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142 F.3d 446
NOTICE: Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3 provides that dispositions other than opinions or orders designated for publication are not precedential and should not be cited except when relevant under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, or collateral estoppel.United States of America, Plaintiff--Appellee,v.Amado Gerry LOPEZ, Defendant--Appellant.
No. 97-30221.D.C. No. CR-96-00042-CCL.
United States Court of Appeals,Ninth Circuit.
.Argued and Submitted Mar. 5, 1998.Decided Apr. 7, 1998.
Appeal from the United States Court for the District of Montana Charles C. Lovell, District Judge, Presiding.
Before SCHROEDER, ALARCON and HAWKINS, Circuit Judges.
1
MEMORANDUM*
2
Amado Lopez ("Lopez") was convicted by a jury of the crime of being a convicted felon in possession of firearms in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). The jury was informed that Lopez stipulated that he had been convicted of a felony.
3
In this appeal, Lopez asserts that the following rulings by the district court were erroneous. Prior to trial, the district court granted the Government's in limine motion to preclude Lopez from presenting evidence to support the defense of entrapment by estoppel. The court ruled that Lopez could not call a defense witness who was present in the courtroom in violation of an order excluding all witnesses. The court also admitted evidence, over objection, that Lopez was in possession of firearms six months after the sale of a Winchester rifle. The court found this evidence relevant to the credibility of the testimony given by Lopez's wife.
4
We affirm because we conclude that the district court's rulings in each instance were not erroneous. We discuss each of Lopez's contentions and the facts pertinent thereto under separate headings.
5
* ENTRAPMENT BY ESTOPPEL
6
Lopez's May 7, 1997 notice to the court that he intended to rely on the defense of entrapment by estoppel was supported by the statements of Cajun James ("James"), a federally licensed firearms dealer in Eureka, Montana, and Marshall M. Myers ("Myers"), a Montana attorney and former federally licensed firearms dealer. It is undisputed that Lopez did not purchase a weapon from either James or Myers. The indictment charged that Lopez purchased the weapon in question from Matthew Stofey ("Stofey"). James' statement reads as follows:
7
Within days of Mr. Lopez becoming a United States citizen, he came to me to inquire about his ability to own a firearm. I told him that to the best of my knowledge he was able to purchase a firearm upon receiving (sic) his citizenship. As a licensed representative of the B.A.T.F., I researched the laws available to me and could find no reason to deny his 2nd Amendment rights awarded him by his newly acquired citizenship. I then informed him of my findings.
8
In a statement dated May 5, 1997, and addressed "To Whom It May Concern," Myers asserted:
9
On or about the latter part of April, 1994, I was approached by Jerry Lopez to research his right to carry a firearm in Montana. Mr. Lopez informed me that while he was a legal alien living in Florida, he was convicted on a drug violation in the state of Florida. He then stated that he served some time in prison and was released after an appeals judge overturned the decision.
10
....
11
I told Mr. Lopez that based on what he had told me, that I didn't see any problem with his owning a rifle in Montana [in accordance with M.C.A. § 46-18-801], but that he should check with his attorney in Florida, as to applicable Florida law.
12
The information given to Mr. Lopez was based on my experience as a Montana attorney, juvenile public defender for Lincoln County, Montana, and as a former federal firearms licensed dealer.
13
On May 16, 1997, the Government filed a motion in limine requesting the court to prohibit Lopez from relying on the testimony of James and Myers to prove his defense of entrapment by estoppel. Responding to an inquiry by the court during argument on the Government's motion, defense counsel informed the court that on the Firearms Transaction Record, Lopez "answered no to the question of whether he had a prior felony conviction." The court ruled that Lopez would not be permitted to rely on the defense of entrapment by estoppel.
14
Lopez argues that the defense of entrapment by estoppel is available to a convicted felon who relies on a representation of a federal firearms licensee, even if this licensee did not sell him a weapon. We review de novo a district court's decision that a defendant may not rely on the defense of entrapment by estoppel. See United States v. Brebner, 951 F.2d 1017, 1024 (9th Cir.1991).
15
The Government maintains that Lopez has "abandoned, forfeited or waived" the defense of entrapment by estoppel. Lopez called his wife to testify that he never possessed the firearms described in the indictment. The Government contends that this evidence is inconsistent with Lopez's defense of entrapment by estoppel that Lopez cannot be found guilty of possessing a firearm because he did so in reliance on a federal firearms licensee's erroneous representation. We agree with the Government that Lopez asserted inconsistent defenses.
16
Under the law of this circuit, however, an accused may present inconsistent defenses. See United States v. Demma, 523 F.2d 981, 985 (9th Cir.1975) (en banc). In Demma, we held that "the rule of inconsistent defenses must extend to entrapment." Id. Accordingly, Lopez is not barred from requesting review of the district court's May 19, 1997 order granting the Government's motion in limine to bar the defense of entrapment by estoppel.
17
While ignorance or mistake of the law is generally not a defense, the Supreme Court has created an exception where a party legitimately relies on the false or misleading representations of a government official. See Raley v. Ohio, 360 U.S. 423, 425-26, 79 S.Ct. 1257, 3 L.Ed.2d 1344 (1959); Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 559, 571, 85 S.Ct. 476, 13 L.Ed.2d 487 (1965). "Entrapment by estoppel applies when an official tells the defendant that certain conduct is legal and the defendant believes the official." United States v. Hsieh Hui Mei Chen, 754 F.2d 817, 825 (9th Cir.1985) (citing Cox v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 559, 85 S.Ct. 476, 13 L.Ed.2d 487 (1965)). The defense is based on principles of fairness and due process and focuses on the conduct of the government official rather than the defendant's state of mind. See Brebner, 951 F.2d at 1025.
18
To prevail under an entrapment by estoppel theory, the defendant must show 1) that an authorized official was involved; 2) that the defendant relied on false or misleading information provided by the official; and 3) that the defendant's reliance was reasonable. Id. Reliance on misleading information given by an official is reasonable if "a person sincerely desirous of obeying the law would have accepted the information as true, and would not have been put on notice to make further inquiries." United States v. Lansing, 424 F.2d 225, 227 (9th Cir.1970).
19
In United States v. Tallmadge, 829 F.2d 767 (9th Cir.1987), we held that a federal firearms licensee may be considered a government official for purposes of the defense of entrapment by estoppel. Tallmadge was convicted of a felony offense that had been reduced to a misdemeanor. He truthfully informed the federal firearms licensee who sold him the weapon "of all the relevant historical facts" concerning his conviction and sentence. Id. at 774. Tallmadge relied on the representation of that federal firearms licensee that his purchase and possession of a firearm was lawful. See id.
20
The facts presented by Lopez are readily distinguishable from those we relied on in our decision in Tallmadge. Lopez did not purchase a firearm from James. Lopez did not fill out a U.S. Department of Treasury Firearms Transaction Record in the presence of James. Thus, James did not give Lopez any advice regarding the answers he should give in filling out the form. In Tallmadge, the defendant answered "no" to the question whether he had been convicted of an offense punishable by imprisonment for a time exceeding one year, only after being erroneously informed by a federal firearms dealer that this was the correct response. See id . at 768.
21
The offer of proof Lopez made to the court on May 7, 1997, indicates that he did not truthfully inform James of "all the relevant historical facts." Lopez did not represent to the court in his May 7, 1997 proffer that he informed James that he had completed a five-year term of probation after being convicted of a felony. Instead, the offer of proof indicates that Lopez asked James if it would be lawful for him to purchase a firearm now that he had become a United States citizen. Thus, Lopez has not demonstrated that his reliance on James' representations was reasonable despite Lopez's failure to disclose the relevant facts.
22
Tallmadge is also inapplicable to Lopez's reliance on Myers' advice because Myers was no longer a federal firearms licensee when he advised Lopez. Application of the Tallmadge rule is limited to the representation of "an authorized agent of the federal government who, like licensed firearms dealers, has been granted the authority from the federal government to render such advice." Brebner, 951 F.2d at 1026. Furthermore, Myers informed Lopez he was not familiar with Florida law regarding the effect of the reversal of a sentence on the judgment of conviction. Myers informed Lopez that he should consult his attorney in Florida regarding his right to own a firearm. This advice put Lopez on notice that he should make further inquiry before purchasing a firearm. See Lansing, 424 F.2d at 227. Lopez has failed to demonstrate that his reliance on Myers' advice, without further inquiry, was reasonable.
23
Our holding in Tallmadge was limited to the effect of an erroneous representation made by a federal firearms licensee who sold a weapon to the convicted felon. We stated:
24
The prosecution and conviction of Tallmadge for the receipt and possession of firearms, after he was misled by the government agent who sold him the weapons into believing that his conduct would not be contrary to federal law, violated due process.
25
Tallmadge, 829 F.2d at 775.
26
Here, it is undisputed that the person who sold and delivered the Winchester rifle described in the indictment did not represent to Lopez that he could lawfully possess it. Lopez failed to demonstrate in his May 7, 1997 offer of proof that he informed a government agent of all the relevant historical facts regarding his felony conviction or reasonably relied on the representations of a federal firearms licensee. Therefore, we hold that the district court did not err in concluding that the defense of entrapment by estoppel was not supported by facts presented by Lopez prior to the court's May 19, 1997 order granting the Government's motion in limine.
II
REJECTION OF DEFENSE WITNESS
27
Lopez asserts that the district court abused its discretion in refusing to allow a defense witness to testify. The witness had remained in the courtroom during the presentation of the prosecution's case in violation of an exclusion order. We review the imposition of a sanction for a violation of Rule 615 of the Federal Rules of Evidence for abuse of discretion. See United States v. Avila-Macias, 577 F.2d 1384, 1389 (9th Cir.1978) ("The appropriate sanction for violation of a witness exclusionary rule is a matter which lies within the sound discretion of the trial court.").
28
Rule 615 provides: "At the request of a party, the court shall order witnesses excluded so that they cannot hear the testimony of other witness." Fed. Rule Evid. 615. In the instant case, the district court granted the Government's motion for witness exclusion to be in effect as soon as witness testimony began in the proceedings.
29
The Supreme Court has held that if a witness violates a trial court's exclusionary order, he or she is not automatically disqualified from testifying. See Holder v. United States, 150 U.S. 91, 92, 14 S.Ct. 10, 37 L.Ed. 1010 (1893). Rather, there must be particular circumstances justifying disqualification. See Taylor v. United States, 388 F.2d 786, 788 (9th Cir.1967). The term "particular circumstances" has been interpreted to mean "some indication the witness was in court with the consent, connivance, procurement or knowledge of the appellant or his counsel." Id. (citations and internal quotation marks omitted); see also United States v. Hobbs, 31 F.3d 918, 922 (9th Cir.1994). Therefore, in determining whether exclusion was an appropriate sanction in this case, considerable weight must be given to whether Lopez or his attorney knew of or consented to the violation of the exclusion order. See United States v. English, 92 F.3d 909, 913 (9th Cir.1996).
30
The district court did not abuse it discretion in excluding Gallegos' testimony because the record clearly indicates that Lopez's attorney knew that Gallegos was in the courtroom in violation of the court's exclusionary order.
III
ADMISSIBILITY OF IMPEACHMENT EVIDENCE
31
Lopez also challenges the district court's admission of rebuttal testimony that he was in possession of firearms six months after the alleged criminal violation. We review the court's admission of evidence for abuse of discretion. See United States v. Hicks, 103 F.3d 837, 843 (9th Cir.1996).
32
To support Lopez's defense that he did not possess the firearms set forth in the indictment, Lopez's wife testified on direct examination that she was aware of her husband's prohibited status. She further testified that she kept all guns out of her husband's possession in a locked cabinet to which she held the key. On cross-examination Mrs. Lopez testified that her husband always took steps to make sure that he wasn't around firearms. She replied affirmatively to a question whether "[h]e never wore one like in a waistband or anything like that."
33
In rebuttal, the Government called Detective Steve Hurtig ("Hurtig") of the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department. Hurtig testified that during an interview at Lopez's residence in April, 1995 he saw Lopez remove a two-and-a-half inch pistol from his waistband. Hurtig also observed a shotgun and an "SKS" type rifle with a banana clip. The court overruled Lopez's objection to Hurtig's testimony and gave the jury an instruction limiting the use of this evidence to test Mrs. Lopez's credibility.
34
Following the presentation of Hurtig's testimony, Lopez moved for a mistrial claiming that Hurtig's testimony was irrelevant and unduly prejudicial to his case. The district court ruled that the rebuttal testimony was in direct contradiction to Mrs. Lopez's testimony and that it caused no undue prejudice. We agree.
35
Impeachment testimony is highly relevant to the credibility of a witness. See United States v. Tom, 640 F.2d 1037, 1039 (9th Cir.1981). The evidence of Lopez's subsequent possession of firearms directly contradicted Mrs. Lopez's testimony that the guns were kept in a locked cabinet because of her husband's status.
36
Impeachment testimony by its very nature is prejudicial because it's purpose is to attack the credibility of a witness. Particularly where the veracity of a key witness is challenged, impeachment evidence is necessary for the jury to evaluate his or her credibility. See id. at 1039-40. While Hurtig's testimony may have been prejudicial, it was highly probative of Mrs. Lopez's credibility. The district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting evidence that directly contradicted Mrs. Lopez's attempt to persuade the jury that her husband did not have guns in his possession because he knew that as a convicted felon, he was prohibited from doing so.
37
AFFIRMED.
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and may not be cited to or by the courts of this circuit except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3
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7 stages where gene regulation can occur
1.) Transcription Initiation
2.) Posttranscriptional Processing
3.) RNA Stability
4.) Translation
5.) Protein Modification
6.) Protein Transport
7.) Protein Degradation
2 type of "things" that regulate transcription
trans-acting factor (usually protein)
cis-acting elements (DNA)
Trans-acting Factors (usually protein)
transcription factors (or sigma factors)
transcription activators/repressors
transcriptional regulators
Trans-acting factors do 2 things:
1.) bind DNA directly, or are recruited to DNA by other factors
2.) Influence transcription (positively or negatively), either by directly recruiting polymerase (or blocking it), or indirectly by recruiting other factors
Cis-acting elements (DNA) (5)
promoters
enhancers
regulatory binding site
regulatory sites
activator/repressor sites
Sequences on the DNA that are recognized and bound to by trans-factors... (2)
Can contain a single binding site, or a cluster of sites (e.g. enhancers)
Can be near the start site (i.e. promoters) or far away (e.g. enhancers)
Transcriptional regulation can occur in __ or ___
cis or trans
You create a mutant cell line that is unable to express Gene X.
How do you determine whether the mutation is in the promoter (or other
cis-acting element) for Gene X, or in a trans-acting factor that positively
regulates transcription of Gene X?
Introduce a 2nd copy of Gene X and see whether its expression is affected by the mutation
Mutation in the Cis-acting element
Regulation in cis occurs when a region only affects transcription of the DNA strand it is on (i.e. it cannot impact transcription of another DNA strand). Regulatory sites on the DNA act in cis.
Mutation in the Trans-acting factor
Regulation in trans occurs when a factor can affect transcription on any DNA strand. Transcription factors act in trans.
You create a mutant cell line with no expression of Gene X. You introduce a second copy of Gene X in a plasmid (complete with Gene X’s promoter). The second copy of Gene X is expressed. Is the mutation in
A.) a cis-acting element
B.) a trans-acting factor
A.)
You run a Northern blot and probe with Gene X (will detect both
copies). If the mutation was in a trans-acting factor, which one would your blot look like?
B.)
Trans-acting factors bind to..... (5)
transcription factors (repressors and activators)
architectural regulators
cofactors (coactivators and corepressors)
insulator-binding proteins
effectors
cis-acting elements bind to.... (3)
regularoty sites (enhancers, promoters, etc.)
Architectural regulator-binding sites
insulators
Transctiption factors: repressors...
negatively regulate transcription by competing with RNA pol or other activators for binding to the promoter
Transcription Factors: Activators ....
positively regulate transcription by recruiting or enhancing recruitment of the transcription machinery to the promoter
Describe how transcription factors can act from long distances (eukaryotic)
Transcription activators bind to distant regions from the promoters (i.e. enhancers or regulatory sites) and help to recruit transcription machinery to promoters. Enhancers can be very, very far away from the promoter, like megabases
causes DNA looping
DNA looping (eukaryotic)
When a transcription factor bound to an enhancer binds to the promoter, it links the two distant regions and forms a loop of DNA between them
Architectural Regulators (eukaryotic)
Architectural regulators bind to DNA at architectural regulatorbinding sites and alter the structure of the DNA/chromatin, which indirectly facilitates transcription by making it easier for distant transcriptional activators to reach the promoter.
Cofactors
Cofactors (coactivators and corepressors) are proteins that do not bind DNA directly, but can facilitate interactions that activate or repress transcription
Insulators (eukaryotic)
Insulators are cis elements that block activators and repressors from being able to affect transcription from one side of the insulator to the other.
Also called boundary elements.
How they do this is still unclear. They probably block DNA looping.
Effectors
Effectors are small molecules that can bind to transcriptional regulators and affect their function.
• Effectors (as a class) can help to repress transcription (inhibitor), or they can help to activate transcription (inducers)
• Effectors are sometimes metabolites produced by the gene they regulate, and can act in a positive or negative feedback loop
Which trans-acting factor both binds to a cis-acting element as well as directly recruits RNA polymerase?
A. Coactivator
B. Inducer
C. Architectural regulator
D. Activator
D. )
Proteins that act by bridging activators and RNA polymerase are called:
A. Insulators
B. Corepressors
C. Enhancers
D. Coactivators
D. )
The lac Operon (image)
lacZ, lacY, and lacA –
encode proteins that metabolize lactose
lacI and lacO -
regulate when lac operon is expressed
Mutations in lacI or lacO lead to uncontrollable expression of....
Lac genes
lacI and lacO are important for ______ lac operon expression
repressing
lacI
encodes protein called lac repressor
lacO
binding site for lac repressor (called an Operator)
Lac repressor binds to the operator sequence to block....
Lac Expression
Does lacO act in cis or in trans?
A. Cis
B. Trans
A.)
Does lacI act in cis or in trans?
A. Cis
B. Trans
B.)
In the absence of lactose, .....
the lac repressor blocks transcription
In the presence of lactose, .....
the lac repressor is blocked, allowing transcription
An inducer (a type of effector)
binds to the lac repressor, .....
blocking its function and allowing lac expression
It’s called an inducer because it induces the operon, not because it induces the repressor (i.e. the inhibitor of an inhibitor is an activator)
The inducer is called allolactose
Allolactose
allolactose is a byproduct of lactose metabolism by the lac operon
when allolactose is produced, it blocks the lac repressor allowing lac expression
What a minute?! You need the lac genes
to be turned on in order to produce
allolactose, but allolactose is required to
induce the lac genes. So how do you turn
on the lac genes if your inducer requires
them to already be on?!!!
The lac repressor isn’t 100% efficient, and a low basal level of the lac genes are always expressed, producing just enough allolactose when lactose is present to block the lac repressor.
There are actually 3 lac
repressor binding sites on the lac operon:
O1, O2, and O3
O_ is the original and is the only one required
1
The lac repressor binds to O1 and either O2 or O3, creating
a loop
The loop physically blocks ___ _______
RNA polymerase
What would happen if you mutated lacZ?
A. You wouldn’t be able to metabolize lactose, but the
other Lac genes would still be expressed
B. The lac operon would become constitutively expressed
C. You couldn’t make allolactose, and couldn’t stop the lac
repressor
D. The same effect as if you mutated lacI or lacO
C.)
Lactose is not as efficient an energy source as ....
glucose
How does the lac operon know when glucose is present?
Cyclic AMP (cAMP) is over-produced when glucose is absent, but turned off when glucose is abundant
When glucose is not there, cAMP ....
is how the cell tells Lac operon and other sugar metabolizing operons that it’s time to turn on. cAMP is an inducer of Lac expression.
cAMP binds to a protein called _______ to
activate it
cAMP responsive protein (CRP)
CRP-cAMP binds to the Lac promoter to activate transcription (i.e. it’s an activator)
In the absence of lactose, the lac repressor is still bound, preventing CRP cAMP from turning on the lac genes when there’s nothing for them to metabolize.
glucose high, cAMP low, lactose _____
absent
In the presence of glucose, there’s no cAMP-CRP, so no effect on the lac operon.
no gene expression
glucose low, cAMP high, lactose ____
absent
In the absence of glucose, cAMP-CRP can bind to the Lac promoter, but if lactose is also absent, the lac repressor blocks cAMP-CRP
no gene expression
glucose high, cAMP low, lactose ____
present
When glucose is high, there’s no free cAMP-CMP. If lactose is also present, the lac repressor is blocked, but the positive signal given by cAMP-CMP is not there to help and only very low transcription can occur.
low level of gene expression
glucose low, cAMP high, lactose ______
present
When glucose is low, cAMP-CMP bind to the lac promoter. If lactose is high, then the lac repressor is unbound and high transcription
high level of gene expression
X-gal
a substrate for lacZ (b-galactosidase)
• Turns blue when lacZ is active
• Used to measure lacZ expression
IPTG
an inducer, binds to lac repressor to block it, allowing lac expression
researchers wanted to study mutations in the lac operon. They treated their mutants with IPTG to activate the operon, then added X-gal to visualize lacZ expression. In their mutant, the cells did not turn blue, indicating a problem with ....
lac expression
Which of the following statements about regulation of the lac operon is true?
A. When glucose is present, gene expression is activated by lactose.
B. The amount of glucose in the growth medium does not affect the
level of gene expression activated by lactose.
C. The binding of the Lac repressor to the operator is not affected by
the presence of glucose.
D. Gene expression is high when the Lac repressor is not bound to the
operator and glucose is available.
C.)
You are studying the lac operon, and want to switch on expression
of the lac operon, by adding something to your media. Which of the following would not work to turn on the lac operon? (assume there’s no glucose in your media)
A. Lactose
B. Allolactose
C. IPTG
D. cAMP
D. )
How do proteins recognize specific DNA sequences?
Regulatory binding site sequences are often inverted repeats
Why?
because DNA binding proteins are often dimers
Helix-turn-helix motif: Recognition helix
one helix, fits into major groove
Most DNA-binding motifs
recognize the ____ groove, because it has more features to interact with (hydrogen bond donors/acceptors, etc.) than the minor groove
major
Another helix-turn-helix motif: Homeodomain
Dimer of helix-turn-helix protein
Each dimer contains one helix that binds to DNA
Leucine Zipper
A motif consisting of several leucines spaced about 7 amino acids apart
Zipper regions hold two subunits together, not involved in DNA binding, but are linked to a DNA binding region
not part of DNA recognition but involved in dimerization
Zinc Fingers
Zinc finger motifs are held together by Zinc ions. Each motif has a DNA recognition helix. Each motif is weak, but can be stacked together (beyond dimerizing), with each motif acting like a finger, gripping the DNA by the major groove.
Zinc ion stabilizes structure, but is not directly involved in DNA recognition
Transactivation domains
Transactivation domains are diverse and don’t share common motifs
These domains are on separate regions of the protein, allowing researchers to separate them (and swap them). This demonstrates the modular nature of regulatory proteins.
Transactivation domains have 2 basic domains:
1) DNA binding domain
2) Transcription-activation domain
Which sequence is an inverted repeat?
A. GAATCC
B. CAGGTG
C. CCATGG
D. AGTTGA
C. )
What region of each of the 3 major motifs actually recognizes the DNA?
A. Zn2+ ion
B. Turn
C. All of them
D. Zipper region
E. a-helix
E. )
You synthesize a fusion protein with JEL4 and RexA. You create a reporter construct to express lacZ, but containing the promoter for JEL4 and the binding site for RexA. Which domains should you use for JEL4 and RexA fusion protein?
A. Transactivation domain for JEL4, DNA-binding domain for RexA
B. Transactivation domain for RexA, DNA-binding domain for JEL438
A.)
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Project Background:
Current Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV) exchangers are limited in their energy recovery efficiency by the exchanger design and the water vapour permeability of membrane materials. This presents a need for exchangers with higher total energy recovery. In North America, cross-flow ERV cores are typical, but their transfer mechanism limits the heat transfer rate relative to flow rate. To obtain higher sensible heat transfer, which is important for reducing heating loads in the winter, a counter-flow core is a more efficient design. Furthermore, current ventilation and energy recovery systems lack the ability to operate optimally from an energy efficiency standpoint while ensuring adequate indoor air quality (IAQ). Ventilation control strategies should be based on inputs such as indoor and outdoor climate conditions, IAQ, the cost of electricity, and the comfort of the building occupant. To evaluate ventilation control strategies which minimize energy utilization while maintaining acceptable levels of comfort and air quality within buildings, an integrated approach is required. The energy recovery exchanger (core), the energy recovery ventilator system, the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system (HVAC) controller, and the building HVAC system should all function optimally together. Recognizing the need to improve energy consumption and indoor air quality in buildings using an integrated approach, dPoint Technologies proposed the project "Integrated Approach to Development of a High Efficiency Energy Recovery and Intelligent Ventilation System" for ecoEII funding. The project was awarded $704K.
Results
A prototype counter-flow ERV core was designed and constructed. It consisted of a self-supporting corrugated structure made solely out of membrane and manifolding to alternating cells. The core design incorporated two dimensional heat and latent heat transfer concepts. Performance of the prototype core was validated by an independent lab to have over 80% sensible effectiveness (related to transfer units for heat) for both heating and cooling conditions. Total (enthalpy) effectiveness was calculated to be over 60% in cooling conditions, at a comparable pressure drop to other exchangers.
The high-performing ERV core was then incorporated into the design of a prototype fan-coil system. Enerzone, dPoint’s project partner, designed and built the custom integrated fan-coil (IFC) system, incorporating smart controls to take advantage of “free cooling” when in economizer mode. The IFC system would mix in cold fresh outside air to perform cooling instead of relying on an additional active cooling system. Its control algorithm was designed to take advantage of the free cooling effects of colder outside air, such as during the shoulder seasons (spring/autumn) when solar irradiation increases the indoor air temperature to a point where cooling is necessary. A hygrometer placed on the inside of the air intake measures the temperature and humidity of the incoming outdoor air.
The IFC system incorporating the ERV core and controls was subsequently installed and commissioned in a condominium building in Toronto. A benchmark standard heat recovery ventilator system was installed in one suite (vacant but fully equipped) and the integrated ERV system was installed in another – one suite on top of the other. dPoint partnered with Tower Labs to verify the performance of the integrated ERV in real world conditions. Equipment and sensors were installed to collect data and monitor the systems over the shoulder (spring) season. Data was analyzed and results indicated that when temperatures escalated and free cooling was available, the integrated ERV system reduced the active cooling requirement by a measurable amount (when economizer mode was active). The system was able to cool the living space by up to 2°C with free cooling, as compared to the suite without the integrated ERV. According to a report published by RDH Building Science Consulting, it is likely that 12% of the hours that would require cooling in Toronto would be appropriate for free cooling, resulting in a reduction of a building’s overall external cooling load.
Benefits to Canada
Canada’s extreme climate with cold, dry winters and hot, humid summers drives large energy consumption for building heating, cooling, ventilation, humidification and dehumidification. A high efficiency energy recovery system would reduce electricity use, natural gas consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in all types of buildings in Canada.
Next Steps
The newly developed integrated IFC ERV system would benefit from extensive in-field monitoring and verification testing over longer periods of time (with the system in economizer mode). Design of the unit could also be improved so that the system fits into utility closets. | https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy/funding/current-funding-programs/eii/16071 |
It's time to put the finishing touches on the 2008-2009 season for the Buffalo Sabres. Here is a complete report card of every single player that played a significant amount of time with the Sabres this season. Thanks to Japers Rink and Mile High Hockey for the inspiration.
Daniel Paille
#20 / Left Wing / Buffalo Sabres
6-0
197
Apr 15, 1984
|GP||G||A||P||+/-||PIM||PPG||SHG||GWG||GTG||SOG||PCT|
|2008 - Daniel Paille||73||12||15||27||0||20||0||0||2||0||80||15.0|
Key Stat: Paille found himself on the third or fourth line on most occasions and therefore had to make the most of his opportunities. Many people felt like Paille had a poor season but he was fifth on the team in points/60 minutes on the ice. He had almost two points(1.96) per sixty minutes that he was on the ice.
Interesting Stats: Paille was sixth on the team with 84 hits in limited ice time. Despite being known as a physical players Paille had zero fights and zero major penalties this season.
Line Combos:
- MacArthur - Pominville (298 shifts - 3 points)
- Gaustad - Kaleta (264 shifts - 3 points)
- Gaustad - Kotalik (228 shifts - 0 points
- Kotalik - Mair (180 shifts - 2 points)
- Ellis - Mair (147 shif ts - 0 points)
The Good: Paille took advantage of his limited oppportunities this season. His point total of 1.96 points/60 minutes was fifth on the team and was even better than Derek Roy, te teams leadig scorer. Paille had 12 goals and 17 assists for a total of 29 points this season.
Paille took advanatge of his shot attempts as well. He scored 12 goals on 80 shots for 15% behind only Clarke MacArthur and Thomas Vanek.
Paille proved to be one of the best value players on the team tis season. He earned just $33,333 for every point this season with his 27 points.
The Bad: Playing on the third and fourth lines he was asked to be responsible in his own zone. His minus 14 giveaway/takeaway ratio was a big reason that he found himself on the bench and in the press box so often. He had only 14 takeaways while giving the puck
away 28 times.
Paille scored 19 goals in the 2007-2008 campaign but seen that total decrease this season. It's easy to argue that he wasn't given an opportuity but overall it was still a decrease in overall productivity.
2008-2009 Salary: $900,000
2009-2010 Status: signed for $1,350,000
Vote: It's time to grade Paille for his play in Buffalo during the 2008-2009 season. Every player has expectations so vote based on those expectations. If a player played to their potential they should receive a "C" if they exceeded expectations they would receive a "B" or an "A".
Discuss: Is Paille being misused by Lindy Ruff? Should he be used as a third-fourth liner or does his point production deserve a promotion to the top two lines? Will he have a breakout season in a contract year? | https://www.diebytheblade.com/2009/6/7/901347/daniel-paille-2008-2009-report-card |
Regulation of transcription is central to proper nervous system development and functioning. Dysregulation of transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulatory pathways are associated with various neurodevelopmental diseases and disorders including developmental lead (Pb) exposure, which is associated with significant and persistent cognitive and behavioral deficits. Recent data from our lab have shown Pb-induced methylation changes at gene promoter regions and effects of Pb on various post-translational histone modifications (PTHMs), however, gene expression changes have not always corresponded to promoter methylation status and mismatches between PTHM levels and transcriptional regulation were also observed, suggesting that other factors may be influencing transcriptional changes in response to Pb exposures. Thus, mechanisms un- derlying altered transcriptional regulation in specific brain regions following Pb exposure cannot be completely explained by alterations in DNA methylation and PTHM levels. Preliminary data from our lab support the hy- pothesis that another mechanism, direct RNA methylation via N6-methyladenosine (m6A), may be an important post-transcriptional mechanism contributing to the functionally altered transcriptome after developmental Pb exposure. Like DNA, RNA is susceptible to dynamic, reversible chemical modification and this epitranscrip- tomic mechanism may play an important role in gene transcription and behavioral plasticity. This has not been investigated as a potential molecular mechanism involved in environmental neurotoxicology. The goal of this proposal is to test the novel hypothesis that the most abundant epitranscriptomic mark, m6A, plays an im- portant role in modulating RNA and influencing memory processes in male and female rats and, based on preliminary data, in regulating transcriptional and behavioral responses to developmental Pb exposure. The following aims will examine the contribution of m6A to memory processing in normal and Pb-exposed animals: Aim1: Examine transcriptome-wide profile of the m6A modification (using methylated RNA immunoprecipitation sequencing (MeRIP-seq)) in mPFC and hippocampus (CA1) in behaviorally nave and behaviorally trained ani- mals of both sexes to assess its potential role as a dynamic epitranscriptomic mechanism involved in encoding and maintenance of memory, and, examine the extent to which the transcriptome-wide m6A enrichment profile is altered in animals with developmental Pb exposure; Aim2: Assess the functional significance of m6A in PFC and CA1 in memory processes in Pb-exposed animals using site-directed knockdown of the RNA demethylase gene, Fto, which will increase m6A levels in mPFC and CA1 and allow us to evaluate the effects of brain region -dependent reversal of decreased m6A levels on Pb-induced impaired memory processes. This work, the first to examine the dynamic modulation of RNA by m6A in PFC and CA1 in male and female normal and Pb- exposed rats, will result in new information regarding mRNA methylation as an effector mechanism for gene expression and behavioral plasticity in response to an environmental neurotoxicant.
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On October 20, 2020, the National Security Agency (NSA), a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, released an NSA cybersecurity advisory highlighting 25 vulnerabilities in commonly-used software that are currently under active exploitation. They released the advisory following a series of attacks targeted in the USA.
Here’s what happened
In September, analysts of the NSA identified vulnerability exploits and data theft in networks of interest that hold sensitive intellectual property, economic, political, and military information. Many of these vulnerabilities can be used to gain initial access to victim networks by exploiting software products directly accessible from the Internet. The NSA issued a public warning out of concern, asking all defense organizations and government contractors to immediately mitigate the 25 vulnerabilities in their networks and protect the country from malicious actors.
The list of 25 vulnerabilities reported by the NSA is here.
All these vulnerabilities have been publicly disclosed long before the attacks started. The software vendors have also provided patches to mitigate the vulnerabilities. All the devices compromised during this attack resulted from failing to mitigate a vulnerability earlier, even though a patch fix was available.
NSA Cybersecurity Advisory released three key takeaways from this incident
Cyber-attacks happen all the time, throughout the year. Security professionals should take up the responsibility to study the incidents and implement necessary measures to secure sensitive data and assets. Here are NSA cybersecurity advisory three takeaways we can infer from this incident:
1. Software vulnerabilities are the primary vectors of cyber-attacks
Whenever a threat actor decides to hack into an organization, the first and obvious choice is to look for vulnerable assets in the network. The hacker looks for vulnerabilities left unpatched, breaks into the network, and moves laterally into other devices.
To quote the advisory,
“They [hackers] often first identify a target, gather technical information on the target, identify any vulnerabilities associated with the target, develop or re-use an exploit for those vulnerabilities, and then launch their exploitation operation”.
In 2019, the highest security breaches were due to vulnerabilities where a patch was available but not deployed. These repeated patterns show us that software patching is vital to IT security. Preventing a fire is better than putting it out after it starts. Similarly, cyberhygiene should be the top priority on your list of security measures. You should regularly patch all IT assets and safeguard them from unforeseen attacks.
2. Vulnerabilities in the 2 months to 1-year range have a higher possibility of exploit
Hackers don’t always rely on creating new vectors of attack. They want to pluck the low-hanging fruits first. Take a quick look at the pattern of exploits in this attack.
The pattern of attacks clearly indicates that hackers find unpatched vulnerabilities older than 2 months fairly easy to exploit. There are two possible reasons for this. First, the average time taken by an IT team to patch a known vulnerability is 67 days. Moreover, many IT teams do not assess and mitigate vulnerabilities unless it’s time for a compliance audit or a software upgrade. Second, by the time a vulnerability is a few months old, hackers develop and distribute codes for exploiting specific vulnerabilities. The rate and ease of attack increases as time goes by.
Now, this doesn’t mean that vulnerabilities can remain unpatched until 2 months. In the first few days of a disclosed vulnerability, the pattern of attacks will be random and unpredictable. You still can’t risk falling into the trap. If the vulnerability is critical, you have to prioritize and roll out the patches right away.
To keep your IT assets secure, you have to mitigate vulnerabilities as soon as possible with effective patching strategies. Read the best practices of patch management and keep up with the latest practices of 2020.
3. An intrusion has to be detected and contained immediately
In the unfortunate situation of a breach, security professionals should be able to detect it immediately in order to take the next step. The scary part of most data breaches is that they go undetected for a long time or not detected at all.
According to IBM’s data breach report in 2020, the average time to identify and contain a breach is 280 days. The report also states that the speed of containment can significantly impact the cost of data breaches. Even if your IT assets are up-to-date with the latest patches, you need an alarm system to go off and report malicious activities immediately.
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) ensures all incidents are reported and responded to immediately. It can detect devices compromised by all types of ransomware to arrest the attack at the source immediately. The infected devices can be removed from the network preventing the spread of the attack. Antivirus software is an additional measure to detect and remove malware.
This incident is just the tip of the iceberg
The current attacks have come to light because highly sensitive military and defense data is at stake. However, this is just one incident out of thousands, and millions of vulnerability exploit happening around the world. Many attacks go unreported and undetected. Cybersecurity Ventures expects that businesses will fall victim to a ransomware attack every 11 seconds by 2021, up from every 14 seconds in 2019, and every 40 seconds in 2016.
SanerNow Unified Endpoint Security and Management Platform helps automate and orchestrate all cyberhygiene practices across all endpoints in your organization. It offers vulnerability management and endpoint detection and response to keep your endpoints secure.
Sign up for a free demo, and we’ll show you how SanerNow can help you secure your IT infrastructure from cyber-attacks. | https://www.secpod.com/blog/three-takeaways-from-the-national-security-agencys-cybersecurity-advisory-in-october-2020/ |
TulaSalud: Challenges of Measuring Impact for a Mobile Health program
Rapid expansion of mobile technology across developing countries has ushered in the emergence of the “mobile health” sector, or mHealth, which refers to the use of mobile technology in medical care. TulaSalud is an NGO based in Guatemala that implements an mHealth program that aims to improve health services for rural populations. Founded in 2008 with support from the Tula Foundation, TulaSalud operates in close partnership with the Ministry of Health in Alta Verapaz, one of the poorest regions in the country. Alta Verapaz is characterized by chronic malnutrition and high rates of maternal and infant mortality.
TulaSalud uses a mobile application to help community health workers (CHWs) collect patient information and provide basic healthcare services. Health outcomes in Alta Verapaz have improved considerably since TulaSalud introduced the program, but the precise contribution of the mHealth platform to this progress is uncertain.
This case study focuses on the important role of feedback data in designing and implementing an mHealth program that supplements existing healthcare services, and in making changes to improve program implementation.
TulaSalud serves as a good example of a program that uses data to make operational decisions and improve its operations. To build on the current approach, we recommend adding impact evaluations to test how variations in the platform and training of CHWs improve their performance. The efficacy of practices TulaSalud promotes is documented in medical research, and improving the training of CHWs and their ability to use the system is likely to be a more relevant question for TulaSalud (and less burdensome operationally) than an assessment of the platform on health outcomes.
Lessons for Others
1. Developing a responsible, actionable mobile system requires significant up-front investment.
Be prepared for a significant investment of resources and frequent iteration to create the system and the strategy for monitoring it. In addition to design, data collection, processing, and analysis, backoffice work is often required to check data quality and make sure that the data can be used and employed in a timely manner.
2. Gathering user feedback is a critical feature of the monitoring and evaluation system.
User feedback data can help optimize and streamline an mHealth system and ensure the actionability of the data it generates.
3. When using proven strategies, focus evaluation resources on creating new operational evidence.
If an approach is already proven to work, consider using an impact evaluation to answer important operational questions instead, such as how to improve program delivery. | https://www.poverty-action.org/publication/goldilocks-case-study-tulasalud |
In physics, scattering means changing the direction of movement of a particle. The word is commonly used for the scattering of photons and electrons but also used for other particles. Photon scattering is considered one of the phenomena in radiative transfer (along with absorption and emission) and is sometimes equivalent to absorption followed by emission due to the energy gained from the absorption. The word scattering might be used if emission is immediately after the absorption, but this terminology might be stretched if a bit of time between is not relevant to the analysis. Some types of scattering:
Photon scattering:
Note that some photon scattering phenomena follows the pattern of classical (wave) electromagnetic radiation theory, whereas some does not, and is only explained by light's quantum nature.
The term scattering is also used regarding the dynamics of planetary systems, e.g., planets redirected from their orbits. The same term may be used for interaction between stars in "crowded" regions such as globular clusters and the centers of galaxies. | http://astro.vaporia.com/start/scattering.html |
Ecological economics or eco-economics refers to both a transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary field of academic research that aims to address the interdependence and coevolution of human economies and natural ecosystems over time and space.
QuotesEdit
- Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author
A - FEdit
- There are two basic ways market organization is brought about... Some combination of the two is usual the case:
- Strategic structuring, informal or formal, whereby social agents, including the state, establish a rule regime regulating market access and transactions...
- Emergent structuring, whereby participants discover or adopt certain similar strategies within bounded rationality and situations with certain opportunity structures and incentive structures. Social network and ecological properties result in relatively well-defined aggregate performance characteristics...
- Tom R. Burns, The shaping of social organization (1987) p. 127.
- The new paradigm may be called a holistic world view, seeing the world as an integrated whole rather than a dissociated collection of parts. It may also be called an ecological view, if the term "ecological" is used in a much broader and deeper sense than usual. Deep ecological awareness recognizes the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena and the fact that, as individuals and societies we are all embedded in (and ultimately dependent on) the cyclical process of nature.
- Fritjof Capra, Gunter A. Pauli (1995) Steering business toward sustainability. p. 3 cited in: Elmer Kennedy-Andrews (2008) Writing Home. p. 13.
- Ecological Economics studies the ecology of humans and the economy of nature, the web of interconnections uniting the economic subsystem to the global ecosystem of which it is a part.
- Robert Costanza, Ecological economics: the science and management of sustainability. Columbia University Press, 1992.
- Standard economists don't seem to understand exponential growth. Ecological economics recognizes that the economy, like any other subsystem on the planet, cannot grow forever. And if you think of an organism as an analogy, organisms grow for a period and then they stop growing. They can still continue to improve and develop, but without physically growing, because if organisms did that you’d end up with nine-billion-ton hamsters. There is a great video on this.
- Robert Costanza in: "What is Ecological economics," at Yale Insights, May 2010.
- The guiding principle must be that of sufficiency and not waste. At present the world's economic system is governed by waste. The profligacy of that waste has created our various pollution problems and constitutes a danger to the planet's well-being. This is only half-realized. A sustainable economy is one that supplies the needs of all within the possibilities of the planet's health... no two Third World countries are alike in their needs, their potential or in their state of development. A variety of methods will be tried... More and more, however, the nations of the world under the impulse of the sharing of resources, and aiming for sustainable sufficiency, will gravitate towards a democratic socialism, or, as some call it, social democracy.
- Benjamin Creme quoted in The poison of market forces by Patricia Pitchon, Share International magazine (July 1990)
- We also have to create a sustainable economy, one which uses only resources which are renewable and correctly husbanded for future generations. The present economy enjoyed by the developed world is completely non-sustainable. If we continue as we are doing now, there will be no forests; pollution of the rivers, the seas, the air, the land will be so tremendous that disease will decimate humanity.
- Benjamin Creme, The Great Approach (2001)
- In the quantitative models that appear in leading economics journals and textbooks, nature is taken to be a fixed, indestructible factor of production. The problem with the assumption is that it is wrong: nature consists of degradable resources.
- Partha Dasgupta "Nature's role in sustaining economic development." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 365.1537 (2010): 5-11.
- Even if we can never quantify [satisfaction or happiness]... as precisely as we currently quantify GNP,... perhaps it is better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong.
- Herman E. Daly and Joshua Farley, in Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications. (2003), page 234. quoted in Beyond GDP Measuring progress, true wealth, and the well-being of nations, European Commission:Environment
G - LEdit
- Ecological economics is the name that has been given to the effort to transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries in order to address the interrelationship between ecological and economic systems in a broad and comprehensive way.
- AnnMari Jansson, Investing in natural capital: the ecological economics approach to sustainability. Island Press, 1994.
- K. William Kapp's book "The Social Costs of Private Enterprise" was one of the first economic treatise that called attention to the ecological and social external costs of the market economy. His book is considered one of the origins of and a foundation for ecological economics.
- Kapp Research Center, "K. William Kapp, Biographical Information " at kwilliam-kapp.de, 2015.
M - REdit
- There always will be limits to growth.
- A quantity growing exponentially toward a limit reaches that limit in a surprisingly short time.
- When there are long delays in feedback loops, some sort of foresight is essential.
- The bounded rationality of each actor in a system may not lead to decisions that further the welfare of the system as a whole.
- Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008, pages 190-191 (ISBN 9781603580557).
S - ZEdit
- Ecologists and economists made unlikely partners -- indeed, these disciplines have often appeared at odds with, and determined to ignore, each other... The modeling of ecological communities or systems seemed purposely to leave out the human economy.6 At the same time, economists either took for granted or ignored the principles, powers, or forces that ecologists believed governed the world's natural communities. The market mechanism, or competitive equilibrium, that mainstream economists studied assigned no role to the natural ecosystem.7 Ecological economics sought to embed the study of economics within a larger understanding of how ecosystems work.
- Mark Sagoff. "The rise and fall of ecological economics." Breakthrough Journal (2012).
- Ecological rationality uses reason – rational reconstruction – to examine the behavior of individuals based on their experience and folk knowledge, who are ‘naïve’ in their ability to apply constructivist tools to the decisions they make; to understand the emergent order in human cultures; to discover the possible intelligence embodied in the rules, norms and institutions of our cultural and biological heritage that are created from human interactions but not by deliberate human design. People follow rules without being able to articulate them, but they can be discovered.
- Vernon L. Smith. "Constructivist and ecological rationality in economics," 2002. p. 509.
- The development of a global economy has not been matched by the development of a global society. The basic unit for political and social life remains the nation-state. International law and international institutions, insofar as they exist, are not strong enough to prevent war or the large-scale abuse of human rights in individual countries. Ecological threats are not adequately dealt with. Global financial markets are largely beyond the control of national or international authorities.
- George Soros, The Crisis of Global Capitalism (1998). | https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ecological_Economics |
Deep Sea Creature
Observe Sea Animals Vocabulary with this ESL Memory Sport. Narwhals, the unicorns of the sea,” are toothed whales present in Arctic waters. Fish and different animals make their houses in all different components of the ocean, even on the bottom, or sea ground. They are an apex predator, which implies they are on the highest of the food chain, preying on animals like seals and dolphins.
These floating demise traps entangle and kill thousands and thousands of animals every year, including a whole bunch of hundreds of whales, seals, turtles and birds. The seal dragged the scientist deep underwater the place she drowned. Without those air pockets in their physique cavities and tissues, deep-sea creatures are not vulnerable to the same pressure that our our bodies feel. | https://www.wahwahthemovie.com/category/animals/sea-animal/page/33 |
A steel guitar is any type of guitar that is played while moving a steel bar or similar object against the strings. It is a continuous pitch instrument known for its portamento capabilities including deep vibratos and smooth glissandos over wide intervals. It is perhaps the only instrument that can play full chords in portamento. The object held against the strings is called a "steel" and is itself the origin of the name "steel guitar". It may be a solid bar held in the hand or a tubular object placed around the player's finger; it may go by many names, including "steel", "tone bar", "slide", "slide bar", "bottleneck" and others. The strings are typically plucked (not strummed) by the fingers of the dominant hand while the tone bar (steel) is pressed against the strings and moved by the opposite hand. Creating music with a slide of some type has been traced back to primitive stringed instruments in African culture, but the modern instrument was born and developed in Hawaii.
A steel guitar might be (or resemble) a traditional guitar, but played in a horizontal position, placed across the player's knees or otherwise supported- a technique developed in the 1890s popularized by Hawaiian musician Joseph Kekuku. This type of playing is referred to as "lap steel" or "Hawaiian style". A steel guitar may also be played in the traditional position (flat against the body) with the player using a hard tubular object around his finger, then called a "slide" and the technique called "slide guitar". It was developed in the Mississippi Delta by African American blues artists near the beginning of the twentieth century and typically heard in blues or rock music. The term "bottleneck" was historically used to describe this type of playing.
The sound of the Hawaiian music, featuring ukulele and steel guitar, became a major musical trend in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. Its popularity spawned the creation of guitars designed specifically to be played horizontally. The first instrument in this chronology was the acoustic Hawaiian guitar also called a lap steel; next was a lap steel with a resonator to make it louder. Dramatic changes in these instruments came after 1934, when the electric guitar pickup was invented, allowing steel guitars to be heard equally with other instruments. Electrification allowed new guitars to be designed without any resonant chamber, bearing little or no resemblance to the traditional guitar shape, e.g., a rectangular block. Electronic amplification led to the development of the electrified lap steel, then the console steel, and the pedal steel guitar.
In the late 19th century, Spanish guitars were introduced in the Hawaiian Islands by European sailors and Mexican "vaqueros" who had been hired by Hawaii's king to work cattle ranches. For whatever reason, Hawaiians did not embrace standard guitar tuning that had been in use for centuries. They re-tuned the guitars to make them sound a major chord when all six strings were strummed, now known as an "open tuning". The term for this is "slack-key" because certain strings were "slackened" to achieve it. To change chords, they used some smooth object, usually a piece of pipe or metal, sliding it over the strings to the fourth or fifth position, easily playing a three-chord song.[a] It is physically difficult to hold a steel bar against the strings while holding the guitar against the body and the Hawaiians laid the guitar across the lap and played it while sitting. Playing this way became popular throughout Hawaii and spread internationally.
Oahu-born Joseph Kekuku became proficient in this style of playing around the end of the 19th century and popularized it--some sources say he invented the steel guitar. He moved to the United States mainland and became a vaudeville performer and also toured Europe performing Hawaiian music. The Hawaiian style of playing spread to the United States mainland and became popular during the first half of the 20th century; noted players of the era were Frank Ferera, Sam Ku West, "King" Bennie Nawahi and Sol Hoopii. Hoopii (pronounced Ho-OH-pee-EE) was perhaps the most famous of the Hawaiians who spread the sound if instrumental lap steel worldwide. This music became popular to the degree that it was called the "Hawaiian craze" and was ignited by some of the events described below.
The annexation of Hawaii as a U.S. territory in 1900 stimulated interest in Hawaiian music and customs by Americans. In 1912, a Broadway musical show called "Bird of Paradise" premiered; it featured Hawaiian music and elaborate costumes. The show became a hit and, to ride this wave of success, it was subsequently taken on the road in the U.S. and Europe, eventually spawning the 1932 film Bird of Paradise. Joseph Kekuku was a member of the show's original cast and toured with the show for eight years. The Washington Herald in 1918 stated, "So great is the popularity of Hawaiian music in this country that 'The Bird of Paradise' will go on record as having created the greatest musical fad this country has ever known". In 1915, a world's fair called the Panama-Pacific International Exposition was held in San Francisco to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal, and, over a nine-month period, introduced the Hawaiian style of playing to millions of visitors.
Radio broadcasts played a major role in fueling the popularity of Hawaiian music. "Hawaii Calls" was a program originating in Hawaii and broadcast to the U.S. mainland west coast. It prominently featured the steel guitar and Hawaiian songs sung in English. Subsequently, the program was heard worldwide on over 750 stations. Sol Hoopii began broadcasting live from KHJ radio in Los Angeles in 1923. By the 1920s, Hawaiian music instruction for children was becoming common in the U.S. One of steel guitar's foremost virtuosos, Buddy Emmons, at age 11 studied at the "Hawaiian Conservatory of Music" in South Bend, Indiana.
The acceptance of the sound of the steel guitar, then referred to as "Hawaiian guitars" or "lap steels", spurred instrument makers to produce them in quantity and create innovations in the design to accommodate this style of playing.
In the early twentieth century, steel guitar playing divided into two streams: lap-style, performed on an instrument specifically designed or modified to be played on the performer's lap; and bottleneck-style, performed on a traditional Spanish guitar held flat against the body. The bottleneck-style became associated with blues and rock music, and the horizontal style became associated with several musical genres, most notably American country music.
Near the beginning of the twentieth century the bottleneck-style (slide guitar) was popularized by African-American blues artists. One of the first southern blues musicians to adapt the Hawaiian sound to the blues was Hudson Whittaker, known as "Tampa Red", whose playing, says historian Gérard Herzhaft, "created a style that has unquestionably influenced all modern blues." The Mississippi Delta was the home of Robert Johnson, Son House, Charlie Patton, and other blues pioneers, who prominently used a tubular slide on a finger. The first known recording of the bottleneck style was in 1923 by Sylvester Weaver, who recorded two instrumentals, "Guitar Blues" and "Guitar Rag". His song, "Guitar Rag", was adapted by Western swing pioneers Bob Wills and Leon McAuliffe in 1935 for the influential instrumental "Steel Guitar Rag". Blues musicians played a conventional Spanish guitar as hybrid between the two types of guitars, using one finger inserted into a tubular slide or a bottleneck while using frets with the remaining fingers. This is known as "slide guitar" and the hard object against the strings in this case is called a "slide". Lap slide guitar is not a specific instrument, but a style of playing.
