporal frequencies. The peak spatial frequencies were 0.3529, 0.8812, 2.2, and 5.4927 cpd in Test 1 (macaques) and 0.115, 0.287, 0.7166, and 1.7892 cpd in Test 2 (humans), respectively, at eccentricity 4° with a constant spatial bandwidth of 1.32 octaves. The peak temporal frequencies were 0.0089, 0.0664, 0.4957, and 3.7 Hz with a constant temporal bandwidth of 2.9 octaves. Figure 4 shows examples of the Gabor functions used at 4° eccentricity in Test 1.
Examples of spatiotemporal Gabor functions matched to the parameters of receptive fields (RFs) at eccentricity 4° from V1 in macaques. (a) Cosine Gabor RFs in the space (horizontal axis)–time (vertical axis) domain. (b) Spatiotemporal profiles of Gabor RFs corresponding to (a) in the frequency domain. The center is zero spatiotemporal frequency. The peak spatial frequencies were 0.3529, 0.8812, 2.2, and 5.4927 cpd from left to right, with a spatial bandwidth of 1.32 octaves. The peak temporal frequencies were 3.7 and 0.4957 Hz from top to bottom, with a temporal bandwidth of 2.9 octaves. The Gabor functions were centered and magnified for rendering in figures.
The spatial and temporal tuning bandwidths were similar across a large range of eccentricities on an octave scale (De Valois et al., 1982; Foster et al., 1985; Kelly, 1984; Snowden & Hess, 1992; Virsu, Rovamo, Laurinen, & Nasanen, 1982; Yu et al., 2010). The peak temporal frequency does not change dramatically with respect to eccentricity on an octave scale. However, as eccentricity increases, the peak spatial frequency decreases, shifting the populations of peak spatial frequency neurons away from high spatial frequencies (De Valois et al., 1982; Foster et al., 1985; Henriksson et al., 2008; Ikeda & Wright, 1975; Movshon et al., 1978; Rovamo, Virsu, & Nasanen, 1978; Sasaki et al., 2001; Schiller et al., 1976; Tootell et al., 1988; Xu et al., 2007). Thus, we applied the peak spatial frequencies of 2.2, 1.8813, 1.5625, and 1.2438 cpd in Test 1 (macaques) and 0.7166, 0.469, 0.3485, and 0.2773 cpd in Test 2 (humans) at eccentricities 4°, 7°, 10°, and 13°, respectively, by least square fits of the known measurements. The magnitude of the Gabor RF kernel was normalized for each neuron, such that the response elicited by the stimuli was the same across the neurons. Figure 5 shows the frequency responses of all Gabor-energy filters used in Test 1 across eccentricity. It may be observed that the peak spatial frequency of the neuronal populations are shifted away from high spatial frequencies with increasing eccentricity and that the spatial frequency bandwidths are much narrower for neurons tuned to low spatial frequencies (on a linear scale).
Spatiotemporal profile of the Gabor-energy filters across eccentricity. The filters covered four peak spatial frequencies and four peak temporal frequencies, where the parameters of the receptive fields (RFs) were matched to V1 in macaques (Test 1): The peak spatial frequencies of the third subband at eccentricities 4°, 7°, 10°, and 13° were 2.2, 1.8813, 1.5625, and 1.2438 cpd, respectively, with a constant spatial bandwidth of 1.32 octaves. The peak spatial frequencies of neuronal populations were shifted away from high spatial frequencies with increasing eccentricity. The peak temporal frequencies were 0.0089, 0.0664, 0.4957, and 3.7 Hz with a constant temporal bandwidth of 2.9 octaves. The center is zero spatiotemporal frequency. Energy levels are shown from black (low) to white (high). The Gabor functions were centered and magnified for visually distinctive rendering.
Test 1 and Test 2 in the motion energy model assessed whether a spatiotemporal filter-based energy model could be used to explain the effect of eccentricity on motion silencing. If there is a constant threshold energy for motion silencing, the threshold velocities of the energy model should consistently match the threshold velocities obtained from the human psychophysical experiment. Two sets of parameters derived from published research (Test 1: measurements of De Valois et al., 1982, and Pack et al., 2006, from macaque V1; Test 2: measurements of Henriksson et al., 2008, from human V1) were used to implement Gabor RFs across eccentricity.
The population responses of Gabor RFs are shown in Figure 6a and 6c from a total of 720 stimuli at diverse velocities across eccentricities 4°, 7°, 10°, and 13°. As motion velocity increases, the population responses consistently decrease for all eccentricities, even though the specific values vary somewhat between Test 1 and Test 2, especially for velocities smaller than 60 angular degree/s.
Population responses seen in the spatiotemporal energy model from a total of 720 combined motion-flicker stimuli across eccentricities 4° (•), 7° (▪), 10° (▴), and 13° (★) in Test 1 and Test 2. The receptive field (RF) parameters that were used derive from the measurements of (a) De Valois et al. (1982) and Pack et al. (2006) from V1 of macaques in Test 1 and of (c) Henriksson et al. (2008) from V1 of humans in Test 2. Error bars indicating 95% confidence intervals are included. Threshold velocities for motion silencing seen in the energy model in Test 1 and in Test 2 are shown in (b) and (d), respectively, and were achieved using the population responses in (a) and (c).
