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A team from Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University together with their Russian colleagues carried out genetic analysis of the symbiotic bacterium Wolbachia that prevents the birth and development of males in different species of arthropods. It turned out that the microorganisms exchanged their genes to rejuvenate. The results of the study were published in the Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution journal.
Different species may have different relationships with each other: some compete for limited resources, and some feed off their hosts. Nevertheless, if two species cohabitate in some way, it is called symbiosis, and its participants are symbionts. Some symbionts can be inherited.
The Wolbachia bacterium is the most widespread symbiont in the biosphere. Many arthropods and some nematode worms have it. The bacterium lives in the reproductive tissues and is inherited from mother to progeny via the oocytes of infected females. Scientists believe that currently these bacteria are being transformed into a new cell organelle.
Wolbachia manipulates the reproductive process of its host. For example, it may "forbid" infected males to inseminate healthy females to prevent them from getting offsprings. All embryos die on early stages of development, and scientists are still unable to understand how the bacteria manage to do it. In other species the bacterium increases the share of females in the population to spread the infection. To do so, it feminizes genetic males or causes thelytokous parthenogenesis -- a process when female progeny is produced without insemination. However, sometimes Wolbachia can be very useful for its host: it synthesizes vitamins and suppresses harmful mutations and even some viruses.
According to the scientists, these bacteria can be very different from the genetic point of view in one host species and very similar -- in different ones. It indicates that the bacterium has several individual symbiotic relations. So, there are several supergroups -- phyletic lines or tribes of Wolbachia.
Although the bacterium has been discovered in 1924, a lot is still unknown about it, including the beginning of its symbiosis with arthropods and the mechanism of its transmission from one species to another. Moreover, how it controls the reproductive system of its host is also unclear.
Previously the authors of the work analyzed phylogenetic relations between different Wolbachia strains and discovered many contradictions in its evolutionary history. They are associated with large-scale horizontal gene transfer -- a process in which an organism transfers its genetic material to another organism that is not its progeny. For example, many centuries ago plants allowed photosynthesizing cyanobacteria to leave in their cells. With time they turned into chloroplasts and transferred a lot of genes to their hosts genomes.
To identify the phylogenetic relations the authors had used a special approach -- they classified different Wolbachia bacteria by alleles (variations) of each gene and looked for irregular accumulation of nucleotide substitutions. In the course of this work the authors studied Wolbachia in mosquitoes using the same method, i.e. by comparing their alleles to the alleles of the same bacteria in other species. They had to understand where the mosquitos got the symbiont from.
"We analyzed genetic profiles of different Wolbachia supergroups and concluded that the bacteria in mosquitoes are very similar to those found in lepidopteras and in one case also in ants. We don't know yet why it happened. However, we assume the bacteria may be transferred by the ticks that live on the bodies of these insects", said Yury Ilinsky, a co-author of the work, PhD in Biology, and a specialist of Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University.
The scientists found out that different Wolbachia bacteria exchange genetic information. This way they can rejuvenate and therefor mend their broken genes. The exchange usually takes place among the bacteria of the same supergroup, but sometimes remote bacteria are involved as well. It means that the bacterium changes hosts more often than the scientists believed, and also that it's older than previously estimated.
"Our global goal is to understand the pattern of genetic distribution of Wolbachia in arthropods. After that we would like to understand how and at what rate it changes hosts", concluded Yury Ilinsky.
This article has been republished from materials provided by Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.
Reference
Wolbachia symbionts in mosquitoes: Intra- and intersupergroup recombinations, horizontal transmission and evolution. Elena Shaikevich, Anna Bogacheva, Vera Rakova, Ludmila Ganushkina, Yury Ilinsky. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Volume 134, May 2019, Pages 24-34, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2019.01.020. | https://www.technologynetworks.com/immunology/news/how-male-haters-spread-317615 |
This combination symbolizes an easy harmony in the ability to understand the subtle fluidity of boundaries and structures, and thus grants the ability to manipulate them over time. Mental discipline comes easy and once an idea has taken hold the mind works on it until it is thoroughly understood. The correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm is intuitively grasped, and this means even large complex structures can be reduced to smaller versions of themselves such that they function almost as a symbol or seed. This makes repeating successes at different scales of both size and time also possible, such that one essential success becomes many, through concepts like franchising and syndication. The only danger of this placement is a fixation on materiality, as a loss of contact with the flow of spiritual energy can cause the gifts to harden and become brittle.
Mercury Trine Saturn Transit
This aspect suggests an easy opportunity to harmonize larger structures with original or essential ideas and symbols. A return to fundamentals restores the flow to stuck situations. This is generally a quick transit that comes around twice a year, but as soon as every six to seven years or more often at longer thirteen-year intervals, Mercury makes a series of three trines with the middle one occurring during its retrograde. This is a pretty significant transit that suggests adjustments to one’s inner sense of authority, boundaries, and structure. If you have given away your power or authority to another or have become lost within a labyrinthine system, this suggests an easy way out by returning to the core of the essential self. Conversely, if you are having trouble entering large or complex structures, then focus, simplicity, and authenticity are the key. | https://www.astrology.com/us/transits/aspects-and-transits-result.aspx?planet1=Mercury&aspect=Trine&planet2=Saturn |
In 2017, I graduated from Leaves of Learning, a not-for-profit educational program, and was accepted at Champlain College's Game Studio where I earned a degree in Game Design with a minor in Interactive Narrative. During my four years at Champlain, I worked on a number of projects culminating in Through Rust We Are Returned where I served as Creative Director on a 19 person team. During my Junior year at Champlain, I spent a semester abroad in Montreal where I interned for Power Level Studios working on Soul Reaper (commercially released in 2020). In the Spring of 2021, I graduated summa cum laude, moved to California, and am excited to see where my career in games takes me next!
About Me
I'm Griffin Carlson: a recent graduate of the Game Design program at Champlain College.
I’m a Game/Narrative Designer who tells stories that engage society, history, and mythology. I have always been fascinated with role-playing and imaginary worlds. I now channel this passion into my work by developing immersive gameplay experiences which allow players to understand their world better through the lens of fantastic realities.
Experience and Education
My Story: All the Screen's A Stage
Throughout most of my high school years, I always thought I would end up majoring in theatre. I performed yearly in my school's Shakespeare plays and was heavily involved in extra-curricular acting programs and summer camps. Ultimately though, I discovered that my love of theatre was not calling me where I thought.
I grew up in a household saturated with games. My dad was a school teacher throughout my childhood who primarily used games to teach his curriculum. Because of this, I was around lots of historical, fantasy, and mythological tabletop games in my formative years. Specifically, I fell in love with first playing, and then game mastering, tabletop roleplaying games. It was here I began to write and develop my own stories and rules. I knew that I loved to perform and tell stories but still didn't understand how I would connect my scattered interests together.
As I got older, I played more video games and became incredibly influenced by game design YouTube channels like Extra Credits, which gave me the tools to view games analytically. Simultaneously, I became deeply formed by video games like Bioshock and Undertale which proved to me the possible depth of narratives in games.
As I continued to perform theatre, I found myself using my analytical, game design-influenced mind to deconstruct what it was I enjoyed about acting. Ultimately what I cared most about was the experience I had getting into the role of a character and the medium of theatre was not the only place I was finding this: I found myself also roleplaying in both tabletop and digital games.
This realization drove me to use my love of storytelling and games to strive towards creating immersive narratives that could allow players to find themselves lost in stories the same way I had been. Games are a safe space for so many people and by creating compelling stories I hope to allow people to not escape their lives but instead to explore and better understand their identities and others' lived experiences through the medium of play.
I also found that the cross-disciplinary nature of game development teams was the perfect balance between my love for individual storytelling and collaborative performance.
I can't imagine what my life would be like without roleplaying, storytelling, and games. Now, as a narrative designer, I hope I'll never have to. | https://www.griffincarlson.com/about |
Taken as a whole game, the game was executed very well.Yes, I do feel it was a well done game. But like I said, I feel that people are exaggerating when they consider it to be one of the best PC games ever made.
Nothing Deus Ex did was remarkable by itself, as they were done, in some form, in games before it.So you agree with me. The point I made in a previous post was that Deus Ex should not be used as an example of how Crysis is not original.
Well...what did you expect? You're playing an UN special forces operative from the outset.A special operative that can be good at stealth and brutal combat? Seems too much like RPG powergaming for my tastes. Of course, this wouldn't be a problem if Deus Ex wasn't trying to be a FPS-RPG.
It was easier to attribute the lack of towers to a "terrorist" attack. And this was over a full year before 9/11.I don't see how the developers coincidentally predicting 9/11 has anything to do with this discussion.
Deus Ex wasn't a pure stealth game.Right, which is why the stealth portions were kinda meh. Which was my point.
Beyond Good and Evil came out in 2003; and gaming in general changed quite a bit in the time between the release of Deus Ex and BGE.I'd say that BGE succeeded at innovating great gameplay, whereas Deus Ex wasn't as successful.
Both games (HL and Thief) were in respective genres that rarely went outside of those genres.Both games raised the bar, providing unprecedented quality of gameplay. Deus Ex didn't improve quality, but was an aggregate of mediocre gameplay.
The consequences of your actions throughout the game? You just got done saying having multiple choices detracts from a game!I was talking about gameplay choices (ie. Stealth vs guns blazing), not roleplaying choices and consequences. Sorry if what I wrote confused you.
Yes, the choices you make in Deus Ex really don't amount to a hill of beans in the end, especially right at the end when you're given a direct choice of a set number of endings. But comparing that shortcoming to what you can do in the first two Fallout games is simply ignoring the technical limitations of PC hardware of the time.So you agree with me. It's sad that technical limitations prevented Deus Ex from being a great game. But I don't think the same thing can be said about Deus Ex 2's failure (maybe?).
Um, which "Shock" game? System Shock 1 or 2, Bioshock? The same oblique arguments you're making against Deus Ex could be made against either of the SS games.Exactly. So you understand what I am saying. However, System Shock 2 and Bioshock stand out as great games because they have one thing that they absolutely excelled at: the atmosphere. I would have said Bioshock was just as mediocre as Deus Ex, except Ken Levine was able to produce one of the most unique, fascinating and immersive setting in gaming history. Yes, the philosphy and existentialism was flawed, but that was coming from the ramblings of a mad-man. The world was consistent with his madness. Rapture was exactly the kind of nightmare some deluded egomaniac with a credit in Philosophy 101 would produce. It was fucking fantastic.
Taking the game as a whole, the story's structure and telling were very remarkable for an FPS-RPG coming out for the time.Over and over again, whenever someone says something great about Deus Ex, they have to add the addendum: it was good for an FPS-RPG. It's like they think it should get extra points because it is a handicap or something.
There's very little to compare between the two. (Crysis and Deus Ex)Exactly. You understand me very well. I was trying to say to other posters (Reitsuki) that it's retarded to compare the two, hence my half hearted "sure, why not".
But if you look at the list of games he's (Ken Levine) had a hand in, several have either influenced, or been influenced by, Deus Ex.Exactly. Ken Levine took the formula that inspired Deus Ex and went beyond that and created games that were truly great and memorable.
but your reasons for bashing the game could be summarized to simply saying "I didn't like it. 'Nuff said."No, I said in my post that I enjoyed the game. (Edit: I reread what I wrote, and it seems like I did not mention it =P My bad) I just think it's nothing special, and overrated if you consider it amongst the PC greats. It's even more ridiculous when people say it's the greatest PC game of all time. | https://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&boardid=1&threadid=101482&id=535794&view=threads |
What are the implications of optimising for “I” over “we” on the peak paradox framework?
There appear to be more opportunities to optimise for "I" than "we".
A question I have been mulling over is, “In a free market can we optimise for many things simultaneously, or is the free actually a ‘freedom’ to enable everyone to choose the one (or very few) things they want to optimise for?”
I have been reflecting on the structure of the Peak Paradox framework as I have finished reading some 2022 published books on behavioural economics, decision making and uncertainty. The Peak Paradox framework provides a lens for decision-making in uncertain times to ensure we consider and value many perspectives equally and fairly. This is needed as the previous generation’s actions had consequences that we are now responsible for solving, and as a good ancestor, I am keen not to create new or accelerate existing.
In the language of economics, the concept of a free market is a system in which the prices for goods and services are self-regulated by buyers and sellers negotiating in an open market without market coercion. In other words, there is an unregulated system of economic exchange in which taxes, quality controls, quotas, tariffs, and other forms of centralised economic interventions by the government either do not exist or are minimal. A truly free market does not exist.
In our versions of a free-market, there are two tribes of individuals, one bounded by economics and the other by law. An individual bound by economics believes in the entitlement of property rights derived from one own effort (possessive individualism). The market validates this belief (market fundamentalism) as the market tries to impose as fewer restrictions as possible. The second tribe is individuals who build on the ideas of claims of entitlement (my rights). The self in both tribes is above the obligations to others. Both individuals here have communities who think and act like they do and provide confirmational bias. When the two tribes of individuals mix, we end up with some very extreme views and behaviours that create incompatible ideals with a big society, such as:
Utilitarian individualism is a form of individualism that takes as given basic human appetites and fears and sees human life as an effort by individuals to maximise their self-interest relative to these given ends. Utilitarian individualism views society as arising from a contract that individuals enter only to advance their self-interest. Utilitarian individualism has an affinity to a basic economic understanding of existence.
Expressive individualism is a form of individualism that arose in opposition to utilitarian individualism (above). Expressive individualism holds that each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realised. Under certain conditions, the expressive individualist may find it possible through intuitive feeling to “merge” with other persons, with nature, or with the cosmos as a whole.
There is a massive body of academic work unpicking what the individual is optimised for, with wildly different hypotheses under any belief system; they agree that the outcome is - “the individual benefits more than society”. There is no Peak Paradox, as with the purity of other peaks, as there is clarity on what you are optimising for. This does not mean all those in this tribe will have the same purpose, mission, values, goals, ethics, or moral fabric; it is just that in whatever belief model you hold, the individual outcome is prioritised over the societal outcome.
However, when we try to optimise for us, we, society, citizens and not I, me, like me, same tribe, same thinking, like-minded, same beliefs: we embrace a wider area on the Peak Paradox framework. This widening of what we optimise for creates tensions and conflicts; we must discover compromise and live with stress. There appear to be more opportunities to optimise for “I” than “We” in the framework, and if you do, decision-making is easier. However, optimising for “I” does not translate into an easy life or better relationships. Optimising for “I” does create a simple linear narrative that is easy to understand and aim for.
Optimising for Peak Society/ Group Purpose is the reality of life for most humans - nothing is simple, and there is no magic solution, but together we can achieve more.
Those optimising for “I” and not “We” understand this and engage in social engineering and informational “saturation” attacks — a military tactic in which an opponent hopes to gain an advantage by mentally overwhelming an adversary by adding to the volatility uncertainty complexity and ambiguity of their situation. They take the already complicated decision-making processes “we” have when optimising for society and make them appear more complex. They find different data for an alternative outcome. They imply the compromise is too far or not enough. Their criticism is not for improvement but to increase tension and stress so that the backing fads and support evaporates. | https://www.peakparadox.com/post/what-are-the-implications-of-optimising-for-i-over-we-on-the-peak-paradox-framework |
Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to driver circuitry for radio frequency (RF) switching circuitry, and in particular to RF switching circuitry with faster switching times.
Background
Figure 1
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Radio frequency (RF) switching circuitry is an essential part of any wireless communication device. RF switching circuitry may be used to route RF signals between various nodes (e.g., a power amplifier and an antenna, an antenna and a low noise amplifier (LNA), and the like), to change the impedance of one or more nodes, or any number of other functions. Exemplary RF switching circuitry 10 is shown in . The RF switching circuitry 10 includes a number of field effect transistors (FETs) 12 (numbered individually from 12A to 12N) coupled drain (D) to source (S) between an input node 14 and an output node 16. A gate drive node 18 is coupled to a gate (G) of each of the FETs 10 via a common resistor R and a number of gate resistors R. Specifically, the common resistor R is coupled between the gate drive node 18 and a gate (G) of a first one of the FETs 12A. Each of the gate resistors R is coupled between the gate contacts (G) of each adjacent pair of the FETs 12.
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A gate drive signal DRV provided at the gate drive node 18 places the FETs 12 in one of an on state or an off state. In the on state of the FETs 12, a low impedance path is provided between the input node 14 and the output node 16, thereby allowing an RF input signal RF at the input node 14 to pass to the output node 16. In the off state of the FETs 12, a high impedance path is provided between the input node 14 and the output node 16, thereby preventing the RF input signal RF at the input node 14 from reaching the output node 16. The RF switching circuitry 10 may be provided in a series configuration or a shunt configuration. In the series configuration, the input node 14 and the output node 16 are RF signal nodes. In the shunt configuration, the input node 14 is an RF signal node and the output node 16 is a ground node or coupled to a fixed impedance.
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The gate drive signal DRV may switch between a positive power supply voltage V and a negative power supply voltage V. Generally, the positive power supply voltage Vpp is provided by a voltage regulator while the negative power supply voltage V is generated from the positive power supply voltage V using a charge pump. In the case of a mobile device, the positive power supply voltage V may correspond with a battery voltage or a downregulated version thereof. The negative power supply voltage V may be generated in proportion to the magnitude of the positive power supply voltage V (e.g., if the positive power supply voltage V is 2.5V, the negative power supply voltage V may be -2.5V).
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A typical gate drive signal DRV is illustrated in . To maintain the FETs 12 in an off state, the gate drive signal DRV is provided at the negative power supply voltage V. The negative power supply voltage V maintains the gate-to-source voltage V of each one of the FETs 12 well below a threshold voltage V thereof, ensuring that the FETs 12 remain off even when a drain-to-source voltage V of each one of the FETs 12 is large. To transition the FETs 12 into an on state, the gate drive signal DRV slews from the negative power supply voltage V to the positive power supply voltage V. As the gate-to-source voltage V of the FETs 12 rises above the threshold voltage V thereof, the FETs 12 turn on.
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As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, each one of the FETs 12 has an associated gate capacitance due to the physical structure thereof. This gate capacitance, along with the resistance provided by the common resistor R and the gate resistors R, degrades the switching speed of the RF switching circuitry 10 as illustrated by Equation (1): where is the time required to charge or discharge the capacitance of each one of the FETs 12, which is inversely proportional to the time required to transition between the on state and the off state of the FETs 12, R is the resistance seen at the gate drive node 18, and C is the capacitance seen at the gate drive node 18. Such a reduction in the switching speed of the FETs 12 becomes problematic when RF standards (e.g., 5G, WiFi) demand very fast switching speeds (e.g., 100-200 ns).
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US 2017/0302259
US 2014/0009206
US 2017/0272066
One way to increase the switching speed of the RF switching circuitry 10 is by reducing the size of the common resistor R and/or the gate resistors R. While doing so decreases the time constant by reducing the resistance R seen at the gate drive node 18, it also increases the insertion loss of the RF switching circuitry 10 as large values of the common resistor R and/or gate resistors R prevent leakage of the RF input signal RF into the gate (G) of each one of the FETs 12. Another way to increase the switching speed of the RF switching circuitry 10 is by reducing the size of the FETs 12. While doing so decreases the gate capacitance of each one of the FETs and thus the time constant by reducing the capacitance C seen at the gate drive node 18, it also decreases the power handling capability of the RF switching circuitry 10.
discloses RF switching circuitry that includes one or more RF switching elements, a control signal input node, a common resistor, and common resistor bypass circuitry. The one or more RF switching elements are coupled in series between a switch input node and a switch output node. A state of each one of the one or more switching elements is determined based on a control signal. The control signal input node is configured to receive the control signal. The common resistor is coupled between the control signal input node and the one or more RF switching elements. The common resistor bypass circuitry is configured to receive the switching control signal and bypass the common resistor for a predetermined time period following one or more of a leading edge of the switching control signal and a falling edge of the switching control signal.
discloses RF switch circuits having adjustable resistance to provide improved switching performance. The RF switch circuits include at least one FET disposed between first and second nodes, each of the FET having a respective gate and body. An adjustable-resistance circuit is connected to either or both of the respective gate and body of the FET(s).
discloses an RF switch having two or more stages coupled in series. A first FET with a first control terminal is coupled across a gate resistor to shunt the gate resistor when the first FET is on. An RF switching device is configured to pass an RF signal between a signal input and a signal output when the RF switching device is on. A second FET having a second control terminal coupled to an acceleration output is configured to shunt the RF switching device when the second FET is on. A third FET is coupled between the first control terminal and the signal input for controlling charge on a gate of the first FET. A third control terminal of the third FET is coupled to an acceleration input for controlling an on/off state of the third FET.
There remains a need for an RF switch with improved switching time that maintains low insertion loss and high power handling capability.
Summary
The present disclosure relates to driver circuitry for radio frequency (RF) switching circuitry, and in particular to RF switching circuitry with faster switching times. According to the invention, there is provided RF switching circuitry according to claim 1. By using the built-in gate capacitance of the bypass FET to provide the multi-level drive signal at an overvoltage that is above the positive power supply voltage, the multi-level driver circuitry is able to maintain the bypass FET in an on state during transitions of the plurality of FETs between states without the need for extra circuitry (e.g., a charge pump).
Those skilled in the art will appreciate the scope of the present disclosure and realize additional aspects thereof after reading the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments in association with the accompanying drawing figures.
Brief Description of the Drawing Figures
Figure 1
is a functional schematic illustrating conventional radio frequency (RF) switching circuitry.
Figure 2
is a graph illustrating a conventional gate drive signal for conventional RF switching circuitry.
Figure 3
is a functional schematic illustrating RF switching circuitry including switch acceleration circuitry according to one embodiment of the present disclosure.
Figure 4
is a graph illustrating a multi-level drive signal for switch acceleration circuitry according to one embodiment of the present disclosure.
Figure 5
is a functional schematic illustrating RF switching circuitry including switch acceleration circuitry according to one embodiment of the present disclosure.
Figure 6
is a functional schematic showing acceleration control signal generator circuitry for switch acceleration circuitry according to one embodiment of the present disclosure.
Figure 7
is a graph illustrating various digital control signals generated by acceleration control signal generator circuitry according to one embodiment of the present disclosure.
Figure 8
is a functional schematic illustrating multi-level driver circuitry for switch acceleration circuitry according to one embodiment of the present disclosure.
Figure 9
is a functional schematic illustrating RF switching circuitry according to one embodiment of the present disclosure.
The accompanying drawing figures incorporated in and forming a part of this specification illustrate several aspects of the disclosure, and together with the description serve to explain the principles of the disclosure.
Detailed Description
The embodiments set forth below represent the necessary information to enable those skilled in the art to practice the embodiments and illustrate the best mode of practicing the embodiments. Upon reading the following description in light of the accompanying drawing figures, those skilled in the art will understand the concepts of the disclosure and will recognize applications of these concepts not particularly addressed herein. It should be understood that these concepts and applications fall within the scope of the disclosure and the accompanying claims.
It will be understood that, although the terms first, second, etc. may be used herein to describe various elements, these elements should not be limited by these terms. These terms are only used to distinguish one element from another. For example, a first element could be termed a second element, and, similarly, a second element could be termed a first element, without departing from the scope of the present disclosure. As used herein, the term "and/or" includes any and all combinations of one or more of the associated listed items.
It will be understood that when an element such as a layer, region, or substrate is referred to as being "on" or extending "onto" another element, it can be directly on or extend directly onto the other element or intervening elements may also be present. In contrast, when an element is referred to as being "directly on" or extending "directly onto" another element, there are no intervening elements present. Likewise, it will be understood that when an element such as a layer, region, or substrate is referred to as being "over" or extending "over" another element, it can be directly over or extend directly over the other element or intervening elements may also be present. In contrast, when an element is referred to as being "directly over" or extending "directly over" another element, there are no intervening elements present. It will also be understood that when an element is referred to as being "connected" or "coupled" to another element, it can be directly connected or coupled to the other element or intervening elements may be present. In contrast, when an element is referred to as being "directly connected" or "directly coupled" to another element, there are no intervening elements present.
Relative terms such as "below" or "above" or "upper" or "lower" or "horizontal" or "vertical" may be used herein to describe a relationship of one element, layer, or region to another element, layer, or region as illustrated in the Figures. It will be understood that these terms and those discussed above are intended to encompass different orientations of the device in addition to the orientation depicted in the Figures.
The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of the disclosure. As used herein, the singular forms "a," "an," and "the" are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms "comprises," "comprising," "includes," and/or "including" when used herein specify the presence of stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements, and/or components, but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, elements, components, and/or groups thereof.
Unless otherwise defined, all terms (including technical and scientific terms) used herein have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which this disclosure belongs. It will be further understood that terms used herein should be interpreted as having a meaning that is consistent with their meaning in the context of this specification and the relevant art and will not be interpreted in an idealized or overly formal sense unless expressly so defined herein.
Figure 3
Figure 1
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shows radio frequency (RF) switching circuitry 20 including switch acceleration circuitry 22 according to one embodiment of the present disclosure. The basic structure of the RF switching circuitry 20 is similar to that shown in above and includes a number of field effect transistors (FETs) 24 (numbered individually as 24A to 24N) coupled drain (D) to source (S) between an input node 26 and an output node 28. A gate drive node 30 is coupled to a gate (G) of each of the FETs 24 via a common resistor R and a number of gate resistors R. Specifically, the common resistor R is coupled between the gate drive node 30 and a first one of the FETs 24A. Each one of the gate resistors R is coupled between the gate contacts (G) of each adjacent pair of the FETs 24.
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A gate drive signal DRV provided at the gate drive node 30 places the FETs 24 in one of an on state or an off state. In the on state of the FETs 24, a low impedance path is provided between the input node 26 and the output node 28, thereby allowing an RF input signal RF at the input node 26 to pass to the output node 28. In the off state of the FETs 24, a high impedance path is provided between the input node 26 and the output node 28, thereby preventing the RF input signal RF at the input node 26 from reaching the output node 28. The RF switching circuitry 20 may be provided in a series configuration or a shunt configuration. In the series configuration, the input node 26 and the output node 28 are RF signal nodes. In the shunt configuration, the input node 26 is an RF signal node and the output node 28 is a ground node or coupled to a fixed impedance. As discussed herein, a low impedance path is one in which any FETs provided therein are on. As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, FETs essentially provide a closed circuit when on, presenting a resistance that is equal to an on-state resistance of the one or more FETs. A high impedance path is one in which any FETs provided therein are off. As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, FETs essentially provide an open circuit when off, presenting a resistance that is equal to an off-state resistance of the one or more FETs.
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The gate drive signal DRV may be provided by a gate driver (not shown), which switches the gate drive signal DRV between a positive power supply voltage V and a negative power supply voltage V in response to a digital or logic-level control signal. Generally, the positive power supply voltage V is provided by a voltage regulator while the negative power supply voltage V is generated from the positive power supply voltage V using a charge pump. In the case of a mobile device, the positive power supply voltage V may correspond with a battery voltage or a downregulated version thereof. The negative power supply voltage V may be generated in proportion to the magnitude of the positive power supply voltage V (e.g., if the positive power supply voltage V is 2.5V, the negative power supply voltage V may be -2.5V).
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As discussed above, the switching speed of the RF switching circuitry 20 is limited due to the combination of resistance of the common resistor R and the gate resistors R and capacitance of the FETs 24. In order to increase the switching speed of the RF switching circuitry 20, the switch acceleration circuitry 22 is configured to selectively bypass the common resistor R as discussed below. To do so, the switch acceleration circuitry 22 includes a bypass FET 32 coupled across the common resistor R. Specifically, a drain (D) of the bypass FET 32 is coupled to the gate drive node 30, and a source contact (S) of the bypass FET 32 is coupled to the gate (G) of a first one of the FETs 24A. A gate (G) of the bypass FET 32 is configured to receive a multi-level drive signal DRV. The multi-level drive signal DRV may switch between the negative power supply voltage V, ground, and an over-voltage V, which is greater than the positive power supply voltage V. When the multi-level drive signal DRV is provided at the negative power supply voltage V or ground, the bypass FET 32 remains off. At some point when the multi-level drive signal DRV is between ground and the over-voltage V, the bypass FET 32 turns on.
C
C
C
C
τ
When the bypass FET 32 is on, the common resistor R is bypassed and thus not presented to the gate drive node 30. When the bypass FET 32 is off, the common resistor R is not bypassed and thus presented to the gate drive node 30. Bypassing the common resistor R substantially reduces the resistance R presented to the gate drive node 30 and therefore the time constant discussed above with respect to Equation (1). Accordingly, the switching speed of the RF switching circuitry 20 may be substantially improved when the common resistor R is bypassed.
IN
C
ML
G
G
ML
Figure 4
Figure 4
A large resistance at the gate (G) of each one of the FETs 24 is necessary to avoid leakage of the RF input signal RF into the gate (G). Accordingly, it is desirable to bypass the common resistor R only when turning on or off the RF switching circuitry 20 and not during steady state operation thereof. Doing so increases the switching speed of the RF switching circuitry 20 without adversely affecting the insertion loss thereof. shows an exemplary multi-level drive signal DRV according to one embodiment of the present disclosure configured to do so. The gate drive signal DRV for the FETs 24 is also shown for context. Specifically, shows the gate drive signal DRV as a solid line and the multi-level drive signal DRV as a dashed line.
G
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GS
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DS
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G
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GS
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G
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O
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O
GS
TH
C
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BP
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GS
TH
To maintain the FETs 24 and the bypass FET 32 in an off state, the gate drive signal DRV and the multi-level drive signal DRV are provided at the negative power supply voltage V. As discussed above, the negative power supply voltage V maintains the gate-to-source voltage V of each one of the FETs 24 well below a threshold voltage V thereof, ensuring that the FETs 24 remain off even when a drain-to-source voltage V of each one of the FETs 24 is large. Similarly, the negative power supply voltage V maintains the gate-to-source V voltage of the bypass FET 32 well below a threshold voltage V thereof such that the bypass FET 32 remains off. To transition the FETs 24 into an on state, the gate drive signal DRV slews from the negative power supply voltage V to the positive power supply voltage V. As the gate-to-source voltage V of the FETs 24 rises above the threshold voltage V thereof, the FETs 24 turn on. Before this occurs, however, the multi-level drive signal DRV slews from the negative power supply voltage V to ground. Then, as the gate drive signal DRV slews from the negative power supply voltage V to the positive power supply voltage V, the multi-level drive signal DRV similarly slews from ground to the over-voltage V, maintaining a headroom of 2.5V above the switching control signal CNT. As discussed below, the multi-level drive signal is provided by utilizing the built-in capacitance of the bypass FET 32 and thus does not require separate circuitry (e.g., a charge pump) to generate the over-voltage V. As the gate-to-source voltage V of the bypass FET 32 rises above the threshold voltage V thereof, the bypass FET 32 turns on to bypass the common resistor R. The 2.5V headroom above the switching control signal CNT ensures that the bypass FET 32 remains on throughout the entirety of the turn on of the FETs 24. If the bypass control signal CNT did not maintain a headroom above the switching control signal CNT, the gate-to-source voltage V of the bypass FET 32 would not be sufficiently greater than the threshold voltage V thereof, and the bypass FET 32 would turn off.
G
NN
PP
ML
C
IN
IN
When the gate drive signal DRV is done slewing from the negative power supply voltage V to the positive power supply voltage V and the FETs 24 are thus turned on, the multi-level drive signal DRV drops to ground such that the bypass FET 32 is turned off and the common resistor R is no longer bypassed. Doing so reduces leakage of the RF input signal RF from drain-to-gate or source-to-gate in each of the FETs 24 while the RF input signal RF is passed from the input node 26 to the output node 28.