Steel guitar was heard in American country music as early as the 1920s. Jimmie Rodgers featured acoustic steel guitar in his song "Tuck Away My Lonesome Blues" released Jan 3, 1930. In the early 1930s acoustic lap steel guitars were not loud enough to compete with other instruments, a problem that many inventors were trying to remedy. A violin repairman in Los Angeles named John Dopyera and his brother Rudy created a guitar with a large resonator cone (resembling an inverted loudspeaker) attached under the instrument's bridge. Their company was called Dobro, a portmanteau of DOpyera BROthers. A former associate and business partner of the Dopyeras, George Beauchamp, went on his own to invent an electric guitar pickup. Beauchamp came up with the idea of using two horseshoe magnets encircling the guitar strings like a bracelet, and six small metal rods wrapped with wire to concentrate the magnetic field (one under each guitar string). A vibrating metal string in a magnetic field generates a small current that can be amplified and sent to a loudspeaker. He applied for patent June 2, 1934 and received it on August 10, 1937. According to music writer Michael Ross, the first electrified stringed instrument on a commercial recording was a steel guitar by Bob Dunn on a Western swing tune in 1935. Dunn recorded with Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies. With electric amplification, steel players realized the benefit of having constant active control the volume of the instrument with a foot pedal. Skilled use of the volume pedal allows guitarists to fade in or fade out notes or chords during a song to make their playing more expressive.
In the mid- to late-1930s, Leon McAuliffe advanced steel guitar technique while playing in the western swing band Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. McAuliffe's "Steel Guitar Rag" helped to popularize the steel guitar in the context of 1930s and 1940s country and western music. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, the steel guitar was prominently featured in the emerging "honky-tonk" style of country music. Honky-tonk singers who used a lap steel guitar in their musical arrangements included Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell and Webb Pierce.
Most recordings of that era were made on a C6 neck (guitar tuned in a C6 chord). Steel guitarists felt a need to change tunings for different voicings, so leading players added additional necks with different tunings on the same instrument. The added bulk and weight made the instrument so heavy that it could no longer be held on the player's lap and had to be placed in a frame with legs. This was called a console steel guitar. The players of that era added more necks and eventually designed instruments with up to four different necks. Since these instruments proved too expensive for most musicians, a better solution was needed, which led to the invention of the pedal steel guitar.
A pedal system was designed about 1948 by Paul Bigsby, a motorcycle shop foreman. Bigsby put pedals on a rack between the two front legs of a console steel guitar. The pedals operated a mechanical linkage to apply tension to raise the pitch of the strings. In 1953, musician Bud Isaacs used Bigsby's invention to change the pitch of two of its strings, and was the first to push the pedal while notes were still sounding. When Isaacs first used the setup on the 1956 recording of Webb Pierce's song called "Slowly", he pushed the pedal while playing a chord, so certain notes could be heard bending up from below into the existing chord to harmonize with the other strings, creating a stunning effect which had not been possible with the steel bar. It was the birth of a new sound that was particularly embraced by fans of country and western music and it caused a virtual revolution among steel players who wanted to duplicate it.
In the United States in the 1930s, the steel guitar was introduced into religious music, a tradition called "Sacred Steel". The lap steel guitar was embraced by the congregation of the House of God, a branch of an African-American Pentecostal denomination, based primarily in Nashville and Indianapolis. The steel guitar often took the place of an organ and its sound bore no resemblance to typical American country music. The Sacred steel genre was largely unknown until, in the 1980s, a minister's son named Robert Randolph took up the pedal steel as a teenager, popularized it in this genre and received critical acclaim as a musician. Neil Strauss, writing in the New York Times, called Randolph "one of the most original and talented pedal steel guitarists of his generation".
The steel guitar's popularity in India began with a Hawaiian immigrant who settled in Calcutta in the 1940s named Tau Moe (pronounced mo-ay). Moe taught Hawaiian guitar style and made steel guitars, and is believed to have been a force in popularizing the instrument in India. By the 1960s, the steel had become a common instrument in Indian popular music--later included in film sound tracks. Indian musicians typically play the lap steel while sitting on the floor and have modified the instrument by using, for example, three melody strings (played with steel bar and finger picks), four plucked drone strings, and 12 sympathetic strings to buzz like a sitar. Performing in this manner, the Indian musician Brij Bhushan Kabra adapted the steel guitar to play ragas, traditional Indian compositions and is called the father of the genre of Hindustani Slide Guitar.
Steel guitar, when played with the guitar held horizontally, typically features a "steel" against the strings above the fingerboard while the strings a plucked by the opposite hand which typically has picks on the thumb, index and middle fingers. If an unmodified traditional guitar is played this way, the steel will usually hit against the frets causing an unpleasant sound. This is remedied by raising the strings higher off the fretboard by raising the bridge and using a nut extender, because frets are not used in lap steel except as a visual reference. When strings are raised, it may create a greater force on the neck than a traditional guitar can take, so these instruments are usually designed with thicker (sometimes square) reinforced necks or are used in console instruments.
Instruments designed and produced for horizontal playing typically have painted lines or "pictures of frets" as a visual cue only. Without the aid of frets, playing in tune is more difficult and requires considerable skill to place the bar exactly where the fret would be. A unique property of the instrument is the fact that when a note is sounded or a steel guitar, it continues to sound until it dies out unless physically silenced by the player. On a traditional guitar a note stops as soon as the player's finger is lifted off the fret, similar to a piano note stopping when the player's finger is lifted off the key. The steel guitarist must play the note and physically stop it afterward in order to play a staccato passage. This technique is called "blocking" and may be done by the player's palm (palm-blocking) another digit (pick-blocking). Using the piano analogy, playing steel without blocking or damping would be like playing a piano with the sustain pedal permanently depressed; the notes would overlap and proper articulations and staccato notes would not be possible.
Dobro is a brand of resonator guitars, but the word is commonly used as a generic term to describe bluegrass resonator lap steels of any brand. Bluegrass dobro players often use a "Stevens bar" which has deep groove in it to allow the steel to be grasped more firmly so it can be lifted and angled vertically downward slightly for playing single notes. The technique also allows for hammer-on or pull-off notes when there is an adjacent open string. Dobro players often slant the bar horizontally when playing to change an interval between two or more notes played simultaneously on different strings.
Slide guitar is played with the guitar held in the conventional position and a tubular form of slide is slipped over the middle, ring or little fingers to accommodate this playing position. The slide is almost always held parallel with the frets and rarely if ever slanted. Slide guitar may be played as a hybrid by fingering the frets on some strings (usually for rhythm accompaniment) and using the slide on others. Slide players may use open tunings or traditional tunings as a matter of personal preference.
Early lap steel guitars were traditional guitars tuned to a chord and modified by raising the strings away from the frets. After the electric pickup was invented, lap steels no longer needed any resonant chamber, thus newer designs began to resemble the traditional guitar shape less and less. These instruments were played resting across the musicians knees. The Rickenbacker frying pan, an electric lap steel guitar produced from 1931 to 1939, was not only the first electric stringed instrument of any kind, but was the first electric stringed instrument on a commercial recording. The new instrument was immediately embraced by Hawaiian steel players, including Alvino Rey.
The console steel is an electric steel guitar that is resting on legs in a frame and designed to be played in a seated position. The console steel usually has multiple necks, each tuned differently, up to a maximum of four. In the evolution of steel guitar, the console steel is intermediate between the lap steel and the pedal steel.
The pedal steel guitar is typically a ten-string electric console instrument with one or two necks, each in a different tuning, usually C6 closer to the player and E9 further from the player. It may have up to ten pedals and a separate volume pedal, and up to eight knee levers are used to alter the tunings of various strings, allowing more varied and complex music than any other type of steel guitar. As an example, use of the pedals and knee levers in various combinations allows the player to play a major scale without moving the bar. Invention of the instrument was set in motion by the need to play more interesting and varied music that was not possible on previous steel guitars and to obviate the need for additional necks on console steels.
A "steel" is a hard smooth object pressed against guitar strings and is the reason for the name "steel guitar". It may go by many names, including "steel", "tone bar", "slide", "bottleneck" and others. A cylindrical-shaped steel with a bullet-shape on one end is typical in console steel and pedal steel playing. Lap steel and Dobro players often use a steel bar with squared-off ends and a deep groove for firmer grip. It has a cross section that resembles a railroad track. Another type of steel is a tubular object around a finger then referred to as a "slide" and that style of playing is called "slide guitar". | http://www.popflock.com/learn?s=Steel_guitar |
Medieval philosophy is the philosophy in the era now known as medieval or the Middle Ages, the period roughly extending from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century C.E. to the Renaissance in the 16th century. Medieval philosophy, understood as a project of independent philosophical inquiry, began in Baghdad, in the middle of the 8th century, and in France, in the itinerant court of Charlemagne, in the last quarter of the 8th century. It is defined partly by the process of rediscovering the ancient culture developed in Greece and Rome in the classical period, and partly by the need to address theological problems and to integrate sacred doctrine with secular learning.
The history of medieval philosophy is traditionally divided into two main periods: the period in the Latin West following the Early Middle Ages until the 12th century, when the works of Aristotle and Plato were preserved and cultivated and the 'golden age' of the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries in the Latin West, which witnessed the culmination of the recovery of ancient philosophy, along with a reception of its Arabic commentators, and significant developments in the field of Philosophy of religion, Logic and Metaphysics.
The medieval era was disparagingly treated by the Renaissance humanists, who saw it as a barbaric 'middle' period between the classical age of Greek and Roman culture, and the 'rebirth' or renaissance of classical culture. Modern historians consider the medieval era to be one of philosophical development, heavily influenced by Christian theology. One of the most notable thinkers of the era, Thomas Aquinas, never considered himself a philosopher, and criticized philosophers for always "falling short of the true and proper wisdom to be found in Christian revelation".
One of the most heavily debated topics of the period was that of faith versus reason. Avicenna and Averroes both leaned more on the side of reason. Augustine stated that he would never allow his philosophical investigations to go beyond the authority of God.:27 Anselm attempted to defend against what he saw as partly an assault on faith, with an approach allowing for both faith and reason. The Augustinian solution to the faith/reason problem is to (1) believe, and then (2) seek to understand.
The first significant renewal of learning in the West came when Charlemagne, advised by Peter of Pisa and Alcuin of York, attracted the scholars of England and Ireland, and by imperial decree in 787 AD established schools in every abbey in his empire. These schools, from which the name Scholasticism is derived, became centres of medieval learning.
At the start of the 20th-century, historian and philosopher Martin Grabmann was the first scholar to work out the outlines of the ongoing development of thought in scholasticism and to see in Thomas Aquinas a response and development of thought rather than a single, coherently emerged and organic whole. Although Grabmann's works in German are numerous, only Thomas Aquinas (1928) is available in English. However, Grabmann's thought was instrumental in the whole modern understanding of scholasticism and the pivotal role of Aquinas.
The problem of free will: A similar problem was to explain how 'divine foreknowledge' - God's knowledge of what will happen in the future - is compatible with our belief in our own free will.
Causality - Discussion of causality consisted mostly of commentaries on Aristotle, mainly the Physics, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption. The approach to this subject area was uniquely medieval, the rational investigation of the universe being viewed as a way of approaching God. Duns Scotus' proof of the existence of God is based on the notion of causality.
The great historian of logic I. M. Bochenski regarded the Middle Ages as one of the three great periods in the history of logic. From the time of Abelard until the middle of the fourteenth century, scholastic writers refined and developed Aristotelian logic to a remarkable degree. In the earlier period, writers such as Peter Abelard wrote commentaries on the works of the Old logic (Aristotle's Categories, On interpretation, and the Isagoge of Porphyry). Later, new departments of logical enquiry arose, and new logical and semantic notions were developed. For logical developments in the Middle Ages, see the articles on Insolubilia, Medieval theories of modality, Obligations, Properties of terms, Medieval theories of singular terms, Syllogism, and Sophismata. Other great contributors to medieval logic include Albert of Saxony, John Buridan, John Wyclif, Paul of Venice, Peter of Spain, Richard Kilvington, Walter Burley, William Heytesbury, and William of Ockham.
Divine illumination - The doctrine of Divine illumination was an alternative to naturalism. It holds that humans need a special assistance from God in their ordinary thinking. The doctrine is most closely associated with Augustine and his scholastic followers. It reappeared in a different form in the early modern era.
mental representation - The idea that mental states have 'intentionality'; i.e., despite being a state of the mind, they are able to represent things outside the mind is intrinsic to the modern philosophy of mind. It has its origins in medieval philosophy. (The word 'intentionality' was revived by Franz Brentano, who was intending to reflect medieval usage). Ockham is well known for his theory that language signifies mental states primarily by convention, real things secondarily, whereas the corresponding mental states signify real things of themselves and necessarily.
For details on some of the wider developments in medieval, see the articles on Medieval theories of conscience, practical reason, Medieval theories of natural law.
Writers in this area include Anselm, Augustine, Peter Abelard, Scotus, Peter of Spain, Aquinas, and Ockham. Writers on political theory include Dante, John Wyclif, and Ockham. | https://infogalactic.com/info/Medieval_philosophy |
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION(S)
BACKGROUND
SUMMARY
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
This application claims priority from Korean Patent Application No. 10-2013-0141887, filed on Nov. 21, 2013, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
1. Field
The following description relates to a mashup service, and more particularly, to a system and method for managing a mashup service based on the content of media content.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the convergence of broadcasting and communications infrastructure, a television has been evolving from a passive device, which only delivers broadcast content from a broadcasting station to viewers, to a more interactive, smart device allowing for Internet full-browsing and execution of various applications thereon.
With the traditional TVs as “lean-back” media devices, viewers may watch video content at fixed hours, which are broadcast from terrestrial broadcasting stations. Meanwhile, change in consumption pattern of such video content takes place by virtue of combination of TV and Internet. Users have more actively interacted with smart devices, regarded as “lean-forward” media, to search for any content desired, as well as terrestrial broadcast content, at anytime and anywhere through the Internet.
As the user's passive attitude toward TV has changed to an active attitude, desires for content-related information, for example, a person, a place, products, and the like, which are seen in the currently played content, are increasing.
Various researches on techniques for providing content-related information have been conducted. For example, Korean Patent Registration No. 10-1175708 (registered on Aug. 14, 2012) discloses “System and method for providing information through moving picture executed on a smart device and thereof,” wherein information about persons or products included in a moving picture is provided. Such technologies, yet, simply provide information only by showing information about a person, a place, products, or the like, which are seen in the moving picture.
Therefore, there is a need for technology applicable to a smart TV environment and various user devices, such as smart pads, smart phones and other smart devices, which identify the user's preferences and characteristics, create user-tailored information based on the identified user information, and further support tasks and related services that are appropriate for additional information of the media content, rather than simply provide the information.
In one general aspect, there is provided a system for managing a mashup service based on a content of media content, wherein the system collects meta information from a broadcasting network or Internet wherein the meta information is related to the content of media content that is currently played on a user terminal which issues a request for a mashup service recommendation; creates a mashup service that conforms to a user's situation and the content of the media content, based on additional information analyzed from the collected meta information; and provides the mashup service to the user terminal.
The system may include a task inferer component configured to search a user profile database (DB) for a user profile associated with the user terminal that issues the request for mashup service recommendation and to infer tasks based on the found user profile wherein the inferred tasks correspond to additional information selected from the media content played on the user terminal and are appropriate for a user of the user terminal; and a mashup service creator component configured to search a unit service module DB for unit service modules to execute a task selected from among the inferred tasks, and to create a personalized mashup service by combining the found unit service modules.
The system may further include a mashup service recommender component configured to provide the personalized mashup service created by the mashup service creator component to the user terminal that issues the request for mashup service recommendation.
The system may further include a profile manager component configured to store the user profiles in the user profile DB and manage the user profiles; a unit service module manager component configured to store unit service modules that are used to create a mashup service in the unit service module DB, and manage the unit service modules; a mashup service recommendation request component configured to receive the request for mashup service recommendation from the user terminal; and a content analyzer component configured to analyze the content of the media content played on the user terminal in response to a request for additional information from the user terminal.
The content analyzer may be configured to, in response to the request for additional information from the user terminal, search for additional information contained in the media content played on the user terminal by analyzing the content of the media content.
The system may further include an additional information manager component configured to store, in an additional information DB, the additional information, which is contained in the media content, in a form of annotation files that contain semantic content and to manage the additional information.
The content analyzer component may be configured to search the additional information DB for the additional information contained in the media content played on the user terminal.
The system may further include an additional information tag display component configured to display the additional information found by the content analyzer component as the additional information tags on the media content played on the user terminal.
The mashup service recommendation request component may be configured to, in response to user's selection of a particular additional information tag from among the additional information tags displayed on the media content played on the user terminal, receive the request for mashup service recommendation from the user terminal.
The task inferer component may be configured to infer the tasks appropriate for the user by taking into account at least one of user's age, sex, home range, usage history of media content, which are contained in the user profile.
In another general aspect, there is provided a method of a system for managing a mashup service based on a content of media content, the method including: receiving a request for mashup service recommendation from a user terminal that is currently playing the media content; searching for a user profile associated with the user terminal that issues the request for mashup service recommendation, and inferring tasks based on the found user profile wherein the inferred tasks correspond to additional information selected from the media content played on the user terminal and are appropriate for a user of the user terminal; and searching for unit service modules to execute a task selected from among the inferred tasks, and creating a personalized mashup service by combining the found unit service modules.
The method may further include providing the created personalized mashup service to the user terminal that issues the request for mashup service recommendation.
The method may further include receiving a request for additional information contained in the currently played media content from the user terminal; analyzing the content of the media content played on the user terminal and searching for the additional information contained in the media content; and displaying the found additional information as additional information tags on the media content played on the user terminal.
The receiving of the request for mashup service recommendation may include, in response to user's selection of a particular additional information tag from among the additional information tags displayed on the media content played on the user terminal, receiving the request for mashup service recommendation from the user terminal.
The inferring of the tasks may include inferring the tasks appropriate for the user by taking into account at least one of user's age, sex, home range, usage history of media content, which are contained in the user profile.
Other features and aspects will be apparent from the following detailed description, the drawings, and the claims.
Throughout the drawings and the detailed description, unless otherwise described, the same drawing reference numerals will be understood to refer to the same elements, features, and structures. The relative size and depiction of these elements may be exaggerated for clarity, illustration, and convenience.
Exemplary embodiments will now be described more fully hereinafter with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which exemplary embodiments are shown. The present disclosure may, however, be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the exemplary embodiments set forth herein. Rather, these exemplary embodiments are provided so that the present disclosure is thorough, and will fully convey the scope of the invention to those skilled in the art.
Throughout the drawings and the detailed description, unless otherwise described, the same drawing reference numerals are understood to refer to the same elements, features, and structures. The relative size and depiction of these elements may be exaggerated for clarity, illustration, and convenience.
FIG. 1
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is a block diagram illustrating a system for managing a mashup service based on the content of media content according to an exemplary embodiment. The system for managing a mashup service based on the content of media content may collect meta information from a broadcasting network or the Internet, wherein the meta information is related to the content of media content that is played in a user terminal that requests mashup service recommendation. Also, the system may create a mashup service that conforms to a user's situation and the content of the media content, and provide the mashup service to the user terminal .
FIG. 1
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Referring to , the system includes a task inferer component and a mashup service creator component .
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The task inferer component may search for user profile from a user profile DB , where the user profile is associated with the user terminal that requests the mashup service recommendation, and, based on the found user profile, infer tasks that are related to additional information selected from the media content played on the user terminal and that are appropriate for the user of the terminal .
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In this case, the user terminal may be a device, such as, TV or a smartphone, which is capable of playing media content and is equipped with network functions. The user profiles present in the user profile DB may include information about users, such as their age, sex, home range, usage history of media content, and the like. The user profiles may be previously obtained when users subscribe to content-based mashup services, or through a data mining mechanism, and may then be stored in the user profile DB . In addition, the user profiles may be stored in the user profile DB after being matched with user terminal identification numbers or user IDs. Accordingly, the user profiles may be identified by means of the user terminal identification numbers or the user IDs.
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For example, the task inferer component may infer tasks appropriate for the requesting user by taking into account at least one of user's age, sex, home range, and usage history of media content, which are contained in the user profile.
Here, the task refers to information that define jobs to be executed in relation to additional information, such as persons, places, products, and the like, which are contained in media content, and at least one task may be selected for each user, depending on the user profile.
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The mashup service creator component may search a unit service module DB for unit service modules that are to execute a task selected among the tasks inferred by the task inferer component , and combine the found unit service modules to create a customized mashup service.
The unit service modules are individual software modules that independently process tasks which are information defining the jobs to be executed in relation to the additional information, such as persons, places, products, and the like, which are contained in media content. The mashup service is information personalized to each user, which is generated by selecting the unit service modules according to the user profile and combining the selected unit service modules.
Accordingly, it may be possible to infer tasks related to media content currently viewed by the user, based on the user profile information, and to create a mashup service for executing the inferred task.
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In another example, the system may further include a mashup service recommender component . The mashup service recommender component may provide the personalized mashup service created by the mashup service creator component to the user terminal that has requested the mashup service recommendation.
Therefore, it may be possible to infer tasks related to the content of the media content currently being used by the user, based on the user profile information, and to create the mashup service to execute the tasks and provide the mashup service to the user. As a result, restrictions and limitations in providing information in the existing content reproducing environment may be overcome and the user's viewing environment for media content can be improved.
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In another aspect, the system may further include a profile manager component , a unit service module manager component , a mashup service recommendation request component , and a content analyzer component .
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The profile manager component may store the user profiles in the user profile DB and manage them. The user profiles may include information about users, such as age, sex, home range, usage history of media content, and the like. The profile manager component may obtain the information about users, such as their age, sex, and home range, during the content-based mashup service subscription process, and may obtain the information, such as the users' usage history of media content, by collecting and analyzing records of use of the media content using a data mining mechanism. The profile manager component may store the obtained information in the user profile DB and manage it. The user profiles managed by the profile manager component are used when the task inferer component infers relevant tasks.
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The unit service module manager component may store the unit service modules, which are used to create a mashup service, in the unit service module DB and manage them. The unit service modules are individual software modules that independently process tasks that are information defining jobs to be executed in relation to additional information, such as, a person, a place, products, and the like. For example, the unit service modules may be registered in or removed from the unit service module DB by the unit service module manager component . Also, the unit service modules managed by the unit service module manager component may be used when the mashup service creator component creates a mashup service.
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The mashup service recommendation request component may receive a request for mashup service recommendation from the user terminal . For example, the mashup service recommendation request component may receive a mashup service recommendation request in response to the user's selection of a particular additional information tag from among all additional information tags displayed on the media content that is currently being played on the user terminal . The additional information tags will be described later in detail.
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The content analyzer component may analyze the content of the media content currently being played on the user terminal , according to a request for additional information from the user terminal . For example, in response to the request for additional information from the user terminal , the content analyzer component may analyze the content of the media content currently being played on the user terminal to search for additional information contained in the played media content. The content of media content analyzed by the content analyzer component is used when the task inferer component inters a task.
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In another aspect, the system may further include an additional information manager component . The additional information manager component may store the additional information, which is contained in the media content, in the additional information DB in the form of annotation files that contain semantic content.
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In this case, the content analyzer component may search the additional information DB for additional information contained in the media content currently being played on the user terminal. For example, the content analyzer component may extract keywords related to the additional information from meta information of content data, and may search for the additional information from the additional information DB through semantic-based retrieval using the extracted keywords.
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In another aspect, the system may further include an additional information tag display component . The additional information tag display component displays the additional information found by the content analyzer component as additional information tags on the media content played on the user terminal .
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The additional information may include information about a person, place, and products contained in the media content currently being played on the user terminal , and the additional information tags may be provided to enable the additional information to be, respectively, visually identified on the media content played on the user terminal .
FIG. 2
FIG. 1
FIG. 2
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is a diagram illustrating an example of a display screen of the content-based mashup service management system of which shows additional information tags, according to an exemplary embodiment. Referring to , additional information tags, such as, “café,” “earrings,” and “trench coat,” are seen in a broadcast content played on the user terminal .
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In this case, in response to the user's selection of a particular additional information tag from among all additional information tags seen on the media content played on the user terminal , the mashup service recommendation request component may receive a request for mashup service recommendation from the user terminal .
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For example, if the user selects additional information tag “Café,” the mashup service recommendation request component may receive a request for mashup service recommendation related to “café.”
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Then, the task inferer component may infer tasks related to “café” based on the corresponding user profile, and receive a user's selection of a particular task for recommendation, from a list of the inferred tasks that is provided to the user terminal .
FIG. 3
FIG. 1
FIG. 3
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is a diagram illustrating an example of a display screen of the content-based mashup service management system of to allow a user to select a task. Referring to , “famous restaurants task” and “travel task” that are tasks inferred in response to the user's selection of the additional information tag, “café,” are displayed on the user terminal .
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In response to the user's selection of “travel task” on the display, the mashup service creator component searches for unit service modules to execute the selected “travel task,” creates a personalized mashup service by combining the found unit service modules, and provides the created personalized mashup service to the user terminal through the mashup service recommender component .
FIG. 4
FIG. 1
FIG. 4
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is a diagram illustrating an example of a display screen of the content-based mashup service management system of which shows mashup service recommendations. Referring to , a personalized mashup service that is created by combining unit service modules, “attractions,” “famous restaurants,” “accommodation” and “tour courses” is provided to the user terminal .
As such, through the system as described above, it is possible to infer the tasks related to the media content that the user is currently watching, based on the user profile information, and to create a mashup service for executing the task and then provide the created mashup service to the user terminal, so that restrictions and limitations in providing information in the existing content reproducing environment may be overcome and the user's viewing environment for media content can be improved.
FIG. 5
FIG. 5
A method of managing a content-based mashup service in the content-based mashup service management system as described above will be described with reference to . is a flowchart illustrating a method of managing a content-based mashup service according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention.
610
First, in , a system for managing a mashup service based on the content of media content receives a request for mashup service recommendation from a user terminal that currently plays the media content.
610
In , in response to the user's selection of a particular additional information tag from among additional information tags displayed on the media content currently played on the user terminal, the system may receive the request for mashup service recommendation from the user terminal.
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Thereafter, in , the system searches for user profile associated with the user terminal that requests the mashup service recommendation, and infers tasks that are related to additional information selected from the media content played on the user terminal and also are appropriate for the user of the terminal.
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In , the system may infer the tasks appropriate for the user by taking into account at least one of user's age, sex, home range, and usage history of media content, which are contained in the user profile.
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Then, in , the system searches for unit service modules for executing a task selected from among the tasks inferred in , and creates a personalized mashup service by combining the found unit service modules.
Accordingly, it is possible to infer tasks related to the content of the media content that the user is viewing, based on the user profile information, and to create a mashup service to execute the inferred task.
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In another aspect, the method of managing a mashup service based on the content of media content may further include an operation of recommendation of a mashup service. In , the system provides the personalized mashup service created in to the user terminal that has requested the mashup service recommendation.
Accordingly, by inferring tasks related to the content of the media content that the user is viewing, based on the user profile information and creating a mashup service to execute the inferred task, it may be possible to enhance the user's viewing environment for the media content.
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In another aspect, the method may further include operations , , and of receiving request for additional information, searching for additional information, and displaying additional information tags.
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In , the system receives a request for additional information contained in the media content from the user terminal that is playing the media content. The request for additional information is described above, and thus the detailed description thereof will not be reiterated.
604
In , the system analyzes the content of the media content played on the user terminal, and searches for the additional information contained in the media content. The search for additional information is described above, and thus the detailed description thereof will not be reiterated.
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In , the system displays the found additional information using additional information tags on the media content reproduced on the user terminal. The displaying of the additional information tags is described above, and thus the detailed description thereof will not be reiterated.
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Thereafter, in response to the user's selection of a particular additional information tag from among the additional tags seen in the media content displayed on the user terminal , the system receives a request for mashup service recommendation from the user terminal in .
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Then, in , the system infers tasks related to the selected particular additional information tag. In response to the user's selection of a specific task from among the inferred tasks to receive recommendation of a relevant mashup service, in , the system searches for unit service modules to execute the selected task, and then creates a personalized mashup service by combining the found unit service modules. In , the system provides the created personalized mashup service to the user terminal.
As such, the system can infer tasks related to the content of media content that the user is currently viewing, based on the user profile information, and creates and provides a personalized mashup service, thereby overcoming the restrictions and limitations in providing information in the existing content reproducing environment and enhancing the user's viewing environment for the media content.
A number of examples have been described above. Nevertheless, it will be understood that various modifications may be made. For example, suitable results may be achieved if the described techniques are performed in a different order and/or if components in a described system, architecture, device, or circuit are combined in a different manner and/or replaced or supplemented by other components or their equivalents. Accordingly, other implementations are within the scope of the following claims.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
FIG. 1
is a block diagram illustrating a system for managing a mashup service based on the content of media content according to an exemplary embodiment.
FIG. 2
FIG. 1
is a diagram illustrating an example of a display screen of the content-based mashup service management system of which shows additional information tags, according to an exemplary embodiment.
FIG. 3
FIG. 1
is a diagram illustrating an example of a display screen of the content-based mashup service management system of to allow a user to select a task.
FIG. 4
FIG. 1
is a diagram illustrating an example of a display screen of the content-based mashup service management system of which shows mashup service recommendations.
FIG. 5
is a flowchart illustrating a method of managing a content-based mashup service according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention. | |
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Question #59052
Sci200818079
Recent Question/Assignment
2000 word without counting the references, its so important to follow the instructions in all the details it s a CRITICAL REVIEW OF A JOURNAL ARTICLE
ONPS1048 Assignment 2- Critical Review of a Journal Article.
This assignment is worth 20% of your assessment.
Due date: Friday September 21, midnight
Word count: 2000 words (+/- 10%)
Total word count, (not including references, tables and figures)
Assignment:
Choose one of the scientific journal articles from the list below and write a review of the article with the following sections:
1. Cover sheet- your name, the article you are reviewing, word count.
2. Summary and Background
3. Critical Review
Detailed instructions can be found below, or can be downloaded here.
List of Journal Articles:
Please choose ONE only of the articles below for your critical review:
Congestrì F, Morotti M, Vicari R, Pedna MF, Sparacino M, Torri A, et al. Comparison of the Novel Immunocatch Legionella Test with Sofia Legionella FIA Assay and with BinaxNOW Legionella Card Assay for Detection of Legionella pneumophila(Serogroup 1) Antigen in Urine Samples. Bourbeau P, editor. J Clin Microbiol. 2019 Aug;57(8):376–4.
2. Hinderfeld AS, Phukan N, Bär A-K, Roberton AM, Simoes-Barbosa A. Cooperative Interactions between Trichomonas vaginalisand Associated Bacteria Enhance Paracellular Permeability of the Cervicovaginal Epithelium by Dysregulating Tight Junctions. Herbert DR, editor. Infect Immun. 2019 Mar;87(5):4680–11.
3. Nair S, Patel V, Hickey T, Maguire C, Greig DR, Lee W, et al. Real-Time PCR Assay for Differentiation of Typhoidal and Nontyphoidal Salmonella. Ledeboer NA, editor. J Clin Microbiol. 2019 Aug;57(8):901–9.
4. Pinault L, Chabrière E, Raoult D, Fenollar F. Direct Identification of Pathogens in Urine by Use of a Specific Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization–Time of Flight Spectrum Database. Carroll KC, editor. J Clin Microbiol. 2019 Apr;57(4):269–9.
Submitting your Critical review assignment
• Please combine all parts of your assignment into one word processor (Word or Pages) or PDF document, and submit using the Turnitin link. Make sure you include a cover page with your name, student number, a word count, and the article you are reviewing.
Assignment Instructions
Critical Review of a Journal Article
Word count: 2000 + or – 200 words
1. Chose a journal article form the list provided, locate the article using the RMIT library and download the PDF and any supplementary material.
2. Read through the assignment instructions, and questions below that are used to assess scientific manuscripts.
3. Read the article you have chosen.
4. Write a review of the article with the following sections:
o Cover sheet- your name, the article you are reviewing, word count.
o Summary and Background
o Critical Review
General Requirements for assignment.
Reports in Microbiology are written in scientific format. The purpose of scientific writing is to inform the reader of the procedures and results of an experiment. The introduction section provides the background and context for the reader. The writing should be clear, logical and easy to understand. For this reason, scientific writing usually follows a defined format.
The report should be word-processed. Use font 12 or higher and double space the report. Include a computer word count and usually at least one table or figure with results should be included. Pages should be numbered. Please use the Vancouver Referencing style in your report. The easiest way to do this is to use referencing software (eg. Endnote).
Students can access Endnote software through the RMIT library. Please see: http://www1.rmit.edu.au/library.
Please ask for advice on installing and using Endnote at the library or IT. Endnote training sessions are run on a regular basis.
In a scientific report, it is important to write as clearly and precisely as possible. After writing the first draft, read the report and see if you can reduce the word count by using good precise scientific writing. The word limit for any report does not include tables, figures or reference list. This word limit is for the entire report, not for each individual section.
Students should use their word processing software to generate a word count and record the word count on the coversheet of your assignment.
Instructions for writing your critical review of a journal article.
Your critical review should be written in 2 sections:
1. Summary of background and contents of paper (50% of marks)
Write around 1-2 page on the background and contents of the paper, this should cover the background of the study so that you can put it in context and its importance in microbiology. Then write and a summary of what was done in the study and its outcomes.
You should write a short review of the background of the article to make its context in medical microbiology clear, this should include a short discussion of the other relevant published studies in the area. This is likely to include the studies referenced in the
article you are reading, but may also include other studies they don’t mention.
In the case of a very novel technique there may be few other published studies, in which case you should focus your discussion of the background of the paper on the problem that it is addressing and its significance.
The general questions you should be addressing in this section of your report are- Why was this study done? And briefly What has previously been reported that provides the basis or rationale for this study?
There may also have been studies published more recently so you will need to do your own literature search on the topic. For help doing this see: Searching for journal articles and How to download articles for the RMIT library.
Your summary of the work done in the paper should cover the introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion sections. You may either write a section under each of these sections or write an overall “summary” of the contents of the paper, provided all sections are mentioned in your report. Don’t forget to read and discuss any supplementary information that is linked to the paper.
As this paper is written primarily for microbiologists working in medical microbiology, there may be some sections that are not explained in the detail that you need for your own understanding. In that case, do some research of the scientific literature using a
database such as PubMed and fill in the gaps. Additional references used should be cited using the Vancouver referencing system.
2. Critical Review. (50% of marks)
The aim of this section is to show the examiner that you have understood the purpose, need for and content of the paper- particularly in relation to other published work in the field.
Present a critical review of the article. The following points will be helpful in the review:
It is not essential that you answer all of these questions (not all will be directly relevant to the article you have chosen), or even that you write your review in the order set out below, but you can use these points as a guide and check list.
The major focus of the critical review should be the findings of the study, or the experimental approach in relation to other published work in the field.
You can point out typographic and grammatical errors, or state whether you think some parts of the paper are too long, or difficult to understand, but do NOT devote a large part of your review to these issues.
Questions to consider when critically reviewing an article:
The following guidelines are modified from guidelines for reviewers of the European Journal of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (EJMID): Permission was obtained from the journal to reproduce this information.
General:
• How original is this paper? For example, is it simply applying the methods used in another study to a new situation or is the idea completely novel?
• Are there any published studies on the same topic?
• What is unique about this study?
• How important is this study to medical microbiology?
• Are there any sections of the paper that are too long and could be shortened?
• Is the writing clear, simple and concise?
Abstract
• Does the abstract outline the aims of the study, main methods, results and conclusions?
Introduction
• Does the introduction state the research question to be addressed?
• Is sufficient background information provided for readers to understand the question?
Materials and methods
• Are the methods appropriate to the research question/s being addressed?
• Are the methods described in sufficient detail to be repeated by another microbiologist? Is any important information missing?
• Have references been provided for all the methods, except new ones developed by the authors?
Results
• Are there any results in the text that would be better presented in a table or figure?
• Is there any material presented in a table or figure that would be better presented in the text? Is there any repetition of results in text AND a table or figure?
Discussion
• Do you agree with the author’s interpretation of results? And the significance of the study? (You are free to agree or disagree- you need to justify your statements with explanations and or reference to relevant scientific literature)
• Have the authors clearly distinguished between their own results and the results of others?
• Are there any negative findings in the results that could be important but have not been discussed?
• Have the authors adequately discussed their results and conclusions in relation to the results of other investigators? ie. other publications on this topic
• Are the author’s conclusions acceptable and is there sufficient evidence for the
conclusions they have drawn?
• Do the findings of the study agree with, or contradict other studies? Has this been discussed?
• Are there any relevant studies on this topic that have not been referred to or discussed by the authors?
References
• Check that all statements in the text that require a reference are properly referenced.
Tables and figures
• Do all tables and figures have complete legends so that they can be understood without reference to the text?
• Could any of the tables and figures be omitted or simplified?
Ethics and Conflicts of interest:
If relevant- Were all studies approved by the relevant animal or human ethics committees?
Do you think there could be any conflict of interest regarding the results of the study? Are any conflicts declared? Are there commercial interests in the study?
The general breakdown of marks for parts of you report are shown in the table below. The detailed marking rubric with for the assignment, with detailed marking criteria is large. It can be best viewed by viewing the PDF version attached below.
Students are advised to review the detailed rubric when preparing their assignment for submission.
Marking scheme.
Criterion Possible Marks
Summary -Background & content
Evidence of understanding of background of subject area
Is there evidence that the background has been researched further?
5
Has the study been clearly summarised and the important outcomes stated? 5
Critical review
Have the key outcomes of the study been addressed? Have the strengths and weaknesses been addressed?
Is there adequate reference to the scientific literature? Have other relevant published studies been discussed?
5
Are critical statements (positive of negative?) backed up by evidence from the paper, or the scientific literature?
Evidence of understanding of the implications of the study for clinical microbiology practice
5
Referencing
present, correct style, use of relevant literature
4
Writing
clarity, spelling, grammar. Use of appropriate scientific language Turnitin score, word count, cover sheet with required information.
6
Total (out of 30 marks) 30
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United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), helps developing countries attract and use aid effectively. In all our activities, we encourage the protection of human rights, capacity development and the empowerment of women.We are recruiting to fill the vacant position below:Job Title: National Consultant – Social Capital Development and Economic GrowthLocation: AbujaType of Contract: Individual ContractPost Level: National ConsultantStarting Date: 29th November 2017Duration of Initial Contract:24 Working daysExpected Duration of Assignment: 24 Working daysScope of WorkThe broader aim of the evaluation, as stated above, is to generate a usable evaluation report that would aid the inherent culture of learning and accountability in the United Nations system programming processes in terms of progress made towards the attainment of the main outcomes and outputs of the UNDAF III.The evaluation would also provide relevant information and strategic recommendations that would support the UN system in Nigeria to enrich the UNSDPF implementation in a timely and most effective manner. The recommendations will aim to improve the strategies, implementation mechanism, and management efficiency of UNSDPF-2018-2022.The Evaluation exercise will cover the current cycle of the UNDAF III from 2014-2017 and will holistically review and systematically analyze recorded achievements and the accompanying strategies and how all these aided the UN in delivering on its mandate. Finally, the evaluation will identify lessons in implementing the UNDAF III, with a particular focus on the governance process and Coordination mechanisms including the PMT, UNCT, UNM&E group, RC office and DaO Lead Agencies and Groups.The recommendations, if any, will aim to improve the implementation mechanism, and management efficiency of UNSDPF-2018-2022.In particular, the evaluation will:Assess the progress or lack thereof, towards the expected results as defined in the theory of change for UNDAF III cycle. Where appropriate, the evaluation will also highlight unexpected results (positive or negative) and missed opportunities;Provide an analysis of how the UN has positioned itself to add value in response to national needs and changes in the national development context;Present key findings, draw key lessons learned, and provide a set of clear and forward-looking options leading to strategic and actionable recommendations to support and adjust the UNSDPF implementation.Assess the contributions made by the UNCT in the result framework of the UNDAF and its contribution to national development results(accountability);Identify the factors that have affected positively or negatively the UNCT’s contribution, and explaining the enabling factors and bottlenecks (learning)Evaluation Methodology and ApproachThe Evaluation shall benefit from existing or newly commissioned studies, research or evaluations conducted by an individual or collaborating Agencies including the UN Agencies.Based on the documented innovations, lessons learnt and findings from the research, studies and evaluations, the Consultants will work with the UN and partners to conduct in-depth analysis of progress towards results, identify lessons learnt and propose corrective actions. The consultants will work with state governments and UNS to produce a report on lessons learnt related to some Delivering as One focus states (Benue, Anambra, Cross River, Oyo, Lagos, etc) and FCT to feed into the Evaluation report.Data CollectionIn terms of data collection, the evaluation will use a mixed method (quantitative and qualitative) approach that will include document reviews, SWOT Analysis, group and individual interviews and field visits as appropriate.Final methods to be selected must match the above stated objectives and specific questions. It is expected that the technical proposal will:Identify methodology and sample (address sampling limitations)Level of stakeholders’ participation amongst other issuesInformation Sources:The following minimum documents will be used for obtaining detailed background information on the UNDAF III: The UNDAF Document; The results matrix; The monitoring and evaluation framework and plans; Joint Annual Work Plans for the DaO states and FCT; Mid-term/End of Year reviews report, Relevant Reports.Validation :The Evaluation Team will use a variety of methods to ensure that the data is valid, including triangulation.Stakeholders’ InvolvementThe Evaluation will be managed by the UNDAF M&E group to ensure independence of the process. A reference group, as per the UNEG guidance, will be created to guide the evaluation exercise. An inclusive approach, involving a broad range of partners and stakeholders, will be taken for evaluation process.The Evaluation Process and Work PlanThe process of the evaluation will be divided into three phases, each including several steps:Phase 0: Evaluability assessment: the consultant will identify and review the basic documentation and discuss with key stakeholders to ensure proper response to the evaluability assessment questions. The deliverable is an evaluability assessment report.Phase 3: Drafting and validating the Evaluation Report: A draft evaluation report will be prepared by the evaluation team after the data collection and analysis exercise. The draft report will be submitted by the Lead Consultant to the Evaluation Committee/RCO. ii. Review and Quality Assurance – The Lead consultant will be directly responsible for addressing any comments or observations towards eventual finalization of the report by securing inputs from the respective subject area consultants. iii. Presentation of findings, Validation and submission of report- The Evaluation team shall present the final draft for validation to stakeholders in designated meetings while the final report shall be submitted to the UNCT via the Chair of Evaluation Committee/RCO (Word and PDF version).Phase 1: Preparation and Inception Phase: i. Desk review ii. UNDAF Evaluability assessment iii Stakeholder mapping; iv. Development of an operational/logistical plan. The Output and deliverable of this phase is the Inception Report.Phase 2: Data Collection and Preliminary Analysis Phase: At the end of this phase, the evaluation team will provide a debriefing of the preliminary findings to the UNCT/PMT, take initial comments and validate the preliminary findings.Deliverables:Inception report describing consultants’ understanding of the assignment and which includes his/her detailed plan to execute it (5-10-page document). The report should also further refine the overall evaluation scope, approach, design and timeframe, and provide a detail outline of the evaluation methodology and is to be delivered4 days after the start of the assignment.Progress report/briefing to the Evaluation Committee/PMT/RCO (the briefing periodicity to be determined in the Inception ReportSWOT analysis report on the sample DaO focus states in NigeriaComprehensive Final Evaluation Report (20 pages content including not more that 4-page Executive Summary)A final Power Point presentation containing the main findings, conclusions and recommendations of the evaluation for dissemination and debriefing purposes.Time Frame and Remuneration:The consultancy is expected to last four weeks (24 working days) starting November 19, 2017 Remuneration will be in accordance with the UN Rules and Regulations and will be commensurate with the complexity of the assignment based on the signed contract administered by UNDP Service center. The Consultancy fee will be paid as a lump sum contract in line with the following schedule and upon acceptance of key deliverables:At the end of the Evaluability assessment, and submission and approval of the inception report (last week of November):20%At the submission of the Final Draft Reports (1st and 2nd week of December):50%At the end of the Evaluation exercise (3rd week of December): 30%Composition of the Evaluation Team:There will be a team of three (3) consultants made up of one international expert and two National Experts; the international consultant will be the team leader. Each of the other two national consultants should possess relevant qualifications and experience in at least one of the four UNDAF-III outcome areas. As much as possible, the composition of the team should be gender sensitive.The selected consultants are expected to be independent and should not have been involved in the implementation of UNDAF III programmes in any of the Agencies.Tasks of the ConsultantsThoroughly review and familiarize self with the UNDAF documents including the Country Analysis, the UNDAF Outcomes, the UNDAF Results Matrix, the Monitoring and Evaluation Framework and the UNDAF Evaluation Concept Note/TORs;Present the draft Evaluation Report as per the process described in point “Phase 3: Drafting the Evaluation Report” above and incorporate any comments or changes and produce the final draft of the report;In close consultation with the RCO, manage the day-to-day coordination of the detailed tasks of the Evaluation including communication with the Evaluation focal points in the Agencies, sending, receiving and proper archiving of documents; organizing and facilitating consultative/coordination meetings etc;Participate actively and take initiative in the meetings of PMT/EC on the Evaluation;Convene coordination meetings with and provide technical guidance to the UNDAF Area/Sub-area consultants and ensure their full understanding and application of the Evaluation principles and guidelines to both the processes and outputs.Attend and provide technical support to UNDAF Area/Sub-area consultative and review meetings;Review and analyze inputs from all UN agencies and stakeholders, ensure that the reports answer the Evaluation Questions (see above) and collate into the draft Evaluation Report;Draft the text for the crosscutting parts of the report including the executive summary; and synthesis of the Situation Analysis update, the constraints, the lessons learnt, summary of proposed changes and recommendations for UNDAF III;Plan, organize, facilitate and summarize outputs from a participatory comprehensive SWOT analysis of the Delivering-as-One planning and operationalization process;In collaboration with the Office of the RC, lead the planning for, and organization of, the Evaluation meeting including preparation of the report document, the accompanying presentations and the meeting logistics;Attend Evaluation meetings and incorporate any comments or changes and produce the final Evaluation report. | https://www.erecnigeria.com/national-consultant-social-capital-development-and-economic-growth-at-united-nations-development-programme-undp/ |
AdvisorGalaskiewicz, Joseph J.
MetadataShow full item record
PublisherThe University of Arizona.
RightsCopyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.
AbstractGentrification is an emerging phenomenon that transforms the social, economic, and physical structure of urban neighborhoods across the nation. Using historically Black neighborhoods in Portland, Oregon as the setting, this project explores how neighborhood organizations employ diverse strategies to address the geographical dispersing of the cultural community that was once concentrated within their neighborhood. Though urban scholars have examined market-based gentrification, this dissertation assesses gentrification in a context that is predominantly state-led—that is, gentrification perpetuated by federal, state, and local urban redevelopment policies. Using in-depth interviews, content analyses, and GIS mapping, this dissertation identifies mechanisms employed by neighborhood organizations in “Black Portland” that complicate notions of community as spatial boundaries dissolve. This project explores neighborhood organizations along two dimensions: type (enterprises and institutions) and sector (for-profit, non-profit, and hybrid institutions). The data reveal that while neighborhood enterprises are predisposed to engage in the neutral, arms-length provision of goods and services, when faced with the displacement of longtime residents, neighborhood enterprises appropriate cultural symbols to access race-specific resources. On the other hand, neighborhood institutions are predisposed to reinforce community values, norms, and rules. Accordingly, when displaced residents fail to resettle in a concentrated area, neighborhood institutions invoke methods of physical expansion to remain engaged with displaced residents and to combat the ‘placelessness’ that former residents associate with gentrification. Similarly, the data show that neighborhood institutions that occupy different sectors adopt differing ‘post-gentrification’ strategies: nonprofit neighborhood institutions adopt a collaborative approach to survive gentrification, for-profit neighborhood institutions adopt an authenticity approach, and hybrid neighborhood institutions adopt a cross-subsidization approach. By expanding theoretical understandings of urban neighborhoods as socially organized, this dissertation contributes to existing literature by assessing the new and existing avenues utilized by Black neighborhood organizations to maintain community cohesion. The themes of “place” and “space” for cultural communities—or alternatively—the social, economic, and policy consequences of “placelessness” for cultural communities are prevalent throughout the narrative. Because neighborhood organizations form the core of urban neighborhoods, they are uniquely positioned to understand and respond to neighborhood change.
Typetext
Electronic Dissertation
Degree NamePh.D. | https://repository.arizona.edu/handle/10150/634422 |
Every IPCC report goes through several drafts and reviews to ensure it is as robust, comprehensive and balanced as possible.
The review process is critical for ensuring the assessment is scientifically rigorous, exhaustive, objective and transparent; broad participation in the IPCC review process is one of the core strengths of IPCC assessments.
The First-Order Draft is open to review by experts; the Second-Order Draft is reviewed by governments and experts; and governments send comments on the Summary for Policymakers, and the Overview Chapter in the case of a Methodology Report, during the Final Government Distribution. In the case of a Synthesis Report draft, it undergoes a single simultaneous government and expert review; followed by a government review of the final draft through the Final Government Distribution.
All review comments submitted by experts or governments are addressed by the authors. The comments and the author responses, together with the drafts, are published after the report is finalized.
How do experts become reviewers of IPCC reports?
Experts are invited to register for the review through the website of the IPCC Working Group or Task Force responsible for the report.
Because the aim of the expert review is to get the widest possible participation and broadest possible expertise, those who register are accepted unless they fail to demonstrate any relevant qualification.
Sometimes the Working Group or Task Force Bureau concerned will also invite specific individuals to register to take part in the expert review, for instance if they have a particular area of expertise to contribute. This does not give them more legitimacy than any other expert reviewer.
The role of expert reviewers of IPCC reports
Expert reviewers may submit comments on one sentence or section of a report, or a whole chapter of the full report. They may consider scientific substance or the structure of the report. Often they will point out a published paper that the report authors may not have included in their assessment, but which could be relevant.
Expert reviewers agree not to cite, quote or distribute the draft, because at this stage the report is still a work in progress and has not yet been formally considered by the IPCC. They must submit their comments through the IPCC website.
Expert reviewers who submit comments are credited by name in the final report for their contribution. Such comments are a vital contribution to the quality of the assessment. But because the review is essentially open to all through a self-declaration of expertise, it follows that having been a registered expert reviewer does not by itself serve as a qualification of the expert or support their credibility in a different context.
For
more information on this topic, please see our Factsheet on the IPCC
review process. | https://www.ipcc.ch/2020/12/04/what-is-an-expert-reviewer-of-ipcc-reports/ |
You Can Ask To Change The Amount Of Temporary Support If Either Of Your Finances Change
If either of your financial situations changes, you can ask the judge to change the amount or end support. For example, if youre paying support and you lose your job or your spouse starts working, you can ask the judge to change support.
Its very important that you ask to change the temporary support amount right away. A judge can only change the amount as far back as the date you filed the papers asking for the change.
How To Get Out Of Spousal Support In Missouri
An alimony obligation is a regular reminder of a potentially unpleasant time, and you might find yourself researching how to get out of spousal support as soon as possible. Generally, the purpose of alimony is to avert the shock and inability to financially survive after the sudden loss of their spouses support. Therefore, courts must determine the following:
- The spouse requesting maintenance has insufficient assets to meet reasonable needs.
- The spouse has insufficient potential income to support themselves or cannot work outside of the home due to circumstances.
Courts often order maintenance payments to a spouse who makes less money, as they agreed that only one spouse would work outside the home while married. This may be due to a lack of education or experience or a decision to oversee the upkeep of the children and household primarily.
If you cant afford child support payments and permanent alimony just because you cant afford them, it is best to consult with a family law attorney. Depending on the facts of your case, your attorney will help you go through the legal process and get the best possible outcome.
Strategy : Put An End Date On Alimony Payments
Alimony payments do not have to be a lifelong affair. You should strongly consider including a termination date in your divorce decree or agreement. This will remove the need to return to court at a later date, saving you from financial burden. The payments will simply terminate.