The threshold velocity of the energy model was predicted by assuming that there is a single constant threshold energy (i.e., the population response) for motion silencing for the set of RF parameters in Test 1 (measurements of De Valois et al., 1982, and Pack et al., 2006, from macaque V1) and Test 2 (measurements of Henriksson et al., 2008, from human V1), respectively. Specifically, the threshold energy for motion silencing was first assumed at each eccentricity to be the population response at the threshold velocities obtained from the human psychophysics (i.e., 240.3, 165.0, 115.0, and 97.8 angular degree/s at eccentricities 4°, 7°, 10°, and 13°, respectively, as shown in Figure 2) using the least-squares fitting curve depicted in Figures 6a and 6c. Then, the threshold energy assumed at each eccentricity (e.g., 5.43 × 104, 5.35 × 104, 6.66 × 104, and 6.41 × 104 at eccentricities 4°, 7°, 10°, and 13°, respectively, in Test 1) was averaged to determine one constant threshold energy (e.g., 5.97 × 104 in Test 1). Next, the velocities corresponding to the constant threshold energy (e.g., 5.97 × 104 in Test 1) were chosen as the threshold velocities of the energy model across eccentricities. The mean of the predicted threshold velocities from a total of 720 stimuli were 224.4, 154.3, 123.4, and 102.6 angular degree/s and 233.9, 159.7, 122.2, and 98.3 angular degree/s at eccentricities 4°, 7°, 10°, and 13° in Test 1 and Test 2, respectively, as shown in Figure 6b and 6d.
To assess whether the threshold velocities observed in the human experiment and those seen in the energy model are related, we plotted all data together in one plot and tested for statistically significant differences using the Kruskal-Wallis test. Figure 7 shows the results. The threshold velocities at the same log eccentricity among the human experiment, Test 1, and Test 2 of the energy model are not significantly different across all eccentricities (p = 0.3844, 0.6484, 0.0536, and 0.1122 at eccentricities 4°, 7°, 10°, and 13°, respectively), and the threshold velocity for motion silencing almost linearly decreases as a function of log eccentricity. These results indicate that the threshold velocities of the human psychophysical experiment and the energy model stem from the same statistical distribution. The strong matches of the threshold velocities between the human experiment and the model tests imply that the spatiotemporal selectivity of V1 neurons across eccentricity should play an important role in the energy model describing the dependence of motion silencing on eccentricity.
Comparison of the threshold velocities obtained from the human experiment (Figure 2b) and the energy model (Test 1, Figure 6b; Test 2, Figure 6d). The horizontal axis indicates log eccentricity, whereas the vertical axis shows threshold velocity (angular degree/s). The threshold velocities at the same log eccentricity among the human experiment, Test 1, and Test 2 of the energy model are not significantly different across all eccentricities, where p = 0.3844, 0.6484, 0.0536, and 0.1122 at eccentricities 4°, 7°, 10°, and 13°, respectively, in the Kruskal-Wallis test.
The results of this study strongly suggest that eccentricity significantly affects motion silencing. The threshold velocity for motion silencing almost linearly decreases as a function of log eccentricity, where the mean slope was approximately −124.59 (Figure 2b). The human psychophysical results from this study provide evidence that the dependence of silencing on motion (Suchow & Alvarez, 2011) varies with eccentricity: The average of the threshold velocities was 240.3, 165.0, 115.0, and 97.8 angular degree/s at eccentricities 4°, 7°, 10°, and 13°, respectively, at 2π/15 angular dot spacing and 1/4-Hz dot flicker frequency. Although the specific threshold velocities might be influenced when the flicker frequency or dot spacing changes as reported in the literature (Choi et al., 2014; Peirce, 2013; Turi & Burr, 2013), the effect of eccentricity on motion silencing might also be similar.
The spatiotemporal energy model offers a plausible and meaningful explanation of why eccentricity affects motion silencing in peripheral vision. The strong statistical matches between the measured threshold velocities for motion silencing from the human experiment and the predicted threshold velocities from the energy model (Figure 7) indicate that the spatiotemporal selectivity of V1 neurons across eccentricity provides a compelling functional account of the dependence of motion silencing on eccentricity. We investigated the population responses of V1 neurons using the energy model by implementing Gabor functions mimicking the spatiotemporal selectivity of neurons in V1 so that the model responses were consistent with the population of RFs implicated with flicker visibility over a plausible range of spatiotemporal frequencies.
In V1, when eccentricity increases, the peak spatial frequency responses of neuronal populations are shifted away from high spatial frequencies (De Valois et al., 1982; Foster et al., 1985; Henriksson et al., 2008; Ikeda & Wright, 1975; Movshon et al., 1978; Rovamo et al., 1978; Sasaki et al., 2001; Schiller et al., 1976; Xu et al., 2007), so a sample at large eccentricity does not include cells tuned to high spatial frequencies. On the other hand, the bandwidths of spatial tuning are remarkably similar across the range of eccentricities on an octave scale (Anderson & Burr, 1985; De Valois et al., 1982) and significantly correlated with peak spatial frequency (G. E. Baker, Thompson, Krug, Smyth, & Tolhurst, 1998; De Valois et al., 1982; Movshon et al., 1978; Tolhurst & Thompson, 1981). Hence, the distributions of RFs in peripheral vision are similar to those of central vision but shifted along peak spatial frequency, which narrows the total range of spatial frequency peaks (De Valois et al., 1982; Tolhurst & Thompson, 1981). Note that on a linear scale, the spatial frequency bandwidths are much narrower for cells tuned to low spatial frequencies than those tuned to high frequencies (De Valois et al., 1982), as shown in Figures 4 and 5.