ML
O
G
PP
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G
To turn the FETs 24 back off, the process is reversed. The bypass FET 32 is first turned on by raising the multi-level drive signal DRV from ground back to the over-voltage V. The gate drive signal DRV slews from the positive power supply voltage V back to the negative power supply voltage V, and the multi-level drive signal DRV maintains a 2.5V headroom over the gate drive signal DRV during this slewing.
G
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O
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Figure 4
The gate drive signal DRV and the multi-level drive signal DRV shown in represent ideal waveforms. Operating the RF switching circuitry 20 and the switch acceleration circuitry 22 in this manner significantly increases the switching speed of the RF switching circuitry 20 without increasing insertion loss or reducing power handling capability. However, generating the multi-level drive signal DRV may require a significant increase in area and complexity of the RF switching circuitry 20 due to the requirement that the multi-level drive signal DRV range from the negative power supply voltage V to the over-voltage V. As discussed above, gate drive signals for RF switches are generally provided by a gate driver that is capable of providing voltages between the negative power supply voltage V and the positive power supply voltage V. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the positive power supply voltage V may be provided by a regulated voltage source (e.g., a main power supply), while the negative power supply voltage V may be generated from the positive power supply voltage V using a charge pump. To provide the over-voltage V according to conventional means, an additional charge pump would be required. Since charge pumps consume a relatively large area in a device, this would significantly increase the area and complexity of the RF switching circuitry 20 and thus may be unsuitable for certain applications (e.g., mobile devices) in which space is limited.
Figure 5
Figure 3
SW
SWD
ACC
SWD
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SWD
To solve this problem, shows the RF switching circuitry 20 and the switch acceleration circuitry 22 according to one embodiment of the present disclosure. The RF switching circuitry 20 is substantially similar to that described above with respect to . The switch acceleration circuitry 22 includes the bypass FET 32, acceleration control signal generator circuitry 34, and multi-level driver circuitry 36. The acceleration control signal generator circuitry 34 is configured to receive a switching control signal CNT from a switching control signal input node 38 and provide a delayed switching control signal CNT and an acceleration control signal CNT. The delayed switching control signal CNT is provided to a gate driver 40, which provides one of the positive power supply voltage V and the negative power supply voltage V as the gate drive signal DRV to the gate drive node 30. The switching control signal CNT, the delayed switching control signal CNT, and the acceleration control signal CNT may be digital or logic-level signals (e.g., from 0V to 2.5V). Accordingly, the acceleration control signal generator circuitry 34 may be digital circuitry, the details of which are discussed below. The gate driver 40 may provide the negative power supply voltage V when the delayed switching control signal CNT is low and provide the positive power supply voltage V when the delayed switching control signal CNT is high.
ACC
ML
ML
PP
NN
The multi-level driver circuitry 36 is configured to receive the acceleration control signal CNT and provide the multi-level drive signal DRV to the bypass FET 32. Specifically, the multi-level driver circuitry 36 uses a built-in capacitance of the bypass FET 32 to provide the multi-level drive signal DRV using only the positive power supply voltage V and the negative power supply voltage V, thereby foregoing the need for additional charge pumps or other voltage generators in the RF switching circuitry 20 as discussed below.
Figure 6
Figure 6
SW
ACC
ACC
SWD
SW
shows details of the acceleration control signal generator circuitry 34 according to one embodiment of the present disclosure. The signal delay circuitry includes an exclusive-NOR gate 42 and a number of inverters 44. The exclusive-NOR gate 42 includes a first input node 46A and a second input node 46B. The first input node 46A is coupled to a switching control signal input node 48, at which the switching control signal CNT is provided. The inverters 44 are coupled in series between the switching control signal input node 48 and the second input node 46B. An output of the exclusive-NOR gate 42 is coupled to an acceleration control signal output node 50, which provides the acceleration control signal CNT. A delayed switching control signal output node 52 is coupled to an output of one of the inverters 44 that is not directly coupled to the second input node 46B of the exclusive-NOR gate 42. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the acceleration control signal generator circuitry 34 shown in is merely exemplary. That is, there are any number of ways to create the acceleration control signal CNT and the delayed switching control signal CNT from the switching control signal CNT, all of which are contemplated herein.
Figure 7
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SWD
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SW
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SWD
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SWD
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illustrates exemplary waveforms for the switching control signal CNT, the acceleration control signal CNT, and the delayed switching control signal CNT according to one embodiment of the present disclosure. As illustrated, when the switching control signal CNT transitions from low to high, the acceleration control signal CNT transitions from high to low since the first input node 46A of the exclusive-NOR gate 42 is high while the second input node 46B is low. As the rising edge of the switching control signal CNT propagates through each of the inverters 44, the switching control signal CNT is inverted and slightly delayed. When the rising edge of the switching control signal CNT reaches the delayed switching control signal output node 52, the delayed switching control signal CNT transitions from low to high. The delay between the rising edge of the switching control signal CNT and the delayed switching control signal CNT is determined by the number of inverters 44 between the switching control signal input node 48 and the delayed switching control signal output node 52. The rising edge of the switching control signal CNT continues propagating through the remaining inverters 44 between the delayed switching control signal output node 52 and the second input node 46B of the exclusive-NOR gate 42, where it eventually causes the acceleration control signal CNT to transition from low to high due to the fact that both the first input node 46A and the second input node 46B of the exclusive-NOR gate 42 are high at this point.
SW
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When the switching control signal CNT transitions from high to low, the acceleration control signal CNT transitions from high to low since the first input node 46A of the exclusive-NOR gate 42 is now low while the second input node 46B is high. The falling edge of the switching control signal CNT then propagates through the inverters 44 to the delayed switching control signal output node 52, causing the delayed switching control signal CNT to transition from high to low. When the falling edge of the switching control signal CNT propagates through the remaining inverters 44 between the delayed switching control signal output node 52 and the second input node 46B of the exclusive-NOR gate 42, the acceleration control signal CNT transitions from low to high because both the first input node 46A and the second input node 46B of the exclusive-NOR gate 42 are now low.
Figure 8
C
PP
SWD
O
shows the multi-level driver circuitry 36 according to one embodiment of the present disclosure. For context, the bypass FET 32, the gate driver 40, and the common resistor R are also shown. The multi-level driver circuitry 36 includes a first multi-level driver FET 54, a second multi-level driver FET 56, a first sub-driver 58, and a second sub-driver 60. The first multi-level driver FET 54 includes a drain (D) configured to receive the positive power supply voltage V, a source (S) coupled to an anode (A) of a multi-level driver diode 62, and a gate (G) coupled to an output of the first sub-driver 58. An input of the first sub-driver 58 is coupled to an acceleration control signal input node 64. A cathode (C) of the multi-level driver diode 62 is coupled to a multi-level drive signal output node 66. The second multi-level driver FET 56 includes a drain (D) coupled to the multi-level drive signal output node 66, a source (S) coupled to an output of the second sub-driver 60, and a gate (G) coupled to the output of the first sub-driver 58. An input of the second sub-driver 60 is configured to receive the delayed switching control signal CNT. An output resistor R is coupled between the multi-level drive signal output node 66 and the gate (G) of the bypass FET 32. A number of overvoltage protection diodes 68 are coupled anode (A) to cathode (C) between the gate (G) of the bypass FET 32 and an output of the gate driver 40.
PP
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PP
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SWD
In one embodiment, the first multi-level driver FET 54 is a p-channel depletion mode metal-oxide semiconductor FET (MOSFET) configured to be on when a voltage below a threshold voltage of the device is provided at the gate (G) and turn off when a voltage above the threshold voltage of the device is provided at the gate (G). The first sub-driver 58 may be configured to provide one of the positive power supply voltage V and the negative power supply voltage V at the output thereof based on the acceleration control signal CNT. Specifically, the first sub-driver 58 may provide the positive power supply voltage V at the output thereof when the acceleration control signal CNT is high and provide the negative power supply voltage V at the output thereof when the acceleration control signal CNT is low. The second multi-level driver FET 56 may be an n-channel enhancement mode MOSFET configured to be off when a voltage below a threshold voltage of the device is provided at the gate (G) and turn on when a voltage above the threshold voltage of the device is provided at the gate (G). The second sub-driver 60 may be configured to provide one of the negative power supply voltage V or ground to the source (S) of the second multi-level driver FET 56 based on the delayed switching control signal CNT. Specifically, the second sub-driver 60 may be configured to couple the output thereof to ground when the delayed switching control signal CNT is high and provide the negative power supply voltage V at the output thereof when the delayed switching control signal CNT is low.
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G
Figure 4
When the switching control signal CNT is low and the RF switching circuitry 20 is in a steady-state condition, the acceleration control signal CNT is high and the delayed switching control signal CNT is low. In response to these control signals, the first sub-driver 58 provides the positive power supply voltage V at the output thereof and the second sub-driver 60 provides the negative power supply voltage V at the output thereof. The first multi-level driver FET 54 is thus off (depletion mode) while the second multi-level driver FET 56 is on (enhancement mode). Accordingly, the multi-level drive signal output node 66 is coupled to the negative power supply voltage V and held there, as illustrated in the first portion of the multi-level drive signal DRV shown in . When the switching control signal CNT transitions from low to high, the acceleration control signal CNT transitions from high to low. Accordingly, the first sub-driver 58 provides the negative power supply voltage V at the output thereof, causing the first multi-level driver FET 54 to turn on and the second multi-level driver FET 56 to turn off. The multi-level drive signal output node 66 is thus coupled to VPP through the first multi-level driver FET 54. The gate drive signal DRV is still at the negative power supply voltage V at this time. To avoid overloading the bypass FET 32 with a large gate-to-source or gate-to-drain voltage, the overvoltage protection diodes 68 limit the voltage at the multi-level drive signal output node 66. In one embodiment, the overvoltage protection diodes 68 limit the voltage at the multi-level drive signal output node 66 to -2.5V above a voltage of the gate drive signal DRV.
SWD
NN
PP
PP
G
ML
C
Figure 4
Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the bypass FET 32 has an associated gate capacitance. As the delayed switching control signal CNT transitions from low to high causing the output of the gate driver 40 to slew from the negative power supply voltage V to the positive power supply voltage V, the charge stored in the gate capacitance of the bypass FET 32 allows the gate (G) thereof and thus the multi-level drive signal output node 66 to float above the positive power supply voltage V. The multi-level driver diode 62 prevents current from flowing back into the multi-level drive signal output node 66 in order to keep the charge in the gate capacitance of the bypass FET 32. This ensures a headroom between the gate drive signal DRV and the multi-level drive signal DRV as shown in . As discussed above, this headroom ensures that the bypass FET 32 remains on throughout the transition of the FETs 24 in the RF switching circuitry 20 from off to on, thereby bypassing the common resistor R during the transition and significantly improving switching times.
SWD
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PP
The transition from low to high of the delayed switching control signal CNT also causes the second sub-driver 60 to couple the output thereof to ground. As the acceleration control signal CNT transitions from low to high, the first sub-driver 58 provides the positive power supply voltage V at the output thereof, thereby turning the first multi-level driver FET 54 off and the second multi-level driver FET 56 on. Accordingly, the multi-level drive signal output node 66 is effectively coupled to ground. The same process is effectively reversed when turning the FETs 24 in the RF switching circuitry 20 from on to off.
Figure 8
ML
PP
NN
Notably, the multi-level driver circuitry 36 shown in is merely exemplary. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the functionality of the multi-level driver circuitry 36 may be implemented in any number of ways, all of which are contemplated herein. In general, the multi-level driver circuitry 36 is able to generate a multi-level drive signal DRV using only the positive power supply voltage V and the negative power supply voltage V without using any additional charge pumps. To do so, the multi-level driver circuitry 36 leverages a built-in gate capacitance of the bypass FET 32. Doing so allows for lean and simple circuitry that is able to increase the switching speed of RF switching circuitry 20 using a single control signal.
C
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DS
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DS
G
ML
ML
Figure 9
In addition to bypassing the common resistor R, the principles of the present disclosure may also be used to bypass one or more of the gate resistors R and/or one or more drain-source bias resistors R as illustrated in . Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the RF switching circuitry 20 may include the drain-source bias resistors R between a drain (D) and a source (S) of each one of the FETs 24. Additional bypass FETs 70 may be provided in order to bypass one or more of these drain-source bias resistors R and/or one or more of the gate resistors R. The same multi-level drive signal DRV may be used for each one of these additional bypass FETs 70, or additional multi-level drive signals DRV may be generated on an individual or group basis for these additional bypass FETs 70 using the principles described throughout the present disclosure.
Those skilled in the art will recognize improvements and modifications to the preferred embodiments of the present disclosure. All such improvements and modifications are considered within the scope of the concepts disclosed herein and the claims that follow. | |
Like clockwork, the same myth emerges every time there’s progress for non-binary people who want more gender options on their identity documents: Allowing an “X” option in addition to “M” and “F,” the critics say, could pose a security risk.
This time, it’s a lawmaker in Minnesota who questioned the state’s recent introduction of a new “X” option for driver’s licenses.
As the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported in their article on the change—which took effect this Monday—Republican state senator Scott Newman responded in a statement: “Will this change hamper law enforcement’s ability to properly identify suspects, or hinder the investigative process in any way? The public deserves answers to these questions, or at least a dialogue about the potential repercussions.”
Fortunately, there are already answers to these questions: No, the growing number of jurisdictions that are issuing non-binary identity documents for people who identify as neither strictly male or female are not going to cause a policing crisis or create a public safety problem.
But that’s been the common objection so far. When California was weighing a bill last year that would introduce non-binary driver’s licenses, for example, opponents claimed that it “could increase identity theft and fraud,” as Courthouse News reported.
Those arguments were unpersuasive, as the bill passed by a 26-12 margin in the state Senate and by 57-21 in the Assembly.
When the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles began modernizing its computer systems last year to include a non-binary gender option, questions were raised about the potential impact on law enforcement, as Vermont Public Radio reported in October–and initially, there were “mixed opinions” on the issue, as a member of the Law Enforcement Advisory Board told VPR.
But by January of this year, VPR was able to report that, after studying the issue, no one on the Law Enforcement Advisory Board opposed the addition of a non-binary gender marker to the state’s licenses, with the Chairman telling VPR that “the general opinion around the table was that it wasn’t going to impede the way we conducted our business.”
In fact, the law enforcement-based objection can be traced back to the very beginning of non-binary legal reform in the United States.
In 2017, Oregon became the first state to allow an “X” on driver’s licenses—and as Reuters reported in its coverage, one of the only arguments that public commenters made against the change was that it could “complicate police efforts to identify people.”
Several public commenters in Washington State beat a similar drum in November 2017 when the Department of Health was considering adding an “X” option to birth certificates.
Said one objector, “I’m very concerned that this could hinder law enforcement.” Added another, “Our law enforcement needs to be able to positively identify all individuals.” “How will the police describe a missing person especially a child or a suspect in a crime?” Someone else asked. Washington added the “X” this January.
The primary proof that non-binary gender markers don’t cause such problems is the simple fact that several states and countries have now added non-binary gender markers to their identity documents without incident.
As the LGBT advocacy group Lambda Legal noted in a letter [PDF] sent to the Oregon Department of Transportation when the agency was soliciting comments on non-binary driver’s licenses, fears about “security threats” expressed by opponents of the change “have no basis in logic or evidence.”
“To the contrary, numerous foreign countries and U.S. municipalities have moved beyond binary gender designations without reporting attendant upticks in fraud or crime,” Lambda Legal wrote.
Those foreign countries—as the letter noted—include Australia, Bangladesh, Germany, India, Malta, Nepal, New Zealand and Pakistan. Within the United States, several jurisdictions—Maine, Oregon, California, the District of Columbia, New York City, and now Minnesota—all offer some form of non-binary government documentation. So far, there hasn’t been a wave of crooks identifying as non-binary to evade police detection.
That’s not surprising because, as Lambda Legal further noted, people generally don’t abuse state policies that allow them to change their name on a driver’s license: “There is no indication that people helped by these policies (most frequently cisgender people who change their names when married) have used their new identity documents to break the law with impunity, evade debts, or otherwise harm the community.”
But it’s not just anti-transgender commenters, anti-LGBT groups, and the occasional state legislator who have questioned the impact of non-binary gender markers on law enforcement; the State Department has also advanced a similar position in the ongoing legal battle over the possibility of an “X” on U.S. passports.
Dana Zzyym, a non-binary person who is also intersex—meaning that their anatomy could not be readily assigned male or female at birth—applied for a passport in 2014, listing “intersex” on the application rather than selecting “M” or “F.” Zzymm, who uses the pronouns “they” and “them,” received multiple denials—and Lambda Legal sued on their behalf, arguing that Zzymm could not be refused a passport simply because they would not select a sex that did not describe them.
In both of the decisions that have been issued in Zzymm’s favor so far by District Judge R. Brooke Jackson, the court has debunked the State Department’s position that passports need to have binary gender options to match law enforcement databases.
First, in a November 2016 ruling, Judge Jackson pointed out that the State Department offered Zzyym the option of a “male” passport “knowing full well that [they] had state identification documents (and perhaps law enforcement database records?) listing [them] as ‘female.”
The State Department also issues updated passports to binary-identify transgender people who, thanks to restrictive state laws, may have “law enforcement records that might list that very same passport holder as the opposite sex,” Jackson noted.
“If syncing passport information to the records contained within law enforcement databases is truly critical for the Department,” Jackson wondered, then how could it explain those choices?
And then, this September—as The Daily Beast previously reported—Jackson again ruled in Zzymm’s favor, writing that the State Department had “failed to add any substantive arguments or evidence” in the new material that the agency submitted to the court.
Jackson pointed to the fact that a growing number of states, as well as the International Civil Aviation Organization—a U.N. agency that sets standards for modern passports—now recognize a third gender option outside of male or female. He also noted that gender “is just one of many fields used to crosscheck a passport [applicant’s] identity,” adding that social security numbers, birthdates, names, and other pieces of information can also be used for cross-referencing.
Moreover, Jackson continued, there’s the issue of accuracy: Zzyym is intersex and non-binary. What purpose would it serve to force them to choose either male or female? (“I find that requiring an intersex person to misrepresent their sex on this identity document is a perplexing way to serve the Department’s goal of accuracy and integrity,” Jackson wrote, in one of the decision’s more scathing lines.)
Indeed, for all the talk about how non-binary documents could potentially make it harder to identify people, the opposite is likely true: Giving non-binary people non-binary gender markers makes the situation clearer for everyone involved.
As Lambda Legal noted in their letter to the Oregon DOT, “forcing a person whose gender is non-binary to use an identity document identifying them as male or female subverts rather than promotes accuracy.”
So, no, the growing trend of allowing an “X” on a driver’s license is not going to “hamper law enforcement’s ability to properly identify suspects.” If anything, more gender options will make it easier to identify people, not harder.
But as more states allow for non-binary gender options in the future, this myth will almost certainly keep coming up—and it will be just as false each time. | https://www.thedailybeast.com/its-absurd-to-claim-that-non-binary-people-are-a-security-risk |
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What Is A Five
Five-year survival rate refers to the average number of people with a particular disease or condition who are alive five years after being diagnosed.
Cancer experts based five-year survival rates for melanoma on information from a database called SEER, which stands for the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program.
Survival statistics from the SEER database are not based on AJCC melanoma staging. Instead, they’re based on if and how far the melanoma has spread:
|Type|
The five-year survival rate for all three SEER stages combined is 93%.
The five-year survival rate for all three SEER stages combined is 93%.
Number Of Metastatic Lymph Nodes Involved
If the melanoma has spread to the lymph nodes the risk of spread to other parts of the body is higher. The greater the number of lymph nodes containing melanoma, the less favourable the prognosis.
A sentinel node biopsy is a technique used to determine whether melanoma cells have spread to lymph nodes at the time of diagnosis of the skin primary lesion. The procedure involves the injection of a radioactive tracer by a radiologist , to show where the site and lymph node where the lymph fluid from the skin at the primary melanoma will flow. Afterwards, at the same time as the extra surgery for the primary melanoma a blue dye is injected around the site of the primary lesion. Using the guide from the radiologist a surgeon looks for the first lymph node to take up the dye. The lymph node is removed and sent to be examined by a histopathologist to determine if the node tests positive for melanoma. The procedure is considered when the Breslow thickness of the melanoma is more than 0.8mm.
Patients may develop lumps in the lymph node regions such as the neck, armpit and groin. This is lymph node metastasis.
Taking Care Of Yourself
Hearing that your cancer has spread is scary, but a lot of research is underway to find new treatments. And there are treatments available to try to stop the disease from spreading, so you can live longer.
Its important to have support and to talk about your fears and feelings, too. Your doctor can help you find a cancer support group.
These tips may help you feel better during melanoma treatment:
- If you lose your appetite, eat small amounts of food every 2 to 3 hours instead of bigger meals. A dietitian can give you other tips on nutrition and eating during your cancer treatment. Ask your doctor for a referral.
- Exercise can help you feel better overall and fight fatigue. But listen to your body, and balance rest and activity.
- Get the kind of emotional support thats right for you. It could be from family, friends, your cancer support group, or a religious group.
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Stage 3 Peritoneal Mesothelioma
Peritoneal mesothelioma is the second-most common form of the disease. Instead of a formal staging system to measure progression, physicians typically use the existing Peritoneal Cancer Index to grade tumors in the abdomen. In addition, the PCI helps doctors determine the stage in many other abdominal cancers.
The PCI ranges from 0 to 39, measuring the spread of tumors across 13 different abdominal sectors. A score between 21 and 30 indicates stage 3 peritoneal mesothelioma. The characteristics of this stage are tumors localized within the abdomen, with some spread to nearby lymph nodes.
If a doctor refers to peritoneal mesothelioma as stage 3, it usually means tumors have spread throughout the abdominal lining and to nearby lymph nodes.Dr. Daniel A. LandauOncologist and hematologist
Also Check: What Are The Early Stages Of Melanoma
Putting The Results Of These Clinical Trials Into Context
The clinical studies described above have shown that both immunotherapies and targeted therapies are adjuvant treatment options following surgery, which are intended to delay or prevent the recurrence of melanoma in patients with high-risk stage III disease. Although both types of therapy provide good options for individuals with late-stage melanoma, patients should be aware of the clear differences in the side effect profiles of immunotherapies and targeted therapies.39
About 1 in 4 patients who received the checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab and about 1 in 3 patients who received the checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab in the clinical trials described above have reported experiencing severe side effects.31,36 Immune-related severe side effects that were observed in the clinical trials, such as the onset of type 1 diabetes or disorders of the thyroid and pituitary gland, have been confirmed in the treatment of real-world patients .
Because they work differently, targeted therapies do not carry the risk of triggering immune-related adverse effects. Nevertheless, about 2 of every 5 patients who received dabrafenib plus trametinib in the COMBI-AD study reported experiencing severe side effects.33 The proportion of patients treated with dabrafenib plus trametinib who withdrew from the study early because of side effects was 26%.33
Read Also: What Is The Survival Rate For Invasive Ductal Carcinoma
How Often Should You Follow Up With Your Doctor
After your treatment, your doctor will recommend a regular follow-up schedule to monitor your cancer. Theyll be checking to make sure the cancer hasnt come back or new cancerous lesions havent appeared. The types of follow-up include:
A yearly skin check: Skin checks are an important aspect of detecting melanoma in its earliest, most treatable stages. You should also conduct a skin check on yourself once per month. Look everywhere from the bottoms of your feet to behind your neck.
Imaging tests every three months to a year: Imaging studies, such as an X-ray, CT scan, or brain MRI, look for cancer recurrence.
Physical exam as needed: A physical exam to assess your overall health is important when you have had melanoma. For the first two years, youll want to get an exam every three to six months. Then for the next three years, the appointments can be every three months to a year. After the fifth year, the exams can be as needed. Do a monthly self-examination of your lymph nodes to check your progress.
Your doctor may recommend a different schedule based on your overall health.
Survival For All Stages Of Melanoma
Generally for people with melanoma in England:
- almost all people will survive their melanoma for 1 year or more after they are diagnosed
- around 90 out of every 100 people will survive their melanoma for 5 years or more after diagnosis
- more than 85 out of every 100 people will survive their melanoma for 10 years or more after they are diagnosed
Cancer survival by stage at diagnosis for England, 2019Office for National Statistics
These figures are for people diagnosed in England between 2013 and 2017.
These statistics are for net survival. Net survival estimates the number of people who survive their cancer rather than calculating the number of people diagnosed with cancer who are still alive. In other words, it is the survival of cancer patients after taking into account that some people would have died from other causes if they had not had cancer.
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Treating Stage Iv Melanoma
Stage IV melanomas have already spread to distant lymph nodes or other areas of the body. Skin tumors or enlarged lymph nodes causing symptoms can often be removed by surgery or treated with radiation therapy.
Metastases in internal organs are sometimes removed, depending on how many there are, where they are, and how likely they are to cause symptoms. Metastases that cause symptoms but cannot be removed may be treated with radiation, immunotherapy, targeted therapy, or chemotherapy.
The treatment of widespread melanomas has changed in recent years as newer forms of immunotherapy and targeted drugs have been shown to be more effective than chemotherapy.
Immunotherapy drugs called checkpoint inhibitors such as pembrolizumab or nivolumab are typically the first drugs tried, especially in people whose cancer cells do not have BRAF gene changes. These drugs can shrink tumors for long periods of time in some people. Ipilimumab , a different type of checkpoint inhibitor, is not typically used by itself as the first treatment, although it might be combined with nivolumab or pembrolizumab. This slightly increase the chances that the tumor will shrink, although itâs also more likely to result in serious side effects, which needs to be considered carefully. People who get any of these drugs need to be watched closely for serious side effects..
Itâs important to carefully consider the possible benefits and side effects of any recommended treatment before starting it.
Braf & Mek Kinase Inhibitors
The BRAF and MEK genes are known to play a role in cell growth, and mutations of these genes are common in several types of cancer. Approximately half of all melanomas carry a specific BRAF mutation known as V600E. This mutation produces an abnormal version of the BRAF kinase that stimulates cancer growth. Some melanomas carry another mutation known as V600K. BRAF and MEK inhibitors block the activity of the V600E and V600K mutations respectively.
Recommended Reading: What Does Well Differentiated Squamous Cell Carcinoma Mean
Stages Iiia Iiib And Iiic
In order to better describe these variable factors, stage III melanoma is further divided into the following three categories:
- Stage III A: This stage includes microscopic levels of melanoma present in lymph nodes.
- Stage III B: This stage includes an ulcerated primary tumor, microscopic levels of melanoma in the skin near the primary tumor, microscopic levels of melanoma in lymph nodes, and melanoma in the draining nodes.
- Stage III C: This stage includes an ulcerated primary tumor and melanoma big enough to be felt in the draining nodes.
Treatment Of Stage Iii Melanoma
Medically reviewed by Dr. C.H. Weaver M.D. updated 8/2021
Stage III melanoma includes cancers of any thickness that have spread to the regional lymph nodes. Optimal treatment of stage III melanoma consists of surgical removal of the cancer followed by systemic adjuvant treatment to reduce the risk of cancer recurrence and prolong survival.
Also Check: Non Invasive Breast Cancer Survival Rate
What Causes Ocular Melanoma
The exact cause of most eye cancer is unknown.
Risk factors for developing ocular melanoma include:
- Race/ethnicity
- The risk is higher in whites than it is in African Americans, Hispanics or Asian Americans
Surgical Treatment Of Stage Iii Disease
Outcomes of patients with stage III melanoma relates primarily to the extent of lymph node metastasis. Standard surgical treatment for patients with stage III melanoma is removal of the primary cancer with up to 2-centimeter margins of the adjacent skin, depending on the thickness of the primary tumor, and removal of all of the regional lymph nodes. Regional lymph node dissection may be performed in the neck, armpit or groin, depending on the site of the primary tumor and presence of palpable nodes. Chronic side effects of removing lymph nodes vary, depending on the extent of disease, body habits of the patient, and inclusion of postoperative radiation to site, but may include numbness, and swelling of the associated extremity, which is called lymphedema.
One of the challenges facing oncologists is assessing the risks for individual patients on the basis of data from previously published studies. Five-year overall survival rates for patients with stage III melanoma have been reported as ranging from 70% for stage IIIA to 27% for stage IIIC disease. In this group of patients, assembled largely during the pre-sentinel lymph node era, patients with stage I and II disease were reported to have 5-year recurrence-free survival rates of 90% and 70%, respectively. The 10% to 30% recurrence rates likely reflect unidentified microscopic disease, which can be detected with present-day techniques.
Also Check: Is A Sore That Doesn T Heal Always Cancer
What Are The Stages Of Melanoma
When a melanoma has been diagnosed, the pathology report provides information to determine the stage of the disease.
The prognosis of melanoma and the treatment options available depend on the stage at which the cancer is diagnosed.
One of the most common areas of confusion is the difference between the levels of melanoma and the staging of melanoma. The level of melanoma relates to the depth of the melanoma in the skin and the staging of melanoma refers to how limited or advanced the melanoma is at the time of diagnosis.
The stages of melanoma are determined by reviewing different factors including:
Read Also: How To Treat Melanoma In Nails
Treating Stage 0 Melanoma
Stage 0 melanoma has not grown deeper than the top layer of the skin . It is usually treated by surgery to remove the melanoma and a small margin of normal skin around it. The removed sample is then sent to a lab to be looked at with a microscope. If cancer cells are seen at the edges of the sample, a second, wider excision of the area may be done.
Some doctors may consider the use of imiquimod cream or radiation therapy instead of surgery, although not all doctors agree with this.
For melanomas in sensitive areas on the face, some doctors may use Mohs surgery or even imiquimod cream if surgery might be disfiguring, although not all doctors agree with these uses.
Read Also: Is Cancer Painful Without Treatment
Surgical Treatment Of Stage Iii Melanoma
Standard surgical treatment for patients with stage III melanoma is removal of the primary cancer with up to 2-centimeter margins of the adjacent skin, depending on the thickness of the primary tumor, and removal of all of the regional lymph nodes. Outcomes of patients with stage III melanoma relate primarily to the extent of lymph node metastasis.
Lymphatic mapping and sentinel lymph node biopsy are used to assess the presence of melanoma cells in the regional lymph nodes in order to help determine which patients may require regional lymph node dissections and systemic adjuvant therapy.
SLNB should be performed prior to wide excision of the primary melanoma to ensure accurate lymphatic mapping. If metastatic melanoma is detected, a complete lymph node dissection can be performed in a second procedure. Patients can be considered for a CLND if the sentinel node is microscopically or macroscopically positive.1-5
Systemic Adjuvant Treatment Of Stage Iii Melanoma
Systemic therapy is any treatment directed at destroying cancer cells throughout the body. Many patients with stage III melanoma are at high risk for disease recurrence because undetectable cancer cells referred to as micrometastases have already broken away from the primary cancer and traveled through the lymph and blood system to other locations in the body. The delivery of systemic cancer treatment following surgery is referred to as adjuvant therapy.
Adjuvant treatment of stage III melanoma with newer precision cancer medicines and immunotherapy drugs is the standard of care because they delay the time to cancer recurrence and prolong survival.
Also Check: Cancer Lesion Pictures
Survival Statistics For Melanoma Skin Cancer
Survival statistics for melanoma skin cancer are general estimates and must be interpreted very carefully. Because these statistics are based on the experience of groups of people, they cannot be used to predict a particular persons chances of survival.
There are many different ways to measure and report cancer survival statistics. Your doctor can explain the statistics for melanoma skin cancer and what they mean to you.