End dates for short marriages are usually one half the length of the union. It is much harder to predict the alimony termination date on a marriage that was lengthier, however. You should speak with an attorney to figure out what end date would be reasonable for your situation, given the duration and individual circumstances of your marriage.
Permanent alimony may still be ordered by the judge during your divorce finalization. It is usually issued when a spouse lacks the ability to support themselves due to extenuating circumstances, such as age or disability.
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Are Savings Included In A Couples Standard Of Living
The goal of maintaining the marital standard of living after divorce might not be a problem when the high-earning spouse has enough money to cover both spouses expenses, even at their former lifestyle. But what about couples who agreed it was important to put away a generous slice of their income into savings, retirement accounts, or other investments? Should judges consider that habit to be a part of their standard of livingand therefore include a savings component in the amount of alimony?
If youre fortunate enough to be facing this issue, the answer to that question will depend on where you live. Courts in different states have taken opposite views on the question. For instance:
- California courts have long held that when a couples marital standard of living included savings and investments, judges may consider that as part of their ongoing expenses. As one court put it, the wife shouldnt be deprived of her accustomed lifestyle just because it involved the purchase of stocks and bonds rather than fur coats. .)
- In contrast, the Florida Supreme Court has held that alimony may not include a savings component. Even when a couple had a history of frugality and savings, the court explained that the supported spouse would receive a share of those savings as part of the property division in the divorce, so the judge shouldnt include speculative post-dissolution savings in alimony. .)
Recommended Reading: What States Do Not Enforce Alimony
Strategy : Your Spouse May Not Get Alimony If They Dont Have Custody
If your spouse is not awarded sole custody of the kids, they may not need money from alimony payments. Caring for children means that you have a significantly higher cost of living. Taking away the financial responsibility of providing care for your children may just lower the amount of money that is needed for your spouse to maintain their living standard. It may just give your spouse the chance to find their footing on their own in terms of their finances without the help of alimony payments.
Your ex will not need additional money, and you will decrease the amount of alimony you can provide by being the sole caregiver for your kids. You will face high costs like daycare, groceries, education, and clothing in paying for the children, which will cut into your expendable income. Some children have special needs, or ongoing expenses like diapers, doctor visits, or tutoring. The costs associated with raising a child or children may just eliminate your ability to pay alimony altogether.
In some cases, your spouse may even be given the order to make child support payments that can help take care of the costs associated with caring for and raising a young child. Be sure to carefully consider if you can be the sole caregiver for your children. You should never use this strategy as a means to avoid paying alimony or get child support monies from your spouse.
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How Much Spousal Support Will I Receive
It depends on the facts and circumstances of your case. First, the court treats temporary spousal support differently than permanent spousal support. So if you are requesting alimony during a case you are asking for temporary alimony and the court will balance your needs with your spouses ability to pay. The court will use a spousal support calculator to determine the proper amount of spousal support, although the court is not bound to follow exactly what the calculator dictates. The calculator attempts to portion net income equally among the parties. Permanent alimony is determined at the end of a case, and depends on the courts considerations of the factors set forth in Fam. Code 4320. For the bullet list of the factors, . The court is specifically not allowed to rely on the spousal support calculator to determine permanent spousal support.
Alimony Laws Vary By State
Spousal support laws vary among states. Most states have cut back on awarding permanent alimony in favor of temporary or rehabilitative spousal support to encourage the recipient to become self-sufficient. Recipients may also get temporary support if they are the principal caregiver of the couple’s children.
Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington are more likely to grant the recipient life-long support payments. Cases involving long marriages where one partner earned much less than the other are most likely to be awarded permanent alimony.
States may limit or deny spousal support if the recipient was the cause of the breakup. Georgia and North Carolina see adultery, abandonment, and marital misconduct as grounds for limiting or denying alimony. Most states, however, recognize no-fault divorce and do not consider who’s to blame when awarding spousal support.
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Alimony And Tax Issues
Alimony takes a bite out of the payor’s wallet but also provides them with a tax deduction. For the recipient, spousal support is considered income and is therefore taxed as such. When considering accepting a lump-sum alimony, beware that you could owe a significant amount of taxes on such a large payout. Consult a tax professional to help determine your best option.
How To Avoid Paying Alimony When The Supported Spouse Does Not Have A Need
You may be wondering, what do you mean does not have a “need?” How does a spouse prove that?
There are many scenarios this can come up but one common one deals with independent wealth separate from marital funds.
If the alimony seeking spouse has an inheritance as one example or otherwise has access to money he or she can use to pay for his or her expenses, that spouse may have a lesser need for alimony.
This may be true even though the other spouse was the breadwinner during the marriage and has the ability to pay alimony.
In addition, third parties, such as parents as one example, may pay the alimony seeking spouse’s expenses. This payment, when recurring, triggers the question whether that spouse has a reduced need for alimony, even if that spouse is not employed.
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How Does The Court Handle Changes In Employment
The court can make assumptions about your income. For example, if youve been making alimony payments based on a $100,000-per-year income, but you go to the court and you say, I just quit my job to pursue my dream of becoming a famous fiction writer, so I cant pay alimony any longer, the court can tell you that you must continue paying the original amount in alimony. The court can also appoint an expert under Evidence Code, Section 730 to evaluate your earning power regardless of what your actual income. The bottom line is that you shouldnt quit your job just to stop paying alimony.
Judges Order Support Based On Needs And Ability To Pay
The judge decides the amount by looking at the:
-
Needs of spouse with less money
-
Ability to pay for spouse with more money
Theyll look at how much one spouse needs to meet their expenses and whether the other spouse makes enough to meet that need.
- Example: need and ability to pay
Needs: One spouse’s net income is $3,400 a month, but their expenses are $3,700. They need $300 to make ends meet.
Ability to pay: The other spouse’s net income is $5,000 per month, but their expenses are $3,500. That spouse can afford to pay support.
: Here, the judge might order the spouse who can afford to pay support to pay the spouse with more need $300 per month for temporary support.
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Strategy : Keep Tabs On Your Spouses Relationship
Some states will stop making alimony payments mandatory when the spouse who is getting them begins living with a new partner or significant other. This info may be written in the fine print on your divorce decree ask your attorney to go over the section about alimony payments with you for the best information.
A new marriage will usually allow the payments to come to an end, so keep track of what your ex-spouse is up to when it comes to their relationships. Keep tabs on them via social media and through friends. Make sure you are aware of when these life changes occur so you can get those alimony payments to cease.
Whats The Next Step To Understanding Alimony
Fighting an award of alimony is nothing short of a knock down drag out battle, but when approached the proper way, can be possible. Understanding how alimony works in each particular state is the first step to deciding how the facts of your case will shake out. The next step is figuring out how much legal advice you actually need. We can help by connecting you at no cost to a local divorce attorneythat can provide you with a consultation!
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How Long Do You Have To Be Married To Get Alimony In Texas
When youre trying to plan for your post-divorce finances, youre probably wondering whether you should expect to pay or receive alimony. Different states have their own guidelines for awarding spousal maintenance, which is sometimes bounded by the duration of the marriage. If youre getting divorced in the Lone Star State, youre probably wondering: how long do you have to be married to get alimony in Texas?
The reality is that Texas has some of the most strict guidelines surrounding court-ordered spousal maintenance. Texas law doesnt favor awarding maintenance and only does so if it is necessary to help the supported individual get to a point where they can be financially independent.
That being said, divorcing couples can come up with just about any alimony agreement they are both comfortable with and include it as a part of their divorce settlement. Its worth understanding, though, that the way that court-ordered spousal maintenance and contractual alimony can be enforced by the courts arent the same.
Lets take a look at how long you need to be married in Texas to receive alimony and everything else you should know about spousal support and maintenance.
What Are The Penalties For Nonpayment
If a spouse who is ordered to pay maintenance fails to pay it as ordered, there are several potential penalties. The spouse may be charged with a class 1 misdemeanor for willfully violating the courts orders under A.R.S. 25-511.01. To prove the criminal case, a prosecutor will be required to show the following elements beyond a reasonable doubt:
- There was a maintenance order issued by the court
- The order directed the defendant to pay spousal maintenance
- The defendant received notice of the order
- The defendant was willful or intentional and
- The defendant disobeyed the order.
If the ex-spouse is convicted of the class 1 misdemeanor offense, he or she can be sentenced to serve up to six months in jail under A.R.S. 13-707. In addition to potential criminal penalties, there are also potential civil remedies. A spouse who is owed maintenance that his or her former spouse has failed to pay may file a petition to enforce spousal maintenance under A.R.S. 25-508. Once the petition is filed, the court will schedule a hearing. Since most spousal maintenance payments are made through the Support Payment Clearinghouse, it is possible to obtain records showing that the payments were not made.
Spousal maintenance orders can be enforced in a number of different ways, including the following:
- Lien against property
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Do I Have To Pay Child Support If I Pay Alimony
Child support and alimony are determined separatelyso yes, child support may still be required for parties ordered to pay alimony. Alimony is for one ex-spouses general living expenses, and while this may be influenced by the presence of minor or dependent children, children are not the main factor.
Conversely, child support is intended for a separate and more specific set of costs related only to raising children. It may be granted automatically by a judge regardless of any request by one party for alimony.
Reducing Your Alimony Payments
Generally, for a modification to be granted, you must prove that you experienced a change in circumstances. However, alimony may also be reduced or terminated based on your former spouses circumstances. For example, if he or she remarried, alimony payments would automatically cancel. If your former spouse is cohabitating with a new partner, you can also petition the court to terminate alimony payments. It is unlikely a judge will grant a reduction of alimony payments if your former spouse experienced a minor increase in income. If your exs income significantly increased, however, alimony payments may be reduced.
Below are some other examples of changes in circumstances that may result in a reduction of alimony payments:
- You involuntarily lost your job.
- You involuntarily took a pay cut.
- You developed a condition or disability that prevents you from maintaining gainful employment.
If you voluntarily quit your job or accepted a job with fewer responsibilities and reduced pay, a judge may not grant a modification to your alimony payments. Voluntarily leaving your job may be viewed as a tactic to pay less alimony to your spouse, which is why modifications are typically not granted under such circumstances.
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The Process For Reducing Alimony In Nj
There are several complex steps involved when seeking an alimony reduction or termination in New Jersey. You could try to negotiate with your ex-spouse or her attorney. If that fails or you know that negotiation with your ex-spouse will not be productive, perhaps you want to obtain counsel and then decide whether mediation is appropriate and whether it is a perquisite as set forth under your divorce agreement. Otherwise, youll have to be the one to file a motion with the family law court asking for a change to your alimony order.
The New Jersey Courts even recommend in their change of order packet that you get a lawyer rather than trying to represent yourself, given the legal complexities involved in this particular process. When you seek a post-divorce modification of your alimony, an attorney from our firm will take the lead to strategize and prepare the necessary forms and other pieces of evidence you may need. Our experienced attorney will also guide you throughout the process and be at your side during the motion hearing. Dont go it alone when so much is at stake financially.
Under the right circumstances and with knowledgeable legal representation, you could be on your way to reduced alimony payments or leaving the headache of making payments to your ex-spouse completely behind.
How To Avoid Paying Spousal Maintenance In A Divorce
Depending on your circumstances, you may be scrambling to figure out how to avoid paying spousal maintenance in a divorce. Since family law matters often evolve, Missouri allows maintenance orders to be modified.
Due to the wording in a prenuptial agreement or in the support order itself, however, the court cannot modify the amount in some cases. This is because of a precise termination date to which the court must adhere.
Missouri law requires proof of substantial and continuing changes in the parties circumstances to modify a support obligation if it can be modified. Though the entire process can be complex, however, guidance from an experienced attorney can help you get the best results. | https://www.divorcetalk.net/how-to-get-out-of-alimony/ |
Being A Successful Leader Using Ethical Decision Making Artur Victoria Research And StudiesNo Comments »
Here’s An Opinion On:
By Artur Victoria
Being a leader you have to train your skills on decision making.
Because of my extended experience I can help giving these reflection topics. I am available to develop any special need for you
This would focus on:
— Looking at some established models of ethical decision making;
— Examining and discussing cases/scenarios involving individual ethical dilemmas
— Examining the issue of Conflict of Interest from an ethical perspective
— Discussing organizational ethical climate as a factor in ethical decision making
Ethical Checklists
Example I: 12 Questions to ask yourself
1.Have you defined the problem accurately?
2.How would you define the problem if you stood on the other side of the fence?
3.How did this situation occur in the first place?
4.To whom and to what do you give your loyalty as a person and as a member of the corporation?
5.What is your intention in making this decision?
6.How does this intention compare with the probable results?
7.Whom could your decision or action injure?
8.Can you discuss the problem with the affected parties before you make your decision?
9.Could you disclose without qualm your decision or action to your boss, your CEO, the board of directors, your family, society as a whole?
10.Are you confident that your position will be as valid over a long period of time as it seems now?
11.What is the symbolic potential of your action if understood? misunderstood?
12.Under what conditions would you allow exceptions to your stand?
–Collect information and identify the problem.
–Be alert; be sensitive to morally charged situations: Look behind the technical requirements of your job to see the moral dimensions. Use your ethical resources to determine relevant moral standards. Use your moral intuition.
–Identify what yOIl know and don’t know: While you gather information, be open to alternative interpretations of events. So within bounds of patient and institutional confidentiality, make sure that you have the perspectives of patients and families as weil as health care providers and administrators. While accuracy and thoroughness are important, there can be a trade-off between gathering more information and letting morality significant options disappear. So decisions may have to be made before the full story is known.
— State the case briefly with as many of the relevant facts and circumstances as you can gather within the decision time available:
What decisions have to be made?
Who are the decision-makers?
Remember that there may be more than one decision-maker and that their interactions can be important.
Be alert to actual or potential conflict of interest situations. A conflict of interest is “a situation in which a person, such as a public official, an employee, or a professional, has a private or personal interest sufficient to appear to a reasonable person to influence the
objective exercise of his or her official duties. “These include financial and financial
conflicts of interest (e.g., favouritism to a friend or relative).
In some situations, it is sufficient to make known to all parties that you are in a conflict of interest situation. In other cases, it is essential to step out a decision-making role.
Consider the context of decision-making
1 -Ask yourself why this decision is being made in this context at this time? Are there better contexts for making this decision? Are the right decision-makers included?
Specify feasible alternatives.
2 – State the live options at each stage of decision-making for each decision-maker. You then should ask what the likely consequences are of various decisions. Here, you should remember to take into account good or bad consequences not just for yourself, your profession, organization or patients, but for all affected persons. Be honest about your own stake in particular outcomes and encourage others to do the same.
3 – Use your ethical resources to identify morally significant factors in each alternative.
— Principles: What are the principles that are widely accepted in one form or another in the common moralities of many communities and organizations.
— Moral models: Sometimes you will get moral insight from modelling your behaviour on a person of great moral integrity.
— Use ethically informed sources: Policies and other source materials, professional norms such as institutional policies, legal precedents, and wisdom from your religious or cultural traditions.
— Context: Conlextual features of the case that seem important such as the past history of relationships with various parties.
— Personal judgments: Your judgments, your associates, and trusted friends or advisors can be invaluable. Of course in talking a tough decision over with others you have to respect client and employer confidentiality. Discussion with others is particularly important when other decision-makers are involved, such as, your employer, co-workers, clients, or partners.
Your professional or health care association may provide confidential advice. Experienced co-workers can be helpful. Many forward-looking health care institutions or employers have ethics committees or ombudsmen to provide advice. Discussion with a good friend or advisor can also help you by listening and offering their good advice.
— Organized procedures for ethical consultation: Consider a formal case conference(s), an ethics committee, or an ethics consultant.
4. Propose and test possible resolutions.
— Find the best consequences overall: Propose a resolution or select the best alternative(s), all things considered.
— Perform a sensitivity analysis: Consider your choice critically: which factors would have to change to get you to alter your decision? These factors are ethically pivotal.
— Consider the impact on the ethical performance of others: Think about the effect of each choice upon the choices of other responsible parties.
Are you making it easier or harder for them to do the right thing? Are you setting a good example?
— Would a good person do this?: Ask yourself what would a virtuous person – one with integrity and experience – do in these circumstances?
— What if everyone in these circumstances did this?: Formulate your choice as a general maxim for all similar cases?
— Will this maintain trust relationships with others?: If others are in my care or otherwise dependent on me, it is impoltant that I continue to deserve their trust.
— Does it still seem right?: Are you and the other decision-makers still comfortable with your choice(s)?
If you do not have consensus, revisit the process. Remember that you are not aiming at Uthe” perfect choice, but a reasonably good choice under the circumstances.
5. Make your choice.
Live with it and Learn from it: This means accepting responsibility for your choice. It also means accepting the possibility that you might be wrong or that you will make a less than optimal decision. The object is to make a good choice with the information available, not to make a perfect choice.
Learn from your failures and successes.
— Accepting a gm In return for organizational favors
— Peddling influence for a fee or for personal gain
— Insider trading
— Nepotism
— “Moonlighting” (some situations)
— Industrial relations activities
Often discussed in respect of “public duty” and public employee responsibility, but in fact goes to every sector of employment.
The potential benefits emanating from such a conflict can extend beyond the individual, to family members, business associates, friends etc.
Private activities as conflicts of interest
Rightly or wrongly, private activities can be seen as in conflict with organizational duty, even if not yielding monetary advantage, as potential causes of public embarrassment or diminishing
faith in tlre integrity of the individual and/or the organization.
Examples
— Social and business contacts
— Lifestyle “idiosyncrasies”
— Behavioral predilections (sexual 7)
— Activities of partners
— Use of substances (alcohol, drugs 7)
— Personal financial arrangements
— Political or Religious affiliations
Conflicts of Interest: Issues for resolution
What should be the major focus of our concern?
— Is it reasonable to require avoidance of you by employees ?
— To what extent are private lives relevant to organizational life ?
— What conditions need to be fulfilled to established that a C or I exists ?
— Should we allow the media or public opinion to dictate what is or is not a Col ?
— Is it appropriate to include spouses, family members, friends, business associates etc. in considering C of I ?
— Should people be required to declare their interests ?
Conflict of Interest
The ethical responsibility to ensure that our private interests do not interfere with the proper
accomplishment of our organizational duties.
About the Author:
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Source:
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Permanent Link: | http://www.blogmacedonia.com/ |
This script is used to summarize dynamic insights and stories, clarify fuzzy ideas, capture additional information about model structure, and elicit feedback from participants after causal structures have been developed, typically at the end of a session.
Status
Best practices
Primary nature of group task
Convergent
Time
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Time required during session: 15 minutes
Follow-up time: 0 minutes
Materials
- Screen
- Projector
Inputs
- Diagram of model
Outputs
- List of main feedback loops and dynamics identified
- List of insights gained from the connection circle exercise and subsequent model
Roles
- Modeler with experience building models
- Reflector with extensive experience building and analyzing system dynamics models
- Recorders with note-taking experience
Steps
- At the start of the model review, the modeler moves up to the front of the room.
- The modeler describes the causal loop diagram and stresses that this is another reflection of the exact same linkages and variables discussed during the exercise and that none of these elements have been changed. Modeler notes that plus and minus signs mean the same as in the previous exercise.
- In a causal diagram, the modeler takes care to explain reinforcing and balancing loops by tracing examples within the model (if available). Modeler introduces the reflector so that the reflector can discuss more insights regarding feedback within the model.
- The reflector reviews key insights from the causal map and reads back the stories associated with major reinforcing and balancing feedback loops, intervention points, etc.
- After the reflector has reviewed the diagram, the reflector then initiates questioning regarding what didn’t get recaptured or is missing from the diagram. The reflector assesses confirmation of the adequacy of the diagram as a representation of the group thinking. The recorders document the insights shared.
- The reflector also will point out subsequent, important changes in structure, help the group identify what is happening with the modeling, and highlight model-based insights that emerge.
Evaluation Criteria
- A revised causal loop diagram that is based on an initial discussion
- A shared understanding of the changes in the model and insights that have emerged
History
Based on the original script “Causal Mapping from Discussion” by Peter Hovmand, created on April 19, 2010.
Revisions
Revised May 22, 2012 by Alison Kraus and Peter Hovmand.
Revised March 4, 2012 by Meagan Colvin and Peter Hovmand.
References
Richardson, G. P. (1997). Problems in causal loop diagrams. System Dynamics Review, 13(3), 247-252. | https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Scriptapedia/Model_Review |
LM5170-Q1 subsystems use average current feedback for current control whereas the C2000 microcontroller provides voltage feedback. Such a control scheme eliminates phase current balancing typical for multiphase converters. A system based on LM5170-Q1 allows a high level of integration, which reduces printed-circuit board (PCB) area, simplifies design, and speeds up development.
12V input voltage range: 6 to 18V.
48V input voltage range: 24 to 54V.
Reverse polarity, overcurrent overvoltage and overtemperature protection.
Highly integrated solution using automotive qualified components. | https://automotive.electronicspecifier.com/power/bidirectional-dc-dc-converter-reference-design-for-automotive |
India International Science Festival (5-8 October)
There’s something called the India International Science Festival that showcases the scientific work done by the country. Into its 4th season, this one of a kind festival nurtures and develops the scientific work of the country. This year’s event will be held in Lucknow between 5-8 October, whose curtain raiser was completed on 14th September in Calcutta by the Hon’ble Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences Dr. Harsh Vardhan.
What is it?
IISF is conceivably the biggest platform in India that brings together students, researchers, artists, and the general public to celebrate our nation’s achievements in science and technology. It is a medium to encourage the young minds towards the field of science and to promote the networking of stakeholders working towards the propagation of science. IISF-2018 with its focal theme “Science for Transformation” will have 23 special events (https://scienceindiafest.org).
IISF-2018 is expected to be represented by approximately 10000 delegates including 5000 students, 550 teachers, 200 students from North-East Region, 20 international delegates and approximately 200 startups. The delegates representing West Bengal and North East are from districts of Kolkata, Darjeeling, North 24 Pargana, South 24 Pargana, Howrah, Nadia, Hooghly, Imphal, Kohima, Guwahati, Tezpur, Itanagar, Churachandpur, Moirang, Thoubal, Bishnupur, Kakching, Tawang, Pamuppare. West Siang, Upper Siang, Seppa, Lower Siang, East Siang, Longding, West Tripura, Aizawl, Gangtok, Shillong etc. and represent various local schools, colleges and Institutes like Central Glass and Ceramic Research Institute, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata, Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Indian Statistical Institute, National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research, Kolkata, Bose Institute, Calcutta University, North Eastern Hill University, IBSD, Assam Agriculture University, IIT, Guwahati, IIT, Kharagpur, Manipur University etc. The first and second IISF was held in New Delhi and the third in Chennai. Ministry of Science & Technology, Ministry of Earth Sciences in association with Vijnana Bharti or VIBHA, is organizing the IISF-2018. As a prelude to the main event at Lucknow, Department of Biotechnology and Vijnana Bharati (VIBHA) will be organizing outreach programmes at eighty centers across the country. The first curtain raiser is being organized at Kolkata (Eastern zone) in which approximately 270 students, 20 teachers and more than 250 scientists and research scholars will participate representing different schools, colleges and institutions of the region.
What’s this session about?
Addressing a gathering of 300 participants comprising of students, scientists, research scholars and representatives from civil society in the presence of senior functionaries from Ministry of Science and Technology (DBT, DST, CSIR) and MoES along-with representatives of the Vijnana Bharati, the Minister highlighted the nature and theme of this session.
The theme of this edition of Science Festival is “Science for Transformation”. “During the past four years, science in India has undergone a sea-change – from fundamental science to application science, where science plays a leading role in societal transformation,” said Dr Harsh Vardhan, Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences. “Another major change in the last few years is bringing a synergy among scientific institutions collaborative research to address myriads of problems being faced by the society, as science has solution for major societal problems,” added Dr Harsh Vardhan.
The Role of Science
The Minister emphasized the role of science and technology in driving inclusive growth and urged the scientific organizations to work in close alignment and partnership with all stakeholders. He underscored the role played by various departments under Ministry of Science and Technology in developing frugal solutions for societal challenges and its role in driving development through energization of industrial clusters. The Hon’ble Minister reiterated government’s commitment to make science and technology as an enabler of social and economic progress for all sections of the population.
What are the events lined up?
- The Global Indian Science & Technology Stakeholders Meet (GIST)
- Industry-Academia Meet and Science & Technology for Harnessing Innovations (SATHI) – A National startup entrepreneurship summit
- Student Science Village
are some of the important events, being organized.
DNA Isolation World Record
The Science Village program is linked with the Pradhan Manthri Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana to reach out to the rural masses and propagate science and for seeking scientific solutions to the diverse challenges facing our society, particularly rural India. North East Student’s Conclave will bring hundreds of innovative, dedicated, passionate and award winning students on a single platform to share their experiences and put forth the new dimensions of passion with science. As World record attempts have been a key part of IISF since 2015, in IISF 2018, a World Record attempt will be made to “isolate DNA” by 500 students from class 8th to 10th standard.
Women Scientists & Entrepreneurs
The special role of Women Scientists and Entrepreneurs in shaping the scientific growth trajectory will be another highlight of this Festival. The programme aspires to develop new entrepreneurship and explore new vistas of opportunities in the field of science and technology among the women. Approximately 800 women scientist/entrepreneurs will attend the event. There will be a special effort to engage with stakeholders of the Northeast and the aspirational districts. Another feature of IISF-2018 will be Mega Science and Industry Expo that will highlight the outstanding contributions of India in the field of science, technology, and industry.
Impacting Society
Building Partnerships Impacting Society is the theme for the “State S&T Ministers’ conclave”. Nav Bharat Nirman and the Science and Literary Festival are the other highlights of IISF 2018. This festival is expected to bring all stakeholders together to discuss the contributions of Science & Technology to the flagship programmes of the Government.
“Vigyan Se Vikas”
Through this festival, the largest of its kind in the country and in this region, it is expected that the message of Excitement of Science will be spread to the students and will be inspiring for the youth. All stakeholders will assemble to collectively work towards “Vigyan se Vikas”– contributing to the Making of a New India. | http://www.egoodnews.in/india-international-science-festival-5-8-october/ |
There are several benefits that your company can achieve through an IS (Information Systems) audit
- Improved security: To identify and address any weaknesses or vulnerabilities in the IT systems and controls, which can help to improve the overall security of their systems and data.
- Increased efficiency: To identify areas where IT systems and processes can be improved or streamlined, which can lead to increased efficiency and productivity.
- Enhanced compliance: To ensure that its IT systems and controls are compliant with relevant laws, regulations, and industry standards.
- Improved risk management: To identify and assess potential risks to their IT systems and data and implement controls to mitigate those risks.
- Enhanced reputation: By demonstrating a commitment to the security and effectiveness of IT systems through regular IS audits, helps to enhance the reputation and build trust with customers, partners, and stakeholders. | https://cryptogennepal.com/services/information-systems-audit/ |
By the early 20th century vegetarianism in the West was contributing substantially to the drive to vary and lighten the nonvegetarian diet. In some places a fleshless diet was regarded as a regimen for specific disorders. Elsewhere, notably in Germany, it was considered as one element in a wider conception of vegetarianism, which involved a comprehensive reform of life habits in the direction of simplicity and healthfulness.
In the second half of the 20th century, the work of the Australian ethical philosopher Peter Singer inspired a revival of philosophical interest in the practice of vegetarianism and the larger topic of animal rights. Singer offered utilitarian arguments to support his contention that modern methods of raising and slaughtering animals for human food (“factory farming”) are morally unjustified; his arguments also applied to other traditional ways in which humans use animals, including as experimental subjects in medical research and as sources of entertainment. Singer’s work provoked much vexed discussion of the question of whether the traditional treatment of animals is justified by any “morally relevant” differences between animals and humans.
Meanwhile, other debates centred on the question of whether a fleshless diet, and specifically a vegan one, provides all the nutrients necessary for human health. In the West, for example, it was long a common belief that humans cannot obtain enough protein from a diet based solely on plant foods. However, nutritional studies conducted in the 1970s cast doubt on this claim, and it is seldom advanced today. A more recent issue is whether a vegan diet can provide enough vitamin B12, which humans need in tiny amounts (1 to 3 micrograms per day) to produce red blood cells and to maintain proper nerve functioning. Popular vegan sources of B12 include certain fortified foods made without animal products (such as nutritional yeast, cereals, and soy milk) and vitamin supplements.
By the early 21st century vegetarian restaurants were commonplace in many Western countries, and large industries were devoted to producing special vegetarian and vegan foods (some of which were designed to simulate various kinds of flesh and dairy products in form and flavour). Today many vegetarian societies and animal rights groups publish vegetarian recipes and other information on what they consider to be the health and environmental benefits and the moral virtues of a fleshless diet. Given that livestock farming is a major source of methane emissions and that meat production requires significantly more water and land resources than does production of an equivalent amount of fresh produce, vegetarianism has been promoted as a way to combat climate change and to encourage more sustainable land use.The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Learn More in these related Britannica articles: | https://www.britannica.com/topic/vegetarianism/Modern-developments |
A Potentially Habitable World in Our Nearest Star
An international
team of astronomers from the Pale Red Dot
campaign have found evidence of a potentially habitable world orbiting the
closest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri, a cool red-dwarf slightly older
than the Sun [1].
The planet, named Proxima b, has a minimum mass of 1.3 times that of Earth and orbits
its parent star every 11.2 days, receiving about 70% the energy Earth receives
from the Sun.
A potentially habitable world is a planet around another
star that might support liquid water on its surface and therefore lies within the so-called habitable zone. Though currently we cannot tell exactly how
habitable such planets are because we can not investigate their geologic or atmospheric composition, it is believed that small planets located in the habitable zone, just like Earth and now Proxima
b, would be more likely to have the right conditions for life as we
know it.
Proxima b was added
to the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog (HEC)[2]
as one of the best objects of interest for the search for life in the universe. The planet orbits well within the conservative habitable zone of Proxima Centauri. Additionally, Proxima b is now not only the closest potentially habitable planet to Earth (4.2 light
years away), but it is also the most similar to Earth (ESI = 0.87) [3],
with respect to Earth’s mass and insolation.
Other factors, though, make
Proxima b quite different from Earth. It is probably tidally-locked, always
giving the same face to its star. The illuminated side might be too hot, while
the dark side too cold for liquid water or life. A thick atmosphere or a large
ocean, though, could regulate the temperatures across the planet, but we do not know if
this is the case [4].
Probably the most
detrimental factor for the habitability of Proxima b is the activity of its
parent star, which produces strong magnetic fields, flares, and high UV and
X-ray fluxes as most red-dwarf stars do. These factors may lead to the atmospheric
and water loss of the planet, but would not necessarily preclude
habitable conditions [5], [6], [7]. Should Proxima b have a magnetic field, much like Earth does, it would potentially be shielded from such devastating forces.
The mass of Proxima b suggests a rocky composition, but we do
not know its radius to evaluate its bulk density [8].
The planet could be between 0.8 to 1.4 Earth radii depending on composition [9]and if rocky should be about 10% larger than Earth. However, Proxima b could be larger given that we only know its minimum mass.
Statistically, it is not expected to have a potentially
habitable world so close to Earth due to their expected low occurrence in the galaxy.
It is estimated that 24% of red-dwarf stars have an Earth-sized planet (1 to 1.5
RE)
in the optimistic habitable zone [10].
This corresponds to an average separation of eight light years between them in
the Solar Neighborhood (248 red-dwarfs within 10 parsecs) [11].
Therefore, the probability of having a potentially habitable world orbiting our nearest star is less than 10%. Either Proxima b was a lucky find or these
worlds are more common than previously thought.
The most exciting aspect of this discovery is that Proxima b
is relatively close enough to Earth for detailed studies in the next years by
current and future observatories. Other known potentially habitable worlds,
especially those from the NASA Kepler primary
mission, are too far away to get any information about their atmosphere or
composition with current technology. Projects like StarShot are even
considering the possibility of reaching the stars with miniaturized space probes,
but this exciting approach might take many decades.
Proxima b is an excellent object for future characterization
via transit or direct imaging in search for biosignatures [12].
There is a 1.5% chance that Proxima b transits its parent star [13].
Such transits will take 53 minutes as seen from Earth and will produce a notable
0.5% decrease on the brightness of Proxima Centauri [14].
Direct imaging in the next decades might even provide information about the
surface and weather of Proxima b [15].
In any case, Proxima b is now one of the prime targets to
understand the extension of our habitable universe in years to come. Red-dwarf
stars are the most common star in our galaxy, comprising about 75% of the
stars. If we find out that planets around red-dwarf stars, such as Proxima b,
are in fact not habitable then the ‘real estate’ for life in the universe will
be instead very small. The answer lies 4.2 light years away waiting for us.
[2] The
Habitable Exoplanets Catalog (HEC) tracks since 2011 all potentially habitable
worlds discovered by all ground and space telescopes around the world. The HEC is
an initiative of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) of the University
of Puerto Rico at Arecibo (UPR Arecibo).
[3]
The Earth
Similarity Index (ESI) is a measure of Earth-likeness from zero (no
similarity) to one (identical to Earth) given some known planetary properties.
For exoplanets the ESI is based on stellar flux and either the mass or radius
of the planets. Since habitability depends on many other factors it is not known
if planets with similar mass and stellar flux to Earth (i.e., ESI values closer
to one) are also in general more habitable.
Note: The PHL @ UPR Arecibo created an independent assessment, and produced multimedia content for ESO and the general public as part of the announcement of the Proxima b discovery. We acknowledge the collaboration of Guillem Anglada-Escudé from Queen Mary University of London (lead scientist of the discovery), the ESO Public Information Office, Edgard Rivera-Valentín from the Arecibo Observatory (USRA), the computational resources of the HPCf of the University of Puerto Rico, the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, and the music of Lyford Rome.
Video 01. The Pale Red Dot campaign aimed to find a planet orbiting our nearest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri. Incredibly, the quest succeeded and the team did indeed find a planet. Even more exciting, the planet, Proxima b, falls within the habitable zone of its host star. The newly discovered Proxima b is by far the closest potential abode for alien life. Credit: ESO.
Video 02. This is an artistic interpretation of the potentially habitable planet around our nearest star, Proxima Centauri. The planet is represented here as a mostly desert-like, tidally-locked world with shallow oceans and a strong atmospheric circulation allowing heat exchange between the light and dark hemispheres. The star and orbit are to scale, but the planet was enlarged (x30) for visibility. Video was rendered by the PHL’s SER software. Additional versions of this video are availablehere. Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo, ESO. Background music ‘Atmospherics Final’ by Lyford Rome.
Video 03. This is a one-minute real-time simulation showing a close encounter with Proxima b at 20% the speed of light. The StarShot Initiative is planning a mission to the Alpha Centauri stellar systems at such speed. The same animation would take over two days to complete at the speed of NASA's New Horizons (~16 km/s). Video was rendered by the PHL’s SER software. Additional versions of this video are availablehere. Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo, ESO. Background music ‘Into the Black’ by Lyford Rome.
Video 04. This is a simulation of the possible surface temperatures of a tidally-locked Proxima b, always giving the same face to its star. The simulations show the large temperature differences between the permanent daylight and nightside hemispheres. This assumes that an ocean and atmosphere transfers heat effectively around the planet, but we do not know yet if this is the case. The temperature range includes habitable conditions, even for complex life (0-50°C). However, Proxima b may also be exposed to high UV and X-ray fluxes that could challenge any presence of life. Proxima b seems to be an extreme, but very interesting planet by terrestrial standards. Additional versions of this video are available here. Credit: M. Turbet/I. Ribas/ESO.
Images
Figure 01. Summary of the properties of the Proxima Centauri System. The size of the red-dwarf star Proxima Centauri and its planet Proxima b are approximately to scale in this diagram. The planet is at a distance of almost 20 times the Earth-Moon distance (74 star radii) from its star. For comparison, Earth is at 407 times the Earth-moon distance from the Sun. Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo.
Figure 03. Size comparison of the red-dwarf star Proxima Centauri and its planet Proxima b with some Solar System bodies, including Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Sun. The color of Proxima Centauri and the Sun were enhanced. Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo.
Figure 04. The Alpha Centauri family is composed of three stars. The G-star Alpha Centauri A and its K-star companion B orbit each other in a very eccentric orbit separated from 11 to 36 astronomical units (AU). Proxima Centauri is believed to be also bound to this system, but at a distance of 15,000 AU. Our G-star Sun is shown for scale. The color of the stars were adjusted to approximately imitate the human eye perception. Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo.
Figure 05. Simulated comparison of a sunset on Earth and Proxima b. The red-dwarf star Proxima Centauri appears almost three times bigger than the Sun in a redder and darker sky. Red-dwarf stars appear bigger in the sky than sun-like stars, even though they are smaller. This is because they are cooler and the planets have to be closer to them to maintain temperate conditions. The original photo of the beach was taken at Playa Puerto Nuevo in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo.
Figure 06. Simulated comparison of a sunset on Earth with that of four known potentially habitable worlds. The sunset from the planets with red-dwarf stars (Proxima b, Gliese 667C c, and Wolf 1061 c) appear darker, but with a bigger star than those with K-stars (Kepler-442 b) or sun-like stars. Red-dwarf stars appear bigger in the sky than sun-like stars, even though they are smaller, because they are cooler and the planets have to be closer to them to maintain temperate conditions. The original photo of the beach was taken at Playa Puerto Nuevo in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo.
Figure 07. Comparison of the visual appearance of Earth illuminated by the Sun (left) and a red-dwarf star (right). The light from a red-dwarf star, such as Proxima Centauri, makes Earth look darker and with a pale green-yellow tone instead of the familiar pale blue. Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo, NASA EPIC Team.
Figure 08. Artistic representations of the top 10 potentially habitable worlds in the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog, now including Proxima b. They are sorted in this image by the Earth Similarity Index (ESI), a measure of how similar a planet is in size (given by radius or mass) and stellar flux (insolation) to Earth. Planetary habitability depends on many factors and it is not known if planets with a similar size and insolation as Earth are generally habitable. Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune for scale. Planet candidates indicated with asterisks. Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo.
Figure 09. Artistic representations of the top 10 potentially habitable worlds in the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog, now including Proxima b. They are sorted in this image by distance from Earth in light years. Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune for scale. Planet candidates indicated with asterisks. Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo.
Figure 10. Orbit of Proxima b assuming a maximum eccentricity of 0.350, but its actual orbit might be less eccentric (closer to the red dotted circle). The size of the habitable zone is shown in a green shade and the ice-line with a blue dotted circle. The orbit is well within the tidal-lock radius (outside of the frame). Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo.
Figure 11. This figure shows all planets near the habitable zone, now including Proxima b (darker green shade is the conservative habitable zone and the lighter green shade is the optimistic habitable zone). Only those planets less than 10 Earth masses or 2.5 Earth radii are labeled. Some are still unconfirmed (* = unconfirmed). Size of the circles corresponds to the radius of the planets (estimated from a mass-radius relationship when not available). Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo.
Figure 12. Sky map with all the stars with known potentially habitable planets (yellow circles). The star Proxima Centauri is close to the center bottom of the figure. Click image to enlarge. Credit: PHL @ UPR Arecibo, Jim Cornmell.
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The plants of more than five feet height raised in 30x45cm size bags can be purchased at the rate of Rs 80 per plant instead of Rs 25 per plant.
As per the revised rates, the plants (six months to one year of age) raised in 12×22 cm polybags will now be available at the rate of Rs 15 per plant in place of previous charges of just Rs 1 per plant.
Haryana government’s decision to increase charges of saplings/plants has come under fire from environmentalists, who claim that it will hit the state’s plans to increase its forest cover. The government, however, has insisted that they have just hiked the cost of plants following an increase in the labour engaged in raising the plants in nurseries. The government also says that most of the plants for plantation drives are supplied free of cost.
As per the revised rates, the plants (six months to one year of age) raised in 12×22 cm polybags will now be available at the rate of Rs 15 per plant in place of previous charges of just Rs 1 per plant. The plants of more than five feet height raised in 30x45cm size bags can be purchased at the rate of Rs 80 per plant instead of Rs 25 per plant.
The cost of ETP (erect tall plant) poplar has been revised to Rs 25 per plant instead of previous rate of Rs 10 per plant while clonal eucalyptus rates have been increased to Rs 10 per plant from previous Rs eight per plant.
The new rates were fixed in May this year, but the activists have come to know about the development recently amid the plantation drives which will continue till September.
In a letter addressed to the forest officers in the field on May 14, the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) mentioned: “The new rates have been fixed because of increase in the cost following hike in the wages of labour.”
A senior officer in the Forest Department said: “We revise the nursery cost price of plants depending upon various calculations as the wages of the labour are increased twice in a year apart from increase in the material cost. We don’t have any targets to sell the plants. But if anybody wants to purchase, then we charge the cost of the plants.”
Objecting the hike in the charges of plants, Shivalik Vikas Manch president Vijay Bansal termed the move as “anti-farmer and anti-environment.”
In a letter to the Chief Minister, Bansal has demanded to provide plants to the farmers and social activists free of cost. Echoing similar sentiments Bhartiya Kisan Union president Gurnam Singh Chaduni said, “With the enhanced cost of plants, the farmers have to incur an extra expenditure of Rs 3,000 per acre only on account of purchasing poplar plants. On the one hand, the government claims to be concerned about the environment while at the same time the prices of poplar and clonal eucalyptus have been increased.”
Chaduni added: “To save the environment and stop depleting water levels, the government should offer Rs 10,000 per acre as an incentive to those farmers who opt for farming of eucalyptus and clonal poplar.” Haryana Environmental Society president Professor S L Saini also said the hike in the prices of plants was not justified.
However, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife) Alok Verma said, “Poplar and clonal eucalyptus are commercial crops to make money out of it. If you want them, you have to purchase the plants. Now, we have increased the targets of plants which are provided free of cost. But if somebody wants to buy bigger plants in bigger polybags, then they will have to pay the cost price.”
Officials said that the number of plants which are purchased from government nurseries is very small in comparison to those which are provided free of cost to village panchayats, schools and other bodies. The cost of such plants is borne by the government.
According to officials, the hike in price of plants is because the subsidy has been removed for sale of some plants adding “sometime these plants are given at subsidized rates under various governmental schemes”. They added that the rates of plants raised in private nurseries are much higher than of the government nurseries.
Around 6.8 per cent of total area in Haryana is under forest and tree cover. Haryana Forest and Environment Minister Kanwar Pal Gujjar had earlier stated the Forest Department has set a target of increasing the forest area in the state by 7 to 20 per cent, under which about 1.25 crore saplings will be planted this year.
“‘COVID Vatika’ will be set up in 1100 villages of the state in which medicinal plants will be planted. Among the 1.25 crore saplings to be planted by the forest department, the goal is to plant more fruit saplings. These saplings will be planted in schools, colleges, religious places, roadsides and on panchayati land.” According to Gujjar, ‘Vrikshamitra’ will be appointed to take care of these plants so that 100 percent plants can survive. | |
Topic: Ancient Religion. For details on requirements, source citation, grading, and point distribution, please read the Discussion Board Forum Instructions document, and the Discussion Board Forum Grading Rubric, located in the Module 2 Assignment folder.
In Chapters 1-3 of the course textbook (within MindTap), you have been studying the role that religion played in ancient civilizations.
In this week’s discussion, you will choose two primary source documents and consider the similarities and differences between the religion of the Hebrews (which has greatly influenced Western Civilization), and another ancient religion.
Choose One of the Following to compare with Psalm 8:
Either:
Egyptian Book of the Dead: Hymns of Praise to Ra
http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?url=https://dailylife2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1824795
Or:
Incantation to Ishtar (from Mesopotamian Civilization)
http://ezproxy.liberty.edu/login?url=https://dailylife2.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/2021772
Compare and contrast one of the above documents with:
Hymns of Praise to Yahweh – Psalm 8
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+8&version=ESV
As you read, look for points of comparison and contrast. Our textbook editors suggest that the Hebrews drew from both Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations (2-1), not only practices of law and society, but also in terms of religious beliefs, going as far as to suggest that the Hebrew people were not truly monotheistic until Moses introduced that idea (2-2). Your initial thread should have a clear thesis statement and should respond to the following questions:
Comparison/Contrast: What are the most telling similarities and differences between the two documents?
Basic analysis: What do you think of the textbook editors’ conclusions regarding Hebrew monotheism? (Use Genesis to support your arguments)
Biblical Evaluation: Based on your own understanding of the Bible, Christianity, and the nature of man, what reasons do you think might account for the similarities within the texts? (Provide specific Scriptural support)
If additional guidance is needed for Biblical evaluation, you can do use either of these websites for further assistance:
Free Ebook – Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible
https://books.google.com/books?id=3TBGAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=strong+exhaustive+concordance+of+the+bible&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi6v7WHjObUAhUG5yYKHXRBDMwQuwUIKTAA#v=onepage&q=strong%20exhaustive%20concordance%20of%20the%20bible&f=false
Draw from the primary source documents and Scripture for the majority of support. Use textbook and lectures for background info only. NO OUTSIDE SOURCES allowed.
Response posts should consider the thesis statements of others, offer further analysis for the topic, and respond to specific aspects of classmates’ threads. In addition to posting on specific student threads, thoughtful responses to questions posed on your thread (by either students or professor) count toward the required minimum.
Your thread (within 300-400 words, essay format) is due by 11:59 p.m. (ET) on Thursday of Module/Week 2.
Your 2 replies (minimum 100 words each) are due by 11:59 p.m. (ET) on Monday of the same module/week.
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What is a volcano question answer?
What is a volcano question answer?
A volcano is an opening in the earth’s crust through which lava, volcanic ash, and gases escape. Volcanic eruptions are partly driven by pressure from dissolved gas, much as escaping gases force the cork out of a bottle of champagne.
What are 10 facts about volcanoes?
10 Interesting Facts About Volcanoes
- There are Three Major Kinds of Volcanoes:
- Volcanoes Erupt Because of Escaping Magma:
- Volcanoes can be Active, Dormant or Extinct:
- Volcanoes can Grow Quickly:
- There are 20 Volcanoes Erupting Right Now:
- Volcanoes are Dangerous:
- Supervolcanoes are Really Dangerous:
What do I want to know about volcanoes?
A volcano is a mountain that opens downward to a pool of molten rock below the surface of the earth. When pressure builds up, eruptions occur. In an eruption, gases and rock shoot up through the opening and spill over or fill the air with lava fragments. More than 80% of the earth’s surface is volcanic in origin.
How do volcanoes erupt again?
Deep within the Earth it is so hot that some rocks slowly melt and become a thick flowing substance called magma. Since it is lighter than the solid rock around it, magma rises and collects in magma chambers. Eventually, some of the magma pushes through vents and fissures to the Earth’s surface.
Can a dead volcano come back to life?
Volcanoes typically are categorized thusly: active (a volcano that has erupted in the past 10,000 years), erupting (an active volcano that is experiencing an eruption), dormant (an active volcano that has the potential to erupt again), and extinct (a volcano that has not erupted in over 10,000 years and is unlikely to …
Can you trigger a volcano?
There are many theories of what can trigger a volcano to erupt. Some are as simple as the buoyancy of magma — it is less dense than the surrounding rock, so it rises until it intersects the surface. This might be high levels of volcanic gases, shallow earthquakes, deformation of the volcano.
How overdue is Yellowstone eruption?
Yellowstone is not overdue for an eruption. Volcanoes do not work in predictable ways and their eruptions do not follow predictable schedules. In terms of large explosions, Yellowstone has experienced three at 2.08, 1.3, and 0.631 million years ago. This comes out to an average of about 725,000 years between eruptions.
What are the 7 types of volcano?
What are the Different Types of Volcanoes?
- Cinder Cone Volcanoes: These are the simplest type of volcano.
- Composite Volcanoes: Composite volcanoes, or stratovolcanoes make up some of the world’s most memorable mountains: Mount Rainier, Mount Fuji, and Mount Cotopaxi, for example.
- Shield Volcanoes:
- Lava Domes:
What is the most dangerous type of eruption?
Composite volcanoes are some of the most dangerous volcanoes on the planet. They tend to occur along oceanic-to-oceanic or oceanic-to-continental boundaries because of subduction zones. They tend to be made of felsic to intermediate rock and the viscosity of the lava means that eruptions tend to be explosive.
Is Mount Everest a volcano?
Formed from clashing of two tectonic plates – the Indo-Australian and Eurasian plates, Mount Everest is not a volcano. Mount Everest is a mountain.
Is Mt Everest still growing?
Growth of Everest The Himalayan mountain range and the Tibetan plateau were formed as the Indian tectonic plate collided into the Eurasian plate about 50 million years ago. The process continues even today, which causes the height of the mountain range to rise a tiny amount every year.
Can you live on Mount Everest?
Humans can survive at high altitudes. Yet still about one out of every five of them gets symptoms of altitude sickness that are severe enough to interfere with their activities. Mount Everest is the highest place on Earth. It rises an unbelievable 29,035 feet (8850 m) above sea level.
What animals live on Mt Everest?
Everest Region and its wildlife Some of the wild animals of the Everest region include Snow Leopard, Himalayan Tahrs, Red Panda, Musk Deer, and Wild Yak. Snow Leopard and the Red Panda are among the rare and endangered species of the country. There are only about 500 Snow Leopards remaining in the Himalayas of Nepal.
What happens to the bodies on Mt Everest?
In the death zone, climbers’ brains and lungs are starved for oxygen, their risk of heart attack and stroke is increased, and their judgment quickly becomes impaired. “Your body is breaking down and essentially dying,” Shaunna Burke, a climber who summited Everest in 2005, told Business Insider. | https://easierwithpractice.com/what-is-a-volcano-question-answer/ |
Multnomah County is among the 36 counties of the Oregon state in the United States. It is the states’ smallest region yet the most populous county. The Native American community of Multnomah County comprises of the Multnomah, Kathlamet, Clackamas, bands of Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla and many other Tribes who trace their origins to the Columbia River (Stevens, Hemmer & Color, 2011, p. 5). This group forms the smallest population of Multnomah county demographics at 1.03% of the total population mainly consisting of whites, Asians and African Americans. The Native Americans live throughout the county, although they have had a tendency of concentrating in several areas among the Kerns and the Brentwood-Darlington neighborhoods (Edmonston &Lee, 1999, p. 4). According to the census survey of 2009 the demographics of these people, mainly comprises of a youthful population with 38% of the population being 24 years of age or younger while only 5% are above the age of 65.
The Native American community of Multnomah has experienced a steady population growth over the past decade as can be seen from them chart below.
Source (Stevens, Hemmer and Color,2011, p. 15)
A community assessment of the Native American Community of Multnomah is handy owing to a number of characteristics that are associated with this group:
The rates of poverty among this group are alarming; the poverty rate in these communities is thrice that of their white neighbors (Graves, 2011). This is further complicated by the rising statistics of children and single parenting. Family poverty is particularly intense estimated at over four times that of the white neighborhoods. As can be seen from the graph below, the poverty levels of Native Americans in Multnomah are higher than those from any other region in the United States. It is also a matter of concern the level of education of this group is significantly low (Graves, 2011). For instance, the Native American youths are less likely to enroll in schools compared to any other group of Multnomah County while more than half who attend high school fail to graduate and more so only 54% of those who graduate join higher education institutions. This group has been reported to have low rates of access to health insurance citing discrimination reasons. The rate of Native American youths’ involvement in crime and incarceration and significantly high estimated at twice that of the white population.
Source: (Stevens, Hemmer & Color, 2011, p. 25)
These statistics call for a community assessment of the community in question. Finding of the assessment will aid in formulating necessary policies and taking measures aimed at uplifting the livelihoods of this marginalized group of people. The assessment shall be conducted as soon as an okay to conduct it is given, citing financial and resource constraints, the assessment shall be conducted within a time frame of three months from its flagship date.
Methodology
Owing to the limited financial resources available to the researcher, mainly provided by their academic faculty there will be limitations in the approach undertaken for this assessment. In order to represent the diverse needs of this community, this assessment shall be conducted through multiple channels.
Interviews and background search
As a technique of data collection, interviews shall be used to gather information from more influential persons in the communities in question. These will include the community leaders and local government as well as health officers.
Focus groups
Due to the size and demographics of the subject population, focus groups constituted an essential tool for collecting data within the population.
Surveys
Owing to the unique characteristics of this group and their long standing history, there exist numerous documented statistics on them. This assessment shall therefore incorporate the previous information available from reliable sources such as census reports to collect data.