The distributions of the peak temporal frequency and temporal bandwidth do not change dramatically with respect to eccentricity on an octave scale, which is consistent with human psychophysical data showing that temporal contrast sensitivity is fairly constant across a wide range of eccentricities (Foster et al., 1985; Kelly, 1984; Snowden & Hess, 1992; Virsu et al., 1982; Yu et al., 2010).
Regarding the spatiotemporal tuning and interactions of neurons in V1, the optimal temporal frequency was not correlated with optimal spatial frequency across eccentricities (Foster et al., 1985; Holub & Morton-Gibson, 1981; Ikeda & Wright, 1975; Kelly, 1984; Virsu et al., 1982; Yu et al., 2010). It is commonly assumed that spatial and temporal tuning of V1 neurons do not interact each other, so spatiotemporal tuning surfaces can be modeled as the product of spatial and temporal tuning curves, each measured independently. Kelly (1984) suggested that at eccentricities out to 12°, the entire threshold spatiotemporal surface is merely translated toward lower spatial frequency with increasing eccentricity. Therefore, as eccentricity increases, the spectral signatures of the combined motion-flicker signal fall outside the response regions of neurons that elicit large responses, thereby reducing the total population response in a spatiotemporal filter-based energy model, consequently leading to declining flicker visibility in peripheral vision.
Why does eccentricity influence the degree of motion silencing? Is it just a side effect of the shift of the population tuning away from high spatial frequencies or a compromise between motion perception and change perception? Neurons representing peripheral vision are essential for visual performance such as defensive reaction, balance, and locomotion as well as survival, which demand accurate perception of motion rather than necessarily recognizing detail objects or their temporal changes at relatively short latencies (Thompson, Hansen, Hess, & Troje, 2007; Yu et al., 2010). Thus, evolution may have kept motion perception in the peripheral visual field but may have not retained high-frequency change perception among the populations of peripheral neurons. This might be related to observations that peripheral vision is sensitive to higher speeds (Orban, Kennedy, & Bullier, 1986), reflecting the distribution of retinal image speed sensing of natural environments. Human psychophysical studies have also demonstrated that central vision is most sensitive to speeds slower than 1°/s, whereas at 40° eccentricity, the peak sensitivity value is shifted approximately to 30°/s (Kelly, 1984; McKee & Nakayama, 1984).
One cannot exclude the possibility that the effect of eccentricity on motion silencing also includes RF sizes' relationship with eccentricity. The average size of RFs in foveal V1 is as small as a 1 to 2 min of arc and as large as 60 min of arc at eccentricity 20° and increasing with increasing eccentricity (Dow, Snyder, Vautin, & Bauer, 1981; Dumoulin & Wandell, 2008). Neurons at great eccentricities tolerate large stimulus jumps using a large RF size, preferring lower spatial frequencies (De Valois et al., 1982) and higher velocities (Orban et al., 1986) to perceive crucial motion signals. Accurate representations of motion, including speed, may benefit from integration over a large spatial aperture (Grzywacz & Yuille, 1990).
In the motion energy model, we tested two sets of RF parameters on the V1 in macaques (Test 1) and in humans (Test 2), as shown in Figure 6. On average, the spatial tuning curves of V1 neurons shift toward lower spatial frequencies as eccentricity increases (De Valois et al., 1982; Foster et al., 1985; Henriksson et al., 2008; Movshon et al., 1978; Schiller et al., 1976; Tootell et al., 1988; Xu et al., 2007). However, there exists considerable scatter of the peak spatial frequencies (De Valois et al., 1982; Foster et al., 1985; Henriksson et al., 2008; Pack et al., 2006) at any given eccentricity. In addition, the eccentricities used when making the experimental measurements varied (e.g., foveal: 0°–1.5°, parafoveal: 3°–5° in De Valois et al., 1982; foveal: 0.5°–1.0°, parafoveal: 2°–5° in Foster et al., 1985; approximately 0°–25° in Pack et al., 2006; 1.7°–19° in Henriksson et al., 2008), so we used least squares fitting to estimate the peak spatial frequency at eccentricities 4°, 7°, 10°, and 13° from the known average peak spatial frequencies. Although the population responses in our tests varied somewhat when predicting the threshold velocities on silencing for each RF parameter set in both macaques and humans, we reached similar conclusions from the well-matched, overlapped data (Figure 7) and the corresponding statistical analysis.
