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Was created in 1976 in Valencia Editorial Pre - Texts and since then has been publishing continuously , independently and with a clear national and international , on the lines of literature and thought.
In 1997 he was awarded the National Award for best editorial work in 2008 with the Award FIL Guadalajara ( Mexico ) and in 2009 , also as Editors of the year, the IDF of Lima ( Peru ) .
The publisher currently has more than 1,500 titles published in its different collections : Narrative , Narrative and Narrative Contemporary Classics for the narrative genre , Essay , dedicated to the major translations of contemporary thought and philosophy , as well as the most interesting contributions and heterodox national scene , Philosophies , in collaboration with the department of Metaphysics at the University of Valencia , Hispanic , dedicated to the study of Spanish literature : Texts and Pre - Texts , a collection of miscellaneous character literature about aesthetics and literary essay , the sound Footprint , analysis of musical traditions and architecture Pre - texts to texts by architects and architecture, influential in the international arena .
In addition , Pre- Texts published five collections of poetry : The Southern Cross, which is one of our most personal proposal ; Anthology of Southern Cross, Poetry , Poetics , collection of reflections on the various forms of poetic expression and the Bird Solitude , around birds in universal poetry .
Finally , Cosmopolis , Matches and Indika , our latest collections , dedicated to creating the first literary and philosophical reflection about cities , the second to the relationship between art and literature and the last to offer an approach to thinking and arts of Indian civilization through the most significant books of the field worldwide.
Post annual poetry awards Emilio Prados and Archpriest of Hita , both for authors under 35 years Cox Award Villa , poetry , the International Prize Literary Criticism Amado Alonso , and Gerardo Diego International Prize for Literary Research , also Awards of Cantabria Culture Concierge poetry , novels and short stories, the young poetry National Radio of Spain and the City of Almendralejo ( Badajoz ) of poetry and novel.
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https://herder.com.mx/en/editoriales-publishers/pre-textos
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Examining how social ideas are expressed through and portrayed in works of the creative imagination. A selection of literary texts, films, visual representations, and/or essays that speak to a particular social issue or set of interrelated social issues. A variety of themes, such as feminism, globalization, migration, environmentalism, post-colonialism and nationalism. Developing students’ competencies in: written and oral communication skills; creativity and scepticism; and critical thinking.
ASIU102
IMAGINING THE OTHER
Examinaton of the definition of the ‘Other’, starting with the widespread description of the term as the processes by which social groups create boundaries and distinctions, often demonizing, dehumanizing, romanticizing, or exoticizing those who do not fit into their society. Exploring the notions of the Other represented in literature to canvas a human fascination with the foreign and the unknown, unlimited by time, place, or cultural context. Focusing on the ways of perception of the Other in socio-cultural, political, religious, geographic, ethnic, gendered, or racial terms in different cultures or time periods. Exploring human identity in relation to the Otherness of the monstrous, the animal, and the super-, sub-, or extra-human.
ASIU104
ART AND INNOVATION
Interdisciplinary study of connections between art/design and politics, science, psychology, literature, music. Creative thinking activities. Innovative design studio. Role of images in propaganda, advertising. Impact of masterpieces in society. Visual perception, gestalt, color theory, drawing as a way of thinking, form and function, poetics of space, collaboration, artistic research. Fluxus, public art, information arts, kinetic sculpture, environmental art.
ASIU107
LANDMARKS OF ART AND ARCHITECTURE
Introducing students a select group of significant monuments in world art and architecture and present the unique aesthetic, cultural and historical issues that frame them; presenting the main methods to analyze and interpret artworks produced in different media. A different time period and culture each week, as wide-ranging as 20th century Europe and America, Safavid Persia, Medieval Europe, Ancient Greece, etc. Social factors in the creation process of artworks, and how the specific cultural context of the artworks influences our reading and understanding of them.
ASIU109
ART OF MUSIC AND MOVEMENT IN THE 20TH CENTURY
An exploration of the aesthetic concepts of the 20th century musical composition and dance choreography, the arts of creating/organizing sounds and movements. Possible relationships-both diverging and converging-between these two disciplines when brought together on stage in traditional or contemporary inter-disciplinary artistic forms such as dance-musical, music-drama, opera, digital multi-media performance. Considering parallel developments in other artistic fields such as painting, sculpture and cinema. Testing and challenging the boundaries between sound and movement, as well as those investigating the tripartite relation between sound, movement and image. Critical discussions on Aesthetics, Modernity&Postmodernity, High&Low Art, Orientalism&Self-Orientalism, the nature of art and creativity, autonomy of artistic disciplines as well as blurring of boundaries.
ASIU111
FILM GENRE
Some of the many questions, concerns and misconceptions raised by the study of film through genre: What is genre? Are film genres a marketing tool, a by-product of journalism or a fundamental way of understanding and discussing motion pictures? Is there such a thing as a `genre film? or is no movie immune to genre criticism? What are the generic tropes associated with certain genres? Can a film belong to more than one genre? Does a film?s genre stay the same over time? Does a genre-based view expand or delimit our conception of a motion picture?
ASIU115
GREEK AND ROMAN ART AND ARCHITECTURE
Public and private architecture and art including mosaics, paintings, reliefs and statuary of the Greek and Roman World. The technical and stylistic developments are placed against the background of the contemporary political and socio-economic situation. Developments in Greece and Italy and areas under Greek and Roman influence including Turkey are addressed in the discourse.
ASIU118
DESIGN THINKING
Exploring the innovation and creative processes through interdisciplinary work and research structures. Understanding design problems independent from their disciplinary boundaries. Gaining an integrative understanding of innovation based on human-centered design.
ECON100
PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMICS
Economic reasoning; basic concepts and processes in microeconomics and macroeconomics; identification and discussion of current economic issues covered in popular economics publications.
EQUR101
QUANTITATIVE REASONING USING COMPUTERS
Effective assessment of data by applying statistics and computing techniques. Introduction of major data descriptors. Applying spreadsheet tools to facilitate data analysis and consequent decision making. Introduction to flowcharts and algorithms. Algorithmic reasoning for computer programming. Emerging information and computing technologies and the future of computing.
EQUR121
SYMBOLIC LOGIC
The fundamental concepts of logic such as statement, argument, premise, conclusion, inference, truth, falsity, validity, and invalidity; elements of propositional and predicate logic; conjunction, disjunction and negation of statements; truth tables for complex statements; logical equivalence; tautologies and contradictions; universal and existential quantifiers; truth trees; proof methods.
MATH101
FINITE MATHEMATICS
Linear algebra and matrix theory; mathematics of finance; counting and the fundamentals of probability theory; game theory.
ETHC105
ETHICS AND EVERYDAY LIFE
Understanding how we experience freedom, justice, equality, rights, good&evil, judgments, and discrimination in our everyday life from the corner of a grocery store to a doctor’s office, to a court-house or to a class at the university. Analyzing the various ways of ethical reasoning already happening in our everyday interactions in order to enrich and sometimes to challenge the philosophical theories of ethics. Analyzing the already existing theories of ethical reasoning in the history of philosophy to challenge our at times non-reasoning habits. Connections between theory and practice in everyday life through very open discussion of everyday examples in connection to our readings of ethical reasoning from Plato, Aristotle, Mill, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre, Arendt, De Beauvior, etc.
ETHC108
WHY BE GOOD?
The case for acting ethically rather than unethically. Explores the motivations behind ethical actions, the status of ethical ‘truths’, and the relationship (if any) between an ethical life and a happy life. Examines research on ethical behavior from disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology.
ETHC109
ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS
A growing area of philosophy focusing on issues about the value of nature and other living beings and our responsibility towards them. Primary questions dealing with issues of moral responsibility of human beings towards other life forms and on the relative value of nature. Various topics focus on economic and technological development, pollution, the preservation of species, and the uses and abuses of life.
ETHC113
A QUEST FOR ETHICAL FOUNDATIONS
A historical introduction to ethical reasoning in order to develop skills to examine our lives. Recognition of the principal problems of ethics in a variety of works. Reading, thinking and writing critically about ethical issues and problems. Examination of theory of knowledge, origins of ethics, ethical responsibility and critiques of ethical theories under the guidance of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant and Nietzsche.
HUMS102
ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATIONS
Fundamental questions about the emergence of the earliest civilizations. Origins of modern humans, the earliest evidence for art and symbolic thinking, the development of agriculture, sedentism and social inequalities as well as the formation of the earliest states. Comparative perspective of the often parallel ways through which these major developments took place across different regions in the Old World and in the Americas.
HUMS104
SEA ROUTES: CIVILZATIONS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN
The history, archaeology, art and architecture of societies and civilizations of the Mediterranean region from the prehistory until the 15th century AD. Focusing on the examination, discussion and analysis of the art, architecture, history and religion of various civilizations in Anatolia, Near East, the Levant, Northern Africa, Greece and western Mediterranean countries. Some basic questions such as exchange, continuity and discontinuity, trade, migration, traditions and innovations.
HUMS105
FAITH AND POWER: EXPLORING THE WORLD MIDDLE AGES
Introduction to the key issues in the cultural history of Europe, Near Eastern Mediterranean, Eurasia and Americas from the 5th century A.D. to the 15th century, emphasis on aspects, which have contributed to our modern cultures. Various sources, methods of analysis of history, society, religion and art of medieval cultures as well as their mutual relationships and connections. Focusing on the Byzantine world and Medieval Europe, the rise and spreading of Islamic civilizations, the developments in Eurasian and Mesoamerican civilizations before the 15th century.
HUMS109
THINGS: THE MATERIAL WORLDS OF HUMANITY
Explores the relationship between people and things. Examines a wide variety of approaches to the world of objects, artifacts and material goods using several disciplines and perspectives, including archaeology, philosophy, materialist and cognitive approaches, consumption studies, phenomenology, social constructivism, actor-network-theory.
HUMS120
TRUTH AND POLITICS
An examination of the relationships between truth and power through the history of philosophy from the Greeks to the 20th century. Assessment of the relations between knowledge and political authority through the examination of key texts from Plato, Descartes, Kant, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Marx, etc. Contextualized elucidation of various models of government through their reliance on philosophical and theological worldviews. Examination of the political implication of scientific and philosophical developments.
HUMS129
CRITICAL THINKING
An introduction of the distinction between an argument and merely a set of sentences. An examination of the distinction between good cases and bad cases of reasoning. In depth study of some of the basic distinctions between different types of reasoning.
HUMS130
HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND TECHOLOGY
An introduction to key aspects of the History of Science and Technology from ancient times to today. Investigating the changing relationship between culture and science and technology, and traces the history of ideas from antiquity to the modern day such as experimentation, the scientific method, a heliocentric solar system, and various ways of measuring and understanding time.
HUMS131
HISTORY, POWER AND PEOPLE
Examining the world history, politics and society between the 17th century and the early 21th century. Focusing on both chief themes such as nation-states, citizenship, hegemony, colonization, migration and liberalism and major events such as French Revolution, the spread of westernization, the rivalries of the Great Powers, World War I, the spread of Americanization, the rise of Communism, and the spread of globalization. Recourse to a variety of historical, sociological, philosophical sources, the writings of major thinkers to films, photos and cartoons.
HUMS132
ILLUSION : WHEN APPEARANCES DECEIVE
An interdisciplinary exploration of how appearances mislead us and strategies for responding to deceptive appearances. Issues to be discussed include: how illusion and hallucination challenge the assumption that perception gives us knowledge of external reality; how theory colors scientific observation; how purveyors of ”fake news” manipulate appearances; and how we can avoid these varieties of perceptual error as individuals, researchers, and citizens. Drawing widely on resources from philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience.
SCIE103
LIFE SCIENCES
General overview of living organisms. Selected topics on the control of cellular mechanisms. Gene technology and evolution.
SCIE108
WORLD OF CHEMISTRY
Chemical facts; matter and energy; nucleus, atom and periodic law; chemical bonding; chemical reactions; polymers. The impact of scientific methods and chemical discoveries on our standard of living. Understanding contemporary issues related to atmosphere, hydrosphere, air and water pollution; global warming and renewable energy; recycling.
SCIE110
PHYSICS OF THE SPHERE
The importance of the spherical geometry; applications in navigation and communication instruments; geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, celestial sphere; navigation, sailing and flight; spherical coordinates, spherical harmonics, spatial and temporal measurements.
SOSC
SOSC105
MIGRATION & GLOBALIZATION
Present realities of contemporary global migration in the context of social sciences. Critical analysis of the social problems such as social mobility, poverty, gender and education, inequality and citizenship as they relate to migration. Understanding the basic methods used for analysing migration related issues. Exploring fundamental consequences of migration for shaping social relations at local and global levels. Examination of social forces within the contexts of migration and migrant integration.
SOSC110
STATE AND SOCIETY
An introductory exploration of state-society relations from an interdisciplinary perspective. Focusing on the questions of what the state is, what the society is, and what the relationship between the two is? The concept of citizenship and how the state relates to citizens through security forces, juridical system, social welfare, education, religion and culture. Working with examples from history, Turkey and other countries.
SOSC111
STUDIES IN POPULAR CULTURE
An introduction to a scholarly study of popular culture, with the overall objective of illustrating how pop culture influences our attitudes and worldviews. Dissecting a variety of pop culture texts such as cartoons, children’s literature, youtube videos, commercials, advertisements, websites, music videos, television, film and news broadcasts. Focusing on icons and imagery which address a global dimension of pop culture. Culture through a variety of more specific critical lenses (such as gender, class, race and ethnicity, sexuality, and beauty).
SOSC119
DATA AND SOCIETY
Familiarize the student with the use, and potential misuse, of data in culture and society. Discussion of the applications of data gathering and analysis, how burgeoning practice interacts with the culture and society. Topics including introductory data science concepts, such as big data and machine learning, understand and critique the arguments regarding policy implications, ethics, etc.
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https://core.ku.edu.tr/offered-courses-fall-2019/
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Shii News – Academic Items
1.Emory University’s Islamic Civilizations Studies Ph.D. program is devoted to exploratory, problem-based interdisciplinary graduate education. ICIVS graduate students work with a faculty committee on specific research questions and theories of interpretation and are encouraged to conduct innovative and interdisciplinary research that highlights trans-regional and transnational connections between the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and beyond. Students accepted into the ICIVS Ph.D. program design their own programs of study under the guidance of faculty advisors. Along with language training that prepares them for textual or field research, they receive training in research methods, historiography, Islamic Civilizations Studies as a field of study, and the pedagogy of Islam and Islamic Civilizations.
Possible programs of study supported by ICIVS include (but are not limited to): Islamic Civilization in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean Basins; Muslim and Jewish Iberia and North Africa; Islam in Classical and Modern Arabic Literatures; Islam in Indo-Persian and Urdu Literatures; Judeo-Arabic Language, Linguistics, and Literatures; Politics and Society in the Muslim World; Islamic Political Philosophy; Muslim and Non-Muslim Minorities in Muslim Societies (with special emphasis on Christian, Jewish and Hindu communities); Diaspora Communities from the Muslim World; Muslim Minorities in Non-Muslim Societies; Islamic Civilizations and Post-Colonial Studies; Islamic Hybridities; Gender and Society in the Muslim World; and Frontier Interactions Between States and Peoples in the Muslim World.
For additional information about the ICIVS Ph.D. please visit the program’s website: http://icivs.emory.edu/index.html
You can see current students’ profile here: http://icivs.emory.edu/people/current-students.html
The application due date is December 15, 2018.
2. The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and the Humanities Collegiate Division at the University of Chicago are announcing a position for a full-time Lecturer in Arabic, for a one-year, renewable, appointment. The successful candidate will typically teach a minimum of two courses of various levels of Arabic (elementary, intermediate, or high intermediate) in each of three quarters (Autumn, Winter, Spring) to both undergraduate and graduate students. Additional duties of the position for Academic Year 2019-2020 are contributing to program development through the organization and promotion of regular Arabic film nights.
The successful candidate must be able to function at the Superior Level of Modern Standard Arabic and have experience teaching Arabic as a foreign language at the college level. Preference will be given to candidates proficient in an Arabic dialect. A Master’s degree in a relevant discipline is required by the start date of the appointment; a Ph.D. is desirable.
Applicants must apply online at the University’s Academic Career Opportunities website, https://academiccareers.uchicago.edu, select requisition #03923, and upload the following materials: a cover letter, which includes a brief description of your teaching philosophy, a current curriculum vitae, and the names and contact information of three references whose recommendation letters will be solicited automatically by the Academic Career Opportunities application system. Supporting documents, including teaching evaluations and sample syllabi, may also be submitted. Review of applications will begin on November 7, 2018, and will continue until the position is filled or the search is closed. Only completed applications will be considered.
3. Posts:
Rice University – Assistant or Associate Professor, Art and
Architecture of the Islamic World
http://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=57504
Sheikh Zayid Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies, American University of Beirut Candidates for the Sheikh Zayid Chair are required to have made highly distinguished and internationally acclaimed contributions in one or more academic fields of Arabic and Islamic Studies as conceived broadly (encompassing: philology and critical editions of Arabic texts, classical literature, intellectual history; civiliza-tion studies; etc).Deadline for applications: 15 November 2018. Information: http://www.aub.edu.lb/fas/Pages/academic-em-ployment.aspx#Link24
Mary Fox Whittlesey Visiting Professorship, American University of Beirut The Faculty of Arts and Sciences is inviting applications for appointment in the field of archaeology special-izing, in particular, in either Prehistory, Environmental Archaeology, or the archaeology of the Islamic or Ot-toman Period to begin August 15, 2019. The successful candidate is expected to teach two undergraduate or graduate courses per semester. The period of the visiting appointment is for one year.
Deadline for applications: 30 November 2018. Information: http://www.aub.edu.lb/fas/pages/academic-em-ployment.aspx#Link23
Assistant Professor in Islamic Art/Architecture, Rutgers University The Department of Art History invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track position, at the rank of Assistant Professor in the field of Islamic art and/or architecture, beginning Fall 2019. PhD in Art History, Middle Eastern Studies, or a closely-related field required by the start of the appointment.Priority will be given to applications received prior 1 November 2018. Information: https://jobs.rut-gers.edu/postings/74257
4. Every year HIAA sponsors a competition and awards the Margaret B. Ševčenko Prize for the best unpublished essay written by a junior scholar (pre-dissertation graduate student to three years after the Ph.D. degree) on any aspect of Islamic visual culture. The Ševčenko Prize recipient receives an award of $500 and a citation, generally presented at HIAA’s annual business meeting. The Prize is named in memory of Margaret Bentley Ševčenko, the first and long-serving Managing Editor of Muqarnas, a journal devoted to the visual culture of the Islamic world and sponsored by the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard and at MIT.
The competition is open to HIAA members only, and the winning essay will be considered for publication by the Muqarnas Editorial Board.
The deadline is 15 November 2018. For details, please see the webpage:
https://www.historiansofislamicart.org/opportunities
5. Conference: “No Country for Anthropologists? Contemporary Ethnographic Research in the Mid-dle East”, University of Zurich, 1-3 November 2018
Bringing together anthropologists from Egypt, Europe, Iran, Lebanon, Pakistan, Turkey, the United States, and other countries, this conference debates the following questions: What are the obstacles to do ethnog-raphy in the contemporary Middle East? What do they teach us about the current role and the future possi-bilities of anthropology?
Information: https://www.isek.uzh.ch/en/anthropology/nocountryforanthropologists.html
6. 14th Conference of the Italian Society for Middle Eastern Studies (SeSaMO): “Paths of Resistance in the Middle East and North Africa”, University of Turin, 31 January – 2 February 2019
Paper proposals must specify one of the 31 open panels for which they are intended and must be submitted by email to [email protected] .
Deadline for abstracts: 31 October 2018. Information: http://www.sesamoitalia.it/convegno-2019-torino-2019-conference-turin/call-for-panels/ including abstracts of 31 open panels.
7. 30th Сongress on “Historiography and Source Studies of Asia and Africa”,
St. Petersburg State University, 19-21 June 2019
The biannual Congress is organized by the Faculty of Asian and African Studies
of St Petersburg State University. It is dedicated to the 150th Anniversary of the
Academician Vasily V. Barthold (1869-1930
Working languages of the Conference: Russian and English.
Time limit for papers: 15 minutes + 5 minutes discussion.
Deadline for abstracts in English or Russian: 31 January 2019.
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https://www.shii-news.imes.ed.ac.uk/shii-news-academic-items-183/
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Art & Humanities Subject Guide: Articles & Databases
This guide will assist students needing resources for CHA assignments.
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Updated for Remote Teaching: Music, Art, Homes, Museums!
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Arts (ProQuest)
Articles from journals and magazines covering art, architecture, design, history, philosophy, music, literature, theatre and cultural studies.
ARTstor
Collection of images from the areas of the visual arts, the humanities, and social sciences.
Biography In Context
Biographies of influential people worldwide and from many time periods. Includes encyclopedia articles, magazine articles, and some multimedia.
Communication and Mass Media Complete
Articles from scholarly journals, magazines and book chapters, in topics of communication, mass media and related fields of cultural studies, film studies, marketing and business.
History (ProQuest)
Articles covering civilizations, historical studies, military history, periods & events, US history, and world history.
JSTOR Arts & Sciences Archive Collection
Contains digitized back issues of academic journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
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Articles from scholarly journals and magazines covering religion and philosophy worldwide.
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Bibliographie D'Histoire d'Art (BHA) & Répertoire de la litterature de l'art (RILA): Free from the Getty!
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What are 3 achievements of ancient India?
Ancient India was home to two of the world’s first cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. These cities had stone buildings, multiply stories, and sewage systems! India was one of the very first civilizations to use algebra and calculus. The number zero was invented in Ancient India by a man named Aryabhatta.
What were the contributions of Indians?
Indians invented zero and the number system, one of the greatest innovations in history. The decimal system, the value of pi, algebra, trigonometry, calculus and many mathematical concepts were all born in India.
How did ancient India influence us today?
As well as giving us the concept of zero, Indian mathematicians made seminal contributions to the study of trigonometry, algebra, arithmetic and negative numbers among other areas. Perhaps most significantly, the decimal system that we still employ worldwide today was first seen in India.
What is the contribution of ancient India in technology?
Indians made three important contributions – notation system, decimal system and usage of zero. Indian notation system was adopted by Arabs and numerals are called Arabic in English.
What are the invention of India?
11 Great Inventions We Can Thank India For
- The Zero. …
- The Ayurveda. …
- The USB (Universal Serial Bus) …
- Board games. …
- Yoga. …
- Buttons. …
- Cataract surgery.
What are the contributions of India in science?
In the past seven decades, India has built satellites and sent probes to the moon and Mars, established nuclear power stations, acquired nuclear weapon capability and demonstrated firepower in the form of a range of missiles. Undoubtedly these are all fabulous achievements of Indian scientists and technologists.
What are the contribution of India to the world class 9?
Contribution of India’s contact with the Oriental world are: It spread Buddhism far and wide i.e.to Tibet, Japan, China, etc. It helped in transmission of India numerical and decimal system to various parts of the world. It helped in enhancing trade relations among various countries.
What is India’s greatest contribution to science and technology?
Five of India’s contributions to science
- Atomism. The earliest mention of the concept of the atom dates back to India. …
- Zero. Zero was recognized as a number and not merely a symbol of separation amongst all other numbers in India. …
- Trigonometric functions. …
- Modern decimal system. …
- Chandrasekhar Limit.
What is contribution of India in science and technology?
India is among the uppermost countries in the world in the field of scientific research, positioned as one of the top five nations in the field of space exploration. The country has frequently undertaken space missions, including missions to the moon and the famed Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
What is the significant contribution of Hinduism to our modern society?
Hinduism’s impact on philosophy, literature, fashion, art, religion and the world as a whole is one that will continue to have an important role on human society — religious or not. Having no single founder, nor one single set of guidelines to follow, Hinduism is a highly adaptable religion.
What was the contribution of India in the field of science and astronomy?
Indian astronomy flowered in the 5th–6th century, with Aryabhata, whose Aryabhatiya represented the pinnacle of astronomical knowledge at the time. Later the Indian astronomy significantly influenced Muslim astronomy, Chinese astronomy, European astronomy, and others.
What is the importance of ancient civilization in today’s modern world why?
An ancient civilization is a topic that helps students have a better understanding of the world. For example, when relating ancient civilizations to humanities and social sciences it helps students understand the economic and political commonalities and differences among cultures, people, and the environment.
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https://krishiindiaexpo.com/journey-to-india/your-question-what-are-three-of-ancient-indias-contributions-to-the-world.html
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L'Annee Philologique (Brepols)L'Annee philologique is a specialized bibliographic database of scholarly works relating to all aspects of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, covering a wide array of subjects, including Greek and Latin literature and linguistics, which includes early Christian texts and patristics, Greek and Roman history, art, archaeology, philosophy, religion, mythology, music, science, and scholarly subspecialties such as numismatics, papyrology and epigraphy. Abstracts of journal articles are in English, German, Spanish, French or Italian. Books entries often include tables of contents and book review information.
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JSTORProvides full image access to a comprehensive archive of over 2,000 scholarly journals over 200 of which have complete backfiles. Nearly 40 subject areas are represented in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences. New subjects and titles are added regularly. Links to the most recent issues of some journals are available through Project MUSE.
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Project MUSEProvides the searchable full text and full images of e-book collections from university presses and approximately 380 journals published by scholarly presses, including Johns Hopkins University Press. Subject areas include math, science, humanities, and social sciences. Provides links to back issues of 29 journals archived in the JSTOR collection.
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Humanities International IndexIndexes and abstracts over 2,000 journals, books, and other internationally published works on a variety of topics in the humanities. Provides citation information for articles, essays and reviews, as well as original creative works, including poems, fiction, photographs, paintings, and illustrations. Note: Absorbed American Humanities Index, effective December 2005.
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TOCS-IN: Tables of Contents of Journals of Interest to ClassicistsProvides the tables of contents of a selection of Classics, Near Eastern Studies, and Religion journals. Where possible, links are given with articles of which the full text or an abstract is available online (about 15%).
Related Resources
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Art Full TextSelectively indexes and abstracts articles from more than 600 periodicals, yearbooks, and museum bulletins published throughout the world. Includes indexing of art reproductions from indexed periodicals. Includes full text coverage from more than 270 publications back to January 1997, abstracting as far back as 1984, and indexing as far back as 1929.
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Religion and Philosophy CollectionFeatures full-text journal coverage of philosophical studies and theology from over 300 journals. Includes topics such as world religions, religious denominations, biblical studies, religious history, epistemology, political philosophy, philosophy of language, moral philosophy, and the history of philosophy.
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Philosopher's IndexIndexes and abstracts scholarly research in the major fields of philosophy, including ethics, philosophy of education, metaphysics, philosophy of science, logic, philosophy of religion, and others. Covers over 570 U.S. and international journals and books. Includes authors' contributions to anthologies and book reviews.
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MLA International Bibliography (EBSCO)Indexes critical scholarship on literature, criticism, language, linguistics, and folklore. Includes over 4,400 titles including journals, series, monographs, dissertations, bibliographies, proceedings, and other materials.
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https://libguides.utsa.edu/c.php?g=522195&p=3570375
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Today, other people think that Greek is useless and never be useful in our modern age and for a few it seems impractical to learn Greek. However, if you are fascinated by the beauty and extensive culture of Greek, or maybe you’ll be mastering some courses, Biblical history, then Greek language is perfect for you.
Is it useful to learn and speak Greek nowadays? The answer is yes. Nowadays, it is very useful to learn Greek, because the Greeks were the greatest scientists, inventors, Philosophers that are still relevant today.
We learn Greek basically to read and study ancient texts written originally. You will be learning the grammar structure and syntax through oral and written examinations. We study the Greek in order to have a better idea of what the languages of ancient Greek pronounce like.
The objective is to learn ample grammar and vocabulary to be effective in reading ancient Greek literature: poetry, prose, the Bible and so forth.
Another reason, Greek has influenced -most western languages, including English, French, Spanish and Italian. With Greek you will be able to understand some terms, phrases since History began in Greece.
Greek also, plays a great part in Biology, Literature, History, Medicine and Law as well. If you have the willingness to take the course in law or medicine, you will benefit tremendously from the vocabulary construction in the ancient Greek classes.
Apart from that, there are hundreds of borrowed words from Greek into English. In truth, around 60% of all English words and 90% of technical and scientific terms were gotten from Greek.
If you are an English speaker and you are willing to learn Greek, on this aspect you will have the edge.
How useful is Greek today?
Since before, Greek is very useful in different forms. Others don’t realize that Greek is part in our everyday lives. Here are a few of the factors that Greek language is very useful.
- Without Greek language, there’s no Greek translation made from the Biblical Hebrew, which became the written language of the Old Testament and the core of the Biblical canon in the Catholic Church today.
- Greek Mythology has been very influential in Western Culture involving art and literature. There are usual English expressions come from Greek myths and beliefs which are used today.
- .The Greek, Phoenician Script was very significant because it is the foundation of many writing systems of Latin, Gothic, Cyrillic, Coptic and other.
- A large percentage of scientific words derived from Greek language which are functional in Astronomy, Biology and Astrology studies until today.
- .Words that start with ‘ph’ have generally come from Greek, such as philosophy, physics, photography, prose, philanthropy and so much more.
- Greek morphemes are parts of words rooting from the Greek language and are used in English. To mention a few; ‘And’ (Android), ‘Arch’ (Archaeology), ‘Biblio’ (Bibliography), ‘Chron ‘(Chronological) and so forth.
- Since before, the Greek alphabet is useful for technical characterization and labels in various domains of science mathematics and other fields.
- In fact, there are many amount of words, prefixes and suffixes owed from Greek into English and were classified into different classes.
What are the Influences and Contributions of Greek in Civilization Today?
The civilization of Greece was progressive over hundreds of years, and is extensively considered to be the pillar of modern Western culture. They are the reason why numerous advancements, of the world’s first steps into language, politics, education and the sciences,
Aside from all the significance of Greek influential elements of Western civilization, ancient thinkers and architects placed the theoretical foundations in different fields of education which are very useful today.
Whether it will be science, mathematics, biology, engineering, medicine, arts, music or architecture- the Greek built several standards of value in which the society benefits it all.
Enlisted here the Greek inventions and discoveries that gave in-measurable effects on Western culture and society.
- The Library of Alexandria
The library of Alexandria was the first library built in Egypt, however Egypt was under the power of Greek and the library was handed to Alexander’s governance.
Ptolemy a General officer under alexander governance ordered people to declare and submit any inventions of science or philosophy at the library to be recorded. Many great discoveries took place in the library one of the discoveries was the Eratosthenes works.
- Mathematics and Science
Greece was the birthplace of many great mathematicians and famous scientists namely;
Eratosthenes– the mathematician who calculated the circumference of the Earth, the tilt of the Earth’s axis, and. became the chief librarian of the Library of Alexandria.
Aristarchus– the astronomer and mathematician who first to create a model with a sun around the Earth, revolving around it.
Archimedes– is the greatest mathematician of all time. He predicts modern calculus, geometry theorems, and calculate the area geometric shapes, containing the circle and sphere. Archimedes come up with an exact approximation of pi and successful levers and pulleys.
Hipparchus– is generally known as the greatest astronomer. He created the first models depicting the movement of the sun and the moon, and the first to predict solar eclipses.
Thales-distinguished as the first of the seven wise men of Greece. Thales earliest mathematics theorems and Intercept theorem were his contribution in the field of Mathematics.
- Democracy
The world’s first democracy created by the ancient Greeks.
Athens began with a monarchy and then proceeded to an oligarchy until it finally became a democracy.
The assembly composed of 6,000 people male and female voted on issues all over Athens. In order for a law to advance, the amount of votes should be a majority. In order to exile someone, all 6,000 votes were needed.
- The Alphabet
Comes from the origin Phoenician alphabet. The Greek alphabet was the first alphabet, featuring different letters for vowels and consonants. Originating from the first 2 letters of the Greek alphabet, which are “alpha and beta.”
Nowadays, many letters of our alphabet derived from the Greek alphabet, including letters A, B, E, and O.
- The Olympic Games
The Olympics Games started in the City of Olympia in Greece. In ancient Olympic, the games were held every four years and the award were fame and glory. Society today, still celebrate the Olympic Games and admired some of the old traditions- the olive leaf crowns, the lighting of the torch, and the opening and closing program.
The symbol of the rings, were designed by Baron Pierre de Coubertin in 1912. The colors of the rings with the white background representing the five participating continents: Africa, Asia, America, Oceania and Europe.
Another symbol is the flame. The historical torch relay and lighting of the Olympic flame originated in the Berlin Games in 1936. The purpose came from Greece, where a holy fire was kept burning for the celebration on the altar of the sanctuary of Hestia.
- Architecture
The first example of Greek architecture is the pillar which was named the Parthenon in Athens. The Parthenon, is a huge building with pillars. Nowadays, pillars are utilized in most public buildings. The Parthenon and the Erechtheum are two examples of their great structures.
- The Lighthouse
The first lighthouse in the world was erected in Greek govern by the Egyptian kingdom of Alexandria. The construction was called the Lighthouse of Alexandria much taller than the Statue of Liberty.
- System of Medicine
The practice of medicine had been implemented in Babylon, China, India and Egypt, while the Greeks were the first to design a standardized system of medicine involving medical diagnosis, prognosis, and medical ethics. These ancient achievements in medicine were entirely instituted by Hippocrates, who is the “father of medicine.”
Hippocrates was the first medical professional who classifies diseases as acute, chronic, endemic, and epidemic. He instituted terms such as exacerbation, relapse, resolution, crisis, paroxysm, peak and convalescence.
- Trial by Jury
The democratic people of Athens in Greece, were the first to used trial by jury as what we have today in the government. Jurors were needed to be male citizens of Athens, and the mechanism of the court was instituted by the name of “dikastaí” that no person was able to choose jurors for their own trial.
- The Theatre
One of the ancient Greeks’ most obvious contributions today is the theatre. The first western theatre started in Athens, the setting was a semi-circular design cut into a hillside and has the capacity of seating 10,000 to 20,000 audiences.
Today, the united States use a democratic system where people voted or appoint a person to be a leader or the decision maker in the state. But, in Greece governance people has the power to make decisions through the majority of citizens’ votes.
- Mythology
Most people today still engage to read Greek myths. The Greeks used these myths to demonstrate things that science couldn’t show, but in the modern world, we enjoy the Greek myths for entertainment reason.
Greek mythology has permeate each form of well-known culture imaginable. Most of the Greek myths have been conformed into modern novels, movies, TV shows, etc.
Related Questions:
Why Is Greek Mythology still taught today?
Greek Mythology is entirely taught today in the School not only as part of the literature curriculum, but it is commonly the aspect of history lessons.
You might wonder why the world is still fascinated by ancient Greek myths today when they are none existent but stories. There are Greek-themed movies and literature today still viewed.
Closely, all of the knowledge we take for granted today was first gained by the ancient Greeks. For that you’ll come to realize that Greek myths are part of our daily life never being forgotten, today and to the next generation.
With those who conclude that the ancient Greek mythology aren’t important you are wrong. These stories were written hundreds of years ago, or thousands of years, but it has the importance of being remembered as they are written by great men. Well, they are part of our civilization, forming generation into modern thinking.
What are the Greek Discoveries and Inventions that are Used Today?
Early Greece is outstanding with many inventions and discoveries, in spite of the fact that several of these have been expanded and adapted by many generations. The discoveries in the field of astronomy, geography, and mathematics made excellent in the field of science.
- Perachora Wheel/Watermill
The watermill was an invention in the third century BC in Greece known as “Perachora wheel” and have been used all over the corner of the world. It served as a metal shaping, and most especially milling.
Since the first launch of its invention the water mill undergone a numerous adaptations, which used for milling different raw materials. The invention popularly used in many parts of the world and provide a similar function.
- The Odometer
The odometer was entirely used in the late Hellenistic period and by the Romans for designating the distance travelled by a vehicle. Around 27 BC the odometer first described by Vitruvius as being used for measuring distance.
The instrument was largely used in the modern day as an indicator for measuring the speed or the distance travelled by a bicycle. The modern innovation today launch a digital version of this odometer which are used in auto-cars and other vehicles by land and sea.
- Cartography
Cartography made a great role in navigation and travel.
Anaximander born between 611 and 610 BC, was the first pioneer cartographers who drew the map of the world a significant contribution to the science of astronomy and geography.
- Geometry
Geometry is one of the oldest branches of mathematics, older than arithmetic itself. It required the use of different geometric techniques before it was recorded in the history.
From the Babylonians, Egyptians and Indus, Geometry were changed. The Greeks persisted that geometric facts must be constructed by deductive reasoning, to which it is done today.
Thales of Miletus, the father of geometry, initiated, the number of axioms and rules that basis of reasoning. Next came Pythagoras, Euclid, and Archimedes whose geometrical axioms and rules are still applied in schools today.
- Philosophy
Greeks approached philosophy from a different perspective. They elaborated philosophy as a way of understanding the world around, without employing to religion, myth, or magic.
From Socrates to Plato, Aristotle, the Greeks widespread the new field of study in Philosophy into the union of research and conversation with regards to the mantle of knowledge, the capacity of the human mind, and how human lives within the world.
- Clock
One of the most common mechanisms today is the alarm clock, and its origin was in ancient Greece. It was invented by the Hellenistic engineer and inventor Ctesibius in 285–222 BC.
Over the period of time the alarm clock has developed a varied changes and advancements from the mechanical alarm to modern technology like gadgets and cell phones.
- Creative Sculptures
The ancient Greeks are also highly creative in their sculpture work. Using their natural supply of stones, marble, limestone and bronze, they made images of their different gods and heroes, and supreme elements of their culture. Their pottery created intended for daily use rather than display, many jars, and containers were designed with distinctive paintings and art that are fascinating enough to be collected on museum shelves
Why Greek developed so Advanced Progression?
The Greek developed so advanced progression because the ancient Greek’s were much organized into city-states others were democracies or oligarchies. If a certain Country has many people involved in decision making they will come up and ended a great idea out of the discussion and different views.
When you supervise less population like in a state rather than a Kingdom it’s very easy to implement the law and being accepted and ensuing excellent effects to the society.
Moreover, if the city or society is abundantly blessed with food, clothing, shelter and other necessities it opens up more leaders, educators and many more. Professions which able people contribute great ideas to the society.
This is a type of environment that grant more great thinkers and wise men to have a big result. The Greeks had many knowledgeable people and brilliant thinkers who are still honoured, remembered and very significant today.
Conclusion:
Learning Greek is very useful nowadays because they influenced western languages and give a big impact to our society today. Greece is the cradle of science, democracy and western civilization.
The rise of the Greek states and their independence aided result in test with political forms, publicly tackled laws especially in Athens, extensively literacy etc. The massive development especially in sports and theatre productions was also begun there.
Additionally, Greece is in different ways the root of our civilization. Greece was the reason why Europe and Asia divided, they conquered the Persians, and stop probably Eastern civilization from overruling Europe.
Overall, all the brilliant ideas, magnificent contributions of the Greeks were adopted by the Romans and passed through the modern times because of the exceptional ideas and forms.
Nowadays, Greeks influential aspects in the field of education, sports, Theatre and others have massive impact not only western languages, but to almost states in the world.
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https://mylanguagebreak.com/is-it-useful-to-learn-and-speak-greek-nowadays/
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The Liberal Arts curriculum at SCI-Arc reimagines the training of young architects by challenging them to develop critical thinking skills that best complement a design studio education.
Liberal Arts
Heading titleThe Value of a Liberal Arts-Based Education
Liberal Arts courses at SCI-Arc are taught as an independent cultural exploration to disrupt conventional ways of thinking about architecture, space, and urbanism.
The Liberal Arts curriculum begins with an intensive series of courses within the core concentrations of art, philosophy, science, and history. The curriculum then continues with a flexible selection of elective seminars taught by leading thinkers, writers, theorists, and practitioners in a wide range of fields and subjects, from media theory to gender studies to biophilic exploration.
Courses offered within Liberal Arts focus on topics such as the history and theory of art and film, contemporary science and technology, history of civilizations, rhetoric and debate, and philosophy. The curriculum also includes an ongoing series of Masterclasses with international academic figures who lead engaging lectures and workshops throughout the semester.
Heading titleWhat the humanities offer architecture
Recognizing that architecture is a broadly humanistic endeavor, SCI-Arc’s B.Arch program asks students to explore how the discipline exists simultaneously as a form of knowledge, a set of built objects, and a unique discourse that continuously informs the work of contemporary architects.
Incorporating other humanities disciplines into a professional architecture program, SCI-Arc’s B.Arch challenges undergraduate students to engage with ethical questions surrounding architecture by emphasizing the analysis and exchange of ideas.
"SCI-Arc has allowed me to experience an architectural education that blends aspects of technology, philosophy, art, urbanism, and politics. It is this exposure to multiple disciplines that has made my view of architecture a much more dynamic and open one."
Heading titleLed by Distinguished Philosopher Graham Harman
As the role of the architect is redefined in the twenty-first century, there is a growing emphasis on the development and communication of ideas, which are central to the study of philosophy.
Representative of an institution of higher learning which champions the deepening and expansion of the field, Graham Harman’s appointment as LIberal Arts Coordinator reflects a commitment to using advancements in the humanities to shape the way students think about architecture and the world.
Harman is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Liberal Arts Coordinator at SCI-Arc. He was included among the 50 Most Influential Living Philosophers* and his work in metaphysics led to the development of object-oriented ontology (OOO).
* according to Best Schools’ 2016 ranking
Heading titleContextualizing Architecture
SCI-Arc values the intellectual life and breadth of its students. Many Liberal Arts seminars are structured specifically to help students build confidence as they learn to formulate and effectively communicate ideas.
Beyond the classroom, Masterclasses, B.Arch Salons, public programs, and live forums provide students with a platform to develop the rhetorical skill sets through which they can articulate, strengthen, and defend individual positions within the contemporary architectural discourse.
Social Media vs. Architectural Discourse: A Conversation
Social Media vs. Architectural Discourse 2.0: The SCI-Arc Conversation Continues
Heading titleMasterclasses
As part of its Liberal Arts curriculum, SCI-Arc offers one to two Masterclasses each semester. Taught by leading thinkers, theorists, and academics who are not architects or designers, Masterclasses bring students into direct contact with thinkers whose expertise provides an interdisciplinary perspective to their architectural studies.
Heading titleSCI-Arc Cinema Series
In spring 2017, SCI-Arc introduced the Cinema Series as part of its liberal arts curriculum. The school hosted a lecture by Jan Harlan, Stanley Kubrick’s producer from 1975–1999, and a conversation between architect Craig Hodgetts and Syd Mead—the renowned science-fiction designer known for his work on Blade Runner, Tron, 2010, Aliens, and Blade Runner 2049.
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https://www.sciarc.edu/academics/undergraduate/liberal-arts
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To know them is to understand literature and politics in postwar America. Select four answers to the question what should a reader be to be a good reader:
Egyptian hieroglyphs with cartouches for the name " Ramesses II ", from the Luxor TempleNew Kingdom The history of literature follows closely the development of civilization. When defined exclusively as written work, Ancient Egyptian literature along with Sumerian literatureare considered the world's oldest literatures.
Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. April Learn how and when to remove this template message Different historical periods are reflected in literature.
National and tribal sagas, accounts of the origin of the world and of customs, and myths which sometimes carry moral or spiritual messages predominate in the pre-urban eras. The epics of Homerdating from the early to middle Iron ageand the great Indian epics of a slightly later period, have more evidence of deliberate literary authorship, surviving like the older myths through oral tradition for long periods before being written down.
Literature in all its forms can be seen as written records, whether the Literature as knowledge for living essay itself be factual or fictional, it is still quite possible to decipher facts through things like characters' actions and words or the authors' style of writing and the intent behind the words.
The plot is for more than just entertainment purposes; within it lies information about economics, psychology, science, religions, politics, cultures, and social depth. Studying and analyzing literature becomes very important in terms of learning about human history.
Literature provides insights about about how society has evolved and about the societal norms during each of the different periods all throughout history. For instance, postmodern authors argue that history and fiction both constitute systems of signification by which we make sense of the past.
Authors often include historical moments in their works, like when Lord Byron talks about the Spanish and the French in "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: Canto I" and expresses his opinions through his character Childe Harold.
Through literature we are able to continuously uncover new information about history. It is easy to see how all academic fields have roots in literature.
Eventually everything was written down, from things like home remedies and cures for illness, or how to build shelter to traditions and religious practices. From there people were able to study literature, improve on ideas, further our knowledge, and academic fields such as the medical field or trades could be started.
In much the same way as the literature that we study today continue to be updated as we[ who? As a more urban culture developed, academies provided a means of transmission for speculative and philosophical literature in early civilizations, resulting in the prevalence of literature in Ancient ChinaAncient IndiaPersia and Ancient Greece and Rome.
Many works of earlier periods, even in narrative form, had a covert moral or didactic purpose, such as the Sanskrit Panchatantra or the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Drama and satire also developed as urban culture provided a larger public audience, and later readership, for literary production.
Lyric poetry as opposed to epic poetry was often the speciality of courts and aristocratic circles, particularly in East Asia where songs were collected by the Chinese aristocracy as poems, the most notable being the Shijing or Book of Songs.
Over a long period, the poetry of popular pre-literate balladry and song interpenetrated and eventually influenced poetry in the literary medium. In ancient China, early literature was primarily focused on philosophy, historiographymilitary scienceagriculture, and poetry.
China, the origin of modern paper making and woodblock printingproduced the world's first print cultures. The most important of these include the Classics of Confucianismof Daoismof Mohismof Legalismas well as works of military science e.
Sima Qian 's Records of the Grand Historian. Ancient Chinese literature had a heavy emphasis on historiography, with often very detailed court records. In ancient India, literature originated from stories that were originally orally transmitted.
Early genres included dramafablessutras and epic poetry. The Vedas are among the oldest sacred texts. The Samhitas vedic collections date to roughly — BCE, and the "circum-Vedic" texts, as well as the redaction of the Samhitas, date to c.
In ancient Greece, the epics of Homerwho wrote the Iliad and the Odysseyand Hesiodwho wrote Works and Days and Theogonyare some of the earliest, and most influential, of Ancient Greek literature.Definition.
A literature review is both a summary and explanation of the complete and current state of knowledge on a limited topic as found in academic books and journal articles.
On the most basic level, Transcendentalism represented a new way of understanding truth and knowledge. The roots of the philosophy go back to Germany, specifically the .
PART I: The Art of Living: Hospitality to the Stranger Within "The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited." - William Saroyan Listen to the Audio Book for this Page. The Philosophy and Literature Bad Writing Contest ran from to For an essay giving background on the contest, click here..
We are pleased to announce winners of the fourth Bad Writing Contest, sponsored by the scholarly journal Philosophy and Literature.. The Bad Writing Contest celebrates the most stylistically lamentable passages found in scholarly books and articles. Good Reader, Bad Reader from Boston Review.
Bad readers were not born, they were created. To know them is to understand literature and politics in postwar America. Overview. The instructions provided here are for a research article or a research report (generally these guidelines follow the formatting guidelines of the American Psychological Association documented in Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 4th Edition).Please consult the specific guidelines that are required by the publisher for the type of document you are producing.
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https://tucytutehehemiv.tranceformingnlp.com/literature-as-knowledge-for-living-essay-27051ok.html
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The Modern Devotion: pone of the most influential religious initiatives in the late medieval Low Countries.
- Author
- Anna Dlabačová, Rijcklof Hofman (eds.)
- Date
- 01 October 2018
- Links
- WPBooks
The Modern Devotion was one of the most influential religious initiatives in the late medieval Low Countries. It fundamentally changed the spiritual landscape through its call for an interiorized religious experience, the foundation of numerous (semi-)religious communities, and the production of literature and art focused on the imitation of Christ. Its impact was not confined to the Netherlands: at its peak communities that adhered to one of the three mutually distinct ‘branches’ of the Modern Devotion could be found in current-day Belgium, Germany, Northern France, Switzerland, and Poland.
This Dutch language volume, aimed at a wider audience than a strictly scholarly one, brings together contributions by no less than forty-six specialists in several fields (medieval history, literature, art history, book history, theology, philosophy, church history etc.) and (spiritual) professionals from the Low Countries, Belgium, Germany, and the United States. In one hundred short articles the authors discuss historical developments, important actors, prominent authors, and paint a broad picture of various aspects of spirituality and culture within the movement. There is ample attention for the historical setting within which the Modern Devotion came into-being, its sources of inspiration, but also parallel-movements in the late medieval period and the historical context within which the Modern Devotion kept developing until the sixteenth century, and even until today. Several chapters are devoted to the reception of the movement (and its literature) from the early modern period up to the twentieth century.
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https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/research/research-output/humanities/the-modern-devotion.-spirituality-and-culture-from-the-late-middle-ages-onward
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Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 6th century AD centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome known as the Greco-Roman world. It is the period in which Greek and Roman society flourished and wielded great influence throughout much of Europe, North Africa and Western Asia. Conventionally, it is taken to begin with the earliest-recorded Epic Greek poetry of Homer (8th–7th century BC), and continues through the emergence of Christianity and the fall of the Western Roman Empire (5th century AD). It ends with the dissolution of classical culture at the close of Late Antiquity (300–600), blending into the Early Middle Ages (600–1000). Such a wide sampling of history and territory covers many disparate cultures and periods. Classical antiquity may also refer to an idealised vision among later people of what was, in Edgar Allan Poe's words, "the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome". The culture of the ancient Greeks, together with some influences from the ancient Near East, was the basis of art, philosophy, society, and educational ideals, until the Roman imperial period. The Romans preserved, imitated and spread over Europe these ideals until they were able to competitively rival the Greek culture, as the Latin language became widespread and the classical world became bilingual, Greek and Latin. This Greco-Roman cultural foundation has been immensely influential on the language, politics, law, educational systems, philosophy, science, warfare, poetry, historiography, ethics, rhetoric, art and architecture of the modern world. From the surviving fragments of classical antiquity, a revival movement was gradually formed from the 14th century onwards which came to be known later in Europe as the Renaissance, and again resurgent during various neo-classical revivals in the 18th and 19th centuries.
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https://news.knowledia.com/US/en/topics/6Em1
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Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes were two of the twentieth century’s most brilliantly distinctive and enduringly influential commentators on literature and culture. Benjamin’s enigmatic mind glowed through the first half of the century; Barthes’ quicksilver intelligence sparkled across the second. This course gives students a chance to read both writers in detail. Writings considered will date from the 1920s up to 1980; but rather than reading them in chronological order, we will consider them in thematic groupings that let us compare and contrast the two critics’ different approaches to similar writers and themes.
This is a course in literary criticism and cultural theory. While literature will be a constant reference point, our principal focus will not be on novels, poems or plays but on critical essays and theoretical meditations. Students should be prepared to engage with concepts and arguments about subjects like literature, photography, film, cities and love. Yet the works considered are also fine pieces of writing (and translation) in their own right, and can afford some of the same aesthetic pleasures we might seek in poetry or fiction.
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was uncelebrated in his lifetime, but posthumously became an icon for modern German letters, cultural theory, and the political Left. He wrote with idiosyncratic insight about literature, often championing new and challenging twentieth-century writers. He also made distinctive, influential contributions to the fields of philosophy, theology, sociology, history, urbanism, film and media. His work in all these fields was informed by a growing political commitment to revolutionary Communism.
The restless pen of Roland Barthes (1915-1980) left its mark on literary criticism, structuralism and semiotics, cultural studies, photography, fashion, gender studies, biography and travel writing. While for much of his career he sought political rigour in the struggle against bourgeois ideology, his late work increasingly engaged in memoir, diaristic meditations and self-revelation.
Direct, biographical links between the two thinkers are few. Their paths never crossed, and Barthes does not cite Benjamin as a significant influence. But they form a suggestive pairing with which to consider modern literature and ideas. Both were modernists, who celebrated the avant-garde and left lasting interpretations of the modern European canon: Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Flaubert, Proust, Kafka, Brecht, Robbe-Grillet. Both developed innovative forms in their own writing: working with montage, fragment and quotation, they made criticism itself into a kind of avant-garde text. Both belonged to the political Left, and were profoundly interested in how literary form and cultural medium were subtly connected with ideology; both sought to describe what a politically progressive art would look like. Both were pioneers in the theory of photography; both produced not just rigorous theoretical tracts but personal writings of lyrical tenderness. All these aspects of their work will be available for comparative discussion on the course.
Benjamin wrote in German, Barthes in French. You won’t have to: this course is in English. All the texts studied will be in translation. Undoubtedly some critical options are lost this way, and anyone who knows either language might gain extra insight from comparing English and original versions. But the available English translations of both writers are richly lyrical and challenging texts in their own right, and will give us plenty to go on.
We will be reading:
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https://www.bbk.ac.uk/courses/modules/enhu/ENHU101S6
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Humanities Full Text (Wilson Web)
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JSTOR
A full text, full image archive of over 120 journals. Coverage of journals generally begins with their first volume and is updated to within three years of the current issue. Allows keyword searching of the full text of all articles, as well as browsing of particular journal issues. Subject strengths are African-American studies, anthropology, Asian studies, ecology, economics/finance, general science, history, literature, math/statistics, philosophy, political science, population/demography, and sociology.
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ARTstor is a digital library of nearly one million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes. Subjects represented include African-American Studies, American Studies, Anthropology, Architecture, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, Design and Decorative Studies, Foreign Languages and Literature, History, Literary Studies, Maps, Medieval Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Music History, Native American Studies, Photography, Religious Studies, Renaissance Studies, Theater and Dance, Women’s Studies.
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Historical Abstracts
Abstracts of articles on the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada, which are covered in America: History and Life). Covers over 2,000 journals published worldwide. In addition to articles, each year Historical Abstracts includes approximately 3,000 citations to useful historical books as reviewed by the most prestigious journals in the field and citations to abstracts of dissertations of particular interest for historical research. Each entry in the database is assigned appropriate indexing terms based on standard authorities. Every year over 20,000 new citations are added to the Historical Abstracts database.
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Historical New York Times
Provides full text access to the New York Times up to three years ago. Historical New York Times provides information on a wide variety of topics including national and international news, biographies, social and economic issues, the arts, literature, music, the sciences, business, and much more. The database may be searched by author, dates, keywords, and title. Editorials, reviews, obituaries, photos, illustrations, and ads are included. Individual articles or the whole page may be viewed.
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IIMP: International Index to Music Periodicals
Indexes and provides citations to articles in over 375 international music periodicals, including feature music articles and obituaries from The New York Times and The Washington Post. Abstracts are included from 1996 forward.
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Index Islamicus
Bibliographic citations, with subject, country and region, and author indexing, for the periodical literature on Africa. Covers more than 325 English-language and multilingual periodicals in African studies.
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Literature Online
Includes full text and abstracts to English and American poetry, drama, and prose from 600 to the present. Also includes literary criticism, biographical information, and Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary.
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Modern Language Association International Bibliography (MLA)
Indexes journal articles, book chapters, proceedings, working papers and bibliographies for literature, linguistics and folkore.
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Philosopher’s Index
Provides indexing and abstracts from books and journals of philosophy and related fields. Covers the areas of ethics, aesthetics, social philosophy, political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, logic, and philosophy of mind as well as material on the philosophy of law, religion, science, history, language and education. Covers both books and 480 scholarly journals published in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish. The book reviews in the print version of Philosopher’s Index are excluded from the online version.
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Women and Social Movements in the United States 1600-2000
This database in American women’s history includes more than 70 document projects, each of which poses a topic and provides a collection of documents, images and links to websites to address the topic. About 5000 pages are added annually to the present database of nearly 30,000 pages of primary and secondary documents. Nearly 600 publications from the Women’s Commission Reports are also being added. Other features are a chronology of U.S. women’s history and a dictionary of social movements and organizations.
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https://library.tcnj.edu/search-tools/articles/humanities-databases/
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The humanities are a group of academic subjects united by a commitment to studying aspects of the human condition and a qualitative approach that generally prevents a single paradigm from coming to define any discipline.
In academia, the humanities are generally considered to be, along with the social sciences and the natural sciences, one of three major components of the liberal arts.
Scholars working in the humanities are sometimes described as humanists. But that term also describes the philosophical position of humanism, which some antihumanist scholars in the humanities reject.
Contents
Fields included
While the precise definition of the humanities can be contentious, the following disciplines are generally recognized to form their core:
- The Classics (Ancient Greek and Latin)
- Art, including art history, art criticism and theory
- Law and jurisprudence
- Literature, including literary criticism, and comparative literature
- Music and Musicology
- Philosophy
- Religious studies
- Theatre, Film and Performance Studies
- Cultural and area studies (Regional interdisciplinary fields such as East Asian studies, American studies, Alaska History and Cultural Studies and African-American studies)
History, although at times considered a social science, is one of the most prominent humanities in the United States as measured by foundation contributions, National Endowment for the Humanities projects, and National Humanities Centers fellowships.
Some people expand the definition to include other studies of human life using qualitative description and analysis, including large parts of the fields of cultural anthropology, sociology, political science, media and communications, archaeology, and some branches of economics.
The equivalent French term is sciences humaines, and in German there is Geisteswissenschaften. Neither of these is an exact fit to the usage common in English-speaking academia. One point at issue is the division to be drawn from the social sciences and anthropology. The connotations of "science" are also differently loaded.
History
In the West, the study of the humanities can be traced to ancient Greece, as the basis of a broad education for citizens. During Roman times, the concept of the seven liberal arts evolved, involving grammar, rhetoric and logic (the trivium), along with arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music (the quadrivium). These subjects formed the bulk of medieval education, with the emphasis being on the humanities as skills or "ways of doing."
A major shift occurred during the Renaissance, when the humanities began to be regarded as subjects to be studied rather than practised, with a corresponding shift away from the traditional fields into areas such as literature and history. In the 20th century, this view was in turn challenged by the postmodernist movement, which sought to redefine the humanities in more egalitarian terms suitable for a democratic society.
The humanities today
Humanities in the West
The 1980 United States Rockefeller Commission on the Humanities described the humanities in its report, The Humanities in American Life:
Through the humanities we reflect on the fundamental question: What does it mean to be human? The humanities offer clues but never a complete answer. They reveal how people have tried to make moral, spiritual, and intellectual sense of a world in which irrationality, despair, loneliness, and death are as conspicuous as birth, friendship, hope, and reason.
Modernist versus postmodernist: an ongoing debate
In the United States, the late 20th century saw a challenge to the "elitism" of the humanities, which Edward Said has characterized as a "conservative philosophy of gentlemanly refinement, or sensibility." Such postmodernists argue that the humanities should go beyond the study of "dead white men" to include work by women and people of color, and without religious bias. The French philosopher Michel Foucault has been a very influential part of this movement, stating in The Order of Things that "we can study only individuals, not human nature."
However some in the humanities believe that such changes may be detrimental, as they lead to moral relativism and the concept that one person's interpretation is as good as any other. The literary critic Denis Donoghue suggests that modern criticism reduces the rich symbolism of a play like Macbeth to a simplistic "find the villain", with Lady Macbeth regarded as the victim of bloody-minded, power-mad masculine society; the result is said to be what E. D. Hirsch Jr. refers to as declining cultural literacy.
Institutions
President Lyndon Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act in 1965 , creating the National Council on the Humanities and funded the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in 1969. NEH is an independent grant-making agency of the United States government dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities.
NEH facilitated the creation of State Humanities Councils in the 56 U.S. states and territories. Each council operates independently, defining the "humanities" in relationship to the disciplines, subjects, values, etc., ... valued in the regions they serve. Councils give grant funds to individuals, scholars, and nonprofit organizations dedicated to the humanities in their region. Councils also offer diverse progams and services that respond to the needs of their communities and according to their own definitions of the humanities.
References
- ^ Levi, Albert W.; The Humanities Today, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1970.
- ^ Walling, Donovan R.; Under Construction: The Role of the Arts and Humanities in Postmodern Schooling Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation, Bloomington, Indiana, 1997.
- ^ Kernan, Alvin, editor; What's Happened to the Humanities?, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1997.
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https://psychology.fandom.com/wiki/Humanities
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David Hume (7 May 1711 – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and scepticism. He is regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume is often grouped with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others as a British Empiricist.
Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume strove to create a total naturalistic “science of man” that examined the psychological basis of human nature. In stark opposition to the rationalists who preceded him, most notably Descartes, he concluded that desire rather than reason governed human behaviour, saying famously: “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.”
A prominent figure in the sceptical philosophical tradition and a strong empiricist, he argued against the existence of innate ideas, concluding instead that humans have knowledge only of things they directly experience. Thus he divides perceptions between strong and lively “impressions” or direct sensations and fainter “ideas,” which are copied from impressions. He developed the position that mental behaviour is governed by “custom”; our use of induction, for example, is justified only by our idea of the “constant conjunction” of causes and effects. Without direct impressions of a metaphysical “self,” he concluded that humans have no actual conception of the self, only of a bundle of sensations associated with the self. Hume advocated a compatibilist theory of free will that proved extremely influential on subsequent moral philosophy.
He was also a sentimentalist who held that ethics are based on feelings rather than abstract moral principles. Hume also examined the normative is–ought problem. He held notoriously ambiguous views of Christianity, but famously challenged the argument from design in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779).
Kant credited Hume with waking him up from his “dogmatic slumbers” and Hume has proved extremely influential on subsequent philosophy, especially on utilitarianism, logical positivism, William James, philosophy of science, early analytic philosophy, cognitive philosophy, and other movements and thinkers. The philosopher Jerry Fodor proclaimed Hume’s Treatise “the founding document of cognitive science.”
Also famous as a prose stylist, Hume pioneered the essay as a literary genre and engaged with contemporary intellectual luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith (who acknowledged Hume’s influence on his economics and political philosophy), James Boswell, Joseph Butler, and Thomas Reid.
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: with Hume’s Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature at Amazon
Related pages
Famous Scottish people – Influential men and women including Robert the Bruce, Alexander Fleming, John Logie Baird and William Wallace.
Philosophers – Some of the world’s greatest philosophers, including Socrates, Plato, Descartes, Kant, Spinoza and David Hume.
Great Thinkers – Influential and insightful thinkers, who have made significant contributions in fields of science, philosophy, literature and the humanities.
People of the Enlightenment (1650s to 1780s) The enlightenment is a period which saw the growth in intellectual reason, individualism and a challenge to existing religious and political structures.
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https://www.biographyonline.net/writers/philosophers/david-hume.html
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I’ve been in Toastmasters for over 20 years and the greatest conclusion I have come to is that it is all about practice. The more you have the opportunity to speak in front of others, the easier it becomes.
The key problem is nerves. Why is it that we can speak easily and confidently, using natural body movements, facial expressions and vocal variety in front of friends and family, but when we are put in front of a large group of strangers, all that ease and confidence disappears? Nerves, adrenalin – whatever you want to call it – kicks in and makes us very uncomfortable. It’s a protective response, designed to make you feel you should run for the hills. The other side of the coin, however, is that it make you feel alive and in the moment. If you can use nerves to your advantage, they can actually enhance your speaking delivery.
Nerves are not an intellectual problem. You can’t “switch them off’, or find the answer to nerves in a book, or by think them into non-existence. The “imagine the audience as all naked” thing never worked for me. Breathing techniques, relaxation, etc. all help, but I have found that the best way to overcome nerves is to speak in public as often as you can. You will never lose nerves – and neither should you want to – but with time it just gets more manageable.
I have a bit of a bug-bear about Powerpoint presentations, in that much of the time they are used as a crutch for the presenter, and not as an aid to understanding for the audience. Let me make this plain: I hate bullet points. I hate complex diagrams. I hate word laden slides. I hate slides with no apparent purpose. Powerpoint presentations should, if at all possible, be full of vivid imagery, with minimal use of text. The audience came to hear you and the focus should therefore be kept on you, and what you have to say.