Key findings
Based on the nature of the questions presented to the respondents, irrespective of age and gender, it was evident that four issues community issues existed. These are, in order of rank;
- Poverty
- Unemployment
- Poor health access
- Lack of education
Poverty and unemployment are the apex concerns of this community. Poverty, ranked at the very top is considered the mother of all problems faced by this group (Edmonston & Lee, 1999, p.9). This poverty usually stems from the lack of employment. The majority of the Native Americans in Multnomah are either unemployed or under casual employment that attracts low returns which often cannot suffice their material and health needs. Poor and sometimes lack of access to health facilities, resources and insurance are also on the priority list of the most pressing community issues in the group. Most respondents cite discrimination reasons for their marginalized health needs. HIV/AIDS and other chronic diseases were identified as the major causes of death among the Native Americans in the county (Stevens, Hemmer and Color, 2011, p.63). Other health problems cited stemmed from poor health behaviors such as tobacco use and poor nutritional diet.
Most of the Native Americans in the region have only minimal or sometimes no academic achievements and this has dismally affected their employment statistics (Edmonston and Lee, 1999, p. 7). Lack of education stems from the high poverty index of the group, which makes them unable to take care of the cost of education on the backdrop of overwhelming family commitments. The Native American community of Multnomah County is among the marginalized groups in the United States whose needs ought to be addressed through policy formulations, government and community initiatives so as to raise their standards of living.
References
Edmonston, B., &Sharon M. Lee. (1999). Demographic Profile of the Native American Population of Multnomah County, Oregon. Investigative . Portland, OR: Center for Population Research and Census.
Graves, B. (2011). “Report paints ‘An Unsettling Profile’ of Native Americans in Multnomah County.” The Oregonian 2 November 2011: Web.
Stevens, C. A., Cross A. H., & Coalision of Communities of Color. (2011). The Native American Community in Multnomah County: An Unsettling Profil . Informative. Portland , OR: Portland State University. | https://www.customwritingservice.org/nursing-homework-paper-on-community-assessment-applied/ |
Despite some promising framework conditions for youth engagement, lives of young people in Uganda are in practice still characterized by inadequate representation in positions of political leadership and a lack of political engagement. However, considering that more than 70% of Uganda’s population is below 25 years of age, participation of youth (both female and male) in democracy and governance processes is crucial for sustainable national development.
In recognition of the vital role that the youth play in shaping the future of the nation, particularly in promoting good governance and democracy, Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) Uganda and the University Forum on Governance (UNIFOG) held a roundtable discussion on constructive youth political engagement at the Makerere University Institute of Social Research on 04th October in order to discuss prospects for youth engagement in political processes in Uganda. The event was intended to bring together academics and experts to enable them to share their varying perspectives on the challenges of mobilizing young Ugandans for meaningful political participation, but also to arrive at practical proposals for actions to improve on youth inclusion in Ugandan policy-making processes.
Michael Mugisha, Technical Advisor atUNIFOG and Fellow at the London School of Economics, presented a paper on the current state youth political participation in Uganda. In his paper, Mr. Mugisha explains that Francis Fukuyama’s theories on the relationship between politics and economics give meaningful insights to understand the lack of political participation of the Ugandan youth. According to Mr. Mugisha, the clientelistic political system leads to manipulation and mismanagement of economic processes as well as to an “underinvesting state”, fueling unemployment among the Ugandan youth and in turn discouraging them to participate in political processes. Economic development in Uganda had produced new social groups full of potential, which however lack the incentives for political or civic engagement, due to the repressive and nepotistic political structures. During his presentation, Mr. Mugisha emphasized the centrality of political parties as tools for political mobilization, but noted that political parties in Uganda are highly unpopular among the youth.
Moderated by Yusuf Kiranda, Fellow at the Centre for Development Alternatives, Mr. Mugisha’s presentation was followed by the roundtable debate. Mathias Kamp, Country Representative of KAS Uganda, narrowed down the issue of youth political participation to two major questions: 1. How many young people in Uganda actually have a say compared to the number of youth in the country? 2. In how far is the output of policy making reflecting the interests of the youth? According to Mr. Kamp, there is a clear disconnect between youth and the political sphere as long as the policy output does not clearly reflect the youth’s interests, even though there is a majority of youth in the country.
The roundtable discussion was generally marked by lively debate and diverging points of views. The experts and academics concentrated their conversation on a number of key questions that were debated intensively. Some participants raised questions about the meaning of youth political participation , pointing out that the Ugandan youth are actually very much involved in shaping Uganda’s political future, for example through the National Youth Council and the active participation during elctions. Subsequently, a lively debate emerged on the question of the National Youth Council effectively representing the Ugandan youth or if it is just a reflection of NRM party politics.
Another key issue that quickly emerged as one of the focal points of debate was the question if there are deficits regarding culture and attitude amongst the youth concerning democratic principles. According to a number of roundtable participants, many young people don’t even feel the responsibility to hold their political representatives accountable, because civic education on basic concepts of democracy and responsible citizenship is widely lacking in Uganda.
Moreover, the connection between Uganda’s economic development and the political participation of youth was taken up again by the participants, who agreed that the desperate economic situation in which many young people in Uganda find themselves preoccupies them and prevents them from meaningful engagement to contribute to society or politics.
However, the issue most intensively debated was clearly the role of political parties in the process of youth mobilization. Are political parties in Uganda dying out, and if so, are they still the institutions to focus on, or should the youth participate through alternative channels and spheres? A majority of the experts clearly contested the potential of political parties in Uganda to integrate the youth and to contribute to political transformation and progress in the country. It was noted that the multiparty-system in Uganda was formed out of political necessity and not along societal cleavages – this lack of ideological base, along with the decades-long repression of political parties in general, continues to have an effect on political culture in Uganda today. Clearly, political parties in Uganda fail to fulfil most classical party functions in a democracy, and some are even said to serve as vehicles for individual careers, which makes them highly unattractive for the youth in Uganda.
For some participants, these observations indicated that young Ugandans should clearly be politically mobilized through alternative spheres, for example the church or other cultural institutions. However, recognizing the shortcomings of political parties in Uganda, some participants still advocated for the importance of political parties. According to them, a democracy cannot exist without political parties, and giving up on them would mark a disastrous regression.
This line of thought was taken up by Ms. Miriam Fischer, Desk Officer of KAS Headquarters Berlin, in her concluding speech for the event. Ms. Fischer strongly advocated for the potential of political parties in Uganda. According to her, leaning back, thinking ‘there is no party that I fully agree with, therefore I avert from political parties in general’ is the wrong approach. Only through political parties can politics be effectively shaped and transformed. ‘If you don’t like how the parties in Uganda operate, then think of ways how to transform them into something that works for you’, she argued. To conclude, political parties have been and still are the only way to effectively mobilize youth in Uganda for meaningful political participation.
Through expert inputs and plenary discussions, the roundtable discussion provided an avenue to explore different dimensions of the challenges of youth political participation and facilitated a constructive exchange on feasible ways of mobilizing the youth in Uganda. | https://www.kas.de/en/web/uganda/veranstaltungsberichte/detail/-/content/ueber-die-wahlen-hinaus-die-zukunft-von-konstruktivem-jugendengagement-in-uganda1 |
HUD’s mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. Creating stronger communities include includes broad community-level issues such as reducing State and local regulatory barriers to affordable housing development, facilitating housing recovery after disasters while creating more resilient housing and communities, and helping ensure that new Opportunity Zone investments are beneficial to communities and are supported by HUD program efforts. Stronger communities also require better housing stock, which relates to such issues as removal of lead-based paint hazards and other health risks and advancing building technology to improve affordability, energy efficiency, and performance of housing.
Explore PD&R's current research and learn more about what we are already doing in this area:
- Regulatory Barriers Clearinghouse
- Rental Housing Discrimination on the Basis of Mental Disabilities: Results of Pilot Testing
- Disaster Recovery and Resilience
- Innovative Building Technology Guide: Selecting the Best Solutions for Your Project
What do you think are the most critical research questions related to Strengthening Communities? | http://forums.huduser.gov/forum/forum-17.html |
Q:
Examples for teaching: Correlation does not mean causation
There is an old saying: "Correlation does not mean causation". When I teach, I tend to use the following standard examples to illustrate this point:
number of storks and birth rate in Denmark;
number of priests in America and alcoholism;
in the start of the 20th century it was noted that there was a strong correlation between 'Number of radios' and 'Number of people in Insane Asylums'
and my favorite: pirates cause global warming.
However, I do not have any references for these examples and whilst amusing, they are obviously false.
Does anyone have any other good examples?
A:
It might be useful to explain that "causes" is an asymmetric relation (X causes Y is different from Y causes X), whereas "is correlated with" is a symmetric relation.
For instance, homeless population and crime rate might be correlated, in that both tend to be high or low in the same locations. It is equally valid to say that homelesss population is correlated with crime rate, or crime rate is correlated with homeless population. To say that crime causes homelessness, or homeless populations cause crime are different statements. And correlation does not imply that either is true. For instance, the underlying cause could be a 3rd variable such as drug abuse, or unemployment.
The mathematics of statistics is not good at identifying underlying causes, which requires some other form of judgement.
A:
My favorites:
1) The more firemen are sent to a fire, the more damage is done.
2) Children who get tutored get worse grades than children who do not get tutored
and (this is my top one)
3) In the early elementary school years, astrological sign is correlated with IQ, but this correlation weakens with age and disappears by adulthood.
A:
Sometimes correlation is enough. For example, in car insurance, male drivers are correlated with more accidents, so insurance companies charge them more. There is no way you could actually test this for causation. You cannot change the genders of the drivers experimentally. Google has made hundreds of billions of dollars not caring about causation.
To find causation, you generally need experimental data, not observational data. Though, in economics, they often use observed "shocks" to the system to test for causation, like if a CEO dies suddenly and the stock price goes up, you can assume causation.
Correlation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for causation. To show causation requires a counter-factual.
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As a Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant I have agreed:
• To maintain a professional standard of service to the public.
• To serve each client/honorees with respect, sensitivity and professionalism and to provide all services in a timely manner.
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• To provide a service that recognizes the unique personalities of your clients, being sensitive to their needs, wishes, values, philosophical and spiritual beliefs and cultural backgrounds.
• Not to discriminate on the basis of gender, race, religion, philosophy of life, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability
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I am a Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant® and ordained non-denominational minister. I am a graduate of the Celebrant Foundation & Institute and I'm certified to officiate civil, nondenominational, intercultural and interfaith ceremonies in New Jersey. I began my public speaking career over ten years ago as a Deacon/Lay preacher in the Lutheran church. I live in Northern New Jersey with my husband and son. I have a degree in Public Administration and have worked in the public sector for over 20
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I became a Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant® to help others create ceremonies that reflect their own beliefs and values. I strive to work with individuals to create ceremonies that will celebrate the milestones of your life in a way that represents who they are and what their lives stand for!
What is a Celebrant?
Certified Life-Cycle Celebrants® have been trained in the art of ritual, symbolism, and ceremony from a vast range of cultural, spiritual, religious, and secular traditions. We consider it our mission to assist others in bringing the art of Life to the world through the creation and sharing of personalized Ceremonies which honor and respect the vision, beliefs, and values of each of our clients. Celebrants officiate at and co-create personalized ceremonies such as weddings, marriages, commitments, renewal of vows, baby welcomings and adoptions, coming of age, step-family tributes, new dwellings, birthdays, graduations, survivor tributes, job transitions, memorials, funerals/end of life tributes, divorce, special achievements and civic and corporate events. I am dedicated to making your event a pleasant surprise!!
"Serendipity: A fortunate occurrence created by unanticipated luck." | http://www.serendipityceremonies.com/prices.html |
Why do WE TEACH RE?
At Wescott Infant School the Religious Education programme is designed to encourage pupils to develop their sense of identity and belonging, provide opportunities for personal reflection and spiritual development and enable pupils to develop respect for and sensitivity to others, in particular those whose faiths and beliefs are different from their own.
WHAT IS THE AIM OF OUR CURRICULUM FOR RE?
The aim of teaching RE at Wescott Infant School is to:
- Develop the pupil’s knowledge and understanding of people’s beliefs, values and practices.
- Enable the pupil’s own social, moral, cultural and social development.
- Develop the pupil’s respect and sensitivity towards other people’s beliefs, practices and values.
wHAT DO WE TEACH IN OUR RE CURRICULUM?
Wescott Infant School RE curriculum ensures that every year group encounters Christianity plus one other religion from Hinduism, Islam, Judaism & Sikhism.
FS – Key Religious Stories
Yr1 – Christianity + Judaism
Yr2 – Christianity + Islam
The curriculum is based on key enquiry questions which are linked to three elements of “Belonging, Believing and Behaving” ensuring that children ‘learn about’ and ‘learn from’.
This is achieved through both class based and experiential lessons, engaging with representatives from local faith groups and parents and families in the school community who are invited into school.
Children sharing food from the Seder Meal and learning about the story of Passover and why Jewish families celebrate each year. to remember.
Children learning about Palm Sunday and its importance to Christians:
Year 1 enjoyed learning about the Jewish festival of Hanukkah and why it is important to Jewish families. They played the dreidel game, ate donuts and took home a chocolate coin. | https://wescottinfant.co.uk/wokingham/primary/wescott/site/pages/aboutus/curriculum/religiouseducation |
And the HR executive — nothing.
Even a year ago we would not have been talking about any of this. But here we are: I think the truth is probably that AI is indeed going to replace humans in the workforce in many capacities — not just on the factory floor. It’s already happening and it’s going to continue happening at a faster rate than we may understand. So what do we do about it? Be ready. And celebrate one silver lining. We’ll be better at our jobs by facing the fact that we are human, and by improving on how we treat each other. And here are a few other pointers for surviving the AI-copalypse:
Stop Pretending
Do ostriches really stick their heads in the sand to hide? We certainly shouldn’t. I came across a startling article by an AI executive who recounts telling an anxious Uber driver it will be another 15-20 years before autonomous cars render his job obsolete. On the other hand, it will only be around 10 years in China.
The articles makes a case for tech companies telling the truth: Yes, human jobs will be replaced, and we should stop pretending it’s not true. If we don’t start facing the future we won’t be able to handle it. A Towers Watson study from December of last year found that U.S. companies will nearly double the amount of work done by automation (to 17%) within the next three years. 94% of companies already using robotics and AI will increase their use of automation by 2020.
Start Planning
Even if your own organization is still, as we might someday say nostalgically, made of “flesh and blood,” preparation needs to start now. Chances are you’ll partner with a company that uses automation if you don’t. Chances are also that you’ll be using AI in your own performance management strategies, but that’s another discussion for another day.
But start planning. Step forward 15 years. Create scenarios that include AI and robots within your workforce. Anticipate the pain points. How are you going to get people to work alongside robots? What about teams that are collaborating with machines? Some work processes are going to depend on complex algorithms and cognitive machines — computer programs that don’t need a human to learn and improve their own performance. In that case, how are you going to show who, or what, should be in charge?
Skill And Reskill
Companies are beginning to look at themselves with a different perspective, particularly in HR. It’s interesting to me that for all the discussion about workforce engagement and better people management, it’s taken the rise of automation and digitalization to push the envelope. One moment we’re talking about how to circumvent a skills gap, and the next, more appropriately, we have to look at skills from an entirely new perspective. The World Economic Forum published a compelling global report about reskilling that’s drawn from powerful data on training and job transitioning, but the discussion may not provide quite the practical grist some organizations need. That’s another reason AI is going to have such an impact: there’s no more room to argue.
The TW survey found that a number of companies were already taking action on preparing for the future. 51% are re-examining jobs and deconstructing them into tasks that can be automated and those that can’t. 41% are considering how to provide “reskilling pathways” for their employees — so that the work taken over by automation can be replaced by other skills. 49% of employers are looking at how automation is going to change which skills are at a premium. And that same percentage is already planning on how to revise their rewards and benefits to fit the future workforce.
Be Mindful Of Our Humanity, Please
A recent Washington Post piece about robots coming to replace factory workers took a point of view I find troublesome. The rationale for replacing workers with robots was that robots didn’t drink and they don’t get the blues. The workers being replaced were in rough shape: sad, drinking, prone to depression, and therefore undependable. Can we please see the irony in that? There have to be positive reasons to throw someone out of job besides being depressed. I’d be depressed too if I was told I’m being replaced because I was late to the line Tuesday morning. And at some point, that approach is going to turn around to bite employers right square in the profit margin.
If you’re still asking are the robots coming you’re not paying attention. But at the same time, we can’t abandon the human workforce or we won’t be able to sustain ourselves. Until or if we’re entirely replaced by AI, the best strategies are to anticipate the practicalities of an augmented workforce, take the long view and make good decisions, leverage tech (please), and make sure steps are in place to support the shift that has to made on all fronts.
That’s probably going to require a specific commitment to protect the human workforce — not from progress, but from being rendered obsolete. Even technologists say we should have a clear statement of ethics in place as guardrails — before it’s too late. Ethically, emotionally, and in the end, practically speaking, we really have no choice. Wouldn’t it be such an irony, as one of my dinner companions proposed, if instead of our stopping progress, progress stopped us? | https://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanbiro/2018/03/09/3-ways-to-embrace-ai-without-losing-what-makes-us-human/ |
Science, Ideology, and Biopolitics in The Times of Covid-19
Western societies have made themselves comfortable in the state of exception that the Covid-19 pandemic triggered. Policies that would have been unthinkable just a year ago are now not only politically feasible, but fiercely supported by an exhausted population ready for anything to go back to its old life. However, as we are approaching the second anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic, it appears clear that there is no going back to the old life. Green passes, perpetual vaccination of the population, and surveillance are going to contour our lives for the years to come.
Amidst panic and exhaustion, Western democracies started flirting with authoritarian methods legitimised by the science of experts and doctors whose allegiances are left unquestioned. Regardless of the fact that pharmaceutical companies keep spending billions on lobbying campaigns and the ongoing scandals that reveal these companies’ bullying tactics, nobody dares question Covid-19 policies. Whoever dares to doubt Covid-19 policies earns the reputation of a flat earther, a science denier, and conspiracy theorist who threatens the public good with their irresponsible stupidity.
How did we get to this point of polarisation? The Covid-19 pandemic has only brought to light an intellectual stagnation that has been going on for decades, and perhaps centuries – stagnation caused by the elevation of technical and practical thinking to the only matters worth considering. Pragmatism leaves no space for discussion nor ambiguities, and calculations are the compass that lead to truths only contestable through other numbers and statistics.
In limiting our perspective, pragmatism (or “purposive rationality” as Habermas would call it) also created a whole ideology that impedes us to accept the validity of any argument that does not follow the same narrow logic. As there are useful subjects, those oriented at the production of wealth, there are useless ones, too abstract to be considered more than mere intellectual games. This kind of mentality led to a hierarchical society of experts confined to their domains, at the top of which we find scientists. However, scientists themselves have not gained more authority over politics. If they had, perhaps we would not be struggling with climate change. Scientific discoveries are, depending on their integrability into the current power structures, treated like irrefutable truths or merely as opinions.
Traditionally thought of as the protectors of objectivity, scientists in this system become passive producers of legitimacy; and in the name of science, governments began to take decisions on all domains of our life. Although scientists themselves often remind the public of the constant evolution of science, the governments prefer to talk about science as a truth factory, from which they conveniently pick the product that aligns best with their ideas. The exponents of the Frankfurt school talked extensively about the rise of purposive rationality and their predictions turned out to be painfully accurate.
In this climate, the work of Michel Foucault and Jürgen Habermas, of a structuralist and of a critical theorist, have never been more needed. Although it may seem peculiar to juxtapose the theories of Habermas with Foucault’s because of their many divergences, I believe that they complement each other in many ways. The Foucault-Habermas debate frames their theories as incompatible, but I believe that a synthesis of their ideas provides a more complete perspective of the topic at hand.
While Foucault shows how science and knowledge provide the foundation for biopolitical practices, the work of Habermas helps us to see how purposive rationality came to colonise all aspects of life. By offering a reading of these authors and putting them in communication with the current situation, I hope to provide an account that avoids polarisation and entrenchment, and that stimulates an intellectual discussion that breaks free from the constraint of the dominant ideology.
Reading Foucault in the Time of Covid-19
Michel Foucault (1926-1984) is one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, and after more than thirty years, his works continue to be strikingly pivotal to analyse contemporary societies. His theories on institutional control that investigate the relationship between power and knowledge are helpful to understand and see in a more nuanced way the policies that have been framing our lives in the past years.
Foucault was the first in identifying a biopolitical shift in modern politics, that is, an interest from the institutions in matters pertaining to the biological lives of individuals. According to Foucault, power relations act directly on the body of individuals: “The body is immersed in a political field”, and power is seen as “a political technology of the body”. In other words, biopolitics represents the relationship between power and the body, whereby the body becomes a target of power.
It is important to stress that Foucault frames power in the context of power relations and the instruments necessary for its functioning. He thus departs from the dominant positions on the problem of power that conceive of power as something imposed from the top down, or something that is possessed by some individuals. Power is rather understood as a strategy, a set of dispositions and techniques that emerges from networks of relationships. Power, therefore, is not exclusively given a negative meaning or as an obstacle to individual freedom, but power simply goes to constitute things.
In describing the practices of power, Foucault introduces the concept of governmentality, which is a combination of government and rationality. The term was introduced to problematize the concept of state power and seeks to answer the question “How are we governed?”. Foucault sees in the emergence of biopolitics a new “art of government” that operates through systematisation and science, the backbone of a pervasive logic that induces individuals subjected to it to self-governance.
It becomes clear that this kind of sovereignty needs to legitimise its practices by appealing to rational and scientific foundations. These foundations make up a regime of truth, the beating heart of political strategies in a biopolitical regime. Alongside biopolitics a net of technologies also emerged to make the control of people’s bodies and lives easier. This comes along with another characteristic of biopolitics, the disciplination of bodies and minds operated through surveillance and normalisation. This surveillance system appears as a space in which the bodies of individuals are subjected to constant control and end up adhering to standards that are subsequently internalised and perceived as free choices.
When Foucault talks about government through truth, he refers to a condition in which one does not come to doubt the rules and mechanisms of power exercised. The regime places individuals in a condition in which there is no questioning of the norms and mechanisms of power exercised. Reality as a whole becomes a representation of the emerging truth and the population becomes subservient to the truth. This is perhaps one of the most important lessons to be learned by Foucault. Power is not necessarily coercive; power can take a benevolent and natural form, and a subject regulated by a system of truths that appear to be natural and benevolent is not necessarily free.
Science as Ideology
The work of Foucault helps unveil the role that knowledge and science play in sustaining power and making it more pervasive. Enjoying a non-partisan status, science helps legitimize the state’s policies while educational institutions participate in the creation of a cohesive view of life, which is essential for maintaining power. In turn, the establishment of a truth regime, or a shared understanding of how things should be, pushes citizens to adopt self-regulating measures that align with what the state wants. In this way, power is exercised without being perceived by its subjects.
While Foucault provides a genealogical account of the rise of biopolitics and the symbiotic relationship between power and science, it only partly explains how science gained its hegemonic position in all domains of life. The work of Jürgen Habermas on advanced capitalism provides further insights on the role that science plays in contemporary societies and on our current situation.
In his studies, Habermas compared pre-capitalist and capitalist models of productions and observed that, in the former system, rationality never became an open threat to the authority held by cultural traditions. Traditions continued to provide legitimacy to the state and its domination. This state of affairs changes in capitalist societies as the traditions that legitimise domination and guide action lose their cogency in relation to the new criteria of rationality.
In this dynamic, Habermas sees the formation of an ideological tendency of science as an institution determined by two fundamental evolutions of 20th century society, namely the growth of state intervention to stabilise the system of production and the growing interdependence between research and technology.
According to Habermas the growth of state intervention leads to a new dimension of politics which is no longer directed towards the realisation of practical ends, but towards the solution of technical problems. Actions are oriented by what Habermas calls “purposive rationality,” a strategic, instrumental, and utilitarian thinking typical of scientific and technical subjects. When this kind of rationality colonises the lifeworld, that is the political and social domains of life, political and social problems are articulated as technical problems that do not require public discussion and thus depoliticise the population.
The ideological character of science in late capitalism according to Habermas resides both in the fact that programmed scientific-technical progress becomes the primary productive force, constituting the foundation of legitimacy, and in the fact that this technocratic consciousness eliminates the differentiation between practice (praxis) and technique (techne). This means that the affirmation of science in a social system requires, on the one hand, that the results and methods of science satisfy particular values typical of the society under examination, and, on the other, compatibility between the sentiments included in the ‘scientific ethos’ (i.e. the set of norms that regulate the behaviour of scientists) and those that are characteristic of other institutions (political, economic, etc.).
Science, therefore, maintains its primacy in all domains of social life only because it is recognised by people as the main source of legitimacy. This, of course, came at an expense. Pragmatism and rational thinking became the two main criteria by which we orient ourselves in all domains of living with catastrophic effects on our political and social life. If pragmatism and rational thinking are good for technical progress and science, they are not as good for creating values and for giving a meaningful direction to our lives.
The transformation of Western societies caused a loss of meaning, identity, and purposeful existence that plunged the population into pervasive uncertainty regarding beliefs and values. It is no coincidence that in the 19th century the problem of the loss of meaning inaugurated a whole philosophical tradition destined to last well into modernity.
Habermas wants to show that there are limits to this reduction of practical problems to technical problems. The very solution of technical problems presupposes not only the development of the productive forces but also the development of the social conscience of the subjects, that is, the primacy of politics. He especially draws attention to the fact that, since the advent of positivism, the theory of knowledge has in fact been replaced by the theory of science; that is, all forms of self-reflection on knowledge and the knowing subject have ceased, and the assumption has been affirmed that only facts and the relations they determine count. This type of position has been affirmed both in the field of natural sciences through Peirce’s pragmatism and in the spiritual sciences through Dilthey’s historicism.
This approach has harmed scientific research by impeding a healthy reformation of the principles on which science stands. And by aggravating the schism between scientific and humanistic disciplines, it interrupted the process of cross-fertilisation which is indispensable to avoid intellectual stagnation. A radical critique of the sciences and their relationship to humanistic disciplines and their harmonious reintegration is thus the key to overcoming this stasis. It is only through this that we will be able to recognise the appropriate role that science should play in society and develop a holistic response to the complex problems that we are faced with.
A Habermas-Foucault Synthesis
Foucault’s and Habermas’ philosophies are very different when one looks at the objectives that they wanted to pursue and their normative outlook. But that does not preclude the possibility of taking the best of both worlds to create a mestizo, able to transcend the genetic limitations imposed by its progenitors.
As we have seen in the first section, knowledge is an aide to normalisation and helps to determine both how this should happen and how it is maintained. Knowledge does not only allow for the creation of a truth regime, but also for the implementation of a biopolitical apparatus that aims at the regulation of its population bodies, lives, and health.
With these insights that stem from the observation of behaviours, culture, and institutions, Foucault manages to uncover the subtle ways in which power shapes individuals and their actions and teaches us to look at what might appear as common sense with an inquisitive eye. In the context we find ourselves in, where a state of exception is slowly becoming normalised and a new truth regime is being established, Foucault’s remarks are of great inspiration. The questions that he helps us raise are: Are scientific truths really as super partes as they appear to be? In which way are certain narratives limiting our worldview?
Foucault stresses that power is neither good nor bad in itself but when accepted blindly it can become extremely dangerous. After 200 years of biopolitics, we have become so accustomed to self-regulation and compliance that critical thinking seems to have abandoned the public sphere. The astonishing obedience demonstrated by the population during the Covid-19 shows how docile and passive we have become. Despite the government’s contradicting claims on vaccines’ efficacy, number of contagions, and necessary measures, people simply kept their heads down. Nobody dares doubting the authority, not even when the authority seems to falter, why?
After interviewing people for the past year and a half on their experiences of Covid-19 as a researcher on SolPan, a comparative and longitudinal study, I have noticed that people tend to unquestionably trust experts and happily delegate to them. In itself, this is not a problematic behaviour. On the contrary, one may even argue that it is good. What is problematic, however, is that the lack of engagement with issues that are deemed purely technical or scientific makes us liable to policies that merely use science to legitimise themselves. Politics in fact, can easily hide behind science and feed off its allegedly super partes status. The idea that science does not become politics when translated into public policies is a great biopolitical triumph, and now is a threat to our political and public life.
While Foucault identifies science and knowledge as tools of power, he does not go as far as to describe the kind of rationality that supports science’s legitimising power. Habermas’ work addresses this question by showing not only how purposive-rationality came about and colonised all domains of social life, but also how it damaged politics and disenfranchised the population. When all political matters are framed as technical matters, the population is excluded from discussions over their future.
In the past two years we have witnessed the extent to which this approach has been adopted, as well as its consequences. Special committees of experts took decisions that affected the population both economically, socially, and psychologically without debates. This has been justified by the exceptional threat that the pandemic has triggered. All the while, the state of exception has become normalised, and with it paternalistic and technocratic practices.
The translation of technical and scientific issues into clear and understandable terms is essential to guarantee the active participation of the masses in decisions that affect them. This is not such a preposterous proposal since according to statistics: around 40% of the European population has completed tertiary education, while 70% completed secondary education. Never in history such high levels of education were achieved across the European continent. People have the intellectual tools to think and understand complex ideas but that is never asked of them. We often hear people arguing that if people were able to understand the state would not need to impose strict measures. But when they say understand, they mean obey. On the public level, there have not been attempts at explaining what makes Covid-19 vaccine different from other vaccines, how it works, nor its potential consequences. Citizens are treated like children, they are cut off from the adults’ talk because they are unable to comprehend. But what do states do to facilitate citizens’ understanding, to enhance their ability to think?
The works of Foucault and Habermas are incredibly useful for understanding how power and ideology limit our intellectual horizon. In these times of crisis and critical torpidity, these two authors provide us the tools to start questioning the reality we live in and prevent us from slouching our way into a dystopian future. It is painfully obvious that our societies are crumbling – economic, environmental, and social crises can be observed across the world. Western countries can still afford to live in their delusional state, but sooner than later we will all pay the consequences of our illusions.
The freedoms we give up today will not come back tomorrow
Three centuries after the beginning of Enlightenment, our societies could not look more intellectually stagnant. After having elected science and rationality as our new masters, we are slowly but steadily falling back into the laps of an authoritarianism fueled by bigotry and shortsightedness – a condition that we are enthusiastically embracing. The way the Covid-19 pandemic has been dealt with is yet another symptom that clearly shows our inability to think and reflect on the consequences of our actions.
The most worrying aspect of the way discussions over Covid-19 have turned is their incredible lack of depth and nuance. On the one side, there are those who are willing to give up all their constitutional rights and are ready to start an inquisition against those that deny science, that is, the truth regime. On the other, much smaller side, you find conspiracy theories of various kinds, anti-vaxxers, and some who do not belong to either extreme but are treated just as equally because they do not conform to the truth regime.
Despite the media representing the second group as a cohesive and evil sect, it is so inconsequential that you will find an article critical of Covid restrictions only if you look hard enough. For these reasons, it is a topic not worth expanding.
Those that belong to the first category seem to be affected by a Pollyanna syndrome that impedes them from seeing the dangers of uncritically accepting restrictive measures. As the French political scientist Oliver Nay wrote in a paper titled, “Can a virus undermine human rights?”:
“The risk is that fear could change the value that citizens accord to freedom. As global biological and environmental threats increase, citizens might be disposed to give up some of their constitutional rights. The aspiration to security can quickly erode the desire for freedom.”
So a question that people should ask themselves is: What future are we giving shape to with our actions? Is Covid the only threat to our existence?
The different value placed on personal freedoms in the face of fear of disease can undermine the very desire for democracy in favour of authoritarian measures legitimised by science and statistics. We are already experiencing this tendency in the ongoing discussions about vaccines and the fear that this regime will continue after the emergency is less dystopian than it might seem.
Twenty years after 9/11, the Patriot Act is still allowing security agencies to spy on every American without due process. Six years after the 2015 Paris attacks, an anti-terrorism law still reduces civil liberties by curtailing judicial oversight of security tools. What makes us think that with Covid measures it will be any different?
Emergency measures are introduced and then normalised, thus becoming part of the truth regime that we are all subjected to. What we lose today will not be given back tomorrow, or, as history teaches, not without blood. | https://epochemagazine.org/45/science-ideology-and-biopolitics-in-the-times-of-covid-19/ |
A radical new chip design invented by engineers at the UNSW-based Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC2T) promises to make the manufacture of silicon-based quantum computers dramatically cheaper and easier than was previously thought possible.
The breakthrough allows quantum bits – the basic unit of information in a quantum computer – to be placed hundreds of nanometres apart and still remain coupled. Previously it was understood qubits would need to be spaced only 50 atoms apart, meaning the surrounding electronics would also need to be built to a nanometric scale.
“If we want to make an array of thousands or millions of qubits so close together, it means that all the control lines, the control electronics and the readout devices must also be fabricated at that nanometric scale, and with that pitch and that density of electrodes,” explains Andrea Morello, program manager at CQC2T.
“This new concept suggests another pathway. It’s a brilliant design, and like many such conceptual leaps, it’s amazing no-one had thought of it before.”
Thong thinking
The design – dubbed the ‘flip flop qubit’ – was conceived by Guilherme Tosi, Morello, Fahd Mohiyaddin, Vivien Schmitt and Stefanie Tenberg from CQC2T, with collaborators Rajib Rahman and Gerhard Klimeck of Purdue University in the US.
The centre had already successfully built two functional qubits using the electron and nucleus of a phosphorus atom trapped in silicon. Those qubits, taken individually, have demonstrated world-record coherence times. But to perform calculations the qubits need to be placed only a few atoms apart so the electrons touch each other.
“We have now discovered that this is not necessary. We can make the phosphorus qubits talk to each other over much larger distances,” says Tosi.
(In quantum computing terms a large distance is “a good fraction of a micron” or 1000 nanometres; about one hundredth the width of a human hair.)
The flip flop qubit encodes quantum information in the combined state of the electron and the nucleus of the phosphorus atom.
“It is operated by pulling the electron away from the nucleus, and then oscillating the electron position around its equilibrium point. This means that we can now control a qubit in silicon using electric rather than magnetic signals. This makes it much easier to integrate with normal electronic circuits,” Morello adds. “Electric signals are significantly easier to distribute and localise within an electronic chip.”
The greater distances also allow the qubits to be more easily integrated with readily available circuitry.
“Once the negative of the charge of the electron is pulled away from the positive charge on the nucleus, the qubit creates an electric field that reaches over large distances. So we can now design a large scale quantum computer where there’s plenty of space to insert interconnects, control lines, a readout devices; without having to fabricate components at the scale of a few atoms,” Tosi says.
Silicon boost
The breakthrough is a significant boost for the newly formed Silicon Quantum Computing, Australia’s first quantum computing hardware company which launched last month with funding from the federal and NSW governments, UNSW, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Telstra.
The company, based at UNSW’s Sydney campus has the goal of producing a 10 qubit integrated circuit prototype by 2022.
“This is a theory, a proposal – the qubit has yet to be built,” says Morello. “We have some preliminary experimental data that suggests it’s entirely feasible, so we’re working to fully demonstrate this.”
The silicon-based approach is just one of a number of potential paths to a fully functional quantum computer.
IBM and Google are pursuing the superconducting circuits approach. Their systems are larger and easier to fabricate and currently have the lead in the number of qubits that can be operated. However, their larger size means they may face challenges in the longer term when building arrays of millions of qubits that will be required by the most useful quantum algorithms.
Microsoft is taking a topological approach to forming qubits uses quasiparticles called non-abellian anyons. The quasiparticles are as yet unproven, but the company is confident, saying it had reached an ‘inflection point’ in its research.
The company cemented its long-standing quantum computing research relationship with the University of Sydney, with the signing of a multi-year investment deal understood to be in the multiple millions in July. | http://www2.computerworld.com.au/article/626993/flip-flop-thinking-breakthrough-quantum-computer-chips/ |
Sleep takes a third part of our lives, but people often do not pay attention to them, unless a dream is a nightmare. Some people even claim that they do not see dreams at all; although the results of research clear up that they actually do not remember their dreams. This happens mainly due to misunderstanding of dreams, inability to navigate the night images and most of all because of the rejection of the truth about themselves. It is absolutely natural for our ego to protect itself from unknown and unpleasant information by playing “ostrich policy”.
This situation has not been the same at all times. Ages before and even now in many non-Western cultures dreams have had a major role in the life of the community and the individual. But only in the last century there was a breakthrough in this field in Western culture, thanks to Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalysis. Although nobody uses the Freudian psychoanalysis now, it still was a major breakthrough in the wall of hostility to people dreams and the unconscious. It was Freud who linked together these two concepts, he demonstrated that dreams are closely connected with the conscious life of the individual and carry a certain messages.
What is the connection between sleep and unconsciousness?
Sleeping for us is another mode of perception of information, different from our usual daily life. This mode is distinguished primarily by the weakening of the ego-complex and, as a result, it gives the unconscious a chance to show itself in a greater extent than in the daytime consciousness. In our usual live the unconscious usually occurs in the form of Freudian slips, curiosities, deeds that we do not understand how this could happened, or suddenly arisen thoughts, or intuition, although each arisen idea has its source in the unconscious.
The language of the unconscious
It is hard to understand the language of the unconscious and during the dream analysis not all aspects could be revealed and understood. When we are working with our unconscious, we can never say “it’s just”, we can only approach and say something indirectly, more or less close to the point.
So, what is important and what is not, in the dream analysis? The answer is everything, absolutely everything is important. Everything in our dreams is symbol by which the unconscious conveys the idea to our consciousness. The language of Dreams (or the language of symbols) very metaphorical and it should not be taken literally, otherwise our understanding will be limited by losing many aspects of the image in the dream and its meaning for the dreamer.
The images used in the unconscious, normally are taken from our day-to-day life. They form the message to consciousness and at the same time it is the key to the interpretation of a dream, because in our dreams we can see only familiar images, not something unknown. The design of these familiar elements is a unique mosaic which we see in our dreams. Usually, there are things that most obsessed our attention during the day or life. It may be a job and a hobby, or some important events; it could be everything that can “shake us up”.
Complication of dreams
Many people complain that dreams are confusing and could not be interpreted easily; they do not obey the daily consciousness logic. But if you look closely, our daily thoughts and concepts with which we operate, not such clear and certain, as we would like to think. Every concept and every thought inevitably “sprouted” in the subconscious and painted individual content that is subjective and varies from person to person.
Of course, these are different shades of mental perception in different people. Each of us individually perceive abstract or general concepts, and, respectively, each of us has its own way to interpret and apply them. When I use in conversation, the terms “state”, “money”, “health” or “society”, I assume that my interlocutors understand them more or less in the same way as I do. This “more or less” is the whole point. Every word has a little different meaning for different people, even if they have the same cultural level. This happens because the general concept, passing through the prism of personality, interpreted and applied by each person slightly differently. Differences in the interpretation, of course, increase when the social, political, religious or psychological experience varies considerably among interlocutors.
As long as the concept is described by its name, variations in its understanding hardly noticeable and have no practical value. However, as soon as it requires precise definition or a thorough explanation, the most improbable interpretations may appear, and not only in a purely intellectual understanding of the term, but particularly in its emotional coloring and method its application. As a rule, these differences are unconscious and remain so.
It would seem that such differences could be dismissed as unnecessary and transient nuances that have little to do with the humdrum needs. However, the mere fact of their existence shows that even the most mundane contents of consciousness has a shade approximate. Even the most carefully formulated philosophical or mathematical concepts, which in our opinion have no other content, than we think, in fact, are endowed with a broader meaning than we suppose. This is a psychic phenomenon, and as a result it is not fully understandable. Even the mere numbers used in the simple math represent a little more than we think. They have also the mythological meaning (and the Pythagoreans worshiped them), and we certainly do not think about it by adding or multiplying them.
Shortly speaking, every single thing that is available in our conscious thought has its associative matching in the psychic. Associations, which are corresponding to concepts, may be more or less bright (in accordance with the importance of this concept for our individuality, or in conjunction with other ideas and even our subconscious complexes) and can change the “usual” meaning of the concept. As a result, this meaning changes considerably from time to time.
In dreams, we see these concepts in full, together with associations and their unconscious, which we may reject in the daily consciousness of rationalization. For consciousness convenience and successful (more or less) communication between people, we have to sacrifice many shades of used concepts inevitably. Naturally, this may be forgotten and not taken into account, and the result of this is frequent misunderstanding, violations of human communication.
The influence of personality on the images in dreams
Some images are an expression of the archetypes of the inevitable personalization, which is converted to the needs of a particular person, the dreamer. It is therefore essential to consider the meaning of the symbols for the individual.
“Take for example a dream in which the number of “Thirteen” occurs. It is crucial to know believes of the person who saw the dream. Such a number may be an unfortunate sign in the dream for the person or it indicates other supporters of superstitions. The result of this dream interpretation will depend on the answer. In the first case it is necessary to take into account that the “curse” of “thirteen” still dominates the dreamer’s personality (which means that he will be unhappy in a hotel room under that number, or in the company of thirteen persons). In the latter case, “thirteen” is no more than uncivil or even insulting references. Obviously, this number is deprived of its usual emotional coloring for a rational person.
It means that none symbol occurring in a dream cannot be separated from the person who saw it and none dream cannot be interpreted directly and unambiguously. Each person has a unique method of compensating and supplementing the impact on the subconscious mind, and it should be taken into account during dream analysis. “
But there are numerous standard themes as typical flight, the fall, the appearance in a public place in the nude, the pursuit of wild animals or wrestling with someone with useless weapon, but such dreams have to always to be seen in the full context, not giving them a particular meaning for ever. Frequently recurring dreams may indicate some consequences after trauma caused by prejudice against something or some significant turn in the fate of the future. Nightmares are also an indication of some important aspect, which appeared in the dreamer’s life or to a specific problem, hindering the development of the individual.
The importance of dream analysis
For the stable functioning of the mind and mental health, subconscious mind and consciousness have to be inextricably linked and act in a coordinated manner. If this link breaks or “dissociated”, there is a psychological disorder as a result. In this regard, the symbolism of dreams plays the role of a courier, conveyed a message from the instinctive to the rational part of the mind. Decoding these characters enriches the impoverished possibilities of consciousness and our consciousness learns to understand again forgotten language of the instincts.
Whatever dream is wrong, right or strange, this is your dream. It is possible to love or not to love it, but it is part of your life. Avoiding thinking about dreams and trying to interpret them by ignoring them, we close our eyes to reality, the third part of our life, which is no less important than the conscious day-to-day life, which is itself subject to significant influence of the unconscious.
Dream analysis can be compared to digestion with vital lessons necessary for the future life path. As if we were loaded in dreams by some messages or ideas, and analyzing them we are feeding the mind and personality, assimilating new, essential for us to, content as well as strengthening this magical connection between the conscious and the unconscious, the link that is not enough for the integrity of the individual. The sign of a successful dream analysis is the state. The state of ease of locomotion, completeness and integrity. It is impossible to describe, but everyone who encountered this state, understand what it means.
A practical method for the dream analysis
Dream analysis should begin with a detailed description of a dream, without neglecting anything. Furnishing (right-left), color (or lack thereof), the characters, their clothes, inconsistencies and emotional reactions in a dream – everything is important. Details are the keys to understanding the language of dreams; otherwise we use a sledge-hammer to crack nuts. On the other hand, binding to detail or analysis of the image out of context does not allow us to see the big picture and understand the meaning of the message. Approach to each dream must be detached, as if this is not your dream but a stranger dream.You need to learn all about the symbols occurring in the dream, but when you begin analysis you should forget everything. Every dream should be a new blank sheet.
First of all, look at the dream and write down the general idea, if any. The process of writing down is also important and should be neglected, making the analysis.
Look in more detail and write down the themes that emerged.
The following: absurdities, inconsistencies in each theme. Try to see them, comparable to daily life, ask yourself: is it happens in everyday life? Write out these absurdities-pleonasms. Speak out loud, what exactly it is, where is jeer-meaning-hint. Often they are the “tricks of the trickster,” a kind of unconscious humor, indicating a defect or interferes with the consciousness set (which prevents the development of the personality).
The following: the number of characters, their gender, their “national” identity, clothes, appearance. Separate the familiar from unfamiliar, look, what function they have about the story.
You should formulate proposals as if you were talking to a little child.
Write out all the predicates in a row, apart from your dream. Words are your actions. Sometimes they reflect your daily life and the state. When you wrote out them all from your dream, check whether they have a counterpart in your daily life, whether they transformed in your dream.
Perhaps to interpret the dream meaning you will spend more than a day or two. It does not say that you have to sit all day on the notebook and “think.” No. Have the time specified for the work with dreams. Let it be half an hour a day at a particular time. And did it regularly, no matter how stupid and pointless this task may seem.
The main thing is to observe the conditions of the “state.”When the experience is gained, insights about the dreams will start to come in different time; it may be another dream, or during lunch, or even during a conversation with a neighbor.
It is necessary from time to time to re-read your old dreams, to see their logic consistent or repeating, to see when unconscious in different ways trying to tell you something important by different images, different actions or different symbols and adjectives.
Reviewing your previous dreams also helps to understand some aspects that were missed in the analysis, as well as to build an approximate chain of developing events, and perhaps their predestination.
And finally,
Dreams can be hard truths, philosophical maxims, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, the anticipation of events, even telepathic visions, irrational feelings and God knows what else. Do not forget that almost half of our life takes place in a more or less unconscious state. The specific manifestation of the unconscious is a dream. As the soul has the day side – consciousness, it has and the night side as well – unconscious mental life, which could be thought of like a dream fantasy.
It is in our power to take up our night “secret life” or continue to ignore it, through the “ostrich policy,” naively believe that everything in life is under conscious control, and everything is limited by conscious. | https://dreamlandia.com/articles/dream-analysis.html |
Lina Tan has recurrent childhood chronic myeloid leukaemia. She was diagnosed three years ago, at age 11, and underwent chemotherapy and other treatments, resulting in remission. Lina was able to return to school and resume a relatively normal life for about two years. When the disease recurred one year ago, Lina underwent a second round of chemotherapy. After a short remission, the disease relapsed. Lina, who is now 14, was recently re-hospitalised for further tests.
While Lina is resting one morning, Lina’s paediatric oncologist, Dr Chong, speaks with Lina’s parents, recommending a stem cell transplant, telling them, ‘Lina is still strong, I think this could help her.’ After Dr Chong and his colleagues explain the benefits and risks of the stem cell transplant, as well as the financial cost of the procedure, Lina’s parents give consent for the transplant.
During evening rounds, Dr Chong stops by Lina’s room. After a brief chat with his patient, Dr Chong asks Lina’s parents to join him in a small conference room down the hall.
Dr Chong calls an emergency team meeting to discuss Lina’s parents’ request.
Early the next morning, before Lina’s parents arrive at the hospital, Dr Chong talks with Lina.
Later that afternoon, Lina’s parents arrive at the hospital. On their way to Lina’s room, they meet Dr. Rosario in the corridor.
In this case, the parents of Lina Tan, an adolescent with leukaemia, first agree that their daughter should receive a stem cell transplant after chemotherapy fails, then change their minds and tell the medical team, “We want to try TCM.” The reason for this change is never quite clear, although there are hints that cost, and the burden of further hospitalisation on their daughter, are factors. While the medical team did not consider TCM to be an effective intervention for leukaemia, Dr Chong, Lina’s oncologist, was reluctant to seek a court order that would allow the medical team to provide life-sustaining treatment to a minor such as Lina without parental consent, and hoped that Lina’s parents would reconsider.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). In general, ‘complementary’ refers to remedies, such as herbal supplements, that are integrated with standard (sometimes referred to as ‘Western’) medical treatment, while ‘alternative’ refers to the primary or exclusive use of non-standard remedies. TCM is common in Singapore, where TCM practitioners are regulated by the TCM Practitioners Board. Clinicians are generally receptive to their patients’ preferences concerning the use of TCM as a complementary remedy combined with standard medical treatment, provided there are no contraindications between, for example, a chemotherapy drug and an herbal supplement that a patient may use to counteract nausea. The use of TCM (or any other complementary remedy) as an alternative to standard medical treatment for a life-threatening condition raises a range of ethical concerns, including whether a decision to forgo life-sustaining treatment to pursue alternative treatment is an informed decision; whether such a decision may close off future options should the patient’s condition worsen; and whether such a decision can be made on behalf of a person who is not able to make this type of decision for himself or herself. All of these questions are present in this case.
What could this team have done differently once Lina’s parents withdrew their consent for the transplant and said, ‘We want to try TCM’ as an alternative treatment? Dr Chong and his colleagues could have tried to find out what this statement meant to Mr and Mrs Tan, and to explore their sudden resistance to the proposed treatment plan. Does the desire to use TCM as an alternative to cancer treatment reflect a desire to alleviate suffering through the use of an approach that they may perceive as ‘gentler’? Does their decision reflect concerns about the cost of the stem cell therapy? Are the goals of the proposed treatment unclear in some way?
The medical team could also have explored the possibility of consulting with TCM practitioners among colleagues in the hospital, carefully clarifying the goals of medical treatment and collaborating on ways to incorporate TCM into the care plan, without abandoning the stem cell therapy.
Finally, this team, like any team responsible for the medical treatment of a minor, needs to be clear, among themselves and within their institution, about the circumstances that would compel them to seek a court order for treatment. The case suggests that Dr Chong has been through this process before, and that his thinking concerning the present situation is influenced by an adversarial, psychologically ‘draining’ past experience of his own, or by his colleagues’ experiences. This, too, is of ethical concern, if clinicians’ past experiences are limiting the options of their current patients. Calling for ethics consultation with the hospital’s ethics committee was an unexplored remedy in this case, and might have provided support to Dr Chong and his colleagues as they worked with Lina and her parents.
Commentary by Ho, Calvin W. L., ‘When parents seek alternative treatments', in Chin, Jacqueline, Nancy Berlinger, Michael C. Dunn, Michael K. Gusmano (eds.), A Singapore Bioethics Casebook, vol. i: Making Difficult Decisions with Patients and Families (Singapore: National University of Singapore, 2014; 2017), http://www.bioethicscasebook.sg.
Lina’s request to know ‘the truth’ about her condition puts Dr Rosario in a difficult position. Lina is an adolescent. To this point, her parents have made all of her medical decisions, and it is unclear how much information she has been given over the past three years about her diagnosis, treatment, or prognosis. She is, however, able to see that her health has deteriorated. In asking for ‘the truth’, she may suspect that the truth has been withheld from her in the past.
Withholding truthful information from Lina fails to respect her as a person capable of understanding her current situation. Creating false hope, by giving Lina or her parents an unrealistic picture of Lina’s prognosis, is another ethical problem, as it could result in poorly-informed treatment and care decisions. Being untruthful may also create mistrust between Lina and the healthcare team.
At the same time, Dr Rosario knows that Lina’s mother has asked Dr Chong, who directs the team, to tell Lina that “everything is fine.” This junior doctor may wonder how to reconcile the patient’s preferences, expressed to him, with the parent’s instructions, expressed to his senior, and also what the law requires of him in situations like this.
This scenario might have been avoided if the medical team had talked early on with Lina and her parents about Lina’s own role in her medical treatment and care, why her preferences mattered, and how a patient of Lina’s age could be involved in treatment decision-making. Dr Chong did attempt to find out more about Lina’s preferences after recommending stem cell therapy to her parents, but once she said, “I’ll do whatever my parents think is best,” he made no further efforts to understand her preferences. Cases like Lina’s require clarity about professionals’ responsibilities to pediatric patients, including how adolescent patients, whose capacity to make decisions began to develop in childhood, should be involved in the decision-making process.
Lina’s question to Dr Rosario – ‘What’s going on?’ – is a poignant reminder of what clinicians owe to patients: a way of framing the experience that the patient is living with. Lina knows she is sick – she is hospitalised, after all. By the end of the case, she is experiencing symptoms of worsening disease, things that are happening to her as well as showing up on tests. She knows something is going on; she wants ‘the truth’ about what it is. Lina’s parents want her medical team to reassure their daughter that “she’s going to be fine.” The urge to protect a child from any source of distress, including distressing information, is strong. However, pretending to Lina that things will be fine would undermine Lina’s trust in the people around her. That she is asking Dr Rosario for ‘the truth’ suggests both that the truth is important to her and that she does not trust what her parents are telling her. When Lina’s mother says, “She’ll believe you,” she is acknowledging that her daughter trusts Dr Chong as a source of information. Dr Chong and other members of the team should take this opportunity to reinforce the importance of supporting Lina by being trustworthy, by asking her what she wants to know, and responding to her concerns truthfully.