What Is Stage Iii Melanoma
Stage III melanomas are tumors that have spread to regional lymph nodes or have developed in-transit deposits of disease, but there is no evidence of distant metastasis. Stage III melanoma is regional melanoma, meaning it has spread beyond the primary tumor to the closest lymph nodes, but not to distant sites. There are four subgroups of Stage III melanoma: IIIA, IIIB, IIIC, IIID. Stage III is invasive melanoma.
- Subgroups are IIIA, IIIB, IIIC, IIID
- Stage III melanoma is defined by four primary characteristics
- Important distinction within Stage III: whether the spread to lymph nodes can be detected microscopically or macroscopically
- Microscopically, also called clinically occult = seen by pathologist during biopsy or dissection
- Macroscopically, also called clinically detected = seen by naked eye or felt by hand or seen on CT scans or ultrasound
- Risk: Intermediate to high for regional or distant spread
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Clinical Staging And Pathologic Staging
To add to the complexity of staging, the cancer also may have a clinical stage and a pathologic stage.
Clinical staging takes place before surgery, based on blood tests, physical exams or imaging tests such as X-rays, a computed tomography scan, magnetic resonance imaging or positron emission tomography scans.
What doctors discover during surgery may provide more detailed information about the cancers size and spread. Often, some tissue from the surgery will be examined afterward to provide more clues. This process is known as pathologic staging, or surgical staging.
If surgery isnt possible, doctors will use the clinical stage when determining a treatment plan.
The Journey Through Stage Iii Melanoma: A Guide For Patients
Melanoma survivorSupported with funding by Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation
Melanoma is the most serious type of skin cancer, with risk for the disease appearing to be on the rise. Historically, the outlook for patients diagnosed with stage III melanoma has been poor. In recent years, however, new therapies have changed the way in which patients with melanoma are treated. These treatments have already helped many patients to live longer lives with a reduced risk for a recurrence or return of their cancer. Because these treatments are so new, many patients may not know that they even exist, how they work, and what types of side effects they might cause. By providing information about the most recent advances in the treatment of melanoma, we hope to empower patients and their families as they navigate through their journey. It is our belief that this publication will help you to work with your healthcare team as you decide which therapies are best for you. | https://www.healthyskinworld.com/what-is-stage-3-melanoma-survival-rate/ |
Here are some of the possible causes of swollen lymph nodes in dogs: Viral, bacterial, or fungal infection. Parasites. Allergic reaction.
Can swollen lymph nodes in dogs not be cancer?
“Swollen lymph nodes don’t mean your dog definitely has lymphoma,” Froman says. “It could be something else, like an infection or tick-borne disease, but because of the potentially aggressive nature of lymphoma, if you do feel something swollen, you should have the veterinarian look at it.”
What size lymph node is concerning?
Lymphadenopathy is classically described as a node larger than 1 cm, although this varies by lymphatic region. Palpable supraclavicular, iliac, or popliteal nodes of any size and epitrochlear nodes larger than 5 mm are considered abnormal.
What percentage of swollen lymph nodes are cancerous?
Over age 40, persistent large lymph nodes have a 4 percent chance of cancer. Under 40 years of age, it is only 0.4 percent. Children are very much more likely to have swollen nodes.
What are the stages of lymphoma in dogs?
Lymphoma is categorized into five stages, depending on the extent of the disease in the body: single lymph node enlargement (stage I), regional lymph node enlargement (stage II), generalized lymph node enlargement (stage III), liver and/or spleen involvement (stage IV), and bone marrow and blood involvement (stage V).
Does lymphoma in dogs show up in blood work?
A serum biochemistry is used to assess the function of your dog’s internal organs. If your dog is diagnosed with lymphoma, your veterinarian may perform additional testing to find out more information about the lymphoma and develop a treatment plan. These additional tests may include: Immunohistochemistry.
How long will a dog live with untreated lymphoma?
The life expectancy of untreated dogs with lymphoma is about 4 to 6 weeks after diagnosis. The cancer will infiltrate an organ to such an extent that organ fails. | https://farfetchedapparel.com/dog-breeds/can-allergies-cause-swollen-lymph-nodes-in-dogs.html |
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Storytelling Through Virtual Reality
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Many think of technology as being disconnect from the world. And that's been true for some time. Radio and TV ushered in the broadcast era, creating passive participants who solely consumed content. Recently, virtual reality has come forward, showing the promise of being a new creative medium. Beyond being a compelling and exciting experience, virtual reality is actually allowing the audience to become participants, utilizing many of our senses for full body experiences. We are at the very beginning stages of creating content for virtual reality, but those who have tried some of the best experiences understand how powerful it can be. This session will explore our human need for immersion, interaction and how virtual reality is a new magical medium for storytelling.
Presenter
Yelena Rachitsky
A participant at the first Limmud Bay area, Yelena is the Creative Producer & Head of Education at
Oculus Story Studio
(Facebook), leading their efforts in outreach and curation. She is back from presenting at the Cannes and Tribeca Film Festivals on the possibility of social change through storytelling with Virtual Reality. Prior to Story Studio, Yelena was the Creative Producer of the annual Future...
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Friday June 24, 2016 3:00pm - 4:10pm PDT
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NSW has an abundance of highway upgrades flagged as priorities, including upgrading the Princes Highway on the south coast with bypasses for Moruya, Milton and Ulladulla and improving the Newell highway, which connects many of the state's regional hubs.
Infrastructure Australia also lists dozens of the state's deadliest rural roads as a high priority.
In regional Queensland, almost every major road is in need of an upgrade.
Infrastructure Australia says if the state's regional road network is ignored, there will likely be a nationally-significant loss in productive.
About 65 per cent of the state's freight is moved via road and that is projected to grow by 20 per cent over the next decade.
Queensland's major north-south rail corridor also needs an estimated $784-million upgrade between Beerburrum to Nambour to move around its growing regional population.
Expanding the nation's ports are high on Infrastructure's list of recommended projects, to stimulate both the regional and national economies.
With the growing demand for lithium - a vital ingredient for anything with a battery - and the expected growth in agricultural exports from Western Australia's Pilbara region, Port Hedland is expected to near its capacity soon, and would benefit greatly from an upgrade.
Among South Australia's top priorities are the regional ports around the Spencer Gulf.
Infrastructure Australia recommends upgrading existing ports such as those at Whyalla and Port Bonython, or investing in new ones at locations such as Cape Hardy and Port Spencer. | |
Single Slam – Ivy (Doomsday) by The Amity Affliction (Misery)
Australian metalcore band, The Amity Affliction, have released a new single called Ivy (Doomsday) along with an announcement about their new album. The album will be called Misery and it will come out on the 24th of August, released via Roadrunner Records.
Misery will be the band’s 6th full length studio album following on from 2016’s This Could be Heartbreak. An album we at GBHBL do not think much of at all, as you can read here. To say I wasn’t bothered about the news of a new album would be an understatement but I am intrigued to see if the band have grown or evolved in any way since their drab, last release.
There was another change to the line-up in between This Could be Heartbreak and the release of this single with drummer Ryan Burt going on hiatus to deal with health issues. I am assuming he finished recording the drums for Misery before leaving. Line up changes are part and parcel of The Amity Affliction with a massive 10 changes to the band over the 5 album releases so far. With Burt being on hiatus, rather than leaving, he hasn’t been replaced and instead is now just covered by touring members with Casey McHale, Troy Wright and Joseph Arrington all having a crack at it.
Not on hiatus, in the band on keys, bass and backing vocals, we have founding member Ahren Stringer. On vocals, clean and harsh is Joel Birch and on guitars and backing vocals we have Dan Brown.
Ivy (Doomsday) is just over 3 and a half minutes long and is pretty bad. A nice melody starts the track off before it becomes completely bastardised by some weird keyboard/synth effects. This sound builds and as you expect the music to kick in with some ferocity, instead it drops with a whimper. Gentle drums, sorrowful clean singing and the occasional guitar melody make for a pretty uninspiring listen so far.
Surprisingly it gets softer before the inevitable kick in with the drums dropping out replaced by a simple, but nice keyboard melody. Then comes the expected kick in for the chorus. It doesn’t exactly get heavy, just louder with Birch getting close to harsh vocals but sounding more hoarse. The same structure is repeated then for the second verse into second chorus. As the song progresses it leaves me with mixed feelings. Every time I think the heaviness is coming, I get a weak and messy sounding synth section instead and then, finally, when it ramps up with a breakdown lite, the strong sounding heavy vocals are separated by a keys melody that lacks power.
Ivy (Doomsday) is not for me. There are way too many flaws in my mind. Despite the vocals being well sung, the verses are insanely boring. The guitars are left in the cold for even the heavier moments of the track with it being keys and synth front and centre. The breakdown is destroyed by the unimaginative and repetitive keyboard melodies within it. There just isn’t much to enjoy here. Still, opinions will differ so check it out, it may be your thing. It isn’t mine.
The Amity Affliction are in the UK on tour in October so visit here to grab tickets for those shows.
Ivy (Doomsday) is available on all the usual streaming services, like Apple Music and Spotify now. You can preorder Misery from Roadrunner, here. You can also grab this, and more from the band at the Amazon links below. Find out more about The Amity Affliction by visiting them at their website, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. | https://www.gbhbl.com/single-slam-ivy-doomsday-by-the-amity-affliction-misery/ |
Wednesday 04 May 2022 06:00
Mainland Brits often joke about their fellow expats in Gibraltar, saying that watches should be set back 20 years when you’re there. Gibraltar has always been a popular target for condescension. Yet this supposedly “backward” place has always been ahead of the Bitcoin adoption and regulation curve. In 2018, the territory was the first jurisdiction to launch a legal and regulatory framework for Bitcoin. Last week, he unveiled a long list of measures to protect market integrity.
Gibraltar is fast becoming a global leader in crypto, and as such the Chancellor should be looking at it very closely, if he is serious about making the UK a global home for these currencies.
Gibraltar debunks many commonly quoted lies about Bitcoin. There is a fear around Whitehall – and in other corridors of power around the world – that crypto is still in its Wild West period, and that Bitcoin investors and startups will only be attracted to jurisdictions with the lowest levels. more anarchic and more liberal.
But Gibraltar’s latest move is not to ease existing financial regulations, but to toughen them. The proposals address some of the latest concerns about bitcoin’s acceptability to politicians, markets, and, of course, bitcoiners themselves.
More importantly, the new regulations aim to strengthen the integrity of the markets in which Bitcoin operates. In its new guidelines for crypto businesses, the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission warns traders that they must combat “the improper manipulation or influence of price, liquidity or market information, or any other conduct, which is contrary to the integrity of the market”.
To make the UK the destination of choice for Bitcoin entrepreneurs and investors, Rishi Sunak must understand that Bitcoin cannot be completely tamed: it is already too big, too strong, and too decentralized for one player to impose its regulatory whims. . Just look at what happens when countries like China try to suppress bitcoin: miners simply move to friendlier territories like El Salvador or Ukraine, taking innovators and investors with them.
But neither is the answer to follow Bitcoin’s exceptionalism and sweep away all the laws and regulations that govern the rest of the financial system. Bitcoin may exist entirely outside of the traditional fiat ecosystem, but it still operates as part of a larger financial market, with growing interactions between the old and new worlds of money.
As the saying goes, you can’t have milk without a cow: you can’t attract Bitcoin businesses without the right mix of rules-based incentives and certainties. Additionally, sensible regulation is essential to show the market that the Chancellor wants to introduce rules that will ultimately strengthen Bitcoin.
To make the UK a crypto hub, first and foremost we need smart legislation. For example, Sunak can show Britain is open for business by guaranteeing it will pursue light regulation, even if it puts him at odds with Threadneedle Street skeptics. It could follow in Portugal’s footsteps by opting for a zero percent capital gains tax structure.
Continuity is even more important. By creating a firm and inflexible policy framework that will guide future Chancellors, Sunak will create peace of mind for investors. This, however, can only be possible if the Treasury and regulators make a real effort to understand Bitcoin and craft rules – as Gibraltar does – that address the real issues in the space.
Ultimately, it’s not tax breaks or free ports that will get Bitcoin investors and entrepreneurs flocking to the UK: it’s the knowledge that the government understands the field. Sunak needs to engage the community and ask what challenges people face in this space. For a legal framework that will underpin a new era of prosperity and freedom for all, he need look no further than the Rock of Gibraltar. | http://ugamui.net/sunak-must-welcome-bitcoin-to-the-financial-markets-with-its-fundamentals-intact/ |
Minds over Matter
The science behind the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics was 50 years in the making—and is partly attributable to Ohio State physicists who devoted their professional lives to finding a mysterious subatomic particle.
When this year’s Nobelists, Peter Higgs and François Englert, first proposed the existence of the Higgs boson with now deceased colleague Robert Brout in 1964, their notions of an unseen particle became central to modern physics. Scientists speculated for decades that the theory would earn a Nobel. But the speculation grew much louder when a particle matching the Higgs’ description was discovered at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012.
Eight Ohio State physicists were among thousands worldwide who labored to design, build and run experiments that would render the Higgs visible. Over that time, scores of Ohio State students earned their degrees hunting for the particle, developing and testing new technology that would ultimately become part of the LHC.
Buckeyes designed and built the electronics that detected the Higgs, crafted the computer algorithms that identified it and rigorously analyzed the data until the announcement could be made last summer that the particle had indeed been found.
The project is far from over. Faculty and students will continue to study the Higgs data—some of which is collected at the Ohio Supercomputer Center—and uncover its implications for science in the decades to come.
The Ohio State faculty involved in the project are:
• Christopher Hill, associate professor of physics, is deputy physics coordinator for the LHC’s Compact Muon Solenoid experiment and is responsible for overseeing all analyses of CMS data.
• With 19 years of experience at CERN, Stan Durkin, professor of physics, and T.Y. Ling, professor emeritus of physics, designed and built a greater portion of the Endcap Muon System electronics for CMS.
• K.K. Gan, Richard Kass and Harris Kagan, all professors of physics, developed computer chips for the pixel detectors within the LHC’s ATLAS experiment.
• Brian Winer and Richard Hughes, both professors of physics, have more than 25 years of experience at Fermi National Laboratory’s Tevatron accelerator, where they created particle-hunting computer algorithms called neural networks, which mimic the learning process of the human brain. While still working at Fermilab, the two joined the LHC’s CMS experiment a year ago. | https://news.osu.edu/minds-over-matter/ |
The Tianzi Mountains are probably one of the most spectacular places on Earth. They are located in the Hunan Province of China, and they look like enormous, natural skyscrapers towering over the forests. The highest peak is 1,262 meters (about 4,140 feet) above the sea level. For comparison, the Empire State Building in New York City is a tiny 443 meters (1,454 feet) next to the highest peak.
The structures you see here are actually made from dead mountains. But how can a mountain die? Well, as the images reveal, the elements can slowly eat away at these monoliths as the years pass, leaving small stalks where huge mountains once stood.
These peaks are made from old, weathered sandstone (which are the remnants of mountain peak). A few of the younger mountains are less weathered, so they still have their sharp peaks). And these staggering towers aren't the only thing that you will find here. The base of these structures has a bit of limestone bedrock, and where you have limestone and water, you have caves—a massive maze of caves.
Aaeons of water erosion, water which came from underground streams, has produced karst caves. As the University of Texas notes, "Karst is a landscape formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks including limestone, dolomite and gypsum. It is characterized by sinkholes, caves, and underground drainage systems." Limestone is easily dissolved in the carbonic-acid-rich water that is common to such areas. This ultimately creates the extensive cave system, underground lakes and rivers, and gigantic cave ins (known as sinkholes).
TravelChina offers some more insight into how these structures are created:
Because the sandstone bedrock that makes up most of the nature reserve was created by a long process of stratification, it appears in distinct layers, each layer slightly different in coloration than the contiguous layers, and because of this layering, the bedrock is subject to erosion that constantly whittles away at the outer edges of exposed rock, leaving an uneven vertical surface that is generally marked by small ledges that alternately jut out/ are recessed. The ledges provide ideal conditions for the accumulation of soil, which in turn can nurture flowers, grasses, shrubs and even trees. Thus the second distinguishing feature of all of the sandstone mountain-peak remnants of Wulingyuan Scenic Area, including those of Tianzi Mountain Nature Reserve, is that these old geomorphological rocks are home to many shrubs and trees which in turn attract birds. Indeed, Tianzi Mountain Nature Reserve is also home to very dense forests with a plethora of wildlife.
If you ever get a chance to go, do send us your pictures. | https://futurism.com/tianzi-mountains-amazing-views-of-the-pillar-like-mountains |
The PC prototype of Super Mario Bros. 3 is a real piece of gaming history. By Sam Prell T23 like I'm looking at a homunculus wearing Mario's skin. Notice the way his mustache Author: Sam Prell. In "Super Mario Bros. 3", Mario and Luigi are faced with the ultimate challenge of venturing into eight new worlds with more than 80 areas to save Princess Peach from the evil hands of the sorcerer Kuppa King. Each world has a ruler who has been transformed by a magic spell into some creature or another/10(34). Super Mario Maker is a creation tool released for the Wii U in September which allows players to create their own levels based on the gameplay and style of Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and New Super Mario Bros. U, as well as to share their creations online. Based on existing games, several gameplay mechanics Developer(s): Nintendo EAD (–), Nintendo EPD (–present). | https://otonagumi.com/Save/super-bros-mario-3-prototype-pc.php |
I hope that some time in the future the Governor of New South Wales, Marie Bashir, mulls over her role last month in announcing the 2011 Sydney Peace Prize had gone to Noam Chomsky. She read a citation from the Sydney Peace Foundation at the University of Sydney, where she is also the Chancellor, saying Chomsky deserved the $50,000 award “for unfailing moral courage, for critical analysis of democracy and power, for challenging secrecy, censorship and violence and for creating hope through scholarship and activism to promote the attainment of universal human rights”. None of this is accurate. The truth is that, far from being a man of peace, Chomsky has throughout his life supported revolutionary violence, including some of the greatest mass homicides in human history.
Chomsky became a public figure during the 1960s anti-Vietnam War campaign. Initially he claimed to be an anarchist but soon endorsed the New Left’s favourite quartet of communist revolutionaries: Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh. He did this fully aware that all had copious quantities of blood on their hands. At a 1967 New York forum he acknowledged “the mass slaughter of landlords in China” yet claimed Mao presided over a “relatively liveable” and “relatively just” society. Moreover, he was speaking only five years after the end of the great Chinese famine of 1958–62, the worst in recorded history, in which between 30 and 40 million people starved to death when Mao collectivised agriculture and confiscated harvests for export to eastern Europe in return for guns and armaments.
Chomsky also acknowledged “the slaughter of landlords in North Vietnam” that had taken place after the communists came to power there. His objective, however, was to justify the violence, especially that of the National Liberation Front then threatening South Vietnam. Chomsky revealed he was no pacifist:
I don’t accept the view that we can just condemn the NLF terror, period, because it was so horrible. I think we really have to ask questions of comparative costs, ugly as that may sound. And if we are going to take a moral position on this—and I think we should—we have to ask both what the consequences were of using terror and not using terror. If it were true that the consequences of not using terror would be that the peasantry in Vietnam would continue to live in the state of the peasantry of the Philippines, then I think the use of terror would be justified.
Chomsky’s calculus of justifiable terror was spurious. Thirty-five years after the Vietnamese communists took control, the state of the peasantry still hasn’t caught up with the Philippines. In 2010, the GDP per capita of Vietnam was $3100, compared to $3500 in the Philippines. Even some Vietnamese communists who had major roles in the transformation despaired at the outcome. In 1999, former Vietcong General Pham Xuan Am said:
All that talk about “liberation” twenty, thirty years ago, all the plotting, all the bodies, produced this, this impoverished broken-down country led by a gang of cruel and paternalistic half-educated theorists.
When the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975 Chomsky welcomed it. And when news emerged of the extraordinary event that immediately followed, the complete evacuation of the capital Phnom Penh accompanied by reports of widespread killings, Chomsky offered a rationalisation similar to those he had provided for the terror in China and Vietnam: there might have been some violence, but this was understandable under conditions of regime change and social revolution.
In 1980, his book After the Cataclysm finally acknowledged that bad things had happened in Cambodia under Pol Pot: “There can be little doubt that the war was followed by an outbreak of violence, massacre and repression.” However, he mocked the suggestion that the death toll might have reached more than a million and attacked US Senator George McGovern’s call for military intervention to halt “a clear case of genocide”. Instead, Chomsky commended authors who still apologised for the Pol Pot regime. He approvingly cited their analyses that the forced march of the population out of Phnom Penh was probably necessitated by the failure of the 1976 rice crop. “The evacuation of Phnom Penh, widely denounced at the time and since for its undoubted brutality,” Chomsky wrote, “may actually have saved many lives.”
The reality, as even communist sympathiser Ben Kiernan recorded in his 1996 book, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide under the Khmer Rouge, was that the evacuation of Phnom Penh in 1975 killed tens of thousands of people. Almost the entire middle class was deliberately targeted and exterminated, including civil servants, teachers, intellectuals and artists. No less than 68,000 Buddhist monks out of a total of 70,000 were executed. Fifty per cent of urban Chinese were murdered. Kiernan argues for a total Cambodian death toll between April 1975 and January 1979, when the Vietnamese invasion put an end to the regime, at 1.67 million out of 7.89 million, or 21 per cent of the entire population. This is proportionally the greatest mass killing ever inflicted by a government on its own population in modern times, probably in all history. Chomsky has never recanted or apologised for being so wrong.
Chomsky has persisted with this pattern of behaviour right to this day. In response to the Al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, he was their most prominent apologist. He claimed that no matter how appalling the terrorists’ actions, the United States had done worse. He supported his case with arguments and evidence just as empirically selective and morally duplicitous as those he used to defend Pol Pot. On September 12, 2001, Chomsky wrote:
The terrorist attacks were major atrocities. In scale they may not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton’s bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and killing unknown numbers of people.
Under pressure from critics who pointed out that Clinton’s attack on a Khartoum pharmaceutical factory, which made chemical weapons for Iraq’s Saddam Hussein regime, occurred after working hours to minimise loss of life and the only casualty had been the caretaker, Chomsky fleshed out his case:
That one bombing, according to estimates made by the German Embassy in Sudan and Human Rights Watch, probably led to tens of thousands of deaths.
However, one of his two sources, Human Rights Watch, immediately denied it had produced any such figure:
In fact, Human Rights Watch has conducted no research into civilian deaths as the result of US bombing in Sudan and would not make such an assessment without a careful and thorough research mission on the ground.
Moreover, the German ambassador was only guessing about the effects that the loss of three months’ supply of pharmaceuticals might have had on the civilian population. Anyone who makes an internet search of the reports of the Sudanese operations of the several Western aid agencies, including Oxfam, Medecins Sans Frontieres and Norwegian People’s Aid, who have been operating in this region for decades, will not find any evidence of an unusual increase in the death toll at the time. Instead, their major concern, then and now, has been how the Muslim Marxist government in Khartoum was waging civil war by bombing the civilian hospitals of its Christian enemies in the south.
The idea that tens of thousands of Sudanese would have died within three months from a shortage of pharmaceuticals is implausible enough in itself. That this could have happened without any of the aid organisations noticing or complaining is simply unbelievable. Hence Chomsky’s rationalisation for the September 11 attacks is every bit as deceitful as his apology for Pol Pot and the Cambodian genocide.
Among Chomsky’s most provocative recent demands are for American political and military leaders to be tried as war criminals. He often couches this in terms of the failure by the United States to apply the same standards to itself as it does to its enemies.
For instance, America tried and executed the remaining Second World War leaders of Germany and Japan, but failed to try its own personnel for the “war crime” of dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. Chomsky claims the American bombing of dams during the Korean War was “a huge war crime … That’s just a couple of years after they hanged German leaders who were doing much less than that.” The worst current example, he claims, is American support for Israel:
… virtually everything that Israel is doing, meaning the United States and Israel are doing, is illegal, in fact, a war crime. And many of them they defined as “grave breaches”, that is, serious war crimes. This means that the United States and Israeli leadership should be brought to trial.
Chomsky’s moral perspective is completely one-sided. No matter how great the crimes of the regimes he has favoured, such as China, Vietnam and Cambodia under the communists, Chomsky has never demanded their leaders be captured and tried for war crimes. Instead, he has defended these regimes for many years with evidence he knew was selective, deceptive and invented.
So when the University of Sydney now rewards Chomsky for his “moral courage”, his “critical analysis” and his “scholarship”, it makes a mockery of concepts an institution of this kind is supposed to guard. When he arrives in November to collect his prize money, the university will give him what its PR department calls a “gala dinner”. Chancellor Marie Bashir will host the function. I hope that, when called upon to toast her guest, she spares a thought for the prospect that her flattering words will do very little to foster peace and a great deal more to trash her university’s former good name. | https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2011/07-08/keith-windschuttle-4/ |
Tomatoes is an annual crop that can be planted throughout the year. Thanks to modern agriculture methods, this edible fleshly juicy plant can be planted in the garden or on the farmland, also it can be home grown through the use of grow bag.
The grow bags, a kind of compost-filled plastic sack that is widely used by gardener who wants to grow his/her own home-grown vegetables. The process of how to plant tomatoes in grow bag is simple.
Simply follow these steps to grow tomatoes in grow bags and they are site selection, acquire grow bags, prepare the soil or compost, pour soil in grow bag, plant tomato seed in the bag, start watering, fertilizer application, and plant management.
The best part of planting tomatoes in a grow bag is that it eliminates the need for a soil bed. You can either start seeds directly in the grow bag and transplant them once they are ready, or you can use seedlings that were started in your garden to be transplanted into the grow bag.
How To Plant Tomatoes In Grow Bag Step By Step Guide
The process of how to plant tomatoes in grow bag is simple. Simply follow the steps that we have listed and discussed below.
Read Also: [Guide] How To Grow Parsley [Grow In Bag And Pots]
Step 1: Site Selection
You have to go out and search for a suitable site or location where the planting activities will take place. The site can also be an area in your compound. Whichever it is, most importantly, the site should be a place where there is enough sunlight because tomato plants require high sunlight daily.
Step 2: Acquire Grow Bags
Go to the store and purchase a grow bag, the size and texture that best suit your farming need.
Step 3: Make holes at the Bottom of the Bag
After you have purchased the ideal grow bag to plant your tomatoes, it is important to make holes at the bottom of the bag. This will help drain out excess water from the soil so that it won’t be waterlogged.
Read Also: [Easy Guide] How To Grow Ginger In Nigeria Step By Step Tips
Step 4: Prepare the Soil or Compost
You have to prepare the suitable soil or compost for farming. Tomatoes thrive in well aerated and drained soil, as such, the ideal soil for planting tomatoes is fertile loam soil because it has good water drainage and aeration properties.
Step 5: Pour Soil in Grow Bag
Once your compost or soil is ready, pour the mix into the grow bag. Not to fill the brim at the first time because you will have to top-up the soil later on.
Step 6: Make Planting Holes
The next step is to make planting holes in bag. It is in the planting holes that the tomato seeds will be sown.
Read Also: [Easy Tips] How To Start Growing Cashew In Ghana
Step 7: Planting
Now is the time to plant the tomato seedlings or already sprouted plants in the planted holes made in the soil. Before planting, make sure you water the soil mildly so that it will be moist.
Step 8: Watering
Regular watering is required after planting your tomato seeds. It is best to water twice daily, early in the morning and late evening. However, be careful not to overwater the soil.
Step 9: Provide Support
You will need to provide support for the tomato plants because they have weak stems when they grow rapidly. You can place poles beside the grow bag where the stems can rest on and sprout as needed.
Step 10: Fertilizer Application
Know that tomato plants are heavy feeders, so ensure you apply fertilizer around the base of the plant to supply essential nutrients needed for healthy growth.
Read Also: [Beginners Guide] How To Start Cocoa Farming In Nigeria
Step 11: Plant Management
Just because you are planting tomato in a grow bag around your yard should not make you lazy. Unwanted plants can grow and pest can also infest the plant. That is why you need to care and manage the plants to avoid it been diseased.
Also, if necessary, you will have to mulch the soil to protect the soil and as well prevent moisture loss. You can use polythene materials or dry grass and weeds as well. However, mulching should be done lightly.
Also, you will have to continually build up the soil until if fills the bucket. The essence is that tomatoes have firm deep roots that require lots of soil.
Growing Tomatoes In Grow Bags – Youtube
YouTube is an amazing video website where you can learn almost anything including agricultural activities. There are many channels on YouTube teaching on how to grow tomatoes in grow bags. Once you type in the search how to grow tomatoes in grow bag, you will see an array of YouTube channels that have videos regarding the question.
How to Plant Tomatoes in container
To plant tomatoes in grow bag, you have to get a fabric grow bag, make draining holes at the bottom of the bag and fill it with rich loam soil. The tomatoes seedlings should be planted deep in the soil and watered regularly.
You also need to provide a proper support for the roots or the tomato plant will not be able to reach back up again once it has been pulled up. Furthermore, place the bag in an area where there is high sunlight by placing the bag in an area exposed to sunlight.
How Many Tomato Plants Can Be In A Grow Bag?
When planting tomatoes, it is important to space the plants to make enough room for the plants to grow properly. At best, three tomato plants should be planted in a grow bag.
How Deep Does A Grow Bag Need To Be For Tomatoes?
Tomato plants are known to grow deep firm roots, that is why when using a grow bag you have to continue to top and refill the soil till the bag is filled. As such, the size of an ideal grow bag should be at least 15 inches in diameter and at least 12 inches in depth.
How Often Should You Water Tomato In Plants In Grow Bags?
Tomato plants thrive in sunny areas as such the soil can lose moisture if not properly mulch. However, it is important to water the plant regularly requiring at least three times a day to keep the compost moist.
Are Tomatoes Better In Grow Bags Or Pots?
Yes! Planting tomatoes in grow bag is best if you desire to grow your tomatoes at home. However, ensure you do not overpopulate a grow bag with too many tomato seed as they may not grow well. At most, two or three plants per bag is best to ensure they grow well and yield plenty seeds as expected.
Do Tomato Grow Bags Need Drainage Holes?
Yes! Grow bag for tomato planting require drainage hole to avoid the soil becoming waterlogged which can lead to root rot and then cause the plant to be diseased.
When Should You Put Tomato Plants In Grow Bags?
If you decide to put a tomato plant from your garden in grow bag, make sure you do so when they are 3-4 weeks old. Also, it should be done during summer when there is high sunshine and the soil should be well watered to provide moist to the soil.
Do Tomatoes Do Well In Grow Bags?
Yes! Growing tomatoes in grow bags is convenient and effective. The plant grow well especially if they are just two or three plants per bag. Also, if the plant is well watered and placed in area with sunlight of about 6-8 hours daily, it will definitely grow well.
Is Potting Soil Good For Grow Bags?
Yes! Potting soil is ideal for grow bags because it contains contain peat moss that help the soil retains enough moisture so that the plant root mass will not dry out between watering.
Do You Have To Put Holes In The Bottom Of Grow Bags?
Yes! It is ideal put holes in the bottom of grow bag to provide drainage where excess water can drain out of the soil.
Growing Tomatoes In Grow Bags With Canes
Tomato stems are weak, so you have to provide support when the plants grow. All you need do is to place the thin canes in the pot close to the plant but not too close to damage the plants. When the plants grow taller, you can tie the stem to the cane to aid growth and increase yield.
Best Soil For Tomatoes In Grow Bags
The preferred soil for growing tomatoes in grow bag is a rich fertile soil or compost.
What Size Grow Bags For Tomatoes?
A 15 inches in diameter and 12 inches deep is an ideal grow bag size to plant 2-3 tomato plants. You will have to go for a larger size if you intend to grow more than 3 tomato plants per grow bag.