The structure should also be simple. The best speeches use a simple narrative style: the speaker tells a story. They might start in the past, move into the present and talk about the future. Alternatively, they might stay in the past, and what was learned from the story. Or they might have a purpose, backed up by a few small stories to demonstrate why you think the way you do. Either way they make use of narrative: moving, where possible, through time in order to reach a conclusion. Make use of storytelling. It’s the gift we were given by our distant ancestors to retain knowledge and audiences appear to be particularly well disposed to it.
As for making mistakes – I’m all for it. When you have an interesting story to tell, you shouldn’t worry too much about slip-ups. The audience will ignore them. The audience is extremely forgiving if you are saying something of value to them. Your missteps, forgotten lines, technical hitches, momentary amnesia, ems, ums and ahs, will be quickly forgotten.
The bottom line: do it. Do it again. Then, do it again. It’s all about practice.
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https://passiveimpressions.com/2011/11/27/some-thoughts-on-public-speaking/
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When planning visual communication, some of the most important questions to answer are about storytelling. Whether you’re working on a film or a live presentation, or using techniques like nonlinear editing or motion graphics, the principles of storytelling are the same.
Build a narrative
You may have heard the saying that a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end — but not necessarily in that order.
Here’s a common narrative arc and key questions to answer that will help you develop your own story.
Our hero needs something, and it’s important
- Who is the hero of the story?
- What do they want and why do they want it?
- What happens if they don’t get it?
The stakes should be as high as possible to connect with your audience.
Our hero encounters an obstacle
- What’s the obstacle?
- Why is it there?
- Can they overcome it?
- If so, how?
- If not, why? And what must they do instead?
Overcoming the obstacle
- How do they approach the obstacle?
- Is this plan going to work?
- How do they succeed?
Even if you’re working on a project with no clear narrative, you’ll probably still find those key storytelling stages to be relevant and helpful to review.
For example, if you’re creating a marketing video for a new product that solves a common problem, you can think of the audience as your protagonist. Their story begins with them facing a challenge, unaware of your product and how it can help. From there, your audience takes a journey of discovery, learning about your product and how to use it to solve their problem — the middle and end of this narrative.
Connect with your audience
The most important way to engage your audience is to add human emotion to the story. You may be showing the origins of a company, the transformation of a character, or your own story of personal discovery — if you can find the human emotions that drive the events in the story, your audience will have a powerful reason to engage.
The characters that your audience will care most about will be the ones that seem most human. Pixar demonstrated this with their famous animated lamp playing with a ball. If characters respond to events with human emotion, audiences will connect with them.
Be clear
Avoid presuming that your audience knows anything that you haven’t explicitly shared with them. If there are gaps, you will need to fill them because audiences disconnect when they don’t understand what is going on.
Inform, educate, and entertain
The goal of the storyteller is to give to the audience — and the audience needs to feel it. If your audience learns something new, gains a deeper understanding, or is engaged and entertained by your project, they will feel it was time well spent and perhaps they’ll come back for more.
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https://helpx.adobe.com/tw/premiere-pro/how-to/storytelling-tips.html
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How do I write a MODERN combat/violence scene without being dry?
Asked by: Angel Smiley
How do you write a violent scene?
6 Essential Techniques for Writing Violent Scenes
- Keep It Simple. Life comes at you fast. …
- Serve Your Story. Something a lot of inexperienced writers forget is that fight scenes are just that: scenes. …
- Fight in Your Genre. …
- Treat Violence Like Dialogue. …
- Consider Your Deeper Goals. …
- Do Your Research.
How do you write a close combat scene?
Rule #3: Fight Scenes Shouldn’t Slow the Pace
- Write in shorter sentences. Shorter sentences are easier to digest. …
- Mix action with dialogue. Don’t just write long descriptions of what’s happening. …
- Don’t focus too much on what’s going on inside the character’s mind. …
- Keep the fight short.
How do you write a good battle scene?
Let’s look at five essential guidelines for writing epic battle scenes.
- Define the Character’s Goals. For a battle to be interesting, you need more than fast-paced clobbering. …
- Follow the Rules of a Scene. …
- Make the Battle Personal for Your Character. …
- Simplify Your Grammar. …
- Think Like a Screenwriter.
How do you write a fight scene on Reddit?
I will summarize what I remember (mainly from the top upvotes from then).
- Good fighting scene is not one that you choreograph on. Give the readers a room to imagine. …
- Be choppy, be concise. To set the fast pacing right, you will want to utilize that “omph” whenever a character act.
- Don’t get too flowery or wordy.
How do you write a gory scene?
How to Write Gore
- You Have to Write it Descriptively. …
- Invoke Common, Relatable Imagery Alongside the Gross Part. …
- You Can’t Go Wrong With Food Metaphors. …
- Don’t Lose the Human Element. …
- Choose Your Words Carefully. …
- – Words with food connotations: Moist, glistening, steaming, smear, chunk, gobbet, ooze, etc.
How do you write a fight scene on fanfiction?
Avoid a blow by blow description of each character action, as this will feel too technical and dry. The scene should feel chaotic, much like a real fight. Keep the character actions simple, clear, and to the point. Avoid long sentences and don’t use adverbs or too many adjectives in the scene.
How do you write a martial arts fight scene?
The Kung Fu Panda Guide to Writing Action Scenes
- Realize Spectacle Doesn’t Translate Well to the Page. …
- Make Your Action Scenes About the Characters. …
- Utilize Dialogue. …
- Up Tension by Increasing the Odds Your Character Will Lose. …
- Know Your Stuff. …
- Choreograph the Moves. …
- Make Your Action Scenes Unique. …
- Shorten Your Sentences.
How do you fight good?
Keep those hands up have a nice balanced base all right don't be up too tall don't be too low if he goes for a takedown. Try to stand it back up if you're more comfortable standing.
How do you write a superpower fight scene?
6 Tips for Writing Better Fight Scenes
- Tip #1: Use creativity, not just mindless fisticuffs. …
- Tip #2: Show off the combatants’ personalities. …
- Tip #3: Use the fight to create character development. …
- Tip #4: Show what they’re fighting for. …
- Tip #5: Call their motives and morals into question. …
- Tip #6: Don’t pad the battle.
How long should a written fight scene be?
A helpful rule of thumb for writing a fight scene is that it should take about the same time to read as the encounter would in real life. Most fights only last a couple of minutes, which means you should devote no more than one or two pages to a given fight.
How do you write an action on Reddit?
- Make it very very clear. Its easy to confuse a reader in an action scene, which outright ruins it. …
- Make it about characters as oppose to a play by play of the fight.
- Use succinct sentences, be short and punchy. No passive voice, no run on sentences, no superfluous detail.
How do you describe an action in a story?
How to write action better:
- Understand strong action and pace.
- Favour active voice.
- Describe deeds, movements and gestures.
- Focus on characters’ goals.
- Keep setting and description relevant to your action story.
- Use shorter sentences to increase pace.
- Set off chains of cause and effect.
- Cut filter words.
How do you write a thrilling scene?
5 Quick Tips for Writing Thrilling Fight Scenes
- Ensure your fight advances plot and character development. First things first: never include a fight scene just for the sake of including a fight scene. …
- Don’t over-describe. …
- Infuse fight scenes with emotion. …
- Keep things realistic. …
- Use writing style to enhance the fight.
How do you write a fast paced scene?
To Speed Up Action Scenes:
- Limit extraneous information. …
- Pull your camera in close. …
- Keep sentences short and clean. …
- Be sharp, short, hard-edged. …
- Examples of action scenes that play well quickly: …
- Offer setting details. …
- Move the camera out. …
- Give yourself a bit more room on sentence length.
How do you start off an action story?
Write a snappy opening.
- Introduce a character. The character should be doing something important. …
- Open with dialogue. An enticing line of dialogue can be the perfect way to begin a novel. …
- Begin with a bang. …
- Don’t get hung up on the opening.
What makes a good story opening?
The opening lines of a story need to engage the reader so that they keep reading. Narrative hooks work to capture the reader’s attention – like a worm on a fishing hook attracts a fish. Raising questions or setting a puzzle at the start of a story can create intrigue.
How can I write my own story?
Through the process I have found six important steps to be helpful:
- Tap into your emotions. Your story won’t resonate with others if it is void of emotion, as I discovered when writing that first draft of my own story. …
- List the turning points. …
- Write everything down. …
- Use the senses. …
- Find the theme. …
- Tell a story.
How do I tell my story?
11 Powerful Ways to Tell Your Story
- Let Simplicity Be Your Guide. …
- Evangelize Your Storytelling. …
- State Your Reason for Telling the Story. …
- Prune Your Details. …
- Use Dialogue. …
- Polish Your Skills. …
- Start Collecting Stories. …
- Master Transmedia Storytelling.
How do you tell a story in 3 minutes?
The Three-Minute Storytelling Lesson You Can’t Forget
- Avoid the intro. There’s virtually no preamble here, just an immediate incident to get the story going. …
- Go for the emotion. …
- Make it about life and death. …
- Give us texture. …
- Complete the arc.
Can someone write my life story?
Fortunately there are professional writers for hire, called ghostwriters, that will work with you to write your story. Maybe you’re an expert in a specific field with useful information, or wish to convey your experiences through a memoir.
How can I make a story interesting?
17 Ways To Make Your Novel More Memorable
- Your protagonist drives the story. …
- Structure your book as a roller-coaster ride. …
- Tell the story in a linear way. …
- Write from your heart. …
- Start your novel at the end of the backstory you’ve created. …
- Include only the most important parts of the story. …
- Always remember the end.
How do I tell a story without words?
Consider the little details
One way to make sure your images are successfully telling your story is to draw with detail. Narrative details can be key in a narrative without words. Background elements in your drawing can serve as clues to the plot, or the character.
How can I write better?
8 Tips for Improving Your Writing Style
- Be direct in your writing. Good writing is clear and concise. …
- Choose your words wisely. …
- Short sentences are more powerful than long sentences. …
- Write short paragraphs. …
- Always use the active voice. …
- Review and edit your work. …
- Use a natural, conversational tone. …
- Read famous authors.
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https://deertales.blog/how-do-i-write-a-modern-combat-violence-scene-without-being-dry/
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‘Outlaw King’ starts with an eight-minute “long take”, in the vein of such classics as ‘Goodfellas’, ‘Chilren of Men’ and ‘The Revenge of the Sith’.
I mean, it’s not a single take, and the sweeping camera movements and lighting transitions make it painfully obvious where CGI has been used to stitch multiple takes together, but that’s okay. Kind of.
This scene covers some fairly dull talk of land ownership and tax revenue, then transitions outside into a fairly dull, low-stakes practice duel between two characters we don’t yet know, then transitions briefly back into the dark tent for some more chat, followed by a CGI Trebuchet launching a CGI fireball hitting a CGI castle that we know nothing about and which we never see again. And every single character (and actor) is bored throughout all of this.
Which raises the question: what’s the point?
In the X-Files Season 6 episode ‘Triangle’, the 45-minute episode is shot in 4 long takes (with a few clever edits to allow for scene redresses), and this adds a wonderful tight energy to the ticking-clock story that makes an already interesting premise fun and compelling.
‘Children of Men’ uses several long, complex single takes to ramp up the tension to a palpable level, to the point that you realise it’s been twenty seconds since you last took a breath and your buttocks are clenched like a vice.
‘Serenity’ opens with a nice steady long single-take scene (actually split into two as it was filmed on two separate sets) which introduces us to all of the ship’s crew but also the ship itself, taking us on a journey through the titular vessel and letting the audience get to know intimately the principal setting of the movie.
The point is, all of these examples are impressive on a technical level and add significantly to the substance of the story being told, either by augmenting the atmosphere, adding to the tension or helping to convey important information.
The opening to ‘Outlaw King’ does none of that. Nothing is being decided, so there is little-to-no tension to speak of. The “duel” might feature an element of danger but it’s pretty obvious that it’s going nowhere. The muddy campsite location is never revisited, and the characters who are introduced could all have had introductions in conventionally-shot scenes.
And the damn thing is clearly stitched together from smaller chunks, meaning it isn’t even that technically impressive, especially given the lack of action beyond a slow and boring swordfight.
To see what I mean about lighting transitions, take a look at this transition from outside in a muddy campsite to inside a candle-lit tent. We start off outside, in the natural light of an overcast day:
See how the inside of the tent is nearly pitch black? You’d expect a degree of that – even on a cloudy day, daylight is much brighter than candles in a dark room.
Then we start moving closer:
Still pitch black, bar a little light seeping through the canvas at the back. But note how there’s now much less natural light in-shot? And also note that steely-eyed, rock-steady guard, standing completely motionless and emotionless?
Closer still:
There’s a bit more light internally now, but bear in mind that there’s no longer any natural daylight creeping into the shot, which means the bulk of the light is coming from the tent itself.
Finally:
And BOOM! Suddenly everything’s fully illuminated. Note the shoulder in the far right, which belongs to that conveniently rigid guard whose tall figure also conveniently covers the entire height of the frame.
What this all means is that the interior scenes and the exterior scenes can both be filmed separately, or at the very least can be stitched together from multiple takes to account for errors. The editor can then make use of lighting changes combined with CGI and what are effectively “wipes” made by characters or objects which cover the whole screen in order to “seamlessly” stitch different segments together.
The same is true when going from inside to outside:
Here, the candelabra is illuminating the tent brightly despite the open doorway to the exterior. But just a few frames later:
Note that the doorway isn’t letting any more light into the tent than it was previously. Also note the glorious James Cosmo, moving from left to right:
Another convenient slab of a man taking up the full height of the frame, providing a “wipe” around which an edit can be stitched.
Even outside there are clever little edits hidden in rapid camera movements, such as this moment just after the 5:00 minute mark, which is hard to capture in a still image:
Notice how pretty much everything is blurred. That’s because at this point, the camera is tracking from right to left, following the guy with the bowl-cut – although even he is weirdly blurred
However, in this shot, a handful of frames earlier, and withing everything moving at roughly the same speed:
The blur is greatly reduced. For the full effect, go find ‘Outlaw King’ on Netflix and track to 4 minutes and 50 seconds in and just watch the next 20 seconds of footage, and you’ll see that at this exact moment, the camera takes on a weirdly stilted motion uncharacteristic of its smoother movement in the rest of the scene.
For a better explanation of this particular kind of motion-trickery, look no further than Captain Disillusion:
(One of these days, I’ll have to figure out how to actually make animated gifs.)
Now, I’m not a cinematographer, and neither do I want to criticise the hard work of carefully choreographing a scene such as this, which is still technically impressive in many ways.
However, as discussed earlier, the fact that this scene is a “single” long take adds nothing to the storytellng – it doesn’t enhance the narrative in any way.
And so the question is: “What was the point?”
And the best I can answer is that it was just for the sake of the director’s ego – or because the film needed some kind of hook beyond being a gritty reboot of ‘Braveheart’ with a few changed names.
Indeed, in the first couple minutes of the below interview, you can even bask in director David Mackenzie’s inability to coherently provide any narrative justification for the long take at all:
“Plus there’s a sword fight and a big Trebuchet thing and there’s something really interesting about doing that without the cut and so the audience have to kind of absorb it all in one thing.”
You’ll also notice that he admits to initially filming it in four separate sections as a “backup”, which I’m assuming are broken down into the initial indoor segment, the first outdoor segment, the second indoor segment, and then the second and final outdoor segment with the CGI Trebuchet – all of which are separated by those conveniently drastic lighting changes and a frame-spanning James Cosmo.
The whole purpose of this article is to say “Don’t be fooled!” Don’t let two-bit film makers with nothing to say trick you into thinking that their creation somehow possesses artistic merit with cheap gimmicks! Look for the seams, root out the true heart of the story and see if it measures up.
I’m not actually finished writing about ‘Outlaw King’ just yet, as there are plenty of other issues with the narrative which can be torn into – but they can wait, for now, until a later date.
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https://crudereviews.net/tag/netflix/
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What’s the Difference Between Omniscient and Third Person Narration?
Whether you’re a writer or an editor, it’s sometimes easy to get confused between omniscient and third person narration. Omniscient narration, especially, is hard to identify because it’s hard to write – so if you’re dealing with a manuscript-in-progress, the author may not yet have nailed the narrative style.
It’s useful to get your head around the differences between these types of narration. Why? Because if you’re a writer, you want to make sure you’re handling your narration with expertise. And if you’re an editor, you want to be able to explain (or correct) slippages in narrative style.
Narrators, not authors, tell stories.
The difference is subtle but important. If the author tells a story, the reader knows it’s made up. But if the narrator tells the story, it’s much easier for the reader to willingly suspend their disbelief and immerse themselves in what the narrator is saying.
Using a narrator helps the reader forget the author – and we want to forget the author because we don’t want to be reminded that what we’re reading isn’t real. Reading fiction is a lot more fun that way.
There are always three potential narrative layers to a piece of fiction: what the author writes, what the narrator says, and what the viewpoint character experiences. Sometimes the narrator and the viewpoint character are the same entity, but not always.
The author writes about events they’ve made up.
The narrator has witnessed (or is witnessing) something that actually happened (even though both the narrator and the events have been invented by the author).
The viewpoint character is a perspective the narrator sometimes shares – it shows the reader the events of the novel through a particular character’s experience. A story can contain more than one viewpoint character.
Readers should only ever hear the voice of the narrator or the viewpoint character when reading a novel. It’s considered preachy and outdated for novels to have the author as its narrator, because in fiction we’re not interested in the author’s thoughts and opinions – we just want to experience the story.
I’m not going to talk about first or second person narration here. But I’ll quickly explain the difference between the two types of third person narration and omniscient narration.
Third person objective is used when the point of view from which the story is told is like a floating camera following the characters around. There is no direct access to the thoughts and emotions of the characters, other than what can be interpreted by their dialogue and actions. This viewpoint isn’t normally used over the course of a whole novel because it keeps readers at arm’s length.
Unlike with third person objective, the reader has access to the thoughts and emotions of the viewpoint character. The story is told only through one viewpoint character’s perspective at a time; we see, hear, smell, taste, feel and think what they do. (If the narrative contains multiple viewpoint characters and the perspective shifts sporadically and jarringly, this is called ‘head hopping’.) A third person subjective narrative can be written in the character’s voice (to varying degrees, depending on the author’s style of writing), and the reader can know only what the character knows. A third person subjective point of view can be blended with third person objective to create variation.
The narrator knows everything, and isn’t limited to the viewpoint of any single character. An omniscient narrator could be a character in the story (like a god or an enlightened person), or they could be an observing nonentity. Completely omniscient viewpoints are difficult to pull off well because the narrator needs to have reasons for imparting the knowledge they choose to impart in the order they choose to do so, otherwise the story will feel contrived (e.g. the narrator knows who committed the murder – because they’re omniscient – but they’re not gonna tell you, the reader, until the end of the novel, just because).
Because an omniscient narrator is all-knowing, it has access to every character’s thoughts and emotions. When it expresses these thoughts and emotions, the omniscient narrator can take on the voice and perspective of a character. Just because the author might decide to use this technique, it doesn’t mean the narrative is a blend of omniscience and third person subjective narration – it still all comes under the umbrella of an omniscient narration.
Omniscient narration and third person objective narration have similarities, but the key is looking for when the narrator knows more than it could objectively observe. A narrative might seem as though it largely follows the rules of objective third person, but as soon as a deeper knowledge is revealed, we can be sure we’re dealing with an omniscient narrator – though this particular omniscient narrator is more observational than reflective.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy – An excellent examples of a slightly disconnected omniscient narrator; you feel as though the narrator itself has been traumatised by the post-apocalyptic events.
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairy Land in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente – A modern example of the author as omniscient narrator, to evoke traditional fairy tale storytelling technique.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams – A great example of an omniscient narrator with a personality.
The content of this post comes largely from my online course Developmental Editing: Fiction Theory. If you’re an editor and would like to learn more about story-craft theory, this course is for you. All the details can be found here: Developmental Editing: Fiction Theory.
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https://liminalpages.com/whats-difference-omniscient-third-person-narration/
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1) A more direct structural approach: this consists of techniques such as massage, manipulation, articulation and muscle energy technique.
2) A more gentle indirect approach; using cranio-sacral or Biodynamic Osteopathy which works with the subtle energies, rhythms and movements within the body and with the health within the body to help bring areas of difficulty back into balanced function with Health, so that the person can function as an integrated whole. It is very gentle yet can be very deep, integrative and helpful in achieving long term health benefits.
Why try Paul’s Approach?
Paul takes a holistic approach (incorporating both of the above approaches) but uses the cranio-sacral approach especially for helping to resolve difficult and complicated health issues as well as in acute situations to settle things down when more direct techniques cannot be used due to pain. This approach helps towards restoring balanced relationships between all conflicted tissues and organs of the body, including relationships with the mind, emotions and between past issues or trauma patterns (stored in the tissues) and the presenting issue. Patients are also educated on Self-healing and other rehabilitation exercises to support optimal recovery.
He is available at Ferny Creek clinic on Wednesdays and alternate Saturdays.
If you would like more information, check out some of these youtube videos.
Part 1: Understanding the Relationships behind your pain.
Part 2: What is the Whole Person?
Part 3: Three factors that Influence Treatment (and finding ART).
Part 4: The Theoretical Framework of Holism.
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https://www.naturalhealingcentre.com.au/paul-turner-osteopath/
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Learning technique is just the start of becoming an artist on the next level. Your artwork must convey your distinct sense of style and identify you as the creator. However, sometimes, you are unsatisfied with your style and would want to change it. The question of how to change your art style must have crossed your mind at some point.
How to Change Your Art Style: Step-by-Step
Changing your art style is similar to finding a style when you first began drawing. You are looking for a definite look that defines you, your personality, your quirks, and everything else about you. Here’s how you go about doing that.
Step 1: Go Back to the Basics
If you wish to change your art style, you undoubtedly already use specific techniques that have previously captured your attention. Going over the fundamentals will reacquaint you with other methods you hardly ever or never utilize.
Understanding the rules will enable you to work around and bend them. Understanding the essentials of drawing, such as shading, getting the perspective right, and the basic pen-stroke techniques, will pave the way for you to develop unique styles. You will be ready to enhance your style as it develops if you strengthen your mastery over these basic principles.
You must look at what remains constant in your previous work while deciding how to change your drawing style. Sometimes artists can become fixated on drawing using a particular approach, which limits the scope of their output. For instance, drawing exclusively in the cartoon style can keep you from finding other things you enjoy capturing on paper in a more realistic approach.
Going back to the drawing fundamentals will introduce you to new techniques.
Step 2: Look for Inspiration
Take in all kinds of art styles as you can. Use books, museum exhibits, popular art, cartoons, or websites devoted to different art styles. Don’t just focus on one type of art.
Pay attention to the works that make you want for more; they are the first indicators of the artworks that could affect your unique style. You will likely connect with and identify with a piece of art if it piques your interest since it speaks to you.
When looking for inspiration, seek variety. Check out graphic novels, art books, museums, and art galleries, or look up the works of renowned illustrators. The more art forms you are exposed to, the more likely you will develop a distinctive style that draws inspiration from various works.
Step 3: Listen to Your Artistic Voice
Allow yourself the flexibility to change your mind along the way, even if you have a specific idea in mind when you begin a drawing. Take a moment to reflect and be sincere about what is and is not working. Your style frequently attempts to be heard when it says, “Stop that now” or “Draw a row of flowers here.” Listen to that voice.
Step 4: Seek Feedback
Even though you have a distinct style, you must avoid letting your ego stand in the way of genuinely improving. Even though all art is subjective, there are steps you can do no matter your level of experience to enhance your skill.
Other artists will assess your work in many art classes and offer suggestions for improvement. Do not become discouraged by a proposal. Instead of getting irritated, consider how what is being stated might enhance your art.
Talk to people about your drawings honestly and openly; if you feel the advice is sound, follow it. If you find their suggestions sensible, it is likely that your subconscious already feels the same way. The new art style you are looking for might be within the feedback of others.
Step 5: Keep Drawing
Draw the same thing repeatedly—instead. As your personality or interests change, so will your drawing or art style.
Drawing or doodling while taking notes in class might help you hone your skills, but focused practice allows you to enhance your technique significantly. Make time to sit down and sketch something carefully in your ever-evolving style daily. To get the most out of your practice, make sure you’re in a setting where you feel comfortable.
Step 6: Keep Evolving Your Style
When you discover something artistically successful, you can be tempted to keep using that style indefinitely. While sticking to a particular niche or style makes some artists successful, you still have to follow your creative guts all the time. If your creative voice wants you to change something about your art, you must follow it.
Keep looking for inspiration, keep trying new methods, keep drawing, keep listening to your artistic voice, and keep seeking feedback as you go along. Every time you try something new, you are opening yourself to new possibilities, new styles, and new artistic growth.
Last Word
How to change your art style is not a simple matter that you can accomplish in a day or two. As you change, and as your personality and interests change, so will your art style if you keep experimenting. Let your artistic side roam free by trying out new basic art techniques, looking for inspiration, listening to your creative mind, incorporating sound feedback, repeatedly drawing, and keeping your style evolving.
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https://www.theworkbuzz.com/how-to-change-your-art-style/
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Why Storyboard?
Storyboarding is a useful tool for planning and revising the narrative before you embark on the expensive process of jumping into production and postproduction. Whilst spontaneity is a fantastic element in the creative process, it doesn’t mean you should rush into your project without spending a little time working out a plan of attack.
Storyboarding can help solve a host of questions such as:
- How should I frame this moment?
- Which characters or props should be in the shot?
- What is the best way to stage the characters in the scene?
- How will it look when it is all edited together?
- Is this line of dialogue needed?
- Is this sequence needed?
The questions and problems that are bound to emerge can be resolved before you jump into production and at a fraction of the cost.
1 – Work fast but maintain clarity
There are a variety of tools to help you storyboard but we’re going to focus on the traditional method of pencil and paper. Featured below are several stages that you can go through before you finish your final boards. How finished and polished your final designs will depend on the budget and the needs of the client.
Start Rough…Really Rough
Before you begin sketching thumbnails, you’ll want to work out your framing using stick figures and basic shapes. At this stage your goal is to work out the visual flow of the narrative.
Thumbnails
Now that you have a very basic layout of your scene you can start to focus on resolving the staging, working out character poses and providing a rough idea of the lighting for each frame.
Roughs
Okay you’ve completed your thumbnail, the story flows, you feel confident with your design and you want to take them to the next level. Let’s gather reference materials and begin to flesh out your drawings with the appropriate anatomy, expressions, perspective, environment, etc.
Clean Up
You’ve pencilled your roughs and they’re looking a little scratchy, you’ve got this big client and you really want them to go with your idea. Now is the time to clean up your drawings so they look professional.
2 – Focus on Storytelling
Don’t go wild…yet
When you are starting out you don’t want to take focus off the storytelling with elaborate camera moves. Whilst these are nice, if they don’t support the narrative they’ll end up falling flat with the audience and lack the emotional impact you’ll want to save this for.
Okay…Get Creative
So you’ve gone through and done your first round of thumbnails, you’ve thought about staging, framing and built a nice foundation for your scene. Now is a good time to look for creative opportunities in the framing, staging, etc.
- Can you move the camera in a way that will add and support the drama on the page?
- Would a slow truck in on one of the characters support the tension in the narrative?
- Would a helicopter shot from above during a car chase help set the scene?
We recommend watching films and learning about the various shots, camera movements and how they affect the way the audience feels. Check out this great content by StudioBinder below:
3 – Use diagrams
Imagine your scene from a birds eye perspective, lay down a grid and start to block in your elements.
- How big is this space?
- Are we in a backyard?
- A busy street in a city? Along a path in a forest?
This can be helpful if you are blocking out a particularly complicated scene where there are multiple characters and interactions in the environment.
Using diagrams can help you see the scene as a single moment fixed in space and time. It can help you understand the physical limitations of the environment you are filming in, where you can stage your characters for the appropriate dramatic effect and where it is physically possible to place a camera.
4 – Draw clearly
You don’t need to be a master draughtsman to reap the benefits of storyboarding, you can get away with stick figures, 3D software and a variety of other options. However, if you’re looking to become a professional storyboard artist you will need to learn and master fundamental drawing principles such as composition, perspective, lighting, anatomy, line weight and gesture to name just several of the many concepts you’ll need to learn.
We won’t be able to cover all of those in this post so we’re going to focus on a few concepts you can work on in your next storyboard.
Choice of staging
Arguably the most important element in storyboarding is your choice of staging. A well polished and beautiful looking drawing will not bring much to the table if your staging is flat or uninteresting.
Strong Silhouettes
Animators are known for colouring in drawings to make sure they read well, the idea being that a strong silhouette will read clearly and register with the audience.
Expression
Make sure your expressions are clear, you don’t need to draw every detail in the face but it should be clear what the character is feeling. Are they happy? Sad? Angry?
Use planes
Defining the planes using lines that criss-cross over one another will help you ground characters, establish perspective and the angle of the camera.
5 – Know the 180 rule
The 180 rule is primarily used to establish a line of action when two or more characters are talking.
Breaking this rule will confuse your audience as it will appear that the characters are looking away from each other.
6 – Throw it out
Don’t get attached
You are going to throw stuff out, some of it will be brilliant work and some of it will be bad. There are many reasons to throw things out.
– It’s going to be too expensive to film
– It doesn’t tell the story
– It’s emotionally flat
– It’s brilliant but it’s not going to fit in with the larger narrative
– There’s a better idea
This is a part of the job and something you’ll need to get used to so being flexible and willing to try new things will teach you more about storytelling.
Keep an open mind
Think about your options when telling stories, your first idea is rarely going to be your best idea.
Good Luck
Storyboarding is a useful tool for those who want to use it, many fantastic filmmakers avoid the use of storyboards or over planning with the belief it kills creativity, while others meticulously plan their visions out.
Both approaches to storytelling have produced great results so it is up to you to decide whether this is the right tool for you.
For those wishing to seek a professional career as a storyboard artist, hopefully some of the techniques listed above can assist you along this path.
So if you are producing an animation, motion graphic, web design or film we hope these tips will help you jump into the production phase with a solid plan.
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https://8ms.com/blog/6-tips-for-storyboarding/
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Second Photography Basics tutorial from the series! (intro and index here).
Exposure time, or shutter speed, is the amount of time the shutter remains open, to let light into the film or sensor of your camera. If you already know exposure you might want to skip to the animation showing everything #INaGIF, if you want to know what we’re talking about, go on reading
That’s easy! This of course will determine the global brightness of the picture, but it will also define more or less the captured moving objects. If you want a very defined and sharp moving object, it’s better to have a fast shutter (short exposure), while if you’re only portraying still objects, or if you’re aiming for a creative effect, you can use a slower shutter.
Here you can see a fan series with different values (the right part of the images is corrected as always, to make things more visible).
The unit of measure is seconds, so the above examples range from 0.5 seconds to 1/4000th of a second.
Also in this series I changed a single setting ONLY (exposure), you can see things getting very dark or very bright pretty fast. In a future series I will use all settings to give a comprehensive example.
To have good result with a handheld camera and slow moving or still objects a good common setting is around 1/60 or 1/80. A general rule is to have the speed corresponding to your lens’ focal length reciprocal, so 1/50 for a 50mm, 1/300 for a 300mm and so on. This can vary depending on how steady you hand is, how you handle your camera, your position, camera and lens weight, your heart rate, etc. For example, snipers breathing techniques can help a lot with relatively long exposures or “long” lenses.
A short or fast exposure corresponds to a fast shutter, that’s less time it stays open, to summarize this part, here’s an animated recap*:
Fast Exposure Time<-> Less Light Captured <-> “Freezed” movements
or
Long Exposure Time <-> More Light Captured <-> Objects Trails
Taking pictures with a slower shutter requires usually a tripod or some sort of decent camera support. Of course, that’s if you want your subjects focused and defined, experimenting with long exposures while moving the camera around could be pretty interesting….
It’s possible to reach extreme results with specific accessories, to capture, for example, the movement of the stars as a trail, or a bullet in mid-air, as if freezed.
More info on Exposure Time on Wikipedia.
If you’ve find those info useful, please consider supporting my Patreon campaign for more tutorials and custom art!
*As always, #INaGIF animations are conceptual and serve the purpose of explaing a behavior, some aspects are exaggerated or reduced to clearly show the fundamental notions.
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https://matericlook.com/2016/05/
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6. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1922) – 80 minutes (the most accessible version)
Maybe the most complex film of themes and visual storytelling on this list, it’s Robert Weine’s 1920 film that evokes to what most critics and film lovers consider the high point of German Expressionism. It’s how Weine unifies considerable narrative techniques, genre elements, and mise en scene for arguably a masterpiece of cinema.
Take any frame from this film and hang it on the wall of a museum and a viewer would consider it a work of art. This being a silent film, one can simply surrender to the visual composition and mise en scene of the black and white contrast; the production design of streets, rooftops and slanted rooms; or painterly crafted walls to add to the emotion of watching this film.
However, it’s not just how Weine explores the finest use of the German Expressionism movement, it’s how he tells the story that even at almost 100 years hold, an audience member is still moved and surprised by the twists and turns on this film.
Without going into specifics, this film was most noticeably the first to use horror elements to shock the viewer in shrieking moments of madness and add the twist and turn elements of narrative filmmaking in the finale. Whether you want to call it a German Expressionist, cult, arthouse, horror or film masterpiece, all is done in 80 minutes.
7. Death of a Cyclist (1955) – 87 minutes
Coming out during Franco’s rule certainly played a part in the making, release, and most importantly to us now, the depiction of the film riveting to this day. Director Juan Antonio Bardem (yes, Uncle of Javier Bardem) explores multiple class systems under a dictatorship, mixing of filmic tones, and an exploration of a extramarital coverup romance in one stunningly shot film.
The films deals with a hit and run which results in the death of a cyclist, you guessed it. Our leads the extramarital lovers, Maria and Juan, are coming back from a weekend getaway where they accidentally kill a person and decide not to report it. What follows is a film that jumps tone in mood and atmosphere so fluidly and effortlessly as any film before it could.
For example, take a dinner party scene halfway through the film where one discovers something is up, it’s a cat and mouse thriller played in delightful murder mystery who dun it fashion, this is polar opposite of the bleak, cold opening to the melodramatic dealing of the couple’s decision.
Bardem does this where we must go along for the ride because we are so gripped to the story and characters, it’s impossible not too. But the way Bardem tells the story in each carefully composed shot for this film. Shot in the typical ratio of 1:33 in the 1950s, every human, object, or structure is perfectly balanced within the frame. As the viewer, we become the editor and peer between what to look at in a perfect film coming out of repressed cinematic time in Spain.
8. A Moment of Innocence (1996) – 78 minutes
Coming from another country that still experiences restrictions in artistic expression, didn’t hold back Mohsen Makhmalbaf from creating a masterpiece. This shortest film on this list blends use of narrative, documentary and semi-autobiographical story into one spectacle like no other.
Iranian directors have found creative ways to explore themes in their country with groundbreaking results. In this film, Makhmalbaf recounts, re-creates, and re-stages the stabbing of a police officer by a teenager at a political rally. Makhmalbaf was sentenced to prison for the crime but here he tracks down the actual police officer and directs non-actors to re-create a similar scene.
The overall story can be thrown into a difficult comprehension of understanding of what actually happened and what Makhmalbaf is trying to do here. But it’s through his very observant and patient camera we see how the blurriness of past memories and feelings of an unrestful political nation can bleed to present day captured on celluloid.
Despite, clocking in at 78 minutes, one ought have patience as we witness the actual police officer thinking about doing the film, the young woman trying to figure out what the situation means to the director, played by Makhmalbaf himself, but it’s at the end of film, in one of the greatest use of freeze frame in history can we start to truly ask ourselves these questions of certainty. Makhmalbaf managed to created and evoke a lasting immersion on a viewer’s mind in only 78 minutes.
9. Before Sunset (2004) – 80 minutes
The middle film of the ‘Before’ Series is the most recent film on this list. Premiering 14 years ago, with another film being released in 2013, can we truly appreciate this masterwork written by Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, and Richard Linklater, the director as well.
Playing out in real time, the camera follows the engaging, thought provoking and humane conversation between Jesse and Celine in Paris. The dialogue here is so precise yet flows so naturally off the tongues of the two leads, Ethan’s Jesse and Delpy’s Celine, we can do nothing but marvel and be completely engrossed in the storytelling.
Linklater captures almost an entire lifetime of feelings of the past, present, and future between two individuals, we feel as a film goer, that we experienced ‘Before Sunrise’ and the nine absent years between these two characters. Anything and everything, far too many quotes and monologues and most importantly moments between Jesse and Celine can be talked about. It’s a film that is pure feeling and so effortlessly performed and told.
Despite its simplicity in nature, it is quite revolutionary, it’s not a play that was adapted, it’s an original work strictly based on dialogue and how it drives every thing the two characters do, act, and feel. Linklater’s middle film here, despite being the shortest of the ‘Before’ Series, is certainly a stunning connection film and masterpiece of modern day cinema.
10. Rope (1948) – 80 minutes
Somewhat under appreciated in Hitchcock’s reservoir is his 1948 film Rope. Similar to the previous listing, this film plays out in real time. It was based off a Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 play inspired by true events. yet it’s Hitchcock’s directorial choices, pacing, and tone that make for this final inclusion for a masterpiece.
The film tells the story of two classmates, played by John All and Farley Granger, who strangle their classmate and hide him in a trunk in their apartment, only to have a party to prove they committed the perfect crime. In Hitchcock fashion, one man, played the one and only James Stewart, discovers something his up.
It’s how Hitchcock tells the presents and tells the story that stands out. Making his color debut, Hitchcock uses the color of the Manhattan apartment to evoke certain moods and feeling that are explored in future classics. Yes, he uses his dry humor and Macguffin for the plot but to tell a story in 1948 in an attempted one take before the digital revolution was unheard of.
A canister of film can shoot for 11 minutes so every 11th minute an actor would block, lean or simply stand in front of the camera before the story continued. By this decision, the film is told in one continuous narrative and flows beautifully as Hitchcock goes from light sense of humor to shock and suspense awe to down right bone chilling tension amongst Dall, Granger and Stewart. Even today the film stands firmly because instead of just going for a technical and creative decision, Hitchcock never forgot the tell the story in pure blend of film emotion and entertainment.
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http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2018/10-movie-masterpieces-that-are-under-90-minutes/2/
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Since time immemorial, humans have had the urge to record their experiences, feelings, thoughts and events; first through paintings and then through symbols which later developed into language scripts.
In the modern era, Words are Power. The adage, ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’ was never truer than in this age of the internet. To top it all, writing can be a very lucrative career as well.
Writing is the reflection of our thoughts, therefore each individual has a unique style of writing. But writing is not just putting pen to paper, it is more of a process that involves conscious planning, research, and then depending upon the purpose, putting your thoughts across in a specific content writing format. The Prewriting stage is vital as it sets the backbone of your writing and determines the Writing Style. The task, purpose and audience of your work are paramount in defining the content you write and hence the need to understand the different types of writing styles.
What are Writing Styles?
Why do we write? Few common reasons to write are to express our feelings; to give information; to sell products or services; record events, or my favorite, to narrate stories. Although there are many different ways in which we can write a particular piece of content, the purpose of writing dictates the choice of words, the tone, the general structure of sentences, and the content writing format. Who is the audience of the content will also define the complexity of language and ideas. A short story for young readers will include small rhyming words whereas a novel would have a thrilling and complicated plot.
In other words, the purpose and target reader also defines the type of writing or the writing style of the author.
What are the different types of writing styles?
There are numerous types of writing styles of which the main five styles are Narrative Writing, Persuasive Writing, Expository Writing, Descriptive Writing, and Creative Writing. There are some further sub-categories that mix two or more writing styles to create a new style. In case you are interested in taking up writing as a career or just looking to sharpen your writing skills you should be aware of at least a few different types of writing styles such as Technical Writing, Objective Writing, and Subjective Writing.
If I have managed to whet your appetite, let me do justice and elaborate on a few types of writing styles, examples of their application, and for the more adventurous, how to enhance your writing skills.
# Narrative Writing
Simply put, Narrative writing is the style of writing that involves reciting a story or a series of events. The content writing format of narrative writing includes a plot, a setting, some characters, sequential events etc. The writer selects the Point of View(PoV) of a character or a third person and tells the story. Few examples of narrative writing are essays, movies, fairy tales, and even jokes. Although narrative writing can be used to inform, motivate and educate as well, the main purpose is to captivate the reader and grab their attention.
Tips to improve narrative writing skills:
- Plan the plot, theme, and setting of the narration or story beforehand.
- Set the characters according to the time setting of the story.
- Add some elements of uniqueness to the characters and plot so that the content stands out.
- Try to write the story from different PoVs to see which might appear more interesting to the audience.
- Include some traits of an interesting person you may know around you. This helps to create more realistic characters.
- Use mind mapping visuals to create new twists in the plot, especially in long narratives or novels.
- Narrative writing generally follows chronological events but sometimes the events can be mixed to create an interesting effect of flashback.
- The content mainly uses past tense to state the events especially if it is a story or a novel.
- The content writing format would include:
- Introduction or beginning where you set the plot(or setting) and introduce the main characters to the audience.
- Events where the characters engage with each other and create the storyline. The events should be linked together to form a continuous flow of the narrative.
- The climax is where the events lead to a decisive moment and later to the resolution or end of the narration. The resolution may or may not be a happy ending.
# Persuasive Writing
Persuasive writing is the most often used style of writing in the business world, wherein the writer tries to influence the reader and lead them to a particular series of actions. Some examples of content using persuasive writing are brochures, proposals, advertisements, reviews and even editorials. The content writing format would vary according to the specific example of the writing. Let’s say we are writing a brochure for a resort. The content would be more persuasive with beautiful pictures depicting the scenery and the facilities offered by the resort. But a review or editorial need not have images. Instead, words have to be powerful enough to create an impact on the reader’s minds.
Top 10 Persuasive Writing tips:
- You can’t sell something you don’t believe in yourself. So first convince yourself.
- Learn the topic in depth. Research, research, and research.
- Know what your target reader wants.
- Repeat your opinion in various subtle ways so that the reader is convinced without feeling pressurized.
- Quite often your opinion might not be enough to convince the reader. At such times, cite well-known examples or quote influential people.
- Use phrases like: Clearly, Obviously, Without a doubt, current opinion/ trend shows, and so on.
- The use of the right adjectives is essential in this type of writing style to drive the message home.
- Frame the sentences keeping the reader in mind. So instead of saying “A portable charger is a good gadget.” a more effective writing technique would be to say “A portable charger allows you to charge your devices anytime, anywhere!”
# Expository Writing
Expository writing, or an expose, is one of the types of writing styles for revealing or stating facts. The main purpose of expository writing is to explain, define, state, clarify, or report some information. Some examples of Expository writing are newspaper articles, thesis, essays, and user manuals with stepwise instructions. Academic Writing and Technical Writing are also subcategories of Expository writing. The How-To manuals or tutorials also fall under this content writing format.
Since Expository writing is a type of writing style that deals with presenting information, it employs a straightforward approach and simple to understand language. Often images and flow charts are included in the content to support the written content and remove all chances of confusion.
Companies or organizations also follow defined style guides to ensure uniformity in terms used in the content. A few commonly used style guides are the Chicago Manual of Style, the Associated Press, and the Modern Language Association.
Tips to improve Expository Writing skills:
- Expository writing generally uses third person pronouns. Avoid using first person pronoun, ‘I’ because you are not stating your opinion in expository writing.
- Try to start with a brief introduction of the topic.
- Active voice is used to convey actionable information in user manuals.
- While writing articles or essays, keep paragraphs short with a single central idea in each paragraph.
- Cite facts or examples to explain a topic further.
- There should be a clear logical progression in the ideas presented in the writing.
- In case of writing instructions, keep them short and clear.
- Try to stick to industry standard words, instead of using creative explanations.
In short, keep your writing brief, crisp and clear as a simple statement of facts.
# Descriptive Writing
The purpose of Descriptive Writing is to paint a picture with words in the minds of the reader. This type of writing skill strives to create an impression using the experience from various senses such as sight, taste, touch, smell, and sound. Use this content writing format to describe events, places, or time in history. In fact, this type of writing is a part of biographies, stories, and journals as well.
An example of Descriptive Writing is: Her smile was as bright as sunshine.
Although understanding the purpose and meaning of Descriptive writing is easy, writing it is difficult. It takes a lot of practice and a concise choice of words to enthrall and evoke the senses of the reader.
Tips to improve Descriptive Writing Skills:
- Use literary devices such as metaphors, similes and analogies to make your work more colorful.
- Practice free writing daily for at least 15 mins to develop the skill of describing your own thought process.
- Travel blogs or websites contain this writing style for their content writing format. Try to pick a familiar place or city and describe it in the smallest detail.
- Brainstorm to pick out different words or synonyms while reviewing and select the word or phrase that is the most suitable.
- Although using a good dose of adjectives may seem very descriptive but sometimes it can be too much. A descriptive sentence such as ‘ beautiful fragrant yellow rose in full bloom’ seems slightly over the top and puts too much effort on the reader’s mind.
# Objective Writing
Objective Writing is a type of writing style that presents an unbiased view of an event or topic and is based on facts that can be verified. Journalist writing relies largely on this content type format. In case, the article is related to a controversial topic, then it falls upon the author to state both sides of the topic and leave it to the reader to make their own opinion. In other words, there should be no prejudice or opinions reflected in the content. School textbooks and reports often employ Objective writing style.
As opposed to this, the author can present their personal feelings or opinions through Subjective Writing, as explained below.
Tips to improve Objective Writing Skills:
- Use a formal tone and avoid using the first person in the content writing format.
- State facts or statistical findings instead of being vague. Instead of saying “Majority of people voted for him” write “79% of the people voted for him”.
- Be careful to avoid all forms of bias in the content.
- Refrain from using words such as always, never, and every time. Including these words might lead to exaggeration.
# Subjective Writing
Subjective Writing style allows the author to express personal opinions and feelings in the content. Some common examples are essays, diary entries, editorials etc. As opposed to Objective writing, the information presented in subjective writing can not always be verified or backed with facts. This style of content writing format is suitable for categories such as Parenting, Fashion, or any other form of fine arts where each person’s perspective is equally relevant.
Tips to improve Subjective Writing Skills:
- Since the content in Subjective writing is derived from personal opinions, the use of first-person is more suitable.
- Phrases such as- In my opinion, I believe that, I feel, etc are more commonly used in this content writing format.
- Even though personal opinions are highlighted in subjective writing, it is better to show your train of thought if you want the reader to be convinced by your point of view.
# Creative Writing
Imagination or fiction is the key ingredient in this type of writing style. Creative writing derives many elements from Narrative writing and Descriptive writing to form a new genre. There are numerous examples of creative writing such as poems, stories, scripts, novels, copywriting, etc. Out of all the types of writing styles, creative writing is one of the most well-paid professions. This content writing format largely depends upon creativity as the main element to captivate the audience. Creativity is only bound by the limits of self-expression but to appeal to the reader is often more difficult than it seems.
Tips to improve Creative Writing Skills:
- Use literary devices such as metaphors, similes, and analogies to make your work more colorful.
- Try to bring uniqueness into your composition through the innovation of ideas and freshness of perspective.
- Improve your powers of observation and then try to recreate the same picture through words.
- Take breaks in between Creative writing spells and indulge in other types of writing styles such as Objective writing to restart again with renewed energy.
- If you are stuck with writer’s block, try mind mapping tools for generating new ideas.
- Take up a hobby to relax your senses between intense writing sessions.
- Last but not the least, read and reread some of your favorite books and imagine a different course of the plot.
# Review Writing
Review writing is similar to Subjective Writing because you present your own opinion about a product, service, or another literary work. For example, you are writing a review of a new phone. The purpose of writing a review is to inform the reader about the merits and demerits of the product. However, before you do that you need to introduce the product, its features, and general use. Next, it is better to support your opinion with some facts or evidence. You can also present a comparative study of similar phones of the same or other brands. The reader should be convinced that your opinion is based on sound facts and not just personal bias.
To view some examples of reviews, click here.
Tips to write good reviews:
- Make sure the review contains more than just your opinion. It should be useful and informative for the reader.
- Do not try to sell some other products while providing feedback on the product in question.
- Research on the topic of the review so that you are well informed about the reader’s expectations as well.
- Try to include both merits and demerits, so that the review does not seem one-sided.
- While mentioning negative aspects, also try to suggest how the product could have been better. This makes the review constructive.
There are numerous other types of writing styles but they broadly fall under the categories mentioned here. Some other widely used writing styles are Academic Writing, Technical Writing, Copywriting, and so on.
It is also worth mentioning that quite often the polished content derives various elements from multiple types of writing styles. For instance, we often write historical essays in a narrative format hence combining the Expository and Narrative Writing styles. Here the setting and plot are not fictional but based on facts. The other elements of Narrative writing are included as we introduce the conditions in the society, the series of small incidents that culminated towards a main historical event, followed by the outcome or impact of the event on our society. The writing styles are not exclusively used and often overlap to achieve the purpose of the content.
How to master the different types of writing styles?
No matter how good your writing skills, it is difficult to master all the writing styles equally. But you can certainly achieve a high level of proficiency.
Analyse your own writing skills to understand your strengths and weaknesses. Then work upon the desired skill set.
It is also a good idea to enroll in some Content Writing Courses from some reputed institutes to hone your writing skills. The courses help you to fully understand the different types of writing styles and the content writing format associated with each writing style. There are certain nuances that come only with practice and experience but you can get a head start by learning them early in your career as a writer. Also, it ensures that you do not form any destructive writing habits which would be difficult to unlearn later. There are numerous companies and organizations offering part-time and full-time courses. You can also choose from online courses and traditional classroom courses. An important aspect to ensure quality control is to enroll in an accredited course such as the Certified Digital Content Writing Course by Henry Harvin.
All things said and done, for me, writing is very therapeutic. When I started writing, it was on unsure grounds. Enrolling in a course provided me the necessary knowledge and in turn, boosted my confidence. Feedback is always welcome because life is nothing but a learning curve and if the change is inevitable, it is better to make it a positive change.
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https://www.henryharvin.com/blog/different-types-of-writing-styles-and-examples/
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Fill Light: The Basics
Please click here to join Hurlbut Academy and learn from the best in the industry.
INCLUDED IN THIS LESSON: 4 Minutes of Video, In-Depth Written Breakdown
IN THIS LESSON YOU WILL LEARN: When lighting a scene, understanding where your fill is coming from and how it will illustrate the world is crucial. In this lesson, Shane Hurlbut, ASC discusses his thought process on fill and how he implemented these techniques on the Bill Paxton directed feature film, “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” This lesson is a firsthand look on being creative on a major motion picture and how your fill is as crucial as you key.
- Firsthand look into “The Greatest Game Ever Played.”
- Understanding the importance of fill in your lighting setup.
- How to craft portrait-esque looks to really sell your imagery.
- The purpose of catching some eye light.
- The basics of what fill does to a shot.
- The different emotions that fill light can evoke out of the character.
- The theory behind fill.
REVIEWS:
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https://www.hurlbutacademy.com/courses/theory-the-why-behind-the-how/lessons/day-exterior-lighting-theory/topic/fill-light-the-basics/
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The rainy summers of the past few years helped gardeners in Henderson County forget that we need to irrigate our gardens. In 2021, the summer has turned out drier and some of us have let our recently planted trees, shrubs and flowers get a little too dry. It is time to start thinking about how we irrigate our plants.
It is not always wet in western North Carolina. A severe drought in 2007 and 2008 that led to wildfires got people thinking about the options for alternative water sources. Most homeowners use treated drinking water (city water) to satisfy all of their water needs.
During droughts this type of water can be replaced by captured rainwater. For example, harvested rainwater can be used for watering gardens, washing vehicles, and flushing toilets. With special treatment and plumbing, it is even possible for harvested rainwater to become the primary water supply for a home or business.
A rainwater harvesting system captures stormwater runoff, usually from a rooftop, and stores that water for later use. Using harvested rainwater for purposes that don’t require treated drinking water has many advantages:
- It reduces the demand on municipal water supplies and thus increases the sustainability of drinking water supplies.
- Its use may be exempt from restrictions during a drought.
- It can reduce water bills, meaning the system can partially pay for itself.
- It can improve the environment by capturing nutrients and other pollutants from rooftop runoff, preventing them from contaminating surface waters.
It can contribute valuable plant nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, to garden irrigation water.
Would you like to learn more about harvesting rainwater at your home? Then check out our NC State publication on Rainwater Harvesting at Home.
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https://henderson.ces.ncsu.edu/2021/06/collecting-rainwater-at-home/
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PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, Oct 27 (IPS) - A centuries-old system for ensuring water security is making a comeback in the Caribbean.
“Rainwater harvesting is, in fact, seen as one of the important tools to ensure resilience and redundancy in Caribbean water supplies, in particular to augment existing municipal water supplies,” Dr. Natalie Boodram, manager of the Global Water Partnership-Caribbean (GWP-C), told IPS. “Rainwater can provide a backup water supply in case of disruption."
One advantage is that the technology is already in place, with many householders, especially in rural areas, creating catchments for rainwater running off of their roofs to supply them with water for daily household use. In the Virgin Islands, slightly more than half of homes use RWH to supply all their water needs.
An estimated 500,000 people in the region at least partially depend on RWH, with the heaviest users including Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, the Turks and Caicos and the Grenadines.
Earlier this month, ministers from the Caribbean Community meeting in Barbados launched a Water, Climate and Development Programme for the Caribbean (WACDEP) that promotes rainwater harvesting as one of the approaches to secure the region’s water supplies.
The GWP-C has undertaken a number of Caribbean rainwater harvesting projects, as part of its parent body’s worldwide initiative to support the integration of water security and climate change adaptation into development planning.
The aim was to eliminate some of the common problems associated with rainwater harvesting, such as “exposure to air pollution, animal droppings, contaminants from poorly maintained roofs, among other debris,” Boodram explained.
The technology promoted by GWP-C with the help of its partners, particularly the Caribbean Environmental Health Institute, involves a first-flush diverter.
“The first-flush system which forms the bottom part of the downpipe is used to divert the initial water with pollutants from the roof, ensuring that these do not enter the water tank/storage device being used. The first flow of water containing roof debris would then settle at the bottom of the downpipe with the cleaner water settling on top, allowing clean water to enter the storage component,” she explained.
That design was used by Trinidad and Tobago’s National Institute of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (NIHERST), which partnered with GWP-C to introduce rainwater harvesting technology to rural communities in Trinidad “with a focus on outfitting disaster shelters, namely, schools,” said NIHERST Senior Project Officer Lovaan Superville.
NIHERST outfitted 15 schools with the rainwater harvesting technology, and provided a few of them with solar panels as a backup energy source as well. To ensure maintenance, Superville said they trained about 25 persons in each community, that is, Toco, Moruga, and Barrackpore.
“The materials used to make the rainwater harvesters are easily available, easy to clean. It’s out of local materials and so it is not expensive,” she said. “Any plumber or electrician, once trained in how our system works, can easily duplicate them."
Interviews with the principals of some of the schools in Trinidad’s southeast communities of Moruga and Barrackpore confirm that the rainwater harvesters have thus far been a success.
Benjamin Santoo, the principal of Rochard Douglas Presbyterian school, told IPS that when the school cleaned the tap water tank, "it has four inches of slush. When we clean the rainwater tanks, we have no such problem."
"Water used to come once a month [through the mains]," he added. "We depended on water trucks to give us water Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Because of the school population, 500-plus, the water that we had was not enough for both drinking and flushing toilets."
In many instances, schools received pipeborne water from the municipal supply only twice a week, sometimes less. With the installation of the rainwater harvesters, they have been able to save the pipeborne water for drinking and use the rainwater for flushing toilets, watering gardens, and carrying out school projects.
Dr. Henry Smith is director of the Water Resources Research Institute, University of the Virgin Islands, where low groundwater resources have made it difficult to ensure a steady water supply.
“Rainwater harvesting at individual installations allows users access to a source that they can manage independently to their benefit as they develop a good understanding of their own needs, what they can expect from rainfall in their local area, and also what other sources of water might be available to them," he told IPS.
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http://www.iede.co.uk/news/2013_3311/caribbean-looks-sky-water-security/
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Rainwater harvesting has been studied in different countries as a way of easing water availability problems and reducing potable water demand in buildings. The most important factor relating to the efficiency of a rainwater system is the correct sizing of the rainwater tank. Therefore, the objective of this article is to assess the influence of rainfall, roof area, number of residents, potable water demand and rainwater demand on rainwater tank sizing. The analysis was performed by using computer simulation and by considering daily rainfall data for three cities located in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. The roof areas considered were 50, 100, 200 and 400 m2; the potable water demands were 50, 100, 150, 200, 250 and 300 l per capita per day; the rainwater demands were taken as a percentage of the potable water demand, i.e., 10% to 100% at increments of 10%; and the number of residents was two and four. Results indicated a wide variation of rainwater tank sizes for each city and also for each parameter. The main conclusion that can be made from the study is that rainwater tank sizing for houses must be performed for each specific situation, i.e., considering local rainfall, roof area, potable water demand, rainwater demand and number of residents. Therefore, sizing rainwater tanks according to local tradition is not recommended as it may incur low efficiency.
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Ghisi, E. Parameters Influencing the Sizing of Rainwater Tanks for Use in Houses. Water Resour Manage 24, 2381–2403 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-009-9557-4
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https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11269-009-9557-4
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What are the causes of rain water harvesting?
Rainwater harvesting is a perfect solution especially in low-lying regions, which are usually prone to floods due to over-taxed drainage systems. The use of rainwater harvesting systems allows groundwater levels to recharge, which in turn aids in enhancing urban greenery.
What are the effects of rainwater harvesting?
It reduces soil erosion and flood hazards by collecting rainwater and reducing the flow of stormwater to prevent urban flooding. Most buildings that utilize rainwater harvesting systems have a built-in catchment area on top of the roof, which has a capacity of collecting large volumes of water in case of rainstorms.
What are the disadvantages of rainwater harvesting?
You may need to treat the water
A sediment filter must be used to remove any contaminants, which might clog filters and valves, or cause discoloration. If you plan on drinking your rainwater, or using it for washing yourself, you will also need a high-intensity ultraviolet sterilizer to destroy harmful microorganisms.
What is rainwater harvesting short answer 5?
Answer: Rain water harvesting is the process of collecting the rain water which used to run off from the roof tops, parks, roads, and tanks. This collected water is used to store for future purpose. Also it is recharged to the ground water to reuse the water.
What is rainwater harvesting class 7?
Answer: Rainwater harvesting is a simple and economical way of preserving rainwater that falls on earth. It involves collection of rainwater on the roofs of the buildings and storing it underground for later use.
Why is rainwater harvesting important in India give two reasons?
(i) India has seasonal erratic and uneven rainfall. Also, in the dry season, some parts of India have scarcity of water, e.g. in Rajasthan. (ii) With the help of rainwater harvesting techniques, water can be conserved and used during the dry season.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of rain water harvesting?
In addition to the great advantages, the rainwater harvesting system has a few disadvantages like unpredictable rainfall, unavailability of the proper storage system, etc. Listed below are few more disadvantages of the rainwater harvesting process. Regular Maintenance is required.
Why does India need rainwater harvesting?
Benefits of Rainwater Harvesting
Storing rainwater helps in recharging the aquifers. It helps in preventing urban flooding due to excess rain. The stored water can be used for irrigation practices in farming region. The water can be used for daily use and help in reducing water bills in the towns and cities.
What are the disadvantages and disadvantages of rainwater harvesting?
Disadvantages of Rainwater Harvesting
- Unpredictable Rainfall. Rainfall is hard to predict, and sometimes little, or no rainfall can limit the supply of rainwater. …
- Initial High Cost. …
- Regular Maintenance. …
- Certain Roof Types may Seep Chemicals or Animal Droppings. …
- Storage Limits.
Can you drink rain water?
While most rainwater is perfectly safe to drink, even cleaner than most public water supply, it is important to understand that all water can have potential hazards associated with it if it is not run through a proper decontamination process.
How many types of rainwater harvesting are there?
There are two ways of harvesting rainwater, namely; surface runoff harvesting and rooftop rainwater harvesting.
What is rainwater harvesting Ncert 6?
Ans: Rainwater harvesting is the collection of rainwater and storing for future use. In this system rainwater in collected from the rooftops by means of pipes into storage tank for later use.
What is rainwater harvesting geography 8?
Rainwater harvesting is the method of collecting rain water for use before it reaches the ground. Generally, rainwater is collected from the roof top through pipes and stored in underground storing structures.
What is rainwater harvesting class 3?
Answer: Rainwater harvesting is the method of storing rainwater. Water from rainfall is stored in dams, wells, and shafts. This stored water is later on used for the purposes of irrigation in an area where rainfall is uncertain. It is also used by the household for purposes of cooking and other household activities.
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https://hollandhitch.com/farm-equipment/what-are-the-causes-of-rainwater-harvesting.html
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Key Concepts of the Scientific Method
There are several important aspects to research methodology. This is a summary of the key concepts in scientific research and an attempt to erase some common misconceptions in science.
This article is a part of the guide:
Browse Full Outline
- 1Scientific Method
- 2Formulate a Question
- 3Collect Data
- 4Test Hypothesis
- 5Conclusion
- 6Overview
Steps of the scientific method are shaped like an hourglass - starting from general questions, narrowing down to focus on one specific aspect, and designing research where we can observe and analyze this aspect. At last, we conclude and generalize to the real world.
Formulating a Research Problem
Researchers organize their research by formulating and defining a research problem. This helps them focus the research process so that they can draw conclusions reflecting the real world in the best possible way.
Hypothesis
In research, a hypothesis is a suggested explanation of a phenomenon.
A null hypothesis is a hypothesis which a researcher tries to disprove. Normally, the null hypothesis represents the current view/explanation of an aspect of the world that the researcher wants to challenge.
Research methodology involves the researcher providing an alternative hypothesis, a research hypothesis, as an alternate way to explain the phenomenon.
The researcher tests the hypothesis to disprove the null hypothesis, not because he/she loves the research hypothesis, but because it would mean coming closer to finding an answer to a specific problem. The research hypothesis is often based on observations that evoke suspicion that the null hypothesis is not always correct.
In the Stanley Milgram Experiment, the null hypothesis was that the personality determined whether a person would hurt another person, while the research hypothesis was that the role, instructions and orders were much more important in determining whether people would hurt others.
Variables
A variable is something that changes. It changes according to different factors. Some variables change easily, like the stock-exchange value, while other variables are almost constant, like the name of someone. Researchers are often seeking to measure variables.
The variable can be a number, a name, or anything where the value can change.
An example of a variable is temperature. The temperature varies according to other variable and factors. You can measure different temperature inside and outside. If it is a sunny day, chances are that the temperature will be higher than if it's cloudy. Another thing that can make the temperature change is whether something has been done to manipulate the temperature, like lighting a fire in the chimney.
In research, you typically define variables according to what you're measuring. The independent variable is the variable which the researcher would like to measure (the cause), while the dependent variable is the effect (or assumed effect), dependent on the independent variable. These variables are often stated in experimental research, in a hypothesis, e.g. "what is the effect of personality on helping behavior?"
In explorative research methodology, e.g. in some qualitative research, the independent and the dependent variables might not be identified beforehand. They might not be stated because the researcher does not have a clear idea yet on what is really going on.
Confounding variables are variables with a significant effect on the dependent variable that the researcher failed to control or eliminate - sometimes because the researcher is not aware of the effect of the confounding variable. The key is to identify possible confounding variables and somehow try to eliminate or control them.