By the age of 14, adolescents may be as capable as adults of understanding complex medical information, even though, due to their continuing neurological development, they may not yet fully grasp the long-term consequences of a decision about life-sustaining treatment. Involving adolescents in decision-making about their own lives and healthcare (as they are willing and able) respects their developing autonomy and helps others to understand the preferences of the person who is experiencing illness and treatment. A ‘shared’ or ‘collaborative’ decision-making model, involving the adolescent patient, the parents, and medical professionals, is appropriate for these circumstances.
According to the case, Dr Chong did not mention the palliative care team until after Lina’s condition deteriorated significantly. When Dr Chong suggests involving palliative care, Lina’s father resists because, to him, this represents ‘giving up’. As a consequence, Lina’s pain and symptoms may be inadequately relieved as her parents try to pursue medical interventions while trying to keep palliative care out of the picture. If palliative care expertise and insights had been part of Lina’s care from the start of her illness three years before, it is possible that the concerns that prompted the parents to stop standard treatment and switch to TCM, and then to try to switch back to standard treatment once Lina’s condition worsened, might have been addressed more effectively. Nevertheless, in the interest of preventing harm, in the form of unneeded suffering to Lina, her doctors should be prepared to advocate for their patient, and to ensure that palliative care is part of her care plan.
Commentary by Gusmano, Michael K., ‘The Voice of the Child', in Chin, Jacqueline, Nancy Berlinger, Michael C. Dunn, Michael K. Gusmano (eds.), A Singapore Bioethics Casebook, vol. i: Making Difficult Decisions with Patients and Families (Singapore: National University of Singapore, 2014; 2017), http://www.bioethicscasebook.sg.
The treatment of children and adolescents is also the treatment of the family. In truth, almost all of us are embedded within a wider context of family, and beyond that, society. As dependents, however, children and adolescents are generally more vulnerable to their setting and may have less power to exercise personal autonomy. This brings with it certain complexities, as the case of Lina demonstrates.
Family styles of decision-making can impact on treatment decisions. Lina’s father is clearly the spokesman for the family, and the clinicians have assumed that he is the family’s authority figure, and the decision-maker on behalf of both his daughter and his wife. This may not be true. Different families have different family decision-making styles concerning medical decisions. In some families, one person may make the decisions for the family and patient, and all other members of the family (including the patient) are voiceless and powerless. In other families, there are pre-existing tacit agreements about family priorities and values, and one person asks as spokesman about the decisions made within the family system, with or without overt family discussion. Some families engage in full discussion between patient and other family members, but the patient makes the final determinative decision with the support of other family members. Some patients act as the sole decision-maker, with no family members involved.
In Lina’s case, as in the case of most children and adolescents, it is unlikely that a patient would be the sole decision-maker, with no or limited family involvement. It is unclear how her family has been making decisions and whether Lina has had any voice in these decisions, or if she may not be as voiceless as she appears. At some level she may have tacitly or overtly agreed with or bought into the family decisions, and may have decided to allow her father to speak for her and determine her welfare. Her mother similarly may have tacitly accepted or agreed to the decisions articulated by her father. Because most adolescents are at fluctuating points between the childhood state of being heavily reliant on parental attitudes and the (ideal) adult state of having independent selves and views, Lina’s apparent passivity may reflect a developmentally appropriate reliance on the family’s priorities and values to help determine healthcare decisions for her life-threatening condition. Furthermore, as treatment may have serious financial consequences for the family, certain family members have a legitimate stake in this decision.
The parents who are trying to be ‘good’ parents are not morally ‘bad’ because they want to shield their daughter. And yet Lina is owed an honest answer to her question: “What’s going on?” What are the options beyond agreeing with the family spokesman and ignoring the voice of the child, or forcing a family to act in a child’s best interests by taking the case to court? These questions can only be answered if the healthcare team explores how the family works, what the values and motivations of each member of the family are, and how the family makes decisions; through a process of ongoing conversations with the parents alone, with Lina alone, and with the family together. When a patient has been relatively disempowered within her family, the ongoing task for clinicians may be to guide Lina (and her family) in developing and articulating her views and attitudes towards the issues at hand, in order to optimise her autonomy and input into the family’s decisions.
Ideally, this style of engaging families in talking about – and walking with them through – making decisions should be part of a style of routine healthcare. Just as families have styles, teams have their own styles; and teams should be reflective about their own values and practices. They should consider consciously adopting a normal working style where they learn about how individual families work from a position alongside them. Team practices, which are as value-laden as family priorities, should be transparent and form a supportive culture where families know what to expect and can navigate their way.
A learning point from Lina’s case is that it would be helpful for teams to start with ground rules about openness where there is an expectation that adolescents are participants in, rather than subjects of, healthcare decisions. At the same time, family styles should be identified and respected, with appropriate levels of support and disclosure then negotiated and agreed by all and tailored to developmental need and family style. If this is the case, the family’s apparent reluctance to involve Lina would be examined and discussed from the start, rather than being colluded with or tolerated and subsequently becoming an issue in a crisis. Furthermore, there can be a policy of assigning each significant family member – such as Lina, her mother, and her father – different team members who can be their advocates to support them from their own perspectives as well as give them the space to develop their views and attitudes. Finally, families need to be supported in the process of making decisions, and where possible, given enough time and space to decide.
Clinical perspective by Tan, Jacinta O. A., 'Family styles and decision-making', in Chin, Jacqueline, Nancy Berlinger, Michael C. Dunn, Michael K. Gusmano (eds.), A Singapore Bioethics Casebook, vol. i: Making Difficult Decisions with Patients and Families (Singapore: National University of Singapore, 2014; 2017), http://www.bioethicscasebook.sg.
Chong, P. H., Chan, M. Y., Yuri, L. I. (2012), 'Do children die? A retrospective review of deaths in a children’s hospital', Singapore Med J, 53(3):192-5.
Low, J. A., Kiow, S. L., Main, N., Luan, K. K., Sun, P. W., and Lim, M. (2009), 'Reducing collusion between family members and clinicians of patients referred to the palliative care team', Perm J, 3(4):11-5.
Levetown M. (2008), 'Communicating with children and families: from everyday interactions to skill in conveying distressing information', Pediatrics, 121(5):e1441-60.
Mack J. W. and Grier H. E. (2004), 'The Day One Talk', J Clin Oncol, 22(3):563-6.
Miller, V. A., Drotar, D., Modish, E. (2004), 'Children’s competence for assent and consent: a review of empirical findings', Ethics Behave, 14(3):255-95.
The neurological capacity to make decisions, including medical decisions, begins to develop in childhood and continues to develop into early adulthood. How should medical professionals talk with patients and their parents about the patient’s role in his or her medical treatment and care?
Why is truth-telling important in patient care? How should healthcare professionals respond to parents or other family members who ask them to withhold the truth from a patient?
When parents make a decision in the care of a child that does not appear to be in the child’s best interests, what steps should physicians and other members of the healthcare team take to try to resolve the conflict?
Under what circumstances would a doctor be obliged to seek a court order for administering treatment to a child against parental wishes? | http://www.bioethicscasebook.sg/case/lina/ |
Relationships play a crucial role in our lives. Some could be rather short-term and insignificant, like interactions with a shop-keeper or a receptionist, while some could be long-lasting and impactful. ‘Birds of a feather flock together,’ it’s true! Your friends, romantic partners, and family contribute to the person you are. This article will explore the psychology of relationships, attractions, and love – the variety of relationships we develop, who we fall in love with, what we find attractive in partners, the types of love and affection, how relationships form, and, most importantly, how we maintain these relationships.
5 Foundations of Love, Friendship, and Attraction
1. Belongingness: Do you feel connected?
Humans are social animals and they seek to have long-term, stable, and strong interpersonal connections. We strive to belong. Research suggests that belongingness strongly affects a person’s emotional patterns and cognitive processes. On the other hand, a lack of such relationships results in ill effects on health, adjustment, and well-being. A recent study showed that relocated individuals were less likely to feel homesick when the community accepted them. This creates a healthy opportunity for new relationships.
2. Proximity: How close are you to someone?
Do you think that if you didn’t live beside your neighbor for the past so many years, you still would’ve been friends? Or perhaps if your best friend weren’t seated next to you in class, you never would’ve met and begun a friendship? The more often people are exposed to a specific person, thing, or even idea, the more likely they are to develop favorable attitudes towards it/them. Familiarity creates liking, usually. Zajonc called this the mere exposure effect. An experiment highlighted this by having four women of similar appearance attend classes as students in a college without interacting with students. At the end of the term, students found the women to be similar and attractive.
3. Observable Characteristics: What do you see in others?
We’ve all heard the phrase ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’; however, facial cues often guide your first impressions of a person. A person’s looks affect many important social outcomes like decisions about relationships – selecting romantic partners, hiring decisions, and even small-talk. The ‘what is beautiful is good’ effect (the beauty stereotype) has an evolutionary basis, where attractive people are assumed to have upward economic mobility, positive personality traits, and the ability to provide more relationship satisfaction. Research shows that physically attractive people can positively influence hiring decisions and influence judgments in serious criminal allegations.
4. Similarity: How alike are you?
Implicit egotism implies that humans have a subliminal preference for things they associate with themselves. Studies show that people who share common opinions or have similar attitudes, especially political or religious ideologies, are more likely to have a satisfying relationship. But haven’t we always said that opposites attract? Research suggests that people in satisfying interpersonal relationships view their partners as similar to them. Implicit egotism implies that humans have a subliminal preference for things they associate with themselves.
5. Reciprocity: Is there a mutual give-and-take?
Reciprocity – a give and take attitude – is also closely related to interpersonal attractiveness. It is typically effective in most types of relationships. People desire reciprocal respect and love. But there is another angle to reciprocity. In a study, reciprocity in rating physical attractiveness depended on the other’s rating. So you might find someone more attractive simply because you know they like you. This reciprocity may seed a yet-to-form relationship just by knowing what a potential partner thinks about you. Go ahead and tell others you like them.The foundation of love and friendship is usually proximity, belongingness, similarity, observable personality + behavior, looks, and mutual give-and-take, according to studies. Click To Tweet
Sources of Liking based on Social Interaction
Some people have better social skills, which help them effectively communicate and socialize. Those skills usually get others to accept them more freely. Like that one extrovert friend who can talk to anyone, say the right things, and ends up being liked by everybody. Some valuable social skills (with a political – social dynamics – approach) are:
- Social Astuteness (social perception) – It is the ability of a person to perceive and understand others from their personality traits to their feelings and intentions. Socially astute people are good at forming strong, positive interpersonal relationships.
- Interpersonal Influence – This refers to a person’s capacity to change another person’s beliefs or ideas through techniques like persuasion.
- Social Adaptability – As the term suggests, it refers to a person’s ability to adapt to various social situations and effectively interact with others.
- Expressiveness – It is the ability to express emotion in a way that others can read easily.
A common first-date tactic is to get your partner confused/mixed-up between thrilling arousal and liking/sexual attraction. People do this by taking dates to gigs, horror movies, adventure sports, etc. Here, people may think the source of arousal is attraction when, in fact, it is an activity like watching a horror movie. This is called the misattribution of arousal. Social interactions that involve non-sexual arousing emotions like fear, thrill, horror, adrenaline rush, and anxiety can facilitate a sense of liking or sexual arousal.
How does Personality affect Relationships?
The OCEAN Model of Personality includes five personality traits of which extraversion (a tendency to be outgoing, energetic, and sociable) and agreeableness (a tendency to be trustworthy and altruistic) are related to high relationship satisfaction and intimacy. Conscientiousness, the tendency to be organized and efficient, is related to greater intimacy. People with narcissism, the personality trait wherein people have an inflated view of themselves, reported less commitment to their relationships because of alternatives for dating partners.
A study that examined resilients (can control motivation, impulses, and adjust to the environment), undercontrollers (low impulse & motivation control, poor adjustment), and overcontrollers (high impulse & motivation control, poor adjustment) saw that resilient adolescents had good quality friendships and romantic relationships. The core themes for interpersonal chemistry are reciprocal candor (honest openness), mutual enjoyment, attraction, similarities, personableness (positive impression, affable), love, instant connection, and indescribable factors. Similarities are, typically, more characteristic of friendships than romantic chemistry.
A theory of Romantic Relationships and Love
Although a love triangle is a problem, in reality, it is a solution to understand love.
Sternberg’s Triangular Model of Love: Robert Sternberg’s triangular theory of love says that love has three components – intimacy, passion, and decision/commitment. Intimacy refers to the degree of closeness between two individuals and the bond formed. Passion is based on sexuality, physical attraction, and romance Commitment is the set of thought processes like deciding to be in a relationship with the person & pondering over the implications of a long-term relationship. Of the three, passion appears less stable and not guaranteed, while intimacy and commitment are somewhat necessary to form a close relationship. In this triangular theory, combinations of the three elements allow for seven different types of relationships.
- Liking – Liking includes only one element of the three – intimacy that allows for a friendship without any passion or long-term commitment.
- Companionate Love – It includes a combination of intimacy and commitment. It is a close, long-term friendship that typifies a healthy marriage where the passion has faded.
- Empty Love – This includes only commitment, and as it says, it is empty, with no intimacy or passion.
- Fatuous Love – Commitment is formed based on passion without any intimacy, a somewhat shallow relationship.
- Infatuation – This is passionate and obsessive and resembles love at first sight and is pure passion.
- Romantic Love – Here, individuals are physically and emotionally attracted to each other but haven’t committed to the relationship.
- Consummate Love – A combination of all three elements. It is the ideal perfect love that is difficult to attain and maintain.
There is another perspective on love – it is a product of an ’emotion complex’, neurobiological abstraction of lust, and experience. You can check it out here.
What do we seek in a relationship and what is attractive?
We can’t exactly generalize our relationship needs, physical and psychological preferences, and tendencies under one paradigm, so let us explore what individual studies have found.
- Trustworthiness and cooperativeness are, expectedly, extremely important in mate selection.
- Sexual economics theory says that heterosexual sex is a marketplace deal in which the woman is the seller, and the man is the buyer. The price is paid in nonsexual resources. Women compete on sex appeal and promise faithfulness. They intend to get a man who will provide resources. Men, on the other hand, compete to amass said resources to get a sexual partner. Agreeableness, extraversion, and conscientiousness can also help a relationship initiate.
- In a study, women wanted increased emotional and companionate behaviors, instrumental support, and parental involvement in their partners, while men wanted greater increases in sex.
- Even in casual (friends with benefits) relationships, women viewed the relationship as more involved and emotional while men tended to see it as more casual with an emphasis on sexual benefits.
- Women also prefer taller partners, where women reported that they were most satisfied when their partner was approximately 21cms taller than them. Men were seen to be more satisfied when they were approximately 8cms taller than their partners.
- From an evolutionary perspective, a study saw that women prefer men who have good-gene indicators like their masculinity, sexiness, good investment indicators like their potential income, good parenting markers like a desire for home and children, and good partner indicators like being a loving, trustworthy partner.
- Large eyes, prominent cheekbones, a large chin, a big smile, and high-status clothing are considered attractive in a man.
- Evidence suggests that women’s physical attractiveness plays a strong role in men’s preferences for a partner than a man’s physical appearance in a women’s choice of partner. However, since the study is old, cultural shifts in preferences are very likely.
- A study on American women suggests that women can compromise on their partner’s physical attractiveness in favor of resources and other qualities they bring into a relationship.
- Research also suggests that those who see themselves as a future married homemaker look for a partner who can provide for the household. Anticipated roles can influence mate choices.
- Based on a study on heterosexual women, those who rate themselves as very attractive (even though others could disagree) may have a preference for men with more masculine facial features. The study supports the idea that a woman’s self-judgment of attractiveness plays a role in masculinity preferences.
The Psychological effects of Family Relationships
Familial relationships are the most important relationship one has. As we grow, our relationships with our family members change; however, it is still a constant foundation for our social being.
Parent-child relationship
Good parent-child interactions and overall parenting are vital to becoming socially well-adjusted. Bowlby established the concept of attachment styles that refer to how secure a person feels in interpersonal connections or relationships. The two basic attitudes that decide one’s attachment style are – self-esteem, which is based on social cues of how valued or accepted they are, and interpersonal trust (social expectations and beliefs in each other), which is the perceived trustworthiness and reliance one can have on the caregiver. Based on the above two dimensions, we get four types of attachment styles –
- Secure Attachment Style (high self-esteem and high trust) – Secure individuals have long-lasting, satisfying, and committed relationships and lead well-adjusted lives. Secure attachment style emerges from good parenting where parents aren’t insecure about their children, and the child isn’t wholly dependent on the parent for everything.
- Fearful-Avoidant Attachment Style (low self-esteem and low trust) – These individuals tend to have unhappy relationships or may not form close ones. It is a result of distant or absent parenting.
- Preoccupied Attachment Style (low self-esteem and high trust) – Such individuals crave closeness and readily form relationships, are seen as clingy too. Since they have low self-esteem, they expect to be rejected and consider themselves unworthy.
- Dismissing Attachment Style (high self-esteem and low trust) – This style leads people to think that they deserve good relationships; however, they don’t trust others.
Attachment styles are not set in stone and can be changed.
Holistic familial relationships
Family relationships don’t occur singularly but in a holistic sense with members other than your parents like siblings and your grandparents. Siblings aid the psychosocial and cognitive development of an individual. This is also seen in high-conflict homes where individuals who had sibling support were more positively adjusted that those who had low-sibling support and only children. When sibling commitment is consistent throughout their lifespan, their communication, as well as affectionate based emotional support, also remains constant.
Cohesive relationships with one’s grandparents have been seen to reduce depressive symptoms within a child, especially in single-parent families. For adults, research has shown that caring for grandparents can reduce the dissatisfaction caused by loneliness (Aloneliness) and also improve their physical and mental health.
Friendships and Wellbeing
All of us establish close relationships with peers and classmates right from when we’re kids. Some of them last for decades and some are momentary. These relationships emerged perhaps because you both were in the same school or the same neighborhood. Friendships reduce feelings of loneliness, which can be detrimental to one’s health. An experiment used an online Friendship Enrichment Program to reduce loneliness and was effective in doing so. Loneliness and social disconnectedness among adults are also related to childhood friendship experiences, especially when other stress factors and barriers threaten wellbeing. For example, research suggests that immigrant adolescents who had same-generation friends had lesser negative health outcomes. It’s not just wellbeing, childhood relationships can have an effect on cognitive functioning and status too.
How are relationships maintained?
Let us look at the Investment Model of Romantic Associations by Caryl Rusbult.
This theory states that commitment to a person depends on the satisfaction level, quality of alternatives, and investment size. The model states that people have more relationship satisfaction if they receive more rewards than costs. They are also more satisfied when there are no better alternatives, i.e., the alternative partner doesn’t provide more rewards than the current partner. The investment in the relationship includes both tangible and intangible resources. Rusbult also identified maintenance mechanisms necessary to maintain a relationship –
- Accommodation: using behaviors and actions that promote relationships without keeping a tally of costs and rewards. It is a willingness to act constructively.
- Willingness to sacrifice – putting your partner’s interests before yours.
- Forgiveness – the ability to forgive mistakes and shortcomings.
- Positive illusions – seeing the positives about your partner.
- Ridiculing alternatives – reducing potential options by seeing them in a negative sense or derogating them.
Relationships are also affected by your thinking styles. There are 2 ways in which people think about their partners.
- Relationship-enhancing: In this attribution or thinking style, a person attributes positive situations to a partner’s personality or qualities and negative ones to an external cause or the partner’s temporary state. For example, if your partner surprised you with a necklace, it’s because he loves you and is thoughtful. On the other hand, if he is late for your movie night, it’s because he got stuck in traffic.
- Distress-maintaining: This style is exactly the opposite where one attributes positive and negative situations to their partner’s negative aspects; like their personality traits or beliefs like they intended to cause hurt or show neglect (which often leads to anger). For example, he got you the necklace because he’s guilty about something or he is late for your movie night because he forgot about it or didn’t care enough. | https://cognitiontoday.com/psychology-of-relationships-love-attraction-romance/ |
As August 21, 2020 marks the 24th anniversary of Bill Clinton’s HIPAA Law, it is not a bad time to reflect on how the law has been doing. As with any big changes in healthcare, whether the advent of Electronic Health Systems (EHRs) in the past decade or a pandemic like COVID-19, nothing stays the same. All laws, rules, and regulations occasionally need some breathing room and this also applies to HIPAA. Here is an update on HIPPA changes and some examples of what not to do.
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How Conversational AI Helps Restore The Doctor-Patient Relationship
Artificial intelligence (AI) is known for using Big Data to detect anomalies in medical imaging, predict health outcomes, personalize treatment plans, even perform robotic surgery. One of the newest entrants to the AI movement is a form of “conversational AI” aimed at helping restore the doctor-patient relationship by alleviating the documentation burden.
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Why Health IT Teams Need Cloud Management Now More Than Ever
The global healthcare cloud computing market is expected to reach $55 billion by 2025, up from $20 billion in 2018. Historically, hospitals have slowly migrated singular applications, like EMRs or contact center technology, to the cloud. But in the wake of COVID-19, healthcare professionals are looking to scale healthcare services rapidly – making the move to cloud even more imperative.
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The Pressure To Publish Rapidly: The Risks Vs. Rewards Of Fast-Tracked COVID-19 Studies
While time is of the essence as hospitals and health systems, drug regulatory agencies, and the general public prepare for the virus’s second wave, concerns around the dangers of accelerated research studies must also be considered.
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Complex unstructured data migration tests healthcare payments company.
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Healthcare’s Unique Challenge: Managing Employee Spend
Healthcare facilities nationwide face increasing pressure to reduce costs across their organization. Providing patient care is the top priority. For that reason, healthcare executives take advantage of cost savings opportunities within administrative spend to reinvest in critical business areas. These reinvestment efforts enable them to provide better quality care.
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Vitality Health Services — The Search For A Secure Place To Store Data
Technology has rapidly changed the chiropractic industry. Less than 5 years ago, only a handful of large chiropractic practices could afford X-ray machines. With the advancement in radiological equipment technology, the cost of this equipment has decreased significantly. Patients are also asking for a quicker turnaround on X-ray diagnostics, forcing their chiropractic care professionals to invest in this technology located on-premises.
ABOUT HEALTH IT OUTCOMES
Health IT Outcomes is the premier information resource for today’s most pressing Health IT topics. Our mission is to provide healthcare providers with expert guidance on technology system selection, integration, project management, and change management.
Health IT Outcomes covers all technology solutions that impact the productivity, efficiency, patient care, and cash flow of a healthcare facility — from the latest electronic health record software (EHR), healthcare information exchange (HIE), healthcare information management Software (HIM), healthcare document management, healthcare business intelligence software, healthcare revenue cycle management software, point of care (POC) EMR (electronic medical record) and HIM (health information management) software to point-of-care solutions and medical imaging systems. The site features a comprehensive buyer's guide, daily health IT news updates on the latest technologies, contributed articles from leading healthcare industry analysts and vendors, and original success stories that highlight how leading healthcare facilities are implementing technology solutions with maximum return.
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To protect PHI, healthcare organizations often build a system of usernames and complex passwords. But why are we still relying on usernames and passwords when solutions such as single sign-on (SSO) have a measurable benefit of giving time back to clinicians, which is everything in healthcare. That time saved –amounting to hours per week – can now be spent with patients, increasing both patient and clinician satisfaction.
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UW Medicine’s Valley Medical Center dramatically improved patient outcomes after moving to a smartphone-based platform for clinical communication and alarm and alert notification. | https://www.healthitoutcomes.com/ |
MAGIS Immersion Experiences
Magis, the Ignatian ideal of more, asks people to go deeper and pay more intimate attention to their feelings, experiences and significant relationships with God and others.
The Magis Immersion and Justice Program puts this ideal into practice. By joining, students agree to advocate, fundraise and pray for and with our partners in communities here at home and abroad.
The focus of these trips is on building relationships, cultivating awareness of social justice and engaging in reflection and solidarity with the poor.
Participation in Magis is open to all Georgetown University undergraduate students of all religious traditions. Graduate students may participate if space is available.
Magis trip are offered as part of the Center for Social Justice’s Alternative Breaks Program (ABP). To learn more or to apply for one of the following trips, please visit the ABP website.
DOMESTIC IMMERSION EXPERIENCES
Economic Justice in Baltimore
Racial and economic inequalities have been a part of Baltimore history since slavery. The Magis Racial & Economic Justice in Baltimore trip seeks to explore issues of racial and class inequality through various structural and institutional forms of injustice including housing policies, religious orders, and access to health and wellness resources.
Baltimore is known for it’s charm through art, music and strong neighborhood identities, many of which organizations are using to promote justice and peace. Participants will also have the opportunity to make meaning of the ways in which these macro forms of oppression manifest in relationships among Baltimoreans today. Along with the community, participants will identify their own racial and social class identities, while creating a bridge of social justice between the Interstate 95 corridor.
Deconstructing Islamophobia and Religious Discrimination
Deconstructing Islamophobia and Religious Discrimination is an intensive experience in Washington, DC. Students on this ABP trip will deepen their knowledge and understanding of religious discrimination and hate as a social justice issue, with a particular focus on Islamophobia. The trip will explore how interfaith organizations, faith leaders, and the government combat religious prejudice. Students will also investigate the impact of such discrimination on communities and society and learn about strategies to build bridges and understanding.
Journey: The Search for Home
Migration permeates history and affects communities across the globe. Specifically, the Jewish people have experienced centuries of mobility, at times fleeing from slavery and persecution. Magis Journey draws from the Jewish migrant experience to think critically about immigration in New York and the District of Columbia today. Magis Journey involves exploring the experience of movement, dialoguing with NY and DC migrants and refugees, evaluating policy, and taking action. The trip will include visiting Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Participants will delve into alternative understandings of movement like the Immigrant Artist Program and service learning through teaching. Magis Journey seeks to go deeper by grounding itself in a spirituality that seeks justice. Throughout the week, group discussions will explore the parallel between a search for a new home and the spiritual search. Taking the Jewish narrative as a guiding point, all participants are encouraged to dive deeper into their own identity as migrants.
INTERNATIONAL IMMERSION EXPERIENCES
Mumbai, India
The private healthcare system in India fails to fully address the needs of modern society. Furthermore, especially in regards to mental health, there is stigma against seeking care. Magis: India begins a conversation about healthcare access for the marginalized in Mumbai, specifically mental health patients, trafficked women and children, and gender minorities. As a collaborative trip between the Office of Campus Ministry and the Center for Social Justice, through Magis: India, participants explore the cultural and societal factors that have created this healthcare disparity and how each participant’s identity relates to this issue. Between cultural immersion in Mumbai and opportunities to reflect on each day’s experience, participants will come to know what is being done to provide healthcare access to the marginalized at every level, from prevention to rehabilitation to advocacy. Magis: India encourages participants not only to examine health care access as it exists in Mumbai, but also to discover how their identities fit into the power dynamics of this access, both in India and in Washington, D.C.
Jamaica
The main theme of Magis Jamaica is the exploration of the growing wealth gap between the rich and the poor as a global phenomenon, made apparently visible in Jamaica’s current economic climate. We will witness the stark contrast between a booming tourist industry of luxury and consumerism and the persistent obstacles of violence, poverty, and national debt. In conversation with our hosts and with each other, we will explore the legacy of Western Colonization and the Atlantic Slave Trade in Jamaica, and consider the meaning of community engagement and economic justice rooted in a conviction of universal human dignity. This experience is a faith and justice collaboration between the Office of Campus Ministry and the Alternative Breaks Program of the Center for Research, Teaching, and Service at Georgetown University. CSJ and Campus Ministry staff co-lead the trip with student leaders, and participants commit to exploring economic and social justice in conversation with practices and legacies of faith.
Kino Border
Kino Border Immersion (KBI) seeks to humanize experiences of migration and the effects of oppressive cycles in the Arizona border region and beyond. Through a framework of faith and solidarity, the trip will engage with the intersectional experiences of various actors, including immigrant families, day laborers, and undocumented youth, as well as indigenous people, ranchers, and law enforcement. Participants will visit a migrant shelter, a deportation hearing, and a workers’ center to bear witness to the impacts of the U.S. border and immigration system, and will further explore how communities use art, organizing, and education to resist and liberate themselves from those systems. Ultimately, by engaging the Jesuit values of social justice and contemplation in action, participants in KBI will grow in a commitment to sustained activism and conscience in solidarity with the migrant justice movement.
Peru: A Faculty and Staff Immersion Experience
The Peru Immersion Experience is a global immersion program for faculty and staff rooted in the University’s commitment to integrating learning, faith, and justice. The purpose of the program is to provide members of the Georgetown community an opportunity to investigate and reflect on the meaning of work and life at Georgetown as a Catholic and Jesuit university by exploring and learning from the justice-oriented work of the Society of Jesus and its partners elsewhere in the world. This Magis experience builds on the legacy of Georgetown’s immersion program in Kenya that occurred annually from 2004 to 2013, involving over 100 faculty and staff participants. | https://campusministry.georgetown.edu/magis |
July 14, 2020
ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:
ICE rescinds international student visa ban after dozens of universities sue (The Week, 7/14/20)
ICE's initial decision came after Harvard University and other schools announced all their classes would be fully online in the fall, though most schools said they'd house students who could not learn effectively in their homes. That included students in countries wracked by civil unrest.Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology specifically cited those students in suing ICE for its decision, and said it "would bar hundreds of thousands of international students at American universities from the United States." Dozens of universities joined the suit, which went to court Tuesday. That's where a judge announced ICE would "return to the status quo" and effectively drop its rule change. | http://brothersjuddblog.com/archives/2020/07/always_bet_on_the_deep_state_266.html |
45.To the extent that algorithms affect people and the use of personal data, there must be accountability for their application, and those affected are entitled to transparency over the results and how they are arrived at.
46.As the Information Commissioner explained, “accountability requires someone to be responsible”,159 but where responsibility for algorithms should lie can be uncertain. Nesta highlighted the need for identifying who is responsible if anything goes wrong “where decisions are made by both algorithms and people”.160 The problem, as the European Commission has acknowledged, is that “the developer of algorithmic tools may not know their precise future use and implementation” while the individuals who are “implementing the algorithmic tools for applications may, in turn, not fully understand how the algorithmic tools operate”.161
47.Dr Pavel Klimov of the Law Society’s Technology and the Law Group was wary of placing full responsibility on the user of an algorithm because strict liability may put “innocent users […] at risk of having to answer for the losses that, on the normal application of legal principles, […] they will not be liable for”.162 Dr Adrian Weller of the Alan Turing Institute believed that we already “have an existing legal framework for dealing with situations where you need to assign accountability” and considered that “we may want to assign strict liability in certain settings, but it is going to require careful thought to make sure that the right incentives are in place to lead to the best outcome for society.”163 On the other hand, Professor Alan Winfield, Professor of Robot Ethics at the University of West England, told the House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence that “we need to treat AI as an engineered system that is held to very high standards of provable safety”, and that:
It is the designers, manufacturers, owners and operators who should be held responsible, in exactly the same way that we attribute responsibility for failure of a motor car, for instance. If there turns out to be a serious problem, generally speaking the responsibility is the manufacturers’.164
48.The Royal Academy of Engineering told us that “issues of governance and accountability will need to be considered in the design and development of [algorithmic] systems so that incorrect assumptions about the behaviour of users—or designers—are avoided”.165 While the submissions to our inquiry agreed that accountability was necessary, the preferred means of achieving it varied. The Upturn and Omidyar Network reported that many ways of achieving accountability which are “fairer, more interpretable, and more auditable” are being explored but that they “remain largely theoretical today”.166 We examine the scope for some of those potential accountability mechanisms below.
49.Dr Sandra Wachter of the Oxford Internet Institute emphasised that standards are a prerequisite for developing a system of accountability.167 The Information Commissioner suggested that “codes of conduct may be drawn up by trade associations or bodies representing specific sectors in order to assist the proper application of the GDPR”, before being “approved by the ICO” and “monitored by an ICO-accredited body”.168 Nesta favoured the establishment of “some general principles” which “guide behaviours, understanding, norms and rules”.169
50.There are examples of standards and principles in the field already. The Cabinet Office has published a ‘Data Science Ethics Framework’ for civil servants using data in policy-making.170 In the private sector, Amazon, DeepMind/Google, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft developed their ‘Partnership on AI’ in 2016 “to address opportunities and challenges with AI to benefit people and society”,171 with eight tenets which include “working to protect the privacy and security of individuals” and “striving to understand and respect the interests of all parties that may be impacted by AI advances”.172 The industry-led ‘Asilomar principles’ include ones addressing research funding on the ethics of AI, transparency, privacy, and shared prosperity.173 The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and the Association of Computing Machinery have developed professional codes of ethics for the development of computer science.174 The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a standard-setting body, has begun work to define “ethical concerns and technical standards related to autonomous systems”.175 An MIT Technology Review has developed five principles for algorithm developers.176 The House of Lords Committee on AI also suggests an AI code comprising of “five overarching principles”,177 calling for “intelligibility and fairness” in AI’s use “for the common good”, as well as the principle that AI should not be used to “diminish the data rights or privacy of individuals, families or communities”.178
51.Despite these efforts, however, the Upturn and Omidyar Network worried that “the use of automated decisions is far outpacing the evolution of frameworks to understand and govern them”.179 Our Government witnesses told us that they were giving consideration to the ‘Asilomar principles’. While there is currently no unified framework for the private sector, they hoped that the Centre for Data Ethics & Innovation would be able to help the issues “coalesce around one set of standards”.180
52.Audit is also key to building trust in algorithms.181 The Oxford Internet Institute explained how audit can create a “procedural record to […] help data controllers to meet accountability requirements by detecting when decisions harm individuals and groups, by explaining how they occurred, and under what conditions they may occur again”.182 The Centre for Intelligent Sensing told us that audits could “probe the system with fictitious data generated by sampling from UK demographic data, or by a company’s own anonymised customer data [… and] counterfactually vary the effects”.183 Auditors could then evaluate the outputs, Google explained, “to provide an indicator of whether it might be producing negative or unfair effects”.184
53.A challenge with machine learning algorithms, highlighted by the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, is that “there is no guarantee that an online algorithm will remain unbiased or relevant”.185 When Google Flu Trends was launched in 2008 its use of search queries to predict the spread of flu outbreaks closely matched the surveillance data from the US Centres for Disease Control, but it was reported that it then ran into difficulties when media coverage prompted flu-related searches by people who were not ill.186 The Institute of Mathematics believed that wholly online algorithms would need their data “updated and fully revalidated”.187 The Information Commissioner called for “data scientists to find innovative ways of building in auditability, to allow an on-going internal review of algorithmic behaviour”.188
54.Professor Daniel Neyland from Goldsmiths University believed that certificates and third-party ‘seals’ for algorithms that are audited could help address “the contemporary limitations of accountability and transparency in algorithmic systems”, particularly if such seals are publicised.189 The Alan Turing Institute told us that certification or seals could be used to signify “algorithms whose design, development, and/or deployment have produced fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory outcomes”.190 The GDPR provides for certification of algorithms in terms of their privacy protections, and the Information Commissioner believed that “seals can help to inform people about the data protection compliance of a particular product or service”. The ICO was “currently looking into how certification schemes can be set up and managed in practice”.191
55.Ethics boards can be used “to apply ethical principles and assess difficult issues that can arise in the creation and use of algorithms in decision-making”, the Information Commissioner’s Office told us, and can aid transparency by publishing their deliberations so that “the development of the algorithm is openly documented”.192 TechUK cautioned, however, that ethics boards “could be seen as a burden for UK SMEs that stand to benefit the most from automated decision-making technologies”.193
56.Setting principles and ‘codes’, establishing audits of algorithms, introducing certification of algorithms, and charging ethics boards with oversight of algorithmic decisions, should all play their part in identifying and tackling bias in algorithms. With the growing proliferation of algorithms, such initiatives are urgently needed. The Government should immediately task the Centre for Data Ethics & Innovation to evaluate these various tools and advise on which to prioritise and on how they should be embedded in the private sector as well as in government bodies that share their data with private sector developers. Given the international nature of digital innovation, the Centre should also engage with other like-minded organisations in other comparable jurisdictions in order to develop and share best practice.
57.Algorithm accountability is often framed in terms of openness and transparency, and the ability to challenge and scrutinise the decisions reached using algorithms.194 Although all of the details are not yet available of the recent NHS breast screening programme failure, where women aged between 68 and 71 were not sent screening appointments, it is possible that if the flaw was a relatively straightforward “coding error”, as the Health Secretary put it,195 then making that algorithm coding more widely available might have allowed the error to have been spotted much sooner. Transparency would be more of a challenge, however, where the algorithm is driven by machine learning rather than fixed computer coding. Dr Pavel Klimov of the Law Society’s Technology and the Law Group explained that, in a machine learning environment, the problem with such algorithms is that “humans may no longer be in control of what decision is taken, and may not even know or understand why a wrong decision has been taken, because we are losing sight of the transparency of the process from the beginning to the end”.196 Rebecca MacKinnon from think-tank New America has warned that “algorithms driven by machine learning quickly become opaque even to their creators, who no longer understand the logic being followed”.197 Transparency is important, but particularly so when critical consequences are at stake. As the Upturn and Omidyar Network have put it, where “governments use algorithms to screen immigrants and allocate social services, it is vital that we know how to interrogate and hold these systems accountable”.198 Liberty stressed the importance of transparency for those algorithmic decisions which “engage the rights and liberties of individuals”.199
58.Transparency, Nesta told us, could lead to greater acceptability of algorithmic decisions.200 But transparency can take different forms—how an algorithmic decision is arrived at, or visibility of the workings inside the ‘black box’. The Human Rights, Big Data and Technology Project suggested that transparency needs “to be considered at each stage in the algorithmic decision-making process, and in the process as a whole”.201 Several submissions indicated that the users of algorithms should be able to explain their decisions in terms that users can understand.202
59.Transparency inside the ‘black box’ may be of practical use only to some because, as Dr M-H. Carolyn Nguyen of Microsoft put it, it “takes a lot of data scientists to understand exactly what is going on”.203 And even then, Dr Janet Bastiman told us, “given the complex nature of these decision-making algorithms, even if the full structure, weighting, and training data were published for an end-user, it is unlikely that they would be able to understand and challenge the output from the algorithm”.204 Where algorithms are based on machine learning, Professor Louise Amoore of Durham University wondered whether full transparency was possible “even to those who have designed and written them”.205 Even if such difficulties could be overcome, University College London warned that “a central tension with making algorithms completely open is that many are trained on personal data, and some of this private data might be discoverable if we release the algorithmic models”.206
60.Hetan Shah of the Royal Statistical Society nevertheless highlighted the recent attempts by New York City Council to require the code for all city agencies’ algorithms to be published.207 Professor Nick Jennings of the Royal Academy of Engineering, however, drew attention to the issue of ‘adversarial machine learning’ where individuals “know the way a machine-learning algorithm works and so you try to dupe it to believe something and come to a particular set of conclusions; then you can exploit the fact that you know that it has been mis-trained”.208 When Google originally published its PageRank algorithm nearly 20 years ago, for example, spammers gamed the search algorithm by paying each other for links and so undermined the algorithm’s effectiveness.209
61.The Alan Turing Institute told us that “two of the biggest hurdles to a ‘right of explanation’ (paragraph 62) are trade secrets and copyright concerns”.210 While patents have traditionally been used to balance the interests of society and inventors, academics at Oxford and Nottingham universities questioned how that balance might be struck in the age of machine learning.211 Microsoft told us that it wanted the Government to “broaden the UK’s copyright exception on text and data mining, bringing it into line with that of the USA, Japan and Canada, and ensuring that the UK is well placed to be at the forefront of data analytics”.212 ”Dr Janet Bastiman worried that “Since the intellectual property in machine learned systems is encapsulated in the structure, weighting, and input data that comprise the final algorithm, any legislation requiring clear transparency of the algorithm itself could have negative impact on the commercial viability of private sector institutions using this technology.”213 As Future Advocacy has recently explained, this may result in less accurate algorithms as designers opt for less accurate but easier to explain models—a concern where this affects healthcare algorithms.214 Others cautioned against “letting commercial interests supersede the rights of people to obtain information about themselves”.215 The Upturn and Omidyar Network pointed out that France is the only country that has explicitly required disclosure of the source code of government-developed algorithms, under its open record laws.216
62.While many of our submissions advocated a ‘right to explanation’,217 the Royal Statistical Society did not think that wider “standards of algorithmic transparency can be legislatively set, as the specifics of technology, algorithms and their application vary so much”.218 The think-tank Projects by IF emphasised that “transparency is more useful with context”219 and, comparing industries, the Royal Statistical Society found “important differences in the level of pressure to explain data science and statistical approaches”.220 Projects by IF concluded that “how a service explains its workings to users will be different to how it explains its workings to auditors.”221
63.We heard about various ways, some in use and others in development, of facilitating a ‘right to explanation’. Hetan Shah saw scope in ‘counterfactual explanations’;222 an approach that Dr Wachter told us avoids having to open the black box.223 She gave as an example where a loan application is rejected and the algorithm “would tell you what would have needed to be different in order to get the loan and give you some grounds to contest it […] This might be that if your income were £15,000 higher you would have been accepted.”224 Google thought that better ‘data visualisation tools’ could also help, showing “key metrics relating to an algorithm’s functioning without going into the full complexity, akin to the way that car dashboards have gauges for speed, oil pressure, and so on”.225 TechUK similarly highlighted ‘interactive visualisation systems’.226 In 2017 the US Department of Defence announced funding for thirteen projects examining different approaches to making algorithms more transparent, including through visualisation tools.227 Machine learning might in the future also be used itself to explain other algorithms.228
64.Whatever form transparency takes, Projects by IF emphasised that “services based on the outcome of an algorithm need to empower users to raise a complaint” if a decision is in dispute.229 Oxford Internet Institute believed that “the rapid spread of automated decision-making into sensitive areas of life, such as health insurance, credit scoring or recruiting, demands that we do better in allowing people to understand how their lives are being shaped by algorithms”.230 IBM thought it was important that explanations uncover how algorithms “interpreted their input” as well as “why they recommended a particular output”.231
65.Oxford Internet Institute highlighted that the ‘right to explanation’ is omitted from the GDPR’s Article 22 (paragraph 73), and is only included in a non-legally binding recital, which serves only as guidance.232 University College London wanted a meaningful ‘right to explanation’ strengthened, to include ‘semi-automated’ as well as the ‘automated’ decisions that are covered by the GDPR.233 A ‘right to information’ in the Data Protection Bill gives the data subject the right “to obtain from the [data] controller, on request, knowledge of the reasoning underlying the processing” of any decision, but only in connection with intelligence services data processing. The Bill has no wider ‘right to explanation’ for the UK, nor one that could be applied to all decisions rather than just to the intelligence field. In France, digital-economy minister Mounir Mahjoubi recently said that its government should not use any algorithm whose decisions cannot be explained.234
66.Transparency must be a key underpinning for algorithm accountability. There is a debate about whether that transparency should involve sharing the workings of the algorithm ‘black box’ with those affected by the algorithm and the individuals whose data have been used, or whether (because such information will not be widely understood) an ‘explanation’ is provided. Where disclosure of the inner workings of privately-developed public-service algorithms would present their developers with commercial or personal-data confidentiality issues, the Government and the Centre for Data Ethics & Innovation should explore with the industries involved the scope for using the proposed ‘data trust’ model to make that data available in suitably de-sensitised format. While we acknowledge the practical difficulties with sharing an ‘explanation’ in an understandable form, the Government’s default position should be that explanations of the way algorithms work should be published when the algorithms in question affect the rights and liberties of individuals. That will make it easier for the decisions produced by algorithms also to be explained. The Centre for Data Ethics & Innovation should examine how explanations for how algorithms work can be required to be of sufficient quality to allow a reasonable person to be able to challenge the ‘decision’ of the algorithm—an issue we explore further in Chapter 4. Where algorithms might significantly adversely affect the public or their rights, we believe that the answer is a combination of explanation and as much transparency as possible.
67.The ‘right to explanation’ is a key part of achieving accountability. We note that the Government has not gone beyond the GDPR’s non-binding provisions and that individuals are not currently able to formally challenge the results of all algorithm decisions or where appropriate to seek redress for the impacts of such decisions. The scope for such safeguards should be considered by the Centre for Data Ethics & Innovation and the ICO in the review of the operation of the GDPR that we advocate in Chapter 4.
159 Q313
161 Council of Europe, The human rights dimensions of automated data processing techniques (in particular algorithms) and possible regulatory implications (October 2017), p 37
162 Q83
163 Q30
164 Oral evidence taken before the House of Lords Artificial Intelligence Committee on 17 October 2017, HL (2017–18) 100, Q20 [Professor Alan Winfield]
166 Upturn and Omidyar Network, Public Scrutiny of Automated Decisions: Early Lessons and Emerging Methods, p 8
167 Q84
170 Cabinet Office, Data Science Ethical Framework, 19 May 2016. See also The Operational Research Society (ALG0045) para. 13
173 Future of Life Institute, ‘A Principled AI Discussion in Asilomar’, 17 January 2017
175 IEEE, ‘IEEE Standards Association Introduces Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in the Design of Autonomous Systems,’ 5 April 2016; Upturn and Omidyar Network, Public Scrutiny of Automated Decisions: Early Lessons and Emerging Methods, p 7
177 These principles are: 1) Artificial intelligence should be developed for the common good and benefit of humanity. 2) Artificial intelligence should operate on principles of intelligibility and fairness. 3) Artificial intelligence should not be used to diminish the data rights or privacy of individuals, families or communities. 4) All citizens have the right to be educated to enable them to flourish mentally, emotionally and economically alongside artificial intelligence. 5) The autonomous power to hurt, destroy or deceive human beings should never be vested in artificial intelligence.
178 House of Lords Select Committee on AI, Report of Session 2017–19, AI in the UK: ready, willing and able?, HL 100, para 417
179 Upturn and Omidyar Network, Public Scrutiny of Automated Decisions: Early Lessons and Emerging Methods, p 7
180 Q375 [Oliver Buckley]
186 “When Google got flu wrong”, Nature news, 13 February 2013
194 Neyland, D. 2015. “Bearing accountable witness to the ethical algorithmic system”, Science, Technology and Human Values, Vol.41 (2016), pp 50–76
196 Q46
197 Mark Gardiner (ALG0068) but this is referencing a quote made by Rebecca MacKinnon, director of the Ranking Digital Rights project at New America
198 Upturn and Omidyar Network, Public Scrutiny of Automated Decisions: Early Lessons and Emerging Methods, p 3
203 Q112
207 Q15 (subsequently amended to the creation of a task force to provide recommendations on how automated decision systems may be shared by the public)
208 Q19
209 Peter A. Hamilton, Google-bombing: Manipulating the PageRank Algorithm, p 3
211 Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute, University of Nottingham, and the Human Centred Computing group, University of Oxford (ALG0049) para 19
212 Microsoft (ALG0072) para 14; The current copyright exception permits researchers with legal access to a copyrighted work, to make copies “for the purpose of computational analysis” allowing the use of “automated analytical techniques to analyse text and data for patterns, trends and other useful information”. However this only exists for non-commercial research, restricting companies like Microsoft from commercialising their algorithm (Intellectual Property Office, Guidance, Exceptions to Copyright (November 2014))
214 Future Advocacy & the Wellcome Trust, Ethical, Social, and Political Challenges of Artificial Intelligence in Health (April 2018), p 32
215 Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute, University of Nottingham, and the Human Centred Computing group, University of Oxford (ALG0049) para 18
216 Upturn and Omidyar Network, Public Scrutiny of Automated Decisions: Early Lessons and Emerging Methods, p 24
217 Aire (ALG0066); University College London (ALG0050) para 28; Alan Turing Institute (ALG0073); The Royal Statistical Society (ALG0071) para 2.5; et al
222 Q15
223 Q60
224 Q60
227 TechUK (ADM0003); “The U.S. Military Wants Its Autonomous Machines to Explain Themselves”, MIT Technology Review, 14 March 2017
228 A recent experiment aimed at explaining an AI system involved running another AI system in parallel, which monitored patterns in people narrating their experiences of playing a computer game. These patterns in the human explanations were learnt by the parallel AI system, and then applied to provide their own explanations. See Osbert Bastani, Carolyn Kim and Hamsa Bastani, “Interpretability via Model Extraction”; and “The unexamined mind”, The Economist, 17 February 2018. | https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmsctech/351/35106.htm |
9.2 Looking for Relationships
In this section, we are going to consider the relationship between quantities in two practical situations and see how to describe these relationships by writing down a general rule or a word formula.
Suppose you are planning a visit abroad. Your map marks all the distances between places in kilometers rather than miles. How can you work out what these distances are in miles?
The first type of information you will need is how long one kilometer is, measured in miles.
You may use the Internet to verify that 1 km is equivalent to approximately 0.6214 miles.
The next step is to work out the mathematical process to change kilometers into miles. You may be able to see how to convert from kilometers into miles immediately, but, if not, try to visualize a few simple examples. [ Drawing a diagram often helps! ]
Each km is the same as 0.6214 miles as shown below.
So, if the distance is 3 km, you will have 0.6214 miles three times; if the distance is 10 km, you will have 0.6214 miles 10 times; if the distance is 250 km, you will have 0.6214 miles 250 times, and so on.
You can write this last example down mathematically as: (to the nearest whole number).
Notice that in each of the examples above, the process for calculating the number of miles was the same: multiply the number of kilometers by the conversion rate of 0.6214. This technique will work for any distance and can be written down concisely as the following word formula:
When using formulas though, we like to state first what we are calculating so the correct way to show this formula is:
You can use this formula to convert any distance in kilometers into miles. For example, suppose you wanted to convert 500 km. Using the formula and replacing “distance in kilometers” by 500 gives:
So, 500 km is equivalent to approximately 311 miles.
In this example, you used the formula by replacing the phrase “distance in kilometers” on the right side of the equation by the corresponding value, 500. This is known mathematically as substituting the value into the formula.
Activity: How Many Miles?
Using the word formula we have just worked out, calculate how far 350 km is in miles.
Answer
Substituting 350 for “distance in km” gives:
So, 350 km is approximately 217 miles. | https://www.open.edu/openlearncreate/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=567§ion=3 |
By Patrick Van Eecke and Julie De Bruyn
Call it a coincidence or not: exactly one week after the Apple Watch was officially introduced by Apple CEO Tim Cook on 9 September 2014, the European data protection advisory body – Article 29 Data Protection Working Party (‘Working Party 29’) – adopted its Opinion 8/2014 on the Recent Development on the Internet of Things.
While the Working Party 29 acknowledges the potential of these ‘smart’ devices monitoring and communicating (in) our daily lives, it stresses that the privacy and security challenges generated by this should not be overlooked. The key to support trust and innovation – and to being successful on the market of the Internet of Things – is to keep the individuals concerned informed, free and safe.
The analysis and recommendations made by the Working Party 29 in its Opinion are focused on three specific Internet of Things developments, selected due to their direct interface with the user, and the fact that they correspond to devices and services that are currently being used in practice, notably:
- Wearable computing – everyday objects and clothes such as watches and glasses, in which sensors are included to extend their functionalities. The most well-known examples of wearable computing are Google Glass, and the Apple Watch;
- Quantified Self – devices designed to be regularly carried by individuals who want to record information about their own habit and lifestyle. Examples include sleep trackers and activity counters monitoring a person’s physical activities and the effects this has on the person’s health;
- Home automation (‘domotics’) – the Internet of Things can also be placed in offices or homes through ‘connected’ light bulbs, smoke alarms or ovens that can be controlled remotely over the internet.
The privacy and data protection challenges identified by the Working Party 29 with respect to these three specific Internet of Things developments relate inter alia to the lack of control and information asymmetry for the user due to third-party monitoring, the user’s consent not being obtained in each case where this is required, the use of the data for different purposes than those communicated to the data subject, profiling and security risks.