The results we have described are of interest to vision science because they confirm and extend our prior understanding of motion silencing (Choi, Bovik, & Cormack, 2012; Choi et al., 2014; Peirce, 2013; Suchow & Alvarez, 2011; Turi & Burr, 2013) and its underlying mechanisms. In particular, we believe that being able to explain the effects of eccentricity using our “back-pocket” V1 model using no free parameters strongly solidifies our contention that the motion-silencing illusion falls out of known mechanisms of early visual processing. To wit, a primary if not only way in which early visual processing is heterogeneous is in its variation as a function of eccentricity. We therefore think that a crucial test of our thesis was indeed to explicitly manipulate eccentricity.
These results are also important as they provide the groundwork for specific perception-based video-processing applications to yield quantitative models of perceived local flicker in less-than-perfect digital videos (such as compressed television signals) and to explain one mode of temporal visual masking of video flicker distortions. Specifically, this extension not only reveals a lawful relationship between a threshold velocity and log eccentricity when motion silencing occurs but also proposes a plausible explanation of why motion silencing decreases when eccentricity increases in peripheral vision, using a spatiotemporal energy model (Adelson & Bergen, 1985). For perceptual applications on digital videos, the motion-silencing phenomenon has been a basis for understanding the influence of motion on the visibility of flicker distortions in naturalistic videos (Choi, Cormack, & Bovik, 2013, 2015a, 2015b) and for developing a perceptual flicker visibility prediction model (Choi & Bovik, 2016b) as well as a new video quality assessment method (Choi & Bovik, 2016a). We believe that a better understanding of temporal flicker masking will play an increasingly important role in modern models of temporal vision and objective video quality assessment.
Turi and Burr's (2013) work showed that the strength of the motion-silencing illusion increases with eccentricity. However, the task and purpose of their human experiments were different. Turi and Burr used two eccentricities (3.5° and 7°) to try to explain the motion-silencing illusion in terms of crowding. They found that silencing depends on the target-flanker spacing with a critical spacing of about half eccentricity, following Bouma's law (Bouma, 1970). Their experimental results contributed to our understanding of the eccentricity effect of motion silencing. Our results go beyond this by detailing a quantitative monotonic power-law relationship (a straight line on the log-linear plot in Figures 2, 6, and 7), over four eccentricities (4°, 7°, 10°, and 13°). In addition, our cortical model (with no free parameters) captures the data quantitatively as well as qualitatively. Based on our human psychophysical data and using a spatiotemporal energy model of V1 neurons, we proposed a plausible quantitative explanation of the underlying effect of eccentricity on motion silencing. We believe that this work embodies significant evidence that the motion-silencing illusion simply falls out of what we already know about early cortical processing.
Because the early retinotopic areas exhibit approximately separable tuning of spatial and temporal frequencies (Foster et al., 1985; Priebe, Lisberger, & Movshon, 2006), we implemented a spatiotemporal filter-based energy model (Adelson & Bergen, 1985) using classical separable Gabor functions (Bovik et al., 1990; Daugman, 1985; Jones & Palmer, 1987). However, as Adelson and Bergen (1985) reported, the temporal response can be physiologically better approximated by other linear filter forms such as causal gamma-modulated sinusoids (Watson & Ahumada, 1985). In addition, it might prove productive to include nonlinear constant gain control mechanisms such as divisive normalization (Heeger, 1992) to more completely model the overall responses of V1 neurons.
In summary, the intention of this study was to determine the degree to which motion silencing consistently depends on eccentricity and whether a quantitative spatiotemporal filter-based energy model could explain the dependence of motion silencing on eccentricity. We suggested the simple explanation that as eccentricity increases, the combined motion-flicker signal eventually falls outside of the narrower frequency passbands of peripheral RFs, although peripheral crowding (Turi & Burr, 2013) might also supply an explanation of reduced peripheral flicker visibility.
This work was supported by Intel and Cisco Corporations under the VAWN program and by the National Science Foundation under Grants IIS-0917175 and IIS-1116656.
Corresponding author: Alan C. Bovik.
Address: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
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Electrophysiological and psychophysical flicker sensitivity in patients with primary open-angle glaucoma and ocular hypertension.
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0.954162 |
Is It Worth Going Dual Military to Pay for School?
I want to join the Navy. My husband is an active-duty E-6 and he supports my decision, but we have two kids.
The reason why I want to join is because I want to continue my education without worrying about loans and money. I don't want to have to be away from my kids, but it seems like I don't have many choices.
I can't find a job after almost four years of being a stay-at-home mom, and we can't afford college because we have just one income.
Is going dual military worth it?
Paying for school is expensive and frustrating, but I think there are better options for you than going dual military just for the tuition assistance and GI Bill benefits.
Consider this: If you do become dual military, you're far from guaranteed co-location with your husband. That means one of you will have to be essentially a single parent in addition to being active-duty Navy.
You'll be required to have a family care plan, which means long daycare hours for your kids or having them live away from you. Also, the Navy is unlikely to approve your tuition assistance request for at least a year, meaning that if you want to serve four years just for the education benefit, you won't even get to take advantage of it the whole time.
So what are some other options? Federal student aid and state aid may help, depending on your location. If your spouse is an E-6, he has probably been in the service long enough to qualify to transfer you his GI Bill. Although he would incur an additional service obligation by doing so, you could start using the benefit immediately and it would cover most, if not all, of your tuition costs, depending on the school.