Operationalization
Operationalization is to take a fuzzy concept (conceptual variables), such as 'helping behavior', and try to measure it by specific observations, e.g. how likely are people to help a stranger with problems.
See also:
Choosing the Research Method
The selection of the research method is crucial for what conclusions you can make about a phenomenon. It affects what you can say about the cause and factors influencing the phenomenon.
It is also important to choose a research method which is within the limits of what the researcher can do. Time, money, feasibility, ethics and availability to measure the phenomenon correctly are examples of issues constraining the research.
Choosing the Measurement
Choosing the scientific measurements are also crucial for getting the correct conclusion. Some measurements might not reflect the real world, because they do not measure the phenomenon as it should.
Results
Significance Test
To test a hypothesis, quantitative research uses significance tests to determine which hypothesis is right.
The significance test can show whether the null hypothesis is more likely correct than the research hypothesis. Research methodology in a number of areas like social sciences depends heavily on significance tests.
A significance test may even drive the research process in a whole new direction, based on the findings.
The t-test (also called the Student's T-Test) is one of many statistical significance tests, which compares two supposedly equal sets of data to see if they really are alike or not. The t-test helps the researcher conclude whether a hypothesis is supported or not.
Drawing Conclusions
Drawing a conclusion is based on several factors of the research process, not just because the researcher got the expected result. It has to be based on the validity and reliability of the measurement, how good the measurement was to reflect the real world and what more could have affected the results.
The observations are often referred to as 'empirical evidence' and the logic/thinking leads to the conclusions. Anyone should be able to check the observation and logic, to see if they also reach the same conclusions.
Errors of the observations may stem from measurement-problems, misinterpretations, unlikely random events etc.
A common error is to think that correlation implies a causal relationship. This is not necessarily true.
Generalization
Generalization is to which extent the research and the conclusions of the research apply to the real world. It is not always so that good research will reflect the real world, since we can only measure a small portion of the population at a time.
Validity and Reliability
Validity refers to what degree the research reflects the given research problem, while Reliability refers to how consistent a set of measurements are.
- External Validity
- Population Validity
- Ecological Validity
- Internal Validity
- Content Validity
- Face Validity
- Construct Validity
- Convergent and Discriminant Validity
- Test Validity
- Criterion Validity
- Concurrent Validity
- Predictive Validity
A definition of reliability may be "Yielding the same or compatible results in different clinical experiments or statistical trials" (the free dictionary). Research methodology lacking reliability cannot be trusted. Replication studies are a way to test reliability.
Types of Reliability:
- Test-Retest Reliability
- Interrater Reliability
- Internal Consistency Reliability
- Instrument Reliability
- Statistical Reliability
- Reproducibility
Both validity and reliability are important aspects of the research methodology to get better explanations of the world.
Errors in Research
Logically, there are two types of errors when drawing conclusions in research:
Type 1 error is when we accept the research hypothesis when the null hypothesis is in fact correct.
Type 2 error is when we reject the research hypothesis even if the null hypothesis is wrong.
Check out our quiz-page with tests about:
Oskar Blakstad (Mar 10, 2008). Research Methodology. Retrieved Jan 11, 2021 from Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/research-methodology
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General conditions request for information RSC
This document describes the general conditions that the RSC and the researcher must adhere to regarding the careful handling of personal data of RSC members when these are made available to the researcher in the context of being approached to participate in scientific research.
Article 1 General
1.1. By ‘Radboud University researcher’, we mean a person who assumes responsibility for the initiation, management and/or financing of scientific research.
1.2. Scientific research is understood to mean:
- Research that aims to lead to new, generally applicable insights (a hypothesis, a correlation, a theory or a combination of these).
- It is carried out according to the appropriate methodological standards for the type of research concerned.
- Data processing for the purpose of the research does not directly lead to decisions concerning the parties involved. The results are always translated into practice.
- The research is reproducible as far as possible;
- The research meets the generally recognised criteria for scientific integrity;
- The results are always published;
- The supporting data is accessed in accordance with the FAIR principles;
- The researcher must justify why this research will contribute to the public good.
1.3. Data is understood to mean the data as mentioned in the document ‘Information on giving consent to being approached for scientific research’, under ‘which details are shared’, more specifically concerning: first and last name, (indirect gender) and email address of the RSC member.
Article 2 Procedure for requesting the contact details of RSC members
2.1. The scientific researcher approaches the RSC with their Radboud University email address via [email protected] in order to request the personal data of RSC members who have given their consent to be approached for possible participation in scientific research.
2.2. The functional administrator of [email protected] informs the scientific researcher of the criteria for the request (see Article 2.3.) and the general terms and conditions that apply by attaching these to an email and by referring to the external website where the general terms and conditions for the scientific researcher are included.
2.3. The request of the scientific researcher will be sent by email to [email protected] and contains the following information:
- The researcher’s name; and
- The name of the faculty to which the researcher is affiliated; and
- The name of their supervisor; and
- Title of the research.
2.4. The researcher may not give additional criteria or instructions to the RSC to sort, filter, structure or otherwise process the requested personal data.
2.5. The request is checked by the functional administrator who manages the email of [email protected] as to whether it contains the elements described in Article 2.2. The RSC’s person with ultimate responsibility is informed by the functional administrator of the researcher’s request.
2.6. The request will be granted if it meets the criteria described in Article 2.2. The decision is communicated to the requestor (scientific researcher) via email.
2.7. The researcher’s request will only be kept by the RSC for as long as necessary. The duration of the retention period of the request is linked to the duration of the validity of the consent of the RSC member.
2.8. After the request has been approved, the requestor (scientific researcher) will receive an email as soon as possible, stating that an encrypted download has been made available via SURFfilesender for a limited period of time. The URL in the email refers to the page where the file containing the personal data as described in the document ‘Information on giving consent to be contacted for scientific research’ and Article 1.3 can be downloaded. The requestor must download the file within the RU network within five (5) working days. The file must not leave the RU network environment under any circumstances.
Article 3 Obligations of the researcher
3.1. The researcher must read the general terms and conditions and submits a request that meets the requirements set out in Article 2.3.
3.2. After receiving the file via SURFfilesender, the researcher must download the file as soon as possible, but in all cases within five (5) working days. If the file is not downloaded from SURFfilesender within five (5) working days, the file will automatically be deleted and the researcher has to submit a new request to the RSC.
3.3. The researcher must, in keeping with Radboud University research guidelines, not keep the downloaded file longer than necessary within the RU network (environment).
3.4. Based on the received file, the researcher will approach the RSC members as soon as possible; following this contact, the downloaded data will be immediately and irreversibly deleted. If the researcher delegates the approaching of RSC members to another person within their research team, that person must comply with the requirements set out in this article.
3.5. If the researcher makes the requested data available to their research team, access will be restricted to a small number of people within the research team. In this, the researcher must comply with the requirements imposed by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), (the Dutch Medical Treatment Contracts Act, if applicable) and other relevant privacy regulations.
3.6. The researcher may not make the data shared by the RSC available to any third party or third parties who are part of their research team, but who are not Radboud University staff members. In this instance, ‘make available’ is understood to mean forwarding/transmitting/making accessible the file containing personal data of RSC members who wish to be approached for participation in scientific research.
3.7. The researcher will approach a member of the RSC for participation in their research by email only. The data will not be used for other purposes, such as (but not limited to) newsletters.
a. If the researcher sends a group email to recruit participants for their research, the researcher should include the members of the RSC in the BCC so that no member of the RSC has access to the personal data of other members.
3.8. The researcher provides the interested RSC member with sufficient written and/or oral information about their research, so that a potential participant can make an informed decision about participating in the research.
3.9. The researcher is responsible for deleting the data after the period specified in Article 3.2 has expired, and will provide proof of this deletion at the request of the Local Privacy Officer and/or Data Protection Officer at Radboud University.
3.10. If, at any time, there is reasonable doubt as to the careful handling of data by the researcher, the Local Privacy Officer of Radboud Services and/or the Data Protection Officer of Radboud University may request further information and the researcher must comply with such a request.
3.11. If, at any time, a complaint is received and/or a privacy request is made in the context of the approach for participation in the research, the researcher will cooperate so that the complaint or privacy request can be dealt with.
(*1) Goodman, S.N., Fanelli, D. & Loannidis, J.P.A. e.a., ‘What does research reproducibility mean?’, Science Transnational Medicine 2016, Vol. 8, Issue 341, pp. 341, see: http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/8/341/341ps12.
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https://www.ru.nl/sportscentre/about-us/conditions/conditions-request-information/
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The falsifiability criterion is not a theory, so it cannot be applied to itself (or to any other object that is not a theory).
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When we refute the potential refutability of a certain theory (hypothesis), we will come to its irrefutability, that is, it does not meet the criterion of falsifiability (Popper's criterion), and therefore-the unscientific nature of such a theory (hypothesis).
Since the Popper criterion is put forward in the framework of theorizing about theorizing, attempts to refute it as a criterion for the scientific nature of a theory or hypothesis without applying it to a specific theory (hypothesis) should be based on competing hypotheses in the methodology of science.
So, yes, Popper's criterion has been questioned and refuted (see the Duhem-Quine thesis, for example). Was he himself the basis for his refutation? – no, – the theories and individual hypotheses that were considered scientific were refuted even before its justification as a criterion of scientific character. Is a scientific hypothesis about the fundamental falsifiability of a theory as a condition for the scientific validity of such a theory? – yes, because it was falsified.
That is, in any case, it is not the criterion of falsifiability itself that is subject to falsification, but either the falsifiability of a certain theory, or the hypothesis of a falsifiability criterion, as criteria for the scientific character of a certain theory or hypothesis.
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https://anyquestions.info/philosophy/is_the_falsifiability_criterion_falsifiable_or_is_it_perfect_and_universal_arguments_like_quot_don_039_t_go_too_deep_quot_won_039_t_work/
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The present study investigates the hypothesis that, within personality assessment, the predictive validity of a list of act descriptive sentences will be higher than the validity of a personality inventory on the one hand and that of an adjective checklist on the other. This hypothesis is based on the assumption that people can judge more reliably whether a person will perform a specific act than whether he or she possesses a particular personality trait. Within the validity study, predictors were self‐judgements whereas criteria were peer‐judgements. The predictive validity of the act list was found to be lower than that of the inventory as well as that of the adjective checklist. Moreover, both the act list and the adjective checklist predicted the personality inventory better than the latter predicted the former two. Because of the different functions of self‐ and peer‐judgements within the present study, the former being predictors and the latter criteria, the results are interpreted under the perspective of self‐other attribution differences. Suggestions for constructing a possibly more valid list of act descriptive sentences are given.
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https://research.rug.nl/en/publications/the-predictive-validity-of-three-different-types-of-personality-a
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Any discussion on Theism, Science, Intelligent Design, or Secularism requires that everybody is speaking, as close as possible, the same language.
Regrettably many who advocate for Intelligent Design in science classes, or dismiss evolution as “just a theory” (like gravity and relativity—both theories, but “theory” doesn’t mean the same thing at all in science as in everyday life) simply doesn’t understand what we mean when we use the word “science”.
Science is two things: It’s a process by which knowledge (1)Knowledge must be in quotes here, because it’s important to note that you cannot know anything for certain (indeed, epistemologists have been trying to prove we exist since the time of Plato to no avail). All knowledge is always up for further revision and improvement. Thus knowledge is actually a refinement of our degrees of certainty. Accepting that it’s impossible to prove anything is what has allowed science the success it has, and allows it to remain flexible in the face of new data. It’s not about getting the answers as much as refining and improving on what we know. is acquired (also called “The Scientific Method”), and it’s the body of knowledge resulting from the application of this method. And while this process isn’t perfect, science is the single most successful enterprise in the history of the human race(2)For about 200,000 years mankind’s knowledge was limited to basic agriculture and architecture. Then about three hundred years ago we discovered and refined the scientific method, and human knowledge exploded at an exponential rate. We discovered antibiotics, sterilization, pasteurization, plastics, electricity, cut infant mortality by a factor of 100, landed a man on the moon, doubled the human lifespan and improved our quality of life at the same time. Any claim that science isn’t wildly effective is breathtakingly ignorant. .
All scientific hypothesis, theories, and statements must meet three requirements to be considered scientific. These conditions are not up for negotiation, there are no exceptions, this is the definition of scientific work and anything not following these standards is, a priori, unscientific.
- Testable: Something is considered scientific only if there is a means of testing it. An untestable hypothesis is not scientific.
- Falsifiable: A facet of the testability requirement, you must be able to imagine conditions under which your hypothesis could be proven false.
- Replicable: A claim is only scientific if the experimentation and observation which led to the claim is repeatable.
Note that there are many things which may well be true, but are still unscientific. It is a limitation of science, that even if a statement is true, if it doesn’t meet all three of those criteria, it is none-the-less unscientific(3)This is important to note, bur actually rarely a problem. If something is demonstrably true, then by nature of being demonstrable it probably meets the criteria. But you where the truth is indemonstrable (like IE), you must remember that science doesn’t care what’s true, it cares what you can prove.. Remember, however, that even with this limitation, the success of these requirements in the acquisition of knowledge is breathtaking.
Once you have met these criteria, the process of engaging in science is as follows:
- Make an Observation: Observe something happening in the natural world.
- Make a Hypothesis: Make the best guess you can as to how or why it is happening.
- Develop Testable Predictions: Assuming your hypothesis is correct, what else would you expect to see?
- Test your Hypothesis: Make repeatable tests, both positive and dispositive, for your theory.
- Repeat steps 3 and 4, refining your hypothesis until enough data is gathered to accept or reject it.
- If it is accepted, you form a theory which is then merged with other scientific theories
- Publish to allow for peer review.
There are a few things to note. First, science is amoral; the consequences of any given research has no impact on the difficulty of that research (it’s not easier or harder to make nerve gas than the cure for cancer) . Further, these requirements are explicitly intended to mitigate biases on the part of the researcher (like wish thinking, confirmation bias, fairness bias, and attribution error)–science is the search for truth, not for fairness or for what we would like to be true. Lastly, none of these rules are arbitrary or capricious- we use them, not because someone declared that this was the way we were going to do it, but because after centuries of experimenting and trying to understand the universe, this method showed itself to be the most reliable means of acquiring knowledge.
With an understanding of what science is, it should be clear why Intelligent Design can not be taught in a science class as an alternate “theory” to evolution. First of all it’s not a theory (it’s a hypothesis), and has undergone none of the testing required to become a theory. Secondly it meets NONE of the requirements for a scientific claim: it is not falsifiable or testable (and therefore also not repeatable).
Now a number of people claim that that’s unfair, but again, that demonstrates ignorance about what science is and does. Science is amoral, it isn’t about what’s fair. It’s success, all of it, is predicated on the above methodology, which is explicitly designed to combat biases (including what any given person thinks is “fair”). Science can not now, nor has it ever been done, without strict, unwavering adherence to those inviolate principles.
That is science.
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https://www.theatheistcodex.com/codex/definitions/science/
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FINAL RESEARCH PROJECT REPORT EVALUATION WILL BE BASED ON THE FOLLOWING ISSUES: Please read carefully because your final exam questions will be also based on those issues.
1-Final Research Report Format:
The content of the report should include the essential parts of a report like
Title
Introduction (Broad Problem Area, The reason of making such a research and the importance of the topic for the stakeholders who are interested about the findings)
Literature Review. Background information. Previous findings about the topic. Refer the lecture notes titled as “How to write a literatüre review”. Please remember that in your project title and
article review homework, you have been asked to answer some questions. The answers of these questions are the basic issues you should consider while evaluating the literature about the topic.
Theoretical Framework (Refer to lecture notes, Theoretical framework is building the logical reasoning between the variables (factors, dimension) related with the problem you are investigating.
Methodology ATTENTION PLEASE: This part (methodology) of your project is just going to be designed but not actually needed to be applied. However you do not need to collect the data either from
primary or secondary sources and conduct the research. Just briefly explain what to do at each step of the research design phase.
Type of the research as exploratory, descriptive or causal, type of the hypothesis like correlational or comparative by justifying the reason of your choice.
Data Collection and Analysis: Explain how the data is going to be collected and which statistical analysis is appropriate to use for testing your hypothesis.
Conclusion (Discussion, comments). Make conlusions as if you have supported or not supported the hypothesis. Based on the expected findings make some conslusion, discussion and comments.
2- References:
References should be up to date. You should have read articles related with your topic and those articles should have some research so that you can evaluate a similar research done on the same
topic.
3- Research Process and Research Design steps should be clearly explained in the research report.
Research project evaluation criteria
(10 pts) Is there a clear, precise definition of the problem. Is the solution provided by the study will have any implication to the related parties. (parties like Marketers, HR people, C level,
Government units, etc.)
(15 pts)Is there a literature survey, evaluation of the previous researches with respect to the variables that have been investigated, with respect to the research methodology used. In this
section, I should be convinced that you know what you are doing and you are equipped with the minumum necessary information about the topic that you are investigating.
(10 pts) Theoretical framework: Are the variables clearly identified and the relationship between them are stated depending on the knowledge gathered through literature survey and depending on your
logical beliefs.
(15 pts) Hypothesis generated depending on the theoretical framework? Develop as much hypothesis as possible. Try to formulate comparative, correlational hypothesis Please do not FORGET that you
are not going to apply the research you have designed but you are responsible to design (PLAN) the research. In other words just explain how to conduct the design part of the research. As you are
not responsible for making the empirical research, what is important for me will be the quality of the hypothesis that you can state. Quality means the variables mentioned in the hypothesis are
operationally defined (measurable) so that the hypothesis can be tested. Notice that hypothesis are the propositions which are stated at empirical level.
(15 pts) Design of the research: You should absolutely have something to tell about every component of the research design. What is important for me is whether you are aware of every component of
the research design and able to select among the alternatives of each component depending on your purpose of the study and your problem definition. You should plan the design phase as good as
possible. Whether you can achieve or not, at least your plan should be as close as possible to perfect scientific research design. If you know how a rigorous (serious) scientific research is
conducted than you can easily realize the applicability of the research design. In other words what you can do and what you can not do actually so that you will be aware of the limitations in your
research.
(10 pts) Operational definitions of the variables that are used in hypothesis
(10 pts) The method of data collection should be determined and the statistical analysis that is planned to be applied should be explained. You may explain the method of analysis by hypothetical
examples.
(5 pts) If the data is planned to be collected through questionnaire, not the whole questionnaire but some example questions with the appropriate scales should be given as example.
(10 pts) Types of findings expected to be found? Like a positive or a negative association, higher or lower sales level, more or less satisfaction. In accordance with your hypothesis, discuss about
the findings you expect to find as a result of the analysis.
P.S: Please only use the sources I uploaded.
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https://www.ukbestessays.com/answers/social-media-branding/
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This Memorandum is focussed on how to use the weight of evidence approach (WoE) to conduct a risk assessment for stressors to which humans and/or the environment may be exposed. It is intended to complement the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) report on the identification of emerging issues and the work on the challenges in future risk assessment. The aim of this document is to support the use of the WoE, wherever appropriate, for the risk assessment activities of the Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks (SCHEER). In addition, it should support the consistency in the work of different EU bodies performing risk assessments. Scientific evidence consists of observations, experimental and model results and expert judgements that serve to support, refute, or modify a scientific hypothesis or theory. The search for relevant information and data for the SCHEER comprises of identifying, collecting and selecting possible sources of evidence in order to perform a risk assessment and/or to answer the specific questions being asked. According to the issue being addressed, the SCHEER may utilise data provided by the DG tasking the SCHEER, or provided by a third party (e.g. stakeholder reports, submissions such as confidential data provided by companies or applicants), reports and Opinions of other scientific, governmental or international bodies, scientific (peer-reviewed) publications, meta-analysis and systematic reviews or personal communications.
The WoE is an iterative process involving:
- Problem formulation
- Identification, collection and selection of the possible sources of evidence
- Assessment and weighing of individual lines of evidence
- Integration of lines of evidence
- Description of uncertainties
- Conclusion and reporting
For each line of evidence, the criteria of validity, reliability and relevance need to be applied and the overall quality has to be assessed. Several tools for the analysis and description of uncertainties are presented. In the integration of the different lines of evidence, the strength of the overall evidence depends on the consistency and the quality of the results. The weighing of the total evidence should be presented in a standard format. A system is proposed that classifies results of analysis for human and environmental risks in terms of:
- Strong weight of evidence: Coherent evidence from a primary line of evidence (human, animal, environment) and one or more other lines of evidence (in particular mode/mechanistic studies) in the absence of conflicting evidence from one of the other lines of evidence (no important data gaps)
- Moderate weight of evidence: good evidence from a primary line of evidence but evidence from several other lines is missing (important data gaps)
- Weak weight of evidence: weak evidence from the primary lines of evidence (severe data gaps)
- Uncertain weight of evidence: due to conflicting information from different lines of evidence that cannot be explained in scientific terms
- Weighing of evidence not possible: No suitable evidence available
Keywords (for literature search):
human health risk assessment, environmental risk assessment, scientific literature, risk analysis, uncertainty and variability analysis, weight-of-evidence/weighing of evidence, data integration, lines of evidence/line of evidence, levels of evidence/level of evidence, strength of evidence/strengths of evidence, quality of evidence, quality criteria, evidence integration/integration of evidence
Opinion to be cited as:
SCHEER (Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks), Memorandum on weight of evidence and uncertainties – revision 2018, 26 June 2018.
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https://health.ec.europa.eu/publications/memorandum-weight-evidence-and-uncertainties-revision-2018_en
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A lot of debate (and part of my thesis) revolve around replicability and the proper use of inferential methods. The American Statistical Association has now published a statement on the use and the interpretation of p-Values (freely available, yay). It includes six principles and how to handle p-Values. None of them are new in a theoretical sense. It is more a symbolic act to remind scientists to properly use and interpret p-values.
1. P-values can indicate how incompatible the data are with a specified statistical model.
2. P-values do not measure the probability that the studied hypothesis is true, or the probability that the data were produced by random chance alone.
3. Scientific conclusions and business or policy decisions should not be based only on whether a p-value passes a specific threshold.
4. Proper inference requires full reporting and transparency.
5. A p-value, or statistical significance, does not measure the size of an effect or the importance of a result.
6. By itself, a p-value does not provide a good measure of evidence regarding a model or hypothesis.
Informally, a p-value is the probability under a specified statistical model that a statistical summary of the data (for example, the sample mean difference between two compared groups) would be equal to or more extreme than its observed value.
No single index should substitute for scientific reasoning.
As others have pointed out 2, scientific reasoning is more than interpreting statistical figures: The reasoning of a particular finding also depends on the study design, the measurement and validity of the underlying theory and the like.
A p-value does present information about the data in the light of a hypothesis. So do Bayes factors, confidence intervals and effect size estimates. The interpretation is different, though, for each and one statistic might have advantages and disadvantages when compared to the other. It is important for the process of reasoning to choose the statistic that corresponds to the logical argument presented – and this is where many publications have failed and what skews interpretations and the (expected) replicability of studies.
If I want to quantify the evidence in my data for or against a hypothesis, Bayes factors might be a better statistic to choose than a p-value. The correct interpretation is – in the first step – the most important part.
The statement is definitely worth reading and you should do so if you happen to do statistical inferences in any kind.
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https://www.neurotroph.de/2016/03/asa-statement-on-p-values-improving-valid-statistical-reasoning/
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The families for wich we build must have rights to their land, whether they own it or are making payments.
They have children under the age of 18. We typically build for families with two or more children.
They earn less than $100 USD per week.
Families who have an immediate need for shelter are given the highest preference.
If a family doesn't meet the above criteria, they may still qualify if they have extenuating circumstances, such as a medical condition.
It is very difficult to calculate a family’s actual need by simply using the metrics above, so we have an in-depth application process that is overseen by our dedicated staff. Families come to our facility and apply in person.
One of our staff members will visit their current residence to assess their situation and investigate the validity of their claims. After that a committee meets and after prayer, they select the families for whom we will build.
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https://www.ywamsandiegobaja.org/hoh-family-selection
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If you're having trouble remembering the difference between qualitative and quantitative data, check out this chapter. The video lessons cover not only types of data but also types of research methods, including observation and experimentation. In addition, you'll review the components of strong hypotheses and studies. After studying our short video lessons, you'll be able to tackle the following:
- Identify the types of research methods
- List the steps of the scientific method
- Explain how to formulate a scientific hypothesis
- Recognize the components of experimental design
- Distinguish between quantitative and qualitative data
- Discuss the importance of reliability and validity in research studies
With our videos lasting a few minutes, you can easily and quickly fit study sessions into your hectic schedule. The video lessons contain many images, diagrams and animations to enforce the instructors' explanations of science concepts. You also have access to lesson transcripts and self-assessment quizzes in a multiple-choice format.
1. What Are The Different Kinds of Research Methods?
This lesson will go over some important research methods, including observation, correlation, and experimentation, as well as examples of each type of methodology.
2. The Scientific Method: Steps, Terms & Examples
The scientific method is more than just hypotheses and experiments. In this lesson, we'll explore the themes and variations that make up the world of science.
3. Developing a Scientific Hypothesis
This video describes how to create a hypothesis and includes the three main things needed to create a strong hypothesis. You'll learn how to make a clear statement that can be both tested and measured.
4. Experimental Design in Science: Definition & Method
What are the requirements of a scientific experiment? How do scientists turn hypotheses into theories and laws? Learn the answers to these questions and more in this lesson on the design of scientific experiments.
5. Validity and Reliability: How to Assess the Quality of a Research Study
Many psychologists and teachers complete research studies. How can you tell if a study was done well? This lesson will cover many criteria for a good quality study, including types of reliability and validity.
6. Qualitative vs. Quantitative Data in Various Research Methods
Qualitative data and quantitative data are both useful in research, but it is important to understand the differences between the two. Learn how to differentiate the two types of data in this lesson.
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https://study.com/academy/topic/scientific-research-experiments.html
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Scientific and Engineering language within a General Theory of Discourse – Rohan McLeod
We have heard many different notions of what the words: science, philosophy and the term ‘philosophy of science’ mean. No doubt if we consult three different dictionaries we will discover three more., and if we consult Wikipedia yet another.
I would hope that those of you more predisposed to enquiry than debate ;even those with with a science and engineering background, like myself; might ask them selves how is it that scientific and engineering discourse is so clear and philosophy (whatever that may turn out to mean) so plagued with with ambiguity ?
Here is a theory’ which for lack of a better title I have described as a “General Theory of Discourse” followed by an attempt to contextualise scientific and
engineering language within it. There is no attempt here to discriminate between ‘technology’ and ‘engineering’, which is here intended as:
-the whole process of invention, design, construction and development of material and intellectual artefacts.
General Theory of Discourse
[I] As a subject matter becomes more ‘ difficult’; there is a tendency for one’s words to
miss-communicate the intended meaning to one’s listener or reader, due to either:
– obscurity, the word conveys no meaning;
-ambiguity, the word conveys many unintended meanings or
– is misleading, the word conveys one meaning, but not that intended.
[II] A partial list of the ways a subject matter can be more difficult would seem to include:
– complex versus simple;
-general versus particular
– subtle versus obvious
– implicit versus explicit
– subjective versus objective
– what exists versus what should / should not be
So all other things being equal; it would be expected for example, that discussing the location of the local post-office should result in less miss-communication in the above sense than discussing some scientific, philosophical, metaphysical or mystical matter, (speculated order of increasing likelihood of miss-communication)[III] But of course all other things are not equal; any two people will experience greater or lesser miss-communication, in the above sense depending on both the difficulty of the subject (as above) and what I will term their ‘degree of linguistic commonality’
It is such a common place, that we take it for granted, that if a speaker has only an English vocabulary and the listener only a French one; communication will be difficult or impossible. So the idea arises that there may be other matters about which there also needs to be agreement even though the requirement like French or English is optional ?
Perhaps there is an ordering of such agreements, so that one is prerequisite for the next ? Here is what seems like a partial sequence of such agreements
1/ Is it agreed that words will only be used literally and not metaphorically ? if so;
2/ Is it agreed that responsibility for disambiguation of words rests with speaker, listener
or somewhere in between ? if so;
3/ Is there agreement regarding what words are (ontologically) ?
eg. if they are symbols; what ‘is’ (ontologically) the referent of the symbol ?
if so;
4/ Is there agreement regarding the utility of definitions to the end of clarifying the meaning
of words ? if so;
eg Wittgenstein in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus might not have agreed with this
if so;
5/ Is there agreement concerning the linguistic form of definitions ?
eg. Should definitions be:
concise, as in using a minimum number of words ?
precise, as in being as unambiguous as possible ?
exhaustive, as in including all intended usages and excluding all other ?
reductive , as in not using words more as or more complex than that being defined ?
if so;
6/ Is there agreement that the definition doesn’t merely describes an arbitrary category
eg.” It all depends how you define “X”;
if so;
7/ Is there agreement on whether words are not just a natural phenomena but also a
social artefact ;the purpose of which is to convey meaning ?
ie. with the implication that a dictionary definition is not an arbitrary construct;
but should be a hypothesis describing preferred usage within a given demographic;
with the further implication that objective ranking of dictionary definitions becomes
meaningful .
If so;
8/ Is there agreement that in a natural language the category so described is not
arbitrary, as in say a legal definition but that it is an attempt at ontological description ?
-as mentioned this seems like a partial list ; that is further criteria may become evident ;
similarly the ordering is tentative and may require adjustment
It is very important to emphasise:
– that the above is just one path through a binary tree of 2^8 = 256 possibilities , where
progress along each path is only indicative of reduced likelihood of miss-communication.
– that just because there is little likelihood of miss-communication does not mean there will
be substantial agreement between speaker and listener;
eg.I may have substantial reservations regarding the existence of angels but at least;
the theologian and myself; will be communicating;
eg. The positivist philosopher may have substantial reservations regarding the utility of
meditation but again she and the mystic will be communicating.
It is also contended the above path would be typical for speaker / listener pairs; with a common background in science and / or engineering and whilst the subject matter
was limited to scientific and engineering matters. It becomes clear then why such communication is so void of semantic confusion; namely because objective falsification
has imposed very strict constraints on:
-what the desired linguistic form of definitions are considered to be ;
-what the definitions of common terms will be:
eg mass, length, time, energy…..etc.
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http://www.scifuture.org/category/news/conference/abstract/
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By Wednesday, February 27, 2013, post your assignment to the M2: Assignment 2 Dropbox. Any conclusion drawn for the t-test statistical process is only as good as the research question asked and the null hypothesis formulated. T-tests are only used for two sample groups, either on a pre post-test basis or between two samples (independent or dependent). The t-test is optimized to deal with small sample numbers which is often the case with managers in any business. When samples are excessively large the t test becomes difficult to manage due to the mathematical calculations involved.
Calculate the “t” value for independent groups for the following data using the formula presented in the module. Check the accuracy of your calculations. Using the raw measurement data presented above, determine whether or not there exists a statistically significant difference between the salaries of female and male human resource managers using the appropriate t-test. Develop a research question, testable hypothesis, confidence level, and degrees of freedom. Draw the appropriate conclusions with respect to female and male HR salary levels. Report the required “t” critical values based on the degrees of freedom. Your response should be 2-3 pages.
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|Salary Level|
|Female HR Directors||Male HR Directors|
|$50,000||$58,000|
|$75,000||$69,000|
|$72,000||$73,000|
|$67,000||$67,000|
|$54,000||$55,000|
|$58,000||$63,000|
|$52,000||$53,000|
|$68,000||$70,000|
|$71,000||$69,000|
|$55,000||$60,000|
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*Do not forget what we all learned in high school about “0”s
|Assignment 2 Grading Criteria||
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Maximum Points
|Calculate the “t” value and set up the posting as required.||
|
15
|Developed an appropriate research question.||
|
15
|Developed an appropriate testable hypothesis based on the research question.||
|
15
|Selected an appropriate confidence level and accurately stated the degrees of freedom along with the required critical value for “t.”||
|
25
|Drew the appropriate conclusion.||
|
15
|The posting was free of all grammatical and spelling errors.||
|
15
|Total:||
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100
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Assessing vital signs such as heart rate (HR) by wearable devices in a lifestyle-related environment provides widespread opportunities for public health related research and applications. Commonly, consumer wearable devices assessing HR are based on photoplethysmography (PPG), where HR is determined by absorption and reflection of emitted light by the blood. However, methodological differences and shortcomings in the validation process hamper the comparability of the validity of various wearable devices assessing HR. Towards Intelligent Health and Well-Being: Network of Physical Activity Assessment (INTERLIVE) is a joint European initiative of six universities and one industrial partner. The consortium was founded in 2019 and strives towards developing best-practice recommendations for evaluating the validity of consumer wearables and smartphones. This expert statement presents a best-practice validation protocol for consumer wearables assessing HR by PPG. The recommendations were developed through the following multi-stage process: (1) a systematic literature review based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses, (2) an unstructured review of the wider literature pertaining to factors that may introduce bias during the validation of these devices and (3) evidence-informed expert opinions of the INTERLIVE Network. A total of 44 articles were deemed eligible and retrieved through our systematic literature review. Based on these studies, a wider literature review and our evidence-informed expert opinions, we propose a validation framework with standardised recommendations using six domains: considerations for the target population, criterion measure, index measure, testing conditions, data processing and the statistical analysis. As such, this paper presents recommendations to standardise the validity testing and reporting of PPG-based HR wearables used by consumers. Moreover, checklists are provided to guide the validation protocol development and reporting. This will ensure that manufacturers, consumers, healthcare providers and researchers use wearables safely and to its full potential.
- public health
- consensus statement
- sports medicine
- sports and exercise medicine
- cardiology
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
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Introduction
Heart rate (HR) is defined as the number of heart beats per minute (bpm) and can be determined from the time interval between two successive cardiac cycles initiated by action potentials in the sinoatrial node.1 While resting HR is a key vital sign and a well-established predictor of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in the general population,2 other features of HR such as the response to exercise and HR variability (HRV) are indicators of general health status, including fitness as well as both physiological and mental stress.3–5 Furthermore, HR assessment during exercise training is an important tool for monitoring training load in elite athletes and recreational exercisers.6 7
Traditionally, HR is derived from electrocardiography (ECG) recordings through either multiple-lead channels or simple chest-straps, consisting of two electrodes. Thus, HR assessment has traditionally been limited to medical conditions, laboratory testing or training monitoring and was not suitable for long-term assessment during daily living. However, recently a wealth of wearables that assess HR by photoplethysmography (PPG) have entered the consumer market. This allows not only for continuous fitness monitoring, but also facilitates screening for incident disease and continuous monitoring of disease progression and complications (eg, detection of atrial fibrillation and stroke prevention, coronary artery disease or sleep apnoea).8–13
PPG is an optical technique that is based on the absorption and reflection of emitted light by the blood, where the systolic variations in blood volume modulate the amount of transmitted or reflected light.14 However, considerable differences in the validity of HR assessed by PPG-based devices are observed,15 which are likely related to difficulties in mathematical peak detection and a higher sensitivity to motion artefacts.16 This, in turn, may have severe consequences for long-term adherence to regular exercise,17 but also for risk stratification if the device is used in a clinical setting.18
Unfortunately, the validation quality of wearables remains often unknown to the consumer due to non-transparent standards for testing and reporting. The validity assessment of consumer wearables is most optimally performed by independent institutions, but the number of new devices introduced by a continuously rising number of device manufacturers makes it almost impossible for scientific institutions to keep up with recent developments. Moreover, the discontinuation of a device or implementation of important changes to a device firmware/software might invalidate previous work.19 Therefore, it is important to develop a common framework for the optimal validity evaluation of consumer wearables measuring HR by PPG, to be used by both manufacturers and research institutions in order to provide quality assurance of available devices.
In 2018, the Consumer Technology Association published a preliminary framework for evaluating and reporting the validity for measuring HR with consumer wearables, including considerations for testing protocols but also individual characteristics, such as skin tone, body mass index (BMI), sex and age.20 However, recommendations for long-term monitoring of HR during free-living conditions are lacking in these guidelines and the scientific evidence for the suggested guidelines has not been presented. In addition, in a recently published review article factors that may affect the accuracy of wrist-worn HR wearables were critically discussed and initial considerations for performing validity testing of these devices provided.21 However, the published work mainly targets scientific evaluations of these devices and specific guidelines that allow for an immediate transfer into practice have not been presented.
Therefore, the present expert statement aims to expand on previously published work by proposing a set of guidelines targeting both manufacturers and scientific institutions, to ensure the rigorous and transparent validation and accuracy reporting of PPG-based consumer wearable HR devices, while at the same time being feasible to carry out. Furthermore, the statement aims to propose a best-practice framework of rigorousness in evaluating criterion validity and provide recommendations for future development of evaluating the validity of wearable HR monitors used by consumers. The work presented is based on a systematic literature search as well as an unstructured review of the wider literature pertaining to factors that may introduce bias during the validation of these devices and evidence informed expert opinions of the INTElligent Health and Well-being: NetwoRk of PhysicaL ActIVity AssEssment (INTERLIVE). As a result, we provide a comprehensive summary of variables that require consideration when developing evaluation protocols (online supplemental table 1) and suggest practical checklists for validation protocol designing (table 1) and transparent data reporting (table 2).
Supplemental material
Expert statement process
The INTERLIVE Network
INTERLIVE is a joint initiative of the University of Lisbon (Portugal), the German Sport University (Germany), University of Southern Denmark (Denmark), Norwegian School of Sport Sciences (Norway), University College Dublin (Ireland), University of Granada (Spain) and Huawei Technologies Finland. The consortium was founded in 2019 and strives towards developing best-practice protocols for evaluating the validity of consumer wearables. Moreover, we are aiming to increase awareness of the advantages and limitations of different validation protocols and to introduce novel health-related metrics, fostering a wide-spread use of physical activity indicators. As one of the initial key aims of the group, the consortium aimed to develop best-practice validation protocols for consumer wearable HR monitoring (part A) and wearable and smartphone devices for step-counting (part B, presented in a separate publication).
Expert validation protocol development
Expert validation process
An initial meeting was held in Cascais, Portugal on 15 November 2019. At this meeting, it was agreed that the optimal process for developing the best-practice validation protocol should begin with extracting key elements of the validation protocols previously used in the scientific literature. This information was then used as the foundation for discussions on the optimal and feasible protocol for conducting the validity assessment that describes the accuracy end-users can expect if the wearable is used in the designated or similar setting. The consortium formed two working groups: (1) HR monitoring (JMM, ELS, JS, SC, WB, JCB, UE, AG and MS), (2) step-counting (WJ, PMG, PBJ, BC, FBO and LBS). The working groups subsequently defined multiple systematic literature search strategies, prior to sharing them with the wider consortium. A second consortium meeting was held virtually on 10 March 2020 to finalise the search strategies, including the selection of the minimum a priori required criterion measure(s). Thereafter, the systematic search was performed and a framework was developed for extracting data of the validation process, including data on target population, criterion and index device, testing conditions, data processing and statistical analysis. In parallel, an unstructured review of the wider literature was conducted to include valid studies on factors that may affect the accuracy on consumer wearables not identified by our defined search strategies. Following that, the data extraction was performed and multiple workgroup meetings were held to discuss each aspect of the validation protocols used in the individual studies. Based on the data synthesised during the systematic literature review, the a priori knowledge relating to research grade device validation22–25 and the evidence informed expert opinion of the INTERLIVE members, a set of key domains for the best-practice recommendations were proposed. The synthesised data were then reviewed with respect to these domains, and expert validation protocols for wearable HR monitors (part A) and wearable and smartphone step-counters (part B) and were iteratively developed by the working groups and subsequently shared with the entire consortium. At a virtual meeting held on 17 June 2020, the revised drafts were discussed and the two protocols were aligned to ensure harmonisation of the statements. The revised drafts were then edited for consistency and reviewed by the wider consortium prior to circulation for final approval.
Systematic review process
The primary aim of our initial systematic literature review was to determine which methods and protocols are currently used in the scientific literature to validate HR with consumer-based wearables. Importantly, we did not aim to review the results from studies examining the validity of wearable consumer devices to assess HR. The search was conducted with respect to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) and registered with the international database of prospectively registered systematic reviews in health and social care (PROSPERO ID: CRD42020177667). Three-domain search terms were used to identify journal articles published in the electronic databases PubMed, Embase and Web of Science. More specifically, these search terms were defined as the control device, the outcome as well as the study design (online supplemental table 2).
Only English language publications in human populations with no restriction to publication year were included. Relevant articles had to be published prior to 18 March 2020. The inclusion criteria were defined as Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome and Study design .26 No restrictions were made with regards to population (ie, healthy, patients, children, etc) and interventions (ie, protocols used). Protocols were classified as (1) laboratory settings (ie, well-controlled conditions, including isolated tasks such as walking, running or cycling on a treadmill or a stationary cycle ergometer), (2) semifree-living settings (semi-controlled conditions, including ‘simulated’ activities of daily living for the purpose of replicating ‘free-living’ conditions) or (3) free-living settings (long-term monitoring of daily living without restrictions of the completed tasks). As a comparison, a criterion measure using a gold standard (ie, assessment of the time elapsed between two successive R-waves [RR intervals) of the signal of sequence of the Q, R and S complex [QRS]) was required. Furthermore, only studies that assessed HR by a PPG-based consumer wearable as the primary outcome measure were included. However, no restrictions applied to the human-wearable interface of the index devices (eg, light wavelength or measurement site). The detailed search string can be found in online supplemental table 2.
Screening and data extraction were performed independently by three members of the consortium, using Covidence software (Veritas Health Innovation). The search process entailed saving the online search, removing duplicates as well as consequently screening titles, abstracts and eligible full texts. A minimum of two identical votes was required for eligibility judgement. In case of a lack of consensus, the third member of the team was consulted. Data extraction was performed according to specific criteria that are outlined in detail in online supplemental tables 3–6.
Current state of knowledge
The presented current state of knowledge is based on the studies that were identified by the systematic literature search as well as supplemental technological studies and our evidence informed expert opinions. Our systematic review led to a total of 1894 hits. Automatically removing duplicates and ineligible records led to 108 full texts for further assessment. Overall, 66 studies were primarily excluded for methodological reasons (ie, in terms of outcome, study design and comparator). Finally, a total of 43 articles were deemed eligible and retrieved. Additionally, one study was manually added by screening other resources, leading to a total number of 44 studies remaining for data extraction. The PRISMA flow chart of the systematic review process and the reasons for exclusions are presented in the supplements (online supplemental figure 1). The following section provides a short summary on the key considerations that appear to be important when testing the validity of PPG-based consumer wearables. Data gathered are presented in six key domains (figure 1), that were deemed relevant for validity testing (target population, criterion measure, device placement, testing conditions, data processing and statistical analysis). The most important aspects of validation protocols are also summarised in the supplements, table 1. The consortium acknowledges that the presented list of domains reflects the current state of knowledge but may not be considered exhaustive.
Supplemental material
Target population
Selecting the target population for the validity assessment appears to be a key factor that determines the significance of the findings obtained. Although PPG-based wearables could theoretically be validated in numerous populations that differ considerably in demographics, ethnicity, anthropometrics and activity level, we advise that the evaluation reflects the device performance in the hands of the intended user. However, even by assessing the validity in a sample that is homogeneous in one domain (eg, recreationally active young men), it is likely that other domains may not be controlled for simultaneously (eg, skin tone). Therefore, we suggest that the target populations generally reflect a heterogeneous sample, allowing for possible subgroup analysis. Homogeneous samples, on the other hand, may be included if the intention is to test the validity of the wearable for a very specific group (eg, athletes of a specific sport).
In addition to the aforementioned considerations, other factors may require attention. For example, the pathology of some heart-related diseases may affect the outline of the QRS complex and potentially provide poor identification of the R wave.27 However, the number of heart-related conditions and their potential implications on the QRS complex impose numerous challenges with the validity assessment. These challenges of including patients with heart-related conditions must be appropriately addressed to ensure the accuracy of the HR measurements. In this context, assessment of atrial fibrillation has been targeted by some wearable devices28 and it seems possible that the future will bring more devices that can address specific heart-related conditions that can be detected with a high degree of confidence.29 In addition, abnormalities in blood pressure may affect the PPG signal.30 Consequently, in many studies included in our review, participants with known systolic or diastolic blood pressure abnormalities were excluded31 32 or at least reported.33–38
Other considerations concern the use of medication and dietary supplements that may affect HR recordings and should be considered when designing validation protocols. Interestingly, none of the identified studies assessed the accuracy of wearable HR monitors in patients with cardiovascular conditions. These patients present a variety of potential challenges to monitor’s accuracy, including hypertension, peripheral arterial disease, venous insufficiency, obesity, atrial fibrillation and use of medications that affect HR, vascular tone and volume status (eg, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, calcium channel blockers, and diuretics).33 Furthermore, factors such as inked and damaged skin (eg, tattoos, scars etc.) may potentially affect the PPG signal and, thus, participants exhibiting either of these were excluded in few studies identified by our systematic review.33 39–41 While we also recommend that exclusion will likely help to overcome potential errors originating from these factors, in this statement we have focused on the validity assessment of HR measurements in the general population. Principally, healthy samples are recommended for the general device validation. However, if a device is specifically designed for a special population, this needs to be reflected in the target population.
The following factors require consideration when designing an appropriate validation protocol.
Sample size considerations
The sample size should be defined a priori. If an a priori specified level of ‘in agreement’ (ie, the difference of paired measurements falls within a specified interval) is considered, the sample size should be calculated based on an expected mean absolute difference, the expected standard deviation (SD) of the differences, and a predefined clinical maximum allowed difference needed to obtain a power of 80% or 90% to assess agreement between two methods of measurement with a sufficient precision.42 It is advised to conduct a pilot study to obtain the mean and SD of differences between the wearable consumer device and the criterion measure to make these prior sample size calculations. If no a priori specified level of ‘in agreement’ is considered, for homogeneous samples we recommend a minimum of 45 participants as a rule of thumb.43 This number is also in line with the average number of participants included in the studies identified by our systematic review. In any case, the variability of relevant participant characteristics in the sample should be considered and for heterogeneous groups, a larger sample size might be necessary.
Age
Ageing has previously been associated with increases in arterial stiffness, resulting in changes in the propagation of the pulse to the periphery, thereby affecting pulse timing and shape characteristics.44 However, only three studies identified by our systematic literature review performed a statistical analysis for age and device error (total range 21–73 years), but did not find age to affect the error in the prediction of HR measurements.41 45 46 In fact, this finding was confirmed by a very recent study validating the wearable fitness trackers Xiaomi Mi Band 2 and Garmin Vivosmart HR+.47 Also, in this study, similar mean percentage errors for young (20–26 years) participants and seniors (>65 years) were observed. Thus, deteriorating effects on vascular function with increasing age may not be reflected in HR assessed by PPG but more research is needed to clearly assess these effects. However, if the validity of a wearable device is not needed for one specific target group (eg, children) we suggest testing in a heterogeneous sample.
Sex
Sex is associated with cardiovascular function, affecting resting HR and arterial blood pressure.48 Consequently, sex differences might also be reflected in PPG-based HR due to possible differences in device positioning and skin characteristics.45 For example, differences seem to exist in the thickness and echo intensity of skin between males and females.49 However, three studies identified by our systematic literature search did not find HR validity assessed via PPG to be affected by sex,32 39 41 while others45 46 found larger measurement errors in men as compared with women. A recent article clearly indicated that factors such as pulse arrival time, pulse transit time, systolic pulse transit time and the ratio of areas under the PPG waveform are affected by sex, with men showing a larger effect on the PPG signal.48 Considering these findings, it appears that sex likely affects wearable device validity and needs to be accounted for when evaluating PPG-based devices.
Body height
Body height was previously identified as a contributor to larger pulse transit time due to longer distances between the heart and the periphery (ie, the measurement site). Indeed, the latency time between the QRS complex and the PPG peak was found to be larger in taller subjects and was significantly associated with changes in pulse transit time both on the fingers and toes but not on the ears.44 However, in this study, no associations were found between body height and HR and these findings correspond well with a separate regression analysis,46 showing body height not to interact with PPG-based HR validity (range: men 159.1–190.0 cm, women 154.4–184.2 cm). In fact, the latter study was the only group that accounted for body height when analysing their findings. However, whether possible delays in pulse transit time were accounted for in the algorithm of the devices tested in the other studies identified by our systematic search remains unknown due to restricted access to algorithms. Thus, we recommend that body height should be considered as a possible factor that may affect HR assessed by PPG. This might be accounted for by including heterogeneous samples of participants (eg, children, adolescents and adults).
Body mass index
In two studies identified by our systematic review, possible associations between BMI and measurement error were assessed but it was concluded that BMI does not affect PPG-based HR accuracy.50 However, both studies used a rather homogeneous sample (ie, BMI of 20–27 kg/m² and 19–33 kg/m², respectively). In contrast, in two studies using larger ranges for BMI (ie, 17.2–39.3 kg/m² and 17.1–45.0 kg/m², respectively) a higher BMI was statistically associated with larger error rates across multiple devices.40 46 Moreover, a study also found that BMI was correlated with wrist circumference, which may in turn affect the PPG signal.36 Thus, previous findings provide potential indications for BMI to affect HR measurements assessed by PPG.
Skin tone
The interaction of light with biological tissue can be quite complex and may involve scattering, absorption and/or reflection.51 For example, it was previously shown that darker skin pigmentation may attenuate the permeability of light wavelengths shorter than 650 nm.37 The importance of skin tone is underlined by our systematic literature review, showing that skin tone or at least ethnicity was considered as a confounder in 20 studies.33 35–37 39–41 46 50 52–62 Among these studies, a higher device error was found in participants across several devices or types of activities with darker skin tones assessed by the Fitzpatrick scale,37 39 46 56 58 while in other studies this was not observed.33 50 63 Thus, skin tone appears to affect the accuracy of HR readings based on PPG and should also be considered during validity testing.
Criterion measure
The current gold-standard reference method for assessing HR is ECG with 12-lead, which is standard in clinical practice when a full ECG tracing of the cardiac cycle is desired.64 The largest and most distinct feature in the QRS complex is the R wave, that represents the early ventricular depolarisation and is commonly used for identifying single cardiac cycles. ECG measurements are conducted using dry or wet surface Ag/AgCl electrodes. Wet electrodes include a conductive gel used to decrease the electrode-skin impedance and, thus, increase the signal to noise ratio. However, the conductive gel tends to dry out with time, which potentially affects the data quality.65 Dry electrodes are an alternative to wet electrodes although not commonly applied with long duration ECG measurements.
Chest strap HR monitors are electronically similar to dry electrodes and some commercially available devices provide beat to beat (RR) intervals for HRV analysis.66 Chest strap HR monitors are specifically designed to be used with sports participation at various intensities. However, measuring RR intervals during strenuous exercise activities is challenging due to the substantial movement of the torso and occasionally high force impacts which generate motion artefacts in the ECG signal.67 The validity of estimating RR intervals with commercially available chest strap devices has been investigated in various studies68–72 and several devices provide RR intervals that demonstrate good to perfect agreement with ECG both in resting conditions and exercise. In online supplemental table 7, we have summarised several validated chest strap devices for measuring RR intervals. The HRV task force guidelines (and the update from 2015) suggest that an independent evaluation of commercially available devices is needed to ensure the validity of the RR interval with HRV analysis.73 74 However, a required level of agreement for a device to be valid is not specified in these guidelines. Consequently, we suggest that any commercial device (chest strap or ECG measured using either dry or wet electrodes) providing RR intervals, which has been independently validated and demonstrates an excellent agreement with respect to bpm (ie, >95%, see online supplemental table 7), can be used as an appropriate criterion measure for evaluating wearable technologies providing HR to the end-users.
Index measure
In addition to the target population, potential sources of bias originating from the placement of the index device need to be considered. We recommend wearing the index device according to manufacturer’s instructions, which should result in standardisation. Nevertheless, the following sections provide a short overview on the most robust factors related to the device placement that may affect the validity of PPG-based HR readings.
Motion artefacts
Previous studies have indicated that consumer wearables are reasonably accurate at resting and moderate steady-state intensities, while the accuracy is typically lower in activities inducing fluctuations in HR.75 For example, the study by Müller et al showed relative higher errors in two activity trackers in a free-living condition compared with a laboratory-based cycling protocol.62 It is likely that these differences in accuracy are attributed to motion artefacts, which are typically caused by displacement of the PPG sensor over the skin, changes in skin deformation, blood flow dynamics and/or ambient temperature.76 77 This, in turn, may well manifest as missing or false beats, resulting in invalid HR calculations.78–80 Even though it is likely that motion artefacts are apparent in every dynamic protocol, only five studies identified by our systematic search specifically reported signal noise originating from movement37 41 58 81 82 (online supplemental table 6). Thus, protocols used for validity testing of wearables are recommended to include heterogeneous activities or in case the device is intended to be used in a sport or activity-specific setting, conditions similar to the intended setting (ie, providing a common level of movement) should be tested.
Contact pressure
It was previously shown that the waveform of the PPG signal may be affected by the contact force between the sensor and the measurement site and that the waveform of the obtained PPG signal differs depending on the PPG probe contact.51 The authors further stated that the most accurate PPG signal may be obtained under conditions of transmural pressure, defined as the pressure difference between the inside and outside of blood vessels (ie, the pressure across the wall of the blood vessel). Interestingly, none of the studies identified by our systematic search reported that contact pressure was measured. Future studies should assess whether the validity of HR readings indeed differs between different contact pressures and whether this is related to wearing comfort (ie, ecological validity). Thus, as for now it is recommended to wear the device according to manufacturer instructions during validity testing and to ensure a constant contact pressure, especially in the context of long-term HR monitoring (ie, by repositioning the device periodically).
Ambient light
Light sensitive diodes may also be affected by ambient light. While this has been discussed in few studies identified by our systematic review,33 37 41 81 83 the magnitude of this effect remains unknown at this stage. In this context, light interferences may be reduced by shading of the interface area site and by electronic filtering (eg, light modulation filtering).84 Consequently, future studies should address ambient light as a potential source of bias in PPG measurements. Irrespective of this, we believe that potential irritations caused by the ambient conditions may be minimised by correct positioning of the device, as was previously also stated in a topical review.84
Ambient temperature
PPG signal quality may also be influenced by the temperature originating both from the environment and changes in skin temperature. While eight studies included in our systematic review reported a controlled laboratory temperature,34 37 50 53 62 82 85 86 in one study the underestimation of the index device was partially explained by low ambient temperatures of the laboratory assessment (18°C–20°C) compared with that of free-living conditions (30°C–32°C).62 In addition, it was shown that the error in HR readings obtained from infrared but not green light appeared to be higher in cold (10°C) compared with hot (45°C) conditions.87 Thus, it seems plausible that ambient temperature may affect the PPG signal quality and should be standardised during laboratory validations and considered as a potential source of bias in free-living conditions.
Testing conditions: laboratory, semifree-living and free-living
Factors that affect the choice of protocol for examining the validity of wearable HR devices, and the validity of the device itself, include types of activities, the intensity of these activities and for how long and frequent these activities are performed. In general, agreement of a device compared with a criterion method during a specific type of activity with a specific intensity is only valid for these conditions. Thus, validity testing programmes of wearable devices may vary in length and complexity and should reflect the intended use of the device. Laboratory based protocols including steady-state activities of varying intensities may be appropriate when examining the basic validity of a device against a criterion, whereas free-living protocols are required when the device is intended to be used in everyday life including sleep.
Furthermore, we recommend to standardise the pretest preparation with a standardised meal replacement to avoid gastric complications during high exercise intensities. Moreover, caffeine should be avoided 12 hours and intense physical activity 48 hours prior to testing. In addition, we recommend a medical screening and to exclude participants using regular medication that affects cardiovascular function (eg, beta-blockers).
Types of activities
Lab based protocols in the studies identified by our systematic search usually included treadmill locomotion31 32 38–40 53 57 82 88 89 or a combination of treadmill locomotion and ergometer cycling.33 41 46 52 90–92 In addition, few studies have included activities of daily living (eg, folding laundry and sweeping)12 45 54 93 94 or resistance exercise12 50 58 83 94 95 (see online supplemental table 4 for additional information).
HR data measured by consumer wearables were most accurate when assessing locomotor activities that are characterised by repetitive movements (eg, cycling, walking or running) in laboratory settings,32 40 41 46 52 58 and were less accurate where the movements were inherently more complex, such as resistance exercise and activities of daily living.50 58 For example, the accuracy of the wearable device was substantially higher during aerobic exercise (92%) as compared with resistance exercises (35%).50 Similarly, HR measured by non-wrist worn devices (ie, worn in the ear) were relatively accurate during upper and lower body resistance exercises, whereas wrist-worn devices showed poor accuracy. Activities implying upper body movements induced a higher rate of errors and HR drop-outs than endurance exercises (ie, running, walking or cycling) in free-living conditions.56 As this was not further assessed in the study, it was assumed that this imprecision was due to motion artefacts from the arm and chest movements, as reported during laboratory or semifree-living protocols.33 41 50 58 95
Upper body movements cause greater variability in error41 50 58 91 for wrist-worn devices, probably caused by motion artefacts and variable contact between skin and device, due to variable pressure/contact induced by muscle contractions and changes in blood flow. During upper body work and work involving the arms, muscle and ligament tension in the wrist may interfere with HR detection from capillary blood flow.50 Thus, devices that rely on HR detection through the skin may be inaccurate if speed or intensity is increased and during activities where skin contact is lost or if an isometric contraction is necessary to perform the activity. Therefore, the specific activities being examined must be clearly considered so the validity of the measurement device in question is aligned with the appropriate/actual use of the device. This is likely an inherited and significant limitation of PPG in general.
Duration and repetitions
The duration of the laboratory protocols performed in the studies identified by our systematic review varied substantially from three to 80 min, with the longest duration observed in semifree-living protocols comprising multiple activities (online supplemental table 4). The length of free-living protocols varied between 2 and 24 hours of continuous monitoring (online supplemental table 4).
Assessing accuracy of HR measurements during steady-state exercise is relevant as consumers often use these devices to monitor HR during continuous exercise sessions or to monitor exercise load and energy expenditure. Steady-state is reached when the HR plateaus during continuous exercise at a submaximal intensity level, and reflects the balance obtained when the cardiac output is sufficient to transport the oxygen needed to meet the energy cost of the work performed.96 This usually occurs within the first 2 min of exercise, depending on the change in intensity and fitness level of the participant.96 However, since HR tends to exhibit a lag compared with the external work performed or the corresponding oxygen cost, protocols should strive for a combination of steady-state activities and those with shorter duration and varying intensities. Indeed, some previous studies have reported lower accuracy when the activity is intermittent with swift changes in exercise intensity (ie, changes in speed of running) or changes in activity that cause changes in wrist movements for PPG wrist-worn devices.50 58 Since PPG sensors estimate HR by measuring changes in blood flow, the limited blood flow to the wrist at the initiation of exercise might lower the confidence of the predictive algorithms to accurately measure HR (ie, measured heart beats are discarded until the algorithm is confident that it is recording a physiologically plausible value).97 This must be considered during measurements of HR during activity with rapid changes in intensity and non-steady-state conditions (less than 3 min in duration).
Exercise intensities
Accurate HR readings throughout a wide range of intensities from rest to near maximal is a prerequisite for any consumer device. The laboratory studies reviewed predominantly included multiple intensities ranging from light to very vigorous in their protocols, whereas the measure of intensity varied (eg, speed, watts, metabolic equivalents, % of maximal aerobic capacity) (online supplemental table 4). Semifree-living protocols also included various intensities (online supplemental table 4), whereas the intensity and variability in intensity during free-living is population specific (eg, athletes vs elderly) and cannot be controlled. The accuracy obtained during a free-living protocol also depends on the duration of the measurement and the variability in activities performed (see above). Relatively high measurement errors (10.1%) were observed in a study evaluating the accuracy of a wrist-worn device during a sedentary and light intensity semifree-living protocol,93 which may be attributable to the freely selection of activities during the testing period. However, this format theoretically mimics everyday activity more effectively than traditional structured activities. It may, therefore, reflect more realistic estimates of validity than a laboratory protocol and may also provide new evidence of how effective the PPG technology is when used in consumer devices.
The studies identified by our systematic review clearly indicated that the accuracy of PPG devices is intensity dependent,58 83 91 94 with increased accuracy during lower intensity exercise and at rest as compared with vigorous intensity exercise, such as running.52 57 58 62 83 89 95 98 Conversely, the opposite has also been reported.32 91 For example, Stahl et al observed the highest accuracy (3.06%) during the highest speed tested (9.6 km/hour on the treadmill). One possible explanation is that with increased intensity perfusion is improved, which could decrease the error rate. Consequently, exercise intensities clearly have a profound effect on accuracy of HR readings and should be considered when designing validity protocols in laboratory, semifree-living and free-living conditions.
Processing of index and criterion data
Data processing and reporting is an integral part of validity testing and should be performed with caution. The following items provide recommendations that should be considered in terms of a best practice in the validation process.
Index and criterion synchronisation
Evaluating the validity of consumer wearables measuring HR requires the comparison of two or more time series, which require an equal sampling interval and accurate temporal alignment. The sampling interval of the criterion measure and the wearable devices is most likely not the same and this can be addressed by either interpolation or simple resampling (averaging) of one of the time series. All studies included in the systematic review used resampling to ensure the equal sampling interval. However, out of the 44 included studies only 14 studies12 34 36 37 50 56 58 62 81 83 90 91 99 100 described the synchronisation process and in three studies12 56 91 an automated method was performed, whereas in the remaining 11 studies34 36 37 50 58 59 62 81 83 90 99 100 a manual timestamp correction or visual method was used (online supplemental table 6). The study by Sartor et al12 was the only one included both an automated and visual inspection. Manual correction using time stamps or visual inspection is an option, but the process is time-consuming and potentially error prone. Several methods are available for the automated synchronisation of two independent time series101 102 and we recommend this approach. The performance of different methods currently available has not been investigated and new methods are continuously being developed. This makes it difficult to propose one single method for the optimal temporal alignment. We recommend that studies use a method that is publicly documented and has been benchmarked with reference to a data set that has been manually edited or generated synthetically.
Data smoothing
Different sources of error may affect the criterion assessment of the RR interval from recordings during both sedentary activities and strenuous exercise. Some errors are related to placement or handling of the device, which can be minimised by the correct application as proposed by the manufacturer. However, ectopic beats (ie, the heart either skips or adds an extra beat) and motion artefacts are errors that are inherent with both chest strap and electrode ECG devices and must be addressed to provide an accurate RR interval with the criterion measure. Only ten studies identified by our systematic literature review described a method to reduce spurious and incorrect HR data12 34 36 37 56 59 81 82 90 91 (online supplemental table 6). Seven of these studies used an automated method (software), and three studies used a manual method but did not describe this in detail. In the HRV Task Force guideline, it is suggested that manual editing of the RR interval is required for the optimal identification and handling of ectopic beats and motion artefacts.73 74 Manual editing of long duration recordings is time consuming and requires expert training. However, since the proposal of the HRV guidelines (and the update in 2015) several new methods have been evaluated for the automatic identification and handling of ectopic beats and motion artefacts.74 103 104 Some of these new methods demonstrate good validity with the assessment of instantaneous HR from RR intervals and should be considered for the validity testing. As with the temporal alignment, currently there is no study available that compares the performance of all the different methods and, therefore, no single method is suggested for the optimal handling of ectopic beats and motion artefacts. We recommend that studies use a method that is publicly documented and has been benchmarked with reference to a data set that has been manually edited or generated synthetically.