In view of mitigating these risks, and apart from the general data protection obligations imposed by the EU e-Privacy Directive and EU Data Protection Directive that must be complied with, in its Opinion, the Working Party 29 foresees a set of specific and practical recommendations tailored to the different industry players to ensure that their developments safeguard the data subject’s privacy:
- All stakeholders should perform a privacy impact assessment before launching new applications in the Internet of Things, must delete raw data as soon as the data required for the data processing has been extracted, apply the privacy by design and by default principles, respect the user’s principle of self-determination of data and adequately inform and obtain consent from the users in a user-friendly manner;
- OS and device manufacturers must inform users of the details of the processing of their data, should be able to efficiently communicate to all other stakeholders involved as soon as a data subject withdraws his consent or opposes to the data processing, should store the personal data in a format allowing data portability and enabling the user to exercise his right of access, follow a security by design process and provide tools allowing to notify users and update devices in case security vulnerabilities are discovered, transfer raw data into aggregated data directly on the device to limit the amount of data leaving devices, etc.;
- Application developers should design notices or warnings to frequently remind users that sensors are collecting data, provide tools to allow data subjects to exercise their rights and export both raw and/or aggregated data in a standard and usable format, apply the data minimisation principle and pay attention to the types of data being processed and to the possibility of inferring sensitive personal data from them;
- Social platforms should ensure that information published by Internet of Things devices on social platforms do not become public or are indexed by search engines by default, and that default settings of social applications based on Internet of Things devices ask users to review, edit and decide on information generated by this device before publication on social platforms;
- Internet of Things device owners and additional recipients should not be economically penalised or have degraded access to the capabilities of their devices if they decide not to provide consent. Where the data subject’s data is being processed in the context of a contractual relationship with the user of a connected device (e.g. hotel, health insurance company or car rental company), the data subject should be in a position to administrate the device. Furthermore, users of Internet of Things devices should inform non-user data subjects whose data are collected of the presence of these devices and the types of data collected, and respect the data subject’s choice not to have their data collected.
- Standardisation bodies and data platforms should promote portable and interoperable as well as clear and self-explanatory data formats containing as few strong identifiers as possible, and focus on formats for aggregated data apart from formats for raw data. Standardisation bodies should work on certified standards setting the baseline for security and privacy safeguards for data subjects, and develop lightweight encryption and communication protocols adapted to the specificities of the Internet of Things all while guaranteeing confidentiality, integrity, authentication and access control.
With the Internet of Things domain quickly evolving, the Working Party 29 indicated to be receptive to cooperating with national and international regulators on this topic, as well as to enter into a dialogue with representatives of the relevant industry, especially those stakeholders subject to EU data protection law. | https://www.technologyslegaledge.com/2014/09/internet-of-things-european-privacy-recommendations/ |
10 Species That Can Live At High Temperature
Our planet is full of natural wonders; infact, life existing and evolving to extreme levels, is in itself the biggest wonder. While various species of plants, animals and microorganisms dwells in normal Earth conditions within a specific range of temperature and environmental conditions, still there exist many other living organisms that can survive and even multiply in extreme conditions such as high temperature.
In this post I’ll cover the organisms which can subsist at high temperature at which normal life forms can never survive. These extreme organisms are known by the name as ‘Thermophile’ enduring in temperatures of about 60ºC to a high of 300ºC (wow, isn’t it weird and exciting!). So, let’s learn about 10 of such species that can live at high temperatures.
10 Species That Can Live At High Temperatures
Tardigrades, also called Water Bears, are eight legged micro-organisms dwelling almost everywhere in moisture. They feed on plant cells, algae and small invertebrates. According to Ben Guarino (2017), an astrophysicist, Tardigrades are the most resilient and hardy earthly organism that can survive in any kind of extreme conditions, from below freezing point to volcanic vents and even vacuum and radiations of space. They are only 0.05mm long with a normal lifespan of 4 months to 2 years. According to Emma Brennand, under dormancy (adverse extreme conditions), these organisms can even live upto 30 years.
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Strain 121 – Geogemma barossii
The microorganism got its name as for the fact that it can survive autoclaving (laboratory process to kill any microorganism) which is done at 121ºC. Moreover, the microbe has its best growth at 103ºC. It was isolated from hydrothermal vents and thrives in iron and sulphur rich environment. It is almost 1 micrometer in diameter with long flagellates protruding out of its one end.
Also learn about Unique Camouflaging Animals
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Thermus aquaticus bacteria
The bacteria can dwell at high temperature upto 80ºC and was first isolated from hot springs in California. The bacteria are chemotrophs. They are used in PCR technology for fingerprinting as a DNA or RNA polymerase.
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Paralvinella sulfincola
The Paralvinella Worm is a water dwelling annelid. According to a research conducted by Bates et al, in 2013, these worms live at around 80ºC of high temperature and can survive upto 300ºC. They are 1.5 cm long with ciliated outer bodies and mucus tubes. They are found in hydrothermal vents in most of the Pacific region upto a depth of 2000 m. Interestingly, they can also survive in anoxic or oxygen deficient waters. Most of the times, they obtain their nutrition from a symbiotic bacteria dwelling upon their ciliated bodies.
Also learn about Bioluminescent Organisms
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Pompeii Worm – Alvinella pompejana
The Pompeii worms are one of the most heat tolerant organisms on Earth (according to Daniel and Lucein,1980). They are found in hydrothermal vents of marine volcanoes. They can grow upto 13 cm and have red gills located on their heads. The survival technique of the worm is weird and mysterious; they keep their head in relatively cooler waters and tail remains exposed to the high temperature. Also, symbiotic bacteria live on its back which is a source of most its nutrition.
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Devil Worm – Halicephalobus mephisto
The Devil Worm derives its name from its weird presence deep inside the earth crust at high temperatures where normally no other animal could survive. This 0.5 mm long nematode, was first isolated by a nematologist Gaekan Borgonie from a South African gold mine from water that remained isolated in the crust for around 4000 years. According to the International Institute for Species Exploration, the worm can not only survive high temperature but can also withstand high pressures.
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Pyrolobus fumari
The bacteria was isolated from a hydrothermal vent named Black Smoker in Mid- Atlantic ridge. According to Huber et al, in 2006, the bacteria can survive upto high temperature of 113ºC. The bacteria are irregularly shaped with an average length of 0.7 to 2.5 micrometer. They are chemolithoautotroph and are being used in animal feed additives.
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Synecoccus elongatus
The cynobacteria dwell in fresh hot water springs at a high temperature range of 60-75ºC. The microscopic bacteria are unicellular and 0.8 to 1.5 micrometer long. They were discovered by Albert Frankel in 1950 from a pond in Massachusetts. They are photosynthetic which means they derive their nutrition from sunlight, so they live in well lit water layers.
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Pyrococcus furiosus
Pyrococcus is a unicellular Archaean and is 0.8 to 1.5 micrometer long. It has a flagellated end and a glycoprotein cell wall which makes it tough and resistible to high temperature. Their normal growth is entertained at 100ºC temperatures and can even normally survive upto 103ºC. Moreover they are adapted to live in acidic as well as basic environments. The DNA extracted from the microbe is used in PCR and are now researched to be bio-engineered into plant cells which would help the plant to delay ageing and cell death.
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Thermus thermophilus
The bacteria are obligate thermophiles and can live in a high temperature range of 65 to 72ºC. Thermus thermophilus bacteria were isolated from a thermal vent in a hot spring from Japan and are now known to be found around almost every hot spring. They can even survive in low oxygen levels. They are able to do so because of their peptidoglycan protein structure, that provides them more protection and stability from outside extreme environments. Because of their stable structures even at high temperatures, they are being utilised as DNA polymerase in PCR.
So, this was my list of 10 Species that can live at High Temperature. I hope you liked the information. If you like it, then give it thumbs up! Do Share the information with others too.
10 Comments
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Karolin
This is actually helpful, thanks.
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pracreation
Thank you so much
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Demetria
Thanks, it is quite informative
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staceecosplay.us
Way cool! Some very valid points! I appreciate you penning this write-up and the rest of the site
is also really good.
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Nicole
Some of these organisms don’t even look real! So wild.
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pracreation
Yes, wild world is full of miracles
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Live Learn Better
Interesting organisms and very informative article
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Danielle Rice
This is so intriguing! The first one got me looking like am I staring at a bear! | https://www.pracreation.com/species-at-high-temperature/ |
Anthropoids consist of three main primate groups known as new world monkeys, old world monkeys, and apes including humans. Monkeys and apes are the animals being used for studies and researches very commonly. The apes, which include gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and gibbons, are much more like human beings than monkeys or lower primates are. Monkeys and apes are both simians, but monkeys generally have tails while a.
But these are not their natural homes prosimians live in african and asia. According to the fossil evidence, anthropoids have started to deviate from prosimians as new world monkeys about 40 million years ago. The difference between primates, apes, monkeys and. The similarities being that both monkeys and apes belong to the primate family and some of. However, it is in their levels of intelligence that apes outscore monkeys and this perhaps is the biggest difference between them. If you go back millions and millions of years into the past, great apes which humans fall under and lesser apes, old world africa and asiabased monkeys, and new world americasbased monkeys all share. Gives an overview of the classification and evolution of primates.
The teeth of prosimians, monkeys, and apes a companion to. Pdf this book provides an authoritative and comprehensive synthesis of. The order primates includes humans, apes, monkeys, and prosimians. The evolution of selfawareness in primates article pdf available in human evolution 26. To find a simple difference between them, look for a tail. Brainstorm ways to prevent other species of primates from becoming endangered. Primate classification and evolution ck12 foundation.
Why are prosimians today confined to only madagascar and some other isolated ecosystems. Difference between apes and monkeys difference between. Apes, monkeys, and prosimians a cincinnati zoo book. A lthough they might remind us of monkeys, the 16 species of gibbon are apes a family of higher primates that also includes chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, gorillas, and humans. To understand the scientific differences between an ape and a monkey, you have to look at the way they are scientifically classified. While there are some similarities in both the animals, the differences are many. While apes and monkeys are both primates, and are part of the same primate suborder, there are lots of differences between them.
Simians tend to be larger than the lower primates or prosimians. A distribution map locates the species around the world, and brief, factual discussion of. The profusion of large, beautiful photos is this book s finest feature. When these chimpanzees saw their strange looking brother, the way they treated him is eye opening duration. Gibbons, considered to be lesser apes, are smaller than some monkeys. Great apes live in africa and asia lesser apes gibbons live only in asia monkeys live naturally in africa, asia, and latin america. Primate sexuality provides an authoritative and comprehensive synthesis of current research on the evolution and physiological control of sexual behaviour in the primates prosimians, monkeys, apes, and human beings. What is the difference between a monkey and an ape. The ayeaye daubentonia madagascariensis is about as improbable an animal as one could imagine fig. The greatest threat to the ayeaye is the widespread deforestation that continues to put all of madagascar s primates at risk. What is the difference between prosimians and monkeys.
Chimpanzees, humans closest living relatives, use simple tools extensively and even have culture to some degree. Prosimians are some times referred to as living fossils because they appear to have some physical similarities to ancestral primates of approximately 50mya. Arms of apes are longer than the arms of monkeys while apes have shorter legs than monkeys. Primates also include the great apes orangutans, gorillas, gibbons, and humans as well. Theres a big difference between apes and monkeys, they arent interchangeable. What are the main differences between monkeys and apes. Chimpanzees are not monkeys and monkeys are definitely not chimpanzees. Monkeys are much more used to life in trees than apes, and use their tail as a fifth limb. Since these features are not found in monkeys and prosimians, what are these characteristics.
They might not be as large or intelligent as the apes. Discuss why miss waldrons red colobus is extinct or nearly extinct. The mandrill monkey is thought to be an ape by many owing to its size, but is in fact an old world monkey. Many of them may be familiar, but it would not be surprising if you cannot immediately visualize prosimians like the ringtailed lemurs in the picture on the right. The lower primates include lemurlike and tarsierlike animals. What happened to all the prosimians around the world around 40mya. There is a direct correlation between primate evolution and primate taxonomy. While both monkeys and apes share certain physical features, such as forwardfacing eyes and flexible limbs, there are several physical differences between the two groups. So, scientists had to come up with a new division that was named after the differences in. Monkeys were monkeys a long time ago, while some apes did evolve into the humans of today. What is the difference between monkeys and apes answers. As adjectives the difference between simian and prosimian is that simian is of or pertaining to apes.
Other prosimians include galgoes bushbabies found in africa, lorises found in asia, and tarsiers found in borneo and the philippines. Explain the differences between new world monkeys and old world monkeys. Chimpanzees and monkeys nonscientists often make mistakes when talking about science. Gibbons are entirely arboreal, which means that they live in trees. There are many many differences between monkeys and apes.
Primates are divided into higher primates and lower primates. Professor alexander harcourt, university of california, davis, usa a. Scientifically speaking, the old world monkeys are more related to the apes than to the new world monkeys. Monkeys prefer to eat fruits and like to forage for. Intelligence makes a huge difference between these two simians, where apes are more advanced than monkeys that are comparable to prosimians in terms of intelligence and capabilities.
Prosimians actively scentmark their territories to warn other animals of their occupancy. The advanced apes have capabilities that make them to use some signs language, make use of. For comparison, the traditional classification of primates into prosimians and. Difference between apes and monkeys curious meerkat.
Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools. The quickest way to tell the difference between a monkey and an ape is by the presence or absence of a tail. There are only a small number of types of apes, while there are over a hundred types of monkeys. There is no other book like it for primates, and i suspect none for any other order. When you hear the word primate you probably think of a chimpanzee and the various species of monkey youve seen at zoos. The old world monkeys are closer to man as they have better developed brain, small ear pinnae, sensitive finger. Before looking at differences, its important to know that apes and monkeys are both primates. As the monkey family consists of the old and new monkeys, the ape family consists of chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, and humans. Prosimians primates, monkeys, apes, and lemurs jrank. The most obvious differences between apes and monkeys are. As nouns the difference between simian and prosimian is that simian is an ape or monkey, especially an anthropoid while prosimian is a primate that is not a monkey or an ape, generally nocturnal with large eyes and ears.
The teeth of prosimians, monkeys, and apes request pdf. I highlight social media that pull people into wellresearched content areas and new books that reflect the breadth of the field. Apes have broader chests than monkeys who have longer chests. The advanced apes have capabilities that make them to use some signs language, make use of tools and show some skills in problem solving. Difference between anthropoids and prosimians compare. Discuss the key similarities and differences in morphology and behavior between the two groups, using the taxonomy laid out in your textbook. It contains 2600 references, almost 400 figures and photographs, and 73 tables. The final chapter covers individuals who have made a difference in the conservation of primates and includes a list of organizations.
We believe youll go ape over todays wonder of the day. It is now known that one of the prosimians, the tarsier, is actually more closely related to the anthropoids, so the classification of the primates has had to. The distinction between different primate groups is based on physical characteristics and evolutionary ancestry the order of primates is characterized by animals with forwardfacing eyes and highly flexible arms. Traditionally, the order primates was divided into prosimii the primitive primates. As nouns the difference between prosimian and primate is that prosimian is a primate that is not a monkey or an ape, generally nocturnal with large eyes and ears such primates were formerly grouped in the suborder prosimii, but are now considered a paraphyletic group and not a clade while primate is zoology a mammal of the order primates, including simians and prosimians. There are more than 300 species of primates on earth, including human beings and other apes, monkeys, and prosimians, such as lemurs. What is the difference between simians and primates. They have a longer snout than the monkeys and apes, and the prosimian snout usually ends in a moist nose, indicating a welldeveloped sense of smell. Introduced feral populations live in gibraltar, on a few caribbean islands, and in parts of the united states. Prosimians are different from monkeys in that they prefer to eat meat and are considered to be predators.
Describe the skeletal differences between primates that are quadrupedal, bipedal, and suspensory. The ayeayes strange and menacing appearance has not helped the species garner protection among locals, who regard them as ill omens and harbingers of bad luck. A larger proportion of the brain of prosimians is devoted to the sense of smell than the sense of vision. This new edition has been fully updated and greatly expanded throughout to incorporate a decade of new research findings. They have been shown, however, to be paraphyletic that is, their most recent common ancestor was a prosimian but it has some non prosimian descendants i. Humans and apes have certain characteristics in common such as a broad sternum, a y5 cusp pattern on the molars, and the lack of a tail. In order to understand the differences between lemurs and other primates, it helps to go down a level. They have the same basic body structure, possess a high level of intelligence and may exhibit similar behavior. | https://mortzinlentre.firebaseapp.com/1352.html |
Energy Efficient Transportation Modeling
As concerns about climate change increase, many people are calling for reductions in the use of fossil fuels and encouraging a shift to more sustainable and less-polluting transportation modes. Cities and urban areas are more concerned because their population comprises over half of the world’s population currently. Roadway congestion levels began to rise again along with the US economy’s recovery from the most recent recession. Congestion levels have not only returned to the pre-recession levels of 2000 and before, but they are now even greater, causing more congestion problems. By 2014, congestion had caused travel delay to increase to 6.9 billion hours per year, up from 5.2 billion hours per year in 2000. Additionally, congestion costs increased by nearly $46 billion between 2000 and 2014, reaching $160 billion in 2014. Sustainable transportation modes such as cycling, walking, and use of public transit and electric vehicles can benefit the environment in many ways, including the reduction of toxic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and noise levels. Moreover, decreasing the number of SOVs will decrease the congestion levels, the travel delays, and the incurred travel costs. In this work the research team focuses three energy-efficient modes of transportation, namely, cycling, and rail. First, cycling is emerging as a sustainable mode of transportation with growing acceptance and popularity. This dictated a need for more planning to support it as a trending transportation mode. This depends greatly on understanding cyclists' behaviors, which requires more research into cyclist behavior modeling. Second, rail is one of the safest modes of transportation which draws more people from using cars to avoid congestion. It reduces the travel costs incurred due to using a vehicle instead. Moreover, It helps alleviates the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.
- Record URL:
Language
- English
Project
- Status: Completed
- Funding: $100000
-
Contract Numbers:
Grant 69A43551747123
-
Sponsor Organizations:
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and TechnologyUniversity Transportation Centers Program
Department of Transportation
Washington, DC United States 20590
-
Managing Organizations:
Urban Mobility & Equity CenterMorgan State University
Baltimore, MD United States 21251
-
Principal Investigators: | https://rip.trb.org/view/1628371 |
Apr 07, 2020 How to Cook Pork Ribs: Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F. Season the ribs well with salt and pepper or dry rub. Transfer the ribs to a rimmed baking sheet or baking pan lined with aluminum foil and a roasting rack. To dry roast, bake ribs for 90 minutes, uncovered.
Apr 14, 2022 Step 1. Coat the inside of a cast iron pan or cast iron grill pan with a little bit of vegetable oil, then set the pan into the cold oven. Heat the oven to 400 degrees F. with the pan in it. Step 2. Once the oven is hot, set the ribs into the hot pan and cook for 15 to 20 minutes, until the meat reaches an internal temperature of 160 degrees F ...
Apr 16, 2022 How To Cook Pork Spare Ribs In The Oven Use Dry Rub Bbq images that posted in this website was uploaded by Media.nbcmontana.com.How To Cook Pork Spare Ribs In The Oven Use Dry Rub Bbq equipped with a HD resolution 736 x 1104.You can save How To Cook Pork Spare Ribs In The Oven Use Dry Rub Bbq for free to your devices.. If you want to Save …
Aug 17, 2020 Preheat the oven to 275F and put the oven rack in the middle position. Cover the baking sheet with aluminum foil to make for easier cleanup. This isn’t a required step but will definitely make it easier when it comes time to wash the pan. Remove the membrane from the backside of the ribs if it’s still attached.
Aug 29, 2021 Bring the BBQ sauce to a boil over high heat and then reduce the heat to low and let the BBQ sauce simmer for 15 minutes. Remove from heat. When the ribs have baked for 2.5 hours, remove them from the oven and unwrap them from the tin foil. Increase the heat to 400F and slather the bbq sauce over the ribs.
Dec 14, 2021 Traditional rub for St Louis ribs. Recipe for dry rub, bbq sauce and directions for cooking st. louis style ribs in oven or barbeque. Fall off the bone ribs. ... your ribs should reach an internal temperature of at least 145 degrees Fahrenheit and be tender enough to …
Feb 07, 2022 Preheat oven to 325℉. Cut the ribs into pieces that are about 2 x 2 inches in size or as square as possible. See Note #2 below. Roll each rib in the dry rub making sure all sides are covered well. Place ribs in an un-greased roasting pan leaving 3/4 …
Feb 10, 2022 Oven Temp Back Ribs Country Style Ribs* 300F: 2 1/2 hours: 40-60 minutes: 350F: 2 hours: 20-30 minutes: 400F: 1 hour: 15-20 minutes: 450F: ... The dry rub should sit on the ribs for at least 15 minutes to 2 hours prior to cooking. As an alternative, you can leave the prepared ribs in the refrigerator overnight.
Jan 20, 2022 To make this simple BBQ rub, grab a glass mason jar or airtight container for easy storing. The amount you need will be according to the size of the cut of meat you are using. For reference, cup of this dry rub recipe will coat one 3-pound piece of meat (pork butt, ribs, chicken wings, etc.). Leftover rub can be stored in an airtight ...
Jul 15, 2021 Combine all the ingredients for the dry rub. Coat the ribs all over in the rub. Place the ribs in the fridge for 2 hours or overnight. (The dry rub acts as a tenderizer as well as a flavor enhancer). Preheat the oven to 275F. Combine the braising liquid and pour it into a 13 x 9-inch baking dish or a baking sheet with sides.
Jul 31, 2021 Place the rack of ribs on the foil sheets. Season both sides of the ribs generously with the dry rub. Turn the ribs meat side up on the foil. Fold the foil over, making sure to seal it tightly at the top. This prevents any juices from leaking. Place the baking sheet in the middle rack of the oven. Bake for 3 hours.
Oven method; Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Place the ribs and tips on a sheet tray covered with aluminum foil and parchment paper. Sprinkle some avocado oil on the top of the ribs and rib tips. Bake the ribs at 300 degrees for two hours. Then, change the oven temperature to 350 degrees and bake for one hour.
Sep 29, 2021 1. Preheat oven temperature to 275 degrees. 2. Line a baking dish with foil for easy clean up! 3. Start prepare or choose dry rub. 4. Season ribs generously with dry rub! 5. After seasoning, place ribs in a single layer on your foil lined baking dish. 6. cover ribs tightly with foil and bake at 275F. Set timer for 2 hours cooking time.
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tree identification ct
This is a photostory of how to recognise different leaves by their shape. Method 1 – Morphological Review Kendra Collins presented during the 2020 CT Chapter Annual Meeting “From Macro To Micro: American Chestnut Tree Identification“, containing useful tips and tools to identify chestnut trees. The plants contained in this resource are those that will grow in USDA hardiness zone 6 or colder. It grows up to 20–30 m (66–98 ft) tall. Identify trees with our Tree ID app. This infographic will help you easily identify trees popular trees in the state. Sakuma A(1), Saitoh H, Makino Y, Inokuchi G, Hayakawa M, Yajima D, Iwase H. Author information: (1)Department of Legal Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba University, 1-8-1 Inohana, Chuo-ku, Japan. Ah, the wonders of 21st-century technology! There are many tree identification apps out there, but not all of them are worth the download or investment. The trail is thus not suitable for a baby carriage or other wheeled conveyance. Dec 8, 2015 - Explore Donna L. Opitz's board "Nuts, Identification, etc." Each season, a locust tree shows off different distinguishing features that make them easier to sponsor. Diseases have also changed the composition of the forest and landscape. Different species have additional features that make them unique and easier to identify, like the range of their size and their variety of colors. Variations of the basal vein : Identification using Three-dimensional CT angiography Author SUZUKI, Yasuhiro 1; IKEDA, Hisato 1; SHIMADU, Motohiko 1; IKEDA, Yoshiho 1; MATSUMOTO, Kiyoshi 1 Department of Neurosurgery, Showa University, School of Medicine, 5-8 Hatanodai 1, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 142-8666, Japan Trees woods and wildlife. The tree's trunk represents the main topic, and the branches represent relevant facts, factors, influences, traits, outcomes, etc. Primal Storytelling; About Us; Services. Des millions d'images png, de fichiers PSD, AI et EPS libres de haute qualité sont disponibles. Box 1946, Wallingford CT 06492 PHYSICAL ADDRESS: 60 Church Street (Rte 68), Suite 3A, Wallingford , CT 06492 PHONE: 203-484-2512 EMAIL: [email protected] Examine the whole tree before coming to a conclusion. Find out which trees are likely to grow in or near your location. Best Tree Identification Apps Around . Questions? You can help Wikipedia by expanding it This page was last edited on 20 February 2020, at 18:34 (UTC). The first half of the program will be held inside the museum and will focus on how to use bark, twigs, and buds as clues for winter tree ID. TIP: Opposite-branched trees often lose limbs and branches from diseases or big storms. CTQ Trees were originally developed as part of Six Sigma . When a plant is grown outside of its original location, it is usually classifed as a non-native plant. Best Tree Identification App for iPhones. See more ideas about fruit trees, trees to plant, nuts. A-Z of British trees. 23 Potter Road. You can use them in a variety of situations, including when you're developing products and services for your "internal customers." When: Saturday, November 25, 2017 - 1:00pm - 2:30pm. Event Type: Walks & Talks. trees and shrubs can be ordered from them through your local nursery or garden center. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. PlantSnap Plant Identification . Check boxes for all that apply. Tree Identification by App. The leaves of deciduous trees also provide a primary clue to the tree's identity. This is what your product or service must deliver for customers to be happy. As a general identification rule, the bark on fir trees is generally more deeply furrowed than other types of conifers. Ed the Tree Man, LLC maintains a team of skilled professionals who are experts in tree services. Figure 1 – A CTQ Tree . 50% off plans during lockdown: https://www.woodbywright.com/shop use code 9JVT31A How to Identify a tree or tree Id is something I get asked all the time. Trees are symbolic of our relationship with nature, a touchstone to the past and future. Email [email protected] Then click on any search button. Here are a few identification apps that you can use with your smartphones. In this approach, leaf and twig samples are examined […] (If the tree has opposite branches, identification will be easier.) This can make it difficult to determine if the tree is opposite or alternative. Tree health problems can affect the aesthetics of the tree or can pose more serious consequences such as disfigurement, economic loss due to reductions in yield and quality, tree death, and threats to safety. Tree Identification by Bark . Hazardous Tree Identification - Avon, CT - Professional hazardous tree identification, Jared Paul Rozborski, hazardous tree removal, Jared Rozborski, tree identification removal, Look at the leaves or needles. We are licensed arborists trained in all tree service needs such as Tree Trimming, Tree Removal, and Stump Removal services. Register here for our Eco-Hour webinar: CT Tree Identification on Thursday, October 29 at 4 p.m. Audience: All are welcome. Also known as Taxodium distichum, the bald cypress is found along the coastal wetlands and low-lying areas of the Southeast and Gulf Coast region. You use CTQ Trees by first identifying the critical needs of your customers. Three-dimensional visualization of composite fillings for dental identification using CT images. pecans image by Stephen Orsillo from Fotolia.com. At the core of this site are plant information pages that contain text and photographs describing the important characteristics of each species. Every plant is native to some location. We know that sometimes making decision about trees on your property can seem overwhelming and difficult. Tree chart is a type of graphic organizer that shows how items are related to one another. Established in 1985, the Notable Trees Project collects and distributes information about Connecticut's largest and most historic trees, both native and introduced. Everything you need to know about British trees. Assist in project identification by linking key drivers of customer satisfaction to processes. Chestnut Identification Methods There are two specific and very different approaches to chestnut identification. Description. As the tree matures, the bark becomes thick and scaly with furrows or ridges running vertically. Trees woods and wildlife . Pngtree fournit le téléchargement gratuit d'images png, png, fond, photos et vecteurs. Locust trees are hardy and fast-growing members of the pea family that grow well in various environments. This site is dedicated to the ornamental attributes, appropriate use, and identification of woody landscape plants. Trees, not so much. Hubspot Support; Primal Storytelling; FAQ; Contact; Resources. There are lots of features that give you clues to what species it is. Basic tree identification tips. To identify tree shrubs you need time and experience, here are some tips that will help you to spot difference between deciduous and evergreen trees, shrubs and bushes. As a small digital marketing agency in CT, our employees can identify popular brands. At the very tip of new branches stems grow closely together. Contact [email protected] Some apps allow users to upload tree identification pictures and other details to help determine what type of tree it is. The tree chart prompts the student to state a decision that needs to be made by listing the possible options, and the pros and cons of each option. Our A-Z guide to British trees from native species to naturalised and widely planted non-natives. Is it a broadleaf (usually deciduous) or is it a conifer (usually with needles or scales)? The UK has at least fifty species of native trees and shrubs, and many more species of introduced non-native trees. For instance, hazel nut trees grow in low-lying land, often near water. However, there are places where the ground is rocky and a small stream must be crossed on stepping-stones. T: 406.404.6334 . Mature bald cypress grows to a height of 100 to 120 feet. The shape of the leaves, pattern of the leaf veins and shape of the leaf margins are all information you will use when learning to distinguish one deciduous tree from another. Where: James L. Goodwin Conservation Center. Search by Trait List by Name. Event Description: Learn to identify trees without visible leaves. Questions? Join Master Naturalist and fellow tree-observer Lynn Kochiss for this first in a series of programs designed to help beginners unravel the mysteries of tree identification. Apr 6, 2018 - Explore Steve Ferrick's board "Tree Bark Identification" on Pinterest. From identification, folklore and history to the pests and diseases that threaten them. Tree Shrubs Identification. You can use a CT tree as an input in the Project Prioritization Matrix. See Google Maps. Hampton, Connecticut 06247. Present this publication to your local retailer and request if plants can be ordered for you. As with any tree identification, you need to take a close look at the leaves, bark, branches and flowers to correctly identify the tree. Register here for Tree Identification in CT on April 7 at 7pm. This tree-related article is a stub. 2-4 If composite resins could be visualized accurately on reconstructed CT images in cases where it is difficult to detect them by external investigations alone, this would aid more accurate dental identification. Deciduous trees occur more widely throughout the Northeast, in both the mountains and lowlands. This tree is atypical in that it drops its needles annually, hence the "bald" in its name. Fir Tree Identification (With Pictures) The bark on fir trees is generally smooth and gray when the tree is young. Now, you can tell what type of tree you have in your front or backyard by snapping a picture or answering a few questions on your phone. Deciduous Tree Identification. Navigate with above index or scroll bar. See more ideas about tree, tree identification, tree bark. By educating our fellow citizens about the importance of our state's natural heritage we work to preserve it. Post-mortem CT imaging is a useful tool for forensic diagnosis in general, and it is now being introduced into the field of forensic odontology. The most common softwood tree in North America is the bald cypress. Tree Identification Trail This Tree Identification Trail, created in 2017, is a ¾ mile loop and rated easy in terms of its walkability. Cinnamomum camphora is native to China south of the Yangtze River, Taiwan, southern Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, and has been introduced to many other countries. MAILING ADDRESS: P.O. Home » CFPA Events » Tree Identification by Bark . If uncertain, skip character or select several states. on Pinterest.
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When you think about leadership, what words come to mind? Most of us think about leaders as either good or bad—someone who can either effectively lead a team or fails to do so.
If you aspire to take on a leadership role in a business—or are about to start leading a team—it is important that you understand the different leadership styles used in a business.
Indeed, there are many different leadership techniques, and each has its own set of intended use cases. In this guide, we’re going to discuss why you should think about your personal leadership style, and talk through eight of the main approaches used in the workplace.
Why Should I Think About My Leadership Style?
Thinking about your leadership style is a good exercise, even if you are not yet ready to make the transition to a leadership role.
Do you want to take a more hands-off leadership approach? Or do you prefer to get the input of all team members before making a decision? Knowing how you want to lead will make it easier for you to take responsibility for your actions in the workplace.
For instance, if you want to be a hands-on leader, that will affect how you think about your long-term goals. You may want to spend time getting your hands dirty with a core project as soon as possible to help prepare you for this style of leadership.
Great leaders have a clearly defined style. So, if you aspire to be a great leader, you will need to spend time considering what your style is, and how you are going to apply that approach in your future career.
Top 8 Different Leadership Styles
While there are dozens of different leadership styles, there are a few which are more common than others. Here are the eight main types of leadership that you may want to consider when establishing your personal leadership style:
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The average bootcamp grad spent less than six months in career transition, from starting a bootcamp to finding their first job.
- Democratic
A democratic leader is a person who will ask questions like, “What do you think?” before making a final decision. Democratic leaders believe in the importance of getting the thoughts and opinions of the team members in making effective decisions.
There are a number of benefits to this leadership approach. By getting team members involved with decision making, you can build up a strong culture of trust in a business. In addition, if team members feel like they had a say in a decision, they may be more likely to commit to the outcome, even if it was not the outcome they desired.
- Autocratic
An autocratic, or “authoritarian,” leader is someone who will make most of their decisions by themselves. These people will consider all the evidence they have around why a particular course of action should be taken and will make a decision either alone, or with the input from a small group of other employees.
Autocratic leadership styles are common in businesses with strict regulatory guidelines. This is because there are usually clear systems that need to be followed for a particular action, and managers typically have more experience implementing those systems. However, autocratic leadership can result in less creative output by a team, because team members may feel like their ideas are not valued.
- Laissez-faire
A laissez-faire leader is someone who is hands-off and provides little oversight to their subordinates. Instead, laissez-faire leaders believe in delegating work to employees who are the best fit for a task and giving them ownership over that task.
Laissez-faire leadership styles are appropriate in organizations where all team members have experience working on a given task. This is because seasoned employees typically need less motivation. In addition, many employees thrive when given ownership over a task because it shows their manager trusts them.
However, if a team is not already motivated to work on a task, they may not be able to function effectively under a laissez-faire leader.
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- Coaching
A coaching leader is someone who will analyze what their employees are good and not good at, and work with each employee to improve their skills. Coaches prefer to work with an employee, instead of as their superior. They will work with an employee to set actionable goals and give them progress updates as they advance toward those goals.
The coaching leadership style is effective because it gives employees more control over their own direction and personal growth. Instead of having to listen to an order given by a manager, employees can work closely with their manager to determine goals and approaches that make sense for them to use in their job.
Coaching leadership styles are time-intensive, which means that they do not work in many organizations.
- Pacesetting
A pacesetting leader is someone who is driven by performance and expectations. This type of leader will set clear goals for their team and will lead by example. Instead of asking people to do something, they will demonstrate their ability to do it and expect people to follow their lead.
Pacesetters have strong experience in their field of expertise and believe firmly in pushing the bar as often as possible to drive performance on their team. This type of leadership works best in fast-paced and results-driven cultures where team members need constant motivation to keep going.
However, this approach to leadership can result in employees feeling burnt out after a certain period of time—especially if they are pushed too hard.
- Bureaucratic
A bureaucratic leader is someone who goes “by the book.” They expect all their team members to follow every procedure in place when making a decision.
This type of leadership is common in large organizations and governments, where each employee has clear expectations and a specific list of responsibilities they have to undertake. The people who benefit most from bureaucratic leaders are those who thrive on safety and security in their work.
Bureaucratic leadership can result in decisions being made only on the merit of policy, without regard to new and innovative approaches that could potentially produce better results.
- Transformational
A transformational leader is similar to a coach in the sense that they believe in working individually with each employee to set goals and expectations. The main difference between coaches and transformational leaders is that transformational leaders are motivated by the goals of a particular organization in their work.
Transformational leaders can be thought of as someone who always thinks about the big picture. They want to see their organization thrive as much as possible.
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This leadership style often promotes creativity, because employees are encouraged to think more about what drives the best results for the business than what approaches have been done in the past. But, for people who are less open-minded, working under a transformational leader can be difficult, because they are usually more hesitant to changes.
- Servant
A servant leader is someone who believes firmly in the abilities of the people with whom they work and strives to make those people feel fulfilled. Servant leaders focus on how they can improve the morale of their employees because they believe that more motivated employees are more likely to produce high-quality work.
Servant leadership styles are beneficial because they can boost morale and make employees feel more involved in the decisions that they will impact their work. This, in turn, leads to better performance.
However, servant leadership can be difficult to maintain because it can involve moving personal priorities aside for the good of other workers. This is a skill that takes practice and time to refine and perfect.
Implementing a Leadership Style
So, now you know a few of the different types of leadership that you can adopt. You may have found one that interests you and asking yourself, “How can I become this type of leader?”.
Maybe you thrive on rules and want to be a bureaucratic leader. Or maybe you believe in autonomy and want to use the laissez-faire approach. Whatever style you want to implement, know that, with practice, you can successfully adopt that new leadership style.
Here are a few steps you should follow when implementing a new leadership style:
#1: Reflect on How You Work Best
The first step to implementing a leadership style is to reflect on how you work best. How have you acted as a leader in the past? What strengths and weaknesses do you have? It may be helpful to get the opinion of those who have worked with you in the past so you can get a firmer insight into your working routines.
#2: Research a Leadership Style
Once you know how you work best, you can use that information to decide on the leadership style you want to implement. Suppose you want to be a laissez-faire leader. Your next steps will be to learn more about how hands-off leadership works and what practices you can use to implement this type of leadership.
It can be helpful to read case studies from people who have exercised a particular style of leadership in the past. These case studies will give you detailed accounts of how leadership styles are applied in practice, which will help you prepare for using a new style.
#3: Practice Makes Perfect
The best way to implement a new leadership style is to practice as much as you can.
Even if you are not yet in a leadership role, you should still be able to find opportunities in your work to embrace a specific style. Here are a few things you can try to practice:
- Volunteer to help coach a co-worker who is new to using a specific process
- Ask if your team can start hosting stand-ups so you can develop closer relationships with your colleague
- Ask for feedback on your work as often as possible, to collect the thoughts and opinions of your co-workers
Conclusion
There is no “right” leadership style to use. In fact, a solid leadership style may look like a blend of a few of those we’ve mentioned in this article.
Insurance companies, for instance, thrive on bureaucratic leaders, due to the intense regulation in the space. Technology startups, on the other hand, often have a large number of laissez-faire managers, because new ideas are essential to the survival of the business.
Whatever leadership style you decide is best for you, the best way to adopt the style is to practice. Over time, as you practice, you’ll figure out what leadership strategies work best in certain situations, and which approaches do not work. You can then use this information to improve as a leader.
With the information in this article, you’ll be able to start thinking about what leadership style works best for you, and how you can start applying that in your job.
About us: Career Karma is a platform designed to help job seekers find, research, and connect with job training programs to advance their careers. Learn about the CK publication. | https://careerkarma.com/blog/leadership-styles/ |
The lithium-ion battery is the most expensive part of the electric vehicle (EV). Improving battery performance is one of the most important factors in promoting the EV market by prolonging battery life, reducing the cost of ownership and giving confidence in the product to potential customers. This paper considers a method of improving battery performance that extends the life of the battery and increases holding capacity. This will be realized by finding the best charging profile for an EV battery by identifying, the time that battery can accept charging and the charging profile with minimum effect on battery life. The analysis presented shows that including rest periods during battery charging reduces battery degradation in two ways. Firstly, it reduces the rate of change in battery internal resistance. Secondly, it slows down the rate of capacity fade. Moreover, it reduces the average battery temperature through charging. | http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/27214/ |
Proposal Summary:
• Address: 1901 N Moore St (RCP #16-019-005)
• GLUP Designation: High Office-Apartment-Hotel
• Existing Zoning: C-O Mixed-Use District
• Proposed Use:
o Residential tower with ground floor retail
o 26 stories (plus 23’ high mechanical penthouse)
o 423 units (464,250 sf)
o 11,355 sf of retail
• Height: 260 feet to main roof, 283 ft to mechanical penthouse
• Parking
o Residential: 265 spaces / 423 units (0.625 spaces per unit)
o Retail: 11,355 sf retail / 13 spaces (1 space per 500 sf after subtraction of first 5,000 sf)
o Location: 2.5 levels below-grade, 2 levels above-grade (below grade access is limited by bedrock and the location directly above the Metro)
The existing pedestrian bridge will be removed.
Building follows the Rosslyn Sector Plan Criteria in terms of: maximum height, tower orientation, sensitive edge to Gateway Park, build-to-line, parking access/ratio/grade, 15’-19’ sidewalk width on all sides, ground floor design elements, priority view corridors, and sustainability
Current images of the site:
Design Goal: Adopt/Respond to the Rosslyn Sector Plan Goals
1. Well defined streetscape and public realm
2. Superior retail infrastructure
3. Coordinated service plan
4. Unique riverfront design & enhancement to Gateway Park Frontage
Proposed Site Plan Updates (new plan in yellow):
Impact on the view of Washington, DC (red is the proposed building):
Evolution of building structure (evolved left to right):
Images of the proposed building:
Proposed view from N. Lynn Street:
A highlight of the design is a huge “sky window” that separates the two halves of the project. Each tower will have a different look. The sky window should be visible to pedestrians and will feature plantings of large trees, such as birches and willows. This visual break was called for in the Rosslyn Sector Plan, and is intended to avoid a monolithic look for the block.
Ground floor plan and image of 4 sidewalks around the building:
Note: some sidewalks will have benches, some will not
Ground Floor Plan:
Note: “L” is the entrance for the loading dock
Proposed Balconies (different between each building):
Rooftop Green Space:
Note: one will have a rooftop terrace, one a pool. The rooftop areas are for the use of residents only, not for the general public.
Rooftop pool proposal (with other residential spaces, including a mechanical penthouse):
Where they are in the application process:
• They filed their application at end of May
• They received the first round of comments last week and are in the process of responding to them
• There will be a few more reviews like this before they are accepted into SPRC
Largest concern: the plan for truck movement (packages, moving trucks) in and out of the building. It was pointed out by stakeholders that this is a busy street used by several buses.
• Trucks will back into the loading dock and pull out forwards
Concerns were also raised about parking availability for building visitors and shoppers. Also, a question was raised about whether pets will be allowed (they will) and where they will relieve themselves. The developer said they would look into these issues.
Projected Timeline: | http://community.northrosslyn.org/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/7016064271/m/5117035283?r=5117035283 |
In general, during a crisis, an organization is forced to face conditions that threaten its balance, and resolving them becomes the most important task, however the situation cannot be solved nor avoided with standard problem-solving tools. The threatening circumstance usually comes from outside, often an unexpected event. An organization can be a person, but it can also be an institution. In both cases, crisis management aims to adapt to changed circumstances. The steps for resolving a crisis situation are different in these two areas.
In the life of a company the goal of crisis management is survival. The first steps taken to this end: detecting and identifying the problem and determining the severity of the problem.
Individuals’ responses to a crisis situation.
TRAINING OBJECTIVES
As a result of the training the participant will get to know:
concept of crisis and trauma, and the physical and mental changes they cause
types of crisis and its occurrence
risk factors for crisis development, the possibilities of solution and coping
success-oriented and failure-avoiding personality traits
stressors caused by the crisis situation and their possible forms of treatment
MAIN CONTENT
- Possible outcomes of crises
- Identify dangerous solutions
- Problem-oriented – Emotion-centered coping
- Avoiding Failure – Success Oriented Coping Techniques
- Personality traits for effective crisis management
Stress and Problem-Solving System
The Stress and Problem-Solving System is a structured method for solving stressful situations, which summarizes the possible directions, thus providing a guideline for problem solving.
To maintain continuous high performance, mobilize internal energies. Stress management through change of attitude. Recharge with energy!
By analysing specific situations, we become aware of our thoughts and feelings, and then, by using another technique we can decide when and how to act in stressful situations. There are two possible directions:
- acquisition of stress relief skills
- acquisition of action skills
Accordingly, two methods are described:
- mastering relaxation technique
- developing behavioural patterns that increase personal effectiveness
Learning preventative techniques to maintain balanced relationships
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accordance with the company's vision. This could include a monitoring system to measure diversity in terms of ensuring a balanced workforce.
- By Krity Sharma
In a globalized world, a diverse workforce is widely regarded as a business imperative, one that should be incorporated as a strategy in every organization. A diverse workforce can deliver improved decision-making, increased productivity, superior products and services, happier customers, and a better bottom line, thus becoming an important business opportunity for organizations.
Taylor Cox in his book, "Cultural Diversity in Organizations" defines diversity management as "planning and implementing organizational systems and practices to manage people so that the potential advantages of diversity are maximized while its potential disadvantages are minimized."
Irrespective of our thought process about managing diversity, the conversation always veers towards what organizations are doing to make this happen. While strategic changes towards diversity and inclusion may transpire at the organizational level, percolation to the individual has a perennial role to play as well. I firmly believe that while the managers have a key role to play, everyone must be
accountable for managing and setting diversity in motion. Leaders and managers must create a strategic plan to ensure that this happens.
How Well Do You Manage Diversity?
The quest towards a more diverse workforce begins with an assessment on facilitation. Some of the assessments that must be made to manage diversity in your organization are-
1. Are your assumptions tested before they are acted upon?
2. Is there only one way or numerous means of doing things right? Has the same message been conveyed to the teams as well?
3. Is there an honest relation with the team? What is the level of comfort, motivation and recognition of goals?
4. Is there an extra effort made to ensure that a diverse pool of candidates have applied?
5. Is the new employee oriented towards the organization culture and the unwritten rules?
6. Is a patient ear lent to your team's views over ways of improving the work environment? Are these actually implemented?
7. Is decisive action taken against team members who disrespect or offend others?
8. Are advancement opportunities equally accessible to all?
Strategic planning for diversity It is highly important to create measurable goals to implement diversity in accordance with the company's vision. This could include a monitoring system to measure diversity in terms of ensuring a balanced workforce. These measures may be in the form of responses to employee surveys, media features, improved percentage representation of diversity at all levels, and awards and accolades. Accountability towards achieving each of the goals is also equally important.
Strategic planning for diversity should percolate through all levels recruitment & hiring, performance management, career development, coaching and mentoring, flexible work arrangements, and training & education. Apart from the traditional levers, companies can also consider aspects such as flexible work arrangement since these are functionally different from a 'work from home' policy. This is also about workplace design - creating an open space concept to enhance collaboration among the employees. Five years ago, one could state, "this is a how start-up company office looks like". Today, traditional offices must introspect as to what they wish to convey through their workspace design. Communicate the vision of diversity. The leadership must communicate the diversity vision to every individual in your organization by your members. This can be articulated during management meetings, company events, or informal sessions with employees and reiterate the importance that the organization holds for diversity.
Diversity then becomes a top priority and personal responsibility for leaders in every capacity.
Further, it is pertinent to communicate any significant achievements to emphasize the organization's commitment to creating a more diverse workforce. Unless this happens, diversity only remains a vision with no authenticity and actual implementation. Additionally, it is imperative that the importance of diversity is communicated to everyone in the leadership. In order to achieve this, it is essential to create an environment that is based on mutual trust, respect, openness, teamwork, innovation and encouragement. Employee involvement and wellbeing, while employing a diverse workforce, long-term satisfaction is dependent on the levels of your engagement and involvement with the employees. It is pertinent to seek feedback and employee inputs for diversity initiatives.
Some ways to seek feedback are through cultural diversity surveys among the employees, internal communication channels or diversity summits. In addition, mentorship in an organization is a great way to indicate to the people that their growth is being invested upon, and this can be achieved through weekly meetings. Reverse monitoring; the practice of encouraging junior employees to mentor their seniors on skillsets such as social media, technology usage, industry jargon and so on can facilitate more inclusion and openness in an organization. An employee's wellbeing in the organization is equally important, and it is important to keep an equal check on the wellbeing of all employees in terms of work-life balance activities, dependent care funds, alternative work scheduling, and life cycle assistance. This will help in increasing their loyalty in the long-term.
Two simple things that work well in ensuring well-being of employees in diverse environments are the Buddy System, a practice of pairing new employees with someone who is well integrated into the organization. An individual from a seemingly different background can integrate better into
the system without ill-feelings and misunderstandings. In addition to this, regular workplace bonding activities such as team lunches and celebration events for cultural holidays can communicate the strong investment in the employee's inclusion and well-being. Conflict Management Strategies for better conflict management and resolution play an important function to a diverse workforce. In any environment with differing perspectives, conflicts are bound to arise. Depending on the degree, they can easily go out of hand and have a long term impact on a company's reputation with reference to diversity. While resolving conflicts at the workplace, the objective should not be to drive anyone out, but to resolve the issue in a manner that future conflicts are overcome in the future. This will be beneficial towards promoting greater teamwork and collaboration between the individuals. Genuine workplace relationships cannot be built on shame, and the conversation should inspire change and learning, and discovery of more inclusive ways to interact through differences. Most people believe in the golden rule: treat others as you want to be treated. But, when you look at the same statement through a diversity perspective, the question that arises is - 'what does respect look like? Is it the same for everyone? Instead of the golden rule, perhaps we should be using the platinum rule, which states: "treat others as they want to be treated."
Moving our frame of reference from what may be our default view "our way is the best way" to a diversity-sensitive perspective "let's take the best of a variety of ways", will help us to manage
more effectively in a diverse work environment. In terms of diversity, globally organizations have progressed significantly. Mass media has been a great facilitator of diversity by allowing for globalization-the positive outcome of which has been the ability to empathise with diverse groups.
Some time ago, diversity was just a 'good to have value' in organizations, but this has changed to 'must have'. The next level of progress would be for organizations to realise that diversity is more than just a moral or business obligation-it is critical to growth owing to the immense value it offers to organizations. Effective implementation of diversity and inclusion programmes taking into consideration all factors mentioned will be instrumental towards achieving this goal. | http://www.tescobengaluru.com/media/media/article/human-capital-creation-of-measurable-goals |
1. Who were the two main superpowers during the Cold War?
United States (NATO) “First World”
Soviet Union (Warsaw Pact) “Second World”
Neutral: “Third World”
2. How has the nature of both alliances and warfare changed since the end of the Cold War?
Warfare is less often conventional and more often state vs organization or internal within state
Alliances are more often economic
3. Give an example in which both the US and the Soviet union used military force to prevent an ally from becoming too independent.
US intervention in Latin America, Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia
4. Define: Balance of Power
Situation in which two opposing forces are of roughly equal power
5. Summarize the Cuban Missile Crisis in at least 3 bullets
Fidel Castro took over Cuba 1959 (communism)
Allowed Soviets to put nuclear weapons in Cuba capable of hitting US.
Led to a standoff between US and Soviets in 1962/ peak of cold war tensions
6. Define: NATO
North Atlantic Treaty Org. Created to protect members from Soviets. Still most powerful military org
7. Define: Warsaw Pact
Soviet military alliance between communist countries to protect from NATO. Dissolved with breakup of Soviet Union
8. Define: European Union
Economic cooperation between European countries
9. Who controls interest rates and inflation in the Eurozone?
European Central Bank
10. Identify 3 adverse effects of the global recession on the Eurozone. (be specific to countries within the Eurozone. | https://www.majortests.com/essay/Ch-8-Ki-4-2013-Complete-530190.html |
We’re getting a lot of advice these days. Some of the tips for the pandemic are good, such as wearing masks. Some of it – like injecting bleach – is actually dangerous. As a behavioral scientist, I know that the advice I’m about to give you is backed up by years of research, but as a semi-functional adult I’m aware it’s going to sound pretty dumb.
To navigate awkward social settings during the pandemic, act like a toddler.
No, I don’t mean throwing a fit because you won’t buy yourself popsicles. When I suggest acting like a toddler to navigate awkward social situations, I’m referencing research that shows how well-suited preschool-age children are to this uncertain era and how badly our adult brains are conditioned to it.
Recently, I went out to eat at a few restaurants and was struck how awkward I felt. I didn’t know where to stand, where and how to sit, what the mask procedures were, and if I should be using the hand sanitizer on the host station. What was once an unconscious behavior has become more fraught than a middle-school cafeteria.
Making matters worse is that each restaurant had different rules of engagement. Some had special walkways with poorly placed signage on the floor marking paths. Others had bricks on the table that signified various stages of the cleaning process. (Customers had to turn the bricks over when they left, which is more of a code than a system.) Some had installed foot pedals for opening the bathroom door but not the signage to make their presence obvious. There were so many new rules that each time I felt like I was eating at restaurant for the first time.
Meanwhile, my 4-year-old friend Wren has no problem adapting to the new rules. Wren’s face lights up if you talk about the parties you can throw after “corina,” as she calls it, but she never bugs her parents about going to the pool or the park. And she has no problem loudly calling out anyone not wearing a mask. That’s because by age 3 children begin to understand social norms and readily accept any behavior if everyone else is doing it. So if no one is going to the pool and everyone is wearing a mask, then that’s just the way it is. She’d probably love the rule about turning over the brick.