Growing Indeterminate Tomatoes In Grow Bags
You can grow an indeterminate tomatoes in grow bag but, you have to use grow bag that are 20-gallon or larger to accommodate the continuous growing root and stem.
Make Your Own Tomato Grow Bags
The method and process of making grow bag is to first acquire your plastic material which can either be jute or fabric. Then you have to gather your materials. Ensure the material is sturdy enough to hold the weight of your plant. Make use of duct tape to hold the material pieces together. Make sure the duct tape you cut is large enough to cover the whole piece.
Tomato Grow Bag For Sale
You can buy tomato grow bag from any agro-shop near you. Also, you can buy online from amazon, aliexpress and other e-commerce site where grow bag is sold.
Growing Tomatoes In Pots
You can also grow tomatoes in pots. It is easy and effective means of planting tomatoes.
You have to select the right pot size, use potting soil, select the right type of tomato seedling, plant the seed directly or transplant healthy sprouted plants, regularly water the plants, apply fertilizer to enrich the soil, and mulching to protect the soil.
Conclusion
We have come to the end of our discussion and From our discussion, I believe you are now enlightened on how to plant tomatoes in grow bag outlining and discussing the steps involved. All you need to do is to follow the process above to get a maximum yield. | https://agrolearner.com/how-to-grow-tomatoes-in-grow-bag/ |
The following top 5 vegetable gardening mistakes are mistakes every good gardener has made along the way. Mistakes are part of learning. When you recognize your vegetable garden mistakes, you can take steps to fix them!
5 Vegetable Garden Mistakes – and How to Fix Them
Even though I’ve been growing vegetables for over 30 years, I still make plenty of mistakes. These are the most common vegetable garden mistakes I’ve encountered when giving talks and lectures to garden clubs and the general public. They also reflect many of the frequently asked questions I see here at Home Garden Joy and on our Facebook page. (Not a member? Check us out today!).
New to Veggie Gardening? You’re Not Alone!
Many of you reading this are new to veggie gardening, and that’s great! I’m so glad you’re here!
Gardening has been my emotional outlet for many years but it’s never been as important as it is now. Weeding the flower beds, starting my vegetable garden, tending the raised vegetable beds…it helps me feel grounded, secure.
Growing your own vegetables is a great way to ensure an adequate supply of nutritional fresh vegetables. The easiest ones to grow are often the spring vegetables including lettuce, radishes, and spinach, so now is definitely a great time to start a few pots, containers, or a raised bed.
5 Common Veggie Garden Mistakes and How to Fix Them
Problem 1: Planting seeds too close together – and not thinning the seedlings
It’s easy to dump too many seeds in a row. Many vegetable seeds are tiny, and as you shake the envelope out, more than one lands in a planting hole, resulting in a crowd of seedlings. It’s tempting to leave them alone; after all, five plants are better than one, right? Unfortunately, the roots tangle together, the plants crowd each other out, and you’ll end up with spindly, unhealthy plants.
Solution: Thinning. Thinning refers to the process of removing the smaller, weaker seedlings. If you can transplant them, fine, but if not, compost them. It feels like a waste of good plants but if you don’t think out the row, you really will end up with a poor yield.
Problem 2: Allowing seeds and plants to dry out
You can’t rely on nature to provide seedlings with all the water they need. I water outdoor seedlings and seed starting trays twice daily, once in the morning, and once at night, giving them a good soaking. Make sure that any pots and containers have drainage holes to allow excess water to drip out or you will drown your plants.
Solution: Twice daily watering. If you are lucky enough to have sprinklers to water your vegetable garden, a timer is a great help, especially if you’re forgetful. The timer automatically starts and stops the sprinklers.
Problem 3: Overplanting
It’s easy to go crazy planting vegetables if this is your first garden. Unlike the grocery store, however, where you can pick up just one head of lettuce for the week, you’ll find that your garden offers its bounty of vegetables all at once! A rush of radishes, a flood of lettuce, and suddenly you’re wondering if you can sneak the extras onto your neighbor’s porch.
Solution: Estimate how much your family will need and plant only as much as you need. Here is a good article from The Spruce that includes how many plants to estimate per person.
Problem 4: Not enough light
Vegetable plants require full sunlight, with some, such as green beans and lettuce, able to grow well in partial sunlight. Many people don’t understand what full sunlight means and assume that dappled shade from a tree is fine, for example, or bright afternoon sunlight is enough. It may not be. If your garden is struggling, and there’s deep shade cast on it from a shed, fence, or tree, you may need to reconsider where you’ve planted your vegetables.
Solution: Move the garden beds next year to a sunnier spot. If that’s impossible, try growing container vegetables and move the containers into the sunlight. Most people have at least one spot in their yard that gets sunlight. It might not be ideal for an in-ground or raised vegetable garden bed but it may be able to accommodate a few large containers.
Problem 5: Setting tender plants out too early
It’s tempting to plant everything now – cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, melons. But these are tender (frost-sensitive) plants that cannot take freezing temperatures. Here in the Piedmont region of Virginia, the last frost date varies considerably. We’ve had a mild spring. I ask myself, “Should I take a chance and plant my cantaloupe seeds? The tomatoes?” But you never know when a sudden cold snap will arrive.
Solution: Find out the frost-free date for your gardening zone. Wait to plant heat-loving vegetables until after the average date of the last frost. If a frost threatens, bring potted or container plants inside, and cover outdoor garden beds with blankets, sheets, cardboard or newspaper (just overnight – take it off in the morning.)
Ask Your Garden Questions Here!
Please feel free to ask any gardening questions you may have using the comment feature. You must tell me where you are located (US state and/or gardening zone). I’m sorry but I can’t answer gardening questions without location and for people in countries other than the USA — gardening varies considerably by location. But if I can, I’ll answer questions and/or direct you to the appropriate resources.
Happy gardening! | https://homegardenjoy.com/site/2020/04/the-top-5-vegetable-garden-mistakes.html |
Role Overview:
The HR Generalist is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the HR Department, acting as the first point of contact for employees regarding prescreening, onboarding, job changes, benefits, retirement, ACA, Sage HRMS, Leaves of Absences, HR Department policies and guidelines. The Generalist must provide superior internal and external customer service, produce quality work, and maintain an atmosphere of teamwork, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Use HR software(s) to manage payroll and employee benefits, including bonuses, leaves, and conduct absences administration
• Organize hard and soft copies of employee records
• Process documentation and prepare reports relating to performance evaluations, licensures, PPD skin tests
• Reinforce the company policies, rules, and procedures to ensure employees’ safety
• Oversee employee labor and HR federal laws and regulations to assure compliance
• Review and select resumes during hiring processes and update database
• Assist in the coordination of staffing and recruitment processes
• Plan onboarding strategies and perform new employees’ orientation to deliver an exceptional early experience
• Recommend and develop employee relations practices to foster a positive employer-employee relations
• Maintain the work structure by updating job requirements and job descriptions for all positions according to HR objectives
• Conduct and analyze exit interviews and make actionable recommendations based on data
• Ensure legal compliance by monitoring and implementing applicable human resource federal and state requirements and conducting investigations
• Establish and maintain contact with injured employees and provide assistance with claims and obtaining health care.
• Arrange seminars, workshops, additional HR training, and conferences based on each department’s needs
To apply, please send resume to [email protected].
What You Bring to VDM:
• Bachelor’s degree preferred in Business or Human Resources (or related field), and AA degree will be considered with prior HR/Benefits experience
• 2-5 years of HR and/or Payroll experience in a fast-paced organization
• Prior experience working with a HRIS (preferably Sage HRMS, but not required)
• Ability to gracefully handle competing priorities simultaneously
• Outstanding follow-through, self-directed, and highly motivated with a strong sense of urgency
• Excellent communication skills and a professional demeanor with a high regard for confidentiality
• Excellent writing skills and ability to make updates and changes as needed
• Strong time management skills and ability to make judgment calls
• Work well in a highly collaborative environment and open to give and receive feedback
• Ability to handle sensitive information with discretion and maintain confidentiality
• Ability to establish strong relationships within all levels of the organization
• Essential technical skills: Excel, Word, PowerPoint, V-lookups and/or Pivot tables (helpful) and Crystal (helpful)
• COVID Vaccination Card (fully vaccinated)
To apply, please send resume to [email protected]. | https://www.humanresources.org/career-listings/hr-generalist-6/ |
Handmade in Aremenia by skilled craftsmen using traditional techniques and patterns, but with a bold contemporary twist on color.
- Handmade
- Fair trade
- 100% Cotton
- Approximately 18 inches (45.7 cm) long
- Hand wash with mild soap. Lay flat to dry. | https://shop.chrysler.org/products/colorful-knit-stockings |
Every year 5th June is dedicated to the environment and celebrated all over the world as World Environment Day and this year on 5th June 2020, the world will be observing 47th environment Day. as the whole world is fighting against COVID-19 pandemic, therefore this year the day would be celebrated on the digital platform. We can learn so many things from nature, and the best example is a tree. It grows by keeping itself grounded only and takes care of everything which is around it, whether useful or not. As humans too, it’s our responsibility to give proper care and attention to nature which is the basis of life’s existence.
Read the complete article to learn more about World Environment Day including its history, theme, and significance of celebrating this day.
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History: It’s important to learn the importance of nature and value what it provides to us for our survival. With the same perspective, the UN General Assembly decided to celebrate a day as World Environment Day and educate people for human interaction with the environment. However, it took 2 years to put this idea into action, and in 1974, this day was first celebrated. The celebration for World Environment Day is done on a rotation basis, i.e. every year a different country is chosen to host the event and announced by UNEP (United Nation Environment Programme)
What is the Theme for World Environment Day 2020?
This year Columbia with the partnership of Germany will be hosting World Environment Day 2020. This day has been celebrated since 1974 by more than 143 countries, focusing on the major environmental issues and encouraging people to safeguard our nature. Every year, a theme is decided for this particular day and this time, the theme is “Biodiversity”. As 2020 is quite a difficult year for the whole world and the recent incidents are the proof of it with some huge countable incidents including Bushfire in Australia & Brazil, Covid-19 pandemic, cyclones, and Locust attack. After experiencing these incidents, there is nothing wrong with saying that it’s high time we must protect our biodiversity and understand its importance in our lives.
What is the significance of celebrating this day?
With more than 143 countries celebrating this day, World Environment Day has become a global platform for public outreach. Since last year, the celebrations were made in many ways by organizing activities such as campaign with the motives of sensitizing the locals for the growing environment and ways to prevent them, tree plantation programs, organizing plays, quizzes, lectures, and poster competitions are quite popular in schools and colleges on this day.
This year the campaign will be carried out on the digital platform spreading awareness on social media, students will be taking part in poster competitions by staying at their homes only.
Eligibility Criteria for All Teaching Exam
Vice President Venkaiah Naidu shares his greeting on the occasion of World Environment Day with a quote “ Let there be a new beginning on this World Environment Day, together, we can secure the well-being of the people and the planet”. He also added that we should be enhancing our 100% efforts for preserving biodiversity and restoring back the ecosystem by fighting for the climate crisis, food security, and the safety of the people around us.
On this World Environment Day, the aim is to intensify the efforts in protecting the nature and biodiversity along with finding sustainable solutions for every sphere of life on the earth. | https://www.teachersadda.com/world-environment-day-on-5th-june-history-its-significance/ |
ICCA Congress Series No. 18 comprises the proceedings of the twenty-second Congress of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA), held in Miami in 2014. The articles by leading arbitration practitioners and scholars from around the world address the challenges, both perceived and real, to the legitimacy of international arbitration. 0The volume focusses on the twin pillars of legitimacy: justice, in procedure and outcome, and precision at every phase of the proceedings. Contributions on justice explore issues related to diversity, fairness and whether arbitral institutions can do more to foster legitimacy – based on the responses of nine international arbitral institutions to a survey on this topic. Articles focussing on precision address burdens, standards and procedures in respect of proof; interim measures and document production; witnesses and experts; and standards governing investor misconduct in investment arbitration. 0The volume opens with a spirited Keynote Address in defence of bilateral investment treaties and also reports the results of a theme-related empirical survey of Congress Participants on demographics, precision and justice in international arbitration, carried out during the Opening Plenary Session of the Congress.
Volume 7 of the EYIEL focusses on critical perspectives of international economic law. Recent protests against free trade agreements such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) remind us that international economic law has always been a politically and legally contested field. This volume collects critical contributions on trade, investment, financial and other subfields of international economic law from scholars who have shaped this debate for many years. The critical contributions to this volume are challenged and sometimes rejected by commentators who have been invited to be “critical with the critics”. The result is a unique collection of critical essays accompanied by alternative and competing views on some of the most fundamental topics of international economic law. In its section on regional developments, EYIEL 7 addresses recent megaregional and plurilateral trade and investment agreements and negotiations. Short insights on various aspects of the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) and its sister TTIP are complemented with comments on other developments, including the African Tripartite FTA und the negotiations on a plurilateral Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). Further sections address recent WTO and investment case law as well as recent developments concerning the IMF, UNCTAD and the WCO. The volume closes with reviews of recent books in international economic law.
International arbitration has developed into a global system of adjudication, dealing with disputes arising from a variety of legal relationships: between states, between private commercial actors, and between private and public entities. It operates to a large extent according to its own rules and dynamics - a transnational justice system rather independent of domestic and international law. In response to its growing importance and use by disputing parties, international arbitration has become increasingly institutionalized, professionalized, and judicialized. At the same time, it has gained significance beyond specific disputes and indeed contributes to the shaping of law. Arbitrators have therefore become not only adjudicators, but transnational lawmakers. This has raised concerns over the legitimacy of international arbitration. Practising Virtue looks at international arbitration from the 'inside', with an emphasis on its transnational character. Instead of concentrating on the national and international law governing international arbitration, it focuses on those who practice international arbitration, in order to understand how it actually works, what its sources of authority are, and what demands of legitimacy it must meet. Putting those who practice arbitration into the centre of the system of international arbitration allows us to appreciate the way in which they contribute to the development of the law they apply. This book invites eminent arbitrators to reflect on the actual practice of international arbitration, and its contribution to the transnational justice system. | http://bibleandbookcenter.com/read/legitimacy-myths-realities-challenges-icca-congress/ |
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Radiology, sonography and beyond: Keep reading to find out how imaging techniques like MRI, CT and ultrasound can be used in the diagnosis of diseases and the guidance of medical procedures.
French interventional radiologists are pushing the frontier by looking at opportunities to perform minimally invasive procedures in manned space flights. A new strategy explored by the French Society…
Everything but mammography, that's what JVCKENWOOD's new CL-S600 6-megapixel monitor can do. With its 30-inch display, it can show medical images of different modalities such as CT, CR/DR, MR,…
Type 2 diabetes can be diagnosed with a whole-body magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. This is shown by a current study by researchers from the German Center for Diabetes Research, the Institute…
From clinical chemistry to digital pathology: Read more about how modern medical laboratories and procedures in pathology play a vital role in the detection and prevention of diseases and in medical research.
Roche announced that it has entered an agreement with PathAI, a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI)-powered technology for pathology. Under the development and distribution agreement, the…
A new rapid molecular diagnostic test from Cepheid has received the CE mark for distribution in the European market. The test, called Xpert Xpress CoV-2/Flu/RSV plus, is designed for qualitative…
Autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) is a chronic liver inflammation that is triggered by an immunological malfunction. In this case, the immune system falsely recognises the patient's own liver cells as…
Medical innovations are rapidly expanding therapy options for many diseases. Keep reading to find more information on new therapies, surgical techniques, effective medication and patient care.
At their workplace, neurosurgeons often have to make compromises since most ORs were not designed with the specific needs of their discipline in mind. To address this issue the University Hospital in…
The first investigational transplantation of a genetically engineered, nonhuman kidney to a human body was recently completed at NYU Langone Health—marking a major step forward in potentially…
Researchers at Durham University are working on a new infrared light therapy that might have the potential to help people with dementia. In the approach, people wear a specially adapted helmet which…
Time to bring out the white collars: Read more about the economy and politics of health as well as optimised hospital and patient management.
“Twindemic” is a term that has not yet been in the headlines but is likely to become part of our lexicon as the summer progresses.
New data published by The BMJ show that white doctors applying for medical posts in London are six times more likely to be offered a job than black applicants.
Making recommendations for change, academics analyzed global data into the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance in urban areas—the rise of which is threatening the lifesaving role of the…
From AI-based image analysis to virtual therapies: Find out how digitalisation and cutting-edge IT solutions advance the medical landscape.
Since 2015, the number of known ransomware attacks has not only increased substantially across many industries. Hospitals, and the healthcare industry in general, have also become favorite targets of…
Of all the methods used in identity and access management (IAM), biometrics is arguably the oldest: it has been around long before IAM was a “thing”. Humans are naturally optimized for…
The role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) – one of the most divisive issues in cardiology – was debated during a session of the European Society of Cardiology annual congress. Two leading experts…
When scientific curiosity paves the way for improved healthcare: Read more about promising studies and trials that lead to more effective drugs, procedures as well as medical guidelines.
Researchers at the Catharina Heart and Vascular Center, together with Eindhoven University of Technology, have developed a new measurement method to analyze the smallest capillaries of the heart by…
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Using cutting-edge genomic sequencing techniques, researchers at the University of Oxford have identified almost all the genomic variation that gives people resistance to 13 of the most common… | https://healthcare-in-europe.com/en/home/index.html |
This article is from Capital & Main, an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.
America’s racial wealth gap, pushed to the front of the nation’s agenda during the racial justice protests of last summer, has continued to widen and has indeed worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The impact on Black lives, Black wealth and Black businesses has been enormous. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, more than 40% of Black businesses shut down between February and April 2020. And 44% of Black workers say they have experienced income loss since March 2020, compared to 27% of white workers. Economists and business experts say it will take years for Black Americans, still staggering from the Great Recession of 2008, to recover.
“What COVID did was just peel back the ugly realities of the inequities that exist in the United States,” says Harold Epps, former director of commerce for the city of Philadelphia and senior advisor at Bellevue Strategies. “It just put a spotlight on us, just as the video cameras in Minnesota did.”
Last fall, a study by the RAND Corporation found that tens of millions of Americans could and should be making twice what they’re currently earning—for example, a full-time worker currently earning the national median wage of $50,000 would be making close to $100,000 now — if the country’s economic growth had been shared as broadly over the past 45 years as it was from the end of World War II until the early 1970s. Though the study found similar pay gaps between all racial groups, the wealth gap magnifies the loss of income experienced by Black workers. In other words, if a white and a Black worker each earn $50,000 for a job that should pay $100,000, the white worker is likely to still be far better off because their wealth is far greater than the Black worker’s. As the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland has determined, the income gap “is the primary driver behind the wealth gap and that it is large enough to explain the persistent difference in wealth accumulation.”
The Black-white wealth gap is not an accident but rather the result of centuries of federal and state policies that have systematically facilitated the deprivation of Black Americans, says the Center for American Progress in a recent report.
“From the brutal exploitation of Africans during slavery, to systematic oppression in the Jim Crow South, to today’s institutionalized racism — apparent in disparate access to and outcomes in education, health care, jobs, housing, and criminal justice — government policy has created or maintained hurdles for African Americans who attempt to build, maintain, and pass on wealth,” the researchers wrote.
Black Americans have lower incomes regardless of education level, less wealth, less inherited wealth, lower savings and investment rates and lower retirement savings than white Americans, all perpetuating the wealth gap. Though Black Americans have vastly improved the racial gaps in both primary and secondary education, wage and wealth gaps persist and continue to widen.
“A racial gap exists in every income group except the bottom quintile (23.5% Black), where median net worth is zero for everyone,” according to a Brookings Institution Report, “Examining the Black-White Wealth Gap.”
Read more: America’s Racial Wealth Gap: How a ‘Downspout’ Impacted Liz Harris’ Efforts to Change Her Community
The scale of the disparity in sheer numbers is shocking: Black Americans represent 13% of the U.S. population, but possess only 4% of the nation’s household wealth, and the net worth of a typical white family, at $171,000, is roughly 10 times greater than for a Black family ($17,150) as of 2016. “In fact, the ratio of white family wealth to Black family wealth is higher today than at the start of the century,” according to Brookings. Prosperity Now, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy and research organization dedicated to wealth equality, says the median wealth of Black Americans will fall to zero by 2053 if things continue as they are.
Having so little wealth and savings creates a cycle of inequity and poverty. It makes it difficult to own a home, qualify for bank loans, afford college tuition or even have a good credit rating. It can also make it more difficult to qualify for rental housing and increase interest rates charged for loans and all types of insurance. Out of desperation, many turn to predatory lenders who charge sky-high interest rates.
It has an impact on retirement savings as well. People with lower incomes are less likely to participate in workplace retirement plans, and when they do participate, are likely to contribute less. This makes them more likely to take Social Security benefits early and, thus, lock in lower benefits for life. Because Black Americans tend to have lower earnings and are less likely to have a pension than white Americans, Social Security can be critical to their subsistence. “In 2017, among Black Americans receiving Social Security, 35 percent of elderly married couples and 58 percent of unmarried elderly persons relied on Social Security for 90 percent or more of their income,” according to the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
“Even if you leveled everything today and said, ‘OK, we’re going to treat everybody equally now,’ you’d still see a perpetuation of the gap,” says Gary Cunningham, president and CEO of Prosperity Now. “There has to be some reckoning, some acknowledgement and some atonement for the history that has went on since slavery to Jim Crow, to the great rip-off of the wealth of Black people in the mortgage crisis.”
Debt is a huge problem for Black Americans
Black Americans appear to be more negatively affected by debt than any other group, according to one report, “Addressing Debt in Black Communities.” Nearly one in five Black households has zero or negative net worth. Additionally, Black people are the most likely to have high debt payment burdens: Nine percent have debt-payment-to-income ratios above 40%.
Read more: America’s Racial Wealth Gap: The Fortitude of J Vibez
“Black Americans still have the most debt,” says Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economics and policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York City and a nationally recognized expert on retirement. “They’re more exposed to financial fraud. They pay more for their debt, even if they have equivalent credit scores.”
She says Black Americans live in neighborhoods where homes don’t appreciate, are more likely to take on student debt and will more likely have to work in college, so they’re less likely to finish their degrees. That leaves them with student debt, but without a degree.
There has been no success in narrowing the racial wage gap
Black-white wage gaps are large and have grown larger in the last 20 years, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
“If you look at two people doing the same job, and one is Black and one is white, there is a pay difference,” said Nick Abrams, a financial planner and founder and CEO of AJW Financial Partners in Baltimore. “If we started out making less, that’s less money we have to build wealth.”
That wage gap was 26.5% in 2019, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The gap has remained between 18% and 22% for workers with high school education, college degrees and advanced degrees.
The EPI report found that white workers are paid more than Black workers at almost every education level, including those with advanced degrees. For example, college-educated white workers earn an average of $35.90 an hour while Black workers at the same education level earn only $27.81.
The wealth gap has, in fact, worsened among Black and white college graduates, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Federal Reserve data. The median net worth of Black college graduates in their 30s has plunged to less than one-tenth of that of white college graduates over the past three decades, driven by skyrocketing student debt and slow income growth, the Journal said. More than 84% of households led by college educated Black people in their 30s have student debt, up from 35% 30 years ago. That compares to 53% of white college graduates in the same age group, up from 27%.
Meanwhile, during the same period, income among Black college graduates has increased only 7%, to $76,000, while the income of white college graduates increased 13% to $114,000, the Journal analysis found.
There is a huge disparity in home ownership
Only 42% of Black Americans own homes, compared with 72% of white Americans. Despite some gains, there has been a 20% to 30% gap in Black-white home ownership rates for the past 100 years, according to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.
Also, Black people go into greater debt and pay higher interest rates for less valuable homes that appreciate less than whites.
Read more: America’s Racial Wealth Gap: Jay Pearson Tries to Build Wealth for the Next Generation
“You had policies like redlining, and practices such as if any African American tried to get outside of their designated area and move into a more upwardly mobile wide area, you would have whites super organized against their presence in the neighborhoods,” said Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, widow of former Rep. Elijah Cummings and CEO of Global Policy Solutions in Washington, D.C.
She said the 2008 housing crisis devastated Black communities across the country. “Homeownership has typically been a major way that white families have built wealth. We saw how unsustainable exotic mortgages were used to strip communities of color of their wealth.”
The gap in retirement savings is enormous
Ghilarducci says one of the biggest issues in the racial wealth gap is the difference in retirement savings.
The average white family had more than $130,000 in liquid retirement savings (cash in 401(k)s, 403(b)s and IRAs) vs. $19,000 for the average African American family in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available.
In general, Black people “have lower incomes, so the contributions to their retirement plans are lower, that’s also true for women,” Ghilarducci says. “Men get the most out of our retirement system.”
As a result, the number of Black Americans (62%) who don’t have money in a retirement account is almost twice the number of whites (37%), according to the National Institute on Retirement Security. The typical household headed by whites aged 47 to 64 holds $105,600 in pension/IRA wealth, which is more than 10 times that of the typical Black household ($10,300), according to a report titled “Social Security and the Racial Gap in Retirement Wealth.” And only 33.5% of Black U.S. households owned stocks in 2019, according to the Federal Reserve, compared to 61% of white households.
Abrams says Black Americans need to stop being afraid to take risks and embrace the stock market. Historically, it has outperformed every other investment.
“Last year, we saw the market take a huge dive,” he says. “It came right back. If you look at, you know the 2007-2009 crash, the market went down and took a huge hit. It came back up and was still on this historic run in the market. No matter what it has done, long term, the markets have always performed. And so, Black Americans must learn to not be afraid to put our money at risk, and have it working for us.”
Are there ways to narrow the wealth gap?
There are some solutions advanced by economists and embraced by some politicians that would considerably narrow or even eliminate the racial wealth gap.
Baby Bonds
The idea, proposed by Duke University economist William Darity and Ohio State University’s Darrick Hamilton, would be to give every child a savings account at birth. Financial guru and author Ric Edelman of Edelman Financial Engines has a similar proposal. The Darity-Hamilton plan would provide each child with a $500 to $50,000 trust fund, depending on the family’s household income. The recipient wouldn’t be able to access the money until they turn 18. Edelman proposes $7,500, though it would be funded differently. Edelman’s proposal is focused on funding for retirement, so the money would not be available until the recipient turned 66.
“We find that baby bonds can have a significant impact on the wealth gap when examining the wealth available to each child when reaching 18,” according to the financial services firm Morningstar. In fact, Morningstar says the Darity/Hamilton proposal would slice the racial wealth gap in half.
Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Reprensentative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) have sponsored legislation modeled after the Darity/Hamilton proposal. The government would put $1,000 in an interest-bearing account for every child born in the U.S. and then contribute up to $2,000 each year until the child turned 18. Lower-income children would receive higher payments. By age 18, the poorest children would have about $46,200; children of the wealthiest parents would have about $1,700, when they can tap the funds for things such as college tuition or buying a home.
Reparations
In their book From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century,, Darity and his wife and co-author, A. Kirsten Mullen, make the case for reparations and offer a framework for how they would be paid.
They estimate the cost of reparations would be $10 trillion to $12 trillion. That would allow for a $200,000 to $250,000 cash transfer to each eligible participant through a trust account or endowment.
“Specifically, restitution for African Americans would eliminate racial disparities in wealth, income, education, health, sentencing and incarceration, political participation and subsequent opportunities to engage in American political and social life,” they write.
“Reparations is a legitimate policy response. And, by the way, when it is a legitimate policy response it has been used by the United States throughout history,” says Rockeymoore Cummings. “It just hasn’t been used to benefit African Americans. It seems to be used to benefit everybody else. We shouldn’t think it is something that is out of bounds for African Americans.”
Home ownership programs directed at African Americans and other people of color
Rockeymoore Cummings says another option that would make a difference would be housing strategies that guarantee below market rate housing opportunities and homeownership opportunities for Black Americans.
“These strategies would give people an opportunity to have a piece of the wealth pie through renovation subsidies and other things that can help them to maintain and keep properties in rapidly growing areas where equity is increasing,” she says. | https://www.fastcompany.com/90670468/americas-racial-wealth-gap-is-enormous-and-getting-worse?partner=feedburner&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feedburner+fastcompany&utm_content=feedburner |
The invention discloses an online calculating method for internal resistance of power batteries. The method includes obtaining an OCV curve and internal resistance values corresponding to an SOC underdifferent temperatures through experiment testing, and calculating the average gradient of the OCV on the SOC within a set range according to the OCV curve; collecting, by a BMS, actual working conditions during the driving of an automobile; setting high and low magnification intervals with the same sizes according to actual data automatic choice behavior magnification; utilizing a time decay algorithm to filter driving working conditions affected by voltage delay and filtering driving working condition data of the SOC exceeding the set range; respectively counting the average voltage, average magnification and average SOC values in the high and low magnification intervals in the filtered driving working condition data; and adopting a battery characteristic based internal resistance calculating formula to update the internal resistance of a battery. Thus, the online calculating of the internal resistance of the power battery can be realized; and the method has advantages of being highin robustness, small in calculated amount and strong in practicality. | |
April 11, 2012 – INDONESIA – A massive earthquake struck off the coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Wednesday afternoon, triggering a tsunami alert for the Indian Ocean. The quake struck about 434 kilometers (270 miles) southwest of Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia’s Aceh province, and had a magnitude of 8.6, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It took place at a depth of 23 kilometers (14 miles). The massive earthquake was followed by a 6.0 in the north Indian Ocean and then a 8.2 earthquake near the main epicenter. The tremor revived fearful memories of the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in the region in 2004 that killed tens of thousands of people. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said Wednesday that it had issued a tsunami watch for the entire Indian Ocean, and the Indonesian Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency said it had put up a tsunami warning. The Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said on local television that there were no reports of casualties or damage in Aceh so far. The areas most at risk of a tsunami are coastal areas of Aceh, particularly the island of Simeulue, Prih Harjadi, an official for the Indonesian geophysics agency said on Metro TV. The earthquake appears to have involved a horizontal movement rather than a vertical movement, so it is less likely that it will generate a tsunami, said Gary Gibson from the Seismology Research Center in Melbourne, Australia. He also said that the tremor took place a long way offshore and was therefore unlikely to have caused much damage itself. The power has gone out in Banda Aceh and residents are moving to higher ground, said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the Indonesian National Disaster Management Agency. The authorities in India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands have ordered people to move out of low-lying areas.
Katla Volcano – Birth Pains?
This month marks the second anniversary of the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull that left millions stranded across Europe, and cost airlines an estimated €150 million a day for six days. But alarmingly, there are signs of high activity beneath the much larger, neighbouring Katla caldera in Iceland – a possible sign of an impending eruption. This should prompt extensive high-level contingency planning across Europe, as Katla has the potential to be much more damaging than Eyjafjallajökull.
Since Iceland was settled in the ninth century, Katla has erupted on average every 60 years, but has not had a significant eruption since 1918. Ominously, eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull in 1821-23 and 1612 were followed within months by eruptions of Katla. Judged by the historical calendar, an eruption is overdue.