Statistical analysis
Since HR is a continuously scaled parameter, the analysis of accuracy should primarily be based on estimation of mean difference or mean relative difference and Bland-Altman limits of agreement (LoA) analysis.105 The calculated estimates of mean difference and the LoA for the mean difference should always be accompanied with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). The acceptable accuracy expressed as mean difference (bpm) or percentage difference between the criterion measure and the index device may vary and needs to be evaluated individually considering the factors described above. The LoA for the absolute or relative difference are expected to contain 95% of paired differences for each measurement point by the two methods. However, the estimated LoA only apply to the specific study sample and because of sampling error, a new study sample from the same target population might provide different limits. Thus, if accuracy should be compared between different devices (ie, different models and/or manufacturers), it is important to provide the CIs of the LoA and the mean differences. Furthermore, for steady-state activities (in lab and semifree-living conditions) we also recommend that the LoA analysis should be based on both individually averaged mean differences of pairs of HR epochs across the activity duration, and in a repeated measure LoA analysis (multiple paired observations of HR epochs per individual). We acknowledge that validity testing may be performed in order to provide accuracy levels to consumers but also in order to further improve readings of a given device. While not necessarily informative for consumers, in research-related validity testing also proportional or fixed bias may need to be considered. If there is evidence of proportional bias, this suggests that the index device does not agree equally with the criterion through the range of measurements. In this situation, researchers could also use least-products regression as part of the Bland-Altman analysis, as reported by Ludbrook.106 In case of violations of these assumptions, evaluators could attempt to log-transform index and criterion data or use a non-parametric approach, as described by Bland and Altman.107
A correlation coefficient could also be estimated (ie, Pearson’s r or concordance correlation coefficient) to provide an additional measure of the relationship between the index and criterion measures, however, the limitations of these measures should be acknowledged as described previously105 and repeated observations per individual should be taken into account if applicable.
Because HR is obtained in a time series in the wearable consumer device and the criterion measure, the mean difference and the LOAs should be estimated while taking into account multiple observations per individual.107 We recommend that evaluators check and report on the assumptions for estimating mean difference and LoA. Accordingly, the paired differences in HR from the wearable consumer device and the criterion measure should have an approximately normal distribution, constant variance of the differences between the two, and no proportional bias.107
As an additional secondary measure of accuracy, we also recommend reporting the proportion of the evaluated epochs (eg, the exact RR time interval or the averaged HR over a segment of time) of the wearable consumer device that were within the predefined maximum allowed difference and a range of differences of greater and less than the predefined allowed difference.108 For example, the number of evaluated epochs within ±20 bpm, ±15 bpm, ±10 bpm, ±5 bpm and ±2 bpm. Finally, because some consumer devices may remove data points, for example due to motion artefacts, we recommend reporting the proportion of such missing epochs (total time duration of recorded but missing epochs) of the total epochs recorded. Descriptive data on the study sample, number of paired observations, mean and SD of the HR obtained from the consumer device and the criterion, the mean differences (with SD and standard error), and the mean absolute error and mean absolute percentage error should also be reported.
The within-device precision (ie, reliability) should also be reported based on the data obtained for steady-state activities with a minimum duration of 2 min. To limit the possibility of true biological variation in HR within participants, the within-device precision should be evaluated using the average HR over five seconds separately in each steady-state activity (during rest and exercise) of at least 2 min duration. Furthermore, we suggest that 95% prediction intervals and intraclass correlations with 95 % CIs should be calculated to estimate within-device precision according to recommendations.108
For a detailed comparison of the statistical analysis in criterion and index devices used in the studies reviewed, please refer to online supplemental table 5).
Recommended validation protocol
Studies aiming to determine the validity of a consumer wearable should be designed to evaluate the device against an accurate criterion measure in a relevant study sample and in conditions that reflect the expected use of the device. Furthermore, the evaluation should be sufficiently described, and the data should be appropriately processed, analysed and reported. Considering the domains presented above, it appears that validation protocols should be carefully designed in order to account at least for the most robust sources of bias. Based on the current state of knowledge, figure 1 provides a graphical matrix of factors that need to be considered when validating PPG-based devices against a gold standard criterion measure. Detailed recommendations and guidelines are provided in online supplemental table 1. In addition, in table 1, we provide a checklist that is intended for planning of the validity protocols. Furthermore, in table 2, a more comprehensive protocol reporting sheet can be found and is intended to be used by both research institutions and manufacturers in order to facilitate standardised and transparent data sharing
Discussion and future directions
This expert statement of the INTERLIVE Network aimed to provide recommendations and guidelines for the validity testing of consumer wearables assessing HR by PPG. In this context, considerations for the test preparation, sampling of participants, testing protocols, and activities as well as data handling, analysis and reporting were critically discussed. Based on a systematic literature review as well as our evidence-informed expert opinion, we have suggested a framework for validity testing of PPG-based devices measuring HR.
A rigorous evaluation of validity should be the mutual interest of manufacturers, shareholders, scientific institutions and consumers in order to judge whether a wearable device for assessment of HR is useful and performs with satisfactory accuracy. At present, the decision on whether a validation of a PPG-based wearable complies with medical certifications lies with the manufacturer, inevitably leading to a large heterogeneity in validation protocols. However, new regulations have been put in force on 25 May 2020, requiring all wearables (including devices assessing HR based on PPG) after a transition period of 3 years to follow regulations for medical devices, such as the US Food and Drug Administration or the CE Marking in Europe.109 Importantly these regulations are to be adhered to even if the devices are not intended to be used for medical evaluation, risk stratification or patient treatment. Consequently, the present expert statement should be understood as an attempt to foster standards in validations of PPG-based consumer wearables.
The urgent need for standardised validity testing is underlined by the wealth of different protocols identified by our systematic literature review. Interestingly, even though a variety of potential sources of bias were acknowledged in most of these studies, only few have attempted to account for methodological shortcomings in the data analysis. Based on the existing literature, solid evidence exists for artefacts originating from sex, BMI, body height as well factors related to the placement of the device, such as motion artefacts (originating both from the movement itself but also from possible shifts of the device on the skin) and skin tone. Conversely, currently little is known on the effects of cardiovascular diseases and their medical treatment (eg, beta blockers, ACE inhibitors, calcium channel blockers or diuretics), as well as skin damage (eg, scars and tattoos), ambient light and temperature or contact pressure on the measurement of HR by PPG. It is likely that these factors may have profound effects on the validity testing51 but accounting for this remains challenging. Future studies should focus on the potential sources of bias that stem from both technological as well as population-based characteristics, in order further refine validation protocols.
When considering the proposed recommendations and guidelines, one has to bear in mind that our approach included an initial systematic literature review in order to assess which protocols have previously been used in the scientific literature for validity assessments of PPG-based HR monitors. Thus, we aimed at summarising all studies that have validated numerous index devices against a gold-standard criterion measure and extracted the specifics of these protocols. Consequently, assessing the study quality by means of a risk of bias assessment was not deemed useful as this analysis could only be used to evaluate the quality in respect to the particular outcome of each study (ie, the level of agreement of a certain device compared with a criterion) but it does not provide information on the quality of the validation protocols. Therefore, the potential sources of bias that were indirectly addressed in these studies were aligned with our evidence-informed expert opinions and provided the base for the presented framework.
It is obvious that a best-practice protocol for standardised validations will need to consider interests of both the scientific community and/or customers as well as that of the manufacturers. In that regard, the required investments that has to be made in hardware and software engineering might not be substantial as this is already in place with most manufacturers, but the validity assessment might require employment of additional educated staff and resources for the actual evaluations. Moreover, the resources required to conduct the validity evaluation seem to increase proportionally with the extent of the optimal evaluation. Considering the number of different devices commonly available with many manufacturers, it clearly suggests that feasibility and simplicity is important for proposing a validity evaluation that will be adopted by manufacturers. Consequently, we believe that the present expert statement provides a reasonable base for validity testing by incorporating high scientific standards.
Considering the wealth of new wearables entering the consumer market without prior proof of validity, providing consumers with wearables demonstrating excellent validity seems to be a great opportunity for new companies to conquer a substantial market share. Furthermore, accurate devices will also increase the usability of PPG for diagnostics and therapeutic monitoring. Considering the worldwide increasing prevalence of cardiovascular diseases,110–112 accuracy will likely become a key criteria for PPG-based wearables. Indeed, prototypes of wrist-worn devices exist that can sense radial artery pulsation and use the data to estimate central aortic pressure.113 It is likely that wearable devices will soon be capable of extrapolating blood pressure114 or even blood glucose concentrations through optical sensors,115 thus, underlining the importance of rigorousness and transparency in evaluating criterion validity. As such, we hope that the provided recommendations and checklists will be deemed useful by both researchers and manufacturers in order to further foster standardised validity testing.
Conclusions
This expert statement provides an evidence-informed best-practice protocol for the validation of consumer wearables assessing HR by PPG. Our initial systematic literature review underlined a high degree of heterogeneity between previously published methods, with many studies failing to address key sources of bias. Thus, the INTERLIVE Consortium recommends that the proposed validation protocol could be used when considering the validation of any PPG-based consumer wearable assessing HR, in order to overcome the methodological shortcomings highlighted in this statement. Adherence to this validation standard will help ensure a transparent methodological and reporting consistency and facilitate comparison between consumer devices. This will ensure that manufacturers, consumers, healthcare providers and researchers can use this technology safely and to its full potential.
References
Supplementary materials
Supplementary Data
This web only file has been produced by the BMJ Publishing Group from an electronic file supplied by the author(s) and has not been edited for content.
Footnotes
Twitter @Will_Johns10, @Ulf_Ekelund, @moritz_schumann
JMM, JS and ELS contributed equally.
Contributors All authors were involved in the development and drafting of the expert statement. All authors have read and approved the content of the manuscript.
Funding JMM is partly funded by Private Stiftung Ewald Marquardt für Wissenschaft und Technik, Kunst und Kultur. UE and JS are partly funded by the Research Council of Norway (249932/F20). ELS is supported by TrygFonden (grant number 310081). PBJ is supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (SFRH/BPD/115977/2016). PMG and FBO are supported by grants from the MINECO/FEDER (DEP2016‐79512‐R) and from the University of Granada, Plan Propio de Investigación 2016, Excellence actions: Units of Excellence; Scientific Excellence Unit on Exercise and Health (UCEES); Junta de Andalucía, Consejería de Conocimiento, Investigación y Universidades and European Regional Development Funds (ref. SOMM17/6107/UGR). WJ is partly funded by Science Foundation Ireland (12/RC/2289_P2). AG is supported a European Research Council Grant (grant number 716657). This research was partly funded by Huawei Technologies, Finland.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Supplemental material This content has been supplied by the author(s). It has not been vetted by BMJ Publishing Group Limited (BMJ) and may not have been peer-reviewed. Any opinions or recommendations discussed are solely those of the author(s) and are not endorsed by BMJ. BMJ disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on the content. Where the content includes any translated material, BMJ does not warrant the accuracy and reliability of the translations (including but not limited to local regulations, clinical guidelines, terminology, drug names and drug dosages), and is not responsible for any error and/or omissions arising from translation and adaptation or otherwise.
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I recently wrote a paper on a structured review of the validity of BLEU, where I reviewed and summarised previously published “validation” studies which measured how well BLEU correlated with human evaluations of NLP systems (or texts). In such studies, a number of NLP systems (or individual texts generated by NLP systems) are evaluated both using a metric and a “gold standard” human evaluation, and the correlation between the metric and the human evaluation is published. A high correlation gives us confidence that the metric is meaningful.
It was clear from my review was that some validation studies were better and more meaningful than others. In this blog I look at some of the criteria that distinguish a good validation study from a poor one. The goal is to educate both people who do validation studies (so they do them better), and people who read validation studies (so that they can distinguish the good ones from the bad ones).
I realise this blog is quite technical in places, feel free to contact me if you have questions!
Material
Output of NLP Systems: The study should assess correlations between metric and human evaluations of NLP systems. Some papers, especially in the image captioning community, assess the correlation between metric and human evaluations of human-written texts (often from a crowd-sourcing platform such as Mechanical Turk). This is not good practice, since its not clear that correlations (between metrics and human evaluators) on human-written texts will be the same as correlations on texts produced by NLP systems. Sometimes validation studies are based on a mix of computer-generated and human-written texts (ie, human texts are one of the “systems” being evaluated). This isnt ideal, but is probably acceptable provided that most of the texts being evaluated are computer generated.
Varied Systems: We know that BLEU is biased against some technologies (eg, rule-based systems), and it seems likely that other metrics are biased as well. For this reason, its really useful if the NLP systems being evaluated use a variety of different technologies. If a validation study only looks at LSTM systems, for example, then its validity results only apply to evaluations of LSTM systems.
Size: The study needs to be large enough to show statistically significant results. At an absolute minimum, you should have at least 5 things being correlated (because 5 data points are the minimum needed to produce a statistically significant Spearman correlation). Ie, at least 5 NLP systems if the correlation is at the system level, or at least 5 different texts if the correlation is at the text level. Of course, more than 5 is better!
Procedure
Good human evaluations: The human evaluation in a validation study is supposed to be a high-quality “gold standard” evaluation. One of my biggest frustrations with existing validation studies is that the great majority use human evaluations based on human ratings in artificial context, which is the weakest type of human evaluation. I dont think I’ve ever seen a validation study which used extrinsic (task) performance in real-world context, which is the strongest type of human evaluation. And even ignoring this issue, many of the human evaluations are not well executed (see my recommendations on how to do human ratings evaluations).
Analysis
Correlation: There are many ways of assessing how well metrics agree with human studies. Regardless of the extrinsic merits of these techniques, the “standard practice” in the field is to assess agreement with some type of correlation (Pearson, Spearman, Kendall). So if you publish a validation study, please include one of these correlations. If you think there is a better way of assessing agreement, you can include this as well, but this should be in addition to (not instead of) a correlation. I personally prefer Spearman correlation, but other people prefer Pearson or Kendall; good arguments can be made for all of these (and of course it depends on part on the experimental design).
Interannoter agreement: It is really useful to report anter-annotator agreement in the human evaluation, if possible. In other words, if multiple people evaluated the same text, how consistent were their evaluations? This is usually done by presenting a kappa score, although again this depends on the experimental design; eg if we are measuring a numerical outcome such as reading speed, it probably makes more sense to report standard deviation.
Statistical significance: I strongly encourage people to report statistical significance of correlations. Almost all statistical packages produce a statistical significance value as well as a correlation coefficent, please at least report this. If you are comparing different metrics to see which correlates best with human judgement, Graham and Baldwin recommend using a Williams test.
Reporting
Clear reporting of material, procedure, analysis: You should clearly report material, procedure, and analysis in your writeup. This should include everything mentioned above, and also everything mentioned in Figure 3 of my review paper. And please give numbers, dont just show graphs! If you dont have enough space in your paper to describe the above, then write and archive (eg on Arxiv) a technical report which gives these details.
Archive data: Please create and publish an archive of the data from your validation study. This will really help people (like me) who want to do meta-analyses of validation experiments.
Originality: A fundamental rule of meta-analyses (including structured surveys) is that results should not be counted twice. So if your paper in places re-presents results published in earlier work, please make this very clear! Likewise if your paper presents an improved or extended analysis of data which has already been presented elsewhere, please make this very clear.
Examples
The validation studies conducted as part of WMT, such as Bojar et al 2016, are generally very good, and meet almost all of the above criteria.
An example of a recent validation study which is more problematic (it only meets around half of the above criteria) is Sharma et al 2017 (which was not in my survey, since it is not in the ACL Anthology).
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https://ehudreiter.com/2018/07/10/how-to-validate-metrics/
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TORI axioms (Аксиомы ТОРИ) are postulates, used in definition of Science.
History
The TORI axioms are formulated in 2009 as generalization, interpretation of the empiric observations of ways of the scientific research. The experience of dealing with as the honest errors, as the intentional frauds and demagogy is taken into account. These axioms are published in 2010 in the first article of the Far East Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Physics , and then, in 2011, in the more detailed article Place of science in the human knowledge written for the Russian journal Uspekhi .
In 2011, on the base of the TORI axioms, the site tori.ils.uec.ac.jp/TORI had been created. The name TORI axioms is shosen after the name of that site. The site is available since 2011 March to 2013 February. 2013February 27, the site had been attacked by the cruel opponents, and since that, it is not available at its original URL. Some articles from there are copypasted to http://budclub.ru/k/kuznecow_d_j and to http://mizugadro.mydns.jp . The TORI axioms are mentioned in at the Main Page of this site.
In 2013, the TORI axioms are published in Journal of Modern Physics and suggested as primary criteria at the consideration of scientific manuscripts in any scientific journal .
Below, the TORI axioms are repeated. Any concept is qualified as scientific, if it satisfies all the 6 axioms below.
Postulates
S1. Applicability: The concept has some limited range of validity, distinguishable from the empty set.
S2. Verifiability: In the terms of the already accepted concepts, some specific experiment with some specific result, that confirms the concept, can be described.
S3. Refutability: In the terms of the concept, some specific experiment with some specific result, that negates the concept, can be described.
S4. Selfconsistency: No internal contradictions of the concept are known.
S5. Principle of correspondence: If the range of validity of a new concept intersects the range of validity of another already accepted concept, then, the new concept either reproduces the results of the old concept, or indicates the way to refute it. (For example, the estimate of the range of validity of the old concept may be wrong.)
S6. Pluralism: Mutually-contradictive concepts may coexist; if two concepts satisfying S1-S5 have some common range of validity, then, in this range, the simplest of them has priority.
TORI as science
Some "popular" articles contain statements
(1) "Scientists have shown, that .." or (2) "Scientists have found, that ..", or even (3) "The science had proven, that.."
instead of to provide the link to the original publication. Often, the declaration, that follows such a statement, is wrong; the journalists do not know, what science is. (How many physicians know physics?)
Statements (1)-(3) above are very helpful: they indicate, that the next statement is a freak, fraud, fiction.
However, If one believes, that some statement still refers to science, the prefix of kind (1)-(3) should be replaced to the specific link, for example,
"Professor Kuroi Black suggests, that ..."
The common confusion is, that one believes, that the existence of the rigorous mathematical proof of some statement indicates, that that statement is true, better than the series of failures in the honest attempts to negate this statement. This is just observation, not a theorem, that the mathematical deductions often have mistakes; and sometimes, the results are also wrong .
In such a way, even if the serious references are provided, this does not guarantee the correctness of the statement borrowed, but some hopes. However, if there is some "Scientists have shown, that .." instead of references, there are no hopes that the statement is correct.
The observation above explains, why the existence of the rigorous mathematical proof is not even mentioned among the TORI axioms.
TORI as religion
The TORI axioms can be considered as dogmas of the special religion. These asioms are not very new. The main idea of this religion were developed by Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, George Orwell (See Orwell1984), Heils Bohr, Stanislav Lem, Strugatsky brothers and other colleagues.
The comparison of the TORI religion with other religions is difficult, if at al. If the scientific methods, id est, the TORI axioms, were used for the comparison of various religions, then it should be easy to demonstrate the priority and efficiency of TORI. However, as Dmitrii Becklemishev had mentioned, such a comparison would be methodologically non–correct, in the same way, as if someone would try to describe the Aristotle's logics using methods of the female logic .
For this reason, here, the TORI axioms are just postulated and suggested to the international (and, especially, scientific) community as the philosophic criterion. The Editor considers this criterion as very efficient and important.
References
- ↑ http://pphmj.com/abstract/5076.htm D.Kouznetsov. Support of non-traditional concepts. Far East Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Physics, 1, No.1, p.1-6 (2010)
- ↑ http://ufn.ru/tribune/trib120111 Д.Ю.Кузнецов. Место науки и физики в человеческом знании. УФН, т.181, Трибуна, p.1-9 (2011)
- ↑ http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=36560 http://mizugadro.mydns.jp/PAPERS/2013jmp.pdf D.Kouznetsov. TORI axioms and the applications in physics. Journal of Modern Physics, 2013, v.4, p.1151-1156.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 http://www.ams.org/notices/201304/rnoti-p418.pdf Joseph F. Grcar. Errors and Corrections in Mathematics Literature. Notices of the AMS,, April 2013, p. 418-425. .. There is no reason to think engineers and mathematicians make mistakes less often than other researchers, ..
- ↑ http://Guacatelamala.sci.ac.gu/2000/3/t/KuroiBlack.pdf K.Black. Original statement. Revista Scientifica de Guacatelamala, 2000, v.3, No.4, p.5-6. (this is just example; there exist neither the author, nor the Journal, nor even the country specified)
- ↑ http://www.ark.ru/ins/zapoved/zapoved/logika.html Беклемишев Дмитрий Владимирович (профессор кафедры высшей математики Московского Физико-технического института.) Заметки о женской логике. Издание 3, исправленное и дополненное. Цитируется по состоянию на 2012 год. (In Russian)
Keywords
Female logic, logics, Place of science in the human knowledge, Relifion, TORI, Philosophy,
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https://mizugadro.mydns.jp/t/index.php?title=TORI_axioms&oldid=30204
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Primary sources came from the Registry of Deeds. This article will help you find and extract the original primary sources from your secondary and tertiary sources. Primary research gives you a lot of specific results. If you find one or two good recent studies, you can identify some important earlier studies simply by going through the bibliographies of those articles. Hypothesis: Fruit flies are attracted to bananas when they are ripe. These have precise statistical meanings.
Papers usually start with an introduction-- an overview to set the stage for the research. References, a Bibliography or List of Works Citedindicates a literature review and shows other studies and works that were consulted. A review article is a secondary source. Remembering this information helps in deciding whether it is a primary or secondary source. Education cannot possibly be divorced from ethics. About Editage Insights Editage Insights offers a wealth of free academic research and publishing resources and is a one-stop guide for authors and others involved in scholarly publishing.
The results may also be broader than your company's niche, making it difficult to help inform your business decisions. Sources include populations schedules and secondary sources. While these articles usually start with a brief literature review of previous and similar research, the rest of the article focuses on the authors' original research. Obviously everyone has a different answer to that question. In the example of your website, once the exploratory research identifies the problem, that your website sales decreased due to difficulties navigating the site, you would use specific research to test reactions to a new layout that is easier to navigate.
The end of the war, however, led to women resuming their traditional roles within the home and a decline in the importance of childcare. For example, an author might discuss works by Researcher A and Researcher B and how people with pets typically acknowledge having stress. As indicated on a previous page, Peer-Reviewed Journals also include non-primary content. Once you have narrowed down your target group, you can do lower cost versions of primary market research, such as sending out surveys or questionnaires. If there is no abstract at all, that in itself may be a sign that it is not a primary resource. Guide to Writing Your Secondary Research Paper Your Research Report should be divided into sections with these headings: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results.
Hi Jennifer: A colleague sent me this link to the guide for reading a scientific paper. Some other primary sources are letters, films, short stories, plays, poems, photographs, court cases, journal articles, newspaper events, and speeches. It also unearths some facts about how beaches were used as a means for climbing the socio-economic ladder and segregation. Secondary scientific literature is generally contained in works such as books, chapters or review articles. You may also need to go to the Supplementary Online Information file to find some of the results. For instance, secondary research often takes the form of the results from two or more primary research articles and explains what the two separate findings are telling us. How To Read a Scientific Paper:.
Secondary sources tend to come second in the publication cycle. How to Write a Research Paper on Primary Education This page is designed to show you how to write a research project on the topic you see to the left. A review article on, say, genome-wide association studies from 2001 is not going to be very informative in 2013. If it were a photocopy of the painting, then it would be a secondary source. Primary Sources are directly taken from an individual or group of individuals, while secondary sources take information from an individual or group and analyzes the topic. Go read , then go back to my last post and read one of the papers that I linked to like and try to identify the null hypotheses in it.
For student researchers, review articles provide a great overview of the exisiting literature on a topic. It focuses on their occupations, places of employment and residence. It depends upon the relationship the writer has in the journal article. Usually all primary sources and citation sources are mentioned there. Do you agree with that? Sources include population schedules and maps. One major downside to primary market research is cost. Ethnic groups, occupations and assimilation are touched upon.
Systematic reviews determine an objective list of criteria, and find all previously published original experimental papers that meet the criteria; they then compare the results presented in these papers. The main primary sources used includes the 1900 and 1910 Census. Before you begin: some general advice Reading a scientific paper is a completely different process than reading an article about science in a blog or newspaper. Terminology will vary slightly from discipline to discipline and from journal to journal. However, as in science, much of philosophy vocabulary is specialized, meaning that you will not find the correct definition in regular dictionaries and encyclopedias. Research papers follow a particular format.
A study of the financial situation of the graduating class of 1910 is also featured. Sources include many captains logs, fishing journals, Census records and secondary sources. The research can include , , interviews, and observations. The authors should explain how they conducted their research. Primary education consists of the early years in the educational process, usually beginning at age 5 or 6 and continuing on until the sixth grade, when a child is eleven or twelve. In ProQuest databases, it looks like this: All of these results are generally primary research articles, but keep in mind that while all case studies are primary research, not all primary research is in the form of a case study, so you may be missing some primary research articles on your topic by searching this way. It studies, with the aide of books by Katz and Vinovskis and Beverly City and School documents, those who were opposed and for a school in Beverly.
Your articles must also be peer reviewed, and dissertations are not considered peer reviewed. Population schedules were relied on heavily in this students research. Secondary research is good when you need to understand a field better, as it brings in several articles that would be popular in the field. You can use a spreadsheet application or a handwritten list. Does it fit with your interpretation of the paper? Readers benefit from the expert's explanation and assessment of the validity and applicability of individual studies. Unfortunately, no giant chocolate family inheritances for me.
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http://lemurianembassy.com/primary-research-paper.html
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Amazon Echo (shortened to Echo and known colloquially as “Alexa”) is a brand of smart speakers developed by Amazon. Echo devices connect to the voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant service Alexa, which responds to the names “Alexa”, “Echo”, or “Computer”. The features of the device include: voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, and playing audiobooks, in addition to providing weather, traffic and other real-time information. It can also control several smart devices, acting as a home automation hub.
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https://www.smarthometimes.com/category/voice-assistants/amazon-echo-alexa/
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This is a cross-posting of Love My Echo‘s Alexa 101 post, which I posted to that site on 12/20/16.
There will be MANY more owners of Alexa-powered devices by the end of this month and it occurs to me that there are a few essential bits of information that most Alexa device owners find helpful, and I should probably pass them on this week: for both the givers and recipients.
Alexa Givers
1. Be sure to deregister any Alexa devices you’ve purchased from your own Amazon account.
Unless you checked that little “this is a gift” box when you ordered it, that Alexa device was automatically registered to your Amazon account. If it’s still registered to your Amazon account, the recipient of your gift won’t be able to register it to their own account. Of course, if you’re intending to run the device for the recipient (e.g., an aging or disabled person), then you’ll want to keep it registered to your own account. Otherwise:
Go to Amazon > Your Account > Manage Your Content and Devices > Devices tab, and look for the new Alexa device(s) there. To deregister a device, click it to select and in its detail panel, click the deregister link.
2. Reassure the recipient there’s no Alexa service to sign up for, and no monthly subscription or service fees—beyond what the recipient is already paying for their existing WiFi connection.
This is a common misconception among people who don’t already own Alexa-enabled devices: that some kind of subscription or fee-based service is required to make the device work.
3. When you get tired of answering the recipient’s questions about Alexa and the device, send ’em here!
Specifically, use the email sharing link at the top of this post to send them a link to this post. Direct them to the Alexa Help Desk page and the The Basics post archive. If they like to have fun with Alexa, tell ’em to check out the Easter Eggs archive too: that’s where all the past Stupid Alexa Tricks posts are stored.
If they can’t find the information they’re seeking on the site, while I can’t help with individual troubleshooting and setup scenarios (for that they need to call Amazon, see #3 in the Alexa Recipients section below), and while I can’t say what Amazon’s future plans are for Alexa and Alexa devices (they don’t make that information public), I do answer other questions via email. They can use the Love My Echo Contact Form to shoot me an email.
Alexa Recipients
1. Be sure to read the Getting Started insert that comes with the device: it’s short, and provides an up-to-date overview of Alexa functionality.
Alexa is an impressive piece of high tech wizardry, and you’ll get much more and better use of her if you start by getting the lay of the land.
2. Having trouble with Alexa mobile app installation? Use the web app in a browser instead.
The Alexa device instructions will tell you to install the Alexa mobile app and use it to set up your device, but you can also go to the web browser version of the Alexa app and complete setup there. You don’t really have to install the mobile version of the Alexa app at all. Note that you’ll be prompted to login to your Amazon account in the Alexa web app, just the same as if you’d used the mobile app, but it’s safe because the web app is an amazon.com site.
3. Having trouble with setup and connection to WiFi? Call Amazon Alexa/Echo Tech Support (1-877-375-9365 – 3am to 10pm PST, 7 days). Yes, they will be there, even on Christmas Day or New Year’s Eve.
Better still, during periods when Amazon expects there be a lot of new device owners or digital service users—Christmas week, for example—they staff up those support departments to ensure no one will be left hanging on hold for hours.
4. You don’t have to be a Prime member or have a paid subscription to any particular streaming music service to listen to music on your Alexa device.
There are numerous free services, and free versions of services, Alexa supports by default. Click here to see Amazon’s help topic about listening to music and media on Alexa (Amazon UK customers click here).
5. In the U.S., Alexa can read Kindle books that have Text-to-Speech (TTS) enabled.
This option is set by the publisher so it’s not available on all Kindle books, but where TTS is enabled Alexa can read the book to you, so long as you know the title. Click here for Amazon’s help topic about reading Kindle books with Alexa.
6. Are there two household members with separate Amazon accounts, and each wants to maintain a separate Alexa profile so Alexa can keep your music libraries, to-do lists, custom settings and so on separate?
See my post about how to set up a second Alexa profile: Yes, You CAN Access Another Household Member’s Music Library On Your Echo. It’s also applicable to Dot and Tap.
7. Alexa does not do open-ended internet searches (and neither do any other digital assistants, regardless of what consumers think), but Alexa can still answer plenty of questions if you know how to ask her.
Alexa can answer plenty of factual questions without any special rules for asking, and when that doesn’t work asking Alexa to “Wikipedia [person, place, thing, event, etc.]” usually will.
There’s a lot Alexa can answer with a plain question, like—say the wake word first, if using a Dot or Echo—: “how many pints in a gallon”, “what’s the tallest mountain on Earth”, “what’s the temperature on the Moon”, “what’s the population of New York City”, “what’s the current time in [city and country anywhere in the world]”, “when will sunset be on [date, up to one year in advance]”, “when will sunrise be on [date, up to one year in advance]”, and so on.
Among other things, Alexa can do math (e.g., “what’s 2,463 divided by 14”), unit conversions (e.g., “convert 3 miles to kilometers”), tell you the current weather and weather forecast for anywhere in the world, tell you when the next full moon will be, tell you how many days it will be till a certain day (e.g., “how many days till Valentine’s Day”) up to a year in advance, and tell you what day of the week a certain date will fall on (e.g., “what day will June 3 be”) up to a year in advance.
Thanks to Yelp integration, Alexa has local business information too. Try queries like, “is there a supermarket nearby?” “is the post office open?” and so on. Alexa will send phone number and address details to the Alexa app—which, don’t forget.
8. Unless money is no object for you, resist the urge to go nuts with purchases of smart home devices Alexa can control: it’s still the early adopter phase for smart home, which means smart home devices are only going to get cheaper and less buggy, and offer more and better functionality going forward with each new generation.
I’m not saying you should avoid such purchases altogether, I’m just saying don’t get too heavily invested in any smart home devices that may eventually be discontinued, or be replaced by a totally new and not backward-compatible version of the hardware or software.
For example, early adopters of the Philips HUE smart home lighting system have their war stories. Many invested heavily in the first generation HUE system specifically because Philips advertised it as compatible with several non-Philips smart bulbs, which were less expensive than the Philips-branded bulbs, and were shocked when a software update yanked support for the third-party bulbs. You can read my full post about it here.
Stories like that are why it’s safest to invest only in relatively inexpensive, individual pieces of smart home tech that don’t require you to buy an entire system. The only smart home devices I’ve bought so far are a few LIFX multicolor smart bulbs (Amazon UK customers click here for white version of bulb), and I’m eyeing the TP-Link Smart Plugtoo (Amazon UK customers click here). These devices don’t cost an arm and a leg, don’t require installation and setup of a whole, complex system, are natively supported by Alexa, and will still work as “dumb” devices if support for their smart features is ever pulled in the future.
9. Unless you have a photographic memory, resist the urge to enable a bunch of Alexa skills right away.
You need to know the correct command to launch each one, so it’s best to try them out two or three at a time. It’s easy enough to disable those you ultimately decide against, and then you can enable new ones. There are literally thousands of skills available, so expect to take your time exploring the Skills tab in the Alexa mobile and web apps.
Once you start using Alexa skills, check out this post about universal Alexa commands, which includes a list of universal skill commands.
10. Get ready for change.
Alexa gets smarter and better with each new software update, but each new software update has the potential to change existing functionality too. Amazon’s Alexa engineers are hard at work making Alexa’s comprehension of plain English better and more flexible, and when they update Alexa with a new, simpler version of a command you’re used to using, the old version of the command may not work anymore or may give a different result.
Be prepared to experiment with slightly different wording when a tried and true command suddenly stops working, and know that when it happens, it’s because Alexa’s going through some growing pains—but it also means she’s getting smarter! Click here to read my post about Alexa’s growing pains with respect to smart home devices, which offers some tips to ensure your smart home setup will be only minimally impacted by future Alexa software updates.
11. Subscribe to Love My Echo’s email list to get tips, tricks, Stupid Alexa Tricks, Alexa news, freebies and more each week.
It’s free, you can unsubscribe at any time, I do not share my subscribers’ information with anyone else, I do my best to be inclusive of UK Alexa users, and there’s even the option to subscribe only to a weekly digest that goes out on Saturdays, or to a once-weekly post directed toward those who are interested in topics related to Alexa software development. Click here to subscribe, so you’ll always be up to date with the latest Alexa help and information.
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https://dmediamom.com/2016/12/20/love-echos-alexa-101-anyone-giving-getting-alexa-device/
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California lawmakers introduced a bill that would limit how manufacturers of smart speakers and digital assistants collect recordings.
The Anti-Eavesdropping Act, which cleared its first committee this week, prohibits saving, storing, or sharing of audio recordings without explicit consent from the user.
“Recent revelations about how certain companies have staff that listen in to private conversations via connected smart speakers further shows why this bill is necessary to protect privacy in the home,” Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham (R-San Luis Obispo), the bill’s author, said in a statement published by The Mercury News.
Bloomberg last month shocked no one with the news that thousands of Amazon employees around the world listen in on Echo owners’ conversations (allegedly to improve the technology).
More troubling is the fact that workers can also access location information of Alexa users and look up their home or office address.
The California bill—introduced in February by Cunningham—defines “smart speaker devices” as a wireless speaker and voice command device with an integrated virtual assistant “that offers interactive actions and hands-free activation.”
Should the legislation pass, it would severely handicap services like Amazon’s Alexa, Siri from Apple, and Google Assistant (among a handful of others).
The latter told Mercury News that it is “monitoring” the bill.
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https://tbltechnerds.com/california-wants-to-limit-storage-of-smart-speaker-recordings
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As the name suggests, voice-controlled devices can be controlled using one or more of the smart assistants (virtual assistants or intelligent personal assistants) currently available. These include Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri, and Microsoft Cortana.
This is just a selection from the range of voice-controlled devices available from Unilet Sound & Vision. Please do visit or get in touch to discuss your requirements, or to arrange a demonstration.
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https://unilet.net/product-category/voice-controlled/
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HomeKit is a software framework by Apple that lets users set up their iOS Device to configure, communicate with, and control smart-home appliances. By designing rooms, items, and actions in the HomeKit service, users can enable automatic actions in the house through a simple voice dictation to Siri or through apps.
Google Home
Google Assistant is an artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistant developed by Google that is primarily available on mobile and smart home devices. Unlike the company’s previous virtual assistant, Google Now, the Google Assistant can engage in two-way conversations.
Alexa Assistant
Alexa is a voice-controlled virtual assistant. She can play audio, control your smart home, answer questions and engage your favorite services to keep you organized, informed, safe, connected and entertained.
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https://microflow.mobi
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TechCrunch TechCrunch is a group-edited blog that profiles the companies, products and events defining and transforming the new web.
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- Best early Prime Day 2021 deals: Echo Buds $80, Kasa Smart Plug $7.50 and more - CNETby Rick Broida on June 17, 2021 at 2:05 pm
Amazon has already slashed prices on lots of products. Find out which ones are worth grabbing now.
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- Amazon Echo Show 5 (2nd gen) review: Still better than an Echo Dot - CNETby Dale Smith on June 16, 2021 at 8:13 pm
If you need a full-featured Alexa smart screen, get a bigger Echo Show 8. But if all you want is an inexpensive Alexa speaker, spring for an Echo Show 5.
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- Best Alexa devices for 2021: Ring, Wyze, August and more - CNETby David Priest on June 15, 2021 at 11:00 pm
The voice assistant on your Amazon Echo devices can do more than tell jokes. It can control your whole house.
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http://stuffworks.com/
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Connecting Your Alexa Device To Wi
You should have already downloaded and installed the Alexa app by now. If not, please do so via the App Store for iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch devices and for Android.
If this is your first Alexa-enabled device, you may not need to take steps 2-4 below. Instead, you will be prompted to begin setup once the app has been launched.
Enter your Amazon account credentials and press Sign In.
If prompted, tap the Get Started button.
Select the name associated with your Amazon account from the list provided, or choose I’m someone else and enter the correct name.
You now might be asked to give Amazon permission to access your Contacts and Notifications. This is not necessary to connect your device to Wi-Fi, so select either Later or Allow depending on your individual preference.
Tap on the Alexa menu button, represented by three horizontal lines and located in the upper left-hand corner. When the drop-down menu appears, select the Settings option.
Tap the Add New Device button.
Choose the appropriate device type from the list .
Choose the specific model you want to set up .
Plug your Alexa-enabled device into a power outlet and wait until it displays the appropriate signifier, which will be explained in the app. If your device is already plugged in, you may have to press and hold its Action button. For example, if you’re setting up an Amazon Echo the light ring on the top of the device should turn orange. Once you’ve determined that your device is ready, select the Continue button.
How To Reset 3rd And 4th Generation Echo Echo Dot
1. Press and hold the Action button for about 25 seconds until the light ring turns orange. The light ring will then briefly turn blue.
2. Wait for the light ring to turn off and on again. It should then light up orange, which indicates its in setup mode.3. Open the Alexa app on your smartphone or tablet, to connect your device to a Wi-Fi network and register it to your Amazon account.
How To Reset 1st
1. Locate the reset button, which will be a small hole near the base of the device.
2. Use a paper clip to press and hold the Reset button, until the light ring on your Echo device turns orange, and then blue.
3. Wait for the light ring to turn off and on again. It should be orange, which indicates its in setup mode.
4. Open the Alexa app on your smartphone or tablet, to connect your device to a Wi-Fi network and register it to your Amazon account.
Also Check: How Do I Find My Optimum Wifi Password
Move The Amazon Echo Away From Wi
Imagine an invisible line between your Amazon Echo and your router, taking note of everything that it crosses. If the connection goes through a wall, it may be worth positioning the router or the Amazon Echo to avoid it, as the wall may be interfering with the signal.
Likewise, if there are any metal objects or Wi-Fi-enabled devices in the way, move them out of the way or position your Echo and router around them. These also can mess up your connection and make it spotty.
Related: Why Is My Wi-Fi So Slow? Here’s How to Fix It
Six Things To Try To Fix An Amazon Echo That Has No Internet Connection
ByJim Martin, Editor| 03 Nov 2020
Alexa is Amazons digital assistant and whether you love her or loathe her, she is undoubtedly part of your household and called upon whenever you want to listen to music, get a weather forecast or turn on the kitchen lights.
For the most part Amazon Echo speakers and smart displays are trouble-free if you discount all the times Alexa responds to your question with Hmm. I dont know that one.
If shes refusing to answer anything and complaining that she cant connect to Wi-Fi, heres what to do to try and fix the situation.
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How To Connect Alexa To Other Smart Devices
If you get a new connected smart light bulb, security camera, smart lock or pretty much any other smart home gadget, Alexa can likely talk to it, too. As long as the device is Alexa-compatible, just head to the Alexa app.
Once the app is open, tap Devices, then tap the little More button in the upper right hand corner of the app. A menu will slide up from the bottom of the screen, and you’ll be able to add devices by tapping — you guessed it — Add Device. From here, select the smart home device you want to add and follow the specific onscreen directions for your new gadget.
Click On The Wifi Network To Disconnect
In the device menu, you should be able to see the name of your WiFi connection that your Alexadevice is connected to.
To disconnect the device, tap or click on the WiFi networks name.
Doing so should disconnect you from that network.
However, this process doesnt always go as smoothly as youd expect as sometimes, it may take a few tries before finding the network name youre looking for.
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Does Alexa Run Off Wi
All Alexa devices must be connected to a WiFi network for optimal functionality. you ask Alexa a question or speak with a voice command over your WiFi network, an audio recording is sent back to Amazon. Next, Alexa will scan for your question or Alexa will fulfill the request after sending it back to your device over WiFi.
Does Alexa Need The Internet
Alexa is a smart home device that is able to play your favorite music, control your smart home devices, tell you jokes, and much more. But none of that is going to be possible without an internet connection.
Related: What Is Alexa and What Does Alexa Do?
Each command you verbally give Alexa is sent to the Amazon cloud for processing. It’s then sent back to your Echo with the appropriate response. All of that process is done using your Wi-Fi connection.
Without the internet, Alexa will have trouble responding to your commands and performing the right actions. It’s important you connect your device to Wi-Fi as soon as you plug it in.
Your Alexa device is capable of performing specific tasks without Wi-Fi, like Bluetooth features, but the rest of its features will be restricted.
Also Check: Optimum How To Change Wifi Password
Google Discounts Pixel 6 Nest & Pixel Buds In Limited
The capability is rolling out first to people with routers from Eero. Eero offers smart routers with more coverage than most provided by internet service providers, plus mesh networking range extenders for larger spaces. Support for TP-Link, ASUS, ARRIS SURFboard, and Linksys routers will roll out in the coming months, an Amazon representative told me via email.
This is part of Amazons plans to make smart homes actually smart and actually easy to use.
Turning on smart lights is great, but if you have to get your phone, download an app, open an account, and then turn your lights on … how smart is that actually?
A lot of what we’ll do in the near term is make even complex tasks simple, Rausch told me a week ago . If we can make it super simple to just kick something off and end an action, that’s a way of taking what was automateable and help it fit into our lives much more elegantly.
Thats a big piece of the plan for Alexa, Rausch said: making what is currently doable but hard simple, easy, and ambient via simple voice commands.
Anyone who has set up smart home devices even once knows that there is inevitably more functionality available than you can easily use or access.
Once youve set Alexa WiFi Access up, youll be able to pause and un-pause WiFi for specific people and for specific devices, set up groups of devices to turn off , schedule WiFi access times, and control guest access.
Use Alexa and want to try it?
Setting Up A Brand New Echo
If youve just received a new Echo, the first thing youll want to do is hook it up to your Wi-Fi connection so you can start enjoying it. If youd like to purchase one, theyre available on
Amazon Echo completely relies on the Internet to work properly so expect your Internet connection or your WiFi to be a place to look if your Echo doesnt work properly.
Before you get started, make sure your Echo is plugged in. It may not be fully charged, and you do not want it to die during the setup process. Wait until the light ring on the top of the Echo turns orange before proceeding.
Given that its one of the more common issues, confirming that the device is fully connected to a power source is near the top of the troubleshooting list.
Next, go through the steps to connect to WiFi and troubleshoot connectivity problems:
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How To Change Wifi On Alexa
1. Open your Alexa app on your iPhone, iPad, or Android.
2. Tap Devices in the bottom toolbar.
3. Select your device.
4. Tap on the WiFi network and then tap Change.
5. A screen will ask if your device is plugged in and displaying an orange light. If it isn’t displaying an orange light, push and hold the Action button on your device until the orange light turns on. The button is the one with a dot on it.
6. Once your device is in pairing mode, as signified by the orange light, your app should now show a list of WiFi networks. Tap the one you want to use. You will have to authenticate it by typing in the network’s password.
Open Your Alexa App Or The Alexa Site
Some Alexa-enabled devices, such as most Amazon Echo accessories, do not have a keyboard or a screen you can use to tinker with settings.
If your Alexa device has no screen, youll need to access and change your WiFi settings through the Alexa app or website.
The steps in this article will allow you to disconnect Alexa from any device.
Firstly, open up the Alexa app on your smartphone or tablet.
Alternatively, you can go to the in a computer browser. If prompted, sign in with your credentials.
Also Check: How To Find The Wifi Password On Mac
How To Connect Alexa To Wifi With Or Without The App
Contents
One of the first things you need to do after getting an Alexa device is to connect it to a WiFi network. So, if you change your WiFi network or try to use your Alexa device in a new place with a different WiFi network, your device just wont work. Heres how to connect your Alexa device to a new WiFi network with or without the app.
If youre setting up your Alexa device for the first time, check out our guide on .
How To Connect An Amazon Echo And Alexa To A New Wi
If you want to change the network that your Echo is connected to, you don’t need to reset it and go through the setup again.
Start the Alexa app again, but this time, go to Devices. Go to Echo & Alexa, select your Echo, then tap Change next to Wi-Fi Network.
Now the app will ask you if your Amazon Echo has an orange light. If you’ve set up your Amazon Echo in the past, it won’t show an orange light anymore. But you can force the Echo into setup mode by holding down the Action button on the unit. Look for a button on your Echo with a single dot on it.
After you hold down the Action button for five to ten seconds, your Echo should show an orange light and Alexa will tell you that it’s in setup mode. Now you can change the network in the app.
Image Gallery
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How To Reset 2nd
1. Press and hold the Microphone off and Volume down buttons at the same time for about 20 seconds until the light ring turns orange. The light ring will then briefly turn blue.
2. Wait for the light ring to turn off and on again. It should then light up orange, which indicates its in setup mode.
3. Open the Alexa app on your smartphone or tablet, to connect your device to a Wi-Fi network and register it to your Amazon account.
Does Alexa Need Wifi
Alexa devices need a WiFi connection to function properly. When you ask Alexa a question or use a voice command, an audio recording is sent to Amazons cloud over your WiFi network. Then it is processed and sent back to your device over WiFi so Alexa can answer your question or fulfill your request.
Recommended Reading: Resetting Blink Module
Manually Reset 1st Generation Echo
- You can find the reset button on the device, which is essentially a tiny button in a hole available underneath the device.
- You can use an unbent paper clip to press and hold the reset button until you first see an orange light that turns blue after some time.
- Once you see the blue light, you can release the button.
- Next, youll first see the light turn off and then on again after a couple of seconds.
- Once the light comes back, it turns orange, indicating that the device is in setup mode.
- Since you have reset the device, you must register it to your existing Amazon account or create a new one, depending upon your preference.
- Lastly, you must open the Alexa app and connect the device to the desired Wifi network.
Getting Your Amazon Echo And Alexa Online
If you’re struggling to get your Amazon Echo online, don’t worry. It’s very easy to get your Amazon Echo connected to your Wi-Fi, regardless of whether it’s your first time setting up the device or if you change want to switch the smart speaker to another router.
Now that your Amazon Echo is ready to go, why not enable some skills and get the most out of your smart speaker?
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https://wifiprotips.com/how-to-disconnect-alexa-from-wifi/
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Google Home Mini is a small device voice-controlled device that can perform various functions. In this guide, we've written everything you want to know about this device. What is it? How to...
Category: Google Home
Does Google Home Use a Lot of Data: Monitor and Minimize Data Amount
Among many smart devices, Amazon Alexa or Google Home is the most crucial point to connect all the smart devices. Further, those are the ones that will stay online all the time. Therefore, it...
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https://brainyhousing.com/category/faq/google-home/
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Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links.
As an English teacher, I totally understand why voice-triggered “assistants” feels like something straight out of 1984. It might be too soon to use AI for anything confidential or sensitive.
But as a technology nerd, I do see potential here for classroom use.
“Hey Siri, remind me at 8:00PM to read Justin’s essay.”
“Alexa, what’s the weather like outside?”
“Hey Google, play my Classroom Writing playlist.”
How I Started
Recently, my husband and I have been dabbling with home automation, such as the Ring doorbell, a front door lock, and certain lights/outlets with timers. It’s particularly helpful to safely allow babysitters into our home (or those moments of “Did I lock the front door?”). Throughout this experience, I’ve been thinking a lot about what the potential for the classroom might be.
Things to Know Up Front
Before you buy (or use) any kind of automation technology and/or virtual assistants, you should know that…
1. You’ll need decent WiFi for certain Siri/Alexa/Google features.
If your school doesn’t have reliable internet, you won’t be able to do as much.
2. You’ll want to think through rules and exceptions for use.
I explain this more below, but you’ll have to consider putting away your devices during certain scenarios, such as tests (so students can’t ask it for an answer).
3. I’m not an expert!
These are just my personal experiences. I’m not an expert at either device, and this post is not an ad.
Trial #1: Alexa (Amazon Echo Dot)
My husband and I were gifted an Echo Dot, and we primarily use it for home automation voice commands, like telling it to start the Roomba, turn the kitchen lights to 30% brightness, or lock the front door.
I took one to my classroom as an experiment. Here’s how that went.
Positives
- I really liked being able to ask Alexa questions. For example, it would be helpful, right before recess, to ask her, “Alexa, what’s the temperature outside?” or “Alexa, define egregious.” As an English teacher, the latter is pretty fun.
- You can ask Alexa to set a timer.
- My students and I like to play JEOPARDY!
- If you say “Alexa, good morning,” then she responds with not only a greeting but a trivia fact, such as informing you that it’s National Dictionary Day, which my homeroom students found amusing in the morning.
- I never set up any Amazon music with it, but in theory you could play music through it.
- If you bought the right outlets, you could have some fun with statements like “Alexa, turn the lights to 50%.” However, that would be pricey.
Downsides
- She doesn’t always hear my voice across the room on the first try, such as when the classroom is too noisy or if music is playing nearby. I need to stand close enough to it and/or ask the classroom to quiet down. HOWEVER, I’m sure this would be an issue with other brands too, so that’s not necessarily a weakness of the Echo.
- I had ONE student who wasn’t mature enough to leave it alone and use it at the correct times. He always wanted to be near it, touch it, or ask it mildly inappropriate questions. I had to unplug it for a while for that reason. I recommend setting classroom norms and consequences if using any Alexa-enabled Amazon device.
Trial #2: Siri (via Apple Watch)
My iPhone has to stay out of sight during the school day, but I can wear an Apple Watch.
Positives
- I love being able to customize the face of my Watch. I chose to have the date, time, weather, exercise rings, and to-do list at a glance. These enable me to quickly tell students at-a-glance if they need a coat to go outside or not.
- I most frequently use it in the classroom as a timer. My students were always amused whenever I said “Hey Siri, set a timer for 2 minutes”, and they’d excitedly start the task because somehow the Siri timer was more motivating than looking at the clock on the wall.
- It’s super helpful for me to read text messages and see phone calls. (For example, I NEED TO KNOW if my son’s daycare is calling, and having the Watch helps me know which messages I can ignore without getting out my cell phone in front of students.)I also use Siri to add reminders, either to the Reminder app or my Todoist app. If I’m standing next to a student’s desk and not near my computer, it’s extremely helpful to just say “Hey Siri, remind me at 8:00pm to update Google Classroom” or “Remind me to write a recommendation letter for Justin.”
Downsides
- If there’s no WiFi, Siri has fewer capabilities.
- Occasionally, my Siri doesn’t listen the first time. That might just be my poor, heavily-used watch (ha) and not a product norm.
Honorable Mention: Google
I obsessively use Google Apps, but I haven’t purchased or tried any Google assistants yet. I imagine they would behave similarly to the pros and cons listed above.
The Bottom Line
In certain scenarios, having an “assistant” in the classroom feels like a helping hand. You just have to find the right one for your budget and what you want to accomplish.
What do you think?
Tell me in the comments!
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https://www.secondarysara.com/2019/06/using-siri-and-alexa-in-classroom.html
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So for Christmas 2017 I got 2 Google Homes and I was really excited because I’m really into the idea of home automation and virtual assistants. The first chance I got I plugged them in, downloaded the app, and got them set up. After messing around with the units a little I went ahead and got the Philips Hue lights set up and grouped them into rooms, then got them connected to my Google Home and was able to control them with my voice, and I was happy.
After little use I started to notice some issues and figured I was just doing something wrong and didn’t think much more about it. After a while things weren’t getting better and I started to do a little research and found that I wasn’t the only one having these problems, in fact not only are others having these problems but it seems like Google isn’t fixing them either. You would think a year after the launch they would have fixed some of these problems but it seems the opposite, they’ve only made them slightly worse.
The Microphone
I understand this is a hardware problem and Google would need to recall the units to fix it but I’ve found that I have to almost yell for my Google Home (GH) to hear me when I’m standing just a few feet away. I understand that I have a slightly deep voice and that I have to speak up but even then I get no response for either of the GH’s. And I know I’m not the only one, I read in several reviews that others had the same problem, some even put a GH and an Amazon Echo side by side and called out to each one and the Echo could hear the the person while the GH couldn’t.
Music
The main reason I went with GH over Amazon’s Echo was access to my Google Play Music account, I wanted the ability to just say a song in my library and hear it. For some reason when I ask for a song from my library, say Motorhead Ace of Spades, GH instead say’s “ok check out this Motorhead playlist on Google Play Music”, not the song I asked for. I’ve even tried building playlists in my account and even then when I say play my Motorhead playlist GH comes back with “ok check out this Motorhead playlist on Google Play Music”. To be fair on some rare occasions it has played the song I’ve requested, but it is rare. I read some reviews saying that they can get music purchased through the Play store to play but not music they’ve uploaded, so since I have both bought and uploaded music in my account I tested it and got the same “ok check out this (insert band name) playlist on Google Play Music”.
What’s my solution? Well if I only what to hear one song while I’m doing something quick I just give up and do the task in silence, but if I working on something for an extended period of time I end up opening the Play music app on my phone and casting to my GH. If I had known this is what I would be doing I would have just bought a Chromecast Audio and used some of the old speakers I have instead.
I have seen one fix for this and it’s been hit or miss in my experience, first you go into the GH app and un-select Google Play Music as you music source, then ask you GH to play a song, it will say something about there’s no music source selected, then you select Google Play Music and ask it to play the song and it would work. This has worked for me, not every time but some times, but if I do this and get it working, listen to some music, then go away for a few hours, when I come back I have to do it all over again. So even this fix isn’t worth the hassle.
Google Services
What really amazes me, even though it wasn’t a selling point for me at first, is that GH doesn’t really work with other Google services. Sure it can read my calendar to me, and perform basic searches, and remind me of events, but yet I can’t add to my calendar, and I can’t edit Google Keep notes just to name a few. The fact that a Google product doesn’t work with other Google services right out of the box makes me question Google commitment to the GH project as a whole, when I see reports of the Amazon Echo working with Google services better than the GH I just think they don’t really care about the GH and have moved on now that they’ve got their money from us suckers.
Alarms
I’m a deep sleeper and I need a really loud really annoying alarm, I have an alarm set on my phone that has sirens, horns, guns firing, and all kinds of loud noises, GH’s alarm is a soft melody that I’ll just sleep right though. Why is it I have been able to change the alarm sound of my phone for years but yet GH won’t let me change the alarm sound? How hard is that?
Ok/Hey Google is annoying and sets off multiple devices
I absolutely hate saying “Ok google” or “Hey Google” every time I want to active a GH, I’ve actully started to hate saying it so much that when I want to turn on lights and my hands are free, I just pull out my phone and do it though the app instead. Why Google hasn’t come up with something like Alexa, or Siri yet dumbfounds me. Seriously Google just let me say “computer” or “Jarvis” or something!
Another issue with OK/Hey Google is that it also actives my phone. My phone is either on my desk or on my nightstand and in both places it’s right next to my GH, so I’ve resorted to turning off the hot word on my phone since I wasn’t using it that much anyway just so I can stop activating the phone every time I active my GH. Again Google new hot word.
Conclusion
I had high hopes for Google Home, intelligent conversion would be nice if it worked solidly (I’ve had it work once or twice). Sure having Google search built in is nice but most of the time I end up looking things up on my phone or computer anyway since I want a more in depth answer than what GH can give me, so no real advantage there either. If I could ask a question, get an answer and say “send results to my phone” and have a search page opened up when I unlock my phone, then it would be useful.
I understand that when it launched Google Home was version one, but it’s not like it was the first to the market, Google Home should have been at least as good as Amazon’s Echo if not better, but sadly it seems that the people at Google were more interested in shipping a half backed product than actually competing and making a great product. The really sad part, for me at least, is I was once a huge fan of Google, I thought Google was the best and jumped on everything they did, but after getting burned multiple times I’m starting to understand that I need to take everything from Google with a grain of salt, and that the old joke stands true “Google is a bunch of engineers looking for a manager” which is sad because if they would get their head out of the clouds trying to create the lasted and greatest, and instead just focus on improving what they already have, Google could do great things.
In the end would I recommend anyone buy a Google Home? No, at least not now. For now go with Amazon’s Echo, I know I’m looking to make the switch.
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https://oppy1984.com/my-disappointment-with-google-home/
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Editor’s Note: CSCU Director of Payments Strategy, Lou Grilli, presented at the Reach Conference in November 2016 on the topic of payments, and how they are changing with the advent of the internet of things. The following is a summary of his presentation.
The internet of things (IoT) is changing payments, that is, in the IoT, payments "disappear" behind devices or become invisible. What do credit unions need to do to remain relevant in the IoT? First, it’s important to level set on what exactly IoT is.
IoT is widely misunderstood and has many different definitions. The person credited with coining the phrase, Kevin Ashton, spoke at the Payments Innovation Project earlier in 2016, and provided a thoughtful grounding to understand the concept.
Ashton pointed out that since computers were first invented, interaction was between the computer and a person. Punch cards, later keypads, and more recently speech, was how humans spoke to the computer, while paper reports and computer monitors were how the computer spoke with us. In 1999 there was research conducted at MIT in which computers independently interacted with other computers. These were not just networked computers, but one computer producing results and another computer independently reacting to those results. This led to devices interacting with other devices, and since then, the growth of these connected devices has been phenomenal. The Wall Street Journal, the Gartner group, and Cisco, each independently provide a prediction that by 2020, there will be 50 billion or more connected devices. And the economic driver behind this growth – according the Wall Street Journal report and the Gartner group is the $1.9 trillion dollars that’s at stake; this number is derived from cost savings, increased productivity, and selling these connected devices which presumably will make all of lives easier.
Almost any device with an on/off switch and intelligence can connect to IoT
While connected devices initially were full computers they now consist of seemingly anything that has an on/off button combined with intelligence and communications capability. The smart refrigerator, for example, is probably the most talked about connected device. The Samsung refrigerator, with an android tablet built-in the door, enables the busy family to remotely see inside, electronically leave notes for each other, and most relevant to payments, keep the current shopping list and with the tap of a button, send the shopping list off, along with payment credentials, to an online grocery delivery service.
There are many other examples of connected devices, many having nothing to do with payments. The Nest smart thermostat knows when no occupants are home and saves electricity by adjusting the temperature. The smart door lock which allows the owner to get an alert if the door was left unlocked or remotely allow a repairman to enter without having to leave a hidden key under the mat.
These connected devices aren’t all talking with each other. There’s usually a central hub that acts as the central control point. The most popular home hub is “Alexa”, the name given to the Amazon Echo. If you watched the Super bowl earlier this year, you may remember Alec Baldwin showing off his new Amazon Echo to Dan Marino. He tells Alexa to stop the music, turn up the lights, and order a pair of Bresciani socks. The Amazon Echo has many capabilities. You can say “Alexa, pay my credit card bill in full”, or “Alexa, send $50 to my friend Bill with a note that says, “this is for my half of the golf lesson.”
Google just launched their version of a connected home hub, the Google Home. So now you can say “Okay Google, did I leave my garage door open” or “Okay Google, did I pay my rent this month?”
Devices answer questions and learn skills
These devices answer questions and perform actions by having what are called “skills” – these are application programmatic interfaces (API) provided by the lights, the stereo, the garage door opener, the bill pay vendor, the P2P application, etc, in order to turn up the lights, or send money to a friend, or pay a bill. These last item are a hint as to how the IoT is changing payments. We have always thought of payments in terms of an action made by a person. In the IoT, payments are made by a device. This change probably sounds more profound or futuristic than it really is. We have been using devices to make payments for a while now. Paying at Walgreen’s using Apple watch, or sticking an Amazon Dash button in the laundry room, and pushing the button to order more detergent, are examples of devices making payments.
But there is a change happening with the way payments are made in the IoT that is far more profound. Up until now, a payment is initiated by a person; it’s a person who is tapping the watch at the terminal in Walgreen’s, or pushing the button to order the detergent.
Move over humans. Connected devices are taking over.
With IoT, devices can initiate payments, without a person involved. A pool pump is monitoring the water flowing through the system and when the pH balance is out of limits, the pool pump requests service from a pool service company, specifies what chemicals are needed, and provides payment. The owner doesn’t need to be home. The owners may be gone for the summer, and the device is requesting service and making payments.
Many technologies still need to mature to make it easy to set up a connected home and allow compatibility across devices. With that said, there are a few technologies that are highly relevant to financial institutions that need to happen to make the payments price of the puzzle come together.
Three of those are tokenization, embedded commerce, and APIs.
What steps can credit unions take to remain relevant in the IoT?
This holiday shopping season some of your tech-savvy members will purchasing connected devices and home hubs. It is likely that the most financially savvy and your younger members will also jump in as early adopters of the technology. And if your members are not asking for this now, they soon will be. Because the internet of things, is quickly becoming the internet of payments.
Send your friend a link to this site.
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http://www.thepaymentsreview.com/the-internet-of-things-is-quickly-becoming-the-internet-of-payments
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is asking the Library of Congress to give owners of voice assistant devices like Amazon’s Echo, Google Home and other voice assistants the right to “jailbreak” the devices: freeing them from content control features designed to prevent users from running unauthorized code on those platforms.
Mobile
Smartphone Users Tracked Even with GPS, WiFi Turned Off
A team of researchers from Princeton has demonstrated that they can track the location of smartphone users even when location services like GPS and WiFi are turned off.
Episode 79: Hackable Nukes and Dissecting Naughty Toys
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:43 — 40.9MB)Subscribe: Android | Email | Google Podcasts | RSSIn this week’s Security Ledger Podcast episode, the UK -based policy think tank Chatham House warned last week that aging nuclear weapons systems in the U.S., the U.K. and other nations are vulnerable to cyber attacks that could be used to start a global conflagration. We talk with Eddie Habbibi of PAS Global about what can be done to secure hackable nukes. Also: with CES raging in Las Vegas last week, we go deep with security researcher Jay Harris on flaws in connected toys being sold to children.
Adult Themed Virtual Reality App spills Names, Emails of Thousands
Thousands of users of an adult virtual reality application risk having their personal information, including names and email addresses exposed, according to researchers in the UK.
Researchers: SCADA Mobile Apps Continue to Have ‘Shocking’ Number of Vulnerabilities
Despite their availability on mobile networks and thus increased exposure to outside security threats, SCADA apps remain highly insecure and vulnerable to attack, putting critical industrial control systems at immediate and increased risk, researchers at IOActive and Embedi have found.
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https://securityledger.com/category/technologies/mobile/page/2/
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With Christmas just around the corner, I have a feeling that many Tech lovers may be finding an Amazon Echo under their Tree. Well after having mine for over a year, I thought that I would tell you the five things that I use it for on a daily basis.
What is an Amazon Echo.