My brain, unlike a toddler’s, is conditioned to deal with a social environment by following the usual cues that help us resolve uncertainty. These new social settings and their unestablished cues – here a food pedal, there a brick – cause uncertainty and anxiety.
The result is what social scientists call “peer discomfort,” or what you feel in a situation where someone is acting differently from what you perceive the rule is. Whereas a toddler’s brain loves clear rules, an adult’s brain trips over the cognitive dissonance between what you see and what you know to be true, such as seeing people shake hands.
Another disorienting factor for an adult’s brain is called “audience inhibition.” That’s when you’re in an environment that used to operate under the old rules, such as a grocery store or a restaurant, where people now act in unfamiliar ways. The brain’s natural response is to be afraid of doing anything that might cause embarrassment, leading to herd behavior. Do I wear a mask here? Should I use the hand sanitizer before or after I swipe my card? I’ll just do what that guy is doing.
A new study published in Scientific American suggests that to ease this widespread uncertainty, we need to create the expectation that we’re all expected to follow new social norms. We’re talking about creating clear guidelines on why we act this way now – to help other people, and so we don’t get kicked out of restaurants, grocery stores and other old places where new behaviors are expected.
The core principle we need to reinforce is fairness: What’s good for the hive is good for the bee. If we’re aware of our place in the hive and how the hive operates, we can develop new habits and work through the temporary anxiety of feeling out of place at the local grocery store, where, it should be said, you should really treat yourself to the good popsicles. Wren would want you to reward yourself for wearing a mask.
Lilly Kofler is the vice president of Behavioral Science and is the U.S. lead of Hill+Knowlton Strategies Behavioral Science Unit. | |
The present invention generally relates to accurate visualization of an interventional tool during an interventional procedure, particularly an accurate visualization of a catheter during an interventional cardiac procedure. The present invention specifically relates to the visualization of the interventional tool in multi-planar reformatting ("MPR") images derived from a three-dimensional ultrasound image ("3D US").
Knowing a relative position of an interventional tool (e.g., a catheter) with respect to a pre-procedural planning scan (e.g., a magnetic resonance imaging ("MRI") scan or a computed tomography ("CT") scan) is important for accurate guidance in an interventional procedure, particularly an interventional cardiac procedure. Since X-ray fluoroscopic images provide very highly resolved images of the interventional tool during the procedure, image-guided systems known in the art for providing visual aid in guiding the interventional tool have concentrated on tracking a tip of the tool in fluoroscopic images and overlaying in the pre-procedural scan.
Increasingly, registering an ultrasound image ("2D US") or 3D US with X-ray imaging has augmented X-ray fluoroscopy as an aid for guiding an interventional procedure. The key role of the 2D US or the 3D US is to augment the pre-procedural scan with real time motion information, while the X-ray fluoroscopic image(s) provide high resolution visualization of the interventional tool in real time. Moreover, with the introduction of 3D US in real time, it is becoming possible to visualize the interventional tool more clearly in ultrasound, thereby enabling ultrasound-only guided interventions.
Localization of the tip of the interventional tool is of paramount importance for accurate navigation and targeting. In particular, for cardiovascular interventions, the visualization of the relationship of a tip and a body of the catheter with respect to the surrounding tissue is important for accurate navigation and targeting. However, visualization of the exact location and orientation of a tip and a body of an interventional tool is often difficult in 2D US or 3D US due to (1) image artifacts from the body of the interventional tool, (2) a limited view of 2D US or 3D US, and (3) out of plane issues involving the tip of the interventional tool going in and out of the 2D US image or 3D US image.
With the difficulty in visualizing the tip of the interventional device in 3D US, it is also difficult to define multi-planar reformatting ("MPR") views around the tip of the interventional device whereby the neighborhood of the tool tip including surrounding tissue is appropriately visualized.
US 2008/221446
discloses an ultrasound system comprising a position sensing module for detecting spatial information associated with a volume of data and a display for displaying first and second images based on the volume of data, wherein the first and second images comprise first and second portions of the volume of data. Further, the ultrasound system comprises a user interface for selecting a first image tracking point on the first image, wherein the first image tracking point is indicated on the first image with a first indicator, and an image tracking module for tracking the first image tracking point within the volume of data, wherein the image tracking module indicates on the display a spatial relationship of the first image tracking point to the second image.
The present invention provides systems for accurate real-time localizing of a tool tip in 3D US and for precise generation of the MPR views of the tool tip and surrounding neighborhood.
FIG. 1
illustrates an exemplary embodiment of an interventional tracking system in accordance with present invention.
FIG. 2
illustrates a flowchart representative of an interventional tracking method in accordance with the present invention.
FIGS. 3 and 4A-C
FIG. 2
FIG. 1
illustrate a first exemplary implementation of the interventional method of by the interventional tracking system of .
FIGS. 5 and 6A-B
FIG. 2
FIG. 1
illustrate a second exemplary implementation of the interventional method of by the interventional tracking system of .
FIGS. 7-9
FIG. 2
FIG. 1
illustrate a second exemplary implementation of the interventional method of by the interventional tracking system of .
FIG. 10
FIG. 1
illustrates a first exemplary embodiment of the interventional tracking system of .
FIG. 11
FIG. 2
illustrates a first exemplary embodiment of the interventional tracking method of .
FIG. 12
FIG. 10
illustrates an exemplary display of X-ray images and MPR images by the interventional tracking system of .
FIG. 13
FIG. 1
illustrates a second exemplary embodiment of the interventional tracking system of .
FIG. 14
FIG. 2
illustrates a second exemplary embodiment of the interventional tracking method of .
The invention in its general sense is a system as defined by independent claim 1. Further embodiments are defined by the dependent claims.
FIGS. 1-14
Disclosed are various systems and methods for visualizing a tool tip and surrounding neighborhood within MPR images derived from a 3D US image. As will be appreciated by those having ordinary skill in the art from the following descriptions of , these methods are implemented by a MPR imaging module of the present invention.
FIG. 1
illustrates a system of the present invention employing 3D ultrasound imaging system, an interventional tool 30 and a MPR imaging device 40.
For purposes of the present invention, the 3D US imaging system is broadly defined herein as including a 3D US imaging device 21 for controlling an operation of 3D US probe 20 structurally configured for generating an ultrasound volume image ("USI") 22 of an anatomical region (e.g., cardiac region of a body). Examples of the 3D US imaging system include, but are not limited to, any type of 3D ultrasound imaging system utilizing a 3D TEE probe. In one embodiment, the iE33 intelligent echo system commercially sold by Philips Healthcare may serve as the 3D US imaging system.
For purposes of the present invention, interventional tool 30 is broadly defined herein as any type of tool, instrument or device structurally configured for performing specific actions of carrying out desired effects during any type of interventional procedure (e.g., interventional cardiology). For purposes of an interventional procedure, two or more image tracking points 31 are defined on the tip area or body of interventional device 30. In one embodiment, one of the tracking points is a tip of interventional device 30. In a second embodiment, each image tracking point 31 is defined by a sensor located in the tip area and/or body of interventional device 30. Examples of the sensor include, but are not limited to, an electromagnetic sensor, an optical sensor or a shape tracking sensor (e.g., a sensor making use of Fiber-Bragg gratings, Rayleigh scattering, backscattering, force sensing using optical fibers or measurement of deformities in optical fiber to track shape or location).
For purposes of the present invention, MPR imaging module 40 is broadly defined herein as any structural configuration of hardware, software and/or firmware for generating a MPR image 41 from ultrasound volume image 22 whereby an imaging tracking point 31 of interventional tool 30 serves as an origin of MPR image 41. In practice, MPR image 41 may have any orientation relative to the imaging tracking point 31 and may have any orientation within ultrasound volume image 22. Also in practice, MPR imaging module 40 may be integrated within ultrasound imaging device 21 or any other type of imaging or display device suitable for an interventional procedure.
To facilitate an understanding of MPR imaging module 40, a description and exemplarily implementation of an interventional tracking method.
FIG. 2
illustrates a flowchart 50 representative of the interventional tracking method. A stage S51 of flowchart 50 encompasses an identification of two or more image tracking points 31 of interventional tool 30 within ultrasound volume image 22, and a stage S52 of flowchart 50 encompasses a generation of one or more MPR images 41 with each identified image tracking point 31 serving as an origin of one of the MPR images 41.
FIG. 3
FIGS. 4A-4C
For example, shows an identification of a tip 63 of an interventional tool 62 within an ultrasound volume image 60 of an anatomical region including tissue 61, and the identified tip 63 serves as an origin of orthogonal MPR images 64-66 as shown in respective . As a result, tip 63 of interventional tool 62 as well as neighboring portions of tissue 61 are accurately visualized in MPR images 64-66.
During the interventional procedure, MPR images 64-66 are continually updated as interventional tool 62 is navigated within the anatomical region and/or the ultrasound probe is moved relative to the anatomical region. To maintain an accurate visualization of tip 63 and neighboring portions of tissue 61, MPR image 64 has a fixed parallel relationship with plane XY of ultrasound volume image 60, MPR image 65 has a fixed parallel relationship with plane YZ of ultrasound volume image 60 and MPR image 66 has a fixed parallel relationship with plane XZ of ultrasound volume image 60.
FIG. 5
FIGS. 6A and 6B
FIG. 5
s
s
s
By further example, shows an identification of an electromagnetic sensor 72 of an interventional tool 71 within an ultrasound volume image 70 of an anatomical region and the identified sensor 72 serves as an origin of MPR images 73 and 74 as shown in respective . Electromagnetic sensor 72 is located within a tip section of interventional tool 71. As a result, the tip interventional tool 72 as well as neighboring portions of any tissue within the anatomical region are accurately visualized in MPR images 73 and 74. Please note tissue is not shown in for purposes of illustrating sensor coordinate system XYZ.
s
s
s
s
During the interventional procedure, MPR images 73 and 74 are continually updated as interventional tool 71 is navigated within the anatomical region and/or the ultrasound probe is moved relative to the anatomical region. To maintain an accurate visualization of the tip of interventional tool 71 and neighboring portions of tissue, MPR image 73 has a fixed parallel relationship with plane XZ of the sensor coordinate system and MPR image 74 has a fixed parallel relationship with plane YZ of the sensor coordinate system.
FIG. 7
By further example, illustrates an ultrasound probe 80 generating an ultrasound volume image 81 relative to an infarct region 90 of a heart. An interventional tool 100 has a defined spacing of electromagnetic sensors 110-113 relative to a tip of interventional tool 100. Three (3) MPR images 82-84 are generated with respective sensors 110-112 serving as the origin of MPR images 82-83 with each MPR image 82-84 being normal to the respective sensors 110-112.
FIG. 8
To visualize both the tip and the body of interventional tool 100, MPR images 82-84 are arranged in a stack formation whereby interventional tool 100 is axially aligned. For instances whereby interventional tool 100 has a non-linear orientation within ultrasound volume image 81, the stacking of MPR images 82-84 warps ultrasound volume image 81 into an ultrasound volume image 85 as shown in . Ultrasound volume image 85 represents a centric rectangular shape having a dynamic frame of reference with tool 100 as its axis and the tip of tool 100 on one of its edges. As such, in practice, ultrasound volume image 85 may be utilized for various purposes.
FIG. 8
In one embodiment, ultrasound volume image 85 may be resliced into one or more arbitrary MPR images containing a portion of the body of interventional tool 100, such as, for example MPR images 86 and 87 as shown in . This reslicing of ultrasound volume image 85 provides real-time soft tissue context around the body of interventional tool 100.
In a second embodiment, a target volume may be segmented from a pre-operative scan and then overlaid on ultrasound volume image 85 to aid in targeting the volume.
FIG. 9
In a third embodiment, a pre-operative or an intra-operative scan (e.g., a MRI scan or a CT scan) from an imaging modality registered with electromagnetic frame of reference may be fused with ultrasound volume image 85, such as, for example, a fusion 87 of scan images 120-122 with MPR images 82-84 as shown in .
In a fourth embodiment, instead of showing the entire ultrasound image volume 85 within the scan fusion 87, only the axis of ultrasound volume image 85 may be visualized along with a target volume rendered in the space of the ultrasound volume image 85. This will hide the ultrasound data, but use the ultrasound data in the background to move the target volume in real-time.
To further facilitate an understanding of MPR imaging module 40, a description and exemplarily implementation of various interventional tracking systems of the present invention will now be described herein.
FIG. 10
FIG. 1
FIG. 1
illustrates an interventional tracking system employing an X-ray imaging system, an embodiment of 3D US imaging system of and an embodiment of MPR imaging device 40 of .
For purposes of the present invention, the X-ray imaging system is broadly defined herein as including an X-ray imaging device 130 for controlling an operation of an X-ray source 131 and an X-ray detector 132 structurally configured for generating a X-ray image ("XRI") 135 of an anatomical region (e.g., a cardiac region) represented by a volume and/or for controlling an operation of an X-ray source 133 and an X-ray detector 134 structurally configured for generating a X-ray image ("XRI") 136 of anatomical region 91. In practice, components 130-132 exclusive of components 133 and 134 represent a monoplane X-ray system of any type, and components 130-134 collectively represent a bi-plane X-ray system of any type. Examples of the X-ray imaging system include, but are not limited to, any type of X-ray system for performing a cardiac interventional procedure. In one embodiment, an X-ray system from the Allure Xper series commercially sold by Philips Medical Systems may serve as the X-ray imaging system.
FIG. 11
In operation, an interventional tracking method represented by a flowchart 140 shown in is executed for purposes of generating MPR images of a portion or an entirety of a catheter 30a within a cardiac anatomical region 91 as derived from an ultrasound volume image 22 and X-ray images 135 and 136.
FIGS. 10
11
Specifically, referring to and , upon a catheter 30a being inserted within a cardiac anatomical region 91, a stage S141 of flowchart 140 encompasses an X-ray image acquisition by X-Ray imaging device 130 of catheter 30a at a 1st gantry angle during a specified cardiac phase (e.g., an end diastole phase) and a specified respiratory phase (e.g., an end respiratory phase) using known cardiac and respiratory gating techniques, and a stage S142 of flowchart 140 encompasses a manual or automatic segmentation by MPR imaging module 40a of a catheter tip 31a in the X-ray image acquired during stage S141.
For a monoplane X-ray imaging system, a stage S143 of flowchart 140 encompasses an X-ray image acquisition by X-Ray imaging device 130 of catheter 30a at a 2nd gantry angle during the same specified cardiac phase and the same specified respiratory phase using known cardiac and respiratory gating techniques, and a stage S144 of flowchart 140 encompasses a manual or automatic segmentation by MPR imaging module 40a of catheter tip 31a in the X-ray image acquired during stage S143.
For a biplane X-ray imaging system, stages S141/S142 and stages S143/S144 may be executed simultaneously.
For either X-ray imaging system, a corresponding 3D location of catheter tip 31a in the 2D X-ray coordinate system is reconstructed by MPR imaging module 40a during a stage S145 of flowchart 140. In one embodiment of stage S145, a known epipolar constraint is utilized to reconstruct the 3D location of catheter tip 31a in the 2D X-ray coordinate system.
Thereafter, during a stage S146 of flowchart 140, a reconstructed 2D X-ray coordinate location of catheter tip 31a is converted into a 3D US real-time coordinate location by MPR imaging module 40a using system calibration and real-time tracking. In one embodiment of stage S146, a manual alignment is used as the basis for the conversion. In a second embodiment of stage S146, a known electromagnetic tracking technique is used as the basis for the conversion.
FIG. 12
A stage S147 of flowchart 140 encompasses MPR imaging module 40a utilizing the 3D US real time coordinate location of catheter tip 31a as an origin of two or more MPR images. For example, as shown in , catheter tip 31a is identified in X-RAY images 135a and 136a, the 2D X-ray coordinates of catheter tip 31a are converted into 3D US real-time coordinate location of catheter tip 31a, and MPR images 41a are generated with the 3D US real-time coordinate location serving as the origin of MPR images 41a of catheter tip 31a.
FIGS. 10
11
Referring back to and , upon the first execution of stage S147, flowchart 140 may return to stages S141 and S143 to update the 3D US real-time coordinate location of catheter tip 31a and therefore update the MPR images. This allows for accurate tracking of catheter tip 31a as catheter 30a is navigated within cardiac anatomical region 91 and/or the ultrasound probe 20a is moved relative to cardiac anatomical region 91. Stages S141-S147 will cycle until the procedure is completed.
FIG. 13
FIG. 1
FIG. 1
illustrates an interventional tracking system employing an embodiment of 3D US imaging system of , a tracking system and an embodiment of MPR imaging device 40 of .
For purposes of the present invention, the tracking system is broadly defined herein as any system including one or more position probe sensors 23 attached to ultrasound probe 20a, one or more position tool sensors 32(1)-(4) attached to catheter 30a and a global tracking device 150 structurally configured for tracking position sensors 23 and 32(1)-(4) within a global coordinate system. Examples of the tracking system include, but are not limited to, any type of electromagnetic tracking system, any type of optical tracking system, and any type of shape sensing system (e.g., optical fiber). In one embodiment, the Aurora™ Electromagnetic Tracking System commercially sold by NDI may serve as an electromagnetic tracking system.
In practice, position sensors 23 and 32(1)-(4) may have any required degrees of freedom ("DOF"), such as, for example, five (5) DOF or six (6) DOF.
FIG. 14
In operation, an interventional tracking method represented by a flowchart 160 shown in is executed for purposes of generating MPR images of a portion or an entirety of a catheter 30a within a cardiac anatomical region 91 as derived from an ultrasound volume image 22 and tracking of position sensor(s) 23 and 32 within a global coordinate system
FIG. 14
Specifically, referring to , a stage S161 of flowchart 160 encompasses a calibration of ultrasound probe 20a to a coordinate space of position tool sensor 23 as known in the art, and a stage S162 of flowchart 160 encompasses a calibration of catheter 30a to a coordinate space of each position probe sensor 32 as known in the art.
A stage S163 of flowchart 160 encompasses a registration of the calibrations to the global coordinate system as known in the art whereby the tip and body of catheter 30a may be registered to corresponding points in the ultrasound volume image 22.
A stage S164 of flowchart 160 encompasses a generation of ultrasound volume image 22 as catheter 30a is being introduced into and navigated within cardiac anatomical region 91.
FIG. 6
FIGS. 7-9
FIGS. 8 and 9
A stage S165 of flowchart 160 encompasses a generation of MPR images based on the registration of the calibrations to the global coordinate system. More particularly, a tip of catheter 30a may be identified in the global coordinate system and thus in ultrasound volume image 22 whereby MPR images may be generated with the catheter tip serving as the origin, such as, for example, MPR images 73 and 74 shown in . Concurrently or alternatively, sensor 32 along the body of catheter 30a may be identified in the global coordinate system and thus in ultrasound volume image 22 whereby MPR images may be generated with the sensors 32 serving as origins, such as, for example, MPR images 82-84 shown in . A warped ultrasound image volume may then be generated as previously described herein in connection with .
Upon the first execution of stage S165, flowchart 140 may return to a cycle of stages S164-S165 to update the MPR images. This allows for accurate tracking of the catheter tip and body as catheter 30a is navigated within cardiac anatomical region 91 and/or the ultrasound probe 20a is moved relative to cardiac anatomical region 91. Stages S164-S165 will cycle until the procedure is completed.
In practice, only one position probe sensor 32 may be employed when exclusively tracking the tip of catheter 30a.
FIGS. 1-14
From the description of , those having skill in the art will have a further appreciation on how to implement systems and methods of the present invention for any interventional procedure.
In practice, any number of X-ray imaging devices, 3D US imaging device and a MPR imaging module may be integrated into a single device. | |
Elevated concentration of salinity hinders plant life from germination to final step. So, numerous mechanisms are inhibited, such as phytohormone synthesis, nutrient uptake, root and shoot regulation, photosynthesis, and DNA replication. It is well documented that the plant growth-promoting bacteria/rhizobacteria (PGPB/R) colonize plants and stimulate plant growth by different processes. In this way, halotolerant or halophilic PGPB become important; therefore, their capability resides in the rise of resistance toward high salt levels by eminent osmoregulatory mechanism to preserve regular cell functions. This kind of bacteria provides plants with many activities to challenge osmotic stress such as phytohormone synthesis [auxins, gibberellic acid (GA), cytokinins (CK), abscisic acid (ABA)], phosphate solubilization, and siderophore production. Adding to that, ACC deaminase is an important enzyme implicated in ethylene reduction. Moreover, PGPB are also capable of colonizing plants endophytically and synthetizing different antimicrobial metabolites like antifungal and antibacterial substances and plant systemic resistance. PGPB are similar in restoration and bioremediation of soils. | https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-18975-4_14 |
How to Be More Self-Compassionate
I hope you’ve been finding the Body Independence Week stories, articles, and daily activities helpful. I’ve mentioned self-talk and self-love in the past, and we’re going to get into that a bit more today. People often encourage others to be compassionate, to show empathy, and to be considerate… of others. However, how often do you hear someone suggesting we be all those things towards ourselves? Not too often in my experience. Today, we’re going to talk about how to be more self-compassionate with the idea of body independence in mind. Today’s activity will be a little deeper and little more real (which is why we cleared our heads yesterday)! Let’s get into it.
How to Be More Self-Compassionate
What is Self-Compassion?
Think first about when you feel compassion for another. You realize that their suffering, failure, and imperfection is part of the human experience we all share – that we all encounter these three aspects of life. According to Dr. Kristin Neff, self-compassion involves acting the same way towards yourself, especially when you are having a difficult time, fail, or notice something you don’t like about yourself. In short, cutting yourself some slack is a great idea.
The research that has been done so far suggests that being self-compassionate could be beneficial.
A study by researchers at Wake Forest University suggested that even a minor self-compassion intervention could influence eating habits. One group was given a lesson in self-compassion before participating in what they believed to be a food-tasting experiment. The instructor said, “I hope you won’t be hard on yourself. Everyone in the study eats this stuff, so I don’t think there’s any reason to feel real bad about it.”
At the conclusion of the study, the researchers found that women who were regular dieters or felt guilty about forbidden foods ate less after hearing the instructor’s reassurance. Those not given that message ate more. The women who felt bad engaged in emotional eating. The women who gave themselves permission to enjoy the sweets didn’t overeat.
The best part? Self-compassion can apply to more than emotional eating.
5 Steps You Can Take to Be More Self-Compassionate with Your Body
1. Talk positively about your body and avoid self-criticism.
Think about the way you talk about yourself and use challenging statements when self-criticizing. Think about what that criticism might sound like if said to someone else. Why speak that way to yourself?
We’ve been practicing speaking positively about our bodies; continue that! It’s time to change the way you think about and see yourself for the better. On the flipside, try to avoid the hurtful lanuage.
2. Be honest about and express your feelings.
When you’re feeling emotional, choose your language carefully to express how you feel. When you’re feeling down about your body, ask yourself why? Is it really stress, exhaustion, or something else? Effectively express what you feel, without bringing in the extremes or more drama.
It is time to recognize that being imperfect, failing, and experiencing life difficulties is inevitable. Be honest about how these moments make you feel, but try not to be so hard on yourself. Be gentle, warm, and compassionate.
3. Focus on your attributes OTHER than your appearance.
We tend to give others and ourselves compliments on physical appearance. “Cute dress!” “Your hair looks great.” You get the idea. Let’s flip that switch. Take time to acknowledging the things about your personality that you love.
Embrace your intelligence, bravery, creativity or strength. Look for ways to highlight these bits of you that make you who you are on the inside. Instead of spending your time worrying about your weight or how your body looks, focus on the aspects of you that are even more valuable – your heart and your nature, your truths.
4. Look for positive role models and outlets.
Tomorrow I’ll be sharing my Friday Favorites – Body Independence Edition that will have a lot of accounts, sites, etc. that feature body positive men and women. By now, we know Photoshop and social filters are laid over people’s best photos are often what gets posted. I encourage you to resist the temptation of self-comparison.
You know that phrase, “Don’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle or end?” It definitely applies here.
Don’t put these people on pedestals. Find role models who encourage you to love who you are, where you are. Look for people who empower you to choose and do great things in society.
5. Treat yo’ self.
If you’re feeling down about your body, do another activity that’s a treat yo’ self activity! Comfort yourself with a gesture. You can choose to focus on self-care or meditation. Sometimes people view self-love or self-care as self-indulgent. That’s a wrong assumption. At the end of the day, you need to focus on your happiness and how you feel.
A little mani-pedi, massage, or another activity that relaxes you could be just what you need to take a step back and re-evaluate. (Note here that I am saying activity.)
Today’s Activity:
By now, you should have declared your body independence, found your mantra for your body, challenged your self-perceptions, and done a freeing activity. Now that your mind has been cleared, think about the ways in which you’ve talked down to yourself and about your body. You’ve practiced challenging those statements the last couple days, I hope. Now, focus on being compassionate.
Take this self-compassionate quiz from one of the experts in the field, Dr. Kristin Neff. Then, try taking a self-compassion break while thinking about body image and body independence. It’s only 5-minutes long! You can also view some of the other exercises that help you work through that inner dialogue.
How will you be more self-compassionate? | http://www.groundedstrengthpt.com/how-to-be-more-self-compassionate/ |
Give examples of INGOs.
International non-governmental organization (INGOs) can be founded by private philanthropy.For example Greenpeace, The Red Cross, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and etc.
Nation-State became the dominant political form during the colonial period. Explain.
Explain the politics of assimilation and integration used to establish a national identity.
Assimilation: Assimilation is a process of cultural unification and homogenisation by which newly entering or subordinate groups lose their distinctive culture and adopt the culture of the dominant majority. Assimilation can be forced or voluntary.
For example: Seizure of lands forests and fisheries from minority groups and indigenous people and declaring them national resources.
Intergration: Integration is a process of cultural unification whereby cultural distinctions are relegated to the private domain and a common public culture is adopted for all groups. This usually involves the adoption of the dominant culture as the official culture.
For example: Adoption of state symbols celebrating the dominant groups history, heroes and culture reflected in such things as choice of national holidays or naming of streets etc.
In an industrial set-up, how can a manager make the worker produce more?
There are two ways of making workers produce more:
Read the passage given below and answer the following question:
Data from the National Sample Survey studies of 1999-2000 and from the 2001 Census of India reveal a sharp fall in the rate of employment generation (creation of new jobs) across both rural and urban areas. This is true for the young as well. The rate of growth of employment in the 15-30 age group, which stood at around 2.4 percent a year between 1987 and 1994 for both rural and urban men, fell to 0.7 for rural men and 0.3 percent for urban men during 1994 to 2004. This suggests that the advantage offered by a young labour force is not being exploited.
Strategies exist to exploit the demographic window of opportunity that India has today. But India’s recent experience suggests that market forces by themselves do not ensure that such strategies would be implemented. Unless a way forward is found, we may miss out on the potential benefits that the country’s changing age structure temporarily offers.
a) What is the demographic dividend?
b) Do you think that India is indeed facing a window of opportunity created by demographic dividend?
a) Demographic dividend –
It is a benefit flowing from the changing age structure - caused by a larger proportion of “workers” relative to “ non- workers ( dependants) “ ( 15 yrs to 64 yrs).
b) Yes, India is indeed facing a window of opportunity created by demographic dividend but India's market does not ensure such strategies. India is supposed to be benefitting from 'demographic dividend' as it -
-reduced birth rate,
-reduced the infant mortality rate,
-reduced crude death rate etc.
But, these strategies would be implemented when potential efforts made to achieve goals.
What is the role and significance of civil society in todays world?
Civil society is much broader than the domain of state and market. It is beyond the private domain of the family. It is public domain in which institutions and organisations are created voluntarily. It is the sphere of active citizenship, in which individuals take up social issues, try to influence the state or make a demand on it, pursue their collective interests or seek support for a variety of causes. Institutions like political parties, media, trade unions, NGOs, religious movements, etc. are the entities formed in civil society.
Relevance of civil society
What do you understand by the term westernization?
Explain the three key principles of social stratification with examples.
Key principles of social stratification :
Differentiate the sociological and economic perspective of the market.
Difference between sociological and economic perspective on markets:
(i) The economic approach is aimed at understanding and explaining how markets work in modern capitalist economies while the sociological approach is based on the phenomenon of adherence of interests of society or all people to the looking after the judicious way of an individual interest. Father of economics viz. Adam Smith himself has called this phenomenon or force as 'invisible hand'. He has argued that society overall benefits when individuals pursue their own self-interest in the market because it stimulates the economy and creates more wealth. Thus, sociological perspective observed markets as a social institution.
(ii) Economic perspective assumes economies/economy as a separate part of society because it has its own laws to guide. However, sociologists have attempted to develop an alternative way of studying economic institutions and processes within the larger social framework.
(iii) Economic prospects do a study on individual buyers and sellers and support economic philosophy or laissez-faire (i.e. noninterference of government in private enterprises) or free market while sociologists view markets specific cultural formation of social institutions. According to them, markets are often controlled by particular social groups or classes and they have specific connections to other institutions, social processes and structures. They say economies composing markets are socially embedded.
Encouraging cultural diversity is good policy from both the practical and the principled point of view. Justify the statement using India’s case as a Nation-State.
Encouraging cultural diversity – ( using case of India as a Nation-state)
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The invention relates to a multi-hop lossless teleportation method based on a non-maximum entangled chain channel. Alice and Bob, which do not directly share a quantum entanglement pair at the beginning, continuously carry out entanglement exchange through the help of p middle nodes; finally, a quantum entanglement channel is constructed; and the multi-hop teleportation process of the sender Alicetransmitting a single-particle multi-energy level unknown quantum state to the receiver Bob is completed. The method in the invention uses the non-maximum entangled chain channel; even the sender andthe receiver do not directly share the quantum entanglement pair, the quantum state information can be still transmitted between both the sides; and the requirement for constructing a complex quantumcommunication network can be satisfied; in the multi-hop lossless teleportation system in the invention, if the teleportation process is successfully executed, the information receiver Bob can obtainthe transmitted quantum state information; if the teleportation process fails, the information sender Alice can restore the transmitted unknown quantum state information; and the unknown quantum state information is not lost. | |
This course is designed to expand students’ boundaries, both in terms of dance performance and personal exploration of space and time. This is achieved through the two sections that compose the course: improvisation and composition and somatic practice.
Improvisation and composition is a consistent course throughout the semester and will focus on the dancer as a performer, investigating presence and theatricality. Students will be encouraged to incorporate a range of disciplines, including song and text, into their choreographies and will be exposed to an array of material that will expand their artistic expression. Through improvisation, students will develop solo and small-scale ensemble compositions.
Laban Movement Studies (30 hours)
Instructor: Sabine Fichter
Laban Movement Studies
In this course students will be introduced to Rudolf Laban’s ideas, particularly his theories of Choreutics (use of space) and Eukinetics (use of dynamics). Within the framework of the Laban principles guided exploration and improvisation will deepen the understanding of movement concepts and will enable students to generate genuine movement material. Compositional exercises will enhance their ability to reflect on choreographic processes and they will investigate the use of compositional strategies. The course provides students with an opportunity to develop more refined insight into the relationship between Laban themes such as Space, Effort, Shape and Body and choreographic content.
3 Credit Hours
Butoh, 30 hours
Instructor: Mitsuru Sasaki
Butoh was born in Japan in the sixties and derived from traditional Japanese dance and performance forms. Butoh encourages the occidental dancer to look beyond traditional assumptions about time and space in order to reach out to new ground in terms of performance.
Tarantismo and Popular Dance of the Mediterranean, 45 hours
Instructor: Gianni Bruschi
The Tarantella, in the south Italian tradition, can be subdivided into several dancing-musical forms: love dances, war dances, honour and expiation dances, and ritual dances. The very ancient origins of these dances date back to Dioniso’s cult, and the traditions of these dances reflect a cultural heritage of great human and artistic value.
The assonances and expressive roots of the cultures of the Mediterranean area inspired the creation of a teaching method that, besides developing techniques, will allow the participants to increase their physical, mental and emotional talent through body exercises, expressive movement, intense dance training, and the use of the voice and theatre. Through improvisation, transposition, and interpretation of proposed thematic contexts (Tarantismo, Dionysiac mysteries, Myth, Greek Tragedy), the course is based on the study of the expressive-technical practices common to the dances of the ritual and tribal culture of several people, revised for the contemporary scene. The students will work towards a performance that will be shown in a venue in the town of Arezzo.
3 Credit Hours
Contemporary Technique (44 hours)
Instructor: Sabine Fichter
This class aims to develop coordination, efficiency, ease, balance, strength, flexibility and physical neutrality to form a base for the articulate, creative and intelligent physical performer. The sessions cover general floor and center work, with an emphasis on thoughtful alignment practice and development of increased body awareness in a dynamic context.
Topics such as the use of Shape, Space, Dynamics and Rhythm deriving from the work of Rudolf Laban will be explored in relation to functional and expressive aspects of the performer’s movement potential and range. Movement principles and technical skills will be taught from a fundamental functional perspective to allow students to develop confidence and competence for expressive and artistic investigations.
Ballet (30 hours)
Instructor: Carolina Basagni
This class is based on principles Vaganova technique and will take place in a local Ballet School with Carolina Basagni, who studied at the American School of Ballet and was a prima ballerina at the London Festival Ballet.
3 Credit Hours
Philosophy of Art and Performance (44 hours)
Instructors: Emilija Dimitrijevic, PhD and Scott McGehee, PhD
The many paradoxes of the modern world, perhaps first clearly articulated by Rousseau, continue to provide a backdrop to all of our social activity: greater personal freedoms encased in a world of greater social regimentation, increased diversity of choice amidst an inexorable drive toward homogenization, increasing production of wealth along with the dramatic growth of poverty, vastly expanded communications providing the tools to increased isolation and so on.
These paradoxes often go unnoticed as they appear a natural part of life, but these phenomena had an historical development that in turn profoundly affected individual perception. Through an exploration of the development of mass production, the fragmentation and specialization of life and work, the development of the information age, the commodification of culture, the compression of time and space, the disassociation of the body and the aesthetic shifts that have accompanied these developments, this class will philosophically analyze the significance of each. We will think about art—about its nature and its important place in human life.
To facilitate this, the course brings together the writings of philosophers and the work of artists from a variety of domains. The goal is not to intellectualize art but to understand the intelligence that goes into it, to enrich our experiences of art, and to foster our own creative sensibilities. We will consider famous writings on art by thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Schiller, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Breton, Artaud, Eisenstein, Debord, Baudrillard, Foucault and others in relation to important works of literature, theatre, painting, music, architecture and film.
A philosophical analysis with help the artist situate both the work of art and the actual work of the artist in a broader framework where the role of social mediation between the artist, the work of art and the reception of the work is revealed. Likewise, the potential role of the artist and work of art as social mediation can emerge as a stimulus to the creative impulse itself.
The class format will be based on lectures and seminar-style discussions where each student will present a critical summary of at least one of the readings. A portion of the class, when possible, will include a critical examination of the student’s own experience in a particular workshop and may include Butoh dance, clown training for actors or other special workshops or master classes in which students participate.
3 Credit Hours
Italian Language, 46 hours
Instructors: Accademia Britannica, Arezzo
The first semester course will introduce students to basic grammatical structures of the Italian language, enabling students to acquire a basic vocabulary and speaking practice.
In the second semester course, students begin moving toward fluency in Italian by focusing on communication and the exposure to a non-stereotypical, complex and modern picture of Italy and Italians.
The readings will provide a point of departure for conversation, which will be an essential component of both classes. Aspects of Italian culture and society will be covered as well.
Wide Open Dancing: The Feldenkrais Method and Contact Improvisation, 20 hours
Instructor: Thomas Kampe
In this workshop we will use The Feldenkrais Method® as a resource for Contact Improvisation and partnering skills. Feldenkrais offers a relational perspective on movement, self-perception and somatic authority. By drawing on organic learning processes it supports a refined self-awareness, an improved skills base, and an ability to relate creatively to our environment. Through ‘Awareness through Movement’® lessons and touch-based ‘Functional Integration’® dialogues we will explore the three-dimensional movement potential of our core, to find freedom and greater possibilities in our shared movement choices as CI dancers.
QUICK DETAILS
Spring 2020: January 20 – April 24
Spring Break: April 30 – March 8
16 Total credit hours
Early Bird Discount: Enroll by July 1
to save 5% off total tuition on our Spring Semester! (See Program Fees and Billing for more information)
APPLY NOW for this program
Application Deadline October 1
PLEASE NOTE: The dates above include arrival and departure. The Accademia dell’Arte does not accommodate students before or after these dates.
The Accademia dell’Arte undergraduate program is fully accredited by Hendrix College. | https://www.dellarte.it/undergraduate-programs/dance-program/course-descriptions/ |
One of the foundational principles of our Agile practice is user-centered design (UCD). Our design team provides services aimed at optimizing digital products around what users actually want or need rather than expecting them to change their behavior to accommodate a product. Design activities at CivicActions unfold iteratively through the project lifecycle, encompassing research, content strategy, information architecture, interaction design, front end development, and visual design. The design guidelines we follow build on specific plays in the U.S. Digital Services Playbook.
- We focus on understanding the problem(s) first.
- We follow user*centered research and design methods.
- We work with skilled, experienced designers.
- We aim for continuous learning and discovery using iterative practices.
Research
As your partner, we strive to understand the problem we are tasked with solving before we begin design or development activities connected to a particular solution. We use a variety of methods, from story mapping to usability testing, to target and solicit feedback from real users, stakeholders, and subject-matter experts to better understand the problem, desired outcomes, and organizational priorities.
We call the research we conduct at the beginning of a project "Discovery" (see Discovery Services for more information about discovery goals). The timing and scope of additional (iterative) research activities are dependent upon specific project needs. Our current research methods and offerings include:
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Audiences & outcomes workshop. To create a successful digital experience, it's important that we gain insight into users and their goals. This workshop is an onsite, collaborative activity conducted with key stakeholders early in the project to identify, describe, and begin prioritization of audiences (user groups) and measurable outcomes (business objectives and user goals) for a digital project. A typical A & O workshop engages 5-10 stakeholders and ranges from 60-90 minutes.
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Story mapping. This is a powerful practice for talking about who does what (and why) when interacting with a digital product. Story mapping is a way to focus discussions around who will use the product and what they'll do with it later, after delivery. A story map helps to clarify overall project vision, builds shared understanding about the whole product, and can be used to formulate a release strategy that focuses on specific users and outcomes.
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Stakeholder interviews. These are semi-structured conversations conducted with individual project stakeholders, which includes anyone who has an interest in the project's success (including end users). Typical interviews are 30-45 minutes each. Most interviews will be conducted by phone or video chat, however we are also open to performing in-person interviews, if logistics allow. Even a small number of in-person interviews can provide rich information.
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Surveys. We often use online surveys to distribute and gather responses to user research questions. Surveys can be structured to address specific areas of interest as well as broader heuristics.
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User persona development. Personas are realistic representations of key audience segments that provide a clear picture of target users' expectations, goals and values. Personas are informed by interviews. They add a layer of real-world consideration to project conversations and can help to uncover the most-needed features and functionality and inform decisions about information architecture and development priorities.
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Usability testing/evaluation. The only tried and true way to find out if a digital product works is to test it. Usability testing is a technique for evaluating a product by putting in front of users. In a typical usability test, one user at a time is shown a website, prototype, sketch, or mock-up and asked to a) figure out what it is, and/or b) try to use it to do a typical task(s).
Content Strategy
The outcome of an effective content strategy is the creation, publication and governance of useful, usable content for your users. Our content strategists work with clients to explore the breadth and depth of their existing content, to plan for future content, and to clarify tone, voice and branding conventions. Content strategy also includes research into what types of content are most useful to your user base, enabling you to identify new materials to enhance your connection with those you serve.
Current content strategy offerings:
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Content audit. The best way to fully comprehend all existing content and to accurately access current content woes and assets is a comprehensive content audit. There are two kinds of audits: quantitative inventories and qualitative assessments. The inventory answers the question "What content is there?" and the assessment answers the question "Is it any good?"
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Content type design. The content strategist is responsible for creating content type definitions (eg. fields), which are used by engineers as guides when building custom content types in Drupal.
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Content templates. We use templates to validate content structure and content type design, using real example content provided by the client.
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Content modeling. A content model is a diagram or chart that documents the elements of and relationships between all the different types of content for a given project. Content models can be used to validate concepts with stakeholders, and they also encourage communication and collaboration between designers, developers, and content creators.
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Wireframes and page tables. Wireframes and page tables are used to convey content requirements defined and driven by messaging, business objectives and user goals, ensuring that content receives the attention it deserves at the right time during the project. Most information architecture documentation, page- and/or component-level documentation is captured in wireframes. Page tables identify and explain key content recommendations, taking wireframes to the next level. They include:
- content objective(s)
- key messages
- specific content recommendations
- source content quality
- guidelines for how to create and maintain the content
Information Architecture (IA)
Information architecture is closely related to content strategy. We use content strategy inputs along with user research and our extensive Drupal experience to make fundamentally sound and lasting recommendations for an effective IA. Our information architects will work with you to develop sustainable site structures, labeling systems, navigation systems and concepts, taxonomies, and search functionality. We use methods such as content inventories/audits, card sorting, flowcharts and wireframes to develop and communicate IA.
Interaction Design
Our designers and front-end developers understand how users and technology communicate. We pair this understanding with a range of tools and methods to create engaging, usable, accessible interfaces on both the front end and the content management side of your project.
"Mobile-first" design
When appropriate, we begin design activities with mobile-based interfaces, moving next to tablet and desktop variations as we account for all possible screen sizes and resolutions. The "mobile-first" approach ensures a solid mobile presentation and, perhaps more importantly, prompts important conversations with clients about content hierarchy and overall design priorities early in the process. The constraints inherent in narrow mobile screens bring these considerations to the fore.
Design Studio
When faced with a particularly tricky or complex design problem, our designers facilitate "design studios," collaborative sketching exercises that leverage the expertise and creative problem-solving abilities of the whole team. The output of a studio session is rapid concept generation embodied in low-fidelity sketches and/or rough wireframes. In our experience, collaborative design builds shared understanding and trust and increases feelings of ownership in the work being done. Designing together increases the design IQ of the entire team and gives designers a much broader set of ideas to draw upon as they refine the user experience.
Wireframes
We use wireframes to develop and communicate the backbone of the overall user experience. Wireframes are low-fidelity mockups that demonstrate where the major navigation and content elements appear on each page, prompting conversations and decisions about content hierarchy and workflows. They connect the site's information architecture to its visual design by establishing paths between pages and defining consistent ways to display particular types of information in the user interface. We often use wireframes in concert with story mapping, which allows us to build a comprehensive product backlog in a visual and holistic way. Wireframes do not include styles, colors, or graphics, though they do inform later visual styling.
Because we can generate them relatively quickly, low-fidelity wireframes allow us to get potential design solutions in front of users for review early and often. High-fidelity designs are time consuming and tedious, but wireframes tighten the feedback loop, ensuring that more time-consuming activities (design and development) are informed by user input. Wireframes can be used to test potential design changes at any scale (small, reusable, discrete design patterns or larger components comprised of other patterns).
Once low-fidelity wireframes are discussed, revised and approved, higher fidelity activities can take place. These activities may include the production of style guides, high-fidelity prototypes, and/or functional prototypes, depending on project needs and scope.
Visual Design
In alignment with the U.S. Digital Services Playbook, our visual designs are beautiful, simple and intuitive. During the last few years we have shifted away from the production of full-page design comps in favor of flexible, living style guides. Also known as pattern libraries, style guides are repositories of design rules, visual language components, and front-end code. Typical guides include color palettes, header styles, fonts, layouts and grids, imagery, buttons, icons, and navigation elements and patterns, providing a library of design elements that can be adapted for any device type.
Creating a style guide takes some time up front, but we have found that it will help you in several ways in the long run. The guide enables our front-end developers to standardize CSS, reducing code bloat and load time. Next, anyone joining the project in the future can refer to the guide for exact styles to use, ensuring that build times for new sections and pages will be faster. Third, design consistency is easier to maintain over time and, because of this, the code base is kept smaller. Finally, a style guide gives the team a shared design vocabulary, encouraging clearer communication and improved quality assurance. | http://handbook.civicactions.com/en/latest/07-sales-and-marketing/service-catalog/design-services/ |
Video filming by employing drones is being used for personal usage and industrial inspection. A flying agent has to detect the target, localize it, and determine the motion of chasing. However, some challenges may occur, such as occlusion from obstacles, motion blur, or color ambiguity with the background.
In a recent paper, a suggestion of the latter problem is offered. This is important in cases where detected targets need to be classified and improves the aesthetic of the film. In the paper, a detectability score metric is proposed. Using this information, a trajectory for chasing a dynamic object is generated.
In order to validate the algorithm, a walking actor with white clothes was filmed between piles of snow. The distance traveled was longer than with a plain chasing strategy, but the actor was maintained in front of the brick walls avoiding snow backgrounds, therefore the detectability of a target was higher.
This work investigates an efficient trajectory generation for chasing a dynamic target, which incorporates the detectability objective. The proposed method actively guides the motion of a cinematographer drone so that the color of a target is well-distinguished against the colors of the background in the view of the drone. For the objective, we define a measure of color detectability given a chasing path. After computing a discrete path optimized for the metric, we generate a dynamically feasible trajectory. The whole pipeline can be updated on-the-fly to respond to the motion of the target. For the efficient discrete path generation, we construct a directed acyclic graph (DAG) for which a topological sorting can be determined analytically without the depth-first search. The smooth path is obtained in quadratic programming (QP) framework. We validate the enhanced performance of state-of-the-art object detection and tracking algorithms when the camera drone executes the trajectory obtained from the proposed method. | https://foolscorner.com/2020/09/06/detection-aware-trajectory-generation-for-a-drone-cinematographer/ |
Thinking Differently About Spending
Buyer's remorse. We all know what it is because we've all experienced it at some point in our lives (well, hopefully!). It's that feeling of guilt that can set in after a sizable purchase. But why does this occur? Research will throw deeper ideas such as cognitive dissonance and the paradox of choice out there as explanations, but I tend to think that human beings simply don't like seeing their bank account take a hit. You've worked hard for that money, so it's only natural to feel sorrow when it departs.
While there are a few tricks out there to help deal with buyer's remorse, I've learned one practice that works best:
HAVE YOUR PASSIVE INCOME MAKE THE PURCHASE FOR YOU
That's it. When evaluating a purchase, set a rule that the purchase will not be made until your passive income can either pay for the item outright or cover the monthly payments. Then, when pulling the trigger on the purchase, it will most likely feel free or as if someone else has made the purchase for you. Either way, that buyer's remorse is nipped in the bud and your bank account doesn't take a haymaker.
As a side benefit, this type of spending mentality encourages good savings habits and the motivation to continue to build your passive income streams; both of which will build a solid financial foundation for a more liberating future. | https://www.ntellivest.com/talk/thinking-differently-about-spending |
When researching mangrove sequestration online, you may notice that the exact amount of CO2 mangroves sink varies from report to report. There are many reasons for this variation; Different scientific methodologies, studies focusing on different mangrove species or locations, the inclusion or exclusion of soil carbon content. The list goes on.
Commonly, environmental research projects find new data and use new methodologies regularly. Importantly carbon sequestration has gained more attention and scientific research has increased. Developing and evolving our understanding of mangroves.
But while reports may differ in their exact results, there is one thing they do agree on… Mangroves and Blue Carbon ecosystems are some of the most effective ways to draw down atmospheric carbon.
Up until 2021 Starboard have based our Mangrove planting on studies carried out by Pathein University and Yangon University. These studies reported that over the first 20 years of a Mangrove tree’s life 1 tonne of carbon dioxide is sequestered and stored within the tree and surrounding soil. We planted our first 500,000 mangroves to offset our emissions based on these numbers.
In 2021 Starboard began planting Mangroves under the Verified Carbon Standard. Meaning our mangroves now have their carbon sequestration officially recognised in the form of carbon credits. These credits are split 50/50 between Starboard and the Worldview International Foundation’s Livelihoods Program. Where they will fund and support the local communities protecting and planting the Mangroves. | https://blue.star-board.com/mangroves/our-carbon-footprint/offsetting-with-mangroves/ |
Ensure payouts are complete, accurate, and timely. Position is responsible for ensuring sales compensation data is reasonable when compared to trends and forecasts. Work closely with systems to pull data and analyze the data to determine root causes and impacts of changes. Communicate effectively with clients and other stakeholders regarding program administration-related topics.
Essential Functions:
- Ensure accuracy of sales compensation data for load into interfaces and resolve any exceptions for assigned Channel Group(s) prior to incentive payout.
- Support client needs through accurate and timely issue resolution of inquiries or disputes.
- Determine root cause of inquiry using incentive management software tools.
- Identify, recommend, and execute business process improvements and coordinate with Channel Group Lead and operational areas to align support for process needs and requirements.
- Validate Data conversion/transfer of data from a variety of platforms.
- Develop “what-if” scenarios for incentive plan designs. Interact with business partners to develop detailed requirements for new or amended incentive plan designs based on outputs from modeling.
- Analyze compensation and performance data timely and accurately by sourcing from the company systems and provide management with summary and key findings and conclusions.
- Work with business partners to maintain incentives.
- Use project management methodologies and project life cycle (including implementation procedures) processes to improve validations and payment quality.
- Use Business Intelligence tools and concepts to validate and adjust payment outcomes.
- Develop Subject Matter Expert knowledge for all Comp Programs for assigned Channel Group(s).
- Effectively support and communicate with clients based on needs with accurate and timely issue resolution of inquiries or disputes.
- Provide support for compliance/legal inquiries and requests and present findings.
- Prepare, present, and train Channel Comp Plan(s) as needed.
Requirements:
- 5-10 years of experience with Sales Compensation in any industry (healthcare and finance are a plus).
- 3-5 years of experience in data analysis, database design, or data mining.
- Proficient with Microsoft Office, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint (Teacher/Expert Level for at least one application in Office Suite).
- Demonstrated ability to work with staff and management at all levels of the Company.
- Experience with the principles of change management.
- Experience with the use of continuous improvement methodologies, tools, and techniques (data collections, process mapping, and data analysis) for solutions.
- Experience with multiple Sales Performance Management solutions.
- Working experience with Siebel or other CRM Systems.
- Knowledge and experience with Structured Query Language (SQL).
Required Education:
- Related Bachelor’s degree or additional related equivalent work experience. Degree in Finance, Economics, Statistics, Accounting is very helpful and preferred. | https://www.cloudteam.com/posting/6306 |
Bayesian phylogenetic estimation of fossil ages.
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Bayesian phylogenetic estimation of fossil ages.
Drummond, Alexei
;
Stadler, Tanja
Identifier:
http://hdl.handle.net/2292/44317
Issue Date:
2016-07
Rights:
Copyright: The author
Rights (URI):
https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm
Abstract:
Recent advances have allowed for both morphological fossil evidence and molecular sequences to be integrated into a single combined inference of divergence dates under the rule of Bayesian probability. In particular, the fossilized birth-death tree prior and the Lewis-Mk model of discrete morphological evolution allow for the estimation of both divergence times and phylogenetic relationships between fossil and extant taxa. We exploit this statistical framework to investigate the internal consistency of these models by producing phylogenetic estimates of the age of each fossil in turn, within two rich and well-characterized datasets of fossil and extant species (penguins and canids). We find that the estimation accuracy of fossil ages is generally high with credible intervals seldom excluding the true age and median relative error in the two datasets of 5.7% and 13.2%, respectively. The median relative standard error (RSD) was 9.2% and 7.2%, respectively, suggesting good precision, although with some outliers. In fact, in the two datasets we analyse, the phylogenetic estimate of fossil age is on average less than 2 Myr from the mid-point age of the geological strata from which it was excavated. The high level of internal consistency found in our analyses suggests that the Bayesian statistical model employed is an adequate fit for both the geological and morphological data, and provides evidence from real data that the framework used can accurately model the evolution of discrete morphological traits coded from fossil and extant taxa. We anticipate that this approach will have diverse applications beyond divergence time dating, including dating fossils that are temporally unconstrained, testing of the 'morphological clock', and for uncovering potential model misspecification and/or data errors when controversial phylogenetic hypotheses are obtained based on combined divergence dating analyses.This article is part of the themed issue 'Dating species divergences using rocks and clocks'.