Another option is to apply for other scholarships. Your on-base spouse club, for example, likely offers an annual scholarship, as do many other organizations. You can find information on those here.
There are plenty of great reasons to join the military, but doing so just for the education benefits may not be your best bet.
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0.992985 |
Why is the business case so important? Well, the key reasons the business case is now at the center of major buying decisions are listed below.
1. Drives business success: It ensures any projects, purchases or investments enable the organization to achieve its objectives.
2. Allocates scarce resources to maximum effect to get the best economic return. Projects must compete for funding.
More structure, rigor and discipline around decisions.
Focuses on results, including ROI/Payback.
Takes the ‘personality’ out of the purchase decision.
Minimizes the extent of politics involved.
Ensures decisions are consistent with business strategy and goals.
4. Prevents canvassing: It manages the process of interaction with suppliers, preventing undue influence and in some cases keeps suppliers at arms length. It also ensures the fairness of the buying process.
5. Ensures compliance with internal and external standards, regulations and directives.
6. Builds consensus: In a way the process of building the business case is a means of ensuring key stakeholders are involved and consulted. All major projects involve change, and the business case process is an important first step in change management.
Ensures projects are more thoroughly planned.
Ensures a common understanding of projects and decisions.
Provides a framework against which project success can be measured and reviewed.
Ensures managers and suppliers are accountable.
It would be a mistake to see the business case as just another administrative document needed to get approval. Sophisticated buying groups see the process for creating the business case as being as important as the business case itself. In these organizations the business case is really a framework for planning, decision-making, implementation and review. It has a full project lifespan, increasingly starting well in advance of the purchase and ending only after project success is achieved.
The business case is a living and breathing entity that grows in sophistication over time, from the preliminary document created at the outset and easily summarized on one or two pages to a comprehensive document with financials in tow.
Once the purchase decision is made, best practice dictates the business case is used to track implementation and project success. It is also updated as required to reflect the changing conditions in the organization and its environment.
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0.924664 |
This dataset of Common Model Organisms in Aging as Human Homologs is essentially a list of genes with a common ancestral DNA sequence with humans. It also includes a brief description of the species, symbol and model organism among others. For a gene to be featured, its association with aging and/or longevity must be unambiguous, and hence most genes were selected based on genetic manipulations and not mere correlations.
This dataset is a list of genes related to a second gene by descent from humans that has a common ancestral DNA sequence, which is termed as homolog.
This dataset comes from the GenAge (Genetic Aging) section of the Human Ageing Genomic Resources (HAGR) which is a repository containing information about the genetics of human aging. Information is obtained from modern approaches such as functional genomics, network analyses, systems biology and evolutionary analyses.
The human dataset in GenAge is a curated database of genes that may regulate human aging or that at least might be considerably associated with the human aging phenotype. It is a functional genomics database designed to provide up-to-date information in the context of aging and molecular genetics. Because the focus is on the fundamental aging process, what some authors call senescence, and not just age-related pathologies, the human dataset features primarily genes related to biological aging rather than genes that only affect longevity by having an impact on overall health.
This is an important point because longevity can be influenced by factors unrelated to aging, and the distinction is crucial, albeit often difficult. (For those interested in genes associated with human longevity, please refer to the LongevityMap). Likewise, a gene is differentially expressed during aging is not by itself proof that this gene is causally involved in the aging process. Nonetheless, for researchers studying transcriptional changes with age, also available is a separate dataset of genes commonly differentially expressed during mammalian aging which were identified by performing a meta-analysis of aging microarray data.
Each gene in the human homolog dataset was selected after an extensive review of the literature. They were identified genes associated with aging in model organisms as well as those that may directly modulate aging in mammals, including humans. Each gene was selected or excluded based on its association with aging in the different model systems, with priority being given to organisms biologically and evolutionary more closely related to humans. Because the focus is on the genetic basis of human aging, there was no in-depth description of aging in model systems but was rather incorporated in the information gathered from multiple models to gather clues about the genetics of human aging.
GenAge has its limits but the aim is to include the most relevant information, but not all the data are available. The human dataset in GenAge can be helpful in more classical genetic studies of aging and longevity. For example, if a given chromosomal region is identified, it is possible to look up which genes are present in that region. Although GenAge is not a bibliographic database, the bibliographic references in the human dataset can be a useful resource.
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0.998907 |
The treasured filet mignon is taken from the small end of the tenderloin. It's boneless typically one, has the least connective tissue and fat, making it one of the most expensive cuts of meat. Treat yourself with a bacon wrapped medallion for dinner.
1. Preheat an oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Defrost the steak and let it come to room temperature for 30 minutes.
3. Pat the steak dry and slice in half to make two medallions.
4. Season both sides of the steak with salt. Wrap the bacon around the sides of each medallion and secure with a toothpick.
5. Heat a cast iron pan on the highest heat.
6. Sear each side of the filets for 2 minutes each.
7. Place the pan in the oven and bake for 5 minutes for medium-rare, check for an internal temperature of 140 degrees F.
8. Remove the medallions to plates, drape a piece of foil over them and rest for 4 minutes.
9. Remove the toothpicks, garnish with butter and serve.
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0.997923 |
Hello Friend, The holidays can be a joyful time, offering a chance to reconnect with friends and family and they can also be very stressful. The holidays can also be hectic, full of shopping, family and celebrations complete with yummy calorie laden foods! As a nutritional consultant I have helped people deal with holiday stress for years and I have come up with some strategies on how to de-stress your life, and stay healthy, emotionally and physically so you can have the best holiday season ever!