An Amazon Echo, is a smart Speaker created by Amazon that uses the Amazon Alexa Smart Assistant to not only provide you with useful information like the latest News, Sports Results and Weather, but can also stream Music, Call People, control your Home, and even play fun Games like Escape The Room.
Anyway, that’s enough of me rambling, here’s the five things that I use my Amazon Echo for on a daily basis.
1. Telling the Time.
With me being Visually Impaired I don’t wear a Watch, because as well as not being able to see most Watch Faces, I can’t stand the feeling of things being wrapped around my Wrist. I know that I can use my Phone to tell me the Time, but even though it’s usually only in my Pocket, I find it much easier to just say, “Alexa, What’s the Time?”. It can also tell me the time in different Countries, which is particularly useful for when I want to talk to one of my many friends around the World and don’t want to worry that i’m waking them up in the middle of the night.
2. Listening to Music or Audiobooks.
I absolutely love listening to Music and Audiobooks, and as well as being able to link it to services such as Amazon Music, Spotify, and TuneIn Radio to listen to thousands of Songs and Radio Stations, it’s also automatically linked to my Audible Account, which means that I can always finish a long day snuggled up in Bed listening to my latest Book.
3. Finding out the latest News and Weather.
Even though I like to know what’s going on in the World around me, listening to a News Reporter dragging out a story that only really needs to be a couple of minutes long makes me want to throw my Remote at the Wall. But with my Amazon Echo, I can get little Flash Briefings from services such as Sky and the BBC, and find out all the latest News in under sixty seconds. I also really like that I can ask “Alexa, What’s the Weather like today?” and be told the current Temperature, whether or not i’ll need a Coat, and even whether or not it’s going to Rain later.
4. Calling people.
Not only can I call anyone in the World who also has an Amazon Echo or the Amazon Alexa App on their Phone, but I can also call other Amazon Echo Devices in the House to find out things like what the Dogs were barking at, remind people to take the Bins out, and even to ask someone to fill the Kettle up for me.
5. Controlling my Home.
With the Amazon Echo you can also control other Smart Devices such as Lights, Door Locks, Thermostats, and even Kettles and Coffee Machines all by saying :Alexa, Turn the Lights on: or :Alexa, Lock the Front Door:. I really like that I can dim the Lights in my Room, schedule my Defuser to turn on, and even find my Phone when I inevitably lose it all without having to move a single Muscle.
There’s a lot more things that I use my Amazon Echo for on a daily Basis, but I thought that I would just tell you five of them.
Do you own an Amazon Echo too? What do you use yours for? What’s some of your favourite Amazon Alexa Skills? Please let me know down below.
This Post may contain Affiliate Links, but Posts are not Affiliate driven.
Luke x
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http://www.lukesamsowden.com/five-things-that-i-use-my-amazon-echo-for-on-a-daily-basis/
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The COVID-19 pandemic has made it vividly clear that personal technology is no longer optional, it is essential to daily life. As the world shut down, the internet made it possible to order food deliveries, stay in touch with loved ones, consult a doctor by video, work, and educate remotely. The empowering nature of this connectedness is more important than ever for people living with vision loss.
Patients often learn about the accessibility of their own devices through word of mouth. The ability to use the same popular products everyone else is using has its own healing properties. It restores a much-needed sense of normal, and it is an inclusive experience they can share with family and friends. Relatively easy adjustments to visual and audio settings can set the stage for uninterrupted use of personal technology across the spectrum of vision loss. Patients are often more resistant to assistive technology devices, because they are awkward, expensive, and, above all, stigmatizing. A mobile device or voice assistant is far more likely to elicit interest and enthusiasm. Personal technology from Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have built-in options for extensive visual and speech features that accommodate the needs of low-vision users.
Recent research has found that the number of older Americans with low vision is expected to double by 2050.1 However, the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) states, “the tragedy isn’t that people have lost vision, it’s that most believe nothing can be done to improve their quality of life.”2 In an effort to dispel this pervasive misconception, the AAO suggests that patients make small changes on their own that will have positive impact for themselves, and most notably it advises people to embrace technology like audiobooks and smart speakers.
If you are under the impression older people aren’t using technology, the data tell a different story. According to Pew Research, screen time has increased to over 4 hours per day for those above 60 years old.3 This trend is seen across genders and education levels. In 2000, 14% of individuals aged over 65 were internet users, and today the number has increased to 73% and is still growing fast. We can expect to see these numbers increase exponentially in a post-COVID environment. According to the Winter 2019 Smart Audio Report,4 60 million Americans have participated in the rapid adoption of smart speakers, averaging 2.6 per household for a total now exceeding 150 million. Much has been reported about the popularity of smart speakers and voice assistants among the visually impaired population. For the coming generation of older low-vision patients, this technology will be second nature.
In 2010, the 21st Century Communications & Video Accessibility Act was signed into law in the United States, mandating accessibility of internet browsers and mobile devices for visually impaired and blind users. The impact of these events cannot be understated: today, accessibility is an expectation, no longer an exception.
The game has changed significantly, and so must the conversation. Taking a moment to encourage your patients to explore and adjust the accessibility settings in their mobile devices and expanding their use of voice assistants is a small step that will pay big dividends. Early and active engagement in this process enables patients to continue using technology without skipping a beat. This knowledge and experience is enormously empowering to patients. By contrast, awaiting legal blindness as the entry point for vision rehabilitation services can create an insurmountable setback.
My perspective on accessibility is rooted in personal and professional experience. Diagnosed with Stargardt disease nearly 30 years ago at age 33, today my vision is reported as “counting fingers,” and because of technological advances, I have been able to continue to function productively. The accessible iPhone (with the VoiceOver built-in screen reader and Siri) is key to my success. On a daily basis, my device gives me access to the information my vision is unable to provide: email, texts, news, clock, contacts, reminders, calendar, weather, books, camera, music, podcasts, and, of course, phone calls. Dictation for messages turns speech to text. The Seeing AI app turns text to speech for quick and easy reading of signs and printed text anywhere. I lean heavily on the voice assistants for easy access to all kinds of information. Recognition of faces and driving of cars has yet to be widely compensated, but it’s not far off. Under social distancing and isolation mandates, I was well equipped to do my ordering online, work remotely, and participate in video conferencing.
Several basic features available on smart phones are invaluable to individuals with vision loss. Text size can be increased and bolded, screen brightness can be adjusted, content can be read out loud, messages can be dictated, and voice assistants (Siri, Google, and Alexa) can open apps, make calls, send messages, search the internet, and more. The painful learning curve associated with most new technology, in this case, is all but eliminated. Making patients aware of these basic features early can help them tremendously.
In 2009, Apple set a new standard for universal design with the first fully accessible iPhone for both visual and nonvisual users. Today iPhone is the most common and best multipurpose device used by people with vision loss. While the iPhone is the gold standard for vision accessibility and the favorite device by far for people with vision loss, the iPad is often adopted for reading books, newspapers, and magazines, as well as watching video on its larger screen. This list reflects an impressive array of settings and apps available for Apple iOS:
- VoiceOver full screen reader for nonvisual access
- Zoom magnifies entire screen
- Magnifier built in for up to 15x
- Improve color contrast
- Invert to white on black
- Color filters for legibility
- Adjust intensity and brightness of colors
- Speak Selection reads selected content aloud
- Speak Screen reads a page aloud from top to bottom
- Highlight content as it is spoken
- Typing feedback that is spoken
- Voices to select voice and set speaking rate
- Audio descriptions for video content
- FaceTime or other apps for video calls
Similar accessibility options are also available on Android devices from Google, Amazon, Samsung, and others; however, there is little consistency across these products, each having its own interface and unique assortment of options.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ACCESSIBILITY APPS
There are multiple apps available that can help individuals with vision loss. Apps that would have once cost a fortune are now free. Some examples are below:
- Seeing AI, by Microsoft for iOS, is an intelligent camera app that reads text, identifies products, people, currency, color, scenes, and handwriting.
- Soundscape by Microsoft for iOS, a map with 3D sound, provides background narration into earbuds from the left, right and center, telling users where they are, what’s around, and what’s ahead.
- LookOut, by Google for Android, is camera vision that delivers information in 3 modes: Explore describes your environment, Shopping reads product barcodes and currency, and Quick Read will read signs, labels, and mail.
- Google Maps Detailed Voice Guidance, by Google for iOS and Android, added a voice guidance feature for walking directions, in the app’s navigation settings.
- Aira (AI Remote Assistance), teams artificial intelligence with live human agents to help people with vision loss get around and get things done. The subscriber model combines both free and fee-based service options.
- Be My Eyes has 3 million volunteers signed up to assist 200 thousand visually impaired users when they need to borrow a pair of eyes or directly speak with technical support or customer service.
LIVE ACCESSIBILITY SUPPORT LINES
In addition to these features, an important and helpful resource is accessibility support phone lines5 that assist customers with vision loss to personalize their accessibility settings for maximum benefit. The specialized service is free of charge from Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, and there are no restrictions or limits. The ability to contact live expert support takes the guess work and frustration out of the equation, making a significant difference for visually impaired users.
- Alexa Technical Support: (877) 375-9365
- Amazon Accessibility Support: (888) 283-1678
- Apple Accessibility Support: (877) 204-3930
- Microsoft Accessibility Support: (800) 936-5900
- Google Accessibility Support: call on Be My Eyes app
- Google Home Support: (855) 971-9121
- Verizon Wireless Accessibility Support: (888) 262-1999
A key lesson from the ongoing COVID-19 crisis is that we must be prepared to function digitally. Retinal physicians can empower patients, with a new degree of urgency, to maintain a high level of proficiency with their personal devices, especially as telemedicine becomes an integral part of patient care. RP
REFERENCES
- Chan T, Friedman DS, Bradley C, Massof R. Estimates of incidence and prevalence of visual impairment, low vision, and blindness in the United States. JAMA Ophthalmol. 2018;136(1):12-19.
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https://www.retinalphysician.com/issues/2020/july-august-2020/helping-patients-maximize-low-vision-technology-on
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A couple of weeks ago, I got my hands on Google Home and immediately set out to use it and record my initial impressions. Now that I’ve given this odd little device a chance to prove its worth in my home, the time has come to finish the review. Out of the gate, I must confess to a little personal surprise at just how little my opinions have changed from the first 24 hours I had to spend with the device. As such, I’m not going to repeat everything I said in my first post. This is an addendum. I will touch on all of the subjects again and add details where there is more to say – because there is still a lot to say. Also, I want to thank the commenters on that post for bringing up subjects and questions. I’ve tried to address most of them here.
Look and design
The upper portion of Google Home is made entirely of white matte plastic with an off-angle slice across the top. Hidden within the plastic is a ring of multi-color LEDs that light up to show when Google Home is listening or working to complete a request. The bottom portion is dedicated to a speaker for music and responding to users, but it’s hidden inside an interchangeable shell. Google is selling these either with a fabric layer or solid metal.
That’s how you might describe Google Home, but it doesn’t really convey its design, which is a pretty tricky thing to explain. It’s a work of art in the realm of subtlety – both interesting and utterly forgettable. Everything about this device is designed to be easy to ignore. There are no shiny parts (unless you put on a metal base) and everything about it is non-descript. It even shares a couple of physical similarities to a Renuzit air freshener; and I’ve got no doubt that was an intentional decision to encourage people to glance at it and immediately dismiss it as something else.
This all serves to be a reminder that Google Home isn’t a conversation piece or a piece of tech to show off. It’s an appliance that you install and use. Period
Setup
I covered the setup procedure with my first impressions post, so I won’t repeat it here. After going through the setup a second time (adding Home to another room), I don’t know that I’d necessarily say setup is completely foolproof, but I would trust any average person to be able to get through the procedure without much stress.
There is one bit I would like to add since many people may not know it’s possible to create groups of multiple Chromecast Audio and Google Home devices and configure them to play in sync. Start in the Google Home app and open the Devices screen. Find one of the audio devices, open the overflow menu and tap Create group. Select the devices you want and give the group a name. Once that’s done, cast some audio to the group and listen for the one that’s ahead of the rest. Go to the overflow menu, Settings, Group delay correction. Follow the instructions and add a delay to each unit until you’re happy with the results. Thanks to RJ and blkandblu for bringing this up in the comments.
An all-voice interface
The big thing that truly separates Home from our phones is that it completely and absolutely relies on voice commands. It has no screen and only a couple of very basic touch elements. Fortunately, Google has basically nailed it. Interacting through voice alone is so good that it crosses into that territory where it’s a bit unbelievable.
Home has an uncanny ability to understand almost everything I’ve ever said to it.
Home has an uncanny ability to understand almost everything I’ve ever said to it. As I said in my first post, it took very little time to become comfortable speaking to Google Home without raising my voice. I’ve even grown accustomed to speaking at just slightly louder volumes when I’m in a completely different room or I’ve got music playing above the lowest volumes.
Google attributes this to a pair of far-field microphones and some computational magic. I was spoiled within days. I can’t get anywhere near the same consistent accuracy from any other device I’ve ever used. The last time I was driving in my car and correcting the dictation of a text message for the third time (a painfully common occurrence), I started to think about how great it would be to cut a hole in my dashboard and mount a Home unit right there. That’s how good this thing is. Seriously, Google, give me a way to add these mics for use with Android Auto and I’ll be the first to preorder.
Natural language
Of course, great hearing isn’t anything without good comprehension skills, and Google Home is very competent. It’s hard to quantify how well a system can grasp any particular language, but it’s fair to say that imprecise language and vague terms will work far more often than you might expect. You’re not locked into saying every word or lining every word up in exact order.
That’s not to say it’s perfect. The things we say to Google Home are transcribed from sound to text before a server parses those commands. Unfortunately, this process serves to hide very subtle shifts in tone and sometimes change the meaning of our words. For example, people often pause very briefly while speaking at the same place they might include a comma, or we might get a little louder when we mention a name or title. These barely perceptible changes aren’t really identified by Google Home. Take this classic grammar joke where the comma absolutely matters to meaning:
Let’s eat, Grandma
Let’s eat Grandma
It’s not all that common, but problems occasionally manifest from these little linguistic gotchas. A more practical example might include two YouTube channels, one titled “News and Reviews” and the other “The Latest News and Reviews.” When you say “Hey Google, play the latest news and reviews video on my TV,” it’s unclear if part of this is a command to get the latest videos from one channel, or simply any video from the other channel?
To be fair, I’m not really complaining about this so much as acknowledging that it happens. It’s a problem with our language and it’s not really something we can expect to see resolved for a while. Among the AP team members with a Google Home unit, most of us have pointed out an instance where it seemed like a command had gone haywire. After a bit of examination, it often became clear that the wording of the request could be interpreted another way or may have triggered some unanticipated behavior.
The catch to always listening
For as good as Google Home is at listening, there are at least a couple of ways that it doesn’t work as intended. Perhaps the most annoying is the now infamous “answering on another device” toast message. If your phone is set up to respond to the “Ok Google” activation phrase and it’s in proximity to Home, you’re going to see this eventually. Google implemented a clever trick to prevent both your phone (or many phones) from trying to respond to the same command while Google Home is.
It’s a great idea and absolutely necessary to prevent an obviously ridiculous situation where both devices try to answer the same request. Unfortunately, it can get in the way… a lot. The anti-collision feature doesn’t even attempt to route commands based on the situation. Once you’re in the room with Home, that’s all you’re going to get. This wouldn’t be so bad if not for limitations that only exist on Google Home (more on that in a bit). Frankly, I think this is the real reason there’s a physical button to shut off the mics. It’s basically the manual hack to work around the anti-collision mechanism. I have a feeling this will be the first “bug” that gets fixed.
The anti-collision feature doesn’t even attempt to route commands based on the situation.
In my first post, I also complained that Home really likes to wake up to the activation phrase, even if it shouldn’t. This probably won’t come up too often, but it’s bound to be a problem if you watch a Google Home review on YouTube or listen to a certain Android-oriented podcast I’ve been known to show up on (ahem).
Even if it happens rarely, it would be great to see a fix for it. The solution most people are proposing is to add voice recognition (not to be confused with speech recognition) so Home can discern who is talking, not just what they’re saying. This may also solve the issue of multiple people automatically using the one and only signed-in account. Yes, Home is currently attached to just one account, much like Android TV before 6.0 came out.
I’m not trying to suggest voice recognition is automatic or easy to implement – it’s certainly not – and I absolutely understand the many practical reasons it wasn’t a feature at launch. However, I also know that it’s something Google has done on phones (remember Trusted Voice?) and some Googlers have already confirmed it’s coming in the future. Since we know it’s in the works, I’m disinclined to ding Home too much for this shortcoming, but it’s still something new buyers should be aware of.
What Google Home can and can’t do
In my first post, I made a point of using Google Home by itself before setting up any home automation gadgets or IFTTT recipes (now called applets, I guess). I’ll want to revisit Home by itself and within an ecosystem including Cast devices, then move onto my experience combining it with Samsung Smartthings and IFTTT.
In a world by itself
There’s a list of current features Google Home supports, or at least these are the things Google wants to promote. Most of these are really just variations on questions you can ask and expect to get a helpful answer. The problem that might not be clear from a first look is just how little you can actually do beyond asking questions.
I expect a lot of people will see Google Home on a store shelf and be surprised when expected features are missing.
This is a good time to point out the list of supported services. To say that it’s not very dense would be an understatement. However, for as short as the list of integrations may be, it’s almost shocking to see that Google’s only supported utility services are Keep and Calendar. They are technically supported, so it’s not a lie, but I wouldn’t say they’re complete by any objective measure.
You can’t set reminders, Keep can only be used as part of a shopping list feature, and even the calendar is very limited – you can ask about events on your primary calendar, but forget about adding a new event or asking about any other calendar. Oh, and things like Gmail and Hangouts are off limits too. There’s no support for sending messages yet.
Every single one of these things can be done on any modern Android phone with voice commands, most of them for several years, but none of them work on Google Home. I expect a lot of people will see Google Home on a store shelf and be surprised when expected features are missing. I certainly would.
I don’t want to sugarcoat this, these are somewhat damning statements. It’s not that all of those capabilities won’t be added in due time, but it’s hard to rationalize a good reason for why they weren’t there by the time Google Home began shipping.
I just said a few words and the right things happened.
None of this is to say that you can’t get tons of value out of the existing features. You really should underestimate how useful it is to ask for something from Google’s knowledge graph, set timers and alarms, or request news and your daily agenda. And let’s not forget you can play music from a supported service or start casting YouTube videos to your TV (if you have a Chromecast). Some of these things might not sound like a big deal, but they’re really great features to have so readily available.
Last night, I wanted to take a short break from writing this review, so I walked into another room and asked for music, spent a few minutes stretching my legs, then told Home to stop the music as I walked out. It was completely effortless. There was no need to unlock a phone, no need to pull up an app, no need to type in a search, and no need to hit the Cast button and pick a target. I just said a few words and the right things happened.
Google assistant actually has a huge bag of neat tricks. People have reported that they can ask about flights without knowing the flight number. It seems Google is smart enough to look at your email and calendar to discern which flight you’re asking about.
But my favorite feature is still centered on music. One of the very first times I asked for a song to play, I screwed up the title and called it by part of a lyric. Specifically, I asked for “Ain’t no place by The Heavy,” and Google Home promptly responded that it was playing the song titled “Short Change Hero.” Frankly, that’s awesome. That’s the type of intelligent interaction we should be able to have and it’s hard not to love it when it’s happening. (Note: I’ve seen reports that Alexa just rolled out this feature, but despite multiple attempts, I haven’t seen it working.)
Google Home is reminiscent to an Apple product in that it seamlessly performs very well with the things it’s meant to do.
Based on the services that do work and how functional they are, I suspect the Google Home team had a deadline to meet and chose to focus on the friendlier entertainment-related features and save the utility/productivity services for later. Objectively, that was the right call. Making Google Home fun to use is going to appeal to a larger audience. Also, thanks to privacy concerns and the likelihood that productivity applications will be more difficult to “get right,” it was probably wise to introduce those more slowly. However, it leaves a big gap that early buyers will probably have to wait a long time to see filled.
Google Home is reminiscent to an Apple product in that it seamlessly performs very well with the things it’s meant to do. Once you venture outside of those lines, the gaps in functionality show through. And much like most first-generation Apple products, it’s pretty easy to find those lines. Google will obviously continue to build out the platform, but that’s not going to happen overnight, and certain issues may remain for a long time to come.
Home and activity automation
Home automation is a complicated subject. In my mind, there have always been four major hurdles to overcome before home automation could possibly become mainstream: cost, usefulness, compatibility, and the human interface. It’s fairly obvious that Google Home’s place in this equation is to provide a friendly and frictionless interface.
If you’ve tried some of the software designed by the hardware manufacturers, I wouldn’t be surprised if you gave up and ripped them out of the wall. Such applications usually range from mediocre to outright terrible. So, does Google Home rate as an improvement? Without a doubt, yes.
Google assistant currently supports just Samsung Smartthings, Philips Hue, and Google’s own Nest. A short list, to be sure, but others will come on board in time. Technically, you can also use IFTTT to reach a few more hardware platforms, but that requires a bit of extra work.
I decided to give Smartthings a shot, so I ordered a Hub and a couple of AC control units. I won’t turn this into a review of Smartthings, but I have to admit that it’s an awfully high price tag for what amounts to a pair of remote control outlets. Samsung isn’t the only offender, basically all of the companies getting into this field are aiming at very high markups.
The setup procedure with Smartthings is easy enough, albeit fairly unpolished. Linking Google assistant to Smartthings is also pretty quick. There’s very little to actually say about using Google Home to control basic on/off actions. I mean, it worked as it should. Google’s language interpreter is flexible enough to allow for a few vague or slightly inaccurate names. There’s probably about 2-3 seconds of delay between voice commands and a controller switching on or off. Nothing here is bad, it’s just not that interesting after the first few times.
Amazon Tap next to Google Home.
Google Home works great for the purpose of home automation. However, for some people, it might actually be too simple. After preorders shipped to customers, there was an immediate comparison to the Amazon Echo, which legitimately beats Google Home in one area: flexibility. As it turns out, Google Home only allows for devices to be attached to a single room and there’s no inherent support for custom groups. This feature would be useful for things like turning on a single light in each room when you’re just getting home. Alexa offers this degree of flexible grouping, support for more ecosystems, and a few other features. Amazon has a two-year head start and has made a point of catering to the home automation crowd.
It’s worth stating the obvious. If you’re already seriously invested or planning to dig deep into home automation, Amazon makes a compelling argument to join its camp and will probably hold the lead for quite some time. However, going with the Echo or Dot means you’re choosing Amazon’s flexibility and configurability over Google’s better language interpreter. Either way, they’ll both evolve and improve as time goes by.
When all else fails, use IFTTT
Before saying anything more about IFTTT, I must first confess that I’m not really a fan. I love the idea and I want to like the service, but I find it oversimplified for the things I would want to do with it. I usually check back every few months, especially when there’s a big announcement or new feature, but my interest fades quickly once I see it’s still absent the features I want. With that said, Google Home brought me back to check it out again.
IFTTT integration basically allows users to add custom phrases to trigger an action, optionally including a number and message. For example, you could create a command to take phone messages that sounds like, “Ok Google, there was a call at 9:15, Brian wanted to say he’ll be late,” and those details could be added to a spreadsheet in Drive.
I’m not sure this will finally convince me to become an active IFTTT user, but it’s the most compelling reason I’ve seen. Customizing Home with commands like this can be really powerful and enables users to do a lot of things that aren’t yet supported natively, even things like sending emails and messages to a pre-selected person, adding reminders and calendar events, or controlling home automation hardware that isn’t yet integrated with assistant. The catch is that these commands have to be predictable. Unless you know what you need it to do in the future, there’s no way to plan ahead and create an applet.
How it compares to Amazon Alexa
…it’s a chore to use [Alexa] and to learn the specific syntax to make things work.
I had planned to give a more in-depth comparison between Alexa and Google assistant, but after spending a few hours doing side-by-side comparisons, I came to the conclusion that there’s no good way to explain the differences and where each shines. The thing is that Alexa doesn’t really shine at much of anything aside from home automation.
I’m speaking from my own experience with Alexa, of course, and others may have a much better run with it than I have. But with that said, Alexa feels shallow by comparison. After repeatedly trying to get use out of my Tap, I find that it’s simply not as adept at speech recognition, doesn’t have the same range for natural language processing, and it is considerably less intuitive. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad, but it’s a chore to use it and to learn the specific syntax to make things work.
The future
Google Home is a product sold at least partially on promises of what it will be able to do someday. While that’s usually a bad thing in the tech industry, and especially for a company with a less than stellar track record for following through on ambitious products that require partnerships to make them successful (e.g. Google TV), things look much more promising for Google Home.
Netflix integration has already been demonstrated on stage. Uber is joining the list soon with Lyft surely coming shortly thereafter. Plenty of popular web services were shown on the partners list at the October 4th event. I think it’s even safe to assume most of the home automation OEMs have been trying to arrange to work with Google as quickly as they can.
That’s just the established and well-known companies. We’re also going to see a lot of small and independent developers building out their own services to work with Google assistant once the open platform becomes available. As regular developers join the fray, we’re sure to see something akin to Alexa’s Skills appearing on Google assistant, but they’ll be built with a better toolset and won’t have to be preinstalled first – and that means avoiding the generally awful browsing experience of Alexa’s Skill market.
I have every confidence all of those things are true and there will be much more to come; however, the realist in me is prepared to see a lot of those things take far longer than most of us anticipate.
Voice control is only going to become more common
I’ve spent most of this review talking about Google Home and giving a few nods to Amazon’s Alexa-based products, but seeing as the market for in-home gadgets with voice control is ramping up, I think it would be a disservice not to editorialize on that subject for a bit. I won’t really discuss Home itself in this section, so feel free to skip to the next section if you’re really just here for the Home review alone.
Google began shipping Home almost exactly two years after Amazon announced the Echo. Reviews of the Echo were generally middling as people liked the hardware and thought the concept interesting, but found very little to actually do with it. Nevertheless, estimated sales figures were great and Amazon quickly built a significant customer base. Naturally, things like this tend to get other companies talking (no pun intended). A couple of years have passed and now we have Google introducing the first true competitor.
This has sparked questions about whether such products are useful to consumers or just a fad and people will be chucking these things into a closet to collect dust with a handful of other gadgets. Frankly, I think the answer is perfectly obvious.
Even Hollywood assumes everybody understands how voice interfaces work.
Since long before most of us were alive, people have been envisioning a future where we would interact with our environment through voice. Gene Roddenberry popularized the idea through Star Trek, but others like Walt Disney called for it a decade or two earlier. Voice controls are now so common in TV and movies that scripts don’t even bother to explain them. Even Hollywood assumes everybody already understands how voice interfaces work.
If it’s not already obvious, this is a market that’s about to explode with aggressive competition. Nobody doubts Apple is preparing a Siri-enabled device of its own, especially given that HomeKit (an API for interacting with home automation equipment) is already a part of Apple’s ecosystem. Microsoft is surely developing its own competitor equipped with Cortana. It could even be argued that Microsoft already dipped its toe in with always listening voice controls on the XBox One, though it’s not as extensive yet.
Speech is almost always the least physically demanding way to communicate, and in some cases, it’s the most efficient.
Speech is almost always the least physically demanding way to communicate, and in some cases, it’s the most efficient. Operating rooms, clean rooms, and other environments with special limitations are going to be popular destinations for products like Google Home. Expect to see customized versions become standard in hospital rooms (for overnight stays) within the next 5-7 years. I would even bet we’ll see upscale hotels advertising some kind of voice assistant as an amenity within a couple of years.
As I said, sales of the Amazon Echo have been startling, and early reports suggest Google Home has been flying off the shelves in some stores. Speech recognition has been a standard feature on phones for years, which means the general public has been acclimating to it for a long time. It won’t be long before voice-enabled appliances in the home becomes normal. Predicting otherwise is basically an absurdity. You might as well be living in the late 90s and arguing that cellphones are just a phase.
Verdict
So, would I recommend Google Home? This isn’t like a normal phone review where you already know you’re going to buy a phone and what you’re getting with it. Like any relatively new category or product, you have to decide for yourself if it’s possible to derive enough value from it for your money. First, ask if this is even a product you’ll need or use. It’s not right for everybody.
The most telling fact is that I’m still using Google Home after a few weeks.
I certainly wouldn’t suggest any voice assistant to somebody just after they took a vow of silence. Sure, they could still use it as a Cast-enabled speaker for music, but it would be silly. On the other hand, anybody with a crippling physical disability should have been on the pre-order list for Home on the first day. For everybody in between those two extremes, a voice assistant is probably going to add some convenience, but I doubt it will be life changing.
The most telling fact is that I’m still using Google Home after a few weeks. I have plenty of gadgets that have only been used a few times, and a couple that I never even took out of the box, so believe me when I say I’m willing to abandon things that aren’t very good. Google Home isn’t one of those. It has proven itself useful and I’ve grown very used to having it handy. In fact, I now have two set up in my house and I’m using both.
As far as choosing between Google Home and the Amazon Echo (or related device), there are really only two things to consider. First, Google Home is a friendly and competent tool for home automation, but if you need something more advanced with customizable grouping and a wider variety of supported hardware, it’s hard to ignore Amazon’s advantages… Or just wait until sometime next year when Google is mostly caught up. Second, if you’re really just interested in Amazon’s exclusive features like the Alexa-only deals, Prime Music, and the existing Skills (I don’t think you’re missing much with these), you’ll obviously have to stay in that camp. In all other regards, I believe Google Home wins.
I always thought the initial MSRP of $129 was set a bit too high. However, with a couple of deals in place for Black Friday / Cyber Monday, it can be had for as little as $74.25 (42% off). That’s a pretty killer deal. If you’re thinking about getting Home, I think it’s definitely worth it at that price.
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https://padtronics.com/google-home-review-three-weeks-with-a-voice-assistant-that39s-actually-worth-talking-to/
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When Apple Music first launched in 2015, playing it on anything other than an Apple device was impossible. Thankfully though, over the years Apple has made its streaming service available to access through third-party devices and speakers, including Amazon Echo and Google-owned speakers. This article focuses on Google devices.
If you have a Google Home mini or a newer Nest-branded smart speaker from Google, you can stream Apple Music to it pretty much seamlessly. All you need is to have your Google speaker set up and connected to your Wi-Fi network, and the Google Home app installed on your iPhone or iPad.
Disclaimer: The views & opinions expressed in this article are for informational purposes only, and are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions to not necessarily represent those of iTunes Gift Cards Online, its staff, and/or any/all contributors of this site.
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https://www.itunes-giftcards.co.za/how-to-listen-to-apple-music-on-a-google-home-mini-or-nest-audio-speaker/
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San Jose State University is one of the 2017 winners of the Challenge Fund for Innovation in Journalism Education. See all 10 winners.
Team
- Halima Kazem, Adjunct Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communications, San Jose State University
- Julie Makinen, Founder and Editor-in-chief, California One
- Vignesh Ramachandran, Head Editor for Audio, California One; Producer, Pro Publica Illinois
- Kathleen Masterson, Journalist, NPR
- David Gross, App Developer
Describe your project
We will prototype best practices for making news briefings and news-related “skills” for new audio and video voice-enabled home assistant devices — also known as smart speakers — and see how such content may be used to build audiences for a new media platform. Students will create briefings and skills for devices including Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Amazon Echo Show and Apple HomePod, and publish to these new platforms as well as other channels (web, Facebook, newsletters) to see how audiences use and interact with them. Results will be used to determine how such platforms can best help news outlets acquire new users.
What is your live news experiment?
Students will learn fundamentals for producing content for digital home assistants based on platform developer kits such as Amazon’s Alexa Skills Kit — a collection of self-service APIs, tools, documentation, and code samples that allows journalists and others to add briefings and skills to Alexa devices.
Students will initially develop a daily workflow for one-minute audio news roundups or “flash briefings,” determining the best content, publication schedule, technical issues and more. In the second phase, students will produce subject-specific briefings on topics such as politics or the environment, or “skills” relevant to California news and civic engagement. In the third phase, best practices from audio may be applied to creating a workflow for video briefings for new devices such as the Alexa Echo Show.
Students will experiment with creating two-way conversations with the audience via smart speakers, seeking comments or questions from listeners who hear the daily flash briefings and want more information.
Students will publish briefings and skills under the umbrella of California One and measure audience acquisition. Students and researchers will collect metrics from Amazon and other platforms, including data on the number of users, frequency of usage, peak usage time, duration of usage/engagement, and utterance distribution.
If the experiment works, what do you think might happen?
This experiment would have a number of positive outcomes, including:
- Audience acquisition for California One and possible future internship or employment opportunities for students involved in the experiment
- Creation of new models of audience engagement through smart speakers, including possible two-way audio conversations between listeners and journalists
- Development of new curricula at SJSU devoted to teaching skills for cutting-edge media devices
- Expansion of this curricula to other journalism programs in the California State University system or beyond
- Creation of audio and video content for new platforms by student journalists for university-based publications
- Dissemination of analytic report on best practices on using smart speakers for audience acquisition, benefitting media organizations nationwide.
California One, SJSU students and researchers will track audience acquisition to determine how effective content for these new platforms is at building audiences for media startups.
What does success look like? We’ve set these goals for the experiment:
- Acquisition of at least 5,000 unique users of flash briefings or skills on smart speakers over course of experiment.
- Students successfully innovate a two-way dialogue with audience via smart speakers.
- Content created for audio assistant devices can be monetized within the smart speaker ecosystem or via means such as newsletters, Facebook or California One’s website.
How is this project unique and innovative?
Audio content is booming and California is at the forefront of smart speaker adoption. However, there is little good content being created for and published on these cutting-edge devices. Despite having a large role in developing these devices, Californians are left to find local news via traditional means like print, radio and television.
We surveyed existing news content on the Amazon Echo and the vast majority of offerings are repurposed stories from print or recordings of television scripts simply pushed to Alexa, creating a subpar user experience as evidenced by poor ratings and customer reviews. California One would produce briefings that are native to voice platforms. We will experiment with what makes sense for a 2017 news consumer who is engaging with voice interfaces in a connected home.
It may be possible to repurpose content created for smart speaker systems for dissemination via email, on the California One website, in podcast form or on social media platforms. Our experiment will investigate these options and try to outline paths forward for efficient workflows for small newsrooms. If we are able to innovate two-way conversations between smart speaker users and news organizations, this could open up wide new paths for audience engagement.
What technology platforms will you use?
Voice interfaces are a uniquely natural user experience. As smart home devices proliferate and audio in cars innovates beyond terrestrial radio, California One will use emerging voice development platforms from Amazon, Google and Apple. (The project reduced its scope to just Amazon devices for ease of use.)
Newspapers found that it was not enough to put a PDF of their print product online and expect success. Likewise, TV news broadcasters have struggled to win viewership online with little innovation around platforms such as Facebook. For journalists, each new technology and platform demands creativity and experimentation to innovate and iterate best practices and take advantage of the unique modalities of the technology.
The barrier to entry for developing flash briefings via the Alexa Skills kit is low: We have already experimented with developing lo-fi examples of simple skills, proving the potential for a more complex news report.
If it works, how might this experiment change teaching at your school or media practices in your partner’s newsroom?
California One’s smart speaker briefings and skills, if proven popular, could easily lead to strategic changes in California One’s business plan, including a greater emphasis on creating content for these devices over other formats such as text. California One may also pursue underwriting or sponsorship for such content.
If this experiment is able to innovate two-way conversations between listeners and the newsroom, it would create pathways for story discovery, commenting and interactions between the newsroom and audiences. One could even envision creating entirely new jobs for journalists to listen to feedback, tips, comments and questions from smart speaker audiences and respond to them appropriately.
This project also could lead to a series of new classes for SJSU’s journalism program. It could be the impetus for the department to create a strong news radio and audio sequence, which it has yet to develop.
The San Jose State University team provided an update on its project in a March 2018 report.
Update: What have you discovered?
Producing an engaging news skill for smart speakers is not easy and requires a suite of skills: news judgment, understanding of how to write for audio ecosystem, understanding of how to edit and record to the specifications mandated by Amazon Alexa ecosystem, acquisition of data, programming skills, marketing prowess, etc.
The collaboration process with California 1 is giving our journalism students entrepreneurial skills such as designing products/apps, prototyping products and testing audiences. The process of learning these skills have led to students thinking about the larger context or news production and not just single news stories. Documentation of this learning process is allowing me to replicate this class in the future.
In addition to California 1, students are also working with local radio KALW and the San Jose State student news publications, including the Spartan Daily newspaper. In the case of KALW, for example, the station is supplying text and audio to students on a weekly basis to “seed” the California Speaks app/skill. In the case of California 1, content featured on the site is suggested to students for inclusion in the California 1 Alexa skill. In the case of SJSU student publications, content created by students is used as basis of local San Jose state news skill.
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https://journalists.org/projects/san-jose-state-university-2017-challenge-fund/
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A similar feature has been reported in other proteins that help to form stable dimers Structure of Mtb ICL.
(A) Ribbon structure of the homotetrameric Mtb ICL, with each subunit shown in different color (PDB ID: 1F8I). Alterations in amino acid sequence could affect the native 3D conformation of the protein structure and to estimate the conformational modifications, MD simulations can be used for an in-depth analysis.
An unusual α/β barrel consisting of eight α-helices (α4–α11) and eight β-strands (β2-β5, β8, β12–β14) forms the larger domain of the enzyme.
This data can be used to study global, correlated motions in atomic simulations of proteins.
Isocitrate lyase (ICL), one of the key enzymes of glyoxylate shunt, catalyzes the transformation of isocitrate to succinate and glyoxylate.
It reveals internal dynamics of the enzyme structure and also suggests that regions other than the active site should be exploited for targeting Mtb ICL inhibition and development of novel anti-tuberculosis compounds..
Thus, the structural dynamics and flexibility play an important role in the function of proteins.
(B) Chain A of Mtb ICL tetramer showing the position of Phe345 in red and active site signature sequence () in green. The active site residues and Phe345 are marked and labeled. There are few reports that show the activity of an enzyme can be lost by a mutation topologically distant from active site.
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https://it-region16.ru/dating-agent-prov4-7-1-3009.html
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Received July 24, 1997
It has been shown in this and other laboratories that during the unfolding of a number of enzymes inactivation generally precedes global unfolding of the enzyme molecule, leading to the suggestion that enzyme active sites are usually more "fragile" and more easily "perturbed" than the molecule as a whole and are therefore conformationally more flexible than the rest of the molecule. However, the role of active site flexibility in enzyme catalysis still remains to be explored. In the induced fit hypothesis originally proposed by Koshland, the presence of the substrate induces a conformational change at the active site so as to fit with the structure of the substrate. By X-ray crystallographic structural analysis of E. coli dihydrofolate reductase liganded with cofactors and substrates, Sawaya and Kraut showed the enzyme in different conformational states indeed while complexed with different ligands, suggesting that the enzyme molecule passes through different conformational states through the whole process of catalysis. Muscle lactate dehydrogenase can be stabilized either in concentrated ammonium sulfate or by cross-linking with glutaraldehyde together with a decrease in enzyme activity which can be restored to the original level in dilute guanidine hydrochloride possibly by increased flexibility at the active site. It is known that a number of enzymes can be activated by chaotropic agents such as urea or guanidine hydrochloride. The activation of dihydrofolate reductase by either urea or guanidine hydrochloride is accompanied by an increase in susceptibility to proteolysis. Isolation of the tryptic peptides of the activated enzyme and sequence analysis allowed identification of the sites of proteolysis to be at or near the active site of the enzyme, indicating an opening up of the active site conformation in the activated state. All the above indicate that active site flexibility plays an important role in enzyme catalysis. It is possible that during the catalytic cycle, the enzyme molecule passes through different stages and each stage requires the molecule to be in a different conformation, especially at the active site. Rapid transition between the different conformational states, and hence the flexibility of the active site, is therefore mandatory for the maximal expression of enzyme activity.
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http://protein.bio.msu.ru/biokhimiya/contents/v63/abs/63030300.html
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Ann McDermott's research group studies the mechanisms of several enzymes, principally through solid-state NMR spectroscopy. She has studied the opening of the active site flexible loop of the glycolytic enzyme, Triosephosphate isomerase, and its coupling to the appearance of product, using a range of biophysical probes. The compressed "non-bonded" interactions of the pre-reactive substrate on the active site of this enzyme, and the conformational dynamics, have been experimentally probed at high resolution. Analogous studies are underway for bacterial Cytochrome P450, where conformational flexibility impacts the range of chemistry carried out by the enzyme. These studies involve recent advances in high-resolution solid-state NMR spectra of uniformly or selectively isotopically enriched proteins wherein site-specific assignments allow for efficient structural, dynamic and mechanistic studies. She also studies the photosynthetic reaction center, and demonstrated for the first time a coherent, quantum mechanical photochemical mechanism for enhancement of NMR detection sensitivity by three orders of magnitude involving the primary players of electron transfer.
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http://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/members/3011510.html
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The enzyme imidazole glycerophosphate synthase (IGPS) can be a bit of a lump. If you bind just one substrate it doesn’t do anything, even though its two active sites are separated by more than 30 Å. Only if the second substrate also binds does catalysis actually go at anything like a respectable rate. In a recent paper in Structureresearchers from Yale report evidence that this change of pace results from a change in dynamics.
|Apo- IGPS from Thermatoga maritima
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PDB code: 1GPW
IGPS consists of two different protein subunits, HisH and HisF (above). HisH performs a relatively standard hydrolysis of glutamine, producing ammonia and glutamic acid. The ammonia molecule is then used by HisF as part of a cyclization reaction involving a weird nucleotide called PRFAR (with an IUPAC name that’s just too long to bother with). The products of this reaction feed into the biosynthesis of histidine (as you might guess from the name) and the purines. In an example of poor planning, however, the active sites for these two reactions are separated by a great distance. Glutamine hydrolysis takes place near the interface between the proteins (which bind to each other with nM affinity), while PRFAR cyclization takes place at the far end of HisF (near the bottom of the image). This is too far for the ammonia to be efficiently transferred by any direct action of the enzyme itself. Therefore, the reaction proceeds when the NH3 travels down the β-barrel of HisF to its distant active site (see image below left). The upside of this system is that ammonia gets where it needs to go. The downside of it is that unless the hydrolysis reaction only occurs when PRFAR is in position, this enzyme will be a little ammonia factory, costing the cell a fortune in nitrogen. Therefore, the cleavage reaction must be tightly regulated.
Enzymes can deal with this kind of demand in two ways. The first is to make the binding of one substrate depend on another. This is called K-type allostery because what is changed is the affinity (KD) of the enzyme for its substrates. Alternatively, the rate of catalysis can be altered, which is called V-type allostery because the velocity (Vmax) of the reaction is changed. IGPS uses the latter approach. When glutamine binds, NH3 gets eliminated at a stately pace of about 10-3 /s. If PRFAR also binds, however, HisH starts firing NH3 down the barrel at about 5 /s, which may not win many races but is a substantial enhancement. The question, then, is how the HisF active site lets the HisH active site know that PRFAR has arrived, when they are separated by more than 30 Å. Examining the enzyme complex in the presence of various ligands, James Lipchock and Pat Loria find evidence that changes to the dynamics of HisF are responsible for this communication.
|A rotated view, looking through the barrel
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towards the HisH active site.
The authors start by examining the energetics of PRFAR binding to IGPS. This event is endothermic, with an unfavorable enthalpy of binding. However, the entropic contribution is sufficiently large to overwhelm this effect. This could indicate a major increase in conformational entropy upon binding, or it could just be related to the behavior of water. Lipchock and Loria found that PRFAR binding to form the ternary complex had similar energetics. Of course, you can’t form a ternary complex with actual substrates for very long, because catalysis would occur and change the affinities. They dealt with this using acivicin, a glutamine analogue that binds covalently to the active C84 of HisH.
Unfortunately, these thermodynamic data aren’t particularly illuminating, so the authors proceeded with a high-resolution examination of the system. Because IGPS is a bit over 50 kDa in size, they chose to use methyl groups as their primary probes. Most of the remaining work in the paper uses ILV (Isoleucine, Leucine, Valine) labeling, which takes advantage of the favorable relaxation properties of the methyl groups of those side chains.
Lipchock and Loria started by examining the enzyme in its apo- state using relaxation-dispersion experiments. As I’ve mentioned before, these experiments detect exchange between different conformations on the microsecond to millisecond timescale. If this represents motion between two well-defined states, then the apparent relaxation rate at a given refocusing field strength will be a function of total process rate (kex = kab + kba), the populations of the two states (pa and pb), and the chemical shift difference between them (Δω). If the exchange rate is fast on the NMR timescale (meaning that kex >> Δω), the last three parameters can be combined into a factor called φex.
This is how the authors fit their data, a choice they justified by stating that fitting the data to the full Carver-Richards formula (SI equations 8-18) gives similar answers for kexbut yields large errors in the populations and chemical shift differences. However, most of the dispersion curves look like data from slower exchange regimes. Unfortunately, I’m having trouble reconstructing their fitted curves from the parameters in any convincing way, in part because the equations in SI contain a few errors, so it’s difficult to discuss where the vulnerabilities in this fitting procedure lie.
Using their approach, Lipchock and Loria find that only a few residues are experiencing conformational exchange, and they believe that the motions are primarily local. I’m not so certain on that point: a quick examination of SI Table 1 indicates that all but two methyls have kex within error of 150 /s or so, which may indicate that most residues belong to a single process. However, most of the residues with similar fluctuation rates don’t physically group in any obvious way (although V100 and V79 are adjacent).
Regardless of the particulars, it’s clear that in the apo- state, few of the methyl groups in HisF are experiencing any kind of µs – ms fluctuation. Binding of acivicin to HisH doesn’t change this too much. Within the bounds of the fitted error, the extracted dynamics parameters are the same for many residues. The exceptions are the adjacent residues V79 and V100, and L153δ1, which has an odd halving of both rate and the combined parameter.
Also, as you can see in SI Table 2, the R2° values in this state are significantly lower than apo- IGPS. This is difficult to interpret without knowing exactly how the experiment was performed; they could represent additional ns fluctuations, the removal of some very fast global process, or simply different deuteration efficiency. However, some methyls do not appear to have large changes in their R2° values (e.g. V56γ2, I73δ1, L94δ1). Most of the spurious factors that would give rise to the observed changes in R2° should affect all residues more or less equally; the lack of uniformity suggests this may be worth following up on.
When Lipchock and Loria added PRFAR to the system, all hell broke loose. Many of the amide groups in the protein had their signals broadened beyond the detection limit, indicating conformational exchange on the intermediate timescale. In addition, a large number of methyl groups showed evidence of conformational exchange.
Here the fluctuation is obviously a genuinely incoherent one. Not only do the fitted kex values vary wildly across the protein, they also have poor fitting characteristics (including fitted errors greater than 100%), and enormous differences between adjacent methyls on a side-chain (e.g.L153δ1,2). This suggests that the two-state model might be inappropriate, which is what you would expect for widespread and incoherent fluctuations among contiguous residues. For atoms that are in close proximity, a two-state exchange model presupposes some kind of coherent fluctuation, because in a chaotically fluctuating system, well-defined, relatively long-lived states don’t exist.
Of course, in the absence of well-defined, relatively long-lived states, it’s difficult to understand what all this motion does. It’s therefore very interesting that when acivicin and PRFAR are bound to the enzymes, forming the ternary complex, all the methyls can be fit to a single conformational exchange process with a rate of about 225 /s. That is, the formation of the ternary complex causes the dynamics to become a global (or nearly so), coherent process.
So, what does all that wiggling accomplish? Lipchock and Loria point out that in the apo- structure of HisH, the backbone amide group of V51 is improperly positioned. Its role in the reaction is to stabilize the negatively charged oxygen in the tetrahedral intermediate of the reaction. However, as you can see in their Figure 9, this amide points away from the reactive cysteine in the apo- state. In order to fulfill its function, this loop must rotate about 180° from the apo- position.
The authors hypothesize that the coherent fluctuations of HisF in the ternary complex are transmitted to the active site of HisH and make it possible for this rotation to occur. Consistent with this model, the binding of PRFAR to HisF causes the amide resonance of G50 to broaden out due to chemical exchange. The titration (in Figure 9) looks a little strange; it’s not clear why the peak shifts between 4% and 20% saturation, or why no points are shown from 33% to 100%. While neither glutamine nor acivicin was bound in this experiment, it at least confirms that information about PRFAR binding to HisF can reach the binding site of HisH as changes in dynamics.
|HisH active site, looking up the barrel from HisF|
This might seem like an odd mechanism, because this particular loop in HisH has no points of close contact with HisF in the crystal structure. By contrast, there appear to be several points of contact between HisF and the region around catalytic triad members H178 and E180, so one could argue that they are more likely responsible for the observed effect. In the apo- state, however, the backbone amide of V51 is hydrogen-bonded to the carbonyl oxygen of P10 (see figure on the right). Fluctuations in that loop, perhaps transmitted from HisF through contacts to HisH residues N12, N15, R18, and R22, could destabilize that bond and encourage rotation. The HisF residues I93 and I73, which are part of the dynamic network in the ternary complex, lie in this region. However, the bulk of the contacts are to the backbone, and alanine dynamics (reflective of main-chain motions) do not appear to have been studied in the ternary complex. A good look at HisF A70, A89, and A97 when both ligands are bound may give some insight into whether this is the transmission point, and some data on the ILV residues of HisH in this region would also help examine this hypothesis. It might also be valuable to mutate P10 to something more flexible to see if the regulation is altered.
The authors point out that the fluctuation rate is many times larger than kcat. The relevant rate, however, is the rate at which the complex enters the catalytically-competent state, which is probably much lower than the total kex. Here, a fit to the full Carver-Richards equation yielding populations would have been enormously valuable. It’s therefore possible (but not yet proven) that the HisF fluctuations are rate-limiting for HisH catalysis, which would after all be an easy way to achieve V-type regulation.
This is another case in which dynamics allow a protein to reconcile incompatible functional requirements. IGPS must be nearly inactive in the absence of PRFAR, yet still achieve a significant rate enhancement in its presence. Although much work remains to confirm the hypothesis that the dynamics are solely responsible, it appears that fluctuations in HisF may enable HisH to adopt an alternate conformation that is catalytically competent while generally favoring the inactive structure.
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https://conflux.mwclarkson.com/category/discussion/expert/
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Large-scale conformational change is a common feature in the catalytic cycles of enzymes. Many enzymes function as homodimers with active sites that contain elements from both chains. Symmetric and anti-symmetric cooperative motions in homodimers can potentially lead to correlated active site opening and/or closure, likely to be important for ligand binding and release. Here, we examine such motions in two different domain-swapped homodimeric enzymes: the DcpS scavenger decapping enzyme and citrate synthase. We use and compare two types of all-atom simulations: conventional molecular dynamics simulations to identify physically meaningful conformational ensembles, and rapid geometric simulations of flexible motion, biased along normal mode directions, to identify relevant motions encoded in the protein structure. The results indicate that the opening/closure motions are intrinsic features of both unliganded enzymes. In DcpS, conformational change is dominated by an anti-symmetric cooperative motion, causing one active site to close as the other opens; however a symmetric motion is also significant. In CS, we identify that both symmetric (suggested by crystallography) and asymmetric motions are features of the protein structure, and as a result the behaviour in solution is largely non-cooperative. The agreement between two modelling approaches using very different levels of theory indicates that the behaviours are indeed intrinsic to the protein structures. Geometric simulations correctly identify and explore large amplitudes of motion, while molecular dynamics simulations indicate the ranges of motion that are energetically feasible. Together, the simulation approaches are able to reveal unexpected functionally relevant motions, and highlight differences between enzymes.
Data Availability: All relevant data are available at: http://data.bris.ac.uk/data/dataset/1klro7qjw27xi19qrcs1bb2nt6.
Funding: AJM and MWvdK are supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant numbers EP/G007705/1 and BB/L018756/1). JDM (with AJM) were funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. SAW is supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (programme grant number EP/K004956/1). Funder URLs: www.epsrc.ac.uk and www.bbsrc.ac.uk. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Enzyme-catalysed reactions take place in the enzyme active site, which is often sequestered from bulk solvent (to avoid loss or breakdown of intermediates, or to prevent side reactions). Substrate binding, conversion to product and product release often therefore require closing and opening of the active site, which can involve significant conformational change. Many enzymes exist as homodimers, with two equivalent active sites. Forming a dimeric (rather than monomeric) species has an entropy cost, which must be offset by the enthalpy of binding between the subunits. Cooperativity between subunits leading to enhanced activity has been suggested as a driver for this adaptation. Here, we examine two homodimeric enzymes for which crystallography suggests cooperative motions related to ligand binding: the human scavenger decapping enzyme DcpS (EC 3.6.1.59) and mammalian (S)-citrate synthase (CS; EC 2.3.3.1).
DcpS is an enzyme that catalyses the hydrolysis of the 5’ cap structure in eukaryotic mRNA, a central step in mRNA turnover and regulation of gene expression. Crystal structures of this domain-swapped homodimeric enzyme indicate a symmetric apo-form with two open active sites (PDB ID: 1XML) and an asymmetric ligand-bound state (PDB IDs: 1XMM, 1ST0, 1ST4) in which one active site is closed with a ligand bound, and the other is open with no ligand bound [1, 2]. The active sites are located between the N- and C-terminal domains (with a domain-swapped N-terminal domain in the dimer, see Fig 1). Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations revealed that in solution, the apo-form undergoes a continual process of conformational change, where one active site opens (by the N- and C-terminal domains moving away from each other) and the other closes (though not to the full extent of the bound crystal structure), in a strikingly anti-symmetric cooperative fashion: as one closes, the other opens. Flexible hinge regions connecting the N- and C-terminal domains permit this ‘rocking’ motion.
Fig 1. DcpS crystal structures with the cleft-distance and the ‘hinge-angle’ measurements labelled.
Chain A is depicted in dark purple, chain B in dark green, with C-terminal domains transparent. A) symmetric structure, PDB ID: 1XML. B) asymmetric structure, PDB ID: 1XMM (complexed with m7GDP; not shown here).
Conformational changes can be directly related to the chemical changes that occur upon reaction, as we have suggested for CS: the involvement of an arginine in the condensation reaction (forming citryl-CoA) may induce a closed-to-open conformational change (in the site where reaction takes place) that would allow for citryl-CoA hydrolysis. Kinetic cooperativity, i.e. substrate binding or reaction at one active site influencing catalysis of the reaction at another, however, has been excluded for dimeric CS. For DcpS, it was suggested (based on the crystal structures) that binding of substrate to one site is coupled with reaction and product release in the other site. Indeed, kinetic analysis of the DcpS reaction revealed negative cooperativity under high substrate concentrations, consistent with the anti-symmetric cooperative motion observed in MD simulation.
Here, we investigate the flexibility and conformational change in the unliganded structures of DcpS and CS using two different all-atom methods. The first approach is unbiased, all-atom molecular dynamics simulations (in explicit solvent) with a standard molecular mechanics empirical potential force-field approach. From the dynamic trajectories we extract principal components describing the overall motion, as well as local structural measured describing active-site geometries. The second approach is rapid geometric simulations of flexible motion. This approach combines constraint information from rigidity analysis using FIRST software and directional information from coarse-grained elastic network analysis using Elnemo software on the crystal structure to carry out template-based geometric simulations using the FRODA module within FIRST[19, 20], exploring large amplitudes of flexible motion. We stress that the geometric simulations do not merely project atoms linearly along normal mode directions; rather they maintain the local steric, covalent and noncovalent bonding geometry of the input structure while exploring large amplitudes of motion. The two methods give consistent results in the character of the motions of both enzymes. In the case of DcpS we find that the anti-symmetric cooperative functional motion suggested by crystallography, and a symmetric cooperative motion, are both intrinsic features of the protein structure. In the case of CS we find that symmetric and anti-symmetric motions are intrinsic to the protein structure; the MD trajectories of this enzyme explore combinations of both modes leading to an effectively independent, rather than cooperative, motion of the two binding clefts. These two homodimeric enzymes show distinct differences in their conformational behaviour, which is not apparent from the crystal structures alone. It seems likely that their specific conformational behaviour is related to their biological function; the dimeric nature of the proteins helps encode this behaviour.
The dimeric DcpS structure has a large C-terminal domain topped by a smaller N-terminal domain. Closure of the active site can be quantified by the approach of Asp111 located in a beta-hairpin on the N-terminal domain to Trp175 of the other subunit, located in a helix on the C-terminal domain (Fig 1); this measure has been used in the analysis of a previous MD investigation. In the 1XML ‘doubly-open’ structure, the N-terminal domain sits mostly symmetrically atop the C-terminal domain and the Asp111-Trp175 inter-active-site distances are about 27 Å (CαAsp111-CαTrp175’ distance; denoted intersite distance from hereon) on both sides. In the closed 1XMM structure, the N-terminal domain has moved to an asymmetrical position so that Asp111 from chain B is adjacent to Trp175 from chain A, forming an active site which we term an "A-B" site. The closed Asp—Trp distance d(AB) in the 1XMM structure is 5.7 Å while the open d(BA) is 36.7 Å, illustrating the substantial scale of the domain motion. The structure should clearly be capable of forming an equivalent "B-A" site by closing in the opposite direction. We generate a model of such a site for comparison by forming a "swapped-1XMM" structure in which the chain identities A,B are simply reversed. Both flexible motion and MD simulations start from the 1XML apo-structure (both active sites open, see Fig 1).
Several structural descriptors may be used to describe the motion of the enzyme. As mentioned above, active site closure can be quantified by simple distance measurement, Asp111-Trp175 (Fig 1). We thus have a pair of ‘active-site-closure’ distances, d(AB) and d(BA). We may also consider a pair of angles which describe the conformation of the ‘hinge’-domain in both chains (Fig 1B); this gives us a chain-A angle and a chain-B angle, with the functional motion involving a closing of one angle and an opening of the other. Finally, we may consider RMSDs relative to the open 1XML structure and to the closed 1XMM structure, or to the chain-swapped 1XMM structure if appropriate. The use of these measures allows us to discuss flexible motion and MD trajectories on a common basis. Additional validation of our distance measures by comparison to MD trajectory information is discussed below.
A previous molecular dynamics study of DcpS reported on the behaviour of the structure during two 20ns simulation runs. This study showed a "strikingly cooperative" anti-symmetric motion, in which one active site closes while the other opens. The crystallographically observed near-symmetric apo structure was rarely populated (15–20% of the simulation time); rather, the structure passed briefly through the near-symmetric state several times in the course of its motion, but was usually asymmetric. The amplitudes of closing and opening motion were substantial (tens of Å), although the shortest active-site distance observed in the study, about 12 Å, is considerably greater than the 5.7 Å seen in the 1XMM closed structure. A very limited capacity for a symmetric closing motion was observed, but only when both intersite distances are large, with conformations showing simultaneous d(AB) and d(BA) distances of about 20 Å, compared to 27 Å in the input apo structure. The results of that study are overall fully consistent with the results of the flexible motion simulations.
Here, we have extended our molecular dynamics investigation of DcpS to four independent trajectories of 100 ns each. Fig 2 shows the range of intersite distances d(AB) and d(BA) explored during each of the MD runs (1–4), along with the ranges explored by the flexible motion simulations (see below). Different MD runs can display strikingly different behaviour in their exploration of the conformational space, with for example run 2 exploring mostly the symmetric closure motion while runs 1, 3 and 4 explore anti-symmetric motions in one direction (run 1) or both (runs 3,4). The extent of the motion during these longer MD trajectories naturally exceeds that explored in the previous study. The shortest active-site distance observed during asymmetric closure is d(AB) = 8.2 Å, while the shortest active-site distances achieved in a symmetric closure have d(AB) = d(BA)≈17 Å.
Fig 2. Comparison of geometric simulation and molecular dynamics trajectories of DcpS.
1XML refers to the (approximately) symmetric structure (see Fig 1A), 1XMM to the assymetric structure (see Fig 1B) and 1XMM swapped to the asymmetric structure with swapped chain IDs. Plots of the Cα distance between Trp175 and Asp111’ for both actives sites (“AB” and “BA”) as observed in the flexible motion trajectories biased along modes 7, 8 and the linear combination of 7+8 (small closed symbols) and in the individual MD trajectories (crosses for every 100 ps); A) run 1, B) run 2, C) run 3, D) run 4.
The correlation between d(AB) and d(BA) in the full 100 ns trajectories varies from near zero in run 2 to strongly negative (R<−0.9) in runs 3 and 4. This is consistent with a picture in which the motion of the domains is sometimes dominated by the anti-symmetric cooperative mode, and sometimes has components of both the anti-symmetric and symmetric modes, leading to effectively independent (non-cooperative) motion of the two active site clefts (but only when both clefts are largely open). The lack of symmetric motion in the MD simulations is evidenced by the fact that the highest correlation between d(AB) and d(BA) in any 10 ns window in the simulations is 0.3.
To validate the use of the d(AB)/d(BA) measures for describing the large-scale motion, we have compared these measures to the distance RMS of six-cross cleft distances (S4 Fig). Clustering of the MD trajectories (based on Cα RMSD of the N-terminal domains after alignment on the stable core of the C-terminal domains) further indicates that the single distance measures adequately represent the range of motion observed in the MD trajectories (Fig 2, S3 Fig). In addition to the intersite distances, Pentakainen et al. quantified conformational changes in the “hinge” connecting the N- and C-terminal domains by measuring the angle formed between the Cα atoms of three residues: Tyr143, Arg145 (the centre of the hinge) and Arg149 (see Fig 1). We have also considered this hinge movement here, both for the flexible motion simulations and the MD simulations (S1 Fig). Flexible motion simulations achieve variations of the hinge angles of sufficient magnitude to match the crystallographically observed 1XML-1XMM transition. This involves an opening of one hinge by approximately 35 degrees with a closure of the other hinge by a similar amount. The MD simulations likewise achieve substantial variations in the hinge angles; however, it is clear that the hinge angles are highly susceptible to local variations in the chain conformation of the hinge region and thus provide a very "noisy" description of the motion of the structure.
Flexible motion simulations begin with the generation of normal mode eigenvectors describing potential low-frequency (flexible) motions. In DcpS, we find that the two lowest-frequency non-trivial modes, modes 7 and 8, describe collective motions of the entire N-terminal domain relative to the C-terminal domain. Higher-frequency modes are more localised, i.e. they do not describe large-scale domain motion. These two mode directions, and combinations thereof, are therefore used as biases during geometric simulation of flexible motion. This motion retains the bonding geometry and non-covalent interaction network of the input structure, so that the conformations generated are physically plausible. The influence of the constraint network converts a linear bias into a curving trajectory of motion, so that the simulations explore tilting of the N-terminal domain relative to the C-terminal domain. The constraint network also generates a natural limit to the amplitude of motion explored (see Methods); once the motion becomes incompatible with the constraints, due to stretching of covalent or noncovalent bonds or due to steric clashes, exploration ceases.
On visual inspection of trajectories of flexible motion for 1XML, it is immediately apparent that motion biased parallel to mode 8 causes the N-terminal domain to tilt so that the active site closes (the beta hairpin carrying Asp111 approaches the helix carrying Trp175 on the C-terminal domain). This produces a structure quite similar to the 1XMM crystal structure; however, this flexible motion generates a "B-A" site rather than an "A-B" site, that is, the structure closes on the opposite side to that seen in the 1XMM crystal structure. Fig 3B shows an overlay of a frame from this flexible motion with the "swapped-1XMM" structure; the Cα RMSD between the structures is 2.5 Å (see Fig 3C). This demonstrates that, firstly, the constraint network in the 1XML structure allows enough flexible motion for the structure to move directly to a 1XMM-like structure; and secondly, that the asymmetric cooperative motion involved in forming an active site is an intrinsic feature of the largely symmetric 1XML structure.