I have been following the Icelandic volcano activity ever since the Eyjafjallajökull volcano closed the air space over Northern Europe for six days in April of 2010. As the article above states, Katla is the evil twin and if she erupts it could be devastating, as Katla’s eruption in 1918 produced five times as much ash as the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull. So why am I posting this story today? Glad you asked. Last night a 8.6 earthquake struck off Indonesia. The 7.0 temblor has become the “new-norm,” and 8.0 quakes and higher, are becoming more frequent. I believe that these earthquakes in diverse places, famines, pestilence, and volcanic activity, that seem to be growing both in intensity and frequency, are the sign that we are in the birth pains that Yashua/Jesus warns us will precede His second coming. | http://discerningthetimes.me/?p=3391 |
Optical devices including, but not limited to, ophthalmoscopes, rifle scopes, binoculars, rangefinders, microscopes, and telescopes have eyepieces that allow users to look through them, using one or both eyes at a time. These optical devices can be used to view objects that are far away or very small by providing additional viewing information, by enlarging the objects, or by overlaying the viewing field with additional information so that a user may see the objects with greater detail. Some microscopes and telescopes have functionalities to allow integration with computer software that has image- or video-capture capability; however, such devices can be expensive, may require manufacturer support for compatibility with the optical device, and may require the use of a desktop or laptop computer. Furthermore, such computers do not facilitate quick and easy transmission of the captured images and typically require additional proprietary software as well as an internet connection and email capabilities, unlike electronic devices, such as smartphones or tablets, which can operate independently over cellular signals.
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This report, written by me, is part of a wide analysis on the twenty first century global education. It seeks to further our understanding of what has happened to the world in both economic and social arenas and how those trends effect to the field of education. I hope the outcome of this report may benefit for many Sri Lankan students as this explains some evidence to broaden their knowledge about what these rocketed changes are and how to face them successfully.
Major trends of 21st century education
Booming popularity of the internet
The Internet has brought us a host of online education choices including everything from unscrupulous diploma mills to a myriad of so-called learning games as well as applications for nearly every subject, platform, and device. In part, higher education explores dozens of e-learning technologies (for example, electronic books, simulations, text messaging, podcasting, wikis, blogs), with new ones seeming to emerge each week. As a result of these attractive modes, this trend will continue. The Internet’s social layer is solidly in place so expect to see education delivered more broadly on the social grid.
For an instance, according to a survey conducted by a group of academic students of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in the year 1997, there were 10% of internet users in developed world. When it came to the end of the decade (2007) the number was raised to 62%. And surprisingly in 2012, the number has increased to 77%. On the other hand in the developing world, there were no users of the internet in year 1997, but gradually it increased up to 17% in 2007.Now finally, it has steadily reached to 32% at the end of 2012.
How it has revolutionary replaced the formal learning tools?
Further, the mobile technology including Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G facilities are giving learners a mobile access to all matters to meet the ever increasing demand in the field of education, even when they are travelling around the Metropolitan city areas or spending their holidays even in the countryside. As a result of these highly motivated updating and entertaining modern attitudes, the technological methods are emerging, but oppositely, traditional-supply side education, which is based on the local methodologies of the national curriculum, has been continuing to lose the demand day by day.
Assessments of the 21st century are different than the past
Most of the modern course providers demand research-based assessments to assess their students’ practical abilities rather than conducting formal examinations. So as research needs a deeper self- study to complete the assessments, even through surfing the internet, learning will be personalized more and more in the way of both portfolio content creations as well as learner-specific and contextually relevant evaluation in a more advanced perspective.
Several studies have reported cases related to the use of:
- blogs to promote student collaboration and reflection.14
- wikis for online student collaboration
- podcasting is beginning to garner attention
- discussions in the literature
A new subject in the school syllabus:
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
As a new subject of the school syllabus, ICT is rocketedly increasing the popularity among students not only in poor developing countries, but also in rich industrial countries as well. According to the definition, the ICT constitutes an extra ordinary resource base for the storing dissemination and sharing of information by strengthening inter cultural exchanges and democratic participation. This does offer new possibilities for providing access to education for large numbers and isolated communities with highly technological methods of visualization and simulation, and powerful means for storage of information. As the syllabus is locally created, if we invest wisely, ICT can help to preserve threatened languages (the best example is Sinhala, which is already in the endangered list) and cultural products while promoting inter-cultural learning and understanding.
Inter-cultural Education as a trend (21st century)
In every country one of the prime functions of education has been that of building a social cohesive society-one held together by shared values, purposes and activities. Until recently, most national education systems were designed to more or less impose one culture-usually that of the dominate race , class or political party or colonial power, while there has been almost as much black sliding as progress. Countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand are beginning to understand that their diversity of culture is s treasure within and not a threat to social cohesion. This is the result of promoting a universal education system as a respond to ever increasing cultural diversity.
Internationalization of Higher Education
According to the rapid increasing globalization, which is defined as the floor of technology, economy, people, values, ideas across borders, is having a profound impact on the nature and function of higher education. On one hand it has been sharing much of the past century upper and lesser degrees which were limited for the middle class of the developed world among all other nationalities by breaking the conventional boundaries of local curriculums.
It is now accepted that, the globalization has increased the rate of internationalization in higher education. Even in traditional post secondary institutions, internationalization initiatives include creating a more global curriculum , fostering opportunities for students to study abroad , encouraging faculty and student exchanges, increasing international student recruitment efforts and exporting or importing programs have already established .
This trend has already created a great cultural awareness in many developing countries who believe that this trend of exporting brains can ultimately result in the removal of the best and brightest local students from their owner futures. As states by UNESCO, Cross border Higher Education encompasses a wide range of modalities from face to face instructions to distance learning. Student mobility has increased significantly over the past two decades. According to an example taken from a survey, four million students were studied abroad in 2004, a threefold increase over the number in 1980. African students are proportionately representing as the most mobile with every 1 in 10 students are studying abroad (2010) and our central Asian students are next in line. When considering the flying destinations of these student visa applicants, Australia can be considered as one of the primary destination for international students in OECD members countries.
Open Universities are now going global
Within the Open University movement, internationalization has manifested itself through direct distance delivery partnership arrangements and the open of branch campus operations .Most post-secondary institution believe that a cross- border experience is valuable to students in this globalized world.
A survey on this trend conducted by the International Association of Universities in 2005, Identified a majority of respondents considered internationalization as a gift which is extremely important to share international knowledge and intercultural skills among university students, faculty and staff members as the greatest benefit. They ranked commercialization and commoditization of higher education in a context of eroding national boundaries, as the key point.
Techniques use in modern education
As we all know, the history of world education is dominated by a teacher centered education system and most of the methods were rote learning theories passed down from a generation to another. When we compare that system that was based on the limited resources consisted by book as the main learning tool, today’s education approach is ultimately advanced than that period. Now we use the internet as our main source of information of study which has stored the data in Terra Bites (One Terra Bite of information is roughly equivalent to the amount on text printed on 40.25 million sheets of paper).So without a doubt we can identify the data in the Web is bigger than all the written materials of the human history. So the above example is given as a comparison between the global technology based education vs. conventional formal education.
Whether the system is modern or ultra modern, the global approaches should also be regulated with similar evaluation methods. Furthermore, the assessment criteria should fulfill with critical and creative thinking, hands-on performances, interactive labs, data analysis, and scientific simulations. According to many online teachers, those common academic activities are highly important in online learning environments.
Technology has played and continues to play an important role in the development and expansion of modern education. Accordingly, many universities have reported an increase in the use of modern tools. Over the past decade, countless efforts have sought to integrate emerging learning technologies into the teaching and learning process in higher education.
A summary of top ten global trends of education .
- A global, knowledge –based society:
Ubiquitous and ever opening access to information creates a need for skilled workers who can transform information to meaningful, new knowledge. As a result of this demand, other than the Academic Institutions, we can see a great trend and a boom on Vocational Training Institutes sponsored or handling by both Government and the Private Sector.
- The innovation is emerging:
Successful members of society will create innovative and contextually relevant applications for new society. Rather than seeing inventers as in the past, now we see the developments of those inventions under the well known, super model brand names of multinational companies. As a result, many parents encourage their children, or even the young by themselves select the course requested by those companies instead of going towards their inborn or generation talents.
As a good example, we can take Sri Lankan Advanced Level Examination in 2012 that represented 65% of students in Commerce scheme and further when the results released, there were 6450 exam passers of commerce with three A(Excellent) grades out of the total number of 8660 three A achievers in all subjects.
- Jobs are moving to developing areas:
Western companies have already learned that it makes sense to move industrial jobs off show .Today many companies are beginning to move creatively by offering jobs to a market with lower labor cost .Specially they select the Asian Pacific Indian region and of course China which have represented a higher Literacy and a Numeracy, even though with the highest unemployment rates. In this way the so called Western companies are able to find the required number of knowledgeable blue collars very easily for a minimum cost.
- Personal success will require novelty at the individual level:
Standardization and centralization at the work place will give way to individualization and decentralization .Employees will be viewed and rewarded for their creative inputs as individual, not for the roles they could play as productive automatons. This creates a great gap between experienced based matured workers and newly arrived academic supervisors. And by seeking promotions, some matured workers are entering to the academic life again by considering it as a must to win their career rights of life.
- Technology changes human relations:
Advances in technology allow people to interact in new ways that were previously obscured by geographical, economic or social boundaries. When we analyze one by one; as a result of the development of air and land travelling, the gap between the urban and rural life styles are minimizing day by day. Secondly, rather than seeking the job security and permanency, the modern youth is temporary changing their career path one after another by seeking a never achievable best job with a never satisfying economic goals in life. According to my view, media is partially responsible for these chases and fantasies. Finally, the patriotic racism will come to a dead end and inter-community relationships will develop.
- Jobs that exist today will not necessarily exist when today’s students finish school:
Why do we insist on preparing students for jobs that existence before they were born instead of for jobs that will exist when they finish school? This is a realistic and a heated discussion as we all have to come to a solution for the sake of next generation.
Essentially, this should be questioned by the governments, especially in third world countries like Sri Lanka. The never changing attitudes of conventional educational directors and the parents who chase their children towards nonrealistic, outdated degrees conducted by never internationally recognized provincial universities are increasing the stress of youth when they are facing to the interviews and seeking career after completing formal education.
One of the main organization who introduces and promotes the Global Education
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization(UNESCO)
UNESCO and its partners, mainly UNICEF have worked by developing and assisting 180 countries around the world by assessing their progress towards basic education for all (ESA) since 1990.
UNESCO 2010 showed that, most of developing countries are making a steady progress towards the goals of universal primary educational and reducing adult illiteracy, and despite their limited resources, countries like Bangladesh have made surprisingly good progress during the past two decades (1990 – 2010).
As a new trend, they recommend new subjects like ICT to the 3rd and 4th world countries because they believe that, the education as the key to alleviate poverty.
Global Education System is NOT 100% pure and democratic
Introduction
As the world has already over-consumerized, globalization is the media of creating a person more and more materialistic. As a result of this influence, human dreams are becoming simpler like having the latest mobile phone is the ultimate dream of life. So, the purpose of the modern education is also created to fulfill the marketing demands set by globalization in a deeper way. That’s why, the social evils are increasing day by day , cause the technology never targets a spiritual society like religions. Finally, the negative influence of the system can return to the creators onwards.
The evidence suggests that even in rich countries, increases in income inequality are associated with increases in education and social inequality. For example, not only does the UK have one of the largest income gaps among OECT countries, it also has the highest proportion (19.4%) of young people 16 to 19 years who are neither attending schools nor employees.
Irrelevant
Sometimes the modern international degrees offered by distance Universities are not recognized or even they are not applicable to the local environment needs. In addition to that, as most awarding bodies are privately governed, the trust-ability of those institutes are questionable.
A Monopoly
The price of some popular software are unbearable to the developed world. The knowledge is not equally dividing as the system has copy right and patent laws. As an example,currently, 60% of internet hosts and 83% of the usage of the net are in the USA, and only 11% is outside first and second world countries.
Privatization
As an ongoing process, educational goods and services are being rapidly privatized. As an example in North America, their second largest accounting is for the education and training industry with nearly 12% of GDP. Further, in 1997 the UK exported over hundred and forty million dollars worthy text books. World-wide the market for educational software now stands at an over four billion dollars.
There has also been a significant growth in the shadow education system- the world of private tutory. For example more than the half of the students in secondary school receive tutoring in countries like Japan, Mauritius and Republic of Korea.
If current global trends continue, commercial activity in educational goods and services can be expected to grow substentually and education itself will become more globalized.
Standards for educational performance are becoming international as we have seen from OECD’s educational at a glance.
My Opinion
To wind up my assessment, I prefer to stand in the side of modern education system. Whether it has some loop holes, it’s extremely advanced than most of the National Curriculums. Further I believe our Sri Lankan education system should definitely be changed according to the global perspectives. It would give more options to the hard working individuals to guarantee their future rather than unconsciously suicide after seeing their conventional result sheets. | https://ieltslanka.com/2016/06/modern-education-system-glance-towards-21st-century/ |
Fr. Pat Howell, s.j.
It is with heavy hearts that we inform you of the passing of Fr. Pat Howell, S.J. As many of you know, Pat came to LIS in the summer of 2017 to serve as Interim Director for the year, following the departure of Felix Just, S.J. In a time of significant transition, Pat was always a source of encouragement and wise counsel, at the personal and organizational levels. His optimistic, can-do attitude was coupled with a humility and transparency that inspired the entire Institute to explore new possibilities with confidence. Pat's joy was infectious, and helped to inspire a creative spirit toward change and growth. Throughout the Institute community he became a source of inspiration and trust.
His passing on Thanksgiving Day was a shock to all, but our sadness is brightened by the gratitude we feel for all the kindness, compassion, and wisdom he brought to our lives.
Go in peace, dear brother.
To learn more about Fr. Pat's life please read this reflection by Fr. James Martin, S.J.
Please note, funeral arrangements are pending. We will provide details once they have been made available. | https://www.loyolainstitute.org/fr-pat-howell-sj |
However, the changes were gradual since the social realism tradition was so ingrained into the psyche of the Soviet literati that even dissidents followed the habits of this type of composition, rarely straying from its formal and ideological mold. They fall in love as their city explodes. Ironically, many of the qualities that people found distasteful in realism — the obsession with character, the superficially mundane plots — were all intensified in Naturalism. They grow flowers as part of the garden that is La Pradera. Realism presents the world as it really is.
The characters—and thus readers—are kept in the dark so that there is an ever-present feel of mystery as events unfold. Realism as a movement in literature was a post-1848 phenomenon, according to its first theorist Jules-Français Champfleury. Perhaps the most essential of those are atmosphere and small-town feel. The story can jump around without the use of flashbacks or flash forwards. For our purposes, we have another chunk of that genre to define as well: what is a short story? Naturalism focuses on the philosophical or scientific ideas whereas regionalism is about he characteristics of a specific region.
In the town of Haddan, people tend to stick to what they know. Advances in the field of human psychology also fed into the preoccupation with representing the inner workings of the mind, and the delicate play of emotions. In the early 1900s, as the Virgin Islands are transferred to American rule, an important ship sinks into the Caribbean. On the night he decides to give her up in the hopes of giving her a better life, Claire disappears. But with the magic she pours into her food, she seduces Pedro, who then marries her sister in desperation. A wild sheep called the moufflon survives in southern Libya, where only Asouf, a bedouin, knows where to find them. From its first imitative activities to innovative attempts nowadays, American literature gradually gains its unique style, theme and form, and I¡¯m always excited to see their works are more and more America in its true sense.
Your book is Magical Realism. Bloomington: Indiana U P, 1971. Peter Lake is an orphan and mechanic who attempts to rob a mansion on the Upper West Side of New York in the midst of a cold winter. There are, indeed, many hotels; for the entertainment of tourists is the business of the place, which, as many travelers will remember, is seated upon the edge of a remarkably blue lake - a lake that it behoves every tourist to visit. The fascination with things falling apart was unpleasant to many, and critics sometimes accused the practitioners of Realism of focusing only on the negative aspects of life. You can infuse your story with these types of reflective events, instead of one controlling thematic event. Life of Pi is a tale about hope and storytelling that will leave you thinking about what it takes to survive.
The Realism and Naturalism first originated in Europe as a response to the Romanticism and Napoleonic War. Giovanni Drogo arrives at a fort where all soldiers wait in earnest for a foreign invasion that never seems to come. She was dressed in white muslin, with a hundred frills and flounces, and knots of pale-coloured ribbon. Watt argued that the novel's concern with realistically described relations between ordinary individuals, ran parallel to the more general development of philosophical realism, middle-class economic individualism and Puritan individualism. Shadow Moon is a man caught in the middle of it all. When Janie, at sixteen, is caught kissing shiftless Johnny Taylor, her grandmother swiftly marries her off to an old man with sixty acres. What does Bettelheim say about fairy tales that had not occurred to you before? The realist novel was heavily informed by journalistic techniques, such as objectivity and fidelity to the facts of the matter.
Larry Rubio and his friends Mondo, Gus, and Juan Carlos , find a scarecrow lashed to a tree in Friendship Park, New Jersey. The sci fi king tells a semi-autobiographical story of a growing boy in a world of gold-fuzzed bees, dandelion wine, firecrackers, new sneakers…and a time machine. Monkey Grip concerns itself with a single-mother living in a succession of share-houses, as she navigates her increasingly obsessive relationship with a drug addict who drifts in and out of her life. In Magic Realist literature, time may be circular instead of linear, or it could jump around and go back and forth from past to future, or it could just seem to stand permanently still. Two hundred years after his death, Haitian emperor Henri Christophe appears in a dream to Tankor Satani, president of a fictional West African country, with instructions to continue his rule. The effect of the narrative buildup in The Human Comedy is the realization of an epic that is more than the sum of its parts.
American Realism began as a reaction to and a rejection of Romanticism, with its emphasis on emotion, imagination, and the individual. Immortal, she travels to present day Oakland, California, where she opens a spice shop as an old woman. Psychologists were just beginning to understand that human consciousness was far more complicated and various than had previously been considered. Literally, this is due to its conviction that everyday life and the modern world were suitable subjects for art. Well, so I am; but I suppose he knows I'm a lady.
The moon hangs decrepit and ugly over the city of New York. The primary plot will be about real things in the real world, but there is an undercurrent of magic. He was remarkable for his ability to dispense with commentary or subjectivity within his narratives. That man can make pretty much anything seem almost plausible. He roused up and gave me good-day.
Readers complained that very little happened in realistic fiction, that they were all talk and little payoff. But one day, a boy comes out of the soil, a boy named Fel. With the tone of fable, the reader is told tales of the mysterious Baron who lives in the trees—his life, his learnings, and his love affairs. Troubled by the life of the possibly false saint Sister Leopolda, Father Damien struggles whether to tell the truth and thus risk exposing his own secret—that he was once a nun who ran. Common Themes Food is a common theme in many stories of Magical Realism. At the request of a friend, the narrator speaks with Simon Wheeler in order to ask after a man named Leonidas W. Narrative style also changed with realistic fiction. | http://vandgrift.com/realism-stories.html |
Carbonates are major sedimentary materials found in many upper layers of the Earth's crust. Understanding their compaction behaviour is important for porosity prediction in sedimentary basins and to improve the knowledge about sealing of active faults at shallow depths, where the faults cross-cut limestone formations. In carbonates, as opposed to siliciclastic sediments, diagenesis starts at shallow depths (<1 km) and can contribute to the formation of a mechanically stable solid framework. Vertical stress, grain size and clay content are the main parameters influencing mechanical compaction. Mechanical compaction of unconsolidated carbonate sands in laboratory occurs mostly at low stress and is mainly controlled by mineralogy and initial packing of grains. It can explain porosity reduction down to about 30%. Conversely, very little porosity loss (< 1%) is obtained by mechanical compaction of cemented rocks under laboratory conditions. In sedimentary basins, however, much lower porosity values are usually encountered, down to zero. Given that mechanical compaction does not explain satisfactorily porosity-depth trends observed in sedimentary basins, the effect of chemical compaction on porosity must be considered. Among chemical mechanisms, pressure solution creep involves local mass transfer by dissolution, diffusion and précipitation processes at the grain scale. Subcritical crack growth is also a fluid assisted process contributing to grain fragmentation and compaction by rearrangement of particles. Pressure solution creep strain rate depends on grain size, porosity, applied stress, fluid chemistry, and temperature. Chemical compaction by pressure solution creep becomes an effective process of porosity reduction from less than one kilometer of depth, as soon as fluids are present. The main parameters controlling porosity loss then become vertical stress, temperature, diffusive flow and pore fluid chemistry. Both mechanical and chemical compaction can lead to either pervasive compaction or localized deformation. The effect of the different parameters cannot easily be differentiated in observations of natural samples, as various deformation processes occur and interact simultaneously. However, control parameters may be separated in specially designed theoretical studies and laboratory experiments. So far, few experimental studies have been performed on pressure solution creep and subcritical crack growth in carbonates. Creep experiments on calcite powder and indenter experiments have shown that time-dependent compaction requires the presence of water. Even though the different controlling parameters were tested, no clear consensus exists on the rate limiting step of deformation and, consequently, on the creep law. Individual processes leading to porosity loss in carbonates are rather well identified. However, their respective importance during burial is still debated. Even at shallow burial (<1 km) chemical compaction is needed to explain the gap between porosity loss obtained during experimental mechanical compaction and porosity-depth curves from sedimentary basins. The present study reviews various processes at work during carbonate compaction and synthesizes the current understanding on the respective importance of thermodynamical and petrophysical parameters at different stages of carbonate compaction. | https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-00799787 |
In Ko Olina, there were two remaining beachfront parcels, and Jeff Stone was looking for hotel operators to fill these spots, but was he looking at just any hotels?
What would fit into Ko Olina’s portfolio?
We know that Atlantis is filling the parcel between Aulani and Ko Olina Beach Resort, but what about the parcel between Ko Olina Beach Resort and Marriott Vacation Club? There has been talk that even that parcel will be split in two so we could see two new hotels?
After learning about luxury tourism last week, 3 case studies focused on The Peninsula, Banyan Tree, and Shangri-la.
Describe a luxury hotel brand (just like the case studies) that we do not have operating in Hawaii that would fit into Ko Olina or another luxury resort area in Hawaii (or for those of you not in Hawaii, you may choose luxury resort area you are familiar with.)
You can incorporate the answers to these 3 questions into your 2-3 page assignment.
- What are the luxury elements in The _ brand?
- What are the success factors of _ ? | https://usaonlineessays.com/a-new-luxury-hotel-for-ko-olina/ |
The present invention relates generally to a speaker applicable to an automotive audio system capable of producing high-quality audio sound, especially relatively low-frequency sound. More specifically, the invention relates to a vehicle panel speaker which can be driven at high amplitudes without requiring excessively high driving power.
Generally, speakers for automotive audio systems can be installed at various locations in the vehicle compartment. Conventionally, cone-type speakers are used in automotive audio systems to reproduce audio sound over a suitable frequency range. However, since space in the vehicle compartment available for the speakers is seriously limited, the size of cone-type speakers to be installed in the vehicle compartment must be limited. On the other hand, in order to clearly reproduce relatively low-frequency sounds, such speakers must be relatively large. For example, at a frequency of 500 Hz, the speaker diameter must be approximately 20 cm. Such a large diameter speaker cannot be installed in the vehicle compartment without significantly reducing the free space in the vehicle compartment. Particularly, in an audio system having recessed speakers disposed between inner and outer vehicle panels or installed below the rear parcel shelf, the size of the speaker which can be used is strictly limited.
Consequently, for standard passenger cars, speakers with a diameter of 5 to 10 cm are generally used. This degrades the audio sound reproduction quality, particularly with respect to relatively low-frequency sound.
In view of the above, there has been proposed a speaker utilizing a vehicle panel as a sound-producing or amplifying medium. Such a speaker comprises a vehicle panel and a driver unit associated with the vehicle panel, at least a part of which is adapted to oscillate to produce audio sound when driven by the driver unit.
The present invention is generally an improvement of the foregoing prior invention for obtaining better quality and higher amplitude audio sound reproduction.
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abstract: 'The problem of keyword spotting *i.e.* identifying keywords in a real-time audio stream is mainly solved by applying a neural network over successive sliding windows. Due to the difficulty of the task, baseline models are usually large, resulting in a high computational cost and energy consumption level. We propose a new method called SANAS (Stochastic Adaptive Neural Architecture Search) which is able to adapt the architecture of the neural network on-the-fly at inference time such that small architectures will be used when the stream is easy to process (silence, low noise, ...) and bigger networks will be used when the task becomes more difficult. We show that this adaptive model can be learned end-to-end by optimizing a trade-off between the prediction performance and the average computational cost per unit of time. Experiments on the Speech Commands dataset [@DBLP:Warden_speech_commands] show that this approach leads to a high recognition level while being much faster (and/or energy saving) than classical approaches where the network architecture is static.'
author:
- Tom Véniat
- Olivier Schwander
- Ludovic Denoyer
bibliography:
- 'refs.bib'
title: Stochastic Adaptive Neural Architecture Search for Keyword Spotting
---
Introduction and Related Work {#sec:intro}
=============================
Neural Networks (NN) are known to obtain very high recognition rates on a large variety of tasks, and especially over signal-based problems like speech recognition [@DBLP:journals/corr/AmodeiABCCCCCCD15], image classification [@DBLP:journals/corr/HeZRS15; @DBLP:journals/corr/abs-1802-01548], etc. However these models are usually composed of millions of parameters involved in millions of operations and have high computational and energy costs at prediction time. There is thus a need to increase their processing speed and reduce their energy footprint.
From the NN point of view, this problem is often viewed as a problem of network architecture discovery and solved with Neural Architecture Search (NAS) methods in which the search is guided by a trade-off between prediction quality and prediction cost [@Veniat_2018_CVPR; @DBLP:journals/corr/HuangW17aa; @DBLP:journals/corr/abs-1711-06798]. Recent approaches involve for instance Genetic Algorithms [@DBLP:journals/corr/RealMSSSLK17; @DBLP:journals/corr/abs-1802-01548] or Reinforcement Learning [@DBLP:journals/corr/ZophL16; @DBLP:journals/corr/ZophVSL17]. While these models often rely on expensive training procedures where multiple architectures are trained, some recent works have proposed to simultaneously discover the architecture of the network while learning its parameters [@Veniat_2018_CVPR; @DBLP:journals/corr/HuangW17aa] resulting in models that are fast both at training and at inference time. But in all these works, the discovered architecture is static *i.e.* the same NN being re-used for all the predictions. When dealing with streams of information, reducing the computational and energy costs is of crucial importance. For instance, let us consider the keyword spotting[^1] problem which is the focus of this paper. It consists in detecting keywords in an audio stream and is particularly relevant for virtual assistants which must continuously listen to their environments to spot user interaction requests. This requires detecting when a word is pronounced, which word has been pronounced and able to run quickly on resource-limited devices. Some recent works [@DBLP:conf/interspeech/SainathP15; @DBLP:journals/corr/ArikKCHGFPC17; @DBLP:conf/icassp/TangL18] proposed to use convolutional neural networks (CNN) in this streaming context, applying a particular model to successive sliding windows [@DBLP:conf/interspeech/SainathP15; @DBLP:conf/icassp/TangL18] or combining CNNs with recurrent neural networks (RNN) to keep track of the context [@DBLP:journals/corr/ArikKCHGFPC17]. In such cases, the resulting system spends the same amount of time to process each audio frame, irrespective of the content of the frame or its context.
Our conjecture is that, when dealing with streams of information, a model able to adapt its architecture to the difficulty of the prediction problem at each timestep – i.e. a small architecture being used when the prediction is easy, and a larger architecture being used when the prediction is more difficult – would be more efficient than a static model, particularly in terms of computation or energy consumption. To achieve this goal, we propose the SANAS algorithm (Section \[sec:sanas\]): it is, as far as we know, the first architecture search method producing a system which dynamically adapts the architecture of a neural network during prediction at each timestep and which is learned end-to-end by minimizing a trade-off between computation cost and prediction loss. After learning, our method can process audio streams at a higher speed than classical static methods while keeping a high recognition rate, spending more prediction time on complex signal windows and less time on easier ones (see Section \[sec:experiments\]).
![**SANAS Architecture**. At timestep $t$, the distribution $\Gamma_t$ is generated from the previous hidden state, $\Gamma_t= h(z_t,\theta)$. A discrete architecture $H_t$ is then sampled from $\Gamma_t$ and evaluated over the input $x_t$. This evaluation gives both a feature vector $\Phi(x_t,\theta, E \circ H_t)$ to compute the next hidden state, and the prediction of the model $\hat{y_t}$ using $f(z_t,x_t,\theta, E \circ H_t)$. Dashed edges represent sampling operations. At inference, the architecture which has the highest probability is chosen at each timestep.[]{data-label="fig:sanas_arch"}](AdaptiveNetwork_3steps_cropped.pdf){width="\linewidth"}
Adaptive Neural Architecture Search {#sec:method}
===================================
Problem Definition {#sec:classic}
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We consider the generic problem of stream labeling where, at each timestep, the system receives a datapoint denoted $x_t$ and produces an output label $y_t$. In the case of audio streams, $x_t$ is usually a time-frequency feature map, and $y_t$ is the presence or absence of a given keyword. In classical approaches, the output label $y_t$ is predicted using a neural network whose architecture[^2] is denoted $\mathcal{A}$ and whose parameters are $\theta$. We consider in this paper the recurrent modeling scheme where the context $x_1,y_1,.....,x_{t-1},y_{t-1}$ is encoded using a latent representation $z_t$, such that the prediction at time $t$ is made computing $f(z_t,x_t,\theta,\mathcal{A})$, $z_t$ being updated at each timestep such that $z_{t+1}=g(z_t, x_t, \theta,\mathcal{A})$ - note that $g$ and $f$ can share some common computations.
For a particular architecture $\mathcal{A}$, the parameters are learned over a training set of labeled sequences $\{(x^i,y^i)\}_{i \in [1,N]}$, $N$ being the size of the training set, by solving: $$\theta^* = \arg \min_\theta \frac{1}{N} \sum\limits_{i=1}^{N} \big[ \sum\limits_{t=1}^{\#x^i} \Delta(f(z_t,x_t,\theta,\mathcal{A}),y_t) \big]$$ where $\#x^i$ is the length of sequence $x^i$, and $\Delta$ a differentiable loss function. At inference, given a new stream $x$, each label $\hat{y_t}$ is predicted by computing $f(x_1,\hat{y_1},.....,\hat{y_{t-1}},x_t,\theta^ *,\mathcal{A})$, where $\hat{y_1} \ldots \hat{y_{t-1}}$ are the predictions of the model at previous timesteps. In that case, the computation cost of each prediction step solely depends on the architecture and is denoted $C(\mathcal{A})$.