Avoid sugars, limit alcohol and caffeine. Eliminating sugars and processed foods that turn to sugar helps tremendously with weight loss and can decrease your stress response. As caffeine can further stimulate the central nervous system, thereby intensifying the stress response, it’s best to avoid caffeinated beverages, such as coffee and colas. In addition, alcohol intake should be minimized, as it can increase appetite and decrease control over eating behavior. Check with your nutritional consultant for more ways towards eating well.
Research shows that exercise helps with stress and “vent” negative emotions, helps to boost our endorphins, or “feel-good” hormones, ultimately improving our mood. Exercise also decreases our appetite, helping us to consume fewer calories. Even when you are out of your regular exercise routine try to do something, even if means going for a 10-minute walk every day. You can even recruit family members to play outside or walk with you making it a super fun and connecting part of the day. Low Pressure Fitness is a terrific way to firm up your body without worrying about pelvic organ prolapse.
Yoga, meditation, deep breathing or even just petting your dog can help to take the edge off. Visualizing a peaceful place can be a soothing way to “escape” from reality, for just a few needed seconds.
Tackle some household chores: dust, vacuum, balance the checkbook, etc.
Work on a craft project that will keep your hands busy: knitting, needlepoint, painting, woodworking, etc.
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0.978914 |
How parents can play important role in children education ?
Parents can play significant role in deciding the career of their children. By virtue of their knowledge and experience, educated parents can provide the maximum assistance to their kids in choosing a suitable career. Parents know ins and outs of their children very well. They are quite aware of the capabilities and level of the aptitude, quality of education being provided to the children and also beliefs and traditions of family they belong to. They know how to meet the expectations they have from their children by providing them suitable facilities. They have ability to judge the company and friendship circle of their children.
All the matters discussed above are important but the most valuable factor is parent-child relationship. No one can ignore the importance of this fact. Parents who have faith in their children create confidence in them and also maintain it. Side by side they also keep an eye on their activities and company of their children. Students who are successful in their career do not deny the role of their parents in achieving the goal. Good parents should provide proper guidance: should take proper care and should be a good friend of their children. They should also be disciplined in their behaviour and approach.
Parents should encourage their children to obtain the maximum education. In so far as the girl education is concerned, it is duty of every parent to provide gender equity. Cultural education and activities should also be developed amongst children to upkeep the traditional values.
Parents should have patience to listen to their children's problems and grievances. They should try to sit with them and discuss their problems to find out adequate solutions. Students generally do not share their problems with parents for fear of being refused and thus causing a gap between the relations. Parents should try also to be open with them, sometimes, just like friends. This is right of every student to expect guidance and help from parents. Parents should accept this fact and should take care not to force their decisions on them while discussing their future career planning.
Also encourage them to participate in extra curricular activities.
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0.999996 |
Review: The first 100 pages of this book were extremely slow and boring. I actually thought about giving up on the book (a rarity for me) but this is Elizabeth Wein, so I stuck with it. The biggest challenge was that I found Teo and Emilia's voices to be almost identical. If it weren't for the different font and notification of who wrote what, I really would have been lost. I also didn't warm up to their mother, Rhoda. I understand she and the kids had to go to Ethiopia for the story to work, but the premise of how they arrived was just so unrealistic (not the fact that she wanted to go, but that she was basically depressed, had limited funds and then one day-woosh! Kids, we're moving to Africa).
Now, once the story moves to Africa I really enjoyed it. The most fascinating part of this was the historical aspect and I kept saying to myself "Wow, that's so interesting. I didn't know that." It takes place before WWII and Italy was trying to invade Ethiopia. They even gassed them at one point and there was limited response from the rest of the world. It was absolutely heartbreaking. I really enjoyed the flying lessons in the book as well as the relationship between Teo, Em and the rest of the people in their town. I'll avoid spoilers but Teo and Em are forced to grow up quickly when certain revelations were made, and like the other Wein books I've read, I found myself in tears at a few different points.
Overall-slow, boring start but it picks up eventually. A really interesting historical read.
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0.999999 |
Please explain to me like I am five.
I run a school wordpress/buddypress site and some of my students get a 503 error message.
How do I access the /dh/ directory to get to this location (from the wiki)?
The simplest way is to use an SFTP client to connect to and browse the system. WinSCP is a good one.
I use Filezilla at work and Transmit at home. I just do not see the /dh/ directory.
Whack /usr/local/dh/apache2/apache2-psXXXX/logs/ in the client’s address bar and see how you go.
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0.940155 |
The stories from Japan about the damage the tsunami has done are tragic. The scale of the devastation is extraordinary; and due to the threat of leaking radiation, may get worse before it gets better. For many Americans, this tsunami feels even more upsetting because the country hardest hit was not some far away and poor country, like Haiti which an easily be dismissed as irrelevant to our lives. Japan is, like the US, an affluent northern country. Many Americans are familiar with Japanese culture and food; and the stories from Japan feel more relevant because the people lived in houses, drove cars and had lives not all too dissimilar from many of us in the US.