Fig 3. Structures obtained from geometric simulations of flexible motion biased along different normal mode directions (mode 7+8 in red–see text, mode 8 in blue) and MD simulations (light green) that are most similar to (A) the asymmetric structure (gray; PDB ID: 1XMM) and (B) the chain-swapped asymmetric structure (gray).
C) Cα RMSDs to the symmetric (1XML) and asymmetric (1XMM) crystal structures for every 100th frame of the flexible motion simulations along mode 8 (blue) and mode 8+7 (red).
Due to the slight asymmetry of the starting structure, there is a consequent asymmetry in the normal modes; thus, motion biased antiparallel to mode 8 does not generate a truly 1XMM-like structure with an "A-B" site. Motion biased parallel or antiparallel to mode 7 does not generate appropriate motions of the N-terminal domain either. However, visual inspection of the motions suggested that a mode containing components of both modes 7 and 8 would generate an appropriate motion towards a 1XMM-like structure. We therefore constructed a composite mode containing equal components of modes 7 and 8; including normalisation, the resulting bias direction can be written as e8+7 = (1/sqrt(2))(e8 + e7). Motion biased antiparallel to this direction does generate a structure very similar to 1XMM (Fig 2A and 2C; Cα RMSD is 1.19 Å). This confirms that the 1XML structure has the intrinsic capacity for motion in both directions, to create either an "A-B" or "B-A" active site.
To quantify further the similarity between our simulated flexible motions and the crystallographic open/closed transition, we extract the inter site distances for the A-B and B-A sites. The closures achieved by flexible motion simulations give distances d(AB) = 7.9 Å in one case and d(BA) = 7.7 Å in the other; flexible motion has thus almost reached the degree of closure in the 1XMM crystal structure (d = 5.7 Å) starting from the input structure with d>27 Å.
Interestingly, bias along mode 7 on its own causes a more symmetric motion in which both the A-B and B-A active site distances increase or decrease simultaneously due to a "rolling" motion of the N-terminal domain over the C-terminal domain. The amplitude of this motion is however limited by the onset of steric clashes in the domain interface region, and so the two active sites cannot both close by motion along this mode. Exploration of this motion is only possible at large active-site distances; flexible motion in the closing direction jams at d(AB) = 19 Å, d(BA) = 26 Å.
Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of the MD trajectories shows that a first principal component (PC1), describing the rocking, "see-saw" anti-symmetric motion of the N terminal domain, accounts for 35% of the overall motion in the MD ensemble. A second component (PC2) describes a rotational motion of the N-terminal domain over the C-terminal domain and accounts for a further 16% of the overall motion. Motion along this PC2 component gives a correlated variation of the intersite distances whereas motion along PC1 gives anticorrelation. To transition from one asymmetric nearly-closed form to the other requires motions along both PC1 and PC2. S2 Fig shows the projection of the four MD trajectories onto the space of the principal comments PC1 and PC2, along with the location in this projection of the crystal structures. To provide an additional comparison between the flexible motion simulations and the MD essential dynamics, we also project the flexible motions biased along modes 7,8 and 8+7 onto the space of PC1/PC2. This projection shows that motion biased along mode 7 explores conformational space along PC2 over a range comparable to that explored by the MD trajectories, while motion biased along mode8 explores conformational space along PC1 over a range exceeding that explored by the MD trajectories. The difference in ordering of PCs 1 and 2 compared to modes 7 and 8 is not particularly significant since the exact ordering of normal modes can be altered by small changes to the distance cutoff or spring constants in the elastic network model. Thus the comparison of the methods in the space of PC1/PC2 is entirely consistent with the comparison in the space of the variables d(AB), d(BA).
We have assessed the convergence of our MD results by comparing the PC1/PC2 vectors generated over the full length of the MD trajectory (0-100ns) to those generated over three subsets (0-75ns, 0-85ns, 10-100ns). Generalised scalar products among these vectors (see S1 Table) show that the PCs generated over 0-100ns and over 10-100ns are effectively identical. The PC1,2 obtained over 0-75ns and 0-85ns windows span the same space as the full-length PC1,2, representing a slightly rotated form of the same basis set. The projections of the flexible motion trajectories onto these various PCs are shown in S6 Fig. Cosine contents of the full-length PCs are small, further indicating that PCs are not reflecting random fluctuations or diffusion (Cosine contents are 0.117 for PC1 and 0.002 for PC2 and less than 0.1 for other PCs.)Thus, the motions identified as principal components in the MD trajectories share the character of the motions explored by geometric simulations of flexible motion; in both cases we see a mode describing large amplitudes of anti-symmetric cooperative motion and a mode describing smaller amplitudes of symmetric cooperative motion, with components of both being required to describe the full transition from a structure closed on one side through the symmetric state to a structure closed on the opposite side.
In the homodimeric citrate synthase (CS) structure, each chain contributes a large domain to the main body of the dimer, with a small domain connected to the main body by a flexible region. This defines two active-site clefts in the dimer. Substrate binding in CS involves a substantial motion of the small domain to close the binding cleft. Crystallography gives evidence of doubly-open and doubly-closed (ligand bound) CS structures, apparently implying a cooperative functional motion in which the two clefts open or close together. Fig 4 shows both the open, unliganded structure of pig CS (3ENJ) and a corresponding doubly liganded structure (2CTS) obtained with the products citrate and coenzyme A bound. This symmetric closure of the two clefts is evident. Previous studies[9, 24] have noted that the vector describing this transition has a strong overlap with a normal mode of the CS structure, a property conserved in both mesophilic and extremophilic dimeric CS.
Fig 4. Pig heart citrate synthase (CS) crystal structures with the angle and dihedral measurements labelled.
Chain A is depicted in dark blue, chain B in dark green, with the small domains transparent. A) open structure, PDB ID: 3ENJ. B) closed structure, PDB ID: 2CTS.
MD simulations of pig CS were performed starting from both the open (1CTS) and closed (2CTS) structures, as described in Methods. In each case, three independent 50ns trajectories were obtained. Geometric simulations of flexible motion were performed using the open (3ENJ) structure as input. Examination of the results of the coarse-grained elastic network modelling indicated that collective motions of the small domains relative to the main body of the dimer are described by the eigenvectors of the three lowest-frequency nontrivial normal modes–modes 7, 8 and 9. Higher modes are more localised. These lowest-frequency modes were therefore used to bias motion in the geometric simulations.
To visualise our results, we make use of an angular measure describing the attitude of the small domains relative to the main body of the CS dimer . Selecting residues at the tips of the small domains and at the flexible "hinge" regions connecting them to the large domains, we take a succession of four residues in the order tip-hinge-hinge-tip (see Fig 4). This defines two cleft-closing angles ABC, BCD and a dihedral angle ABCD. We take Gly-312 as the tip of the small domain and Gly-386 as the hinge.
In Fig 5A and 5B we show data for motion starting from the open CS structure, both for MD and for geometric simulations biased in the direction of normal modes 7,8 and 9 and combinations thereof. Fig 5A shows the cleft-closing angles ABD, BCD, while Fig 5B shows the same data with the inclusion of the dihedral angle ABCD in a 3-D representation. It is clear that mode 7 is an anti-symmetric mode while modes 8 and 9 are symmetric modes which differ in the behaviour of the dihedral angle. Geometric simulations biased along mode 9 describe well the symmetric crystallographic open/closed transition between 3ENJ and 2CTS. This is fully consistent with earlier studies on normal modes of CS[9, 24]. By motion biased along this mode, the CS structure can become both significantly more open than the 3ENJ crystal structure, and slightly more closed than 2CTS, without violating the constraint network of the 3ENJ structure. As the geometric simulations use a simplified physical model this does not, of course, preclude the existence of substantial free energy barriers not represented in the local interactions defining the constraint network.
Fig 5. Comparison of geometric simulation and molecular dynamics trajectories of citrate synthase.
A striking feature of the anti-symmetric motion, meanwhile, is that such motion can apparently close one or other binding cleft to an extent comparable to that seen in the symmetrically closed structure. Since we expect the true dynamics of the structure to involve components of all the lower-frequency modes, this suggests that the structure will be able to display independent, non-cooperative motions in which one or other binding cleft opens and closes independently of the other. To test this proposition we have further carried out simulations of motion biased parallel and antiparallel to two constructed modes representing the sum and the difference of modes 9 and 7. Formally the bias eigenvectors are constructed as e9+7 = (1/sqrt(2))(e9 + e7) and as e9-7 = (1/sqrt(2))(e9—e7). Trajectories from geometric simulations of flexible motion biased using these modes are also shown on Fig 5A and 5B. These motions have the expected character, an effectively independent opening and closing motion of one cleft or the other as described by the angles ABC and BCD.
Fig 6A shows an overlay of the closed (2CTS) structure with a frame from geometric simulations biased along normal mode 9 of 3ENJ. It is clear that the motion captures the character of the crystallographically observed symmetric transition. Fig 6B, meanwhile, shows an overlay of the closed (2CTS) structure with a frame from geometric simulations biased along normal mode 7 of 3ENJ. In this case the alignment is carried out only on the closing chain of the dimer, chain A. We can see that the simulated closure of the binding cleft in chain A in this anti-symmetric motion appears to match the closed cleft of the 2CTS structure just as well as the symmetric motion does. The other cleft, meanwhile, has opened significantly beyond what is seen in "open" crystal structures of CS. Motions biased along mode 8 do not generate cleft geometries relevant for the open-closed transition as they show a different behaviour of the dihedral angle describing torsion of the dimer.
Fig 6. Symmetric (A) and asymmetric (B) forms of citrate synthase as generated by the geometric simulations (red, blue) biased along normal modes 9 (A) and 7 (B), started from the open structure (PDB ID: 3ENJ), compared to the closed structure (PDB ID: 2CTS, light gray).
The MD simulations starting with the open structure show several notable features. First of all, the conformational space explored (in terms of the cleft-closing angles) lies mostly further away from the closed structure. That is, the exploration of symmetric conformations–roughly equal change in both cleft angles compared to the starting structure–is towards structures where both clefts are more open rather than more closed. The range of motion explored by MD lies within the range defined by the jamming limits of the flexible motion simulations. The MD simulations do explore a considerable degree of closure in one of the chains (down to 72°), but this is achieved by noncooperative (independent) motion and not by cooperative symmetric motion; during this portion of the trajectories the correlation between the cleft angles is just below zero. Overall, the MD simulations indicate that the symmetric and the anti-symmetric motions suggested by the flexible motion simulations are approximately equally important for the dynamics of CS in solution (leading to largely non-cooperative motion), and that the solution structure is indeed capable of opening considerably further than the crystallographic open structure.
Fig 5C and 5D show data for atomistic MD simulations beginning from the closed (2CTS) unliganded structure. The flexible motion simulation trajectories from the open structure are duplicated here to provide a frame of reference for comparison. The range of motion observed in these trajectories is considerably greater than for the trajectories starting from the open form, as expected. Conformations in which both clefts are near the crystallographic closed structure are initially sampled. Over the course of the first 10ns of each simulation, however, both binding clefts open, and the bulk of the MD trajectory is visibly centred around the open rather than the closed conformation. Importantly, cleft opening does not happen simultaneously in both chains (i.e. not along the path of the symmetric modes identified), but rather one by one: in two runs, angle ABC opens up first, and in the other, the angle BCD opens up first (the angles are never simultaneously both around 73°). Further sampling of cleft movement appears to be predominantly independent rather than cooperative.
We can quantify the impression of non-cooperative motion in the MD simulations further by calculating the correlation between the angles ABC and BCD over moving windows during the course of each simulation. The first 10ns of each "from closed" simulation gives a strong positive correlation, as during this phase the two angles initially open. Over the remainder of the "from closed" simulations, however, and throughout the "from open" simulations, the correlations vary from somewhat positive to somewhat negative. When the first 10 ns of the trajectories are ignored (to allow for equilibration), the average correlation (R) and its standard deviation over all 6 simulations is −0.01 ± 0.20 for 5 ns windows and 0.01 ± 0.17 for 10 ns windows. Average values for “from open” simulations are similar to those for “from closed” simulations. This strongly indicates that the cleft motions of CS in solution are non-cooperative.
We have carried out a further analysis on the MD trajectories in order to validate the use of these angular measures to describe the domain motions. It might be objected that such measures are susceptible to error due to local fluctuations in the positions of the selected atoms. We have therefore divided the MD trajectories into 1ns windows and calculated the standard deviation of variations in the angular measures within each window. The resulting standard deviations lie between 1.2 and 2.8 degrees for 95% of the windows, extending up to 4.0 degrees for 5% of outliers where the window includes a more substantial domain motion. Comparison of the cleft-closing angles ABC,BCD and the dihedral ABCD with RMSD measures of the change of each of the small domains (with respect to the main body of the dimer) upon opening indicates that these measures adequately track the conformational change (S7 Fig). Clustering of the “from closed” MD trajectories on this RMSD measure was also performed, indicating that the resulting cluster centroids are well distributed over the range covered by the cleft-closing angles (S8 Fig).
Our current MD simulations confirm the main conclusions from previous conventional and enhanced sampling MD simulations at much shorter timescales: in the absence of ligands, the closed conformation opens rapidly, and open conformations do not close spontaneously. This is consistent with a picture in which the closed apo-conformation has a significantly higher free energy than the open apo-conformation. The “from open” MD simulations further indicate the existence of a ‘nearly open’ state, which may be similar to the state reached in the enhanced sampling simulations that targeted the open structure from the closed. According to PCA analysis of our trajectories (see S3 Fig), the conformations sampled by two (out of six) chains in “from closed” simulations coincide with those sampled in the “from open” simulations, indicating that a full transition to the “open” ensemble in solution is reached. This indicates that any barrier between the open and closed (as suggested previously) should be reasonably low, as 50 ns unbiased MD simulation at 310 K can overcome it.
This example thus brings out the value of applying appropriate modelling techniques to obtain information that is implicit in the crystal structure of proteins. In this case, the anti-symmetric cooperative motion cannot be inferred from comparison of crystal structures, whereas the symmetric cooperative motion can; this is because the crystallisation process will tend to obtain either a double-open or a double-closed, ligand-bound conformation.
The geometric simulations and the MD simulations performed here describe the functional motions in two different domain-swapped homo-dimeric enzymes. In DcpS, we find a clear asymmetric cooperative motion; in the absence of ligand, a near-closed conformation can be attained in one active site, while the other active site is open–or vice-versa. Substrate binding is thus probably largely governed by conformational selection of the unliganded enzyme, with further subtle rearrangements to allow for reactive alignment with the catalytic histidine triad. Further, the flexible motion and MD simulations confirm that simultaneous closure of both active sites is structurally and energetically impossible. It appears that the dimer structure has been naturally selected to enhance cooperative motions, probably to allow efficient substrate binding and product release in what is essentially half-of-sites reactivity; the negative cooperativity in the dimeric enzyme thus enhances enzyme activity (under conditions of low substrate concentration). In CS, essentially no cooperative motion occurs in the unliganded enzyme, which strongly prefers open conformations of both active sites. It is well known that the two substrates, oxaloacetate and acetyl-CoA, bind in an ordered sequential manner (under the low acetyl-CoA concentrations typically observed in vivo):[26, 27] oxaloacetate binds first, followed by acetyl-CoA. Given that the unliganded enzyme prefers the open conformation, the mechanism of oxaloacetate binding is believed to be predominantly induced fit. The conformational change in response to oxaloacetate binding (and subsequent acetyl-CoA binding) leads to a well-organized active site, in which both substrates are sequestered from solvent. This sequestration is functionally important, as it helps avoid premature hydrolysis of acetyl-CoA (and potentially also decarboxylation of oxaloacetate), which would stop citric acid cycle turnover. The well-organized closed state also offers a means to couple chemical and conformational change. Once condensation has taken place to form citryl-CoA, a more open conformation of the active site is required to allow the next chemical step catalyzed by CS: hydrolysis of citryl-CoA to form citrate and CoA. Closure and re-opening are thus functionally important, but cooperative closure of both binding sites upon oxaloacetate binding to one site is not desired; this would potentially slow down the citric acid cycle, by preventing catalysis in the second active site. Citrate synthase is also known to associate physically with other enzymes such as malate dehydrogenase[29, 30] and pyruvate dehydrogenase; the capacity for independent action of the two binding sites may be relevant to maintaining function under these conditions.
The two contrasting examples of conformational change in the homodimeric enzymes described here illustrate that the commonly observed formation of domain-swapped homodimers can have distinctly different implications for their conformational dynamics, which are likely to have evolved to serve different purposes[32, 33]. The conformational dynamics are encoded in the structure, and provide a clear reason for selection of domain-swapped homodimers by evolution. It is also clear that different domain-swapped homodimeric enzymes can show significantly different dynamics. Molecular simulations provide an excellent route to explore and analyse such functionally relevant motions.
The combination of flexible motion simulation and conventional MD simulation is powerful: the former allows the rapid exploration of structurally feasible conformational transitions and the latter indicates which regions of the conformational landscape are physically and energetically feasible.
Conformational changes are an integral aspect of catalytic cycles for many enzymes. Molecular simulations have an essential role to play in establishing structural and kinetic details of conformational changes. We find a remarkable degree of agreement between two modelling approaches using very different levels of theory–conventional empirical-potential atomistic MD, and rapid geometric simulations of flexible motion–in exploring the motion of two very different dimeric enzyme structures whose function involves large-scale domain motion. This agreement does not, of course, mean that the methods generate directly comparable dynamic trajectories, due to the very different levels of theory which they employ. Rather, we find that the methods concur as to the character of the large-scale motion which is an intrinsic property of the open crystal structures, the computational exploration of which provides information beyond what can be inferred from comparison of the static open and closed crystal structures. The rapid geometric simulation method employed here has shown considerable utility in modelling protein flexibility for the interpretation of experimental data; this direct comparison with conventional MD provides a useful cross-validation of the approach. We note that geometric simulations using FRODA without normal mode information, and elastic network modelling without geometric simulation, have previously been compared with MD with promising results.
In DcpS, where crystallography identifies a potential anti-symmetric cooperative functional motion, we identify the motion involved as an intrinsic feature of the enzyme structure. We also identify a symmetric cooperative motion, with limited amplitude, occurring when the structure is in the near-symmetric, doubly-open state. MD simulations indicate that the anti-symmetric motion dominates and both asymmetric conformations are accessible without a significant free energy barrier. The two simulation methods concur that components of the symmetric motion are also involved in the full translation from a structure closed on one side to a structure closed on the other. In CS, where crystallography identifies a potential symmetric cooperative functional motion, we identify symmetric cooperative, anti-symmetric cooperative, and non-cooperative motions as intrinsic features of the enzyme structure. The geometric simulations identify the anti-symmetric cooperative motion as being potentially as important as the symmetric motion, and thus assist in the interpretation of the MD results. The MD simulations give further insight into the range of conformations along these motions that can be accessed, and indicate that physically realistic protein motions are essentially non-cooperative. The agreement between the two modelling approaches strongly implies that non-cooperative motions are just as much an intrinsic feature of the CS structure as the symmetric cooperative motion implied by crystallography. DcpS and CS thus represent two contrasting examples of homodimeric enzymes. DcpS displays a conformational selection mechanism of ligand binding, and different simulation methods both indicate a large anti-symmetric cooperative motion in the open-to-closed transition (as suggested by crystallography). CS is believed to display an induced fit mechanism of ligand binding, and geometric and MD simulation together identify non-cooperative behaviour of the dimeric structure (whereas crystallography appears to suggests a symmetric cooperative open-to-closed transition). The two examples illustrate the value of applying rapid, inexpensive geometric simulations of flexible motion in conjunction with standard MD simulation: in cases where large domain motions are expected, we recommend the use of both methods together to gain insight into the nature and mechanism of conformational change.
For DcpS, four independent trajectories of 100 ns each were performed, starting from the approximately symmetric apo-form, based on the crystal structure with PDB ID 1XML. The preparation of the starting structure, equilibration and production simulation were done as described previously; we provide only a short description here. Missing loops were modelled in and mutations introduced for crystallization purposes (Leu206Met, Leu317Met) were changed back to the wild type Leu. In addition to the water molecules from the X-ray structure, a rectangular box of water extending at least 13 Å from the protein was added, as well as seven sodium ions to neutralize the system. Minimization and MD simulation was then performed using NAMD 2.6, with the CHARMM27 protein force field and the TIP3P water model[23, 37] and a 2 fs time-step (with SHAKE applied to bonds involving hydrogens). A 12 Å cutoff was used for van der Waals and short-range electrostatic interactions, and PME for long-range electrostatics. Heating and 1 ns of equilibration was performed, first in the NVT, then the NPT ensemble. Production simulations were conducted in the NPT ensemble, keeping the temperature at 300 K using Langevin dynamics and the pressure to 1 atm using a Nosé-Hoover Langevin piston.
For CS, 6 independent simulations of 50 ns each were performed, 3 starting from the open form (PDB ID: 1CTS) and 3 from the closed form (with coenzyme A and citrate removed; PDB ID: 2CTS) of the pig (Sus scrofa) enzyme. Dimers were constructed using crystallographic symmetry and hydrogens were added using the CHARMM program v. 30. The histidine residues in the active site were treated as singly protonated on Nδ (His235 and His274) or Nε (His238 and His320), in line with their local hydrogen-bonding environments and similar to treatment in previous computational studies (double protonation leads to active site distortion[40, 41]). Other protonation states and histidine tautomers were determined from the optimal hydrogen bonding network calculated with the WHAT-IF web-interface (http://swift.cmbi.ru.nl). The structures were solvated in water as described above, and sodium and chloride ions were added such that the net charge of the system was zero and the average ionic concentration of the solution was 0.05 mol dm−3. Solvent positions were equilibrated and subsequently the whole system was heated and equilibrated prior to production simulation in the NPT ensemble at 310 K (close to the average pig body temperature of ~312K) and 1 atm, with temperature and pressure regulated as above, again using the NAMD software with the CHARMM27 protein force field, the TIP3P water model[23, 37] and a 2 fs timestep (combined with SHAKE).
This approach combines information from rigidity analysis and coarse-grained elastic network normal mode analysis to explore large amplitudes of motion in an all-atom model, using template-based geometric simulation to maintain the bonding geometry and the network of noncovalent interactions identified in the input structure. We use Elnemo software to obtain normal mode eigenvectors from coarse-grained elastic network modeling, and FIRST/FRODA software[17, 19] to carry out rigidity analysis (FIRST), identifying the noncovalent interaction network and labelling dihedral angles as locked or variable, and template-based geometric simulations of flexible motion (FRODA) which project the all-atom structure over large amplitudes of motion while maintaining local bonding and steric geometry. The approach neglects all long-range interactions, and thus sacrifices information about the detailed conformational energy landscape, in favour of the ability to explore physically plausible motions in an all-atom structural model over large length scales at minimal computational cost[20, 44, 45]. An exploration of motion along multiple normal mode directions, covering substantial (multi-Ångstrom) motions of a protein with several hundred residues, can typically be completed with a computational expense of a few CPU-hours. Recent studies[46, 47] have shown that, despite the simplifications involved in the model, flexible motion simulations are informative for protein structural biology and biochemistry. Normal-mode-based geometric simulations have identified a cisplatin-binding mechanism in calmodulin, domain motions carried out by ERp27 in solution, and flexible variations of the target in protein folding simulations. In a recent study, investigations of rigidity and flexibility in newly solved structures of mutants of calexcitin were reported alongside the crystal structures themselves. However, no direct comparison with MD has previously been published.
We generate normal mode eigenvectors in Elnemo in a one-site-per-residue coarse-graining using the Cα geometry of the input structure, placing springs of equal spring constant between all sites lying within an interaction distance cutoff of 12 Å. For a protein of N residues this generates a 3Nx3N matrix of second derivatives; diagonalisation generates a set of 6 trivial zero-frequency modes, representing combinations of rigid-body rotations and translations of the input structure, and 3N-6 nontrivial modes. When sorted in ascending order of frequency, the lowest-frequency nontrivial mode is thus mode 7. Since the lowest-frequency nontrivial modes represent directions along which motion can occur with little restoring force, we expect these low-numbered modes to contribute strongly to the large-amplitude flexible motion of the structure and to form a "basis set" describing flexible motion.
A rigidity analysis of the all-atom input structure is carried out in FIRST using the "pebble game" algorithm[17, 50] which matches degrees of freedom against bonding constraints in the molecular framework of the protein. Bonding constraints include covalent, hydrophobic and polar (hydrogen bond and salt bridge) interactions. As the strength of the polar interactions can be gauged from their geometry, the results of the analysis depend on an "energy cutoff" which selects the set of polar interactions to include in the constraint network. Previous research has shown that, while interesting features of the static rigidity appear as the cutoff is varied around the range[43, 51] of −0.5 to −1.0 kcal/mol (for comparison, RT at room temperature is about 0.6 kcal/mol), flexible mobility is best explored at lower cutoffs around −2.0 to −3.0 kcal/mol[46, 47]. A cutoff of -2.0 kcal/mol is used in this study for both DcpS and CS.
Template-based geometric simulation of flexible motion, carried out using FRODA, explores the mobility of the all-atom structure using an iterative approach. In each step of the simulation, all atomic positions are slightly perturbed along the direction of a normal-mode eigenvector (a typical perturbation step being of order 0.01 Å along the bias direction, along with a random step also of order 0.01 Å), followed by a relaxation of the atomic positions to satisfy steric exclusion and maintain bonding geometry (represented as a series of overlapping multi-atom templates). All longer range interactions are neglected. For each mode of interest we explore motion biased parallel and antiparallel to the normal mode eigenvector and carry out several thousand iteration steps to generate large motion amplitudes. The simulation generates an initial phase of "easy" motion, where the bonding geometry is easily maintained, followed by the onset of "jamming" as the motion encounters steric and bonding constraints which naturally limit its amplitude.
Distance, angle and dihedral measurements and principal component analysis (PCA) of MD trajectories were performed using WORDOM. PCA for DcpS was performed by combining the four trajectories after alignment on the Cα atoms of the C-terminal domains. (The final 60 ns of run 4 was omitted for PCA, as the dimer structure remains ‘stuck’ in a single, asymmetric, conformation.) Subsequently, the projection of the individual trajectories onto the first two PCA eigenvectors was calculated. Pearson correlations between the distance measurements in DcpS and the angle measurements in CS (that define how open the active sites are, see Figs 1 and 4) were calculated using R (www.r-project.org), either over the whole trajectory or for moving ‘windows’; in the latter case, correlation was calculated as a function of simulation time. All molecular figures were prepared with PyMOL (www.pymol.org).
S1 Fig. Comparison of flexible motion and molecular dynamics trajectories of DcpS.
Plots of the angle between Cα-atoms of Tyr143-Arg145-Arg149 in chain A and B of DcpS as observed in the flexible motion trajectories along modes 7, 8 and the linear combination of 7+8 (small closed symbols) and in the individual MD trajectories (plus signs for every 100 ps); A) run 1, B) run 2, C) run 3, D) run 4.
S2 Fig. Projections of the four individual DcpS MD trajectories on the first two eigenvectors determined by principal components analysis.
The (symmetric) starting structure (1) and structures most similar (according to Ca RMSD) to the asymmetric 1XMM (2) or 1XMM-chain swapped (3) structures are also indicated.
S3 Fig. Validation of distance measures for DcpS using clustering.
Distribution of representative structures of clusters (cluster centroids, open red circles) obtained from the full MD trajectories of DcpS, identified based on RMSD, in the space of the d(AB)/d(BA) variables. Grey points are MD frames from all four trajectories; filled circle is input structure; closed and open squares are closed structures. Cluster centroids are well spaced across the range described by the d(AB)/d(BA) measures. Hierarchical agglomerative clustering was performed on the Cα RMSD of the N-terminal domains, after fitting to the Cα RMSD of the C-terminal domains (using cpptraj from AmberTools14). The average distance to centroid of the 20 target clusters ranges from 0.83 to 1.85 Å.
S4 Fig. Validation of single intersubunit distance measures to describe cleft opening and closing in DcpS.
Correlation between the single cleft distance measure (d(AB)/d(BA), between Cα Asp111 to Cα Trp175’, as used in the main text) and the distance root-mean-square of six different cleft distances (dRMS) in the course of the MD trajectories for DcpS. The six cleft distances are the intersubunit distances of Cα’s of Asn110 and Thr130 (on the N-terminal domains) to Cα’s of Trp175’, His279’, Asp205’ (on the C-terminal domains). Each row is an MD trajectory. Left column, measures d(AB) and d(BA); right column, dRMS measures. The single distance measure clearly captures the cleft opening of each trajectory.
S5 Fig. Flexible motion trajectories compared to MD PCA eigenvectors.
Projection of the flexible motion trajectories for DcpS biased along modes 7,8 and 7+8, onto the PC1,2 bases obtained for DcpS from different sections of the MD trajectory. Colours show the projections onto PC1,2 for a full trajectory 0-100ns (A) (black) and for the subsets 0-75ns (J) (red), 0-85ns (K) (yellow) and 10-100ns (L) (blue). This visually confirms the findings from S1 Table that PC1,2(A) and PC1,2(L) are effectively identical, while PC1,2(J) and PC1,2(K) are rotations of the basis vectors in the same space.
S6 Fig. Comparison of angle and dihedral variables to RMSD for CS.
Figures show a comparison of the angle and dihedral variables for CS (as described in the main text) to the Cα RMSD of the small domains (residues 275–385; red and blue in panel A) after alignment on the stable part of the large-domain dimer (residues 5–54, 89–270 and 390–436; black in panel A). Both measures describe motion of the small domains in the course of the first 20ns of the 3 “from closed” MD trajectories (where the closed-to-open transition occurs; see main text). In panels B-D, red and blue lines show RMSD of the individual small domains, orange and cyan lines the equivalent angle measures, grey line the dihedral measure and black the Cα RMSD of the stable large-domain dimer. In two cases (panels B,C) the RMSD and the cleft-opening angle measures track each other closely; in the third case (panel D), for one of the domains (blue), the RMSD and cleft opening angle diverge, due to variation in the dihedral (domain rotation) angle. Overall, these data show that the angle and dihedral variables well capture the large scale motion of the small domains relative to the main body of the CS dimer.
S7 Fig. Validation of angle and dihedral measures using clustering.
Distribution of representative structures of clusters (cluster centroids, open red circles) obtained from the full ‘from closed’ MD trajectories of CS, in the space of the angle and dihedral variables. The RMSD clusters are well spaced over the range of motion explored by the MD in the space of the angular variables. Grey points are MD frames from all four trajectories; filled circle is input structure; closed and open squares are closed structures. Hierarchical agglomerative clustering was performed on the Cα RMSD of the small domains (red or blue in S6A Fig), after fitting to the Cα RMSD of the large domain dimer (black in S6A Fig), using cpptraj from AmberTools14. The average distance to centroid of the clusters obtained from each subunit (10 clusters each) ranges from 1.10 to 1.46 Å.
S8 Fig. Projections of the combined ‘from open’ and ‘from closed’ trajectories of citrate synthase onto the first two eigenvectors determined by principal component analysis.
A) the three combined trajectories for the ‘from open’ (black and blue lines show the projections for subunit A and B respectively) and ‘from closed’ trajectories (red and green lines show the projections for subunit A and B respectively; Xs mark the positions of the closed monomers A and B, as indicated). B-D) the ‘from closed’ trajectories broken down into the individual simulations (red and green lines for subunit A and B respectively with the space filled in brown for the ‘from open’ comparison set).
S1 Table. Generalised dot products among the principal component eigenvectors PC1/PC2 obtained over different sections of an MD trajectory for DcpS.
PC1,2 for a full trajectory 0-100ns (A) are compared to those for the subsets 0-75ns (J), 0-85ns(K) and 10-100ns (L). The dot products show that sets A and L are effectively identical. For sets J,K compared to A, there is some mode mixing; however the sum of squares data show that PC1,2(J and K) cover the same space as PC1,2(A) and are simply rotations of the same basis vectors.All data are given to three significant figures and derived from eigenvectors at five significant figures. Each PC eigenvector consists of three components (x,y,z) for the motion of each residue in the structure. The generalised dot product is formed simply by summing the products of corresponding entries in two eigenvectors.
AJM and MWvdK thank EPSRC and BBSRC for support (grant numbers EP/G007705/1 and BB/L018756/1). JDM (with AJM) thanks the BBSRC for funding. SAW thanks EPSRC for support (grant number EP/K004956/1). The MD simulations were carried out using the computational facilities of the Advanced Computing Research Centre, University of Bristol (see http://www.bris.ac.uk/acrc/). The authors would like to thank Prof. Danson for helpful comments.
Conceived and designed the experiments: SAW MWvdK AJM. Performed the experiments: SAW MWvdK JDM. Analyzed the data: SAW MWvdK. Wrote the paper: SAW MWvdK AJM.
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Protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPases) play critical roles in the intracellular signal transduction pathways that regulate cell transformation, growth, and proliferation. The structures of several different PTPases have revealed a conserved active site architecture in which a phosphate-binding loop, together with an invariant arginine, cradle the phosphate of a phosphotyrosine substrate and poise it for nucleophilic attack by an invariant cysteine nucleophile. We previously reported that binding of tungstate to the Yop51 PTPase from Yersinia induced a loop conformational change that moved aspartic acid 356 into the active site, where it can function as a general acid. This is consistent with the aspartic acid donating a proton to the tyrosyl leaving group during the initial hydrolysis step. In this report, using a similar structure of the inactive Cys 403-->Ser mutant of the Yersinia PTPase complexed with sulfate, we detail the structural and functional details of this conformational change. In response to oxyanion binding, small perturbations occur in active site residues, especially Arg 409, and trigger the loop to close. Interestingly, the peptide bond following Asp 356 has flipped to ligate a buried, active site water molecule that also hydrogen bonds to the bound sulfate anion and two invariant glutamines. Loop closure also significantly decreases the solvent accessibility of the bound oxyanion and could effectively shield catalytic intermediates from phosphate acceptors other than water. We speculate that the intrinsic loop flexibility of different PTPases may be related to their catalytic rate and may play a role in the wide range of activities observed within this enzyme family.
National Center for
Biotechnology Information,
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8528087?dopt=Abstract
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Deposition Author(s): Torbeev, V.Y., Kent, S.B.H.
Protein conformational dynamics in the mechanism of HIV-1 protease catalysis.
Torbeev, V.Y., Raghuraman, H., Hamelberg, D., Tonelli, M., Westler, W.M., Perozo, E., Kent, S.B.
We have used chemical protein synthesis and advanced physical methods to probe dynamics-function correlations for the HIV-1 protease, an enzyme that has received considerable attention as a target for the treatment of AIDS. Chemical synthesis was used to prepare a series of unique analogues of the HIV-1 protease in which the flexibility of the "flap" structures (residues 37-61 in each monomer of the homodimeric protein molecule) was systematically varied. These analogue enzymes were further studied by X-ray crystallography, NMR relaxation, and pulse-EPR methods, in conjunction with molecular dynamics simulations. We show that conformational isomerization in the flaps is correlated with structural reorganization of residues in the active site, and that it is preorganization of the active site that is a rate-limiting factor in catalysis.
Department of Chemistry, Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
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https://www.rcsb.org/structure/3FSM
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Allosteric modulation of protein presents unique opportunities for discovery of new medicine with novel mechanism of target control. In addition to inhibition (negative modulation), allostery provides opportunities of positive allosteric modulation. We have recently developed a unique computational methodology that allows identification, ranking and characterization of allosteric sites on protein targets of interest. This technology is based on identification of conserved network pathways of interactions between the protein surface and active-sites, and provides biophysical insights into the mechanism of allosteric communication.
Our unique approach is based on the biophysical mechanism of allosteric communications in enzymes. See the enzyme sub-section (see the tabs above) for more details or contact us for more details.
Speed: We identify the allosteric site through computational modeling. We characterize and rank them by impact on the target activity.
Low Cost: High throughput screening are expensive and do not provide the location of ligand binding. We provide a list of allosteric sites and a list of potential ligands that bind on the allosteric sites.
True allosteric sites: Not all sites where ligands binds will control target activity, our approach only focuses on the true allosteric sites that change (negatively or positively) the activity.
Enzymes undergo constant conformational fluctuations. Our ongoing work is revealing that a number of conformational fluctuations are conserved part of enzyme structure and they play an important role in enzyme rate-enhancement. See below for more details on our computational modeling of enzyme conformational fluctuations and enzyme dynamics in relation to promoting the designated function.
We are developing hyper-catalytic enzymes through identification of the reaction promoting conformational fluctuations, and modulating them through external signal such as light of appropriate wavelengths. We have used a novel chemical modification of enzyme Candida antarctica lipase B (CALB) that allows modulation of the enzyme conformation to promote catalysis. Computational modeling was used to identify dynamical enzyme regions that impact the catalytic mechanism. Surface loop regions located distal to active site but showing dynamical coupling to the reaction were connected by a chemical bridge between Lys136 and Pro192, containing a derivative of azo-benzene. The conformational modulation of the enzyme was achieved using two sources of light that alternated the azo-benzene moiety in cis and trans conformations. Computational model predicted that mechanical energy from the conformational fluctuations facilitate the reaction in the active-site. The results were consistent with predictions as the activity of the engineered enzyme was found to be enhanced with photo-activation. Preliminary estimations indicate that the engineered enzyme achieved 8 to 52 fold better catalytic activity than the unmodulated enzyme. See this article for more details.
Enzymes are highly efficient catalysts. A number of theories have been proposed to explain enzyme catalysis; however, detailed understanding of the biophysical mechanism of enzymes and the factors that contribute to catalytic efficiency remains limited. Over the last century, protein structure has been emphasized as the key to understanding protein function including enzyme catalysis. Increasing evidence from experimental and computational investigations, however, continues to reveal that proteins are not rigid structures but constantly undergoing conformational fluctuations.
4. In the active-site the protein motions and the energy from solvent promotes the reaction by facilitating the attainment of the transition state.
We are investigating various aspects of enzymes to understand the factors that enable the high catalytic efficiency.
Plasmid-encoded R67 dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) catalyzes a hydride transfer reaction between substrate dihydrofolate (DHF) and its cofactor, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH). R67 DHFR is a homotetramer that exhibits numerous characteristics of a primitive enzyme, including promiscuity in binding of substrate and cofactor, formation of nonproductive complexes, and the absence of a conserved acid in its active site. Furthermore, R67’s active site is a pore, which is mostly accessible by bulk solvent. This study uses a computational approach to characterize the mechanism of hydride transfer. Not surprisingly, NADPH remains fixed in one-half of the active site pore using numerous interactions with R67. Also, stacking between the nicotinamide ring of the cofactor and the pteridine ring of the substrate, DHF, at the hourglass center of the pore, holds the reactants in place. However, large movements of the p-aminobenzoylglutamate tail of DHF occur in the other half of the pore because of ion pair switching between symmetry-related K32 residues from two subunits. This computational result is supported by experimental results that the loss of these ion pair interactions (located >13 Å from the center of the pore) by addition of salt or in asymmetric K32M mutants leads to altered enzyme kinetics [Hicks, S. N., et al. (2003) Biochemistry 42, 10569−10578; Hicks, S. N., et al. (2004) J. Biol. Chem. 279, 46995−47002]. The tail movement at the edge of the active site, coupled with the fixed position of the pteridine ring in the center of the pore, leads to puckering of the pteridine ring and promotes formation of the transition state. Flexibility coupled to R67 function is unusual as it contrasts with the paradigm that enzymes use increased rigidity to facilitate attainment of their transition states. A comparison with chromosomal DHFR indicates a number of similarities, including puckering of the nicotinamide ring and changes in the DHF tail angle, accomplished by different elements of the dissimilar protein folds.
Internal motions enable proteins to explore a range of conformations, even in the vicinity of native state. The role of conformational fluctuations in the designated function of a protein is widely debated. Emerging evidence suggests that sub-groups within the range of conformations (or sub-states) contain properties that may be functionally relevant. However, low populations in these sub-states and the transient nature of conformational transitions between these sub-states present significant challenges for their identification and characterization.
To overcome these challenges, with Dr. Chennubhotla lab (University of Pittsburgh), we developed a new computational technique, quasi-anharmonic analysis (QAA). QAA utilizes higher-order statistics of protein motions to identify sub-states in the conformational landscape. Further, the focus on anharmonicity allows identification of conformational fluctuations that enable transitions between sub-states. QAA applied to equilibrium simulations of human ubiquitin and T4 lysozyme reveals functionally relevant sub-states and protein motions involved in molecular recognition. In combination with a reaction pathway sampling method, QAA characterizes conformational sub-states associated with cis/trans peptidyl-prolyl isomerization catalyzed by the enzyme cyclophilin A. In these three proteins, QAA allows identification of conformational sub-states, with critical structural and dynamical features relevant to protein function. Overall, QAA provides a novel framework to intuitively understand the biophysical basis of conformational diversity and its relevance to protein function.
Figure: QAA describes conformational sub-states leading to transition state during catalysis in cyclophilin A.
Cyclophilins are a family of proteins that bind to the immuno-suppresent drug cyclosporin. Members of this family have peptidyl-prolyl isomerase (PPIase) activity as they catalyze the isomerization of the peptide bond preceding proline residue in peptide and proteins. Cyclophilins have been known to play role in many cellular function including protein folding.
We are particularly interested in the human cyclophilin A (CypA) and cyclophilin B (CypB) due to their role in retrovirial infections. CypA is required for the infectious activity of Human Immuno-deficiency Virus type 1 (HIV-1) and CypB is known to promote the infectious activity of Hepatitis C Virus (HCV). The exact mechanism of the role of CypA in HIV-1 remains a topic of debate. However, it is known that CypA is incorporated into the virion in complex with Gag-encoded capsid protein. Some interest in the PPIase activity in relation to HIV-1 has also been expressed but investigations have revealed that PPIase activity may not be essential for the infectious activity. For CypB recent evidence suggests that interaction with non-structural protein 5B (NS5B) of HCV may promote the RNA dependent RNA polymerase activity.
We have developed computational models for investigating the PPIase activity of CypA in peptides and HIV-1 capsid protein. We have used a series of umbrella sampling type simulations to model the entire reaction pathway of cis/trans isomerization catalyzed by CypA. The details of the catalytic mechanism have revealed the role of various protein residues in the isomerization step. Further the computational models have also revealed details of protein-protein interactions between CypA and HIV-1 capsid protein.
The PPIase activity of CypA has also been used as a prototypical system for investigating the interconnection between enzyme structure, dynamics and function. We have discovered a network of residues in enzyme CypA that ranges from the flexible surface loops of the enzyme and reaches all the way into the active-site. The motions of these network residues are play a promoting role in the PPIase mechanism. Moreover, it has been discovered that these rate promoting motions (or slow conformational fluctuations) are conserved feature of the CypA fold (click on the movie below).
Proteins are dynamic objects, constantly undergoing conformational fluctuations, yet the linkage between internal protein motion and function is widely debated. We are using joint computational-neutron scattering investigations to obtain insights into the role of protein motions in protein function.
Recently, we have used this strategy to characterize temperature-activated collective and individual atomic motions of oxidized rubredoxin, a small 53 residue protein from thermophilic Pyrococcus furiosus (RdPf). Computational modeling allows detailed investigations of protein motions as a function of temperature, and neutron scattering experiments are used to compare to computational results. Just above the dynamical transition temperature which marks the onset of significant anharmonic motions of the protein, the computational simulations show both a significant reorientation of the average electrostatic force experienced by the coordinated Fe3+ ion and a dramatic rise in its strength. At higher temperatures, additional anharmonic modes become activated and dominate the electrostatic fluctuations experienced by the ion. At 360 K, close to the optimal growth temperature of P. furiosus, simulations show that three anharmonic modes including motions of two conserved residues located at the protein active site (Ile7 and Ile40) give rise to the majority of the electrostatic fluctuations experienced by the Fe3+ ion. The motions of these residues undergo displacements which may facilitate solvent access to the ion.
Molecular simulations using high performance computing (HPC) continue to play an important role in many domains including biology, chemistry and material science research. The future HPC architectures, on the way to and at Exascale, will pose significant performance challenges to applications including molecular simulations.
These future architectures are expected to deviate from the conventional path of concurrency in a homogeneous environment. The future systems are expected to have up to a billion way concurrency based on a multi-level hierarchy of heterogeneous resources. The heterogeneity will come from use of multi-core processors coupled with accelerators such as graphics processing units (GPUs). In order to harness the potential of these emerging architectures, codes and algorithms will need to optimally utilize the hardware resources. We hypothesize that a systematic approach, based on performance modeling, is required for scalable software development for optimized molecular simulations on the future HPC architectures. Recently, we have ported and optimized LAMMPS (a popular molecular simulations code) on GPU-enabled Linux clusters, providing 10-20 fold speed-ups for biomolecular simulations. Our emphasis is on developing performance models that will allow optimal utilization of the heterogeneous computing resources for best scientific productivity. Codes including LAMMPS, AMBER and AutoDock are being optimized for heterogeneous architectures. Click here for details on NVIDIA's web-site.
Our GPU-LAMMPS is distributed under Open Source Software model, see our Software section for obtaining a copy. It is capable of running simulations based on CHARMM and AMBER force-fields and can be run with CHARMM/AMBER topology, coordinate files (after conversion with provided scripts).
1. Optimize and scale MD codes LAMMPS and AMBER, and docking code AutoDock on GPU-enabled HPC architectures by matching the software requirements with hardware. Performance models have been developed based on workload characterization. These performance models are being used for developing alternate data and communication patterns to exploit the computational power of multi-cores processors coupled with GPUs.
2. We are extending the developed code to other types of heterogeneous architectures including multi-core and many-core processors, ARM processors and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The performance models are being extended to other heterogeneous devices and will allow quantitative comparison of the performance improvements on alternate hardware devices. Further, the MD performance will be optimized based on an independent agent based framework to manage hardware and off-loaded computations.
3. We are also aiming to improving the end-user productivity by integrating fault-tolerance and application auto-turning strategies for optimal MD performance. Novel strategies for application health monitoring, fault detection and recovery are being inbuilt into the MD codes. An auto-tuning methodology that explores the highly multi-dimensional space of the hardware configuration parameters is being developed. This auto-tuning methodology will allow end-user to automatically achieve the optimal time-to-solution on heterogeneous architectures.
Application resiliency will be one of the critical factors in determining scientific productivity on the upcoming High Performance Computing (HPC) architectures including the Exascale. Applications oblivious and incapable of handling transient soft and hard errors could waste computing resources, or worse, yield misleading scientific insights. To overcome this challenge, We are exploring a novel application driven silent error detection and recovery strategy based on application self-health monitoring. Our methodology is based on utilization of application output that follows known patterns as indicators of application's health and violation of these patterns could be indication of faults. Information from system monitors that report hardware and software health status is used to corroborate faults. Collectively this information is used by a fault coordinator agent to take preventive and corrective measures. This cooperative fault management system utilizes the Fault-Tolerance Backplane (FTB) as a communication channel.
The Fault Coordination Framework uses two critical components: the Application Monitor Agent and the Fault Coordinator Agent. The Application Monitor Agent interacts with the application to monitor any deviations in the simulations. The important features of our agent include: it does not require any code modifications to the application code, it runs independently of the application and and is completely re-usable with a variety of applications. The Fault Coordinator Agent is capable of utilizing information from system monitors that report hardware and software health status is used to corroborate the faults captured by the Application Monitor Agent.
This framework are has been successfully used with molecular dynamics simulations and quantum chemistry calculations on scalable clusters to handle memory and I/O corruptions.
We are interested in developing Open Source Software for scientific applications. We have developed VigyaanCD, a Live Linux based bio/chemical software workbench that provides modeling tools for biomolecular and chemical modeling for education and research purposes. VigyaanCD has been downloaded over 250,000 times around the world.
Our GPU-LAMMPS for biomolecular simulations is also available under Open Source Software model, see our Software section for obtaining a copy. The software is capable of running simulations based on CHARMM and AMBER force-fields and can be run with CHARMM/AMBER topology, coordinate files (after conversion with provided scripts). It is capable of running on single workstations as well as scalable GPU-enabled Linux clusters.
An early release of the Application Monitor Agent is also available for testers. In combinations with the Fault-Tolerance Backplane (FTB), this agent can be used for application to self-monitor health.
Please see the Software section for downloading our software.
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http://agarwal-lab.org/research.html
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The M1 metallo-aminopeptidase from Plasmodium falciparum, PfA-M1, is an attractive drug target for the design of new antimalarials. Bestatin, a broad-spectrum metalloprotease inhibitor, is a moderate inhibitor of PfA-M1, and has been used to provide structure–activity relationships to inform drug design. The crystal structure of PfA-M1 with bestatin bound within its active site has been determined; however, dynamics of the inhibitor and the association or dissociation pathway have yet to be characterized. Here we present an all-atom molecular dynamics study where we have generated a hidden Markov state model from 2.3 μs of molecular dynamics simulation. Our hidden Markov state model identifies five macrostates that clearly show the events involved in bestatin dissociation from the PfA-M1 active site. The results show for the first time that bestatin can escape the substrate specificity pockets of the enzyme, primarily due to weak interactions within the pockets. Our approach identifies relevant conformational sampling of the inhibitor inside the enzyme and the protein dynamics that could be exploited to produce potent and selective inhibitors that can differentiate between similar members of the M1 aminopeptidase superfamily.
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https://research.monash.edu/en/publications/mapping-the-pathway-and-dynamics-of-bestatin-inhibition-of-the-pl
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- Published:
Exploiting protein flexibility to predict the location of allosteric sites
BMC Bioinformatics volume 13, Article number: 273 (2012)
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Abstract
Background
Allostery is one of the most powerful and common ways of regulation of protein activity. However, for most allosteric proteins identified to date the mechanistic details of allosteric modulation are not yet well understood. Uncovering common mechanistic patterns underlying allostery would allow not only a better academic understanding of the phenomena, but it would also streamline the design of novel therapeutic solutions. This relatively unexplored therapeutic potential and the putative advantages of allosteric drugs over classical active-site inhibitors fuel the attention allosteric-drug research is receiving at present. A first step to harness the regulatory potential and versatility of allosteric sites, in the context of drug-discovery and design, would be to detect or predict their presence and location. In this article, we describe a simple computational approach, based on the effect allosteric ligands exert on protein flexibility upon binding, to predict the existence and position of allosteric sites on a given protein structure.
Results
By querying the literature and a recently available database of allosteric sites, we gathered 213 allosteric proteins with structural information that we further filtered into a non-redundant set of 91 proteins. We performed normal-mode analysis and observed significant changes in protein flexibility upon allosteric-ligand binding in 70% of the cases. These results agree with the current view that allosteric mechanisms are in many cases governed by changes in protein dynamics caused by ligand binding. Furthermore, we implemented an approach that achieves 65% positive predictive value in identifying allosteric sites within the set of predicted cavities of a protein (stricter parameters set, 0.22 sensitivity), by combining the current analysis on dynamics with previous results on structural conservation of allosteric sites. We also analyzed four biological examples in detail, revealing that this simple coarse-grained methodology is able to capture the effects triggered by allosteric ligands already described in the literature.
Conclusions
We introduce a simple computational approach to predict the presence and position of allosteric sites in a protein based on the analysis of changes in protein normal modes upon the binding of a coarse-grained ligand at predicted cavities. Its performance has been demonstrated using a newly curated non-redundant set of 91 proteins with reported allosteric properties. The software developed in this work is available upon request from the authors.
Background
Proteins can be regarded as the functional building blocks of life, carrying out and coordinating almost all biological processes. Tight regulation of these processes is fundamental in all kingdoms of life and allostery represents one of the most commmon and powerful means of modulating protein activity. Allostery can be defined as the regulation of a protein’s function by binding of an effector molecule at a site which is not the active site. Its relevance was emphasized decades ago by Jacques Monod, when he referred to allosteric regulation as the ‘second secret of life’, second only to the genetic code. Even though allostery and its often intrincate nature have captured the interest of researchers since the initial discoveries more than half a century ago (for a review see), most allosteric mechanisms are still not completely understood. At present, allosteric phenomena are being intensively studied for their potential as target mechanisms for the development of new classes of therapeutics.
Expanding drug-design through allostery opens up an unexplored territory of novel potential therapeutic solutions, beyond what has been already covered by the classic, active-site oriented drug-development approach. An important factor fueling interest in allosteric drugs consists in their characteristic advantages compared to traditional active-site inhibitors. For example, allosteric sites tend to be under lower sequence-conservation pressure than active sites, facilitating the design of highly specific drugs and reducing the risks of toxicity or side-effects[5–7]. To explain this briefly, if the pathogen’s active site is very well conserved in nature it may share important structural features with the human homologue, which could be then bound and inhibited as well by the antimicrobial drug causing toxic side-effects on the patient. Thus, lower levels of evolutionary conservation at ligand-binding sites may allow for more selective drugs. Furthermore, allosteric drugs may not only inhibit but also increase target-protein activity, enabling novel therapeutic possibilites as seen for example in the activation of glucokinase by allosteric drugs, a potential treatment for type 2 diabetes mellitus[8, 9]. On the same line, traditional drugs may be complemented by allosteric effectors, as observed in the case of aminoglycoside phosphotransferase where a previously unknown binding site could be exploited to allosterically counteract antibiotic resistance.
However, the field of allosteric-drug design is rather young and the amount of allosteric drugs known today is still marginal. For example, at the time of this writing a query in DrugBank for the term ‘allosteric’ returns 7 results, while ‘inhibition’ returns 483 entries. This may be in part due to the intrinsic difficulties in understanding allosteric mechanisms and to the lack of systematic studies on the topic. Only recently the first initiative to store and organize information on allosteric cases has surfaced in the form of the AlloSteric Database (ASD). By browsing ASD it becomes apparent that part of the difficulty in studying allosteric systems lies in the large degree of variety found among them, as there are many ways in which protein activity can be affected allosterically[12, 14]. A textbook example is the one provided by glucose-induced glucokinase, in which the ligand triggers a conformational change allowing the active site to become functional. In other cases the presence of the allosteric ligand triggers the formation of the biologically active protein complex (e.g. GTP cyclohydrolase stimulatory complex). A protein illustrating the variety and complexity allosteric mechanisms may reach is ribonucleotide reductase. This protein presents two different allosteric sites: one affects the enzyme catalytic rate and the other alters its specificity allowing the enzyme to switch substrates. Furthermore, allosteric signals may also propagate solely by altering protein dynamics, without a detectable conformational change[18, 19].
In the context of such diversity, unveiling common patterns beneath allosteric phenomena could increase their potential for therapeutic exploitation, stimulating the design of allosteric drugs. We postulate that the first step in such a procedure would be to computationally detect or predict the presence and location of protein allosteric sites, to allow further focusing of drug-screening processes on selected protein targets down the pipeline. The algorithm should be able to pinpoint which proteins are sensible to allosteric regulation. However, if as already suggested any dynamic protein has the potential to be regulated allosterically, then the method should indicate the location of putative allosteric sites on the protein. Based solely on sequence, it would be very hard to predict the location of allosteric sites as it has been done by homology on active sites[21, 22], because the evolutionary pressure for sequence conservation on allosteric sites is generally much lower and harder to detect, if at all present[3, 23].
Until now, much of the research in the field has been focusing on the conformational changes induced by allosteric signals. The group of Jeffrey Gray studied conformational changes upon allosteric activation and expanded this research by analysing the networks of quaternary and tertiary motions on which allosteric communication relies. Following a similar line, a very interesting and thorough study was published where different parameters were interrogated in terms of their potential to indicate which protein residues are involved in transmitting the allosteric signal, on the basis of experimental mutation data. The results from these analyses aim at defining the particular pathway of residues that mediate the allosteric communication. However, other authors have argued that this may not be the case in vivo, where multiple effector sites may be present on the protein acting through multiple signaling pathways. In general, recent studies aggree in the idea that allostery is mainly a thermodynamic process and among the different protein properties that are involved in allosteric phenomena, flexibility (i.e. protein dynamics) stands out as the most significant one[3, 28–31].
Following this line of thought, Ming and Wall developed a theoretical framework to study allosteric effects by comparing the dynamics of bound and unbound protein-ligand pairs. They further refined their methodology and tested its ability to predict functional ligand-binding sites (not necessarily linked to allosterism) on a set of 305 protein-ligand complexes of known structure. Very recently, two other approaches partially aiming at predicting allosteric sites have been published by Mitternacht and coworkers. In a first article they describe a geometric measure that helps at locating biologically functional ligand-binding sites, while a second one describes a more elaborate measure called ‘binding leverage’, related to protein dynamics, which appears useful at locating biologically relevant binding sites including allosteric sites. They tested this last feature on 15 allosteric proteins[34, 35], observing different results for specific proteins and concluding that regulatory sites may be identified without previous experimental knowledge on conformational changes. However, these studies were not completely focused on allosteric sites and did not benefit from the larger data set now available at ASD.
Even though the previously cited articles represent an important step forward in the understanding of allostery, we consider that further research is needed if allosteric sites are to be predicted with the same coverage and precision as active sites[21, 22]. The first thing we did in this direction was to integrate more than one hundred allosteric entries available at ASD. Among the multiple allosteric mechanisms known and the different effectors (other proteins, small-molecules, phosphorylation, etc), we chose to focus on small-molecule ligands, as these are the best candidates to be mimicked by therapeutic drugs[4, 14]. Moreover, the approach presented here is based on the idea that changes in protein flexibility upon ligand binding can be related to allosteric and regulatory effects[1, 24, 36–38]. A simple computational way to estimate protein structural flexibility is the use of Normal Mode Analysis (NMA)[32, 35, 38, 39]. In this case, however, we were not interested in measuring absolute flexibility values but the change in flexibility that occurs when a ligand binds to the protein structure in a particular location, in a similar fashion to the approach developed by Ming and Wall. Once we had gathered and filtered allosteric proteins of known structure, we tested if changes in flexibility could be linked to the presence of the allosteric ligand. Experiments were performed using different molecular representations of the small-molecule ligands, and across different ranges of normal modes. Moreover, as a control we simulated the presence of ligands in alternative binding sites. This helped in parameterizing the methodology and made it applicable to cases where there is no a priori knowledge on the allostery the protein may present. Besides evaluating the overall results on a set of allosteric proteins, we took a closer look into particularly interesting cases.
Results and discussion
Gathering structural data on allosteric sites
To study allosteric sites from a structural perspective we first gathered the available data. We started by integrating the 146 allosteric site entries that were, at the time of this writing, annotated in the AlloSteric Database (ASD) with another 72 allostery examples we had previously found in the literature. We proceeded to filter and cluster the data set as described in the Methods section to avoid overrepresentation and low quality structures, turning the inital 213 cases into a total of 91 representative proteins where both the structure and location of the allosteric ligand are known.
Allosteric-ligand presence affects protein flexibility
Our first experiment aimed at quantifying the number of proteins in our data set that undergo a significant change in flexibility when the allosteric ligand is bound. However, known allostery cases show large diversity in their mechanisms and we did not expect a positive result on the complete data set, since in many cases the allosteric effect may not be primarily driven by changes in local or overall flexibility but specific conformational changes, oligomerization or other mechanisms may be more relevant.
As explained in the Background section, we have chosen to estimate flexibility using Normal Mode Analysis (NMA). When applying NMA, calculated low-frequency modes reflect large collective oscillations of the protein structure and high-frequency modes reflect small local fluctuations. Even though for most cases it has been shown that low-frequency normal modes are better descriptors of allosteric effects, we made no a priori assumption on the set of normal modes that would be more appropriate to detect an allosteric effect upon ligand binding for the ample protein set studied here. Thus, we decided to explore this parameter by using different ranges of normal modes, as described in the Methods section.
We used the calculated normal modes to predict B-factors, as this is a standard quantity for the estimation of protein flexibility. Briefly, NMA calculations were performed for proteins in our data set both in the presence and absence of the allosteric ligand. For each protein, Cα B-factors derived from both conditions were compared and considered to be significantly different if the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test returned a p-value < 0.05.
The results are displayed in Figure1 and show that for the majority of the data set protein flexibility is significantly affected by the presence of the allosteric ligand. For most cases the effect was only observed when low-frequency normal modes were considered, as expected. However, there are exceptions like the ribonucleotide reductase from Thermotoga maritima ([PDB:1XJF]), for which the allosteric effect has been described to be related to the local stabilization of three loops in the structure[4, 17] and was captured only by high-frequency normal modes in our calculations.
Effect of ligand representation on the NMA results
We performed a second experiment to measure how different the results from this approach would be if we used a simplified molecular representation instead of the full-atom ligand, given the fact that knowledge on the ligand structure may not always be available. Moreover, a predictive approach that does not require information on the ligand molecule has a much larger field of application (e.g. structural genomics) paving the way for the discovery of novel and pharmacologically interesting allosteric sites. Another interesting possibility that would open up is the detection of serendipitous allosteric sites, which despite having no natural ligand effectively become an allosteric site given the presence of an appropriate ‘opportunistic’ ligand.
We tested two representations of ligands: a single dummy atom located at the ligand geometric center and a set of 6 dummy atoms located at the vertices of an octahedron around the geometric center, as explained in the Methods section.
Figure1 shows that for most cases the single dummy atom at the ligand geometric center is not able to trigger a significant change in flexibility during the simulations, while the octahedron exerts an effect much closer to that of the full-atom ligand. From a methodological point of view, simulating ligands in a simplified form allowed us to perform control experiments which are described below.
Predicting ligand-binding pockets and selection of normal mode range
To further develop a predictive approach, we used the LIGSITEcsprogram to predict the putative ligand-binding sites on the protein structure. Different programs are available for this task with very good performance in general as shown in recent reviews[44–46]. We chose LIGSITEcsbecause pockets are predicted based only on the shape of the protein surface; programs incorporating more parameters (e.g. evolutionary conservation, druggability) could have improved but also biased our results.
We predicted the location of up to 8 ligand-binding pockets per protein and performed NMA to check if any of the predicted pockets had a significant effect upon protein flexibility when occupied by a small-molecule ligand, as described in the Methods section.
A pocket that presents no ligand (i.e. appears empty in the original structure) may nevertheless display a significant change in overall flexibility if occupied by a ligand representation when performing the normal-modes calculation. It would be wrong to consider this directly an error, since native ligands may exist that bind this pocket even if there is none present in the particular experimental structure under study. A few examples are mentioned in the next section, where we found pockets that affect protein flexibility and, although they are indeed not allosteric sites, they are active sites or other biologically relevant sites. Nevertheless, to guide the definition of the model we needed an error propensity estimate for the different parameters tested, i.e. range of normal modes and ligand molecular representation. If all pockets predicted on the protein surface would be found to affect significantly the flexibility, the corresponding parameters would be rendering the method too sensitive (low specificity) and prone to present false positives. Based on this argument, we estimated error propensity (ep) for each range of normal modes and the two ligand representations using the following ad hoc equation:
where p x is the number of cases in which x pockets were predicted to be significantly affecting the overall protein flexibility. Note that this equation does not formally stand for an error but simply gives an idea of the likelihood of having false positives. The results are displayed in Figure2 and show that the octahedron representation, combined with the lowest frequency normal modes, leads to a higher specificity (lower number of pockets significantly affecting overall dynamics) than the single dummy atom at the geometric center. We then decided to continue our work using the octahedron representation of ligands together with normal modes in the range 6-20.