![SANAS architecture based on *cnn-trad-fpool3* [@DBLP:conf/interspeech/SainathP15]. Edges between layers are sampled by the model. The highlighted architecture is the base model on which we have added shortcut connections. Conv1 and Conv2 have filter sizes of (20,8) and (10,4). Both have 64 channels and Conv1 has a stride of 3 in the frequency domain. Linear 1,2 and the Classifier have 32, 128 and 12 neurons respectively. Shortcut linears all have 128 neurons to match the dimension of the classifier.[]{data-label="fig:cnn_SANAS"}](cnn-trad-fpool3_SANAS+Phi.pdf){width="1\linewidth"}
Stochastic Adaptive Architecture Search: Principles
---------------------------------------------------
We propose now a different setting where the architecture of the model can change at each timestep depending on the context of the prediction $z_t$. At time $t$, in addition to producing a distribution over possible labels, our model also maintains a distribution over possible architectures denoted $P(\mathcal{A}_t | z_t,\theta)$. The prediction $y_t$ being now made following[^3] $f(z_t,x_t,\theta,\mathcal{A}_t)$ and the context update being $z_{t+1}=g(z_t,x_t,\theta,\mathcal{A}_t)$. In that case, the cost of a prediction at time $t$ is now $C(\mathcal{A}_t)$, which also includes the computation of the architecture distribution $P(\mathcal{A}_t | z_t,\theta)$. It is important to note that, since the architecture $\mathcal{A}_t$ is chosen by the model, it has the possibility to learn to control this cost itself. A budgeted learning problem can thus be defined as minimizing a trade-off between prediction loss and average cost. Considering a labeled sequence $(x,y)$, this trade-off is defined as : $$\mathcal{L}(x,y,\theta) = \mathbb{E}_{\{\mathcal{A}_t\}}\big[\sum\limits_{t=1}^{\#x} [\Delta(f(z_t,x_t,\theta,\mathcal{A}_t),y_t)+\lambda C(\mathcal{A}_t)]\big]$$ where $\mathcal{A}_1,...,\mathcal{A}_{\#x}$ are sampled following $P(\mathcal{A}_t | z_t,\theta)$ and $\lambda$ controls the trade-off between cost and prediction efficiency. Considering that $P(\mathcal{A}_t | z_t,\theta)$ is differentiable, and following the derivation schema proposed in [@DBLP:journals/corr/DenoyerG14] or [@Veniat_2018_CVPR], this cost can be minimized using the Monte-Carlo estimation of the gradient. Given one sample of architectures $\mathcal{A}_1,...,\mathcal{A}_{\#x}$, the gradient can be approximated by: $$\begin{aligned}
\nabla_\theta \mathcal{L}(x,y,\theta) &\approx \big(\sum\limits_{t=1}^{\#x} \nabla_\theta \log P(\mathcal{A}_t | z_t,\theta) \big) \mathcal{L}(x,y,\mathcal{A}_1,...,\mathcal{A}_{\#x},\theta)\\
&+\sum\limits_{t=1}^{\#x} \nabla_\theta \Delta(f(z_t,x_t,\theta,\mathcal{A}_t),y_t)
\label{eqg}
\end{aligned}$$ where $$\mathcal{L}(x,y,\mathcal{A}_1,...,\mathcal{A}_{\#x},\theta)=\sum\limits_{t=1}^{\#x} [\Delta(f(z_t,x_t,\theta,\mathcal{A}_t),y_t)+\lambda C(\mathcal{A}_t)]$$ In practice, a variance correcting value is used in this gradient formulation to accelerate the learning as explained in [@DBLP:journals/ml/Williams92; @DBLP:conf/icann/WierstraFPS07].
The SANAS Model {#sec:sanas}
---------------
We now instantiate the previous generic principles in a concrete model where the architecture search is cast into a sub-graph discovery in a large graph representing the search space called *Super-Network* as in [@Veniat_2018_CVPR].
**NAS with Super-Networks (static case):** A Super-Network is a directed acyclic graph of layers $L=\{l_1, ... l_n\}$, of edges $E \in \{0,1\}^{n\times n}$ and where each existing edge connecting layers $i$ and $j$ ($e_{i,j}=1$) is associated with a (small) neural network $f_{i,j}$. The layer $l_1$ is the input layer while $l_n$ is the output layer. The inference of the output is made by propagating the input $x$ over the edges, and by summing, at each layer level, the values coming from incoming edges. Given a Super-Network, the architecture search can be made by defining a distribution matrix $\Gamma \in [0,1]^{n\times n}$ that can be used to sample edges in the network using a Bernoulli distribution. Indeed, let us consider a binary matrix $H$ sampled following $\Gamma$, the matrix $E \circ H$ defines a sub-graph of $E$ and corresponds to a particular neural-network architecture which size is smaller than $E$ ($\circ$ being the Hadamard product). Learning $\Gamma$ thus results in doing architecture search in the space of all the possible neural networks contained in Super-Network. At inference, the architecture with the highest probability is chosen.
**SANAS with Super-Networks:** Based on the previously described principle, our method proposes to use a RNN to generate the architecture distribution at each timestep – see Figure \[fig:sanas\_arch\]. Concretely, at time $t$, a distribution over possible sub-graphs $\Gamma_t = h(z_t,\theta)$ is computed from the context $z_t$. This distribution is then used to sample a particular sub-graph represented by $H_t \sim \mathcal{B}(\Gamma_t)$, $\mathcal{B}$ being a Bernoulli distribution. This particular sub-grap $E \circ H_t = \mathcal{A}_t$ corresponds to the architecture used at time $t$. Then the prediction $\hat{y_t}$ and the next state $z_{t+1}$ are computed using the functions $f(z_t,x_t,\theta, E \circ H_t)$ and $g(z_t,\Phi(x_t,\theta, E \circ H_t),\theta)$ respectively, where $g(z_t,.,\theta)$ is a classical RNN operator like a Gated Recurrent Unit[@DBLP:journals/corr/ChoMBB14] cell for instance and $\Phi(x_t, \theta, E \circ H_t)$ is a feature vector used to update the latent state and computed using the sampled architecture $\mathcal{A}_t$. The learning of the parameters of the proposed model relies on a gradient-descent method based on the approximation of the gradient provided previously, which simultaneously updates the parameters $\theta$ and the conditional distribution over possible architectures.
![Example of labeling using the method presented in section \[sec:experiments\]. To build the dataset, a ground noise (red) is mixed with randomly located words (green). The signal is then split in 1s frames every 200ms. When a frame contains at least 50% of a word signal, it is labeled with the corresponding word (frame B and C – frame A is labeled as *bg-noise* ). Note that this labeling could be imperfect (see frame A and C).[]{data-label="fig:data"}](signal_and_frames.pdf){width=".8\linewidth"}
Experiments {#sec:experiments}
===========
We train and evaluate our model using the Speech Commands dataset [@DBLP:Warden_speech_commands]. It is composed of 65000 short audio clips of 30 common words. As done in [@DBLP:conf/icassp/TangL18; @DBLP:conf/icassp/TangWTL18; @DBLP:journals/corr/HelloEdge], we treat this problem as a classification task with 12 categories: ’yes’, ’no’, ’up’, ’down’, ’left’, ’right’, ’on’, ’off’, ’stop’, ’go’, ’*bg-noise*’ for background noise and ’*unknown*’ for the remaining words.
Instead of directly classifying 1 second samples, we use this dataset to generate between 1 and 3 second long audio files by combining a background noise coming from the dataset with a randomly located word (see Figure \[fig:data\]), the signal-to-noise ratio being randomly sampled with a minimum of 5dB. We thus obtain a dataset of about 30,000 small files[^4], and then split this dataset in train, validation and test sets using a 80:10:10 ratio. The sequence of frames is created by taking overlapping windows of 1 second every 200ms. The input features for each window are computed by extracting 40 mel-frequency spectral coefficients (MFCC) on 30ms frames every 10ms and stacking them to create 2D time/frequency maps. For the evaluation, we use both the prediction accuracy and the number of operations per frame (FLOPs) value. The model selection is made by training multiple models, selecting the best models on the validation set, and computing their performance on the test set. Note that the ’best models’ in terms of both accuracy and FLOPs are the models located on the pareto front of the accuracy/cost validation curve as done for instance in [@DBLP:conf/iconip/ContardoDA16]. These models are also evaluated using the *matched, correct, wrong* and *false alarm* (FA) metrics as proposed in [@DBLP:Warden_speech_commands] and computed over the one hour stream provided with the original dataset. Note that these last metrics are computed after using a post-processing method that ensures a labeling consistency as described in the reference paper.
As baseline static model, we use a standard neural network architecture used for Keyword Spotting aka the *cnn-trad-fpool3* architecture proposed in [@DBLP:conf/interspeech/SainathP15] which consists in two convolutional layers followed by 3 linear layers. We then proposed a SANAS extension of this model (see Figure \[fig:cnn\_SANAS\]) with additional connections that will be adaptively activated (or not) during the audio stream processing. In the SANAS models, the recurrent layer $g$ is a one-layer GRU [@DBLP:journals/corr/ChoMBB14] and the function $h$ mapping from the hidden state $x_t$ to the distribution over architecture $\Gamma_t$ is a one-layer linear module followed by a sigmoid activation. The models are learned using the ADAM [@DBLP:journals/corr/KingmaB14] optimizer with $\beta_1=0.9$ and $\beta_2=0.999$, gradient steps between $10^{-3}$ and $10^{-5}$ and $\lambda$ in range \[$10^{-(m+1)}$, $10^{-(m-1)}$\] with $m$ the order of magnitude of the cost of the full model. Training time is reasonable and corresponds to about 1 day on a single GPU computer.
![**Cost accuracy curves.** Reported results are computed on the test set using models selected by computing the Pareto front over the validation set. Each point represents a model.[]{data-label="fig:acccost"}](acc_cost_fixed.pdf){width=".6\linewidth"}
![**Training dynamics.** Average cost per output label during training. The network is able to find an architecture that solves the task while sampling notably cheaper architectures when only background noise is present in the frames. []{data-label="dyn"}](cost_per_word_fixed2withoutlambda.pdf){width=".6\linewidth"}
Results obtained by various models are illustrated in Table \[tab:streaming\] for the one-hour test stream, and in Figure \[fig:acccost\] on the test evaluation set. It can be seen that, at a given level of accuracy, the SANAS approach is able to greatly reduce the number of FLOPs, resulting in a model which is much more power efficient. For example, with an average cost of 37.7M FLOPs per frame, our model is able to match 86.5% of the words, (80.7% correctly and 5.8% wrongly) while the baseline models match 81.7% and 82.9% of the words with 72.8% and 77.9% correct predictions while having a higher budget of 124.6M and 137.3 FLOPs per frame respectively. Moreover, it is interesting to see that our model also outperforms both baselines in term of accuracy, or regarding the metrics in Table \[tab:streaming\]. This is due to the fact that, knowing that we have added shortcut connections in the base architecture, our model has a better expressive power. Note that in our case, over-fitting is avoided by the cost minimization term in the objective function, while it occurs when using the complete architecture with shortcuts (see Figure \[fig:acccost\]). Figure \[dyn\] illustrates the average cost per possible prediction during training. It is not surprising to show that our model automatically ’decides’ to spend less time on frames containing background noise and much more time on frames containing words. Moreover, at convergence, the model also divides its budget differently on the different words, for example spending less time on the *yes* words that are easy to detect.
Conclusion
==========
We have proposed a new model for keyword spotting where the recurrent network is able to automatically adapt its size during inference depending on the difficulty of the prediction problem at time $t$. This model is learned end-to-end based on a trade-off between prediction efficiency and computation cost and is able to find solutions that keep a high prediction accuracy while minimizing the average computation cost per timestep. Ongoing research includes using these methods on larger super-networks and investigating other types of budgets like memory footprint or electricity consumption on connected devices.
Acknowledgments {#acknowledgments .unnumbered}
===============
This work has been funded in part by grant ANR-16-CE23-0016 “PAMELA” and grant ANR-16-CE23-0006 “Deep in France”.
[^1]: See Section \[sec:experiments\] for a formal description.
[^2]: a precise definition of the notion of architecture is given further.
[^3]: $f$ is usually a distribution over possible labels.
[^4]: tools for building this dataset are available at <http://github.com/TomVeniat/SANAS> with the open-source implementation.
| |
Which is the most polluted river in India?
Yamuna is the most polluted river in India. The river Yamuna flows as a tributary of the river Ganga. It is one of the most sacred rivers of Hindus.
Image Credit: Source
The river finds its origin in the Uttaranchal state at the picturesque Yamunotri, the birth place of river Yamuna. The river covers a very long span of 1,637 kilo meters all along from Uttaranchal to Allahabad, where it meets the Ganga River.
Thus, the meeting point of Ganga and Yamuna at Allahabad is famous among Hindus and it’s of high religious importance too.
Importance of river Yamuna through its long journey
River Yamuna creates fertile plains throughout its journey. The river serves as the lifeline of thousands of people living in the Yamuna basins and the water is an important source of irrigation for agricultural purposes.
It is found that, the Yamuna River does not flow at a constant rate throughout the year. There are months when there is a good flow.
There are months when the flow of the river reduces and sometimes when the regions turn totally dry. When the region turns dry, when the water levels of Yamuna recede, that is when the pollution levels at the river are also high.
Pollution levels of the river water of Yamuna
The Tajewala Barrage is used to divert the water of Yamuna River into the state of Haryana for agricultural need. To satisfy irrigation water for their fields, the state of Haryana has thus utilized the barrage for providing water to its lands.
Sadly, the water used for irrigation is found to be so toxic in chemicals that the water that outflows from the fields into canals is highly polluted.
The same water when flows back into the river pollutes the main river source through its flow, hence river Yamuna is considered one of the most polluted waters in the country.
The problem here is that of the usage of heavy toxic chemicals for agricultural purposes. The use of nitrogenous compounds to enrich soil leaves a trace of toxic substances flowing into river waters, increasing toxicity in water and killing marine life, popularly called eutrophication.
It is also reported that the water flowing from the Himalayan ranges of Uttaranchal is rid of any pollution, as there are no industrial elements to force chemicals into the water. Thus, less pollution into the river water at this region is a boon and gift of nature.
The main areas causing polluted elements to enter the river are the regions of Kurukshetra, Panipat and Sonepat. All these regions are industrial areas by their very nature and all the industrial effluents that are discharged from the industries go directly into the rivers.
They have no safe disposal system of industrial effluents and all toxic chemicals and disposals are sent to pollute the rivers.
Entering the zone of Delhi, the river loses track of its original quality. Just before entering the region of Delhi, reports indicate that the river of Yamuna is found to be affected by thousands of microbes in it.
A packet full of water in one’s hands reveals several thousands of bacteria under a research table. These bacteria are not just harmful, they are threatening for life. Looking down further, the region of Delhi is the maximum contributor of waste into the river Yamuna.
Not just industrial effluents, chemicals, wastes, agricultural disposals, pollution etc. turn the river into a totally unrecognizable water flow there.
The amount of microbes has been counted to be several million of them, the most polluted waters in the country. They are totally unfit for drinking/ cooking purposes.
Water used for washing is again left back into the river. They reach canals and further pollute the water on the journey making them the most polluted waters of the country.
How does sewage increase pollution of river Yamuna?
Another main reason why the water is so polluted is due to the entry of sewage water into the river waters. One can imagine the effects caused when water becomes a mixture of sewage and chemical wastes.
Not only do the reactions cause several damaging effects on water, they are life threatening and have capability to wipe out several generations as such.
When water reaches the areas of Agra, the highly industrialized areas contribute further to the deterioration of water quality. We can see that the water color all along this stretch is totally green.
The rivers are embedded with growth of algae substances that make the river turn from water color to a green blanket. The phytoplankton growing under the river waters cause enormous filth and dust to settle on the waters and the water is thus declared to be eutrophicated.
Steps taken to look into pollution levels of rivers
Let us now look into what the government has done to take measures to stop pollution and save river Yamuna. The pollution control board has issued strict warnings to industrial zones against disposal of wastes into rivers which are the main polluting agents of the river.
They contribute maximum pollutants to the river and are thus known to be a hazard to the rivers. The letting out of sewage into the river is another major problem the city of Delhi is facing and popular sewage disposal channels have to be built in to tackle this menace.
Our rivers are facing a lot of problems when it comes to quality. Knowingly or unknowingly we all tend to dirty our river waters and throw a lot of unwanted substances into them which will in turn cause damage to us only.
We ourselves are the victims of our acts, but along with us, a lot of marine life and animals that depend on water for their survival are thoroughly affected.
The loss of marine life creates an imbalance in the river waters. Water used for irrigation purposes may not all that safe, hence directly affecting the quality of food that we eat.
That is exactly the reason why we see so many water-borne diseases on the rise and the precautionary measures taken to curb such activities are almost negligible, given the lack of awareness among people and ignorant practices. Voluntary organizations have also come forward to contribute in cleaning up the rivers. | https://www.studytoday.net/most-polluted-river-india/ |
Copperopolis, CA — Calaveras County Sheriff’s Detectives are asking for the public’s help to identify the porch pirate and give tips on how not to become a victim.
Anyone recognizing the man or vehicle in the image box is asked to contact investigators. The sheriff’s dispatch got a call on Wednesday morning reporting a package theft in the Copperopolis area. Security footage collected by deputies at the scene spied the small sedan pictured driving onto the property and the alleged suspect stealing a package. While deputies checked the area, they were unable to locate the suspect or his vehicle.
Those with information on the suspect or incident are asked to call the Sheriff’s anonymous Tipline at (209) 754-6030.
Sheriff’s officials provide these tips to avoid becoming a victim of package poachers:
- Install security cameras or video doorbell devices. Visible security cameras can help deter criminals. Some security cameras allow you to monitor activations from your mobile device.
- Coordinate with your neighbors who may be home to accept or collect your packages.
- Require signatures or sign up for tracking alerts.
- Request your mail be held while on vacation.
- Have packages delivered to your work.
- Package lockboxes can be installed near or in conjunction with your mailbox.
- Keep the area around your front porch clear and visible. | https://www.mymotherlode.com/news/local/1060806/porch-package-thief-sought.html |
Over the last two weeks in Southeast Asia, demonstrations against the military coup in Myanmar continued as anti-coup protesters marked the 100th day of military rule in the country. Although such demonstrations have gradually been decreasing over the weeks following deadly crackdowns by the junta, armed resistance against the junta has been increasing. Over the last two weeks, days-long battles between the Myanmar military and armed resistance groups were reported in Chin state. Meanwhile, following the National Unity Government’s (NUG) announcement of the establishment of a People’s Defense Force (PDF), dozens of resistance groups pledging to fight under the PDF banner have been formed in townships across the country. Additionally, fighting between the Myanmar military and ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) continues unabated in several states, including in Kachin, Kayin, and Shan states. Elsewhere, in the Philippines, an increase in deadly clashes between Islamist groups and state forces was reported. Fighting between state forces and Papuan separatists also increased in Indonesia. This comes alongside increased protests against the Indonesian government’s treatment of Papuan separatist groups. Lastly, demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine were held by Muslim groups across the region.
In Myanmar, anti-coup supporters marked the 100th day of the coup on 11 May by rallying in the streets to oppose the military junta. Mass demonstrations across the country have been ongoing for more than three months. More recently, demonstrators have adopted a flash-mob style of protest where they gather and disperse quickly so as to avoid a response by the military. The seizure of power by the military on 1 February has plunged the country into turmoil, drawing strong international criticism for the military’s violent crackdowns against anti-coup demonstrators and activists. More than 800 demonstrators and civilians have been killed by the military junta forces to date, according to data from the Assistance Association of Political Prisoners (AAPP) (AAPP, 21 May 2021).
Meanwhile, armed resistance against the military junta has intensified, notably in Chin state, which has been a stronghold of opposition to the junta since the coup. On 12 May, a ceasefire reached in late April between the Myanmar military and the Chinland Defense Force (CDF) broke down after fighting erupted between both sides in Mindat town (BBC, 22 May 2021). Following days of clashes, the Myanmar military seized control of the town on 15 May, forcing the CDF to retreat. An estimated 90% of Mindat town residents fled to the nearby jungle during the days-long battle (Irrawaddy, 19 May 2021). Following a “four-cuts” strategy that has been used in the past to deny armed groups local support, the military cut off food and water supplies in the town (Myanmar Now, 19 May 2021). A reported 12 CDF fighters and 30 Myanmar military soldiers were killed between 12 and 17 May (Myanmar Now, 19 May 2021). Meanwhile, as the Myanmar military took control of Mindat town, another days-long battle between the Myanmar military and the CDF broke out in Hakha town in northern Chin state (Irrawaddy, 21 May 2021).
Additionally, local self-organized resistance groups have been formed in dozens of townships under the People’s Defense Force (PDF). Many of these groups have pledged to fight under the leadership of the NUG (Irrawaddy, 10 May 2021; Myanmar Now, 20 May 2021). The formation of the PDF was formally announced by the NUG on 5 May. Over the last two weeks, clashes between the Myanmar military and different local PDF groups were reported in Kayah state, and in Magway, Mandalay, and Sagaing regions.
Meanwhile, tension between the Myanmar military and EAOs continues to escalate, with clashes reported in Kachin, Kayah, Kayin, and Shan states. Notably, fighting between the Myanmar military and the Karenni National Progressive Party/Karenni Army (KNPP/KA) broke out for the first time since the coup. This comes after the Myanmar military attempted to enter KNPP/KA-controlled territory (Irrawaddy, 21 May 2021). The Myanmar military has recently accused the KNPP/KA of providing military training to anti-coup activists (Myanmar Now, 11 May 2021). In Kayin state, the Karen National Union/Karen National Liberation Army (KNU/KNLA) clashed with the Myanmar military, including the Kayin Border Guard Force, resulting in dozens of fatalities. Elsewhere, in Kachin state, clashes between the Myanmar military and the Kachin Independence Organization/Kachin Independence Army (KIO/KIA) continued unabated.
In the Philippines, an increase in Islamist violence was reported in Mindanao. Notably, clashes between state forces and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) took place in Maguindanao province. While early reports said the rebels had occupied the public market in Datu Paglas town, later reports confirmed that they had only been passing through to look for food, but got stuck when security forces surrounded the area (Sunstar, 9 May 2021; Rappler, 8 May 2021). During the shootout, the military received air support to pursue the rebels, who fled without any fatalities. However, follow-up operations a few days later led to the killing of five BIFF militants in a neighboring town. The deadly battle comes shortly after President Rodrigo Duterte warned of an “all-out offensive” against the BIFF should violence continue (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 11 May 2021).
Meanwhile, deadly clashes between state forces and Abu Sayyaf (ASG) fighters also took place in Mindanao in the Philippines, as well as across the Sulu sea in Sabah state, Malaysia. The clashes, which took place over a span of four days, resulted in nine ASG fighters being killed. Five of the fighters, including an ASG sub-leader, were killed by Malaysian police in Sabah state, where they had reportedly been sheltering in a squatter settlement. This comes after Malaysian police, with assistance from the Philippine military, carried out a mass arrest of ASG fighters and their family members in the same state (The Star, 11 May 2021). The arrested militants were allegedly planning to carry out kidnappings for ransom (Reuters, 10 May 2021).
Elsewhere, clashes between state forces and the separatist West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) also increased in Papua province, Indonesia. Multiple clashes, which resulted in deaths on both sides, took place over the past two weeks, primarily in Puncak regency. Alongside the clashes, reports of rebels setting fire to public buildings and security forces shooting at villagers’ homes have displaced thousands of villagers in Papua province (Human Rights and Peace for Papua, 14 May 2021).
Amid the increasing instability in West Papua, Papuans continue to protest against the extension of the region’s Special Autonomy Status and the Indonesian government’s labelling of Papuan separatists as “terrorists” (Benar News, 29 April 2021). Beyond concerns of heightened military tension, the labelling of Papuan separatists as “terrorists” has raised concerns of increased discrimination against Papauns across Indonesia (The Star, 3 May 2021). Protests also increased following the 9 May arrest of the National Committee for West Papua (KNPB) spokesperson, Victor Yeimo, for committing treason as he allegedly masterminded the 2019 riots that broke out in West Papua (Jakarta Post, 10 May 2021). If convicted of treason, he could be sentenced to life imprisonment. Papuan students in several cities across the country carried out coordinated protests to call for Yeimo’s release.
Finally, despite strict movement restrictions to curb rising coronavirus infections, Muslims across the region took to the streets to show solidarity with Palestine in light of the increased conflict between Israel and Palestine. In Indonesia, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in dozens of cities to demand that Israel stop its aggression against Palestine (Tribun News, 21 May 2021). They condemned the situation in Palestine as “humanity’s worst tragedy” (Jakarta Globe, 19 May 2021). Likewise, in the Philippines, around 500 Muslim youth protested in Marawi city to call for an end to the violence in Palestine (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 21 My 2021). Similar protests were held by Malaysian Muslims in front of the United States’ Embassy in Kuala Lumpur.
© 2021 Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED). All rights reserved. | https://acleddata.com/2021/05/27/regional-overview-southeast-asia8-21-may-2021/ |
Metformin is a first-line biguanide agent for the treatment of diabetes mellitus. It has been known to be associated with lactic acidosis. This side effect especially worsens when being used with other medications affecting the kidney such as angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEi) and loop diuretics. This is a case of a 63-year-old male who suffered from metformin-induced lactic acidosis and underwent hemodialysis for treatment.
Introduction
Metformin is a biguanide medication used as first-line therapy for the treatment of diabetes mellitus type II. The well-known adverse effect of metformin is lactic acidosis, but it is rarely reported in the literature review of case reports. The assumption is that the lactic acidosis occurs from a failure of the kidneys to clear the medication from the body. We report the case of a patient who was admitted for profound lethargy and altered mental status and was found to have an elevated lactic acidosis level secondary to metformin.
Case Presentation
A 63-year-old male, with a past medical history of type II diabetes mellitus, hypertension, chronic kidney disease stage G3a, and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, presented with generalized lethargy and weakness. His history, obtained from his family, revealed that he was taking his home medications: metformin 1000 mg twice daily, lisinopril 10 mg once daily, and furosemide 40 mg once daily but not eating or drinking adequately at home due to a lack of money. On physical examination, he was found to be confused and in a state of lethargy. He had a dry oral mucosa and scored 14/15 on the Glasgow Coma Scale. The vitals were a blood pressure of 70/40 mmHg, pulse of 70 beats/minute, a temperature of 92 degrees Fahrenheit, and a respiratory rate of 14/minute. Tables 1-2 list the major laboratory and hematology findings.
His urine toxicology screen was negative and blood alcohol level was undetectable. The computed tomography (CT) scan of the head and the posterior-anterior (PA) / lateral chest X-ray were unremarkable.
The patient was admitted to the intensive care unit for a hypovolemic shock, with the resultant acute chronic renal failure secondary to hypotension worsened by the ongoing use of furosemide and lisinopril. He was treated initially with intravenous fluids and norepinephrine for blood pressure support. It was postulated that the elevated lactic acid level and anion gap level were due to hypoperfusion, likely exacerbated by the concomitant use of metformin in the setting of acute kidney injury. His altered mentation was likely due to metabolic encephalopathy secondary to high lactate.
The patient received broad-spectrum intravenous antibiotics on the day of admission, but they were discontinued later, as no source of infection was found and sepsis was ruled out. The patient also received a bicarbonate drip until the bicarbonate improved to 22 mmol/L. He subsequently underwent emergent hemodialysis. Post hemodialysis, lactic acid trended down to 8.3 mmol/L and pH improved to 7.24 with an anion gap of 35 with the first session; subsequently, lactate became undetectable, as he underwent further sessions of hemodialysis during the hospital course. His creatinine at the time of discharge was 3.12 mg/dl, bicarbonate was 31 mmol/L, the anion gap had closed, and pH was 7.34. His urine output normalized and mentation improved to GCS 15/15. He was discharged in a stable condition. His metformin, lisinopril, and furosemide were stopped, and he was advised to keep himself adequately hydrated. Outpatient creatinine was 1.4 mg/dL.
Discussion
Metformin is a biguanide medication used as a first-line agent for new-onset diabetes mellitus patients. The well-known side effects commonly found in patients include gastrointestinal side effects, such as nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Metformin-induced lactic acidosis is a well-known but rare side effect with an estimated incidence of 4.3 cases per 100,000 person-years in metformin users . This is especially true in patients with renal failure due to the decreased clearance of metformin from the body. It is excreted in an unmetabolized state from the proximal tubular cells of the kidneys. The plasma protein binding of metformin is minimal, so it can be hemodialyzed . Metformin inhibits gluconeogenesis and increases glucose uptake by muscle and adipose tissue. It promotes the conversion of glucose to lactate and decreases hepatic gluconeogenesis from lactate, pyruvate, and alanine . Metformin is commonly used in combination with angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors due to the prevalence of hypertension in diabetic patients and with diuretics in patients with heart failure.
In the setting of dehydration with resultant acute kidney injury, metformin can accumulate, leading to type B lactic acidosis, especially in the presence of other nephrotoxic agents (ACEi and loop diuretics) . The contraindications to metformin are listed in Table 3 .
The typical patient with this clinical picture will usually present with nausea, lethargy, and abdominal pain, and progress to altered mental status . Serum metformin concentration is usually not available in most hospitals in the United States and doesn't correlate with disease severity appropriately in a clinical setting . The use of a bicarbonate drip is still controversial and is usually limited to a pH of <7.10. However, hemodialysis with bicarbonate buffer is the treatment of choice for such patients . Patients are usually treated until lactate falls below 3mmol/L and pH increases to 7.35 . Also, the prognosis and outcomes of metformin-induced lactic acidosis are better than those for lactic acidosis of other etiologies as per results from a retrospective analysis .
Conclusions
Our case of metformin-induced lactic acidosis shows the importance of the appropriate dosing of metformin in chronic kidney disease patients and further indicates that metformin toxicity could be worsened by ongoing dehydration in the setting of using diuretics and ACEi. It's worthwhile to review what the evidence-based practice should be and use this patient as an example of the population that actually needs dosing adjustments.
References
- Salpeter SR, Greyber E, Pasternak GA, Salpeter EE: Risk of fatal and nonfatal lactic acidosis with metformin use in type 2 diabetes mellitus. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2010, CD002967.
- Chang CT, Chen YC, Fang JT, Huang CC: Metformin-associated lactic acidosis: case reports and literature review. J Nephrol. 2001, 15:398-402.
- Bailey CJ, Turner RC: Metformin. N Engl J Med. 1996, 334:574-579. 10.1056/NEJM199602293340906
- Fitzgerald E, Mathieu S, Ball A: Metformin associated lactic acidosis. BMJ. 2009, 339. 10.1136/bmj.b3660
- Jones GC, Macklin JP, Alexander WD: Contraindications to the use of metformin. BMJ. 2003, 4-5. 10.1136/bmj.326.7379.4
- Gan SC, Barr J, Arieff AI, Pearl RG: Biguanide-associated lactic acidosis. Case report and review of the literature. Arch Intern Med. 1992, 152:2333-2336. 10.1001/archinte.1992.00400230129023
- Vecchio S, Giampreti A, Petrolini VM, et al.: Metformin accumulation: lactic acidosis and high plasmatic metformin levels in a retrospective case series of 66 patients on chronic therapy. Clin Toxicol (Phila). 2014, 52:129-135. 10.3109/15563650.2013.860985
- Heaney D, Majid A, Junor B: Bicarbonate haemodialysis as a treatment of metformin overdose. Nephrol Dial Transplant. 1997, 12:1046-1047.
- Calello DP, Liu KD, Wiegand TJ, et al.: Extracorporeal treatment for metformin poisoning: systematic review and recommendations from the Extracorporeal Treatments in Poisoning Workgroup. Crit Care Med. 2015, 43:1716-1730. 10.1097/CCM.0000000000001002
- Friesecke S, Abel P, Roser M, Felix SB, Runge S: Outcome of severe lactic acidosis associated with metformin accumulation. Crit Care. 2010, 14:226. 10.1186/cc9376
Metformin-associated Severe Lactic Acidosis in the Setting of Acute Kidney Injury
Ethics Statement and Conflict of Interest Disclosures
Human subjects: Consent was obtained by all participants in this study. Conflicts of interest: In compliance with the ICMJE uniform disclosure form, all authors declare the following: Payment/services info: All authors have declared that no financial support was received from any organization for the submitted work. Financial relationships: All authors have declared that they have no financial relationships at present or within the previous three years with any organizations that might have an interest in the submitted work. Other relationships: All authors have declared that there are no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.