When tsunamis hit countries like Indonesia or India, earthquakes devastate poor countries like Haiti or floods cause enormous damage in places like like Pakistan it is easier for Americans to believe that these kinds of natural disasters cannot happen here, or that when they do we will be better prepared than people in less wealthy countries. Hurricane Katrina should have taught Americans the folly of that that particular delusion, but even Katrina did most of its damage to a poor and largely non-white area, thus allowing middle class Americans to hold on to the notion that it could not happen to them. The tsunami in Japan is another blow against that misguided belief. Additionally, as the US, for political and economic reasons, continues to deconstruct the trappings of modern statehood, it is likely that we will be less prepared for these kinds of disasters.
The tsunami also should remind everybody of the increasing environmental frailty facing all of us. Earthquakes and tsunamis are not the kinds of extreme weather events to which global climate change contributes, but as climate change continues it is likely that hurricanes and other storms, for example, will become more frequent and stronger. The damage to the Japanese nuclear facility, which has not yet been controlled, is an even starker reminder of the risks involved in continuing a lifestyle oriented around increasing consumption. The fear generated by the potential nuclear event in Japan will also exacerbate dependence on coal, oil, natural gas and other resources as governments may become more concerned about the safety of nuclear energy.
The combination of continued population growth, the rumblings of global climate change and consistently increasing demands for all resources including energy, but also for water and land makes all of us particularly vulnerable to natural disasters like the one we have just witnessed. The tsunami should help demonstrate the import of investing in infrastructure and preparing for contingencies, but even doing these things will not be enough.
As we have seen from Japan, while these preparations can help, they cannot prevent the terrible consequences of a tsunami, earthquake or other disasters. Although Japan's infrastructure probably saved thousands of lives, this does not make the loss of thousands of lives any less tragic or horrific. Moreover, these precautionary steps only are short term solutions which do not address the broader global problems of energy dependence and consumption which make all of us vulnerable.
While helping the Japanese recover from this tragedy and contain whatever radioactivity that can be contained is the most urgent and immediate priority, the tsunami could also be a time to accelerate a national, or even global dialog about the future of life on an increasingly crowded planet given to increasingly dramatic weather events. The tsunami should be a reminder of the need to secure alternate and safer sources of energy as well as the need to consume less.
The peril of the dependence on foreign oil has been part of our national political and security discussion for a few years now. Many people recognize that driving big low mileage cars and flying so much, for example, weakens the position of the US and gives authoritarians from the Middle East to Russia and beyond far more influence over us than we would like. This, however, is only a piece of the overall cost of a heavily consumerist resource intensive global culture. All of the ways we produce energy involve either substantial risks, of either technological or scientific nature, or widespread environmental degradation, but as long as our energy needs grow, we have little choice but to pursue various risky or unsafe means of getting this energy.
Making any kind of meaningful change in this regard will be extremely difficult, but is even more difficult in a political climate in which one party has an almost principled resistance to scientific realities and where both parties, albeit perhaps for different reasons, are unable or unwilling to suggest that unlimited production and consumerism may not, in the long run, be the best thing for the survival of our species and planet.
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0.970288 |
Rent to own homes provide buyers (tenants) and sellers (landlords) additional options during questionable times...The term "rent to own" is not always clear what it means, and that's partially because renting to own and the similar plan lease/option can work numerous ways. However, in a typical scenario, tenants can rent for a set period, such as a year, then when that time is up, they have the option to purchase the home. A portion of the rent is often credited to the sales price, used as a down payment, or closing costs.
Most commonly, the buyer wants to enter into a lease purchase agreement because the buyer is unable to obtain financing for some period of time or saving up for a down payment. However, there are risks that make rent to buy more complicated and expensive than straight renting. Among them: the tenant's rent payment will likely be higher than market rent as part of that will be going toward the eventual down payment on the property.
A lease purchase agreement is an agreement in which the buyer and seller enter into both a lease agreement and a purchase contract at the same time. The buyer will lease the property, for example, for one year, and at the end of the one-year period the buyer is obligated to purchase the property by closing escrow. Buyer (tenant) runs the risk of obligating themselves in purchasing a home that may not be at current market price.
A lease purchase agreement provides the seller (landlord) the most security outside of an out-right sale, as it contractually guarantees the eventual purchase of the property by the buyer (tenant). However, both parties should be cautious if the agreement can not be fulfilled if buyer can not obtain financing to buy the property.
If the buyer (tenant) ultimately decides NOT to buy the house, he or she faces the potential consequences of a broken contract in addition to losing the deposit and rent premiums. The seller, then, also faces legal expenses in pursuing the broken contract.
A lease option agreement differs from a lease purchase agreement. In a lease option agreement, the buyer and seller enter into a lease agreement containing a clause that gives the buyer (tenant) the right, but not the obligation, to purchase the property under specified conditions. The purchase contract is then drawn up when buyer is eligible to obtain a loan and purchase the property at current market price.