Overall performance when predicting allosteric sites
At the time of this writing, no large-scale study attempting the prediction of the allosteric-site location in known allosteric proteins has been published. Recent work by Demerdash and coworkers aimed at predicting the residues involved in the propagation of allosteric signals within a protein structure for a set of 16 different proteins. Quite distinctly, our method follows a drug-discovery oriented approach where the intention is to pinpoint specific protein pockets that present a high potential for affecting biological function. From that perspective our method is comparable to the one developed by Ming and Wall for finding functional sites, as it exploits NMA to assess the differences in flexibility between ligand-bound and unbound states of a protein[33, 47]. However, their approach differs from ours in multiple major points, including the sampling of protein sites, the parametrization of probes and of their interaction with the protein and the approach by which the perturbation of protein dynamics is assessed. The method described in this paper is also similar to the approach recently published by Mitternacht and coworkers, where they measured the ‘binding leverage’, or ability of a binding site to couple to the intrinsic motions of a protein, on a set of 15 allosteric proteins.
In this context, any pocket with a biological regulatory role would be suited for the analysis, but we chose to focus on allosteric sites since these are possibly the most interesting, albeit complex, regulatory sites to approach. Starting from a data set containing 91 proteins, we measured the rate of success of our approach to identify allosteric sites as follows. First, we discarded a total of 33 proteins for which no single LIGSITEcspredicted pocket matched the allosteric site, leaving a total of 58 cases to work with (63,7%). The rational for discarding these proteins is that the present analysis is not concerned with the ability of a specific program to detect a cavity but with the ability of our approach to identify the cavity, among those detected, that corresponds to the allosteric site. Indeed, it has been previously observed that not all allosteric sites are predicted to be potential ligand-binding cavities by common algorithms. There can be different reasons for this, for example the allosteric site may be deeply buried in the protein, may display a planar shape or be located at the interface of subunits, making it difficult for the pocket-prediction algorithm to detect its presence.
A total of 464 pockets were predicted on the surface of the 58 proteins (8 per protein). The chance of randomly selecting an allosteric site is low, given that only 13% of these pockets (one per protein) matched the location of an allosteric site (i.e. its center less than 5 Å away from the allosteric ligand; if more than one pocket matched the ligand position within this cut-off, the closest was chosen). After performing the analysis of normal modes, 117 pockets display a significant effect on the overall protein flexilibity upon ligand binding (set F in Table1). The chance of success (positive predictive value) more than doubles with the incorporation of this analysis, with 27% of these 117 pockets matching an allosteric site. Furthermore, we integrated these results with our previous work on protein-pocket conservation by selecting pockets that display at least 50% structural conservation, as defined previously. Interestingly, considering protein conservation alone (set S in Table1) results in a slightly lower positive predictive value than considering only flexibility. While the two measures show the same specificity, using the effect on flexibility as criterion leads to a slightly higher sensitivity than using the structural-conservation feature. The double-filtered set, combining the effect on flexibility with a high structural conservation (set FS), contains only 36 pockets, of which 15 (42%) match an allosteric site (Table1). This represents a nearly four times larger positive predictive value than ‘random’ selection within the 464 identified cavities, at the expense of reducing further the sensitivity of the approach, i.e. decreasing drastically the number of false positives but increasing also the number of false negatives.
However, it will not be common to select up to eight pockets per protein as potential allosteric sites. A researcher working on a particular protein without a priori knowledge on its regulatory mechanism will probably keep the first three largest pockets predicted by default or, as Thornton and coworkers explain for the case of active sites, the largest pocket will usually be the best bet. In those two scenarios, the tendency shown for the complete set of predicted pockets is conserved (Table1). When keeping the first 3 pockets (set c123), the chance to match an allosteric site (positive predictive value) goes from 25% to 39% when using the flexibility criterion and up to 47% when incorporating structural conservation as well. Out of the 58 allosteric sites, however, 14 are not found within the c123 set. Likewise, when selecting only the first and largest pocket, the inital success rate goes from 45% to 52% when considering the effect on flexibility upon binding (set c1F) and to 65% when structural conservation is also required. Note that between sets FS and c1FS the number of false positives decreases by three-fold, while only two additional false negatives are added.
We considered only allosteric sites as desirable matches. However, other pockets with biological functions were matched by our criteria, as described further below on a few particular examples. The performance of this approach might be improvable using other pocket prediction programs or a combination of them. However, performance of pocket prediction methods does not vary largely, as shown by a recent large-scale comparison. Our study represents the largest test to date (58 non-redundant proteins in complex with their corresponding small-molecule allosteric ligands) proving the concept that changes in overall flexibility upon ligand binding are relevant identifiers for some allosteric sites, and these effects can be captured in many cases with the simple approach described here. In addition, we further show (see also) that evaluation of the structural conservation of the candidate pockets may contribute as much to the identification of the allosteric site.
Biological examples
As mentioned in the Background section, allostery can work through many different mechanisms. Thus, we consider it important, besides the overall results presented above, to explain the results for a few proteins in more detail. The following section should help to better illustrate the relevance of incorporating a flexibility measure when studying allosteric systems and predicting the location of allosteric sites.
Glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase
Aldehyde dehydrogenases (ALDH) are found across all kingdoms of life. They play a vital role in multiple cellular processes, including glycolysis, detoxification and embryogenic development. A distinct family within the ALDH superfamily consists of the non-phosphorylating glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenases (GAPN), which catalyze the phosphate-independent irreversible oxidation of glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate (GAP) to 3-phosphoglycerate using NAD(P) as a cosubstrate. Unlike other proteins in the GAPN family, the enzyme of the hyperthermophilic Archaeum Thermoproteus tenax (Tt-GAPN) is regulated by a set of inhibitors (NADH, NADP(H) and ATP) and activators (AMP, ADP, glucose 1-phosphate and fructose 6-phosphate (F6P)) which decrease or increase, respectively, the affinity for NAD. This suggests that Tt-GAPN plays a crucial role in regulating the carbohydrate catabolism in T. tenax.
All different activators bind to the same allosteric site, which is located more than 20 Å away from both the active site and the cosubstrate-binding site of any monomer of the tetramer. The activator binding site is located at the interface between the tetramerization domain and the cosubstrate binding/catalytic domains. It is also observed that the allosteric ligands are in direct contact with 3 or even four monomers in the protein complex, indicating a role in the stabilization of the complex. This role probably combines with the detected effect on flexibility to influence enzyme kinetics, as no large conformational change is observed when comparing the ligand-bound and ligand-free structures besides a rearrangement of the tetramerization domain with respect to the cosubstrate binding/catalytic domain.
In our analysis, PKT5 (the fifth largest pocket predicted) matched the location of the allosteric effector F6P, as shown in Figure3. When a ligand was simulated occupying this pocket, using the octahedron representation, the overall flexibility of the protein was significantly affected on all ranges including the lowest frequency modes (p-value<=0.001). No other pocket presented the same behaviour (Figure3), not even the largest pocket (PKT1), which matches the position of cofactor NADP. Given the ‘hinge-like’ position of the activator binding site and the variety of ligands that it can accomodate, we consider this case a good example to speculate that the actual position of the ligand in the structure plays a major role in its effect on the protein activity, beyond the particular chemical properties of the ligand itself that may be important for binding.
PDK1 kinase
PDK1 kinase is a key regulator of AGC kinases, which play crucial roles in physiological processes relevant to metabolism, growth, proliferation and survival. This protein is regulated allosterically by the binding of a phosphopeptide which Biondi and coworkers managed to mimic with a low-molecular-weight activator and further solved the structure of the complex. As shown in Figure4, the largest pocket (PKT1) matches the binding site of ATP. In our analysis, PKT1 affected protein flexibility significantly on most normal-mode ranges. The second largest pocket predicted (PKT2) matches the location of the allosteric activator (PS48) at the HM/PIF binding site. According to the analysis, based on the lowest-frequency normal modes (6-5 range) PKT2 significantly affects overall protein flexibility if occupied by a ligand.
Another predicted pocket (PKT7), appears to significantly affect protein flexibility on most normal-mode ranges when occupied during the NMA. This pocket is not occupied by any ligand in the original structure ([PDB:3HRF]), but it does match the position of a phosphoserine (SEP) in the activation loop of PDK1, as shown in Figure4. Also in this pocket, residue THR226 is considered a crucial element of the allosteric mechanism of this protein, given that mutation of this residue inhibits activation without inhibiting binding. These results indicate that stabilization of this protein region would have an effect on the overall flexibility of the protein, linking it to a regulatory function which correlates with what has been observed previously based on deuterium exchange and other experimental procedures. The other 5 pockets predicted on this structure were not found to significantly affect protein flexibility.
HIV reverse transcriptase
Non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) are key elements of the so-called HAART (Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy) multi-drug treatments against HIV-1 infection. However, rapid mutation of HIV-1 compromises the efficacy and durability of HAART. This high mutation rate fuels the need to discover novel agents with better activity profiles against HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT) and its most common mutants. In this context, Anthony and coworkers have developed substituted tetrahydroquinolines which are potent allosteric inhibitors of HIV-1 RT and some of its key mutants.
In our normal-mode analysis the two significant pockets matched the position of the allosteric ligands, as displayed in Figure5. The allosteric site is located in a ‘hinge-like’ position between domains, a position which has even been exploited for the engineering of regulatory sites as well. A ligand bound in this position would easily perturb the low frequency modes of vibration of the protein, thus affecting its overall flexibility and subsequently altering protein function. All other pockets predicted on this structure were found not to affect protein flexibility significantly, meaning that a hypothetical blind drug-design approach focused on the significant pockets from the NMA would have been successful. This is an excellent example showing that the combination of pocket prediction and NMA may pinpoint the location of the allosteric/regulatory site based solely on structural data.
L-lactate dehydrogenase
When glycolysis takes place under anaerobic conditions, pyruvate is reduced to L-lactate, a reaction that is catalyzed by L-lactate dehydrogenase (LDH). In contrast to their mammalian counterparts, some bacterial LDHs display allosteric regulation by fructose 1,6-bisphosphate (FBP). Iwata and co-workers solved the structure of Bifidobacterium longum LDH in both active (R) and inactive (T) states, co-crystallized with the allosteric activator. A significant difference can be observed between the B-factors of both structures, suggesting an overall change in flexibility being part of the allosteric mechanism.
We mentioned this protein in our previous work, where we found the allosteric site to be structurally conserved although no signal of sequence conservation was found. In the current analysis, the only pocket that perturbed the overall flexibility of LDH when we simulated the presence of a ligand was the second largest pocket (PKT2), which is also the one closest to the allosteric site, as displayed in Figure6. We did not consider this case as a ‘match’ in the large-scale results shown in Table1 because the pocket geometric center is 6.6 Å away from the allosteric ligand, thus failing the pre-defined threshold of 5 Å. However, after visual inspection we considered this case relevant because the ligand is occupying the same large pocket, even if it is not located precisely at the pocket center defined by LIGSITEcs.
No other pocket on this protein displayed an effect related to flexibility according to our calculations when considering the normal mode range 6-20, not even those pockets matching the location of the active site or other ligands.
Given that animal LDHs are not regulated allosterically, this protein/pocket could be an excellent target for antimicrobial compounds. To further explore this idea, we analyzed the human LDH homolog ([PDB:1I10]) as well, which shows a sequence identity of 37.7% and a local RMSD of 1.04 Å according to the SUPERPOSE web server when compared to Bifidobacterium longum LDH. On the human protein, which is not regulated allosterically, the pocket equivalent to the allosteric site in the bacterial homolog did not produce a significant effect on flexibility according to our calculations. It is remarkable that a coarse approximation such as this (based on Cα s and NMA) is able to distinguish that the presence of the allosteric ligand has a significant effect on the bacterial protein flexibility but not on its human homolog.
Conclusions
In this article we have proposed a very simple approach exploiting changes in protein flexibility upon ligand binding to predict the presence and location of allosteric sites. We tested the methodology on a non-redundant set of 58 proteins achieving in the best case a success rate (positive predictive value) of 65%, with a sensitivity of 0.22. Furthermore, we analyzed four cases in more detail, revealing how the coarse-grained approach described here is able to capture the effect triggered by the allosteric ligand, matching the current literature. The structural analysis proposed here could help medicinal chemists and other researchers on their way through the promising field of allosteric-drug design.
Methods
To ensure that the quality and nature of the selected structural data was appropriate to our study, we discarded structures with a resolution lower than 3 Å or with a G-Factor lower than -1, as calculated by PROCHECK. We conservatively defined a non-redundant data set to avoid possible bias in the results that may arise from overrepresentation of any protein family. Clustering was performed with the BLASTCLUST program using a threshold of 30% sequence identity, which grouped the 213 initial entries into 91 groups. We then selected the highest resolution structure of each group as its representative and defined a non-redundant data set which contained a total of 91 distinct allosteric proteins, for which the structure and location of both the allosteric site and ligand were known.
Normal mode analysis (NMA) was performed on the protein crystallographic structures with and without a probe ligand, in its three different representations (full atom, octahedron and geometric center, see below). The simplified ligand representations (octahedron and geometric center) were alternatively placed in each of the eight predicted pockets. The NMA was based on the implementation of Sanejouand and coworkers[39, 60] using the programs PDBMAT and DIAGRTB. The calculation involves the diagonalization of the mass-weighted Hessian (H) of the potential energy function V . Following Tirion’s Elastic Network Model, the potential energy V is simply described as a set of harmonic springs of equal strength k linking every pair of Cα atoms with a distance smaller than R c in the crystallographic structure:
where is the Euclidean distance between atoms i and j in the crystallographic structure and R c and k were given in this study the values 10 Å and 1 Kcal mol−1Å−2, respectively. Note that this energy function was designed in such a way that it does not require energy minimization of the X-ray structure prior to the normal-mode calculation since the X-ray structure is the minimum of the function. Although this method uses very gross approximations (reduction to Cα atoms, extremely simple energy function, no solvent), it has proven to perform surprisingly well in front of both more complex approximations and experimental data (B-factors)[39, 60, 62].
The eigenvectors and eigenvalues of H correspond to the normal modes, characterizing the direction and amplitude of the vibrational motion, and frequencies of vibration, respectively. They can be used to calculate mean-square displacements of the atomic cartesian coordinates x (〈x2〉) as:
where x i is the coordinate i, m i the corresponding mass, K B Boltzmann’s constant, T the temperature, n v the number of modes considered, w j /2Π the frequency of normal mode j and a ij the coordinate i of normal mode j. The resulting mean-square radial displacements of atom positions 〈r2〉 can in turn be used to estimate atomic B-factors as:
Low-frequency modes reflect large collective or delocalized motions in the protein structure, while high-frequency modes reflect small vibrations in localized regions. We estimated B-factors for the ligand-bound and unbound protein structures using different ranges of normal modes to explore this variable. Ranges were named using two numbers X-Y: Starting from the low frequency modes, X is the number of modes that are skipped and Y is the number of normal modes that are taken into account. The first six normal modes, with zero frequency, are of no interest as they represent rigid-body translation and rotation. The ranges tested were: 6-5, 6-10, 6-20, 6-50, 6-94, 11-10, 16-10, 26-10, 56-10, 90-10, 16-84, 26-74, 56-44 and 96-4.
We prepared protein coordinate files for NMA as follows: (1) Protein chains in direct contact with the allosteric ligand (i.e. multiple residues within 3.0 Å) were selected and atoms belonging to other chains or molecules in the structure were removed. (2) The LIGSITEcsprogram was used to predict up to 8 pockets per structure. (3) After pocket prediction, protein structures were parsed to keep Cα atoms only.
We took the first 100 normal modes for each protein and ligand representation: apo, the Cα only ‘apo’ protein crystallographic structure (allosteric ligand is not present); ligand, same protein structure as in ‘apo’ but including the allosteric ligand (or a simplified molecular representation) in the allosteric site; PKTX, same protein structure as in ‘apo’ plus a simplified molecular representation of a ligand occupying the predicted pocket number X (1 to 8).
In the last case, the molecular representation of the ligand was located at the pocket geometric center, as predicted by LIGSITEcs.
The ligand molecule during NMA was simulated in different ways: full atom, all atoms in the ligand molecule are included in the calculation; geometric center, a single dummy atom located at the ligand-pocket geometric center is considered; octahedron, the ligand’s presence is simulated by a dummy atom positioned at the geometric center and six extra dummy atoms located at 4 Å distance from the center on both sides of each axis (i.e. forming the vertices of a regular octahedron).
For each protein-ligand pair, calculated B-factors for the Cα protein atoms of the apo structure were compared to those obtained for the same atoms in the configurations including real or simulated ligands to test for significant changes in flexibility using the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test. Differences with a p-value<0.05 were considered significant.
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Acknowledgements
The authors dedicate this paper to Professor Wilfred F. van Gunsteren on the occasion of his 65th birthday. This project is supported by funding under the Seventh Research Framework Programme of the European Union (ref. HEALTH-F3-2009-223101). AP acknowledges the FPU Scholarship from MICINN, Spanish Gov.
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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Authors’ contributions
AP and XD conceived the study and wrote the manuscript. AP carried out the computational work. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Panjkovich, A., Daura, X. Exploiting protein flexibility to predict the location of allosteric sites. BMC Bioinformatics 13, 273 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2105-13-273
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- Glycoside hydrolase 1 (GH1) enzymes are a ubiquitous family of enzymes that hydrolyse the glycosidic bond between two or more carbohydrates, or between a carbohydrate and a non-carbohydrate moiety. Despite their conserved catalytic domain, these enzymes have many different enzyme activities and/or substrate specificities as a change of only a few residues in the active site can alter their function. Most GH1 active site residues are situated in loop regions, and it is known that enzymes are more likely to develop new functions (broad specificity) if they possess an active site with a high proportion of loops. Furthermore, the GH1 active site consists of several subsites and cooperative binding makes the binding affinity of sites difficult to measure because the properties of one subsite are influenced by the binding of the other subsites. Extensive knowledge of protein-ligand interactions is critical to the comprehension of biology at the molecular level. However, the structural determinants and molecular details of GH1 ligand specificity and affinity are very broad, highly complex, not well understood, and therefore still need to be clarified. The aim of this study was to computationally characterise the activity of three newly solved GH1 crystallographic structures sent to us by our collaborators, and to provide evidence for their ligand-binding specificities. In addition, the differences in structural and biochemical contributions to enzyme specificity and/or function between different GH1 activities/enzymes was assessed, and the sequence/structure/function relationship of several activities of GH1 enzymes was analysed and compared. To accomplish the research aims, sequence analyses involving sequence identity, phylogenetics, and motif discovery were performed. As protein structure is more conserved than sequence, the discovered motifs were mapped to 3D structures for structural analysis and comparisons. To obtain information on enzyme mechanism or mode of action, as well as structure-function relationship, computational methods such as docking, molecular dynamics, binding free energy calculations, and essential dynamics were implemented. These computational approaches can provide information on the active site, binding residues, protein-ligand interactions, binding affinity, conformational change, and most structural or dynamic elements that play a role in enzyme function. The three new structures received from our collaborators are the first GH1 crystallographic structures from Bacillus licheniformis ever determined. As phospho-glycoside compounds were unavailable for purchase for use in activity assays, and as the active sites of the structures were absent of ligand, in silico docking and MD simulations were performed to provide evidence for their GH1 activities and substrate specificities. First though, the amino acid sequences of all known characterised bacterial GH1 enzymes were retrieved from the CAZy database and compared to the sequences of the three new B. licheniformis crystallographic structures which provided evidence of the putative 6Pβ-glucosidase activity of enzyme BlBglH, and dual 6Pβ-glucosidase/6Pβ-galactosidase (dual-phospho) activity of enzymes BlBglB and BlBglC. As all three enzymes were determined to be putative 6Pβ-glycosidase activity enzymes, much of the thesis focused on the overall analysis and comparison of the 6Pβ-glucosidase, 6Pβ-galactosidase, and dual-phospho activities that make up the 6Pβ-glycosidases. The 6Pβ-glycosidase active site residues were identified through consensus of binding interactions using all known 6Pβ-glycosidase PDB structures complexed complete ligand substrates. With regards to the 6Pβ-glucosidase activity, it was found that the L8b loop is longer and forms extra interactions with the L8a loop likely leading to increased L8 loop rigidity which would prevent the displacement of residue Ala423 ensuring a steric clash with galactoconfigured ligands and may engender substrate specificity for gluco-configured ligands only. Also, during molecular dynamics simulations using enzyme BlBglH (6Pβ-glucosidase activity), it was revealed that the favourable binding of substrate stabilises the loops that surround and make up the enzyme active site. Using the BlBglC (dual-phospho activity) enzyme structure with either galacto- (PNP6Pgal) or gluco-configured (PNP6Pglc) ligands, MD simulations in triplicate revealed important details of the broad specificity of dual-phospho activity enzymes. The ligand O4 hydroxyl position is the only difference between PNP6Pgal and PNP6Pgal, and it was found that residues Gln23 and Trp433 bind strongly to the ligand O3 hydroxyl group in the PNP6Pgal-enzyme complex, but to the ligand O4 hydroxyl group in the PNP6Pglc-enzyme complex. Also, His124 formed many hydrogen bonds with the PNP6Pgal O3 hydroxyl group but had none with PNP6Pglc. Alternatively, residues Tyr173, Tyr301, Gln302 and Thr321 formed hydrogen bonds with PNP6Pglc but not PNP6Pgal. Lastly, using multiple 3D structures from various GH1 activities, a large network of conserved interactions between active site residues (and other important residues) was uncovered, which most likely stabilise the loop regions that contain these residues, helping to retain their positions needed for binding molecules. Alternatively, there exists several differing residue-residue interactions when comparing each of the activities which could contribute towards individual activity substrate specificity by causing slightly different overall structure and malleability of the active site. Altogether, the findings in this thesis shed light on the function, mechanisms, dynamics, and ligand-binding of GH1 enzymes – particularly of the 6Pβ-glycosidase activities.
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- Provide reports as requested to the Board and committees
- Keep the Board informed of internal and external trends and issues that might impact the program
- Support the Board President and Committee chairs in carrying out their responsibilities
- Assure that all necessary legal requirements are met, including filing of taxes, CPA audit, maintaining appropriate insurance, and employee workplace laws
- Monitor volunteer and child caseload procedures
- Oversee public relations efforts and general community awareness of program and approve public relations material, press releases, press packets and media coverage
- Be available for public speaking and training presentations
- Maintain relationships with all stakeholders to establish, revise, and implement program strategies for serving the needs of children in the dependency system
- Develop the vision and mission of the organization, contribute to organizational leadership and planning, and set and achieve program goals.
- Represent the program at meetings and conferences with judicial officers, county and government officials and private organizations, the Judicial Council of California, the California and National CASA Association, and other stakeholders.
Qualifications and Requirements:
- Excellent management and leadership skills
- At least five year’s previous experience in a social service agency, non-profit sector setting, and/or court-related program
- Excellent written, oral and interpersonal communication skills
- Previous supervisorial experience and strong personnel management skills
- Experience in the fields of child development and/or volunteer program management
- Understanding of the dynamics of child abuse and neglect
- Experience in fund development and marketing campaigns
- Well-developed fundraising and grant writing skills
- Knowledge of financial management and nonprofit accounting, budgeting, and business systems
- Ability to plan, organize, and evaluate system operations
- Familiarity with word processing and database management including working knowledge of financial accounting and reporting software
- Bachelor’s degree required, Master’s degree preferred
- Experience in dealing with the public, including public presentations and group facilitation
- Extensive knowledge of community resources
- Ability to work comfortably with professional staff, volunteers and working committees of the CASA Board
- Respectful of all people regardless of socioeconomic background, culture, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or gender
- Flexible with hours, available evenings and weekends
- Have own transportation and be willing to occasionally travel
- Valid driver’s license with current automobile insurance
- Criminal justice fingerprint clearance, DOJ and FBI
- Child Abuse Central Index clearance (CACI)
Demonstrated Ability To:
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https://casatulareco.org/who-we-are/careerop.html
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COUNTRY CONTEXT:
In Kenya, WUSC programming will focus on strengthening the capacity of partner organizations working primarily in the Nairobi region. These organizations focus on fostering improved economic opportunities for young women and displaced youth. Kenya has a large young, however many government programs designed to boost entrepreneurship and combat high unemployment for young people are not well known or experience negative population perceptions. WUSC volunteers will support organizations such as Organization of African Youth (OAY), Akili Dada, and FIDA to promote inclusive economic opportunities and training for young women, in addition to supporting organizations advocating for urban refugees and displaced people.
ASSIGNMENT CONTEXT:
The Program and Volunteer Support Advisor will assist in the delivery of volunteer and program management support activities. The volunteer will work in collaboration with program support staff and volunteers across the program to ensure consistency, responsiveness and continued quality in the support provided to volunteers. The volunteer will also support general program planning and management activities in the local WUSC office, including, on a case by case basis: liaising with partner organizations, contributing to work planning and other tasks which support the effective management of volunteer cooperation within the country.
Functions
ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES COULD INCLUDE:
- Work with local staff in providing personal and professional guidance to Canadian volunteers to contribute to the realization of program goals and completion of mandates;
- Support in the design and coordination of in-country orientation for volunteers and organize volunteer management training for local partners;
- In collaboration with country office staff, develop and implement safety and security protocols, communicate emergency procedures to local and international staff, and liaise with development partners on best practices;
- Support in the preparation and processing of immigration documents for Canadian volunteers, including visas, residence, and employment permits;
- In collaboration with the Finance and Administration team, develops and manages project specific budgets;
- Support program monitoring and evaluation by liaising with volunteers to consolidate results, document best practices and encourage learning among volunteers and partners.
- Provide support to program communications team including social media, newsletters, and case studies, as required;
- Develop strategies to continue to improve the volunteer integration process;
- Support handover from incoming and outgoing volunteers to ensure continuity between mandates and to avoid duplication of work;
- Support country office staff in program related activities, when necessary;
- Ensure the representation and engagement of women in all activities and program benefits;
- Volunteers are required to undertake public engagement and fundraising activities before, during, and after their volunteer assignment and will be equipped with tools, training, and one-on-one support to achieve these goals; and
- Write reports as required by the program.
Requirements
QUALIFICATIONS:
- Degree and/or formal training in human resources, volunteer management, social sciences, or a related discipline
- Minimum 3 years of relevant experience in volunteer management
- Excellent judgment and problem-solving skills
- A commitment to gender equality, youth inclusion, and international volunteering
- Experience with group facilitation and trainings, including content development
- Flexibility, adaptability, excellent interpersonal skills and cultural sensitivity
- Written and oral fluency in English
- Experience living and working internationally is a strong asset
Details
VOLUNTEER BENEFITS AND SUPPORT:
- Support and guidance prior to departure and while on assignment in country
- Participation in a pre-departure training where you will have the opportunity to learn about the program, gain practical skills for living and working in an intercultural context and meet other volunteers
- Travel, meals and accommodation are covered
- In-country orientation and briefing upon arrival in-country
- Language training in-country where required
- Return flights, visas and work permits
- Cost of required country specific vaccinations and antimalarials
- Health insurance
- Modest monthly living allowance while overseas
- Accommodation while overseas
- Vacation leave entitlement
- Return debriefing in Canada after completion of assignment
- Travel, meals and accommodation are covered
- An incredible opportunity to enhance your professional skills and participate in an experience of a lifetime!
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https://wusc.ca/volunteer/program-and-volunteer-support-advisor-9561/
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Health and safety orientation is conducted for workers as soon as possible and before the assignment of work that places their health or safety at risk.
Job-specific health and safety training is provided prior to workers commencing specific jobs they have not previously performed that places their health or safety at risk.
Workers are provided orientation training and/or job-specific training, as appropriate, in the event of changes to work operations that introduce new hazards.
Worker attendance at health and safety orientation and job-specific health and safety training is documented as set out in the program standard and is readily accessible to those who require the information.
Job-specific health and safety training programs include written and/or practical evaluations which workers must successfully complete.
Regular evaluation of worker and supervisory familiarity with the requirements of job-specific health and safety training programs. (It is important that workers are able to perform to the expected program standards).
Regular evaluation and updating of health and safety orientation training and job-specific health and safety training programs.
This policy applies to all new workers and to any workers (including acting positions) who are assigned new or unfamiliar work and/or equipment. Certain provisions of the policy (as indicated) also apply to volunteers and contractors.
Depending on individual division needs, this policy may require the development of divisional guidelines to meet operational requirements.
A formalized training program geared to a specific job/task (e.g. confined space entry) that provides participants with the necessary knowledge and skills to perform the job/task safely.This includes any applicable workplace specific training (e.g. security procedures, fire and evacuation procedures). Refer to the accompanying Program Standards.
Provide sufficient resources to ensure timely and efficient implementation of this policy and its’ accompanying program standard.
Ensure that health and safety orientation and job-specific health and safety training programs as outlined in this policy and program standard are established within their area(s) of responsibility. This includes 3 parts; Part A is the required Ministry of Labour H&S Awareness training content, Part B is the City general health and safety orientation training content, and Part C is the job-specific health and safety training programs. More details on available training methods can be found in the Program Standards.
Distribute this policy, its associated program standard and appendices to all levels of management and ensure its implementation.
Distribute it to both co-chairpersons of all joint health and safety committees within their division.
Provide joint health and safety committees within their area(s) of responsibility the opportunity to provide timely input into the development and updating of training programs; and the opportunity to assist’ as appropriate, in the delivery of such training programs.
Ensure that all new workers under their supervision and any worker reassigned to their supervision, complete health and safety orientation (see attached Program Standard for content) and any required job-specific health and safety training, prior to commencing work that places their health or safety at risk. (Workers reassigned to a supervisor may not need to attend orientation training). For transferring workers, provide orientation regarding policies/procedures/practices that differ from those of the original work area. In the event that work operations change and new hazards are introduced, provide workers with orientation training and/or job-specific training, as appropriate. When the worker has been absent from their position for an extended period of time, the worker’s skills should be reassessed. Retraining or updated training should be mandatory when, (1) the worker is not able to demonstrate the safe operation of the equipment, tool, etc., or (2) new equipment, tools, etc. have been introduced since the absence of the employee.
Communicate aspects of the attached Program Standard applicable to their work operations to those new workers and workers with new tasks or equipment who report to them (e.g. tailgate sessions, staff meetings, training sessions, posting in the workplace).
Attend and be familiar with all health and safety training programs required by workers under their supervision.
Monitor workers’ performance to ensure the skills and knowledge are put into practice and for modifying training as needed.
When health and safety orientation and/or job-specific health and safety training is delivered by the supervisor, the supervisor will update and maintain training records in accordance with the Program Standard.
Through contract language, ensure that workers of contractors and sub-contractors are adequately trained to perform the required work.
Ensure they are advised of hazards related to City workplaces and/or City work that may affect them.
Take reasonable steps to ensure that these parties are competent to perform work to which they are assigned.
Ensure that health and safety orientation as set out in the Program Standard is completed.
Ensure they are advised and protected from hazards related to City workplaces and/or City work that may affect them.
Take reasonable steps to ensure that volunteers are competent to perform work to which they are assigned.
Participate in City-required health and safety orientation and/or job-specific health and safety training courses.
Undertake proficiency and certification tests, as required.
Utilize the information and skills acquired through orientation and job-specific training to protect their health and safety.
Advise their supervisor of additional training needs.
Develop and deliver on a regular basis, generic health and safety training programs to assist divisions in meeting their responsibilities under this policy. (Refer to “Courses for the Toronto Public Service” for details).
When developing new training programs and revising existing programs, build in participant evaluations, either written and/or practical.
Lead in the development of health and safety orientation information and post this information on the City’s intranet site.
Provide consultation in the design and/or delivery of health and safety orientation and job-specific health and safety training programs, in accordance with the accompanying training standard, in conjunction with their client division and the respective joint health and safety committee(s).
When health and safety orientation and/or job-specific health and safety training is delivered by the human resources safety consultant, human resources will update and maintain training records.
Human Resources will make the training records available to client divisions, joint health and safety committees and the Ministry of Labour, upon request.
When consulted, provide input for the development and updating of both health and safety orientation and job-specific health and safety training programs.
Both management and labour members of joint health and safety committees should be encouraged and permitted to take part in the health and safety orientation.
Review and make recommendations on the health and safety orientation and job-specific health and safety training programs within the area of their responsibility.
Review and comment on the policy and training program on an ongoing basis.
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https://www.toronto.ca/city-government/accountability-operations-customer-service/city-administration/corporate-policies/pehr-policies/orientation-training/
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Overview:
The Door was established in 1972 with the vision of creating an innovative youth development model to address the complex needs of young New Yorkers. Today, we serve up to 11,000 youth annually across our four New York City locations, including our main site in lower Manhattan, our supportive housing sites on the Lower East Side, and our satellite site in the South Bronx. The Door’s success lies in our commitment to meeting young people where they are and providing them with the comprehensive and integrated services they need to reach their potential. At The Door, youth can access everything from health care and education to mental health counseling and crisis intervention, legal assistance, high school equivalency and college preparation services, career development, housing support, arts, sports and recreational activities, and nutritious meals – all for free and in a diverse, caring, and supportive environment. Broome Street Academy (BSA), a charter school embedded at The Door, enrolls up to 330 students and prioritizes applicants who are experiencing housing instability or have been involved in the child welfare system. The wraparound supports provided in partnership with The Door promote student success in school and in life. Learn more at www.door.org.
Reporting directly to the CEO, the Chief Compliance and Operating Officer (CCOO) will be a member of the Executive Team and oversee the day-to-day operations of The Door, including Compliance, Human Resources, Finance, Facilities, IT, and Data/Program Evaluation to ensure quality services and increased operational efficiencies. The CCOO will be responsible for identifying and assessing areas of compliance risk, preparing and distributing the written code of conduct, setting forth the ethical principles and policies that are the basis of the compliance program, implementing a retaliation-free internal reporting process, and collaborating with executive management to effectively incorporate the compliance program within system operations and programs.
Responsibilities:
- Work directly with the CEO and the Executive Team to design and implement business strategies, plans, and procedures and establish policies that promote organizational culture and vision on all issues related to strategic planning, program expansion, and overall organizational growth
- Oversee, coordinate, and monitor the day-to-day compliance activities of the organization, including working with outside counsel regarding all aspects of legal compliance, such as review of vendor and funder contracts, and working with auditing firms to ensure compliance with annual financial filings
- Working with the Managing Director of Human Resources, manage and oversee the compliance-related human resource functions including recruitment, hiring, and compensation; race equity and inclusion; benefits administration; professional training and development; talent management and retention strategies; organizational policies; and employee relations issues
- Working with the Managing Director of HR, develop and coordinate appropriate compliance training and education programs for all employees, interns, and volunteers to ensure that they have the requisite information and knowledge of laws, regulations, agency policies, and requirements to carry out their responsibilities in a lawful and ethical manner; assess the need for additional training and education and develop appropriate compliance programs
- Working with the Chief Financial Officer, manage and oversee the compliance-related finance functions including audits, grants, and contract administration, accounts payable, accounts receivable, general accounting, purchasing, cash management, payroll, budgeting, third-party billing, and financial planning and analysis
- Working with the Chief Program Officer, ensure all programs meet regulatory and compliance related obligations, such as reports, audits, contract renewals, etc., particularly in our Medicaid/third party reimbursable programs (Adolescent Health Center, Article 31 Mental Health Clinic, Health Homes, etc.)
- Working with the Managing Director of Facilities, oversee the maintenance of building systems, including mechanical, electrical, fire, health, safety, and elevators, and oversee contractors for facility renovation projects including HVAC, electrical systems, and floor arrangement for all sites
- Working with the Managing Director of IT, ensure the ongoing maintenance and updating of information and communications systems and infrastructure, including hardware, software, and IT applications, and work with others to update all of The Door’s database systems
- Create and implement an effective compliance program, ensuring that it includes internal controls that effectively prevent and/or detect violations of law, regulations, organization policies, and the code of conduct
- Regularly review the compliance program and recommend appropriate revisions and modifications, including advising administrative leadership and the board of directors of potential compliance risk areas
- Lead and report back to the internal Compliance Committee (made up of staff and external attorneys) at its regular meetings, or as otherwise necessary, on any significant compliance issues to ensure appropriate discussion of such compliance issues and to ensure that appropriate action is taken
- Coordinate internal compliance review and monitoring activities, including periodic reviews of departments, and oversee efforts related to audits, reviews, and examinations
- Perform other duties as assigned by the CEO and/or the Compliance Committee
Qualifications:
- Master’s degree in Business, Law, or Public Policy strongly preferred and/or minimum of 10 years of successful senior executive experience, principally as a CAO/COO/CCO or as a “Chief” of Finance Administration/Human Resources at a non-profit or another organization with similar model and culture
- Thorough understanding of finance, IT systems, and HR; broad experience with the full range of business functions and systems, including strategic development and planning, budgeting, business analysis, finance, information systems, and human resources
- Knowledge and experience in healthcare and Medicaid/third party reimbursement
- Superior management skills, strong mentoring and coaching experience, and a track record of building and leading high-performing teams that work collaboratively to meet established organizational goals
- Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to manage and influence direct reports, partners, associates, and staff to gain buy-in and support for ideas and initiatives
- Solid organizational skills, including project management skills
- Ability to solve challenges creatively, analytically, and strategically
- Ability to work independently, assess priorities, take initiative, handle multiple assignments, and meet deadlines
- Excellent analytical, administrative, and written and verbal communication skills
- Demonstrated competency to work in a diverse, consensus-driven culture with a strong commitment to social justice, race equity and inclusion, and our mission
Work Schedule: Full time, Monday – Friday. 35 hours a week
Salary: Commensurate with experience plus generous benefits package
Contact: Please submit cover letter and resume to: Apply
COVID -19 POLICY
The Door and Broome Street Academy follow the CDC and NYS recommendations to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The Door and Broome Street Academy are now requiring all new hires to be vaccinated against COVID-19 unless they have a qualified exemption.
We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive community. We support a broadly diverse team who will contribute to our organization. We are an equal opportunity employer for all regardless of race, color, citizenship, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, veteran or reservist status, or any other category protected by federal, state, or local law.
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https://door.org/chief-compliance-operating-officer/
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Founded in 2011, the International NGO Safety Organisation (INSO) is an international NGO that supports humanitarian aid workers by establishing safety coordination platforms in insecure contexts. INSO provides registered NGOs with a range of free services, including real-time incident tracking, analytical reports, safety-related data and mapping, crisis management support, staff orientations and training.
INSO services help NGOs with their day-to-day risk management responsibilities and improve their overall situational awareness to support evidence-based humanitarian access decisions.
INSO provides daily support to more than 1000 NGOs operating in 16 of the world’s most insecure countries and has earned a strong reputation for its performance, principles and professionalism.
INSO is registered in the Netherlands with its headquarters based in The Hague, the international city of peace and justice.
Position:
We are now seeking a qualified and experienced individual to join our headquarters Field Programs Group as Regional Director – East Africa (RD EA). This is an exciting opportunity to make a significant contribution to the safety of the humanitarian community and use your humanitarian sector knowledge, experience and skills to lead and develop INSO programs in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Mozambique. Working closely with the Director of Field Programs, you will contribute to structuring INSO field operations and global outreach. The portfolio currently includes established INSO programs in Somalia and Kenya and start-ups in Mozambique and Ethiopia.
The post is fully funded and available for an immediate start.
Job Summary:
Regional Directors are responsible for overseeing INSO project implementation in their assigned areas (approx. 4-6 countries, EUR 2-4 MM budget per country program). They are a functional expert in all aspects of delivering INSO projects in the field as well as an experienced generalist in NGO safety practises, humanitarian field architecture, project/grant management cycles and donor relations. Under the leadership of the Director of Field Programs and in collaboration with the Field Program Group (the Global Training team, Grant Manager and MEAL Manager), the Global Analysis and Research team, and the Technology & Innovation team (holders of the CHDC project), the Regional Directors participate in structuring, improving and developing INSO field programs.
The main role is to lead, manage, mentor and support Country Directors (CDs) in accomplishing their tasks and responsibilities and to ensure that INSO country projects operate as intended. For this purpose, Regional Directors are hands on and spend a significant amount of their time in their region.
Regional Directors are based at our Headquarters (HQ) in the Hague. At the HQ, the Regional Directors coordinate and communicate across all Departments through the course of their work and play a key role in cross-departmental learning and support.
Regional Directors are supervised by the Director of Field Programs and line manage up to six Country Directors in their assigned area.
Main Duties and Responsibilities:
Program Strategy, Management & Quality
The overall aim is to ensure that INSO projects provide high quality services that are relevant and adaptive to NGO needs while protecting INSO’s reputation and principles and effectively delivering its mandate.
- Support CDs in development and implementation of Annual Plans, – assessing and contributing to short-and-long range country strategy to improve NGO safety – and ensure the plan is relevant to INSO’s mandate, NGO needs and is achievable within the context (security, legal, environment, funding, etc.);
- Ensure that all projects adhere to INSO’s mission and principles and contribute to further its reputation as an accountable, humanitarian and professional organisation and valued member of the global and local humanitarian community;
- Ensure that projects follow standard internal policies, program framework and quality standards.
- Monitor the ongoing relevance of the project to the needs of NGOs in the context and ensure the project and team take and retain their proper place as a central node in the local humanitarian architecture.
- In coordination with other technical referents (analysis, information, training), monitor and quality control outgoing products and services (with frequent sampling) to ensure INSO products remain of objectively high value and quality (good analysis, accurate data, helpful & timely advice, etc.);
- Independently monitor beneficiary satisfaction and attitudes with periodic meetings and feedback sessions;
- Lead new project scoping and development missions
Grant Management & Fundraising
The overall aim is to ensure that projects remain fully funded and that INSO meets all contractual obligations on time and on budget.
- Manage regional grants if applicable
- Comprehensively orient CDs in their grant management responsibilities and the general principles of program cycle management, providing ongoing mentorship and advice as needed;
- Actively supervise and support the CDs in fundraising. Anticipate funding gaps and identify appropriate mitigation plans;
- Supervise grants management to ensure full compliance with donor regulations and timely submission of reports;
- Support CDs in identifying and implementing required modifications to project activities and grant documents to reflect changes in the context and/or priorities and strategy, updating the Annual Plan where necessary;
- Ensure CDs are engaged in effective project management including regular financial and performance indicator reviews, cross team communication and forecasting;
- Support and guide the CDs in developing and managing their relationships with other HQ personnel and departments involved in the program management cycle including Finance Controller and Operations staff.
Personnel Management, Mentorship & Leadership
The overall aim is that projects are fully staffed by competent, well managed, motivated and happy employees.
- Lead the recruitment (as Hiring Manager) of vacant Country Director positions;
- Line manage Country Directors; provide effective training and orientation, set written performance objectives, monitor performance, provide regular feedback, support and mentoring; oversee disciplinary procedures where required.
- Support CDs in their delivery of HR and team management responsibilities and monitor their performance, modelling good leadership practices and providing an open and supportive management space;
- Monitor and maintain staff structure with country offices to ensure proper and fair allocation of tasks/service delivery responsibilities between personnel;
- Monitor overall team morale and motivation, intervening where necessary to inspire, lead, mitigate problems or resolve conflicts;
- Foster open, collegial and positive communication within and between regional teams (and beyond) to inject a spirit of unity of purpose.
Regional Cooperation, Development & Synergies
The overall aim is to develop strong, interconnected regional programming (where necessary) that acknowledges and reflects common dynamics, maximizes our capability and meets our partners and donors where they need us.
- Where possible, seek to develop a wider regional programming strategy approach and maximize regional team cohesion and opportunities for cross context learning.
- Establish and develop a regional/desk donor contacts list and actively track regional and CO specific funding opportunities;
- Coordinate closely and frequently with the Director of Field Programs, other Regional Directors and the Global Training Manager to maintain a ‘whole of INSO ’ project approach and prevent regional imbalance and division;
- Develop connections to regional NGOs, UN and donor hubs, groups, forums etc.
Representation
The overall aim is to be a good ambassador for INSO and to promote its work and reputation effectively and positively.
- Serve as an active senior representative of the organisation, maintaining and building the reputation of INSO;
- Represent the region in internal meetings and conferences providing briefings and presentations as required.
- Represent INSO for new project start-ups (scoping missions) and with NGOs, the UN, forum or donor conferences as required.
Cross Departmental Support & Coordination
The aim is effective flow of information and coordinated action between departments in support of common goals and priorities.
- Establish and maintain close and cooperative relationships with all INSO departments in pursuit of coordinated action, understanding their responsibilities, capabilities and limitations;
- Establish and maintain regular communication with the designated Financial Controller/s;
- Provide timely information, input and responses to financial, HR, procurement, administrative, legal or other processes related to the Country Office as may be required (signing PRs, recruitment documents, tender reviews, powers of attorney, etc.);
- Facilitate and organise CD orientation with other departments and support integration of learning into practice.
Project Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning
The aim is to have and use standard project evaluation & learning tools to assess project performance and quality in a routine and comparable manner.
- Support the Director of Field Programs in development of a comprehensive project monitoring, evaluation and learning framework (project audit) with key standards and indicators;
- Lead periodic project evaluations to assess project performance against the established benchmarks, identify gaps and recommendations for follow-up;
- Ensure integration of evaluations into Annual Planning, project policy development, etc.;
- Support the Director of Field Programs and Senior Management Team in the ongoing development of INSO program strategy.
Knowledge, Skills and Experience:
Essential:
- Master’s degree in international relations, conflict, humanitarian practice or another relevant field.
- 5-7 years managing teams ideally within international NGOs.
- Experience overseeing implementation of organizational and program budgets of at least $2M annually.
- Management and operational experience in the field (ie: Program Director, Country Director) and at the regional/headquarters level (Regional Director, Desk Manager, Head of Emergency and/or Analytics teams, etc.).
- Established operational expertise in humanitarian safety, access and coordination.
- Excellent English language skills, both written and oral.
- Operational experience in East Africa (Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Mozambique).
Nice to Have:
- Relevant previous employment experience with INSO in a senior position in the field or HQ-based role.
- Relevant experience providing support to country directors and country programs from a headquarters/regional/roving support capacity or from a peer-to-peer perspective.
- French or Arabic language skills.
- Demonstrated experience working with a range of stakeholders (e.g. from global headquarters to boards to field teams).
Personal attributes:
- Proven ability to identify issues, analyze and participate in the resolution of issues/problems.
- Excellent communication, and organizational skills.
- Excellent listening and questioning skills, combined with the ability to interact confidently with staff to establish what the problem is and explain the solution.
- Demonstrated understanding of humanitarian principles and practices.
- Ability to work effectively and efficiently unsupervised.
- Strong work ethic and capacity to take responsibility for their actions.
- Ability to meet tight deadlines.
Safe-guarding Policy:
INSO is fully committed to safe recruitment, selection and vetting of all potential new staff, trustees and volunteers and we will ensure rigorous compliance with our Code of Conduct and Safeguarding policy throughout the recruitment process.
Terms & Conditions:
Fixed-term (renewable) full-time contract based in The Hague, Netherlands, €7,250 per month, 8% vacation pay (vakentiegeld), 2.5 days annual leave per month. This post is eligible for a Highly Skilled Migrant visa sponsorship and relocation allowance.
How to apply:
Interested applicants are requested to send the following to [email protected] and reference “RD EA” in the subject line of the email. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. The closure of applications is on 7 June 2022. Please include the following in your application:
- An up-to-date CV (2 page maximum).
- A cover letter explaining your motivation and interest in the position. Please explain how you meet the minimum requirements of the role and what motivates you for this particular position.
Please do not send any additional information (such as copies of certificates, copies of diplomas, other writing samples, etc.) and keep the total size of your application under 2M
Tell us a little about yourself
Information provided in this form will only be used to understand our audience and improve our website.
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https://ngosafety.org/vacancies/regional-director-east-africa-hq/3278/
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Under the supervision of the Branch Operations Director and in accordance with the direction and mission of District 7 HRDC, the Weatherization Director is delegated the responsibility to lead the ongoing strategy, development, and implementation of the company’s Weatherization programs by ensuring the successful day to day operations of the programs.
The incumbent will be responsible for ensuring that all state and federal guidelines, and grant and contract requirements are met; assisting staff to perform their jobs effectively; and act as a liaison between staff and other related agencies.
MISSION OF THE ORGANIZATION
Through its mission, HRDC-7 empowers people in need through the mobilization and development of community services creating opportunities for success in Big Horn, Carbon, Stillwater, Sweet Grass, and Yellowstone Counties. All HRDC-7 activities focus on 3 national goals:
Individuals and families with low incomes are stable and achieve economic security.
Communities where people with low incomes live are healthy and offered economic opportunities.
People with low incomes are engaged and active in building opportunities in communities.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES
The requirements listed, are representative of the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to perform the essential functions of the job. To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to carry out each task satisfactorily and perform other duties as assigned.
Under the direction of the Branch Operations Director, develop, administer and monitor program operating budgets and expenditures and provide comprehensive program reports as required.
Establish procedures for completions of multiple contracts following all relevant federal and state rules and regulations.
Review all energy audit results ensuring SIR compliance. Have all Energy Services Programs reviewed for compliance.
Work to resolve client grievances according to established policy and procedures.
Evaluate Weatherization programs on an on-going basis and implement authorized program changes to meet changing program requirements.
Manage the purchase of materials and supplies for the Weatherization program to ensure proper expenditures of program funds and job costing.
Manage the implementation and oversight of procedures to ensure Weatherization property, tools, supplies and materials are accounted for and that inventory is current and accurate.
Ensure that Weatherization vehicles are maintained and in proper working condition.
Establish, monitor and enforce safety procedures and protocols for the Weatherization program.
Work closely with the Branch Operations Director and staff to ensure the mission of the agency and its respective programs are implemented and comply with program contracts as well as state and federal regulations.
Provide timely reports as required by respective programs and agency requirements. Update, communicate, and implement all program changes that reflect and impact compliance requirements.
Attend and conduct meetings for the purpose of training staff to implement program policy changes, safety procedures, etc. and address employee concerns.
Follow the training requirements for each grant and ensure all employees are meeting requirements including CEUs and coursework to ensure the spending of the training and technical assistance budgets.
Attend all weatherization trainings to ensure foundational knowledge of all jobs within the Weatherization Program.
Assist in developing means of expanding the agency’s participation, services and influence in all five counties of District 7.
Implements agency work plans at the program level to ensure achievement of set goals.
Complete special projects as assigned. Be flexible in assuming new duties and perform other duties assigned and determined to be productive and efficient for the continuing improvement of the agency.
SUPERVISORY DUTIES
Supervise and lead subordinate staff [and volunteers] in a fair and productive manner in accordance with the agency’s policies, and applicable state and federal laws.
Participate in the selection process, conduct employee evaluations, enforce discipline, and terminations as required.
Ensure that appropriate training has been provided to his/her staff as needed.
Communicate policy and policy changes to his/her staff.
Resolve employee conflicts and client grievances according to established policy and procedures.
Demonstrate competency in leadership; develop and maintain an effective team.
Additional Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:
Effectively
communicates
on all platforms.
Demonstrates
dependability
and
punctuality
.
Adheres to a consistent work schedule.
Demonstrates
professionalism
in the workplace.
Maintains professional boundaries with participants;
Must have the ability to work with low income and disadvantaged people by modeling an unbiased, non-judgmental attitude.
Demonstrates positive and appropriate interactions with coworkers and management.
Contributes to a harmonious and productive work environment.
Must be a team player to ensure overall program success.
Nurtures, builds, and mentors employees to build a cohesive team.
Brings creative suggestions and potential solutions to direct supervisor regarding work barriers and team efficiency.
QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS:
To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.
EDUCATION and/or EXPERIENCE:
Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Accounting or related field and five years of supervisory experience, preferably in building trades; or equivalent combination of relatable education and experience. Construction and mechanical experience is desired.
OTHER SKILLS and ABILITIES:
Knowledge of energy saving techniques: air sealing, duct sealing, furnace tune-ups. Must be able to implement and follow program budgets.
Licenses and/or Certifications:
Must possess a valid Montana Driver’s License, proof of personal automobile insurance and must meet insurability requirements for agency automobile insurance policy.
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https://hrdc7.catsone.com/careers/40864-General/jobs/15391344-Program-Director/
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Responsible for raising awareness for the Buckner Family Hope Center. To inspire greater self-confidence, aspiration, and resilience in youth and children. Develop happy, thriving and resilient children and youth who can contribute positively to society.
NOTE: Some descriptions may have more specific duties and/or goals and objectives attached to this form. Such attachments normally reflect unique aspects of specific locations, shifts, departments, etc.
Discuss needs of children and youth with Family Coach. Based on needs identified by the families, work to bring appropriate empowerment resources to meet those needs through networking and bringing in local agencies that offer services needed and by engaging local church volunteers to meet identified needs of children and youth.
Assist youth and children in accessing the programs offered on-site as well as other services and referrals identified in the community; recognize and accommodate the clients’ varied levels of capability to understand and maneuver the expectations and eligibility requirements for the services.
Develop and manage a system to coordinate on-site and off-site programs and to aid with communication among program sponsors/collaborators.
Assist program to develop children and youth opportunities for leadership and development, including, but not limited to, assisting with program enrollments, assisting with obtaining school enrollment, and other services.
Develop professional relationships with institutions and agencies that provide education, living skills training, and children development programs. Develop relationships with community and social service organizations to help guide community assessments, program development, and implementation of new programs.
Analyze program needs; develop, modify, and implement changes in the program to meet changing needs of youth and children.
Assess needs and concerns of youth and children. Research models of programs with identified needs and concerns; research, prioritize and recruit local programs that address identified needs and concerns.
Coordinate regular events at the FHC including, but not limited to, sports camps, youth leadership, children camps, Vacation Bible Schools and lead children empowerment events.
Organize, implement and coordinate a comprehensive children and youth program in conjunction with area schools.
Serve as liaison between volunteers and Buckner staff to ensure that the on-going need for program volunteers and special event volunteers are met.
Maintain a master calendar of all volunteer and campus activities for youth and children; distribute notices of activities and volunteer projects to applicable program staff.
Maintain detailed records regarding all volunteerism and group activities including, but not limited to, maintaining a volunteer/activity database.
Coordinate the acquisition and distribution of in-kind donations including, but not limited to, tickets to special events and items to offset budgeted expenses. Document all in-kind donations following established procedures; write personal thank you notes when appropriate.
Plan, organize, and implement designated children and youth special events. Coordinate and implement Christmas activities, gift drives, and distribution.
Assist with conducting tours for mission groups and community programs as required.
Coordinate and lead frequent community presentations for recruiting purposes.
Serve as a resource and contributor for newsletters, Buckner Today stories, etc. as required.
Identify and implement strategies and resources which improve delivery of services to youth and children.
Timely and accurately complete and submit to management utilization, special events, activity reports, and other documentation and reports as requested.
Work nights and weekends as required to meet business needs.
Work with culturally diverse youth and families effectively.
Conduct client and community meetings regularly; attend and participate in staff meetings, other meetings and training as required. Actively participate in regularly scheduled Team meetings and other group processes to ensure professional care for clients. Chair special committees as required.
Responsible for supporting and representing Buckner at special events, activities and other assigned functions.
Work successfully as a part of a team and is responsible for developing then maintaining strong working relationships with co-workers.
Travel as needed to monitor, assess and help develop programs.
Report suspected child abuse and/or neglect to the Director and appropriate regulatory and law enforcement agencies.
Perform general office tasks as required.
Work in conjunction with support service staff to organize and maintain files and records in accordance with established procedures and guidelines.
Maintain compliance with all Buckner policies, procedures, and requirements. Maintain compliance with all federal and state laws. Maintain compliance with all agency regulatory guidelines and requirements.
Perform special assignments, projects, and other duties as required.
NOTE: These requirements represent minimum levels in order to perform the job on a satisfactory basis. Candidates must have the ability to satisfactorily perform the essential functions of the job.
Requires concentrated understanding of a comprehensive field of knowledge normally acquired through attainment of a bachelor’s degree in a related field. Bachelor’s Degree in a related field required. Minimum two years prior related experience required. Minimum one-year prior related experience providing community based services, youth and children programs.
Requires ability to observe and make accurate assessments of situations and individuals and determine appropriate action required.
Requires proficient knowledge of and/or work experience using youth and children community resources. Awareness of community resources, including social service and health providers required.
Requires ability to facilitate collaboration of Company and youth and children resources.
Requires proficient working knowledge and understanding of the applicable regulatory standards and requirements governing programs and services.
Requires ability to effectively interact and conduct ministry business within the community. Ability to sell strategic ministry opportunities with constituencies required.
Requires proficient ability to speak, read and write English.
Must demonstrate cultural understanding; ability to develop positive and trusting inter-cultural and interdenominational relationships based upon previous cross-cultural experience.
Requires ability to speak clearly and make self clearly understood in face to face interactions; to articulate with accuracy to speak on the phone.
Requires ability to relate positively, influentially, and sensitively to a broad spectrum of persons in a variety of multi-tiered relationships and settings.
Requires ability to effectively provide oversight to volunteers; requires administrative skills to include but not limited to volunteer selection, development, motivation, scheduling, and evaluation.
Requires ability to travel to various geographic locations as required using various modes of transportation. Requires the ability to provide personal transportation on an as needed basis to perform job functions in the community. Requires ability to provide personal transportation and visit homes of clients to provide in-home services.
Requires ability to drive assigned vehicle(s) or personal vehicle, with appropriate state license, following all laws applicable; must provide proof of liability insurance and must be eligible to be insured under Buckner’s insurance policy. Must be age 21 or older to drive on behalf of Buckner. Must be age 18 to be employed with Buckner.
Requires ability to recognize confidential matters and maintain confidentiality.
Requires ability to motivate people.
Requires proficient ability to exhibit detail-oriented skills necessary to understand and manage a wide-range of information.
Requires ability to recognize differences in sounds, such as voices/noises that are loud and playful instead of angry and combative; and ability to differentiate tones and volume in conversations.
Requires ability to perform tasks with little supervision. Most tasks are governed by standard practices; however, some are not. Innovative thinking is required. Detail-oriented, with good organizational skills required. Requires leadership ability characterized by servant leadership, integrity and honesty. Must possess the ability to lead through influence as opposed to authority.
Requires ability to effectively handle multiple tasks with energy and excellent organizational and time management skills; ability to appropriately prioritize and re-prioritize tasks.
Requires ability to effectively communicate orally and in writing and speak in front of large groups of people. Requires outstanding interpersonal skills.
Requires ability to work with frequent interruptions and in stressful situations; ability to respond timely and appropriately in crisis situations.
Requires personality attuned to the requirements of meeting needs of clients and the ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships with other employees and the public.
Proficient working knowledge and ability to accurately and timely operate and perform computer related tasks with specific equipment and software applications required.
Requires professional commitment to Christian principles and teachings so as to perform tasks and responsibilities in alignment with Buckner’s mission, vision, and values.
Requires ability to use up to 50 pounds of force occasionally and/or up to 20 pounds of force frequently and/or 10 pounds continuously to move objects. Requires ability to lift, carry, push, pull or otherwise move objects.
Requires ability to walk, stand and sit, sometimes for prolonged periods of time.
Requires ability to work nights and weekends.
Requires sufficient good health to properly discharge duties. Employees shall not be permitted to work who have infectious disease or skin lesion for the duration of the communicability.
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https://www.simplyhired.com/job/f2Hd8S-ErJFG_Itz22pgKYZ-dIqMBi5_jFZQXY2xnoZ7Apnyx3oZEw?q=
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be provided with sufficient training to undertake volunteer activities.
Agencies should develop and implement appropriate risk management policies and procedures for the management of volunteers. Agencies should identify and assess the risk associated with the volunteer activity to be undertaken and take steps necessary to eliminate or minimise any risk prior to commencement of the activity. This process should be documented. Risk should be managed in accordance with AS/NZS ISO 31000:2009 Risk Management, which provides a generic guide for establishing and implementing risk management.
Volunteering Australia has developed a helpful risk management tool called "Running the Risk?" to assist organisations involving volunteers to identify the range of risks that might affect them and their volunteer staff alike and implement strategies to deal with these risks.
Agencies should ensure that the volunteer is safe from injury and risks to health and, in particular, provide and maintain a safe environment in which to undertake the voluntary activity and have safe systems in place in accordance with the Work Health and Safety Act 2012 (see section 19 regarding duty of care). During induction, the agency's relevant OH&S policies and procedures, including information on the agency's incident and accident reporting system, should be given to and explained to the volunteer.
Agencies are encouraged to develop a volunteer registration form that records contact and emergency details of the volunteer, and agencies must ensure that volunteers disclose any medical condition or injury, or any medication that the volunteer is taking, that could affect the carrying out of the volunteer activity.
Agencies should assess and screen potential volunteers to ensure that they are competent and appropriate for the volunteer activity. Areas of potential risk are activities requiring the volunteer to undertake physical tasks, deal with money and/or sensitive information and intellectual property, operate in positions of trust, or where volunteers will be involved with vulnerable clients, such as children or people with disabilities. Agencies need to fit their volunteer screening procedures into all aspects of their formal recruitment and management processes.
It is suggested that agencies make reference to the National Standards for Involving Volunteers in Not-For-Profit Organisations when defining and documenting their policy and procedures for volunteer involvement.
Agencies should have clearly documented recruitment, selection and orientation policies and procedures that are consistent with non-discriminatory practices and guidelines, and ensure that volunteers have an understanding of State Service Principles, Code of Conduct, Diversity and Occupational Health and Safety. Volunteers should be supplied with a copy of the agency's volunteer policy and any other policy that affects the volunteer activity.
Agencies should be aware of the details of the terms of cover provided to agencies by the Fund for authorised agency volunteers. For information on the terms of the cover provided by the Fund for authorised agency volunteers, see Incident management - personal accident, Incident management - liability and Incident management - property.
Treasury has also developed a brochure containing information about cover provided for volunteers that agencies may wish to customise for their agency and give to volunteers.
Agencies should provide appropriate orientation / induction for volunteers including an introduction to the policies and systems used within the agency. Volunteers should be supplied with a copy of the agency's volunteer policy and any other policy that affects the volunteer activity.
Agencies should provide a written activity statement to all volunteers appointed by the agency. The statement should clearly identify the nature of the activity the volunteer will be undertaking and be consistent with the agency's role and function.
Agencies should provide volunteers with sufficient training to obtain the necessary skills and knowledge to safely and effectively undertake the volunteer activity.
Agencies should provide adequate supervision and feedback for the volunteer.
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https://www.treasury.tas.gov.au/tasmanian-risk-management-fund/risk-management/volunteers/volunteer-guidelines/volunteers-volunteer-management
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When Nurse Practitioners (NPs) begin to work at the R. Adams Crowley Shock Trauma Center in the University of Maryland Medical Center, they are given training that helps integrate them into the ICU. Brooke Andersen, ACGNP-BC, Clinical Program Manager for Shock Trauma and Advanced Practice Provider for the Critical Care group, wrote about this topic for Critical Care Nurse. She took the time to answer our questions about how this process works and why it is important.
What follows is an edited version of the interview.
As opposed to having them begin working directly in the ICU, what kind of preparation is done beforehand? Why is this necessary?
All newly hired NPs attend a 2-day hospital orientation and a 1-day Advanced Practice Provider orientation that includes content on regulatory requirements, computer training, access to systems, and supplies needed for the job. Each NP receives a structured orientation manual and details regarding the orientation plan.
This standardized onboarding phase assists the NPs in completing the necessary requirements to begin work in the ICU and has minimized delays in credentialing and other regulatory requirements while streamlining the process.
What kind of training do they receive before starting in ICU? Why?
We do not provide training before starting in the ICU. The new NPs receive education in conjunction with their clinical training. They participate in weekly 1-day standardized didactic education and bimonthly procedural workshops or simulation sessions throughout the orientation. The weekly sessions provide time off the unit and opportunities for the NPs to obtain knowledge and technical skills while gaining confidence and competency in the critical care setting.