Article Information
DOI
10.7759/cureus.3897
Cite this article as:
Iftikhar H, Saleem M, Kaji A (January 16, 2019) Metformin-associated Severe Lactic Acidosis in the Setting of Acute Kidney Injury. Cureus 11(1): e3897. doi:10.7759/cureus.3897
Publication history
Received by Cureus: December 23, 2018
Peer review began: December 26, 2018
Peer review concluded: January 15, 2019
Published: January 16, 2019
Copyright
© Copyright 2019
Iftikhar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY 3.0., which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
License
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Metformin-associated Severe Lactic Acidosis in the Setting of Acute Kidney Injury
Figures etc.
RATED BY 0 READERSCONTRIBUTE RATING
Scholarly Impact Quotient™ (SIQ™) is our unique post-publication peer review rating process. Learn more here. | https://www.cureus.com/articles/16777-metformin-associated-severe-lactic-acidosis-in-the-setting-of-acute-kidney-injury |
This article addresses the potential implications of climate change for the financial management of disaster risks. It outlines the contribution of insurance to reducing the economic disruption of disaster events and policy approaches to supporting the penetration of disaster insurance coverage and the capacity of insurance markets to absorb disaster risks.
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This report reviews three key areas of corporate action accounting for greenhouse gas emissions, achieving emissions reductions and engaging suppliers, consumers and others. | http://www.oecd.org/cgfi/resources/bydate/6/ |
Mark Jaccard is a professor of Resource and Environmental Management with Simon Fraser University, and a leading Canadian expert in the field of sustainable energy policy. In his recent column in the Globe & Mail he stated that the Canadian Government knows it will not succeed in limiting greenhouse gas emissions as promised less than two years ago.
He reached this conclusion because the Federal Government approved the construction of a 500 Megawatt coal fired electricity plant in Alberta by Maxim Power. If constructed by July 15, 2015, this plant will not be subject to Regulations promulgated by the Minster of the Environment on May 26 last. Once constructed, the plant will continue to emit GHG for another 45 years, its expected life span.
This plant will supply Alberta residents with electric power for many years to come. As coal is presently the cheapest fuel for generation of electricity, Alberta businesses and consumers will share in the cost benefits of this construction, at the expense of the environment (climate change).
There is another negative feature to allowing Maxim Coal to proceed. Approval of this plant is a message for entrepreneurs who otherwise might invest in renewable energy sources that currently produce power at a higher cost. They will understand that neither the Albertan or Canadian Government wish to be held accountable by the electorate for higher electricity costs. So the Canadian Government, which recently suspended financial support for renewable energy projects, will not come forward with an effective policy on renewable energy in the near future.
Jaccard condemned the Canadian Government for its handlling of the Maxim project. He said:
” It puts the lie to claims of significant emissions reduction over the next decade – an extremely short time frame.”
Does this mean that we should distrust promises on limiting GHG emissions by politicians make during the next years ? Here is Jaccard’s reaction:
“All of this raises an interesting conundrum for Canadians. What do you do when your government knowingly permits investments that prevent it from meeting its promises? Do you simply stand by and watch the construction of a coal plant that contributes great harm to the planet? Or is the only remaining ethical option to use every legal avenue and perhaps even peaceful civil disobedience to try to stop the plant?”
Perhaps the Canadian Government will be careful to speak in generalities and avoid making concrete promises while focusing voter attention on jobs and
the economy. If past performance is any guide, this tactic could well succeed, at least to the point of getting the Government re-elected for a second term.
Apart from the lack of honesty towards electors, the accommodation shown Maxim Power demonstrates a weakness with democratic processes. Democratic countries currently do not have the resolve to make the necessary decisions to reduce climate change. | https://forourgrandchildren.ca/blog/2011/09/09/is-the-canadian-government-honest/ |
U.S. network Discovery Channel is diving deep into the jungle for its latest survival series, American Tarzan (pictured).
Produced by Sharp Entertainment, the series will feature seven competitors as they encounter difficult conditions across four distinct terrains, relying solely on their survival skills, basic tools and mental fortitude.
Participants will kayak through open water to reach the island of Dominica to experience similar conditions faced by early inhabitants in centuries past. They will be challenged with navigating through natural obstacles in dense jungles, raging rivers and coastlines, mountainous terrain and canyons while foraging for food in order to sustain themselves over the weeks-long journey of becoming the ‘American Tarzan.’
Contestants include personal trainer Brandon Morrison; timber sports athlete Derek Knutson; ER nurse Kim Liszka; bartender Maria Herrera; stay at home dad Tim Olsen; security contractor Tim Reames; and small business owner Jeremy Guarino.
Sharp Entertainment’s Matt Sharp and Dan Adler serve as executive producers, alongside Discovery Channel’s Joseph Boyle and Kyle Wheeler.
American Tarzan premieres on July 6 at 10 p.m. EST/PST across Discovery Channel. | https://realscreen.com/2016/06/15/discovery-swings-into-survival-series-american-tarzan/ |
FAST45 workshops and test labs contribute to the development of FAST45 Art School Futures Labs: an artistically inspired workshop model to discuss and co-create future images of higher arts education.
The workshop and test labs investigate the feasibility of selected group working methods and structures while generating stimulating and insightful futures images. The workshop's group working methods combine futures thinking and artistically inspired data generation and interpretation methods drawing from artistic forms: operational logic, creative play, and modes of representation.
The workshop objectives are:
• to experiment with different arts-based approaches to see how they can be combined with futures thinking and futures methodologies
• to test how different arts-based methods could be used for the co-reflection and co-creation of futures images
• to form feasible approaches for Art School Futures Labs.
The test-lab objectives are:
• to investigate the feasibility of different futures lab structures for the ArtsSchool Futures Labs
• to investigate the feasibility and impact of different participant groups to find the most helpful participant mixes for the Arts School Futures Labs
• continued testing of arts-based methods as part of the test labs.
In the feasibility study, selected arts-based approaches will be assessed for their practicality to generate futures materials, stimulate the creation of futures images that have relevance for higher arts education institutions, and help interpret such images. The study aims to shed light on the strengths and weaknesses of the examined approaches, opportunities and threats embedded in these approaches, the resources required to use these methods, and eventually their potential for success in futures workshop contexts. The task is to judge what value and at what cost arts-based approaches add to futures workshops in higher arts education institutions.
What's happening:
What has happened: | https://fast45.eu/art-school-futures/workshop-with-the-management-team-of-luca-2 |
Stephanie Abbott to Speak at SCOPE: Summit for Clinical Ops Executives.Abbott, PharmD speaks on optimizing process and technology for trial feasibility and start-up.
FROM SCOPE EVENT: Analytics-driven global site selection, an optimized protocol development and feasibility assessment process, and effective site management, and the ability to improve study start up in multi-center and decentralized trials are critical to improving clinical trial timelines and outcomes. Too often companies fail to learn from past mistakes and take the same approach to protocol development, trial planning, and execution. SCOPE’s Protocol Development, Feasibility, and Global Site Selection track will cover the topics one should consider when planning and implementing a data-driven and patient-centered trial. The Study Start-up in Multi-Center and Decentralized Trials track highlights strategies for accelerating multi-center and decentralized trials in a post-COVID world. | https://www.innovoresearch.com/news/stephanie-abbott-to-speak-at-scope-summit-for-clinical-ops-executives |
Very sad news for ‘Walking Dead’ fans, Scott Wilson who played Hershel Greene on the popular AMC show, has died at 76. The actor died at his home in Los Angeles late Saturday, according to his agent, Dominic Mancini. Wilson died after a long battle with leukemia, surrounded by friends and family. A rep for the ‘The Walking Dead’ said recently at Comic-Con that ‘Scott would be returning to the show for the new ninth season of the show. It’s unclear how many episodes Wilson will be in. The new season of the show premiers on Sunday on ‘AMC’.
Wilson was a veteran of more than 50 movies, starting in 1967 in ‘The Heat Of The Night’. That same year he starred along side Robert Blake, in the classic film ‘In Cold Blood’ adapted from Truman Capote’s book of the same name. Wilson played the part of true life murderer Richard Hickock. Wilson earned a spot on the cover of ‘Life Magazine’ in 1968, standing next to Truman Capote and Blake on location in Kansas. Wilson at the time was an unknown actor, and beat out Steve McQueen and Paul Newman for the role.
Wilson was cast in the role of Hershel Greene in 2011, after visiting his mother in Georgia. Wilson was a native of Thomasville, Georgia, and told the producers that his ‘mother was a huge fan of the show.’ His character was killed off in 2013, Wilson has appeared on the show since the character was killed off and had filmed episodes for the upcoming season. Wilson also had a recurring role on the Amazon series ‘Bosch’ playing Dr. Guyot. Wilson said in an interview that he’s had a lot of up and downs in his career, ‘a lot of dry spells’. Wilson explained, “you stick with it because you love it, or you leave it.” Wilson is survived by his wife of 41 years Heavenly Wilson. | http://accessthestars.com/actor-scott-wilson-of-the-walking-dead-dies-at-76/?v=recent |
Each and every working day, LaJune Zellmann spends hours tending to her 12 rock gardens, 70 pots, and planted hostas, geraniums, lantanas, and extra.
“I like playing in the dirt,” stated Zellmann. “It’s just sort of serene it will get the birds singing.”
Zellmann has been increasing her garden because she moved to the Belle Plaine property on Kittson Boulevard in the early 2000s.
“It started off genuinely small,” she said, “and then I just stored including perennials and perennials and additional perennials.”
In general, she’s not picky with her flowers. If she likes the shade, shape, and style, she’ll buy a new plant and take it again to her garden, though most of her bouquets are Mother’s Day items from her sons, Ross and Mike Zellmann.
Her favored flowers are the geraniums, lantanas, and Iris, and she primarily loves everything pink.
“It’s awesome what the Lord can do to distribute out the colour,” she said. “I plant it, I h2o it, and the Lord would make it grow.”
With the dry heat this summer season, she’s been likely out to drinking water her vegetation two or 3 occasions a day, in some cases spending properly in excess of two hrs tending to her yard.
By trial and error, she’s found that some bouquets carry more soreness than they are well worth, for case in point, Lily of the Valley.
“I really like them and they scent wonderful, but they just distribute everywhere you go,” she explained.
She states Snow on the Mountain and Wild Violets also unfold much too a great deal for her liking.
Her backyard is house to far more than just flowers it’s packed with ceramic bunnies, angels, h2o fountains, American flags, butterfly chairs, and other sculptures, which she picks up at garage income.
The segment of her yard that she’s most happy of is down in the vicinity of her barn, near to the highway. The backyard garden is stuffed with dazzling colors, fowl houses, benches, sculptures, and ceramic animals.
“Most people drive by, or when they’re operating, they will halt and glance. From time to time they’ll quit by my mailbox and take photos.”
She said one particular of her youthful neighbors likes to stroll as a result of the backyard garden and decide flowers to make her very own bouquet.
Zellmann reported she enjoys watching her take pleasure in the knowledge.
As the stop of summer season attracts near, Zellmann and her neighbors will devote time having fun with the beauty though it lasts.
“I nearly cry when I have to place the geraniums absent for the reason that it’s ordinarily October and we ordinarily have about 20 blooms on them and I have to just take them down since it is gonna freeze,” she stated.
But with the approaching adjust in seasons and winter season on the horizon, will come a tranquil peacefulness that she appears to be forward to as very well.
A time to rest, until finally it is time to carry her yard to everyday living yet again. | https://ohrobb.net/community-gardener-fills-yard-with-vivid-colours-information.html |
During times of uncertainty and stress, we recognize the importance of communicating with our community. Many aspects of our lives have been affected by the outbreak of COVID-19, and many of these same changes also have an impact on the financial markets.
We want to reassure you that MCF is always in close touch with Commonfund (our Outsourced Chief Investment Officer) and Boston Trust Walden (our socially responsive portfolio). We are communicating frequently with both. We developed our investment policies to help ensure investment decisions will align with our long-term mission and vision, and to help weather periods of market volatility. Together, we remain committed to these policies, which will support nonprofits in the short-term and help us achieve our long-term objective to build endowments that will support our community for generations to come.
On this page, we will provide insight into how we are responding to recent market developments and their potential impact.
While 2019 was a very strong year – inflation remained under control, employment was strong, and earnings growth was still supportive for equities – Commonfund recognized that we were in the late stages of a long growth cycle and decided to take a focused approach to sell into strength. As such, Commonfund tactically reduced its overweight to equities in the MCF endowment throughout 2019.
The policy portfolio, collectively designed by Commonfund and the MCF Investment Committee, is aligned with MCF’s long-term objectives. It is well-diversified to account for our return needs, risk tolerance, and liquidity requirement (to provide steady income to support annual distributions). As such, our portfolio contains four primary components: equities, fixed income, diversifying strategies, and real assets.
Equities (Growth Assets): The role of equities in the portfolio is to provide long-term growth and capital appreciation in support of our return needs.
MCF executes equities through both public and private strategies and, collectively, they represent the largest allocation in our portfolio. As noted above, we had been carrying a tactical overweight to equities in the portfolio, which has served us well in recent years. We reduced this overweight and changed the portfolio allocation to a neutral position by the end of 2019 in recognition of the signs of a slowdown in global growth and to sell into a position of strength.
Our public equity managers have generally performed in line with benchmarks during the recent downturn. The private equity investments, where value calculations are delayed by one quarter, are expected to boost MCF’s first quarter returns (because they will reflect fourth-quarter valuations). They will be priced into the portfolio by the second quarter of 2020. The use of both public and private equities (with regional and sector diversification) has enhanced portfolio returns over time, while also providing important diversification.
Relative to our peers, MCF has a higher allocation to private investments and these investments have been the primary driver behind our top decile performance for the 1-, 3-, 5- and 7-year returns ending December 31, 2018*.
Fixed Income (Deflation Hedge): The role of fixed income in the portfolio is to provide a source of income and liquidity, while also providing potential downside protection from negative volatility in the equity markets.
While fixed income has not offered attractive returns in the past few years, we’ve maintained an allocation close to our targets for the very reason that unfolded: an unforeseen drop in the equity markets. The fixed income portfolio has served its purpose and helped dampen the impact of the recent equity market volatility.
Diversifying Strategies (Diversification Benefits): The role of diversifying strategies in our portfolio is to provide a source of return that does not rely on the broad direction of either the equity or fixed income markets.
Over the past year or so, our portfolio has carried a slight overweight to diversifying strategies. Given a desire to add more flexibility and liquidity to the portfolio, we reduced the allocation to target weights coming into 2020. Not all diversifying strategies are priced daily, so we do not have a full comparative picture of how the strategies are faring relative to benchmarks. But the portfolio has provided much needed diversification away from traditional asset classes during this volatile period.
Real Assets (Inflation Hedging Strategies): The role of real assets in the portfolio is to serve as a hedge against inflation, and, for select strategies, to drive long-term capital appreciation.
Our real assets portfolio is diversified and includes both public and private natural resources, as well as both public and private real estate. The disruption we’ve seen across the energy sector has caused the valuations in natural resources to decline. Given our diversification between both public and private strategies, we expect the impact on values will be stretched out over the next several quarters because of the lag effect in reporting private returns that we described earlier. While inflation has been modest over the past several years, we do believe having a component of the portfolio that can provide inflation protection characteristics will be beneficial over the long-term.
* The last year available for comparisons from the Council on Foundations | Commonfund Study of Foundations, which we use as the basis for peer comparisons.
The major drop in equity valuations over the past several weeks has served to drive forward-looking price/earnings ratios below their 15-year average in the United States. Equity investments outside the United States, which had already been viewed as inexpensive from a valuation perspective, have experienced similar weakening in valuations. Given the interest-rate drop in fixed income, the recent market downtown has served to increase the attractiveness of equities relative to fixed income from a valuation perspective. To put this in context, the dividend yield on the S&P 500 is now three times greater than the yield on a 10-year Treasury note. Just as we “sold into strength” coming into the new year, we believe that increasing our equity and real assets allocations will enable us to potentially “buy into weakness.”
How does your investment performance compare to the recent volatility of your benchmark?
The precipitous drop in stock prices began on February 20, 2020. Relative to history, this is a particularly sharp decline over a short period of time. This selloff was triggered by increasing investor concerns over the spread of the coronavirus and its implications on global economic growth. It is far too soon to know the ultimate human, economic and market impacts from the coronavirus; therefore, we expect market volatility to remain high until the coronavirus is contained and we have passed peak infections rates. We have no insight as to exactly when that will happen.
In periods where volatility rises quickly and steeply, correlation among stock returns tends to be high. Selling tends to be indiscriminate and that is what we have experienced to date. In our experience, as market corrections become more prolonged, our focus on higher quality companies with sustainable business models trading at reasonable valuations has added value. The period from that date is only a few weeks, but our U.S. large cap strategy has generally held up modestly better than the S&P 500 and outperformed by about 125 basis points or 1.25%
Do you identify any opportunities with the recent market correction?
Yes, we are systematically reviewing our existing holdings (price changes, current valuations, etc.) as well as a much broader list of high-quality companies that we regularly monitor. During this time of crisis, we seek to identify companies in the portfolio that could be meaningfully impacted by the specific issues plaguing the market. Concurrently, we seek to identify new company investments that have very durable business models that have been dragged down with the broader market and now sell at very attractive valuations. We have made a few minor adjustments to the portfolio over the last few weeks and would expect to make a few more in the weeks ahead. Our aim is for Madison Community Foundation to remain invested in diversified portfolios of reasonably valued, high quality stocks with strong financials and attractive growth prospects.
As long-term investors, does COVID-19 currently affect your 5+ year outlook?
There will undoubtedly be an impact to markets and the broader economy in the short term. We cannot predict the future, but we do not think the companies we invest in will be feeling the effects of coronavirus in a meaningful way in 5+ years. For some perspective, in the Great Recession, it took about six years for the market to fully recover to the pre-crisis peak value (2007 to 2013).
Our general view over the past few weeks has mostly been driven by experience, which is that all crises pass. Further, actions taken in the midst of panic selling are incorrect more often than not. We believe that this crisis will pass as well, though we have no special insight on the timing of when this will be over. We note that the Madison Community Foundation has approximately 40% of its Boston Trust Walden portfolio holdings in bonds and money market funds. These holdings will help to buffer the volatility of the stock portfolio.
Finally, a philosophical note: to partake in stock market returns, investors must accept that volatility and uncertainty of returns are to be expected. And today, unfortunately, there are no attractive “safe harbors.” Longer-term bond yields are close to historic lows and their prices have been as volatile as stocks over the past week. Cash equivalents, which also have low yields, are the only stable choice. We would also not advise selling now and planning on buying back later when markets are calmer. That approach rarely works well. We believe having a long-term strategy and sticking with one’s discipline, especially during times of crisis, is the best way to build wealth over time. Even so, this is likely to be a very volatile and difficult period.
Get regular updates from MCF staff. Read our blog.
Carmen Jeschke(608) 232-1763 Email Carmen
(608) 232-1763 (888) 400-7643 Email
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Madison Community Foundation is a tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) community trust. EIN: 39-6038248. | https://www.madisongives.org/about/investment-updates |
Preliminary eurozone PMI indices for August, released this week, were lower than expected. The composite index for August was 56.1 versus an expected 56.3, but continued to show healthy expansion remained above the 50 mark in both the manufacturing and services sectors, albeit at a moderating pace. However, two things are becoming abundantly clear about eurozone industry trends for the full year: 1) Germany is a cornerstone to full year corporate performance; 2) German exports from the machinery & equipment, automotive and chemicals sectors will be key to improved potential growth prospects. Recent unexpected strength from the German services PMI, which was 58.5 against an expected 56.3, should not be interpreted as the key source of growth, since the services sector makes up a smaller part of the German economy and is dependent on industry demand. | http://www.forexhound.com/2010/08/27/industry-sector-weekly-by-lloyds-tsb-15/ |
We are firmly committed to diversity in all areas of our work. We believe that we have much to learn and gain from diverse cultures and perspectives, and that diversity will make our organisation more effective in meeting the needs of children, young people and adults.
We are committed to developing and maintaining an organisation in which differing ideas, abilities, backgrounds and needs are fostered and valued, and where those with diverse backgrounds and experiences are able to participate and contribute.
The Equal Opportunities Policy
Young People
The Scout Association is part of a worldwide educational youth movement. The values, which underpin and inspire its work, are embodied in the Scout Promise and Law and in the Purpose of the Association.
Within this framework, the Association is committed to equality of opportunity for all young people.
Accordingly:
The Scout Association is committed to extending Scouting, its Purpose and Method to young people in all parts of society.
No young person should receive less favourable treatment on the basis of, nor suffer disadvantage by reason of:
- class or socioeconomic status;
- ethnic origin, nationality (or statelessness) or race;
- gender (including gender reassignment);
- marital or civil partnership status;
- sexual orientation;
- disability (including mental or physical ability);
- political belief;
- pregnancy;
- religion or belief (including the absence of belief).
All Members of the Movement should seek to practise equality, especially in promoting access to Scouting for all young people. We should make adjustments where possible to support all young people with disabilities to access Scouting – see the section on Reasonable Adjustments on this page.
The Scout Association opposes all forms of prejudice and discrimination, including racism, sexism, and homophobia. All Scout Groups, as independent charities, have a duty to comply with relevant equalities legislation.
Further information about equalities legislation and Scouting is available via the members area of the www.scouts.org.uk
Note: With reference to gender, membership of the youth Sections of the Association is open to boys and girls, and young women and young men of the appropriate ages subject to the rules set out in 3.6, 4.6 and 5.6 in POR.
Leaders and other volunteers
To carry out its work the Association seeks to appoint effective and appropriate Leaders, and to involve other volunteers in supporting roles, all of whom are required to accept fully the responsibilities of their commitment.
The overriding considerations in making all appointments in Scouting shall be the safety and security of young people, and their continued development in accordance with the Purpose and Values of the Association.
Accordingly, all those whom the Movement accepts as volunteers must be appropriate persons to undertake the duties of the particular position to which they have been appointed (including, if relevant, meeting the requirements of the Sponsoring Authority) and, where appropriate, the responsibilities of membership.
In making an appointment to a particular leadership or support position it may be appropriate to consider the gender and/or ethnicity of the potential appointee, in particular to ensure appropriate composition of leadership or supporting teams.
The physical and mental ability of a particular potential appointee to fulfil a particular role will always be a relevant factor to consider.
Within these constraints no person volunteering their services should suffer disadvantage by reason of any of the issues already listed above for young people. Nor should they be discriminated by age.
Note: Sexual feelings directed towards children and/or a sexual interest in children is a bar to any involvement in the Scout Movement. | https://gdscouts.org.uk/faq/our-commitment-to-diversity/ |
Q:
A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma
The following message can be unambiguously decoded to reveal an eleven letter word. It can be deciphered with pen and paper, although knowing a bit of Python would probably help.
What is the word?
o83AfLftzPrpZPdflFo4AFlhTFIeOpvoRd5f5lFDfPrqnFudFfiSa
tHFiSapbVOp0vorvmApD4fLFpBvo1oaiEofF2lhTdFprpBvo2FieO
9dFlFdfPrfD3ifaPFieOoaiEko8iPhODfLfpb32vODfPrpVorPbvO
iF2c9pIPhoDFLff83DifaSFtOacoNQvmAppvqzUeOaftDFPrdf2lF
PVODieHOvA3QKQzUeDFp5rvaqKOp7zprpOcVdiehopBvodFprfD30
(Note: The original text had to be edited, but it still available in the edit history if anyone needs it.)
I can't think of any more clues I can offer without giving the whole thing away, but the answer can be obtained without any fancy arithmetic.
Clue 1:
Don't eat the fish
Clue 2:
Try the bacon instead
Clue 3:
And for dessert, perhaps the Cranberry Tart or Stilton Cheese?
Clue 4:
The keyword is important
A:
OK, so I'll post my working so far. I'm plodding along slowly with it :-)
Update: This working is all done with the original ciphertext. The same logic can be applied to the correct ciphertext and you'll end up at the numbers that the OP supplied part-way through the solve.
The second hint is a kind of cipher... how do we utilise it?
Convert lowercase letters to a and uppercase to b. Treat numbers as spaces. Decode it with the Bacon cipher.
Decrypting the first line like this gives us a translated ciphertext of
a babaaabaabbaaaba bbaabbbabaaaba a abbabaaabaabaaba
which in turn, decodes to
KEY WOR DIS
Continuing the remaining 4 lines in the same way, we get the following ciphertext and message:
a babaaabaabbaaaba bbaabbbabaaaba a abbabaaabaabaaba
abbabaaabba aaaaabab abbabaa aaabaab aababaaabaa baab
ababaabaab aaabbaabaaabaa ababbabaaa abbabaabaabaab
ab a abbaabbbaa baaabbabaaabbaabaaaaababaaabbbaaa ab
bbbbaabbab bbbababba aaaabba aaaababaaaaaabaaabaaab
KEY WORD IS JUMBLIES REVERSE LINES THEN DECRYPT PLAYFAIR
By following the first directive, we now have the ciphertext of
fEhkQzkQavrPfDFl5f5dRovpOeIFThlFA4oFlfdASifHtpzTfL38f
AooE2ifOeifRpFdr2PfdGmtn1ocAtOVb4PfLfdpam0vROvpoEiFQn
OcaOovBprOvPRp23fdoEiFOvBp8ohPiokEiaOOeif3PafIdfRoVp9
Qf2oeiFRPfdtFaOeuvhpItrEUvheIaOTfavU38fnQOEifOHp9i2Pc
03FidfRpfdOvbpoheOrZrovp7qNOcaot5fSAmVfLFD3OhEOrzPZQV
Now, this is the evil part.
In Playfair encryption, J gets translated to I, so our keyword is actually IUMBLES.
Decrypting with this, we get a string containing digits written out (one, two) and a lot of q characters which split up groups of digits (it's not unusual for q to be omitted from this kind of cipher, so they probably represent spaces). It isn't clear just yet what these numbers mean, or whether any should be combined together.
eightxhrexqonenineqtwofiveqnineqninesevenqtwonineqfivefiveqoneqonehundredqfournineqsixqtwofivethreeqfourqtwoqonefivefourqfourfiveqfiveqsevenqtwoohfiveqoneoneqsixfourqsixfiveqonexightfiveqfoursevenqonefourqfiftyqtwothreeqonesixnineqfiftytwox
The numbers are:
83 19 25 9 97 29 55 1 100 49 6 253 4 2 154 45 5 7 205 11 64 65 185 47 14 50 23 169 52
But these are wrong (@OP HOW COULD YOU!?) so we need these ones instead, provided by the OP :P
78 19 25 9 92 29 54 1 95 49 6 247 4 2 149 45 5 7 199 11 62 63 179 47 14 50 23 163 52
Interestingly, all the deciphering we've done so far has been purely alphabetical - the Bacon deciphering was done with upper/lowercase letters and we ignored the numbers as all characters in Bacon are comprised of 5 a/bs, and the Playfair decryption only uses letter digraphs, again discarding numbers.
There happen to be 5 digits in each of the 5 lines of the ciphertext (and they remained consistent between old/new ciphertexts):
83 4 5 5
0 4 1 2 2
9 3 8 32
2 9 83 2
3 5 7 30
A:
Continuing from Joes answer...basically all credit goes to him, since he only missed this part:
The unsolved part from Joes answer:
78 19 25 9 92 29 54 1 95 49 6 247 4 2 149 45 5 7 199 11 62 63 179 47 14 50 23 163 52
I did this:
I googled Jumblies and found a poem with the same name. The Jumblies
.
Taking the corresponding words from that poem you will get the following:
.
"go of on did the in....."
What they all have in common is that they are all:
Preposition!
Edit:
This could be wrong I created a script to double check: http://jsfiddle.net/fz29ruoy/1/
and it gives me the following words:
go of On did, Jumblies on be They heads every a they sea went said, round in Sieve, Their a big, But In round, went one could the ‘You’ll
And taking the first letter of each word:
goOd Job The atswsr iS Tabbirwocty
And I am guessing there are some typos or I have mistakes in my code:
Good Job the answer is:
.
Jabberwocky!!
| |
Çalışmalarınızı "Yazım ve Yayın İlkeleri" çerçevesinde Dergipark adresimizden yükleyiniz.
Abstract
“TEXT” CENTERED VALUES EDUCATION: SAMPLE OF GRADUATE THESES
This study aims to investigate 178 graduate theses, which were conducted to detect values in various texts, from different perspectives. The sample of the study, which was carried out with document analysis in survey model, consists of 178 graduate theses, being 160 master’s and 18 doctoral theses between the years 2009-2018. These theses were examined by the years they were prepared, education level, universities, materials used as samples, literary genres of the texts examined, the value classifications used in the research and the most preferred author-work distributions. The data of the research were analyzed by content analysis and the categories were presented in tables and graphs by using frequency and percentage values. According to the obtained findings, it was found that the text-based values education studies were prepared mostly in 2015, 2017 and 2018, and majority of the studies is in the master's degree program, Ataturk University is the institution where the highest number of the theses were published on this topic. It was also found that the materials used in the research mostly consist of literary works and textbooks; studies mostly dwell on multiple works of a single author; story and novel genres were examined more than the other literary genre. While Safahat and Dede Korkut Stories were the most studied works in the theses while Aytül Akal, Muzaffer İzgü, Yalvaç Ural and Yavuz Bahadıroğlu stand forefront as the most researched figures regarding the values in their works.
Keywords
Value, values education, text, graduate theses.
Adres :ANKARA
Telefon :0506 509 32 59 Faks : | http://www.avrasyad.com/DergiDetay.aspx?ID=819&Detay=Abstract |
This interview is part of our Road to the IGF series. You can find the rest by clicking here.
A vast landscape is open for the player to explore, shape, and document in Mu Cartographer, a game where players manipulate an alien device to look over and alter the lands they see.
Mu Cartographer offers many mysteries with little direction, letting players figure out its interface by fiddling with it to see its effects on the land. As they slowly come to understand the strange contraption, they can unveil more secrets buried deep in these colorful landscapes, combing through them with every change they make.
Titouan Millet's creation of curiosity and exploration earned him a nomination for the Nuovo Award from the Independent Games Festival, and Gamasutra recently spoke with him to learn what went into creating a mysterious device that lets players explore colorful, shifting lands.
What's your background in making games?
I taught myself programming while being in a game art section in a video game school in the North of France. I discovered indie games and they resonated with me. I decided to focus on personal game projects rather than working in a company to be more free to experiment and create original content. I quickly went into abstract and experimental projects, enjoying working with colors, shapes and motion, and to generate visuals by code.
How did you come up with the concept?
It was during the Exile Game Jam 2015 that I came up with the idea for Mu Cartographer. Initially, I was simply showing examples of a tool I use to make shaders in Unity. One of the examples ended up becoming an interactive landscape, explore-able and shape-able by modifying values in the shader.
What development tools were used to build your game?
I used Unity with one of my favorite plugins: a nodes-based tool to create shaders called ShaderForge.
How much time have you spent working on the game?
I worked on Mu Cartographer for one year, but not full time. I’d say it would make six months of working full time on the game.
Why give the player an interface they would need to learn to use?
A big part of the game is to learn how to use the machine. I could have made a whole tutorial, but it would have removed the surprise and a part of the abstract sandbox aspect. The idea was to reward the dedicated players who spend more time trying to figure out how the whole system works. With the acquired knowledge, they can manipulate the shape of the landscape in a more precise way, and they will discover more secrets.
Still, I wanted the interface to be fun to play with even without understanding its mechanism in its whole. The coexistence of these two aspects, experimental exploration and colorful sandbox, was one of my main objective with Mu Cartographer.
The visuals of Mu Cartographer are striking, drawing the player into colorful lands. How did you create that draw within the player through visuals? How did you design the look of the game to pique the player's curiosity and need to explore?
The landscape is procedurally generated, and corresponds to the configuration of the interactive elements on the abstract machine at a given time. It means that if two players set the machine in the exact same configuration, they will be able to contemplate the exact same landscape.