Very rarely does it make sense to rent to own. It's a complex process, and most people don't understand what they're getting themselves into. Instead continue with a straight rental agreement and don't rent-to-own. Put the difference in an interest bearing account and build up your credit. If you're a low-income buyer you may be eligible for a USDA loan (100% financing) or as a first time home buyer, you only need 3.5 percent as a down payment.
The Arizona Housing Finance Authority (AzHFA), acting on behalf of the Arizona Department of Housing, announced the launch of the new Home Plus program. The AzHFA Home Plus Mortgage Loan Origination Program provides a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a down payment assistance (DPA) grant to qualifying homebuyers purchasing a primary residence, which they intend to occupy, throughout most of Arizona.
Itching to move from their rental into a place of their own? Then the new “Home Plus” Mortgage Loan which features a non-repayable down payment assistance grant may help you get the home they’re looking for.
These loans are geared towards home buyers who want to buy in a rural area. You have the ability to finance closing costs into the loan and the underwriting guidelines are relaxed with lower credit ratings. The USDA loan program is not limited to first time home buyers. The loans were set up to assist eligible homebuyers regardless of whether they have previously or currently own a home. However, the property needs to qualify and the homebuyer meets strict income requirements.
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0.987337 |
Can force majeure events be agreed in Vietnamese law contracts?
Article 161.1 of the Civil Code provides that an event of force majeure is an event which occurs in an objective manner which cannot be foreseen and which cannot be remedied by all possible necessary and admissible measures being taken. It is common that parties to a contract agree in advance a list of force majeure events (such as natural disasters, war or epidemic) and the nature and characteristics of a force majeure event. However, there is a risk that these events are not considered as force majeure under Vietnamese law if the parties cannot prove that these events actually satisfy the conditions of Article 161.1 of the Civil Code.
One possibility to overcome this risk is to provide that to the extent a force majeure event agreed in a contract is not considered as force majeure events under Article 161.1 of the Civil Code, such force majeure event will constitute an exemption event provided in Article 294.1(a) of the Commercial Law. This is because Article 294.1(a) of the Commercial Law allows the parties to a commercial contract to agree on exemption events the occurrence of which will exempt the affected party from liability under the contract..
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0.997255 |
Warning signs of credit score scams, specifically those targeted at repairing a person's credit, include having to pay in advance, the promise of having negative information deleted and being asked to assume a new credit identity, according to the Better Business Bureau. To avoid becoming a victim of such a scam, a person should look over the contract and cancel the service if anything looks suspicious.
Individuals often targeted by credit repair scams include those with poor credit who are attempting to buy a home, lease a car or get a job, notes the Better Business Bureau. The scammer informs the person he can have his past negative credit information disappear, such as late payments and even bankruptcy. However, as long as that negative information is correct, it cannot be removed. Another warning sign of a scam is the credit repair company offering the person someone else's Social Security number or a new ID number, both of which are illegal to use.
The contract for a legitimate credit card repair company usually has the time period, price, services rendered and all other terms of the business agreement, according to the BBB. In most cases, the services, and the contract can be cancelled within three days. It's best to contact the state BBB to ensure the credit repair company is legitimate and to determine if everything in the contract is legal.
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0.99999 |
"I have done nothing better than these songs," said Richard Wagner about his Wesendonck Lieder. So, why are these songs significant? To answer this question, we must first answer the question, what is a song?
Songs are the most simple and yet most powerful of all musical forms in our world. Songs are chamber music for voice. Yet songs can the foundation of the most complex of orchestral compositions, as witnessed by Mahler's well known song cycles.
Why did Richard Wagner chooses to write songs, including the Wesendonk Lieder, when he is best known for his operas? The answer is simple. He wanted to write music that would make him accessible to music lovers in their homes, not just the opera house.
Wagner's first songs were written while he was living in Paris, between 1839 and 1842. By writing songs, he hoped to make his name in what was then the music capital of the world. In this case, he failed, for the songs he wrote during that period, while interesting, are not musically significant.
The situation changed when Wagner wrote the Wesendonck Lieder in 1857. These songs, which became an important artistic statement for Wagner, were written while the composer and his wife were living in Zurich on the estate of Otto Wesendonck and his wife Mathilde. Wesendonck was a wealthy merchant and one of Wagner's many benefactors.
During his stay with the Wesendonck's, Wagner fell in love with Mathilde. He saw his friend's beautiful wife as a "loving muse." At the same time, Mathilde herself was inspired to write her poems by the presence of the great maestro in her daily life. In the end, he himself was inspired to set five of them to music, which he presented to her as a birthday present on December 23, 1857. The songs were studies for Wagner's next opera, Tristan und Isolde, an opera filled with the unresolved chromaticism that would open a new window of expression for the musical world.
In the first song, Der Engle, Wagner uses themes from Das Rheingold. The rest of the songs are in one way or another connected with Tristan und Isolde. The rushing music heard in Stehe Stille! - Stand Still - is later used in Act I of Tristan. The introduction of Im Treibhaus - In the Green house - most closely resembles music in Act III. In the fourth song, Schmerzern - Pain - the music is found in Act II of the opera. Finally, the pivotal love duet in Act II of Tristan und Isolde finds its source in the setting for Mathilde's final poem, Traeume - Dreams.
So we see that Wagner's assessment of this music was correct. He has indeed done nothing better than these songs.
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