Education sessions include over 30 critical care core topics. The procedural skills lab provides the necessary training for NPs to become credentialed in ICU advanced skills. High-fidelity clinical simulations are failure-to-rescue and rapid-response scenarios that provide training in critical high-stress situations with debriefing.
How has this helped them be better at their jobs when they begin in the ICU? Why? How does this training and integration help the patients?
The weekly education allows the NPs time to network with other critical care providers and develop a support system. Our program evaluation has shown that novice NPs do not feel adequately prepared to work in an ICU immediately after graduation, but at the completion of orientation, they are confident and competent.
This training helps the patients by ensuring that the NPs have had standardized training that promotes success in achieving competency in necessary critical care knowledge and technical skills.
Is this just done for the ICU or other departments as well? Why?
A structured orientation is provided for newly NPs throughout the organization, but is tailored to the specialty areas. The critical care orientation that we have described is specific to the critical care units and has been shown to meet the necessary NP competencies needed in all the ICUs. These competencies are based on the AACN Scope and Standards for adult and pediatric ACNPs.
What else do you think is important for nurses to know about how new NPs are integrated into the ICU?
Newly hired NPs require a depth of knowledge and skills to successfully transition into their new roles. A comprehensive training program that includes standardized educational activities, clinical training, and thoughtful matching of preceptors with new NPs are key elements. Mentorship is especially critical during the orientation period to ensure new NPs receive support and guidance in their learning while fostering independence and autonomy as competencies are achieved—and ultimately builds confidence.
Michele Wojciechowski
Latest posts by Michele Wojciechowski (see all)
- What It’s Like to Work as a Nurse Researcher - July 15, 2019
- Time’s Up Healthcare: Advocating for Health Care Professionals - July 8, 2019
- Working as a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner - July 3, 2019
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Subscribe to The Weekly Boost - the weekly email newsletter for DailyNurse.
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https://dailynurse.com/integrating-new-nps-into-the-icu/
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Work with the zonal manager and relevant technical staff to develop the work plan in regard of sponsorship, integration, protection and micro projects.
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Review and provide feedback on relevant zone/field proposals.
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In coordination with the technical staff conduct the planning of activities at the zonal level, according to WV’s Sponsorship standards, and protection models.
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Serve as a technical resource and provide technical advice to Zonal Manager on CP, SRS, Advocacy and DRR.
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Provide the field and the NO with relevant information specific to the zonal target area.
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Inform Zonal manager of any arising issues , general policies change at the National level and new opportunities
Design , Monitoring and Evaluation
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Advise Z one Managers on appropriate prioritization of problems, selection of interventions, activities and indicators.
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Participate in the assessment and design of projects.
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Contribute, in cooperation with the technical Coordinators and the DM&E, to the development of standardized monitoring indicators, tools and monitoring processes for the relevant designated projects in the Zone
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Participate in compiling project models and best practices as part of developing technical approach and technical program for the CESP project
Project implementation
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Coordinate the implementation of Advocacy, Sponsorship and Protection initiatives and other macro projects in the zone and advise the manager on arising issues and challenges.
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Ensure the integration of Sponsorship in programming.
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Ensure the implementation of Advocacy in technical programs.
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Revise the annual plan of action, CESP annual budget and mid-year review budget, and advise manager upon need.
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Prepare consolidated quarterly, semi-annual, annual, and end of reports required by NO, donors, government and interested stakeholder
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Visit the field and assess beneficiaries’ satisfaction regularly.
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Assist the COs and Zonal manager in choosing appropriate field and National level partners
Sponsorship Accountability
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Provide coordination and support to ensure Child Monitoring Standards are met
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Ensure child monitoring results analyses and propert follow up for case management
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Ensure sponsorship correspondences and 2.0 products are developed in engaging way and contribute to life skills development of children
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Ensure sponsorship messaging to be integrated within Area programme awareness raising activities
Advocacy
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Facilitate trainings on Child Rights and Child Protection for different stakeholders as needed.
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Contribute to local and national advocacy interventions and Campaigns initiated by the National Youth Forum and communities themselves with robust child participation and leadership.
Capacity Building & People’s supervision
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Supervise the Community Officers at the zonal level and build their capacity in the specific area of expertise, to include coaching, mentoring and providing regular feedback in relation of their performance.
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Develop and strengthen the technical skills of key team members by providing trainings and workshops to team at the zonal level, such as assessment, methodology, sharing etc…
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Organize learning and sharing events with other partners at the zonal level.
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Develop need based training and technical assistance interventions
Networking
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Participate in Sector zonal Working Group Meetings.
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Ensure WV JWG representation with relevant government local Ministries. Ensuring active membership of related NGO networks and working groups. Active work to develop local networks and alliances of various development players in the assigned provinces. Initiate issue-based/learning and sharing forums of NGOs and other institutions in the Zone
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Managing relations with village councils and steering committee
Child Protection
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To act as liaison between the national office’s Child Protection Technical Specialist, the community, the zonal office staff and relevant organizations and bodies.
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To design, implement, monitor & evaluate child protection programs at the zonal level.
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To link and provide advice other sectoral projects in mainstreaming child protection at the zonal level.
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To support zonal staff in technical child protection questions and capacity building.
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To lead the planning and implementation of the Child Protection Level 1 Incident Preparedness Plan (CPIPP) at the zonal level.
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To provide refreshers to zonal staff and volunteers on the national child protection policy once every two years or whenever the policy is revised.
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To provide a training orientation on the national child protection policy to new staff and volunteers.
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To attend child protection trainings and deliver the same training to colleagues at the Zonal Level.
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To attend the Child Protection Network meetings lead by the Ministry of Social Affairs at the zonal level and provide feedback where necessary to the Child Protection Technical Specialist and zonal manager.
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Review zonal offices’ materials including videos and pictures to ensure their compliance with WVI standard on avoiding harm in communication.
Other
Perform other duties as assigned by the supervisor
Knowledge, Skills, Abilities:
Education
Degree in social science or related subjects to development or relevant years of work experience
Knowledge & Skills
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Strong understanding of community-led development work
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Creative and able to apply innovative thinking, partnership building and problem solving skills;
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Strong facilitation skills, including catalyzing, connecting, and building the capacity of community groups
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Good interpersonal skills and cross-cultural sensitivity, abilities to work as a team.
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Effective in written and oral communication; able to speak and write with a proper standard of English.
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Computer literacy; Strong computer skills including Word, Excel, PowerPoint
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Good analytical and writing skills; Basic understanding of design, monitoring, and evaluation
Experience
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A minimum of 3 years’ relevant experience, including at least one year in a supervisory role
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Experience in development/facilitation in and with communities
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Experience with program assessment, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation processes
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Experience with faith, community based and child focused empowerment programs.
Work Environment
Willingness to be flexible with hours when necessary and able to travel often in the field
Position is based in Al Zababdeh-Jenin
Interested and qualified candidates can apply online through Apply Now-button below
We thank all applicants for their interest. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.
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https://www.jobs.ps/jobs/community-protection-coordinator-31840
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Reporting to the Superintendent, Evaporation & Utilities, you will be responsible for the direction of production personnel to ensure the safe and efficient operation of the Evaporation, Utilities, and Tank Farm Area Equipment. The Evaporation & Utilities Shift Engineer has the TSASK regulatory responsibility to act as the “Shift Engineer". Additional responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
- Provide direct supervision, technical assistance, and operational guidance to area panel and field operators for safe and efficient operation
- Review daily production reports and make necessary changes to ensure KPI targets are met
- Communicate information effectively to ensure consistency, understanding, and clarity
- Conduct daily and monthly shift review meetings to communicate safety, quality, and production highlights
- Grow and develop technical and behavioural competencies to increase knowledge, capability, and performance
- Troubleshoot and analyze process upset conditions to optimize production
- Ensure detailed work notifications are entered for any required maintenance
- Work with the coordinators to monitor, schedule, and co-ordinate maintenance within the area to optimize up-time of production
- Resolve problems through root cause analysis and actioning the best solution
- Evaluates how well the process is working and shares insights to promote action and continuous improvement
- Work with the Scheduler to ensure shift coverage is maintained and that guidelines are followed
- Complete frequent check-ins with all direct reports and provide 1:1 coaching and mentorship to expand the capacity of team members
- Provide timely positive and constructive feedback to recognize or improve work habits and task completion
- Foster a positive and respectful work environment that builds team engagement
- Develop your own personal execution plans and conduct performance reviews
- Support the Operations Progression Program (ie. training and competency assessments)
- Co-ordinate and ensure operators are trained on appropriate work instructions and safety policies
- Ensure TSASK regulatory compliance and assume role of “Shift Engineer” as described in the Boiler and Pressure Vessel Act.
- Ensure all incidents are reported and that a thorough investigation is completed
- Review and authorize lock out/tag out of area equipment.
- Ensure safe operating procedures (SOP’s), work instructions, and lock out requirements are accurate and up to date
- Review non-routine tasks and ensure safety procedures are followed
We enrich your life
We are committed to being a company where every employee can contribute, grow and thrive, and where we reflect the diverse communities in which we live and work. We are working toward a truly inclusive environment, because we know that the amazing array of differences in our backgrounds, competencies, experiences, race, gender, age, beliefs, sexual orientation, identity and their intersections is key to the longevity, sustainability and growth of our organization.
In a career with K+S Potash Canada (KSPC), you can look forward to:
Good People and Great Culture
Be part of a team committed to building an innovative and diverse culture. KSPC is growing our business, delivering exciting new opportunities, and giving back to the communities where we live and work.
Challenge and Growth
We support your growth and potential through professional development, training, and a robust performance recognition program.
Valuable Compensation
Our total target compensation is competitive and benchmarked to the market. We have a Pay-for-Performance philosophy that includes two components: fixed (base) pay, and a short-term incentive (bonus) that rewards employees for their contributions towards corporate, team and individual successes.
Supporting Benefits
Our comprehensive, employer-paid benefits program includes Life, Disability, Health and Dental, as well as competitive Retirement benefits, Employee and Family Assistance Program, paid work time to help out in your community (volunteer with a sports team or a charitable organization of your choice) and more! We offer a Health Spending Account for extras, like more expensive glasses, or a Wellness Account that covers recreational items, like your park camping fees, hunting or fishing license, and your gym membership.
Your Profile
Our company values and recognizes the diversity of the workforce and encourages individuals with the equivalent combination of education and work experience. The ideal candidate will have:
- 2nd Class Power Engineering Certification (consideration may be given to the holder of a 3rd Class Power Engineering Certificate who is nearing completion of a 2nd Class Certificate)
- 3-5 years’ experience leading/coaching or training people is a requirement
- Operating experience including field and panel duties. Start-up or commissioning experience is an asset
- Well-developed leadership, organizational, consultation and relationship building skills, ability to demonstrates effective relationship building skills (participates/leads in team meetings, actively shares knowledge, respects differences of opinions, receives feedback openly)
Employment is subject to successfully completing KSPC’s pre-employment checks which may include criminal record check, education verification, functional fitness evaluation and drug and alcohol testing.
To ensure consideration for this role, please apply by Sep 30, 2022.
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https://www.kpluss.com/de-de/karriere/stellenangebote/jr3410
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International Medical Corps is a global, humanitarian, nonprofit organization dedicated to saving lives and relieving suffering through health care training and relief and development programs. Established in 1984 by volunteer doctors and nurses, International Medical Corps is a private, voluntary, nonpolitical, nonsectarian organization. Its mission is to improve the quality of life through health interventions and related activities that build local capacity in underserved communities worldwide. By offering training and health care to local populations and medical assistance to people at highest risk, and with the flexibility to respond rapidly to emergency situations, International Medical Corps rehabilitates devastated health care systems and helps bring them back to self-reliance.
Job Purpose
The Protection Coordinator is responsible for senior oversight of both Gender Based Violence (GBV) and Child Protection (CP) programs, including multiple sites of operation. This role includes strategic planning, technical leadership, capacity building, support and supervision of staff, senior internal and external coordination and representation, proposal development and reporting
Main Responsibilities
To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential function with or without reasonable accommodation. The tasks listed are representative of the nature and level of work assigned and are not necessarily all-inclusive.
Strategic Planning
- Provide strategic direction and undertake analysis of GBV and CP trends, gaps in services, and IMC’s capacities to guide IMC’s programming in country
- Contribute to national and inter-agency strategies
- Lead GBV and CP assessments as required, maximizing available sources of information and opportunities for coordination, and ensuring compliance with safety and ethical standards
- Ensure that GBV programs are driven by women and girls and planned with community stakeholders
- Identify appropriate locations and orientation for services
- Develop concept notes/proposals/appeals as needed
Implementation and Capacity Building
- Work closely with GBV Technical Advisor, country level senior management, and program team to achieve program goals
- Ensure adherence to IMC’s GBV and CP Minimum Standards, as well as relevant inter-agency guidelines and standards
- Oversee program interventions, including the establishment and delivery of focused GBV and CP services
- Build capacity of program staff/partners in relevant technical areas to deliver services and lead interventions
- Organize/support/facilitate technical trainings as needed, including GBV case management and clinical response to rape and intimate partner violence, and CP Case Management
- Establish and monitor supervision and support systems for GBV and CP case management services
- Establish and maintain appropriate systems for information management
- Ensure effective community participation throughout implementation, including children as appropriate and leadership of women and girls
- Oversee appropriate prevention and awareness-raising/behavior change strategies
- Conduct regular program monitoring and quality assurance and apply learning for continuous improvement of interventions
- Produce regular program reports, on time and with accurate data
Senior Coordination, Representation and Advocacy
- Coordinate with other service providers to ensure holistic support for GBV survivors and vulnerable children, including participation in strengthening SOPs and referral pathways
- Represent IMC’s GBV and CP programming in relevant coordination meetings and with a range of stakeholders
- Contribute to inter-agency efforts to strengthen CP and GBV prevention and response through active participation in coordination mechanisms and promotion of sector principles, standards, and guidelines
- Coordinate with, and build capacity of, other sectors as possible to ensure integration of GBV and CP concerns into various services and broader humanitarian response
- Advocate as necessary with relevant , humanitarian actors, donors, and other stakeholders
Human Resources Management
- Select and orient program staff/volunteers/partners for effective implementation
- Support, coach and supervise staff to build capacity and strengthen quality of interventions
- Develop support strategies for staff, foster teambuilding, and introduce principles of self-care
- Provide supportive and constructive feedback, and conduct regular performance appraisals
Financial Management
- Develop work plans in line with financial pipelines
- Plan and procure supplies required for program activities, in line with budget and project timelines
- Ensure compliance with donor regulations
Security and Conduct
- Ensure compliance with security protocols and policies
- Consider security implications of programs, reviewing plans with teams and appropriate stakeholders
- Foster a safe and supportive working environment for all GBV staff/volunteers/partners
- Exemplify core principles of protection programming, including respect, non-discrimination, responsible use of power, nonviolence, and promotion of gender equality
- Contribute to the positive image and overall credibility of the program and organization, notably through adherence to the Code of Conduct and Ethics, including compliance with anti-harassment, safeguarding and PSEA policies
Code of Conduct
It is our shared responsibility and obligation to prevent matters involving Sexual Exploitation & Abuse, Trafficking in Persons, Child Safeguarding and any suggested violation to our Code of Conduct, which may involve Conflicts of Interest, Fraud, Corruption or Harassment. If you see, hear or are made aware of any suggested activities then you have an obligation to report.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree, or relevant level of experience required. Advanced degree an advantage, particularly in related fields including Social Work, Public Health, International Development or Gender Studies.
Experience
- Minimum five years related experience, including both GBV and CP program design and management
- At least one year of international, humanitarian experience
- Demonstrated application of GBV core competencies and commitment to core principles of protection programming
- Relevant regional experience preferred
- Experience with humanitarian architecture and knowledge of mandates/roles of donors, UN agencies, and other NGOs
- Strong knowledge of standards and guidelines for GBV and CP programming, coordination, and data management
- Knowledge of standards and guidance related to protection from SEA and child safeguarding
- Experience with GBV and CP case management services
- Facilitation experience required
- Supervisory experience required
- Experience working with local partners and community mobilization preferred
Competency
- Profound cross-cultural awareness
- Ability to exercise sound judgment, remain flexible, and apply experience and guidance to evolving challenges
- Strong communication skills, both oral and written
Equal Opportunities
International Medical Corps is proud to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, age, disability or status as a veteran.
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https://worldngojobs.com/jobs/protection-coordinator-at-international-medical-corps/
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Vision and Mission:
At United Way of Northeast Florida, we envision a community of opportunity where everyone has hope and can reach their full potential. Our mission is to solve our community’s toughest challenges by connecting people, resources and ideas.
Purpose of Position:
The mission of RealSense, an initiative of United Way of Northeast Florida, is to provide resources to improve the prosperity of our community's most vulnerable and economically challenged citizens. The initiative support’s United Way’s goal to ensure “families are economically stable and self-sufficient.” Through free tax preparation services, RealSense seeks to stabilize low- to moderate-income working families in Northeast Florida by providing them the tools, knowledge, skills and resources needed to succeed. RealSense is a key community resource focused on ensuring that eligible individuals and families apply and qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) through the IRS Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program.
The function of this position is to support the volunteer activities of the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program within the Community Impact and Strategic Investments department, and to provide a connection to the Volunteer and Community Engagement department. Specifically this position will:
- Ensure the VITA tax program has the volunteer support and engagement required to meet program needs for the tax season
- Provide leadership to plan, implement and evaluate strategies for volunteer recruitment, training, and retention within the VITA tax program
- Develop a year-round stewardship plan to align VITA program volunteers with United Way and community volunteer opportunities
- Serve as the liaison for RealSense and Volunteer and Community Engagement teams
Key Responsibilities and Essential Functions:
- Lead the recruitment, placement and retention of VITA program volunteers to ensure all tax sites have adequate volunteer coverage
- Respond promptly to IRS volunteer requests and provide status updates to IRS
- Assist in the development of the schedule for all VITA volunteer training classes (classes generally conducted in December and January). Conduct training sessions as necessary and determined by the Tax Program Manager
- Ensure all VITA program volunteers are IRS-certified to the appropriate level and aware of IRS Quality Site Requirements
- Have an in-depth knowledge of the VITA program and its requirements, including IRS reporting timelines and guidelines
- Understand IRS certification/record-keeping requirements and procedures
- Maintain VITA program volunteer IRS-certification documentation
- Ensure volunteer reporting and communication deadlines to IRS are met
- Ensure Site Coordinators have appropriate IRS-required documentation on all site volunteers
- Maintain accurate and current records on all VITA volunteers, using Get Connected, including tracking of hours worked and monthly activity reports
- Manage communications with volunteers and Site Coordinators throughout the recruitment, training and placement processes
- Coordinate the end-of-season distribution of certificates, thank-you letters, swag, etc. to all RealSense volunteers, within a designated time frame
- Coordinate IRS awards to long-term volunteers (10 year, 20 year, etc.)
- Ensure CPE credit paperwork is provided to the IRS for those volunteers requesting it
- Collect client and volunteer success stories used to highlight program activities
- Assist the Tax Program Manager in planning and executing tax site-related events (such as Tax Blitz Day and May Days)
- Assist with signature volunteer events, including planning for VITA volunteer recognition such as an awards event, and ensuring all volunteers are invited
- Establish year-round engagement opportunities for VITA volunteers
- Establish a schedule of coordinated messaging and touch-points to support VITA volunteer stewardship in partnership with the United Way Marketing department
- Provide insight and connect volunteer opportunities to business partners with corporate social responsibility goals that support financial stability, in partnership with the United Way Resource Development department
Experience/Position Requirements:
- Must be proficient in the Microsoft Office (Outlook, Word, Excel PowerPoint)
- Must possess good work ethic; come to work when scheduled and on time
- Must possess good telephone etiquette; professional appearance
- Must agree to be flexible with hours - occasional evenings or Saturdays (mostly during training and tax season)
- High school diploma required. Two-year college degree preferred.
- 2-4 years progressively responsible, related experience
- Excellent planning, organizing, verbal/written and PC skills
- Experience in the area of volunteer development and training
- Excellent interpersonal, written and oral communication skills
- Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously
- Experience in planning, policy design, and spreadsheet analysis
- Familiarity with VITA tax site processes and software
- Strong detail orientation
Professional Core Competencies Required:
- Mission Focused: Creates real social change that leads to better lives and healthier communities. This drives performance and professional motivations.
- Relationship Oriented: Places people before process and is astute in cultivating and managing relationships toward a common goal.
- Collaborator (Includes teamwork and communication): Understands the roles and contributions of all sectors of the community and can mobilize resources (financial & human) through meaningful engagement. Strong supporter of a team environment.
- Results Driven: Dedicates efforts to shared and measurable goals for the common good; creating, resourcing, scaling and leveraging strategies and innovations for broad investment and impact.
- Brand Steward: Understands role in growing and protecting the reputation and results of the greater network.
General Physical Requirements for Essential Functions of the Job:
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job the employee is regularly required to sit, talk, and/or hear. Continual use of the hands with wrist and finger movement using a keyboard is required. Specific vision abilities required by this job include long hours viewing a computer monitor screen. The employee may occasionally travel using personal vehicle and/or work outside normal office environment.
This description is not designed to contain a comprehensive inventory of all responsibilities and qualifications required of all team members assigned to this position. It is intended only to describe the key elements relative to each section. Also, duties and/or requirements of this position may be modified, added or deleted at any time. This supersedes all descriptions previously written for the same position. Unique equivalent skills and experience may possibly substitute for required position requirements.
United Way of Northeast Florida is an Equal Opportunity Employer and a Drug Free Work Environment.
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https://careers.unitedway.org/job/realsense-volunteer-coordinator-0
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Status: Full-time (37.5 hours per week). Flexible work arrangements might be negotiated by the ideal candidate.
Location: Yellowknife, NT, Canada
Salary: $75k+/year, depending on experience/qualifications, plus benefits.
Reports to: President of the Makerspace YK Board of Directors
Closing Date: August 16, 2022
To Apply: Please email your cover letter and resume to [email protected] with the subject of the email: "Executive Director Application, Your First and Last Name"
Job Purpose and Scope
The Executive Director (ED) is the most senior MSYK employee, responsible for the planning, funding, and implementation of the mandate of MSYK under the strategic guidance of the Board of Directors. The ED plays a key role in leading all activities required to establish and maintain the operation of the newly renovated Makerspace facility as well as a strong, sustainable, and relevant program of activities, learning opportunities, partnerships, membership and all initiatives that support the Makerspace goals.
The ED will be responsible for the establishment and operations of a Makerspace facility in Yellowknife, consisting of a workshop specialized in woodworking, a clean workshop specialized in digital lab activities, and a workshop specialized in arts and crafts. The ED will manage memberships, partnerships, and a tool rental library. The ED is responsible for the on-the-ground operations, partnership building, human resources, financial health and growth, as well as strategic business planning. The ED reports to the president of the Board of Directors.
At present, MSYK has two full-time employees who currently manage the woodworking shop and digital lab. These employees, along with our short-term and part-time contract staff, will report to, and work closely with, the ED.
Duties & Responsibilities
Leadership and Human Resources
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Supervise existing employees;
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Lead the hiring process of future employees;
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Establish safety protocols and safety programs in accordance with the Safety Act and Safety Regulation of the Northwest Territories to ensure the health and safety of all members, visitors, volunteers, trainees, employees, Board members, and minimize risk;
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Establish programs to attract and retain volunteers to support program delivery and other operational needs;
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Provide comprehensive administrative and support services to the Board of Directors, including safety reporting, operations oversight reporting, human resource reporting and records management as well as any other research, reporting or information that is key to Board operations or Strategic planning; and
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Provide accurate and timely financial reports, including budget and variance reporting on a periodic basis.
Operational Planning & Management
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Plan and deliver programs, events and initiatives that are aligned with Board approved strategy, and MSYK mandate to ensure the organization’s operations remain relevant to members and meet the expectations of the Board, government agencies, and partners;
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Manage administrative and financial matters and deadlines to ensure the organization is in good standing with Corporate Legal Registry and the CRA; and
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Educate, communicate and implement MSYK operational, financial, and Human Resource policies/procedures.
Fundraising & Sponsorship Development
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Develop a revenue diversification strategy, in line with the MSYK Strategic Plan, for Board approval that will include new revenue models, fundraising and sponsorship opportunities or innovative programming.
Financial Management
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Administer in compliance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) the organization’s funds in compliance with the approved budget and monitor the monthly cash-flow, including tracking and reporting on variances from established plans.
Risk Management
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Ensure organization’s compliance with federal and territorial rules and regulations;
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Identify possible risks and bring it to the attention of the Board of Directors;
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Develop and implement, including on-going updates, a comprehensive workplace safety policy;
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Ensure WSCC Insurance is in place and that all workers, volunteers, etc. have adequate workplace safety training and that a comprehensive workplace safety and incident reporting protocols are in place; and
Marketing and Public/Community Relations
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Establish partnerships that enhance the reputation and operations of MSYK and that build support from the community at large.
Working Conditions
Physical Demands
The ED may spend long hours sitting and using office equipment and computers, which can cause muscle or eye strain. The ED may also have to do some light lifting of supplies, equipment and materials from time to time which will require an ability to bend and squat and lift up to 40lbs without difficulty.
Environmental Conditions
The ED may have to manage many projects at one time, and may be interrupted frequently to meet the needs and requests of volunteers, trainees, employees and contractors. The ED may find the environment to be cold, hot, busy, noisy, or dusty. The ED is responsible to ensure that all workspaces meet occupational & safety guidelines at all times. The ED will need excellent organizational and time and stress management skills to complete the required tasks.
Mental Demands
The requirement to work effectively with a variety of people including those who may be under stress can create conflict or difficult interpersonal relationships. The requirement to report to a Board of Directors can cause stress. Stress may be caused by the need to complete tasks or projects within tight deadlines.
Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
Desired Knowledge & Experience
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Knowledge of the unique opportunities in Northern Canada, and the unique entrepreneurial culture of the City of Yellowknife;
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Experience writing successful proposals to funders seeking sponsorship, grants and fundraising support;
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Experience with Project Management, ideally in an industrial or entrepreneurial setting;
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Knowledge and understanding of government relations and advocacy;
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Experience in business management, human resource management or financial management; and
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Experience living and working in the North.
Skills
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Ability to be self-directed, solve problems independently, and assume a leadership role;
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Excellent computer skills including Microsoft suite and Google Drive;
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Verbal and written communication skills (fluency in English required) to effectively work with a range of stakeholders;
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Financial management skills including knowledge of bookkeeping, financial reporting, and budgets; and
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Conflict management and effective interpersonal skills to manage a variety of business and professional relationships effectively.
Aquisition of Knowledge, Skills & Abilities
The knowledge, skills and abilities required to be successful in this role are usually acquired
through a combination of education and experience as follows:
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Experience managing operations of a facility and/or program delivery;
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University degree in a relevant discipline (formal education in management or leadership, project management, business, finance, or communications); and
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2-3 years experience in a relevant field.
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https://www.makerspaceyk.com/executivedirector
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Position Summary:
Under the direction of the Senior Association Director of Child Development and Early Education, the Regional Director of Early Education is primarily responsible for administering the management, policies, procedures, and curriculum of the assigned programs. Additional responsibilities include ensuring a developmentally appropriate program that ensures the healthy progression of socio-emotional, cognitive, and motor skills for children in compliance with State regulations. The Regional Director of Early Education ensures the connection of program activities to Y core focus areas of Healthy Living, Youth Development, and Social Responsibility.
Requirements
Essential Responsibilities:
Maintains and oversees all administrative areas of compliance and quality, including Department of Early Education and Care licensing, the Professional Qualifications Registry, the MA Quality Rating and Improvement System, and NAEYC.
Work collaboratively with branch executive and/or Regional Program Administrator and Association Director.
Ensures the safety and quality of day-to-day operations, including substitutes where needed, staff supervision, family intervention, school connections, and business support.
Ensures implementation of a developmentally appropriate and multicultural curriculum fostering a progression of skills and social development in all children.
Demonstrates leadership toward success in program compliance, quality, fiscal health, and sustainability.
Engages program in YMCA of Greater Boston Initiatives for Child Development. including curriculum, assessments, and Kindergarten readiness.
Develops a comprehensive daily program schedule with monthly themes that engage children and are inclusive of all.
Ensures implementation of policies, procedures, parent meetings, staff development, and a learning-based, child-centered curriculum; staff development, supervision, and accountability.
Ensures the safety and protection of every child through structured activity. protocol, and diligent hiring practices.
Develops and maintains a parent advisory committee (to help facilitate goals, programming priorities, and parent engagement).
Evaluates the performance of Early Education staff and review these evaluations annually with the Child Development Team Leader.
Prepares and submits in a timely fashion all reports required by the Child Development Team and the Greater Boston Y.
Makes contributions to the annual budget process in consultation with the Child Development Team; administer the budget, take appropriate action to ensure fiscal soundness.
Maintains a professional image and manner consistent with the YMCA mission and goals.
Attends designated staff functions, including annual All-Staff Conference and Quarterly Leadership Meetings.
Additional Responsibilities:
Remains current in required and voluntary training in order to promote growth of mind, spirit and character values for all, and deliver that training to staff.
Representation of the YMCA in a professional manner within the community and its programs.
Assurance that programs implement activities and initiatives that are priorities of educational partners, along with those of the YMCA, its strategic plan, and its mission.
Manage the utilization of third party slots for the surrounding region
Helping families understand the process of applying for financial assistance, collecting documentation, and staying up to date with required paperwork
Communicate and collaborate with the billing coordinators and business managers about enrolling families and keeping paperwork up to date to ensure compliance with third party
Outreach to new school partners to build relationships and develop partnerships
Develop customer service tools and systems, including tour structures, talking points for programs, etc.
Additional responsibilities as deemed necessary by supervisor and program needs.
Education and Experience:
Bachelor's Degree required in Elementary Education or related field
4 or more year's professional educational experience supervising staff and developing curriculum
EEC Qualifications-Lead Infant/Toddler Teacher, Lead Preschool Teacher and Director II Qualified
Demonstrated understanding of the developmental progression of skills of children and program development
Commitment to the philosophy and goals of the Y, particularly those identified as outcomes for children participating in YMCA of Greater Boston's programming
Excellent public relations and conflict resolution skills in order to facilitate positive relationships with parents, staff, children, and outside agencies, including schools, where applicable
Effective written and oral communication skills
Concern for detail and accuracy and have the ability to delegate responsibly
Physical Demands:
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.
While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to stand, walk, use handles, handle or feel objects, talk and listen. The employee is frequently required to sit and reach with hands and arms.
The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, and the ability to adjust.
Must be able to drive between branches and around the community to attend meetings and events.
Work Environment:
The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.
Evening work is expected and may be required
Required Training/Certifications:
Child Abuse Prevention (within 30 days of employment)
Respect in the Workplace and Sexual Harassment (within 30 days of employment)
Team Leader Certification
Others to be determined
YMCA Competencies (Multi-Team Leader):
Mission Advancement: Models and teaches the Y’s values. Ensures a high level of service with a commitment to changing lives. Provides volunteers with orientation, training, development, and recognition. Cultivates relationships to support fund-raising.
Collaboration: Champions inclusion activities, strategies, and initiatives. Builds relationships to create small communities. Empathetically listens and communicates for understanding when negotiating and dealing with conflict. Effectively tailors communications to the appropriate audience. Provides staff with feedback, coaching, guidance and support.
Operational Effectiveness: Provides others with frameworks for making decisions. Conducts prototypes to support the launching of programs and activities. Develops plans and manages best practices through engagement of team. Effectively creates and manages budgets. Holds staff accountable for high-quality results using a formal process to measure progress.
Personal Growth: Shares new insights. Facilitates change; models adaptability and an awareness of the impact of change. Utilizes non-threatening methods to address sensitive issues and inappropriate behavior or performance. Has the functional and technical knowledge and skills required to perform well; uses best practices and demonstrates up-to-date knowledge and skills in technology.
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https://mass-veterans.jobs/boston-ma/regional-director-of-early-education/38243F935D5A4C34BA750C1EF69147C1/job/?vs=28
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Our Veteran-to-Veteran Volunteer Program focuses on pairing Veteran volunteers with our Veteran hospice patients. Veteran volunteers have the distinct ability to relate and connect with Veteran patients thereby creating a safe environment where life review and healing can occur. Once paired, they can share in their common language and experiences, forming strong relational bonds. Veteran volunteers can make a difference in a variety of ways including:
- Providing companionship and allowing the patient to tell his "story"
- Leading/participating in Veteran pinning ceremonies for patients and their families. Ceremonies are held in either the patient's home or in the facility where they live. Note: Due to COVID, we were forced to cancel a Pinning ceremony with 80 patients, family and friends expected. Most ceremonies are small, but Hospice Vets can work with larger groups as well as the community.
If you are a compassionate Veteran who has the capability to help other Vets on their end of life journey, consider becoming hospice volunteer. Our volunteers are an important part of our hospice care team, helping improve the quality of life for our Veteran patients, their families and their caregivers.
Please call DJ at (603) 692-0220 to schedule an interview. Class days/times are scheduled to meet your needs.
4 More opportunities with Wentworth Hospice
Opportunities
About Wentworth Hospice
Location:
9 Andrews Rd., Somersworth, NH 03878, US
Mission Statement
Quality of Life Matters We want to ensure that our patients will be cared for both professionally and compassionately. We promise both.
Description
We are a hospice located in southern NH and cover both NH and southern ME locations. We provide services to patients and their families who are dealing with terminal illness in both their homes and facilities.
A comprehensive training program for Volunteers is provided to help them gain the knowledge and confidence that is necessary to provide this life affirming service. In addition, Volunteers are part of the Hospice Team at Wentworth Hospice and have an on going access to staff support and guidance.
WHEN
WHERE
9 Andrews Rd.Somersworth, NH 03878
DATE POSTED
September 10, 2021
SKILLS
- Veteran Care
- Hospice Care
- Elder care
- Public Relations
- Animal Therapy
GOOD FOR
N/A
REQUIREMENTS
- Driver's License Needed
- Background Check
- Orientation or Training
- 22 hours of training; 15 in class. After training, commit to serving at least 2 patients a minimum of 2 hours per week. Your choice of patients living at home or those in facilities.
- 2 step TB test; background checks.
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https://www.volunteermatch.org/search/opp3038836.jsp
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Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) have started to emerge as a consequence of the general trend toward the integration of beforehand isolated systems into large-scale federations of distributed systems comprising software and physical entities. Moreover, each system as part of such a federation is autonomous in the sense that it is developed, operated, evolved, and governed independently from the other systems. However, they all interact with each other in a dynamic and open world, which causes individual systems to dynamically join or leave the federation over time, the federation architecture to dynamically vary, and emergent behavior of the overall federation.
An example for such a CPS is a large-scale federation of autonomous robots as shown in the figure above. In contrast to our CPS lab, in which three robots are available, this project should consider large-scale federations with hundreds or even thousands of robots. Though the robots may act autonomously and therefore independently from each other, they may also interact to jointly perform a task such as collaboratively exploring an unknown territory. Thereby, the robot may sense their environment, store important information in a context model and share that information with other autonomous robots in the system. This is illustrated in the figure by links connecting individual robots such that the whole federation can be described by a graph with robots as nodes and interactions between robots as links between the nodes.
This requires scalable means to test and validate such systems through simulation that makes use of the graph structure of such federations. For instance, while an individual autonomous robot can be rather easily simulated in isolation, the federation behavior that emerges when thousands of robots collaborate can only be effectively simulated with a scalable solution.
The goal of the project is to design and develop an extensible simulation environment that enables the validation of types of systems such as a large-scale federation of autonomous robots. Thereby, the focus is set on a scalable and resource-efficient kernel of this environment that is able to simulate the collaboration of thousands of autonomous systems (robots) following a graph-transformation based approach. Scalability should be addressed by leveraging concurrency in simulating federations of autonomous systems on modern multi-core hardware.
This simulator kernel should allow the developer to analyze traces of the simulation, for instance, by logging the simulated behavior of individual autonomous systems and of the whole federation, and to monitor properties during the simulation, such as the convergence of the behavior of all robots toward a joint goal. Moreover, a visualization of the simulated behavior should be developed that supports focusing on the individual behavior of a single autonomous system and on the emergent behavior of the overall federation.
Finally, the simulator kernel should be extensible with respect to further requirements of CPS. Examples for such requirements are timing aspects such as real-time constraints for embedded systems (robots) controlling physical entities or probability aspects such as uncertainties of the reliability concerning the autonomous systems (robots) and the communication among them.
The project is supervised by Prof. Dr. Holger Giese together with Joachim Hänsel, Thomas Vogel, and Sebastian Wätzoldt. If you have any question about this project, please contact one of them or just come around our research group.
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https://hpi.de/en/giese/teaching/master-projects/an-extensible-simulation-environment-for-large-scale-federations-of-autonomous-mobile-systems.html
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This research seeks to gain insight into the design of distributed multi-agent systems. Distributed multi-agent systems present opportunities for accomplishing a goal using multiple simple systems rather than a more complicated monolithic system. Distributed systems, if properly designed, have the potential to exhibit self-organizing behavior which can lead to systems that require less centralized control in addition to improved robustness, reliability, scalability, and adaptability than traditional monolithic, centralized systems. As engineered systems become more complex, their behavior is more difficult to characterize and predict. Self-organizing systems are difficult to analyze and design since the system behavior is emergent, i.e., the collective behavior only becomes apparent once the system is integrated. The collective behavior is primarily driven by the local interactions of the agents and their environment. This poses an enormous challenge for engineering these systems. The task of system design---selecting the right rules and system parameters---is difficult due to the opaque connection between inputs and responses. The goal of this research is to develop a methodology that provides a way of systematically exploring the design space in order to identify the conditions that give rise to emergent behavior. This information can be used as part of the scientific process of providing feedback through the iterative design process. In order to address this goal, this research seeks to answer the question on how to define, measure, and use the concept of emergence in the design of a multi-agent system. Similarly, it will address the more general question about how to understand "complex systems" in order to analyze and engineer them. This will be used to guide the development of an appropriate methodology. This research develops the Systematic Exploration for Emergence Detection (SEED) methodology for evaluating computer simulations of complex systems in order to identify conditions that lead to emergent behavior. This research proposes a new quantitative measure of emergence which can identify critical transitions in macro-level performance/function of the system due to changes in system context (i.e., environmental conditions or system parameters). The methodology provides the framework for performing a design space exploration using this measure of emergence to identify critical regions in the design space. These regions help to characterize the design space and will help guide the design process by providing insight into design points where the system behavior is unexpected or changing rapidly, which are possible indicators of emergent behavior. The SEED methodology is based on a statistical analysis approach. The design space is efficiently sampled using Design of Experiments methods. At each of these design points, the system behavior is characterized statistically using repeated runs of the simulation. The proposed measure of emergence, Design Space Divergence, is then evaluated across the design space and critical regions are identified using data visualization and clustering methods. A case study is performed on a multi-UAV distributed surveillance problem to investigate whether this framework is capable of identifying emergent behavior. The SEED methodology is used to explore the system design space, including the number of UAVs used in the system and influential vehicle and system parameters. The results show that this methodology provides insights into the landscape of system performance across the design space. More specifically, it identifies a number of candidate designs which exhibit emergent behavior where the system performance rapidly improves as the system undergoes a transition from disorganized to organized behavior. The SEED methodology provides for a more rigorous, traceable, and thorough design process for systems which have been difficult to understand and design using traditional engineering methods.
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https://smartech.gatech.edu/handle/1853/56241
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2022:
Collective Robotic Construction at ICRA
May 2022: In addition to improving construction as we know it, CRC may enable novel types of structures and construction in settings that have been deemed too difficult for human labor or traditional automation techniques. This workshop will bring together roboticists who work on algorithms and hardware, architects and civil engineers who advance our understanding of designing and building with these new construction systems, and industry/funding agencies who represent current technological needs. Topics will span safety, industrial and sustainable construction, and future applications such as construction in disaster scenarios and extraterrestrial construction, all with a particular focus on what can be achieved from having many robots work together.
Modular Self-Reconfigurable Robots at ICRA
May 2022: Modular self-reconfigurable robots (MSRRs) consist of groups of individual robots that can mechanically connect together to move and interact with the environment together as a single entity. These systems are envisioned to be nearly as capable as traditional robots, with the added benefit of adaptability and fault tolerance. However, the abilities of current MSRRs are far-removed for those predicted capabilities. The goal of this workshop is to gather researchers to have an open discussion on the state of MSRRs today. We will discuss both advances in hardware design and the algorithms for controlling these systems. The day will feature invited talks with a diverse set of expert speakers from within the MSRR community. Interspersed between invited talks and discussions there will be a poster session as well as a “show and tell” where we will invite participants to bring MSRR systems (even a single module, or just a unique component of a module), to facilitate small-group discussions of these systems.
2021:
Multi-Scale Instrumentation of Biological Swarms
June 2021: Engineers draw inspiration from biological swarms when designing multi-agent systems, from software to robotics. Advances in our understanding of natural swarms are therefore essential to technological advancement. Biological swarms are challenging to study for many of the reasons that robotic swarms are challenging to design. They are complex systems with nonlinear interactions among individual agents which sense, signal and actuate locally while distributed in cluttered environments. Empirical investigations of biological swarms and the environments that they operate in often require measurement tools with sufficient spatial and temporal resolution to observe the experience and behavior of individuals and the collective simultaneously. Recent focus on multi-scale empirical investigations of biological swarms has led many research teams to develop custom technologies and analysis pipelines (e.g., computer vision software, sensor arrays, automated experiments) that are tailored for their specific study systems. This special session on multi-scale instrumentation of biological swarms will promote interactions among these groups which are facing similar challenges.
Agricultural Robotics Around the World
Oct 2021: Agricultural robotics is rapidly developing and sparking strong interest from roboticists in research and industry alike. Compared to factory automation, agricultural operations are significantly more complex and present a diverse set of challenges for robots: from the autonomous field operation, to compatibility with end users that vary widely in operational scales, technological background, and risk adversity. To effectively contribute in this area, academic research needs to be highly interdisciplinary, it does not lend itself well to isolated lab tests, and it requires more than the usual attention to the final ecosystem and end consumer for which it is intended. We have invited three leading experts on agricultural robotics from Europe, Australia, and the U.S. to address questions pertaining to the future of agricultural robotics.
2018:
Collective Embodied Intelligence Workshop
July 2018: Half-day workshop in collaboration with Prof. Napp from University at Buffalo, at the Graduate course for Social Evolution and Behavior, held at the Rockefeller University Field Center. The workshop introduces simple, bio-inspired, reactive control and physics to produce complex emergent behaviors in robot collectives. Students will get to mechanically program a collective of robots to comply with a user-specified goal.
Swarms: From Biology to Robotics and Back at ICRA
May 2018: Workshop bringing together roboticists and biologists interested in swarm behavior. Topics include swarm robotics and multi-robot systems, animal collectives, self-organization, self-assembly, self-repair, modular reconfigurable systems, programmable matter, smart materials, amorphous computing, social systems and mixed animal-robot societies, human-swarm interaction, and distributed evolutionary and collaborative systems.
Distributed, Collective Computation in Biological and Artificial Systems
March 2018: Janelia workshop focused on how distributed computation occurs in neural networks, between cells and social insects, robot collectives, and neural nets. Co-organized with Prof. Iain Couzin, MPI, and Prof. Shaul Druckmann, Janelia. (Conference Book)
March 2018: This Multi-Robot Mini Symposium is organized by Kirstin Petersen in conjunction with the Cornell Robotics Seminar and will feature a series of brief talks by students and professors related to recent work on Multi-Robot/Swarm Robotics research. The goal is to identify and inspire new ideas among the multi-robot community at Cornell. Please find Speaker list here.
2016:
Assembly and Coordination across the Scales
June 2016: Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems funded workshop, covering multi-unit systems and their control spanning bacteria and cell biology, chemistry, social insects, and robotics. Co-organized with MPI Group Leaders Alex Sprowitz and Hakan Ceylan.
Swarmbot Assemblages at Smart Geometry
April 2016: Workshop held at the Smart Geometry Conference in Sweden, concerning construction of emergent structures in 2D by physically intelligent robots. This workshop was primarily for architects. Co-organized with Petra Jenning, FOJAB arkitekter, Sweden. Expert: Prof. Nils Napp, University at Buffalo.
2013:
North East Robotics Colloquium (NERC) 2013
October 2013: 2nd annual Northeast Robotics Colloquium at Harvard University with more than 200 participants. Co-organizers: Karthik Danthu, University at Buffalo, and Richard Moore, SINTEF ICT, Yigit Menguc, Oculus, and Daniel Vogt, Harvard.
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https://cei.ece.cornell.edu/news/workshops/
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Some things seem to happen without direction. Fish form schools to deter predators and ants form rafts to survive floods. These emergent group behaviors have long been the focus of research in biological science, but they are inspiring new work in computing and robotics.
Andréa Richa, a professor of computer science in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, and Joshua Daymude, a postdoctoral researcher with ASU’s Biodesign Center for Biocomputing, Security and Society, are exploring ways that algorithms can help explain how local interactions induce large-scale phenomena without top-down direction.
“There is plenty of great robotics work in progress related to self-organizing groups. Think of swarms of drones or autonomous vehicles,” Daymude says. “But what happens when you go down to the micro- or nanoscale and take away the processing capability that comes from microprocessors and sensors? Can we approximate the activity of groups of devices that have no coordinating intelligence?”
The answer appears to be yes. Together with professors of computer science Dana Randall at Georgia Tech and Sarah Cannon at Claremont McKenna College, Richa and Daymude devised an algorithm that controls how collections of abstract particles move on a lattice. This computational model accurately predicted the behavior of 30 “dumb” robots in a physical experiment. The successful result opens opportunities for innovation in fields ranging from manufacturing to medicine.
“Imagine someone suffering from internal bleeding, and surgery is not a timely option,” Richa says. “This line of work could lead to the development of tiny particles known as colloidal state machines that the patient can swallow, and they’ll swarm through the person’s system to rapidly fix the problem.”
The exciting new findings have just been published in the journal Science Advances.
Daniel Goldman, a professor of physics at Georgia Tech, and his co-author students Shengkai Li and Bahnisikha Dutta created the group of basic robots to serve as the physical proof for the computational model that Richa and Daymude developed at ASU. Each one was a 4-centimeter (or 1.5-inch) plastic puck embedded with loose magnetic beads and mounted on tiny bristle brush feet. Vibration from a small electric motor enabled noisy, circular motion across a 1.2-meter by 0.75-meter (or 4-foot by 2.5-foot) test platform.
Across multiple experiments, the strength of the embedded magnets was gradually increased to transition the particles (in the simulation) and the robots (in the physical proof) from a scattered state to a congregated one. That magnetism was the sole input or “bias parameter.”
“It mimics how intently theoretical particles, or physical robots, seek to be near others. And you might expect there would have been a steady increase in aggregate grouping as we increased that magnetism,” Daymude says. “But that isn’t what we saw in our computational model nor in the experimental robot platform.”
Instead, nothing changed as the bias increased. The particles and the robots stayed largely spread out in their movement — until a particular threshold was achieved, and then aggregates formed rapidly. Collective behavior emerged like fish forming a school.
“We saw a sharp phase change from dispersion to aggregation, just as our theory predicted,” Richa says. “We usually think about phase changes in physics, but they’re in fact more universal. Our inspiration comes from biological and physical systems, like groups of animals acting in unison. What they do collectively is much more powerful than what any of them could do alone. So, we are seeking a better algorithmic understanding of collective behavior since it represents the potential to manipulate local actions and achieve desired outcomes without centralized direction.”
The paper represents pioneering ground for computer science, physics and robotics. It is a very early effort in the translation of computational abstractions as a mechanism for programming through physics or embedded physical characteristics rather than through digital code.
It also is part of a larger emergent computation research project that began in 2019 with ASU, Georgia Tech, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northwestern University through funding from a U.S. Department of Defense program called the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative.
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https://fullcircle.asu.edu/research/greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts/
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Self-organization in a multi-robot system is a spontaneous process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between robots in an initially disordered system. Cooperative coordination strategies for self-organization promote teamwork to complete a task while increasing the total utility of the system. In this dissertation, we apply prosocial behavioral concepts such as altruism and cooperation in multi-robot systems and investigate their effects on overall system performance on given tasks. We stress the significance of this research in long-term applications involving minimal to no human supervision, where self-sustainability of the multi-robot group is of utmost importance for the success of the mission at hand and system re-usability in the future.
For part of the research, we take bio-inspiration of cooperation from the huddling behavior of Emperor Penguins in the Antarctic which allows them to share body heat and survive one of the harshest environments on Earth as a group. A cyclic energy sharing concept is proposed for a convoying structured multi-robot group inspired from penguin movement dynamics in a huddle with carefully placed induction coils to facilitate directional energy sharing with neighbors and a position shuffling algorithm, allowing long-term survival of the convoy as a group in the field. Simulation results validate that the cyclic process allows individuals an equal opportunity to be at the center of the group identified as the most energy conserving position, and as a result robot groups were able to travel over 4 times the distance during convoying with the proposed method without any robot failing as opposed to without the shuffling and energy sharing process.
An artificial potential based Adaptive Inter-agent Spacing (AIS) control law is also proposed for efficient energy distribution in an unstructured multi-robot group aimed at long-term survivability goals in the field. By design, as an altruistic behavior higher energy bearing robots are dispersed throughout the group based on their individual energy levels to counter skewed initial distributions for faster group energy equilibrium attainment. Inspired by multi-huddle merging and splitting behavior of Emperor Penguins, a clustering and sequential merging based systematic energy equilibrium attainment method is also proposed as a supplement to the AIS controller. The proposed system ensures that high energy bearing agents are not over crowded by low energy bearing agents. The AIS controller proposed for the unstructured energy sharing and distribution process yielded 55%, 42%, 23% and 33% performance improvements in equilibrium attainment convergence time for skewed, bi-modal, normal and random initial agent resource level distributions respectively on a 2D plane using the proposed energy distribution method over the control method of no adaptive spacing. Scalability analysis for both energy sharing concepts confirmed their application with consistently improved performances different sized groups of robots. Applicability of the AIS controller as a generalized resource distribution method under certain constraints is also discussed to establish its significance in various multi-robot applications.
A concept of group based survival from damaging directional external stimuli is also adapted from the Emperor Penguin huddling phenomenon where individuals on the damaging stimuli side continuously relocate to the leeward side of the group following the group boundary using Gaussian Processes Machine Learning based global health-loss rate minima estimations in a distributed manner. The method relies on cooperation from all robots where individuals take turns being sheltered by the group from the damaging external stimuli. The distributed global health loss rate minima estimation allowed the development of two settling conditions. The global health loss rate minima settling method yielded 12.6%, 5.3%, 16.7% and 14.2% improvement in average robot health over the control case of no relocation, while an optimized health loss rate minima settling method further improved on the global health loss rate settling method by 3.9%, 1.9%, 1.7% and 0.6% for robot group sizes 26, 35, 70 and 107 respectively.
As a direct application case study of collaboration in multi-robot systems, a distributed shape formation strategy is proposed where robots act as beacons to help neighbors settle in a prescribed formation by local signaling. The process is completely distributed in nature and does not require any external control due to the cooperation between robots. Beacon robots looking for a robot to settle as a neighbor and continue the shape formation process, generates a surface gradient throughout the formed shape that allow robots to determine the direction of the structure forming frontier along the dynamically changing structure surface and eventually reach the closest beacon. Simulation experiments validate complex shape formation in 2D and 3D using the proposed method. The importance of group collaboration is emphasized in this case study without which the shape formation process would not be possible, without a centralized control scheme directing individual agents to specific positions in the structure.
As the final application case study, a collaborative multi-agent transportation strategy is proposed for unknown objects with irregular shape and uneven weight distribution. Although, the proposed system is robust to single robot object transportation, the proposed methodology of transport is focused on robots regulating their effort while pushing objects from an identified pushing location hoping other robots support the object moment on the other end of the center of mass to prevent unintended rotation and create an efficient path of the object to the goal. The design of the object transportation strategy takes cooperation cues from human behaviors when coordinating pushing of heavy objects from two ends. Collaboration is achieved when pushing agents can regulate their effort with one another to maintain an efficient path for the object towards the set goal. Numerous experiments of pushing simple shapes such as disks and rectangular boxes and complex arbitrary shapes with increasing number of robots validate the significance and effectiveness of the proposed method. Detailed robustness studies of changing weight of objects during transportation portrayed the importance of cooperation in multi-agent systems in countering unintended drift effects of the object and maintain a steady efficient path to the goal.
Each case study is presented independent of one another with the Penguin huddling based self-organizations in response to internal and external stimuli focused on fundamental self-organization methods, and the structure formation and object transportation strategies focused on cooperation in specific applications. All case studies are validated by relevant simulation and experiments to establish the effectiveness of altruistic and cooperative behaviors in multi-robot systems.
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https://hammer.purdue.edu/articles/thesis/Social_Behavior_based_Collaborative_Self-organization_in_Multi-robot_Systems/13360661/1
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We propose a developmental framework that enables the robot to learn affordances through interaction with the environment in an unsupervised way and to use these affordances at different levels of robot control, ranging from reactive response to planning. Inspired from Developmental Psychology, the robot’s discovery of action possibilities is realized in two sequential phases. In the first phase, the robot that initially possesses a limited number of basic actions and reflexes discovers new behavior primitives by exercising these actions and by monitoring the changes created in its initially crude perception system. In the second phase, the robot explores a more complicated environment by executing the discovered behavior primitives and using more advanced perception to learn further action possibilities. For this purpose, first, the robot discovers commonalities in action-effect experiences by finding effect categories, and then builds predictors for each behavior to map object features and behavior parameters into effect categories. After learning affordances through self-interaction and self-observation, the robot can make plans to achieve desired goals, emulate end states of demonstrated actions, monitor the plan execution and take corrective actions using the perceptual structures employed or discovered during learning. Mobile and manipulator robots were used to realize the proposed framework. Similar to infants, these robots were able to form behavior repertoires, learn affordances, and gain prediction capabilities. The learned affordances were shown to be relative to the robots, provide perceptual economy and encode general relations. Additionally, the affordance-based planning ability was verified in various tasks such as table cleaning and object transportation.
Subject Keywords
Computer engineering.
,
Cognitive robotics.
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http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12612754/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/20763
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A fluid dynamics framework for control of mobile robot networks
Paç, Muhammed Raşid; Erkmen, Aydan Müşerref; Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (2007)
This thesis proposes a framework for controlling mobile robot networks based on a fluid dynamics paradigm. The approach is inspired by natural behaviors of fluids demonstrating desirable characteristics for collective robots. The underlying mathematical formalism is developed through establishing analogies between fluid bodies and multi-robot systems such that robots are modeled as fluid elements that constitute a fluid body. The governing equations of fluid dynamics are adapted to multi-robot systems and a...
Robot planing based on learned affordances
Çakmak, Maya; Şahin, Erol; Department of Computer Engineering (2007)
This thesis studies how an autonomous robot can learn affordances from its interactions with the environment and use these affordances in planning. It is based on a new formalization of the concept which proposes that affordances are relations that pertain to the interactions of an agent with its environment. The robot interacts with environments containing different objects by executing its atomic actions and learns the different effects it can create, as well as the invariants of the environments that aff...
GESwarm Grammatical Evolution for the Automatic Synthesis of Collective Behaviors in Swarm Robotics
Ferrante, Eliseo; Turgut, Ali Emre; DuenezGuzman, Edgar; Wenseleers, Tom (2013-07-10)
In this paper we propose GESwarm, a novel tool that can automatically synthesize collective behaviors for swarms of autonomous robots through evolutionary robotics. Evolutionary robotics typically relies on artificial evolution for tuning the weights of an artificial neural network that is then used as individual behavior representation. The main caveat of neural networks is that they are very difficult to reverse engineer, meaning that once a suitable solution is found, it is very difficult to analyze, to ...
Using learned affordances for robotic behavior development
Doğar, Mehmet Remzi; Şahin, Erol; Department of Civil Engineering (2007)
“Developmental robotics” proposes that, instead of trying to build a robot that shows intelligence once and for all, what one must do is to build robots that can develop. A robot should go through cognitive development just like an animal baby does. These robots should be equipped with behaviors that are simple but enough to bootstrap the system. Then, as the robot interacts with its environment, it should display increasingly complex behaviors. Studies in developmental psychology and neurophysiology provid...
DEVELOPMENT OF A SOCIAL REINFORCEMENT LEARNING BASED AGGREGATION METHOD WITH A MOBILE ROBOT SWARM
Gür, Emre; Turgut, Ali Emre; Şahin, Erol; Department of Mechanical Engineering (2022-9-09)
In this thesis, the development of a social, reinforcement learning-based aggregation method is covered together with the development of a mobile robot swarm of Kobot- Tracked (Kobot-T) robots. The proposed method is developed to improve efficiency in low robot density swarm environments especially when the aggregated area is difficult to find. The method is called Social Reinforcement Learning, and Landmark-Based Aggregation (SRLA) and it is based on Q learning. In this method, robots share their Q tables ...
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E. Uğur, “A developmental framework for learning affordances,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2010.
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https://open.metu.edu.tr/handle/11511/20763
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Steven Johnson’s “Emergence” attempts to connect the lives of ants, brain activity, urban interaction, and software to show how decentralized and bottom-up interactions emerge as an intelligent swarm.
I was at first skeptical about the book, as it seemed to take a very scientific view, which I am wary of given my thesis on design thinking and its relation to a scientific approach to solving problems. But I got over myself and began to appreciate the perspective and what it might mean for interaction design. (Notably, the word “interaction” is repeated a lot throughout the book.)
The behavior of ant colonies forms the backbone of the thinking behind the book. Despite popular belief, ant colonies have no pacemaker, meaning there is no top-down authority that tells the colony what to do. The queen does not give directions, she only lays eggs. The rest of the ants base their behavior on interactions with their compatriots using a very simple language using pheromones. Through the numbers of these low-level decisions by individual ants, the colony as a whole exhibits characterizable behavior.
“The colonies take a problem that human societies might solve with a command system (some kind of broadcast from mission control announcing that there are too many foragers) and instead solve it using statistical probabilities. Given enough ants moving randomly through finite space, the colony will be able to make an accurate estimate of the overall need for foragers or nest-builders.”
When I read that the ants made decisions through statistical samples of the overall population, it seemed related to how designers make decisions based on a small, but rich interaction with sample users. Given millions of design decisions resulting from random sampling of the population, will there emerge a better world for all? That’s the hope that a greater design culture brings.
Another intriguing argument is that through local interactions higher-level order emerges. One prime example given is the benefit of sidewalks in increasing local interaction of city dwellers. Neighborhoods often develop, not because someone planned them, but through interaction with others—individual decisions about where an how to live creates an order. Examples include class divides, ethnic areas, and gay neighborhoods.
Good designers recognize that they have only so much control in the way that there solutions are used. Johnson points out that emergent systems are not without rules. In fact they need rules to prevent chaos. This seems a likely place for design to contribute: by understanding the system as a whole and providing the rules for interaction, but not dictating how interaction should take place. Not all interactions can or should be designed. There is room to allow emergent behavior to determine the interaction, rather than interaction being dictated by the designer.
Does this sound a bit like co-creation or allowing users to design their own experience? I think so. To encourage emergent systems, Johnson suggests that in addition to rules, incentives should also be provided. For designers interested in allowing users to design their own experience, incentives for participation are paramount because they encourage investment and support.
Johnson entertains the principles of emergence being applied to all aspects of human activity, from social organization to urban planning to business management to political systems. For businesses looking for innovation, an emergent approach is worth considering. Johnson suggests an organization made up of smaller teams that act without top-down dictation.
“The role of traditional senior management grows less important in these models—less concerned with establishing a direction for the company, and more involved with encouraging the clusters that generate the best ideas.”
Through the lens of design, you could see this as employees designing their own work experience. With groups making the best decisions at the local level, the overall system would be more efficient and innovative. This idea definitely gains my interest, having worked in too many places where decisions made from above hurt the experience of employees and the effectiveness of the organization; and where everyone at the local level knew how to make productive changes but were discouraged and prevented from doing so.
Perhaps what I appreciate most about “Emergence” is Johnson’s ability to make connections between seemingly tangential subjects, as making connections is what good designers do. Overall, it’s an interesting read with insights into emergent behavior that are worth considering and perhaps bringing into current and future design challenges.
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https://jamin.org/emergence-book-review/
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In the last decades, studies on swarm robotics have grown significantly, with different implementation details becoming of interest in research works. Although the first idea in swarm robotics should be the application or the task that robots should perform, other aspects can be studied. In a robotic swarm, it may be necessary to select the robots that will perform a given task, which is a division of labor among the members. A similar problem is that of robot recruitment, required when a specific robot needs assistance to execute some tasks and starts recruiting other robots of the swarm. In this chapter, a distributed algorithm, termed the wave algorithm, is exploited to perform the recruitment based on robot message passing to neighboring robots. The intended task to be done is the coordinated motion of the recruited robots that must follow the robot that starts the recruitment.
In a robotic swarm, a group of mobile robots works together to achieve a collective behavior (Şahin, 2005). In such systems, the agents are autonomous robots that follow simple rules and have only local capabilities of sensing and communication. The swarm has no central control or global information sharing. At the microscopic level, even individual robots are not aware of the complete behavior of system. In fact, the swarm behavior emerges from the interaction of the robots or between robots and the environment. In general, the concept of swarm is more intuitive at macroscopic level, when the group of robots perform a given task collectively.
The non-centralized approach of robotic swarm is classically inspired in the observation of social animals, like ants, bees, birds and fishes. Social animals exhibit some kind of swarm intelligence (Bonabeau et al., 1999), where a successful collective behavior emerges from interactions between individuals. It is robust, flexible and scalable, characteristics that are desired in multi-agent systems (Camazine et al., 2001). The robustness can be defined as the capability of continuity of work in presence of failures. A swarm system is said robust if it can continue to operate even if one or more swarm members stops to work due to internal failures or if the environment is changing dynamically. This is achieved in the nature by the redundancy of the individuals and the absence of leaders. The scalability of the system means that the swarm can work if different number of members. An individual can work in the same mode in a swarm with a large or with a small number of members without a significant change in its performance. And the flexibility is defined as the possibility of change in swarm behavior. In a flexible system, the internal parameters of individuals can be adjusted in presence of changes of the environment. All these three concepts are related to a single main idea: a swarm system can be able to perform the proposed task under different conditions.
Swarm robots are devices with limited capabilities of computational processing, sensing, communication and movement. The task done by the swarm is usually achieved by the execution of algorithms in each robot. This kind of system has many similarities with the execution of distributed algorithms by a multiprocessor system. In this chapter, the behavior of an individual robot is defined by an algorithm, that takes advantage of basic concepts of distributed systems, such as direct communication, allowing the transmission of explicit messages among processes. However, typical swarm robotic systems may also use indirect communication, sensing other robots or interacting with the environment (Cao et al., 1997).
A mobile robot is an agent able to move in the environment. In the context of this chapter, a robot is characterized having two movement engines, allowing it to go forward and backward, but with no direct right-to-left displacements. Robots with this movement are called non-holonomic. An individual robot is dotted with some computational capabilities. Furthermore, it may sense the environment via some built-in sensors. The main sensory capability allows distance measurement to robots in the swarm. This is a local knowledge, because a robot can only sense robots in a small neighborhood. Robots may also have some kind of wireless communication, allowing message passing among the swarm members. It may be a local broadcast message, where a robot broadcasts some information to all robots in the neighborhood, or a direct message, identifying both the sender and the receiver.
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https://www.igi-global.com/chapter/distributed-algorithms-for-recruitment-and-coordinated-motion-in-swarm-robotic-systems/173357
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