I worked on how much freedom to give the player and how much I would give them precision in their ability to shape the world. In some previous versions, there were way more detailed values alterable by the player, but not all were truly relevant or obvious enough when converted into actual visual modifications. I wanted each single interactive element to have its specific visible effect on the map.
The base of the landscape itself is made of a set of textures that I had to create myself and add details to them in order to offer variation in the landscape. I wanted the player to be able to find/create a certain amount of different landforms, mountains, rivers, clouds, seas, forests, valleys…
Also, the color palette you choose to render the world and how much you zoom in the map totally changes how you interpret what you see. And all that is only at a given location on the map. Now, add the possibility to move through it and you obtain a great deal of discoverable landscapes. I believe that all that, added to the story to unravel and all the secret cities to discover, creates the need to explore.
Why give the player a means to share their favorite locations through Twitter?
In my mind it was the same thing as taking a picture of a landscape during a trip or a hike in the mountains. The feature to post a screenshot directly to Twitter allows the player to immediately share their discoveries with the online community. It is nice to search Mu Cartographer on Twitter and see all the different landscapes people have discovered and shared. Some players were really dedicated in documenting their trip through screenshots thanks to this tool.
Have you played any of the other IGF finalists? Any games you've particularly enjoyed?
I’ve played a bunch of them. I’m in love with *Oik OS*, the dog opera by David Kanaga. I’ve been able to play an early version of the game and to talk a bit about it with David, and I’m very curious to discover what it’s going to become.
What do you think are the biggest hurdles (and opportunities) for indie devs today?
It is hard to stand out, and to communicate about your game when you’re alone. It is not easy to make a living out of it (I personally don’t). I guess big events like the IGF are real opportunities to show and talk about your game, and to meet a lot of other indies. But it has a price, and not everyone can afford it. Being nominated for the Nuovo award is really an honor for me, and an exceptional opportunity to tell the world about Mu Cartographer. | |
In his recent address to the UN General Assembly in New York, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani denounced sectarianism and attempts to promote religious divisions.
Yet in Iran, persecution of minority religious communities continues, and it is a matter of deep concern to the United States, said Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom David Saperstein.
The victims of that persecution and discrimination include Sunni Muslims and those who follow the Sufi tradition; also Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians, and dissident Shia adherents. But it is the Baha’i community, whose faith has been essentially criminalized, said Ambassador Saperstein, who suffer the severest repression:
“The very existence of the group is declared to be illegal. Its leaders are in jail in many cases, and often many of those in jail end up facing significant human rights abuses there as well… Any of the religious activities of the Baha’is are often repressed; [they] are persecuted, subject to arrest by the government.”
Not only are the Baha’is’ religious activities forbidden in Iran, Baha’i businesses are subject to arbitrary closure; individuals are attacked with impunity; graveyards are despoiled; and students are refused admittance to university unless they renounce their faith.
Ambassador Saperstein noted that “religion is an extraordinarily powerful part of the lives of the vast majority of people on earth.” It is, he added, an integral part of a person’s identity:
“So it goes to the core issues of the rights of someone to live in accordance with their conscience. When someone is told they can’t do that…and will be subject to repression or persecution or discrimination, then it divides that society along sectarian divisions; it creates different classes of citizenship.”
The result, said Ambassador Saperstein is a destabilized society, where the structures that should unify a society, are weakened.
In contrast, even when a government has a religious identity, but still protects the rights of all its people, that government “nurtures a kind of trust, a comity and a commonweal” that makes a country stronger. | http://iranpresswatch.org/post/15693/treatment-of-iranian-bahais-of-grave-concern/ |
On November 29, 2020 (Sunday) from 20:00 the Foundation “For Our Children” organizes its biggest charity event of the year – the Evening of the Virtues. For the first time due to the imposed anti-epidemic measures, it will be held entirely online through the virtual events platform MP-Studio Events. The event will be broadcast live from a specially built stage in Sofia Event Center, and each guest will be able to enjoy the exciting program from the comfort of their home.
For 11 years, every autumn, the Evening of Virtues brings together over 400 socially engaged leaders and visionaries in our society – representatives of socially responsible business, the non-governmental sector and cultural and social life, for whom children are the most valuable capital.
And this year the cause of the Evening of Virtues is early childhood development. We believe that in addition to the security of the family, intensive stimulation, thanks to which the youngest learn about the world around them and develop their potential, is a key prerequisite for their success in society, in education and employment in the future. Our goal is to use the funds raised by the event next year to support at least 1,000 children and their families to develop fully in early childhood – the age of 0 to 7 years. In the Early Childhood Development Centers in Sofia and Plovdiv, the foundation’s specialists – social workers, psychologists, rehabilitators, and family therapists will support children with developmental difficulties, children at risk of abandonment, children at risk of dropping out of the education system, living in poverty and isolation.
The theme of this year’s Evening of Virtues “Eyes of the Future” will immerse guests in an interactive story about the dreams of the organization in the coming years – the new vision of the future and the philosophy that only people can help other people. Ms. Ivanka Shalapatova, Executive Director of the For Our Children Foundation, will also present the idea of the new network of investors in early childhood development, which will be launched in 2021 in partnership with the international organization The Human Safety Net.
The hosts of the event will be the famous Bulgarian actors Elena Petrova and Kalin Vrachanski, and the traditional charity bidding, which will be realized in a new way in a virtual environment, will again be in the masterful hands of Igor Markovski.
In support of investments in early childhood development and their importance for the development of the full potential of children at a later age, guests will hear the voice of the golden teacher of Bulgaria, Mr. Theodosius Theodosiev-Theo. One of the most famous dancers in Bulgaria, Remi Toin, will take part in the evening with a choreography specially developed for the event, and the actors from the Musical Theater Ilona Ivanova and Denko Prodanov will present a musical gift for the guests with a performance of two emblematic duets from popular musicals.
Tickets for the event are worth BGN 150 and can be purchased online through the foundation’s website or by bank transfer. For confirmation or additional information: [email protected].
You can learn more about the event here.
For Our Children Foundation thanks the sponsors and partners of the event – Dundee Precious Metals, Special Events Group, Sofia Event Center, MP-Studio and MP Studio Events, EOS Matrix, Interlogistics Holding Limited Sofia, Sinevo, The Smarts, J Point, and Arlet Stars. Their support provides all organizational costs and provides the opportunity for 100% of the funds raised before and during the Evening of Virtues to be directed to the cause in support of early childhood development.
Last year, thanks to the nearly BGN 170,000 raised during the Evening of Virtues 2019, the foundation supported over 1,000 children and families. | https://www.detebg.org/en/the-first-online-evening-of-virtues-will-be-held-on-29-11-2020/ |
Listen to Murray discuss her bill at today's hearing.
(Washington D.C.) – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray's (D-WA) legislation to improve care for women veterans at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) passed the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee. The legislation, the Women Veterans Health Improvement Act of 2008, seeks to prepare the VA for the unprecedented influx of female veterans who will access care there in the coming years. The legislation addresses many of the unique needs of female veterans by authorizing programs to improve care for Military Sexual Trauma (MST), increase research on the current barriers to care, and expand women veterans staff positions at the VA.
"While women are playing an increasing role in our military and sacrificing on the front lines, they make up a small fraction of those receiving care at the VA," Senator Murray said at today's hearing. "We need to ensure that women have equal access to VA health care benefits and services, and that the VA health care system is tailored to meet the unique needs of women veterans. Planning for the wave of new women veterans is going to be a difficult and complex task, but this bill gets us on the right track."
Senator Murray's bill was passed as part of S. 2969 – The Veterans' Health Care Authorization Act of 2008 -- a larger "omnibus" bill that incorporated a number of different veterans' health care measures
A summary of Senator Murray's bill as passed today follows:
- The Women Veterans Health Care Improvement Act of 2008 -
A bill to expand and improve health care services to women veterans, particularly those brave women who have served our country in Iraq and Afghanistan. This bill aims to equip the VA for the long-term needs that will be associated with a greater women veteran population.
A Fast Growing Population with Unique Needs
Women veterans have unique mental and physical health care needs that the VA is currently underprepared to handle.
- Women make up 14 percent of our current active duty, guard and reserves.
- Today, there are approximately 1.7 million total women veterans, or 7 percent of the nearly 25 million total veteran population.
- It is projected that the number of female veterans who use the VA system will double in the next five years, assuming current enrollment rates stay the same, making female veterans one of the fastest growing subgroups of veterans.
- Among the issues women disproportionally face upon returning home are the effects of Military Sexual Trauma, the difficulties of being thrust into a care-giving role, child birth, and the difficulties of being less likely to have military service recognized or appreciated.
A Look at What the VA is Doing and What More Needs to be Done
This bill authorizes new assessments of the care we are and should be providing to women veterans.
- Requires VA to report to Congress on its comprehensive assessment of VA services and programs for women veterans, and submit a plan on how it will address the health care needs of women.
- Requires VA to work with the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a study on the health consequences for women veterans who served in OIF/OEF.
New Programs that Will Prepare the VA for Today and Tomorrow
This bill authorizes new programs aimed at improving the VA’s capacity to care for women veterans’ mental and physical health care needs.
The bill will require the VA to:
- Provide neonatal care to the newborns of eligible women veterans;
- Implement a program to educate, train and certify mental health professionals to specialize in the provision of mental health services regarding military sexual trauma;
- Create a pilot program – using the Department’s existing child care program for its employees – on the provision of child care to women veterans who require intensive outpatient care;
- Implement a pilot program to provide reintegration and readjustment services to women veterans in retreat settings;
- Report to Congress on the staffing for at least one full-time employee at each VA medical center who is a women veterans’ program manager, and
- Ensure that there are OIF/OEF veterans on the Advisory Committee on Women Veterans. | https://www.murray.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/newsreleases?ID=F1971CFF-044A-4F07-B1C2-BD0B6567F185 |
Publisher:
Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 1998, MCB UP Limited
FID/ET Pre-Congress Seminar. Towards the new information society of tomorrow: innovations, challenges and impact
FID/ET Pre-Congress Seminar. Towards the new information society of tomorrow: innovations, challenges and impact
Jaipur, India, 12-13 October 1998
The pre-congress seminar will explore the theme of the FID Congress (to be held in New Delhi, 15-17 October) with special emphasis on education and training. The increasing use of information and communication technologies in the work environment and in the daily life of communities challenges information professionals to ensure that information is accessible. These technologies pose a number of challenges for educators and trainers seeking to develop and implement a curriculum that is relevant to the modern information professional, yet able to be supported by the resources of universities, colleges and training organisations.
The seminar will provide unique opportunities for educators from around the world to exchange ideas on developments in education in their own countries, explore common trends and patterns in education and training, as well as differences in focus and emphasis, enhance their appreciation and understanding of the social and cultural contexts of education for the information profession, initiate contact with academic and professional colleagues who share common interests and concerns, learn about education and training opportunities in other countries.
Prospective participants are invited to submit abstracts for papers which adopt a forward-looking view in addressing the FID Congress theme, from the perspective of education and training. Suggested topic areas include:
- •
the impact of the new information society on education and training for information work;
- •
strategic alliances and partnerships: new opportunities for education and training in information work.
- •
the development of key knowledge and skills for the modern information professional;
- •
ensuring quality in education for the information professional of the future; and
- •
innovations in teaching tomorrow's information professionals.
The seminar will conclude with a working session of two/three hours, in which participants are invited to develop an agenda for FID/ET for the next two years and consider possible roles and tasks for themselves in furthering that agenda in their local, national or international communities. The papers selected for presentation at the seminar will contribute to the development of the FID/ET agenda and will be published. | https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/al.1998.17307iab.008/full/html |
Everyone lives and works in a river catchment. Everything you do in your backyard, your school playground, your farm or your business then has the potential to affect waterways lower down the catchment,and ultimately the ocean and marine life.
Even little things you do in your part of the catchment can help prevent big problems like toxic algal blooms elsewhere in the system.
What is a catchment?
A catchment area or basin is land which is bounded by natural features such as hills or mountains from which all runoff water flows to a low point. This low point will be a dam, a location on a river, or the mouth of a river where the water enters a bay or the ocean.
It's just like water in a bathtub flowing to the plughole, or water that falls on a roof flowing to a downpipe.
Sub-catchments
Catchment areas vary in size and make-up. Large catchment areas such as those drained by the Burdekin and Fitzroy Rivers are bordered by mountain ranges and include major drainage networks of creeks and rivers. Large catchment areas are made up of hundreds of smaller 'sub-catchment' areas. These can be bordered by low hills and ridges and drained by only a small creek or gully.
Catchment areas are important
What happens in one part of a catchment is likely to affect the wellbeing of the rest of the catchment area, so there are many things you can do to minimise your impact on the system.
For example, since stormwater drains run straight into our waterways, heavy rainfall can wash sediments, rubbish and pollutants into the rivers and eventually into the ocean. This may impact negatively on aquatic life, coral reefs and seagrass beds. It can also affect people who use the water, for example, for irrigation or stock watering.
Development decisions under the Environmental Protection Act 1994 involving pollutant discharge to waterways must consider environmental values and water quality objectives.
The State Planning Policy (SPP) sets out State interests that must be addressed through local government planning schemes, regional plans and when making decisions about the designation of land for community infrastructure. There are 16 State interests, (including coastal environment, and water quality) that are important to protect and enhance through Queensland's continued development.
Find out more about water quality under the SPP.
Well-known contaminants include oils, animal waste, litter, fertilisers and weed sprays. But grass cuttings, leaves and soil can also upset the waterways' ecological balance. Some pollutants directly poison aquatic and marine plants and animals; others harm the environment through eutrophication or sedimentation.
Natural disasters
Floods and cyclones are natural processes which can benefit the environment. Changes we make to our catchments can change the way they respond to flooding and cyclones.
Toxic algal blooms
The blue-green algal blooms which have caused serious damage to many of our waterways in the last few years are a result of accelerated eutrophication.
Accelerated eutrophication occurs where excess nutrients make their way into inland and coastal waters, allowing increased growth of algae. As the algae decay they deplete the oxygen content of the water and aquatic animals die in large numbers. Urban sewage and runoff from agricultural land and stormwater drains are the major causes of these damaging algal blooms.
So, we need to think of our roads, yards, farms and drains in the same way we do our creeks, remembering all stormwater eventually flows into our waterways.
Sedimentation
Sediments in waterways are particles of soils that have been washed from farms, construction and development sites, road stockpiles, sewage effluent and other sources.
Large amounts of sediments in the water reduces the amount of light able to reach the river beds and bay bottoms. That means aquatic plants and marine seagrasses don't have enough light to photosynthesise and die.
Sediments cause more problems as they sink to the bottom, because they alter the shape of estuaries and shores and smother filter-feeding marine life such as coral and sponges.
The combination of increased sediments and higher nutrients have been linked to massive dieback of seagrasses in many areas.
You can help care for catchments
You can do many little things such as reducing water pollution and conserving water to reduce your impact on your catchment. Minimising erosion around your home and business will also reduce problems downstream; tree planting and mulching prevents excess soil and nutrients getting into drains and creeks.
You can also help by joining your local Landcare or Waterwatch group and supporting programs that care for your catchment including programs being developed by your Regional Natural Resource Management Body.
Regional Natural Resource Management Bodies are a joint initiative between Queensland and Australian Governments. These groups develop regional Natural Resource Management plans and organise on-ground works and community events.
Regional Natural Resource Management depends on local people and local communities getting involved. To get involved or to find out more about Regional Natural Resource Management Bodies follow the Regional Natural Resource Management link above.
What is government doing to protect water quality?
Reef catchments
The Reef Water Quality Protection Plan is a collaborative program of coordinated projects and partnerships designed to improve the quality of water in the Great Barrier Reef though improved land management in reef catchments.
The plan is a joint commitment of the Australian and Queensland governments. Its primary focus is diffuse source pollution from broadscale land use. This is pollution that comes from a wide range of different sources and cannot be directly attributed to one point of dispersal, such as a pipe or waste outlet.
The plan sets ambitious, but achievable, targets for improved water quality and land management practices and identifies actions to improve the quality of water entering the reef. Initially established in 2003, the plan was updated in 2009 and 2013. It details specific actions and deliverables to be completed by 2018 when the plan will be reviewed.
The Reef 2050 Plan is the overarching framework for protecting and managing the Great Barrier Reef from 2015 to 2050. The Reef 2050 Plan is also a key component of the Australian Government’s response to the recommendations of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee.
Regional Natural Resource Management bodies are responsible for preparing water quality improvement plans to address water quality management. For information on these refer to your Regional Natural Resource Management Body.
Marine parks
Marine parks are established over tidal lands and waters to protect and conserve special areas while allowing for the planned use of marine resources.
Special areas protected by marine parks conserve important natural features such as seagrass meadows, mangroves, rocky shores, reefs, sandy beaches, bays, sheltered channels, rivers, creeks and estuaries.
These areas are home to a wealth of wildlife including whales, turtles, dugong, grey nurse sharks, fish, corals, birds and more.
Marine parks protect our marine environments from the threat of direct impacts, including land sourced runoff of sediments, nutrients and chemicals as well as the careless discarding of litter.
We can improve the health of our marine environments by:
- disposing of all rubbish properly
- taking cans, glass, plastics, fishing line and non-biodegradable wastes ashore
- not discarding pollutants in stormwater drains
- reducing your use of chemicals, fertilisers and pesticides.
Remember, what goes down your stormwater drain, sink and toilet or on your garden eventually reaches our marine environments.
Queensland marine parks include the Great Barrier Reef Coast Marine Park, Moreton Bay Marine Park and the Great Sandy Marine Park.
Find out more about Queensland’s marine parks.
Coastal management
Coastal environment interests are included in the State Planning Policy (SPP).
Additionally, the Coastal Management Plan commenced on 18 March 2014. It is made under the Coastal Protection and Management Act 1995. The Coastal Management Plan provides non-regulatory policy guidance to coastal land managers. | https://environment.des.qld.gov.au/management/water/catchment-care |
The MSRB was established by Congress as a self-regulatory organization to protect investors and the public interest by promoting a fair and efficient municipal securities market. The MSRB’s role includes developing rules to regulate the securities firms and banks involved in underwriting, trading and selling municipal securities. The MSRB Board, composed of members from the municipal securities dealer community and the public, sets standards for all municipal securities dealers. All MSRB rules are subject to oversight by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The MSRB creates standardized industry practices for trade confirmation, clearance and settlement, making it easier for dealers to complete transactions with one another.
New rules, including MSRB Rule G-11 on underwriting practices, are created to address major concerns among market participants regarding the operation of underwriting syndicates purchasing new issue bonds from issuers.
The MSRB establishes high ethical standards for dealers in the municipal securities industry, including rules on suitability, pricing and fair dealing.
The MSRB establishes a standard for a fixed-income securities market that allows investors in fixed-income instruments to more easily compare yields to analyze alternative investment opportunities in municipal securities.
Alphanumeric codes, or CUSIPs, were assigned by CUSIP Global Services to reflect the differences in securities that are relevant to trading and investment decisions. A new MSRB rule requires that CUSIP numbers appear on confirmations of transactions and that the securities delivered on those transactions match the CUSIP numbers appearing on the confirmations. The rule sets the stage for the computerization of the municipal securities market.
The landmark report marks the MSRB’s first public attempt to address pricing practices in the municipal securities market. The report grew out of dialog with the industry aimed at establishing broad parameters for acceptable spreads in transaction prices taking into account bond maturity and market risks and other factors.
One provision of the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act called for the elimination of all bearer securities. This provision encouraged the municipal bond market to move to electronic book-entry-only issuance, which has eliminated the use of paper certificates.
Through the MSRB’s adoption of new uniform practice rules, the municipal securities industry takes progressive steps toward an all-electronic standard for processing transactions in inter-dealer and institutional customer trades. This eventually eliminates the need for paper confirmations and physical settlements of these transactions.
The SEC mandates that underwriters for most bond issues obtain the issuer’s agreement to deliver an official statement to the underwriter within seven business days after the date of sale. The SEC also requires underwriters to review the official statement to determine whether all key factors had been disclosed. The landmark rule promotes increased disclosure and transparency in the municipal securities market.
The MSRB adopts a rule requiring dealers to send the MSRB two copies of the official statement. The MSRB begins serving as the central repository for official statements.
The MSRB adopts its pay-to-play Rule G-37, which prohibits a dealer from negotiating business with an issuer within two years after the dealer or one of its municipal finance professionals makes a political contribution to an issuer official.
The MSRB develops a daily summary report of bonds traded between dealers, a first step in providing comprehensive price transparency in the municipal securities market.
A new MSRB rule sheds light on dealer use of consultants to solicit municipal securities business. MSRB Rule G-38 requires that issuers contracted by consultants be informed that the consultants are working on behalf of a dealer.
The MSRB implements another major step in providing market transparency, expanding its daily reports on dealer trading to include transactions with customers.
The MSRB adopts an initial set of fair practices and other rules relating to dealer transactions in 529 college savings plans and local government investment pools, known as municipal fund securities.
The MSRB assembles leading municipal securities industry groups and initiates a long-range planning process that results in the creation of the Muni Council and a multi-year process to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of disclosure practices in the municipal securities market.
The MSRB launches its online system for the submission of official statements by underwriters, setting the stage for development of the Electronic Municipal Market Access (EMMA®) website.
The MSRB revised its Rule G-38 after industry trends indicate increased dealer compensation to consultants and an increase in political contributions by consultants. The revised rule prohibits hiring persons, other than employees, for the purpose of soliciting municipal securities business.
The MSRB requires dealers to submit transaction information to the MSRB within 15 minutes of execution of all trades, providing real-time public access to trade information.
In a series of regulatory actions, the MSRB adopts rules for disclosure and advertising of 529 plans that ensure fair and complete disclosure in the 529 plan market, consistent with mutual fund standards.
The MSRB publishes a concept release setting forth its vision of a centralized electronic disclosure system for the municipal securities market.
The launch of the pilot program for the Electronic Municipal Market Access (EMMA®) website was the first time that historical data and statistics on the municipal securities market were available from a single source, free of charge. EMMA is an online system that provides public access to disclosure documents, real-time trade price data and educational resources for the municipal securities market.
The MSRB launches a program to collect information about auction rate securities and variable rate demand obligations from broker-dealers and disseminate it to the public for free through EMMA. Dealers are required to provide the MSRB with interest rates set for auction rate securities and variable rate demand obligations. The program provides all market participants with additional critical information necessary to trade these financial products.
The MSRB revises its Rule G-32 to require municipal securities underwriters to submit electronic copies of official statements and advance refunding documents (rather than paper copies) to EMMA. Electronic documents make the submission process less costly and speeds dissemination to investors.
Under amendments to SEC Rule 15c2-12 adopted by the SEC in 2008, municipal bond issuers began to provide electronic copies of continuing disclosure documents to the MSRB through EMMA, which made them immediately available to the public. In 2009, the MSRB officially begins to collect all disclosure documents associated with municipal bonds under a combination of MSRB and SEC rules.
The MSRB revises its Rule G-37 to require disclosure of dealer contributions to municipal bond ballot campaigns.
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed by President Barack Obama on July 21, 2010, expands the MSRB's mission to include the protection of municipal entities and obligated persons. It also granted the MSRB rulemaking authority over municipal advisors. The Dodd-Frank Act also established a public majority Board of Directors for the MSRB.
The MSRB issues an interpretive notice to its Rule G-17 on fair dealing to outline explicit and expanded requirements for underwriters aimed at protecting state and local governments that issue municipal bonds.
MSRB enhances protections for investors by amending MSRB Rule G-11 to generally prohibit municipal securities dealers from providing consent to changes to authorizing documents.
Amendments to MSRB Rule G-11 establish certain basic protections for issuers and investors.
The MSRB creates explicit obligations for municipal advisors to supervise their personnel and promote compliance with regulatory requirements. The MSRB also requires that advisors meet threshold requirements in order to engage in municipal advisory activities.
The MSRB looks back on its four decades of efforts to ensure a fair and efficient municipal market with a commemorative video.
The MSRB begins requiring all municipal advisor representatives to take and pass the Municipal Advisor Representative Qualification Examination (Series 50) to demonstrate understanding of the regulations and business of engaging in municipal advisory activities.
The MSRB adapts an important investor protection from the corporate and equity markets for the municipal market with the creation of Rule G-18, which requires municipal securities dealers to exercise due diligence in obtaining the most favorable terms available when executing transactions for retail investors.
Program disclosure documents for tax-advantaged savings vehicles established by states under the Stephen Beck Jr., Achieving a Better Life Experience Act of 2014 (ABLE Act) are available on EMMA.
Municipal advisors become subject to Rule G-20, which protects against improprieties and conflicts of interest that may arise when regulated entities or their associated persons give gifts or gratuities in relation to the municipal securities or municipal advisory activities of the recipients’ employers.
The MSRB creates Rule G-42 to ensure firms and individuals that advise state and local governments on municipal finance transactions and products are subject to detailed regulations on their professional conduct, including rules furthering the federal fiduciary duty to their municipal entity clients established under Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
MSRB Rule G-37 is extended to municipal advisors to curb the giving of political contributions to state and local officials in exchange for the award of municipal advisory business, and provide greater transparency regarding the municipal advisors' political contributions.
The MSRB leverages advances in education technology to create MuniEdPro®, a suite of interactive, online courses designed specifically to reinforce understanding of municipal market activities and MSRB regulations.
The MSRB established continuing education requirements for municipal advisor firms to ensure that individuals providing municipal advisory services to municipal entities and obligated persons remains current in their industry knowledge.
In an effort to improve investors’ ability to assess the cost of transacting in municipal bonds, the MSRB created a rule to require municipal securities dealers to provide retail investors information about compensation dealers receive when buying municipal bonds from, or selling them to, investors.
See an online gallery of municipal securities regulation and a timeline of significant developments in financial securities regulation published by the Securities and Exchange Commission Historical Society.
Read the MSRB’s perspective on the distinctive regulatory model for the municipal securities market. | http://msrb.org/About-MSRB/About-the-MSRB/Creation-of-the-MSRB/Milestones-in-Municipal-Securities-Regulation.aspx |
Front right view of a White 1978 Mustang Cobra II hatchback. These are the original tri-color stripes of yellow, orange, and red which are on the bodysides, front spoiler, front bumper, hood, hood scoop, roof, decklid, and rear spoiler or wing.
Email the webmaster.
Return to the Home Page. | https://mustangattitude.com/cgi-bin/showcar.cgi?type=search&line=163817462048&pic=/1978/1978_00023_07 |
Susan Stroman is a theatre director, choreographer, film director and performer. Her notable theater productions include The Producers, Crazy for You, Contact, and The Scottsboro Boys. She is a five-time Tony Award winner, four for Best Choreography and one as Best Director of a Musical for The Producers. In addition, she is a recipient of two Laurence Olivier Awards, five Drama Desk Awards, eight Outer Critics Circle Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, and the George Abbott Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater. She is a 2014 inductee in the American Theater Hall of Fame in New York City.
“Stro” started her career as a Choreographer of shows like Show Boat and Crazy for You, before following in the steps of Fosse and Bennett and becoming a Director/Choreographer. The Music Man, The Producers, Young Frankenstein, and The Scottsboro Boys are just a few of the titles on her long resume.
That transition from Broadway dancer to Broadway Choreographer to Broadway Director-Choreographer is just one of the things we discussed in her podcast, along with:
How she convinced Kander & Ebb to let her and some friends create the (fantastic) revue that started her Choreographic career.
Her first step when she’s creating “steps.”
Why she doesn’t have a style, but how she does have a signature (and hear my mind get blown as I realize what she’s talking about).
Why Choreographers make great Directors.
How to work with titans of the entertainment industry like Mel Brooks and Woody Allen. | https://www.susanstroman.com/news/the-producers-perspective |
How do schools calculate cost of attendance?
How do schools calculate cost of attendance?
Cost of attendance (COA) is your estimated annual school cost, including tuition and fees, books and supplies, room and board, transportation and personal expenses. Schools subtract your EFC from their cost of attendance to calculate the maximum amount of need-based aid you can receive.
Do schools get paid when students are absent?
A. No, school districts do not receive any funding for excused absences. If a child is enrolled in school, but has the flu or is absent for an excused reason, the school is penalized that day. Before then, schools received funding if the parents called or a doctor’s note was given, but after 1998, that changed.
How many days off is 95% attendance?
Attendance
|%||Days Absent|
|95||9 days off|
|96||7 days off|
|97||5 days off|
|98||4 days off|
What is a good school attendance rate?
95%
An attendance rate of 95% is generally considered good; this allows for children to miss 9.5 days across the school year. Persistent absence (PA) is defined as an attendance rate of 90% or below.
WHO calculates cost of attendance?
As dictated by Congress, the COA is the average cost to attend for one academic year (fall through spring). It includes tuition and fees, books and supplies, room and board, transportation, and personal expenses. Colleges adjust the COA yearly to reflect changes to these costs.
What are the 5 expenses of cost of attendance?
There are five main categories of expenses to think about when figuring out how much your college education is really going to cost: tuition and fees, room and board, books and supplies, personal expenses, and transportation.
How much is every student worth?
California K-12 schools receive $7.68 billion, or $1,224 per pupil, from the federal government. State funding totals $51.78 billion or $8,254 per pupil. Local funding totals $32.18 billion or $5,130 per pupil.
How much money does a school lose when a student is absent in California?
For System Leaders: Because a lot of school funding in California is based on “average daily attendance” (ADA), not enrollment, a school loses approximately $85 per day for every student absent.
Is it bad to miss 10 days of school?
It depends on the state, but in general, most schools define chronic absence or chronic absenteeism as a student missing 10% of the school year. This translates to around 18 days (depending on the school’s defined number of school days), and this can affect your child moving up a grade.
How many days are needed for 75% attendance?
So in order to gain 75% attendance, you have attend 75% of 108 days classes ie., 81 days classes to maintain 75% attendance. That means you can miss approx 2 days classes in order to meet the required percentage . Hope it helps..!
How to get an estimated cost of attendance form?
In order to receive a Form I-20 or DS-2019, the student must show sufficient funding to cover their estimated cost of attendance for at least 1 year or for the time remaining in their academic program, whichever is less.
How to determine Texas a & m estimated cost of attendance?
Funding documents from these sources must explicitly state the amount of funding a student will receive. If Texas A&M University funding does not fully cover the student’s estimated cost of attendance for at least 1 year, the student will be required to show additional financial resources to make up the difference.
Why do we need attendance sheets in schools?
It helps a teacher or an institution/school at large to monitor the regularity of students and preserve it for future requirements. It has been made mandatory by the Education Ministry to maintain records of student’s presence for every academic year.
What happens in the first column of the attendance sheet?
The first column is for the attendance of that particular date. All the cells in the sheet bear “P” that is present. You only need to change the absent roll number to “A” if the student is absent. It will automatically give its retrospective effect everywhere in the sheet. Cell bearing A will changes its color to Light Red. | https://nanodrop.org/2019/06/26/how-do-schools-calculate-cost-of-attendance/ |
Material:
Steel
Colour:
Matte black, white, outdoor treatment option
Nominal Heat Output:
6 kW
Efficiency:
57.8%
A Functional Piece of Art
Gyrofocus has been honoured the world over as a design object as well as a functioning fireplace. It has been exhibited in the Bordeaux Contemporary Art Museum, the National Centre of Contemporary Art in Grenoble, and New York’s Guggenheim Museum. It has also been featured in the work of Norman Foster among other renowned architects, and has even appeared in a James Bond film. | https://gaslogfiresmelbourne.com/product/focus-gyrofocus/ |
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