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DOI: | https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/handle/2292/44317 |
We will effectively integrate the voices, choices, abilities and experiences of our students into our school programming. Students will be more successful when they are engaged in their learning in this manner. We will be more responsive to the strengths, interests, gifts, and lived realities of our students as we create and design our schools and classrooms.
We will ensure that every school offers a wide range of programming and creates a welcoming, inclusive learning environment for all students.
We will continually review and assess our policies, procedures and practices to ensure that they promote equity, inclusion and human rights practices.
We will review program, planning and accommodation needs to ensure equitable access, increased opportunities and enhanced learning outcomes for all students.
As the City of Toronto grows and changes, demographics shift, and the pressures on school infrastructure change. The Board uses a Long-Term Program and Accommodation Strategy (LTPAS) as a tool to help anticipate these shifts, and ensure that there is space for students where it is needed.
As we update the strategy, the Board will take steps to ensure underserved students are considered in the plan, and maintain our commitment to human rights, equity, accessibility and inclusion.
The TDSB offers a number of specialized programs, including French language programs and alternative schools. The Board will undertake a review of the admissions procedures and auditions associated with these programs, and what barriers might be preventing underserved students from accessing them.
In order to meet the different interests and learning styles of our students, the TDSB must keep updating course offerings and delivery methods. The Board will conduct a review of existing programming offering in secondary schools and scan for gaps based on feedback obtained through student surveys, and explore the expansion of new delivery models, such as virtual high schools, experiential learning and co-op programming.
The Board is working to remove physical and attitudinal barriers that prevent students and staff with disabilities from accessing services. These efforts will include developing a new set of accessibility principles and standards that are aligned with the Board’s equity policy and with Ontario Human Rights Commission disability rights objectives. They will also include new resources for staff and evaluations of the effectiveness of existing training strategies.
Human rights principles will be infused into the work of the Board, in every school, in every workplace, in order to eliminate embedded systemic barriers that hurt disadvantaged students the most. The Board will also commit to investigate and resolve cases brought to the Human Rights Office in a timely and effective manner.
In order to achieve our goals in equity and anti-oppression, our workforce needs to reflect and understand our diverse population at all levels. To that end, the Board will be reviewing its hiring and promotion practices, and enhancing recruitment of Indigenous and other racialized staff.
The board will also review and refresh its demographic questionnaires from application, to point of hire and promotion, in order to collect data, and inform policies. And staff responsible for hiring will engage in professional learning designed to remove barriers for racialized and underrepresented groups. | https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Leadership/Boardroom/Multi-Year-Strategic-Plan/Provide-Equity-of-Access-to-Learning-Opportunities-for-All-Students |
The Miller Gorrie Center, OIT Building, and Facilities Management complex all provide showers/changing facilities for bike commuters. In addition, showers/lockers maybe accessed by students, and member faculty/staff, at both the Recreation and Wellness Center and the Martin Aquatic Center. A variety of other locations around campus provide covered, lit, and patrolled outdoor bicycle storage options for residents and commuters.
Most major buildings have bicycle racks located within close proximity to at least one building entrance. Residence halls also have convenient access to bike parking. In addition, the university's design standards call for all new buildings to have bicycle parking located next to the building.
While not a continuous network of dedicated bicycle/pedestrian paths, Auburn does maintain over 13 miles of bike facilities, including on and off-road paths. In addition, the Campus Master Plan takes into consideration the need for multi-modal transportation.
War Eagle Bike Share, a campus contracted service, provides GPS-enabled bike share services to the university. This program allows students, faculty, staff, and the general public to utilize any of the bikes free of charge for a 2-hour rental period, and allows additional renewals upon return to the kiosks or extended rentals for a fee. The bikes may be used both on and off campus.
Auburn Outdoors, a program of Campus Recreation and Wellness, also offers 36 bikes of varying types for 1/2 day-1 week rental periods. In addition, any member of the Auburn community may also utilize the City of Auburn's bike share program, which provides free bike rentals for up to 2 weeks.
Auburn University's Tiger Transit system provides transit services during fall, spring, and summer semesters, as well as offering Gameday transit. This service typically provides 2.5 million rides per year, removing approximately 5,000 cars from campus. Student fees that partially pay for Tiger Transit are included in tuition and allow students to ride fare free, and faculty and staff can ride Tiger Transit at no cost for on-campus routes, and may purchase a pass for off-campus routes. The service also offers free transit to 90,000+ spectators during Auburn University home football games.
In addition to offering Tiger Transit services, Auburn University also provides support for the Lee Russell Public Transit (LRPT) by supporting the ridership of Auburn students, faculty, and staff. Any AU-affiliated individual may schedule transit services on the LRPT free of cost within the Auburn/Opelika area due to the university's support.
Auburn University uses Zimride to facilitate ride-matching services for the university community (students, faculty, and staff).
Enterprise CarShare is a membership-based car sharing program that offers students 18 years and older, faculty, and staff membership for a $35 yearly fee and the ability to reserve a CarShare online for hourly or daily rental fees. CarShare vehicles are available in two locations on campus.
There is 1 Level 2 charging station located within the parking lot of the Auburn University Hotel and Convention Center. In addition, the lower level of the Stadium Parking Deck has 9 level 1 ports and 1 level 2 port.
Telecommuting is allowed on a case-by-case and unit-by-unit basis. A supervisor works with individual employees to arrange a telecommuting program that ensures job responsibilities are met.
Condensed work weeks are allowed on a case-by-case and unit-by-unit basis. A supervisor works with individual employees when asked, to arrange a workable condensed week that ensures job responsibilities are met.
A number of departments on campus offer incentives to promote the use of sustainable transportation modes. For instance, Parking Services conducts prize drawings for Zimride Commuter Calendar users that meet a certain point threshold (you earn more points for using sustainable transportation modes). The employee Healthy Tigers program also offers a number prize opportunities for employees through events related to Bike to Work Week and the yearly Travel with Care safety campaign, including bicycle-safety gear. The Office of Sustainability also provides pedestrian/bike safety gear as prizes/incentives at various events throughout the academic year. | https://reports.aashe.org/institutions/auburn-university-al/report/2016-01-11/OP/transportation/OP-21/ |
This won’t be as citation-laden as many of my posts on academia are, so please feel free to ask if you’d like references. Mostly, though, I encourage you to sit back and enjoy the rant.
As a scholar, I engage in a lot of qualitative research, ranging from fairy-tale interpretation to studying the numinous in dance. I love me some qualitative research – but even then, I’d like to note that there are methods, theories, and disciplinary frameworks to keep us from wandering off too far into hyper-subjective la-la land.
I really loathe bad scholarship (view one of my rants on the topic here), but obviously that’s a somewhat subjective judgment. I get annoyed when people make erroneous assumptions, such as that everyone is equally knowledgeable about folklore (you’re not), or that all folklorists are good for is writing children’s books (we’re not). Ungrounded assumptions have no place in the academy, in my view.
So, with those two admissions up front, I have to say: I really hate it when stuff that is not empirically, well, anything gets discussed as though it’s valid in an academic context. I am all for personal exploration when it comes to spirituality, religion, and Jungian-type analysis. Hell, I’ve published on Tarot (though I’ll note that it was a historical overview of Tarot iconography in light of feminist spirituality, so, something that can be examined in terms of evidence and theories). I’m not saying that all inward-looking work is useless, or irrelevant, just that I dislike seeing it in a university setting.
Again, I like qualitative research. I think it adds a necessary complement to quantitative research. I love working in the humanities as well as the social sciences. I think art is incredibly important. I recognize that there are subjective components in the classroom, and those are often incredibly important to the student’s overall learning experience. But if there’s not some empirical aspect to what you’re doing, if there’s not some way to replicate the study or teach it or even to use language accurately to define or discuss it, then I don’t want it in official academic discourse.
It’s entirely possible that I’m missing something here, or overlooking some important function that “woo” stuff serves as a complement to the rest of what happens in the university. But mostly I’m annoyed that this stuff gets airtime when it doesn’t really stand up to the same rigor that the rest of what we’re supposed to engage with does. | https://www.patheos.com/blogs/foxyfolklorist/keep-your-woo-out-of-my-u/ |
Subtitled in 20 languages and narrated by Richard Gere, Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops is a series of five short films, featuring twelve leading climate scientists, that explores how human-caused emissions are triggering nature’s own warming loops. We submit the five shorts to your festival (total 57:34) for screening of any or all of the films.
The film series had its official launch with the Dalai Lama, Greta Thunberg and world-renowned scientists in a webcast, “The Dalai Lama with Greta Thunberg and Leading Scientists: A Conversation on the Crisis of Climate Feedback Loops.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9GXgOMMeTg
While scientists stay up worrying about this most dangerous aspect of climate change, the public has little awareness or understanding of feedback loops. Climate change discussion at all levels of society largely leaves out the most critical dynamic of climate change itself. It is urgent we remedy this.
The first film in the series, Introduction (13:09), provides an overview of the feedback loop problem. The four other short films explore important climate feedback mechanisms: Forests (14:10), Permafrost (10:55), Atmosphere (8:45) and Albedo (10:35).
Greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, such as carbon dioxide and methane, are warming the planet. This warming is then setting in motion dozens of feedback mechanisms, which then feed upon themselves, as well as interact with each other and spiral further out of control. These processes are rapidly accelerating climate change.
An example of a climate feedback loop is the melting of the permafrost. In the Northern Hemisphere, permafrost makes up nearly 25% of the landmass. As heat-trapping emissions warm the Earth, this frozen tundra is melting. As it does, large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane are released, which further warm the planet, melting more permafrost in a self-perpetuating loop.
Human activity kicks off these feedback loops, but once set in motion, they become self-sustaining. The danger is that this process reaches a tipping point beyond which it is extremely difficult to recover. This is why it is urgent to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so we can slow, halt and even reverse these feedbacks and cool the planet. | https://documentaryshortfilmfestival.com/2021/07/21/short-film-climate-emergency-feedback-loops-13min-usa-documentary/ |
Chronic Stress: the Bad Kind of Stress
In our present western society, we are commonly encountered by prolonged psychological stress. Now, stress gears up the bodily systems and releases hormones to improve memory, enhance immunity and increase muscular function (see: Acute Stress: the Good Kind of Stress). But when the stress is prolonged, the results are different. Memory is impaired, immune function decreases and excess energy is stored as fat.
Results of Chronic Stress
When the stress systems are continually and chronically stimulated, there are unpleasant consequences:
- Overexposure to cortisol can lead to weakened muscles and suppression of several bodily functions.
- Elevated epinephrine production increases blood pressure.
- In combination, increased levels of cortisol and epinephrine can contribute to chronic hypertension, abdominal obesity and atherosclerosis.
- Long exposure to adrenaline increases the activity of chemicals that contribute to inflammation and potentially lead to atherosclerosis, arthritis and perhaps even the aging of the brain.
Stress-related Disorders
A wide variety of stress-related disorders has been identified by scientists. These include:
- Colitis
- High blood pressure
- Clogged arteries
- Impotency and loss of sex drive in males
- Irregular menstrual cycles in females
- Adult-onset diabetes
- Possibly even cancer
- Overexposure to glucocorticoids increases the number of neurons damaged in a stroke
- Prolonged exposure to stress hormones before or immediately after birth, can lead to a decrease in brain size and a lower number of neurons.
Effects on the immune and cardiovascular system
- Immune system: while acute stress enhances immune function, by decreasing inflammation, autoimmunity and allergic reaction, glucocorticoid overexposure can be harmful because it increases tumor growth.
- Cardiovascular system: stressful experiences have a direct effect on heart rate and blood pressure. In the case of acute stress this helps the body respond to the stressor. But prolonged exposure to stress results in accelerated atherosclerosis and an increased risk of a heart attack.
Effect of Personality
The people at greatest risk of developing a stress-related disorder are those that are hostile, irritated by trivial things and exhibit signs of struggle against time and other challenges. This has been tested by exposing two groups of people (those with hostile personality traits and those with non-hostile traits) to some form of harassment. People with high hostility scores showed a much larger invrease in muscle blood flow and blood pressure, along with a slower recovery of these stress-induced effects. They also showed a larger increase in levels of stress hormones.
So, if you have personality traits that indicate a high hostility score, learning to reduce or avoid anger could be important to avoid cardiovascular and other bodily damage. | https://knoji.com/article/chronic-stress-the-bad-kind-of-stress/ |
Cultural anthropology is the comparative exploration of diverse beliefs, practices and material culture of contemporary human societies throughout the world. Inherent to this study is consideration of the historical, political, economic and environmental contexts in which cultures operate. The variety of ways humans define their place in the universe, interact with their physical, social and spiritual environments, and endow their existence with meaning and order are at the core of cultural anthropological inquiry. In this course, students will learn the basic concepts, theories and methods used by anthropologists studying people and culture. Specific topics include cross-cultural patterns of subsistence, marriage and family, social organization, economics, politics, religion, globalization and culture change and the application of anthropology to contemporary social problems. | http://elon.smartcatalogiq.com/en/2018-2019/Academic-Catalog/Courses/ANT-Anthropology/100/ANT-112 |
Helped me turn my ideas on metrics from fuzzy to specific and actionable. R&D can be a company’s biggest discretionary expense. We had better achieve a proactive ability to measure impact and efficiency. — VP, Global Programs & Portfolios, Invitrogen Corp.
Past News Releases
NEEDHAM, Mass. (PRWEB) December 28, 2019
9 KPIs That Capture Innovation Performance
The 9 KPIs in this program measure “overall corporate performance,” above and across the details of individual project investments and cost center departments. All nine are all strong candidates for innovation leader and manager dashboards. These 9 KPIs come very close to capturing the collective business and financial performance of investments in R&D and product development across most industries.
Currently there is a tussle going on between the accounting profession, the SEC, and public corporations regarding Non-GAAP KPIs. CEOs and CFOs are displaying metrics such as “% New Product Sales” and “Return On Innovation” alongside the required GAAP metrics in their 10K and Annual Report, and related footnotes. Companies are increasingly creating Non-GAAP metrics that suit their needs. The SEC argues that these “creative metrics” mislead analysts and investors. Yet, it is these Non-GAAP metrics that analysts and investors seek to find as it gives them an analytical edge over GAAP metrics alone. Eight of the nine metrics in this program are Non-GAAP metrics.
8 Metrics That Quantify R&D Spending Performance
The 8 KPIs in this program are wide-ranging, from internal C-Level and program measures to indicators used by Wall Street. Each KPI employs R&D Spending in its calculation in some way. The program covers investments for programs, spending allocation between and across business units, upper and lower limits to spending, corporate performance, and metrics that use R&D Spending in relation to stock price and market capitalization. This unique program involves significant secondary research focused on measuring R&D spending performance.
Years go by between the time a decision to develop a product is made and the time that commercial results are measurable in the marketplace. However, it is that initial decision to spend money on R&D and/or Product Development that generates those market results (or not) years later. R&D Spending is the common thread across all other development activities. Big data correlations can now codify the business and financial results across the 8-15+ years that go by from first spend to actual ROI. In the years ahead, with many more companies using big data analytics across longer durations of time, executives will be increasingly guided by these data as they make spending decisions and allocations to both new and existing initiatives. And, how much total money to spend each year.
7 Measures To Value Product Design
The 7 KPIs in this program focus on measures that characterize or quantify good design in the eyes of customers and users. While some measures also have utility for internal purposes such as product quality, reliability, and cost, this program centers on how customers, users, markets, and the investor community regard the products and their value.
Great product design, inclusive of Customer Experience Design (Cx), User Interface Design (UI), User Experience Design (UX), Industrial Design (ID), Sustainable Design, Digital Design, and other techniques, is now proven to measurably improve the ROI on products. And, if design is elevated to become a true company competency, it can boost corporate valuations to levels that are twice that of competitors. These seven measures critically examine the contributions of product design, from inception through early commercialization. Together, these measures enable a hard look at product design quality, performance, and financial impact in our new age of near continuous design evolution.
Program Leader
Founded in 1986, Bradford Goldense’s company has consulted to over 200 medium and large companies. Some 500 companies have participated in GGI’s educational events. Since 1998 the company has performed primary and secondary research on R&D, product development, innovation, and metrics. For twenty years, Brad also taught in the weekend executive Masters in Engineering Management program at The Gordon Institute at Tufts University. Mr. Goldense is a cited author in over three-hundred publications, many of which may be found in Google Scholar and ResearchGate.
Share article on social media or email: | https://www.spaceportbar.com/index.php/2019/12/28/innovation-metrics-for-rd-and-product-development-continue-to/ |
Designed to provide students with travel experiences to contribute to their understanding of the history of a particular area of the world.
A brief survey of ancient Near Eastern civilization, history of Greek and Roman peoples, feudalism, medieval church, crusades, Renaissance and Reformation.
The Age of Absolute Monarchy, the French Revolution and Napoleon, Age of Nationalism and the two World Wars.
A survey of the historical interaction of the specific civilizations which together comprise non-Western world civilization in their intellectual, political, economic, and religious aspects.
A concise review of the history of Latin America from the Aztec and Inca to contemporary affairs. Designed to introduce the student to highlights of political, social, economic, and cultural themes which have coalesced to distinguish these societies in this important part of the Third World.
American history covering the period from 1492 to 1865.
American history covering the period from 1865 to present.
Topics are studied which are not assigned or covered in other courses in the department. The format of this course will vary depending on the topic, instructor and the needs of the students.
This course will examine the major tribes of the Great Plains from their earliest occupation on the plains to the present day. While we will examine archaeological, anthropologic, and ethnographic materials, the emphasis will be on the historical record of the late eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. We will examine Indian-White relations as well as the development of Native American societies.
This course will look at history through the lens of feature films produced in the United States and abroad. Particular emphasis will be placed on how historical representation and interpretation has changed with each generation of film makers. The topics of this course will vary depending on the instructor and the needs of the students.
This course seeks to introduce students to different themes in the history of the evolution of sea power.
This course is designed to introduce students to the field of military history. Students will tackle the debate on "old" vs. " new" military history. In particular students will examine the impact of social studies or the evolution of military history. A considerable portion of the course will also be spent on examining military history in a non-western setting.
This course examines the cultural, political, economic, and social developments of the High Middle Ages, a period of dramatic and important change in the western world, focusing on the religious reformation of the eleventh century, the twelfth-century renaissance, and the rise of towns and urban commerce, and the growth of centralized governments.
An examination of the historian's craft that considers philosophical and interpretive issues central to the discipline, major schools of interpretation, and the process of historical research and writing.
This course examines social organization and cultural institutions that shaped the western world between late antiquity and the Renaissance, focusing on the interaction between major institutions, such as family and religion, and the lives of medieval women and men.
A history of women in Europe from prehistoric times to the present.
A history of women in America from the colonial period to the present.
Examines the development of Colonial British America from the first English explorers to the French and Indian War.
Examines the American Revolution from its origins through its culmination in the adoption and implementation of the Constitution.
Explores the expansion and development of the American nation from the Louisiana Purchase through the Mexican-American War.
Political, social, economic, and cultural dynamics of Amerindian civilizations and colonial Latin America up to independence.
Examination of political, cultural, social, and economic dynamics of Latin American nations and region from independence to present.
Causes leading to the Civil War, the war itself, and the attempt to reunify the social, economic, and political framework of America.
In-depth study of a country or region in Latin American or an in-depth analysis of a specific topic of historical or contemporary importance in understanding Latin American history and culture.
This course will analyze the primary social, cultural, and political forces that helped create and sustain the vast colonial empires in Asia and Africa.
This course will examine the major social, cultural and political forces that helped create colonial India.
This course aims to introduce students to the complex cultural, political and economic factors that created the 'nation' of India as it is known today. The course begins in 1947 when India grained independence from Britain. It will examine in detail the major issues that have helped mold the history of contemporary India.
This course is designed to engage students in an intense study of theories of ethnic conflict. Students will also be involved in a comparative study of the militarization of ethnic conflict in various regions of the world.
The rise and expansion of the British Empire from its earliest beginnings to the present.
The motivations for European expansion and exploration overseas from 1300 until 1800 and the impact that European contact with the rest of the world had upon the societies of the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe.
The political, economic, religious and social development of Europe from the Crusades through the era of the European Reformation.
History of Europe from the Thirty Years' War to the French Revolution with special emphasis on the Enlightenment.
The causes of the French Revolution and the political, social, and intellectual impact of the Revolution upon western Europe.
This course will examine the development of Pacific Rim nations from 1500 to the present. While the entire region will be studied, the emphasis will be on the cultural, political, and economic relations between the United States, Japan, China, and Russia as well as the colonizing powers of Spain, France, and Great Britain.
Constitutional history of the United States to 1860.
Continuation of History 473. Period covered is from 1860 to the present.
This course emphasizes the professional development of the student in the area of the student's professional interest. Grade will be recorded as credit/no credit.
Examines the origins and development of American social, political, and religious ideas through the Civil War.
Examines the origins and development of American social, political, and religious ideas after the Civil War.
This course will emphasize the natural environment of the plains, human attempts to settle and utilize the region's resources, and the role of Nebraska and the Great Plains in United States History. Recommended for elementary teachers.
This course will examine the process of European frontier expansion from the 1500s to the point at which the new nations of North America had basically developed both the geographic boundaries and political structures that essentially ended territorial expansion on this continent. We will examine not only the United States' frontier, but also those of Spain, Mexico, France, Britain, and Russia in North America, providing a chance for students to compare various aspects of the frontier in different regions under different authorities. Major themes in the course will stress the interaction between Whites and Indians, as well as European efforts to utilize the continent's natural resources.
This course will examine the development of the western United States. After a very short review of western settlement prior to 1850s, the course will examine the tremendous development that occurred in the West in the later half of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. The course will then examine the changes in the West that were brought about by the New Deal and World War II, and finish by looking at the particular problems that face the West since 1945. Major emphasis will be given to ethnic interaction in the West, resource exploitation/development, and the emergence in the West of new industries.
An analysis of the transformation of an agrarian America into an urban-industrial society, 1870-1898.
The rise of America as a world power and the problems of reform and industrial expansion in early twentieth century America.
A detailed study of some of the more important aspects of the history of the period.
A general survey of the political, social, economic, diplomatic, and cultural developments of Russian civilization from 800 A.D. to 1917.
The period from the French Revolution and Napoleon to World War I.
This course will explore the commonalities and divergences between fascism, communism, and nationalism and their twentieth century manifestations. After investigating the intellectual roots, social bases and key elements of these ideologies, we will examine their concrete manifestations in Europe, including Hitler's Germany, Soviet communism under Stalin, and postwar Yugoslavia.
Cultural and political aspects of the history of Europe since World War I.
The 1917 revolution and the development of the Soviet state with an emphasis on domestic policies.
While we will survey the nineteenth century, the thrust of the course will be on the post World War I period. Here issues such as nationalism, big power rivalry, modernization, the peasantry, the political left and the extreme right will be closely examined for the period up to World War II. Then World War II with the crucial postwar period of Sovietization will be covered. Finally, we will consider the Revolutions of 1989 and their aftermath.
The purpose of this course is to allow students to explore a selected topic in depth. Topics will be selected in accordance with the research expertise of the instructor. Students will spend the first seven weeks of the course reading secondary literature on the topic. In the final eight weeks, students will design, research, and write a twenty-page original research paper. They will present their work, in oral and written form, to the seminar.
Independent readings in history for the advanced undergraduate. Readings to be selected and directed by a history faculty member. Students wishing to take this course must obtain written approval in advance from the department chair. | http://aaunk.unk.edu/catalogs/04-06cat/crshist.htm |
5 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Using Nonstick CookwareWhen used and stored properly, nonstick cookware utensils are a handy kitchen tool. These pans are easy to use (especially for the novice chef), and are particularly easy to clean. However, how to use non stick pan first time? when used incorrectly, all the Nonstick pans are easily destroyed.
From cooking to cleaning, here are five common mistakes people encounter when using non-stick cooking tools - with the best tips on how to avoid these pitfalls!
1. Cooking on high heatCooking on high heat should be avoided for some reason. First, bad temperatures increase for non-adhesive coating on cooking utensils. Over time exposure to high temperatures will worsen. Also, depending on the type of non sticky layer in the pan, cooking can result in high heat to release unhealthy smoke, which can be toxic.
Follow this advice: Cook in medium heat with non-stick cooking utensils.
Read Also: Best Burned burnt flavors Bengali Recipe
2. Use nonstick spray sprayUsing non-stick cooking spray on non-stick cookware is less important. Here's a problem - after a while the pool pan gets a sticky buildup of spray that does not burn during cooking. It usually happens around the pan. Removing this adhesive film requires some heavy grease and is not easy to happen.
Follow this advice: Use full fat, such as oil or butter, instead of cooking spray.
3. Failure during fryingLike steel iron, it is helpful to prepare and re-prepare non-stick cooking utensils. Not only will it help you to strengthen your time, it will also improve the way the dishes are cooked in these foods.
Follow this Advice: To illuminate the pan, rinse and thoroughly dry, then use a paper towel to rub one teaspoon of oil (whatever type you would do) in the pan. It is also a good idea to recycle the pan by throwing it, it is a small amount of oil every hour before use.
4. Use sharp objects or abrasives anywhere near a panIt applies to cooking and cleaning. Use sharp tools such as knives or metal knives to stir or remove the food from the pan, including things like hard oil to clean, can excrete and damage the paint. Once the paint on the coils is accidentally starting to remove or put on, it's best to replace it. does olive oil ruin non stick pans.
Follow this Advice: For cooking, stick sticks or silicone spatula to stir the food. When cleaning time, use a sponge or soft or non-metallic brush.
5. Clean the nonstick cookware in the dishwasherIt is true that many non-stick pans claim to be safe in the dishwasher, when to throw away non stick pans but high-hot water and harsh detergents are not good for non-sticky layers. Over time, this will result in a more rapid aggravation of the pan than washing your hands.
Follow this advice: Wash non-stick cooking utensils. It can help your tank last longer.
Friends, if you like Common 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Using Nonstick Cookware tips, know the comments. | https://www.techlifeware.com/2019/02/5-common-mistakes-to-avoid-when-using-nonstick-cookware.html |
The invention relates to a running machine. The running machine comprises a running machine body, an electromagnetic device and permanent magnet devices, wherein the electromagnetic device and the permanent magnet devices can generate magnetic fields which attract each other; the permanent magnet devices are fixed on feet of a user; the electromagnetic device is fixed in the running machine body;the electromagnetic device is electrically connected with the running machine body; after the user wears the permanent magnet devices, starting of the electromagnetic device can be controlled througha man-machine interaction device on the running machine body; after the electromagnetic device is started, the electromagnetic device and the permanent magnet devices generate magnetic fields which attract each other; the permanent magnet device can produce downward tension to legs of the user, therefore, original sandbags and lead pigs are replaced, and a function of running with load can be fulfilled on the running machine. | |
Social impact theory Latane's social impact theory posits that three factors influence the extent to which we conform to group norms: However, the size of the group only affects conformity to an extent—as a group expands past 3—5 members, the effect levels off. Unanimity When a group is unanimous in its support of a norm, an individual feels greater pressure to follow suit. In Asch's study, when even one other confederate dissented from the majority and provided the correct answer, the participant answered incorrectly on fewer trials about a fourth less.
Open in a separate window The paper focuses on social influence as a mechanism shaping behavior. We do not claim our provisional list of mechanisms in Table 1 is exhaustive; as noted above, many types of influence are possible. Nevertheless, the list encompasses a wide range of mechanisms operating at multiple levels, and will serve to illustrate how these might be modeled.
Social influence requires that there be at least two units interacting with one another.
Eight of these techniques employ what might be considered social influence mechanisms: Many of these techniques are either explicitly drawn from, or can be tied to, well-established behavioral theories: These behavior change techniques are largely drawn from the clinical psychology and health behavior within the context of dyadic therapist-patient interactions.
While therapeutic relationships may serve as a model of one type of social interaction, social influence clearly extends beyond dyadic interactions to relationships between individuals and larger social and political systems.
Kelman proposed a framework of influence at operating at multiple levels, with three processes compliance, identification, and internalization linking individual behavior to norms outside the individual, shaped by the structure of social interaction We therefore turn to social networks as a means of understanding this structure.
Social network models We imagine that many types of norms arise from the local social environment, especially social networks. In turn, norms help shape and re-enforce social networks.
In what follows, we focus on actor-by-actor 1-mode networks.
Networks are typically represented as graphs. Actors in a network are referred to as nodes, and relationships including interactions between nodes are represented as edges 27 If the network is egocentric, all real-world information about the network is collected from, and revolves around, the ego; an example is the General Social Survey GSS If alters are also egos, then the network is sociometric; the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health Add Health is a well known example Specification of interaction without a network structure is also possible, and in many situations is plausible The lowest level of interaction is the dyad, comprise of only two agents.
Thus, influence may vary in a manner analogous to infectivity factors in infectious disease Focusing on dyads alone is only appropriate for models where exogenous ties outside the dyad can be ignored; researchers are advised to address this question before conducting analyses solely at the dyadic level, since this implies the absence of a larger network The next level of interaction is the triad, comprised of three agents.Psychologists are studying how social norms, the often-unspoken rules of a group, shape not just our behavior but also our attitudes.
Psychologists are studying how social norms, the often. Analysis is based upon fathers who are ages with their own (biological, adopted or step-) children less than 18 years of age in the household; fathers who . With member countries, staff from more than countries, and offices in over locations, the World Bank Group is a unique global partnership: five institutions working for sustainable solutions that reduce poverty and build shared prosperity in developing countries.
From a sociological perspective, social norms are informal understandings that govern the behavior of members of a society. Social psychology recognizes smaller group units, such as a team or an office, may also endorse norms separately or in addition to cultural or societal expectations.
In other words, norms are regarded as collective representations of acceptable group conduct as well as. Social norms refer to attitudes and behaviors that are not only prevalent in a society but are also socially dependent1.
Social Social network studies offer invaluable insights into norms by demonstrating how the attitudes and behaviors of socially connected. The results of this review indicate that no substantive meaningful benefits are associated with social norms interventions for prevention of alcohol misuse among college/university students.
Although some significant effects were found, we interpret the effect sizes as too small, given the measurement scales used in the studies included in this review, to be of relevance for policy or practice. | https://jigaqawidizuqic.grupobittia.com/an-analysis-of-social-norms-49399ua.html |
Which state has the longest shoreline?
Table
|State or territory||Method 1 (CRS)|
|Coastline||Rank|
|Alaska||6,640 mi (10,690 km)||1|
|Florida||1,350 mi (2,170 km)||2|
|California||840 mi (1,350 km)||3|
What state has the most lake shoreline?
Wondering what state has the most shoreline including lakes? The state of Alaska has the most shoreline of any U.S. state at 33,904 miles, this includes both Pacific and Arctic shoreline.
Which freshwater lake has the longest shoreline in the world?
Spanning the border from Minnesota into the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba, Lake of the Woods is an enormous body of water over 68 miles long, 59 miles wide, with 25,000 miles of shoreline – the world’s longest lake shoreline.
Which state has more ocean shoreline than California?
Hawaii is practically all shoreline, but because it is so small, it only has 1,052 miles of ocean shoreline and 229 miles of lakeshore.
California, Florida, and Hawaii Shoreline vs. Minnesota Shoreline.
|California|
|Ocean||3,427|
|Lakes||32,050|
|Total||35,477|
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Does Kentucky have more shoreline than Florida?
The Kentucky Southern Shorelines Region has more miles of freshwater shoreline than Florida’s entire coastline – and it ripples peacefully along Dale Hollow Lake, Green River Lake and Lake Cumberland.
Which state has the most freshwater?
U.S. Water Area State Rank
|Rank||Water Area ▼||State / Population|
|1.||94,743.02 sq mi||Alaska / 728,300|
|2.||40,174.58 sq mi||Michigan / 9,889,024|
|3.||12,132.93 sq mi||Florida / 19,361,792|
|4.||11,338.56 sq mi||Wisconsin / 5,724,692|
What is the deepest lake in the United States?
At 1,943 feet (592 meters), Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States and one of the deepest in the world.
Who has the most shoreline in the US?
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the state with the most shoreline is Alaska, with 33,904 miles. Second place is Florida, with 8,436 miles of coastline. Third is Louisiana’s 7,721 miles.
Which state is the longest?
The longest state in the United States of America is Alaska, which is approximately 1,400 miles by 2,700 miles.
Which is the smallest lake in the world?
Welcome to Liaoning. Benxi Lake in Liaoning Province was lately approved by Guinness World Records as “the world’s smallest lake”. The lake was named after Benxi City where it is located. As a natural lake, Benxi Lake is only 15 m² large, yet the water is quite clear.
Which country has most lakes?
Canada might be the second-largest country on Earth (after Russia) but experts agree it has the most natural lakes in the world and over half of the world’s lakes.
Which is the largest fresh lake in the world?
Lake Superior
Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake and the second largest lake in the world by surface area.
What country has the most shoreline?
Canada has the most coast of all – a staggering 202,080 kilometres, according to the CIA World Factbook – though the chilly waters mean it’s far from ideal for beachgoers. Ditto Greenland and Russia, numbers three and four, respectively.
Which US state has the most lakes?
Minnesota has the most lakes of any state.
Minnesota may be the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” but Alaska is the state of more than 3 million lakes.
What state has the least coastline?
Indiana has the smallest coastline, at a mere 45 mi (72 km) among the 30 states that have a coastline. | https://mindrightdetroit.com/interesting/readers-ask-what-state-has-the-longest-freshwater-shoreline-in-the-country.html |
Q:
Integer solutions of the equation $7(a^2+b^2)=(c^2+d^2)$
What are all the integer solutions of the equation $7(a^2+b^2)=(c^2+d^2)$
First thing to note is that $c=7C$ and $d=7D$ and substituting it in the original equation yields an equation that is analogous to this equation.So by Fermat's method of infinite descent,there can be no solution except $(0,0,0,0)$. But I am struggling with the proof writing.
FORMAL PROOF:
It is enough to solve the equation for positive $a,b,c,d$. Let $(a,b,c,d)=(A,B,C,D)$ be a quadruple satisfying the equation such that $C$ is the smallest positive integer value that $c$ can take. Note that for $7$ to divide the right side,it must divide each of $C$ and $D$. This can be proven by considering the residues that a perfect square leaves mod $7$. Then $C=7C_0,D=7D_0,C_0<C$, and substitution yields $(A^2+B^2)=7(C_0^2+D_0^2)$ and again substituting $A=7A_0,B=7B_0$ yields $7(A_0^2+B_0^2)=C_0^2+D_0^2$ but then $c=C_0$ is the smallest positive integer that satisfies the equation.This contradicts our initial assumption and hence there exists no positive or negative solution of the equation.Hence the only solution is $(0,0,0,0)$.
Is my formal proof correct?How can it be improved?Any advice regarding the proof writing will be appreciated.
A:
Your proof is correct, but you should list the squares mod $7$ and explain why that works, rather than just saying.
Here is another proof - sums of squares can often usefully be considered modulo $8$, where the squares are $0,1,4$ and in particular every odd square $\equiv 1$ because $(2m+1)^2=4m(m+1)+1$.
Assume that $a,b,c,d$ have no common factor (we'd cancel it) and not all are zero. We have $8(a^2+b^2)=a^2+b^2+c^2+d^2$. This cannot happen if any of $a,b,c,d$ are odd, because the maximum sum of residues mod $8$ on the right is then $7$. Hence they must all be even. Contradiction. Hence all are zero.
A:
In a sum of two squares, the primes of the form $4k+3$ appear with even exponent.
$7$ is of this form.
In $7(a^2+b^2)=(c^2+d^2)$, $7$ appears with odd exponent on the LHS and with even exponent on the RHS. Hence, the numbers must be zero.
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Several PSBs are associated with ECC, however the SES as the strongest influencing factor mediates this association. Difficult socioeconomic conditions might predispose for both, ECC and mental illness. Targeted strategies are needed to facilitate the use of preventive measures and dental health services especially in families of lower status. For this purpose, psychosocial risk constellations must be identified. More integrative, multifactorial oriented research is necessary to gain a bio-psycho-social understanding of ECC.
Mothers of the CG reported significantly higher dental anxiety (d Cohen = 0.66), childhood trauma (d Cohen = 0.53) and nicotine dependency (d Cohen = 0.64) than the NON-CG. However, mediator analyses showed that these effects were partly mediated by the SES. Mothers of the CG had a significantly lower SES (d Cohen = 0.93); with education as strongest predictor of dental status. The groups did not differ significantly in symptoms of depressiveness, subjective somatic symptom burden, alcohol dependency, eating disorders, and generalized anxiety.
In this study, sixty children with ECC (caries group [CG]) and sixty caries-free children [NON-CG] with their mothers were recruited at two sites in Germany. Children aged three or four years were included in the study. Children’s dental status [dmf-t] and plaque index were recorded, and mothers answered a multidimensional SES index (including education, profession and income) as well as screening questionnaires capturing dental anxiety, depressive disorders, generalized anxiety, somatic symptom burden, eating disorders, traumatic childhood experiences, nicotine dependency and alcohol dependency.
Various maternal mental disorders and socioeconomic status [SES] are discussed as risk factors for early childhood caries [ECC]. In our study, we examined a wide range of symptoms of mental disorders with the aim to identify those maternal psychopathological symptom burdens [PSBs] which show relevant associations with ECC. Our second objective was to investigate how SES affects the associations between PSB and ECC.
Introduction
Early childhood caries (ECC) is one of the most common chronic diseases in childhood [1]. It is defined as the occurrence of at least one carious lesion on a deciduous tooth within the first 71 months of life [2] and can lead to complete destruction of the primary dentition and impairment of the permanent teeth [3]. In Germany, the prevalence of ECC has decreased in broad parts of the population [4]. According to the DAJ-Study, a recent representative national survey in Germany, 13.7% of the 3-year-old children already had caries experience, while by average, 3.57 teeth were affected per child and only 26% of the carious teeth were restored sufficiently [4]. A polarization of the disease is observed to the extent that a small part of the population accounts for the main caries load. This part of the population could not be reached sufficiently by prevention strategies [4,5]. As a reason for the high caries prevalence in this group, a constellation of low SES and suboptimal oral hygiene and preventive behavior is suspected [4]. A multifactorial disease development model is assumed for ECC [6]. Increasing importance is attributed to psychosocial risk factors such as maternal psychopathologies [7–24], educational deficits and poverty [15]. However, the still fragmentary knowledge about the influence of psychopathologies and their widely neglected interactions with socioeconomic factors complicates the integration in a multifactorial bio-psycho-social model. In most previous studies only one or few disorders were considered, making it difficult to compare the effects of the influencing factors. A few of these determinants are quite well verified (e.g., parental smoking [17–20,25], dental anxiety [7–10,21–24]), others have hardly (e.g., alcohol [11]) or not at all been investigated (e.g., childhood trauma, eating disorders), or study results are contradictory (e.g., depressiveness: positive studies [10,12–14], negative studies [15,16]).
Among the maternal psychopathologies, dental anxiety is one of the most studied risk factors. In children of mothers suffering from dental anxiety, an increased caries prevalence was confirmed in the majority of studies [7–10,21–24]. Mothers’ dental fear can impede the dental care of their children in two ways: apart from avoiding own dental visits, dentally anxious mothers take their children later and less regularly to the dentist [9]. Moreover, maternal dental anxiety predisposes for the development of dental fear in children [24,26].
Although maternal dental fear is a risk factor of ECC [7–10,21–24], nothing is known in this context about the influence of childhood traumatization, which is a common cause of dental anxiety in females [27]. Particularly traumatized women, who experienced sexual abuse in their childhood, often suffer from dental anxiety even in adulthood and perceive dental visits as intimidating [28,29]. A German study on inpatients with mental diseases showed that 42% of patients with posttraumatic stress disorder due to abuse and neglect in childhood suffered from high dental anxiety [30]. Women with childhood traumatization report inadequate dental care in their own childhood [31], more often have dental anxiety [27,28] and have issues with mother-infant bonding [32]. This leads to the assumption that maternal traumatization has a potential yet overlooked impact on ECC.
To better understand the causal relationships between maternal psychopathological symptom burden [PSB] and ECC, the socioeconomic framework conditions of the families should also be considered. Studies have shown that both, mental disorders [33,34] as well as ECC [5,35–41], are associated with low SES, which implicates SES could be a linking factor. Such a mediating influence of the SES is suspected [19] as an explanation for the observed association between household smoking and ECC [17–20,25]. However, since studies focusing on the influence of PSB on ECC often record the SES insufficiently or not at all, little is known about the triangular relationships of these factors. Such methodical limitations in the assessment of the SES are, for instance, the use of unvalidated questionnaires, very few or even only single items yielding little information.
Overall, previous research has confirmed that many maternal psychosocial burdens are associated with children’s oral health. On this basis, the next important step for further research would be to verify the relevance of these influencing factors and to understand the interactions between psychopathological and socioeconomic aspects. The integration into a multifactorial bio-psycho-social model seems necessary to identify risk constellations for need-adapted prevention strategies.
Therefore, the specific objective of our study was to cover a broad spectrum of maternal psychopathologies in order to identify those that show significant associations with ECC and to clarify if these associations are either direct or confounding effects, mediated by the common influence of SES on ECC and PSB. The aim of our study was to examine the following hypotheses:
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Welcome to the third part of a series of articles exploring the principles and properties of audio systems and related fields (Part 1 is here and part 2 is here).
This time we focus on the properties of audio summation. Perhaps you know everything on this subject already, but just maybe there are a few holes that can be filled in and make the reading effort worthwhile.
Combine two equal level sources: Do we get +3 dB or +6 dB?
The correct answer is yes. And there are even more possible outcomes as well. There’s a lot of confusion on this subject in the pro audio community so let’s set the record straight.
Summation results depend on two critical ingredients: relative amplitude and relative phase. If the two signals are matched in level and phase then we get a doubling (2x, i.e., + 6 dB). This seems pretty straightforward, and yet there are readers out there that are thinking “I heard it was +3 dB.” So if these are both right, then what is the differentiator?
Correlation. In order for the summation result to be consistent over time (which we call a “steady state” value), the signals must be correlated. They must be the same song with a constant relative amplitude and phase relationship. This could be steady state addition (up to +6 dB) or cancellation (down to – 60 dB or so).
The maximum addition (matched level and phase) is simply the same song at twice the size. Let’s call it 1 + 1 = 2. The maximum cancellation (matched level and inverted phase) is one copy of the song subtracted from the other. Let’s call it 1 – 1 = 0. Intermediate relative level and phase values will provide combinations between these extremes but (importantly) they will be steady and predictable (Figure 1).
If the signals are uncorrelated, such as Metallica and the Metropolitan Opera, then the relationship between the signals changes over time. On a moment-to-moment basis the signals can have any combination of level and phase relationships, and the combined result is a new and unique musical composition: Metallicopera. The combined result can still run the complete range of outcomes (between +6 dB and -60 dB) but the outcome is neither constant nor predictable. The relative level and phase values are random.
There are two certainties in this situation. The first is the uncertainty of the combined level at a given moment. The second is that two signals mixing together is more than one of the signals alone (duh!). That is where the +3 dB figure comes from: sources that get added together as strangers, rather that twins. The + 3dB figure is not exact for any given moment but is the combined statistical average over time of uncorrelated sources with matched average levels and random phase.
Here’s an example to help clarify the difference in the +3 dB (uncorrelated) and +6 dB (correlated) scenarios: A restaurant with everyone talking separately (uncorrelated) compared to when everyone sings “Happy Birthday” in unison (correlated). Send pink noise and add a matched loudspeaker (+6 dB). Listen to the noise floor and add a second moving light (+3 dB).
What happens when we sum multiple (more than two) signals?
We’ve memorized that each time we double the number of loudspeakers we gain 6 dB (2x = +6 dB, 4x = +12 dB, and so on). But what about 3x and 5x and other quantities that are not simple doublings? What is the difference between 8 boxes and 10 boxes?
The problem here is that many of us have memorized the doubling answers without internalizing the mechanism behind them. The key to understanding this is the knowledge that these dB values are the log coded version of the linear ratio relationships. For example, +12 dB is the log version of a 4:1 ratio. So if we go from 1 loudspeaker to 4 we get +12 dB. We could read the log version of this as 0 dB + 0 dB + 0 dB + 0 dB = 12 dB. That makes no sense in its log coded form, since adding an infinite number of zeros doesn’t normally make something larger or louder. The reality is that 0 dB is not “zero” in the linear sense. It’s a ratio of unity, i.e., 1:1. Translated to linear ratios the previous equation reads: 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4. Not so complicated, eh? | https://www.prosoundweb.com/audio-summation-part-3-in-an-ongoing-series-on-essential-fundamentals/ |
Making Art on the Path
Can a path which posits desire as the fundamental cause of suffering have a place for beauty or aesthetics? How do those who tread that path deal with issues of beauty and art? Is there a point where the path and the making of art merge? An artist’s exploration of ‘dharma art’
Sri Lanka was where I became immersed in Buddhism under the guidance of Ayya Khema, a Western nun and a wonderful meditation teacher. A philosophy and practice centred on the Four Noble Truths that emphasized ‘desire’ as being the central cause of human suffering inevitably cast a shadow on anything that could stir desire, including the arts. In a Theravada Buddhist culture that was austere and stressed injunctions of the vinaya (Buddhist rules of conduct), clearly against enjoying music or dance or paintings, it seemed that making and enjoying art were parts of my life that were on the to-be-shed list.
I didn’t give this too much thought then. I was absorbed in learning and meditation and in a World Bank assignment and family life. I made just three paintings in those two years, but did notice the quality of quiet and awareness that I had in making them, and they remain amongst my favorite paintings for the quality of mind they exude.
There comes inevitably a time on the path when the emphasis of dharma practice shifts from learning and meditating to assimilation and implementation in daily life. And as an artist, I had to make some decisions on art. Was art part of the second noble truth and therefore a cause of dukkha or suffering? Should I make art at all? What art would be consistent with my practice? As an unreligious person who had found profound direction in the Buddha’s teachings, was there the possibility of a making of, what could be seen as ‘contemporary dharma art’?
Art in Early Buddhism
Some of the most beautiful art in the world is Buddhist and is found strewn across India, China, Tibet, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Indonesia. The rendering of the Buddha’s face in sculpture or paintings, across this vast geography, is one of the best examples of an art that captures a state of being, which stills, stirs and inspires. So I knew there was more to the story of art and Buddhism.
We don’t really know much about the Buddha’s views on aesthetics or art. The one connection I have found is a story about the hesitation Sakya Dandapani, Siddhartha’s father-in-law, had about the marriage offer made by Siddhartha’s father, Sudhodana. The hesitation, says the Lalitavistara (a Buddhist text), was on account of the prospective bridegroom’s not being particularly proficient in the arts. But this is a story before Siddhartha became the Buddha!
In early Buddhism, there was wariness about all forms of art, as they were thought to lead to vasana or desire and were therefore seen as a cause of suffering. Early Buddhist art is focused on simply and attractively showing episodes that revealed the main principles of the Buddha’s teaching. After the second century AD, the images became richer, more ornate, as seen in the sculptures of Mathura, Sanchi and the paintings of Ajanta. And as Mahayana Buddhism developed into Vajrayana, the images changed to become dramatic, particularly in the thangkas (scroll paintings) of Tibet.
Images of Enlightenment
I have walked the old pilgrims’ path from Varanasi to Sarnath, the place the Buddha came to after his enlightenment, and where he was urged to teach. It is winter and the morning fog lies in the fields. At the ruins of the oldest stupa, the spot where the Buddha gave his first sermon 2,500 years ago and set the wheel of his teachings in motion, there is a group of Thai pilgrims in prayer. I sit quietly at the edge of their circle and wait for the opening hour of the nearby museum.
It is quiet as I enter the museum, filled with sculpture from the ruins, and reach this larger than human-size figure. The Buddha is seated, hands in teaching mudra, eyes closed with a gentle smile. The sculpture seems to draw me inwards, into the truth the Buddha has connected with, an image that radiates beauty—of an inner state of mind and being, the beauty inherent in the experience of profound realization, of nirvana: peace, calm, gentleness, spaciousness.
The museum is filled with beautiful Buddha sculptures. There is something in these rooms that is more than just beautiful forms. There seemed to be the presence of the Buddha’s experienced beauty of inner calm and clarity. How does one reconcile the creation of so many beautiful Buddhist objects with the psychological forces of pleasure, delight and its often-concomitant desire and craving? Was the conflict resolved by allowing art in the context of religious images but discouraged in other aspects? Or was it that the middle path called for some balance in the use of arts, some skilful use? Or was art, as in Tibet, to be used principally to create meditation and religious tools? Is there a particularly Buddhist aesthetic, I wondered.
Beauty& Truth
As separate religions, Buddhism and Hinduism are probably more of colonial and modern inventions. Both seem anchored in the same philosophic and spiritual ground. In India, then and now, spiritual teachers seem to grow from a common ground of deep ancient ideas. The dharmas of Hinduism are essentially the same as of Buddhism, though the paths are varied. In Hinduism there are austere Shaiva paths, more everyday life Vaishnava paths, and countless gurus and teachers like Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Shirdi Sai Baba, Sri Aurobindo, to name some better-known ones. That the Buddha was not attempting to start a new religion is quite obvious.
What is less understood is that Buddhism rests comfortably in the Great Indian tradition of Dharma, with its myths, philosophies, sciences and arts. So the journey into Buddhist aesthetics must start from the common ground of Indian philosophy and aesthetics, where Truth and Beauty and the Divine are the same. (Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram)
These days, beauty and aesthetics have become polemic concepts, viewed by many with suspicion. I share much of the anguish about who decides what is beautiful, fraught as it has been with the politics of oppression in male dominated or colonized societies. But beauty is not prettiness; it is something much deeper and more meaningful. Beauty is not mainly about how things look. It is about how things are. Aesthetics has sadly become misunderstood: beauty is seen as the property of objects. This is a beautiful face, or this is a beautiful pot, is how we now talk about beauty.
In Indian aesthetics, beauty is an experience. There are some objects that induce in us the experience of beauty, joy, balance, harmony, connectedness. But in all cases, the objects are merely stimuli, the inducers of the aesthetic experience. In Indian aesthetics, beauty is more than pleasing. Beauty is something that is uplifting, that takes us out of our usual state of contracted consciousness, and gives us a taste of unity as we connect and resonate at a deeper level of consciousness.
Most of the philosophy on Indian aesthetics was written in the context of art making: its purpose, skills, attitudes and motivations, and the structure and levels of the aesthetic experience that occur in the viewer. I will try and summaries the main developments and postulates in the philosophy of Indian aesthetics, as it has much to offer in these times of aesthetic crisis.
Journey to Bliss
Several centuries before the Buddha, it was postulated that for something to be considered a work of art, two conditions needed to be met: it must be a work of skill, and it must have chhandomaya (the rhythm, balance, proportion, harmony that is the essence of nature, of life and, it was thought, the whole universe). These days the absence of the experiential properties of rhythm, balance, proportion, and harmony in much of contemporary art is one reason so many of us find it dissatisfying. The other is the absence of visual skills in a cultural scene dominated by various types of ‘Conceptual’ art.
Between second and eleventh centuries AD, the period of some of the greatest Buddhist art, it was thought that art was more than the product of skill and chhanda. While art must please the senses, it must also communicate a unique feeling and mental experience. It was thought that the essence of art lay not in its disciplined skill or representational adequacy and effectiveness, nor in its formal construction, but in its suggestiveness, its ability to evoke a state of feeling.
As feelings cannot be communicated directly, their evocation, through suggestion and implication had to be done indirectly, and this mood or implied feeling is the well-known Indian concept of rasadhvani. Abhinavagupta, a famous 12th century theoretician on aesthetics, built a comprehensive theory of feeling in which art and the aesthetic experience came to be postulated by the creative energy, vision and imagination of the artists and viewers. Skill and chhanda became means to make the external qualities of an art-object, but what imparted it soul (or atman), was the creative energy, vision and imagination of the artist.
The Buddha, of course, did not believe in the existence of a soul, and Buddhists are more comfortable with the dynamic term ‘consciousness’. In Indian philosophy, the ultimate aim of consciousness was to enable the human being to experience bliss (anandam). A gradation of functions was described for consciousness: starting with activities of nutrition, followed by senses and thought, which lead to cognition and finally, at the apex, anandam, absorption and bliss. This conception of the movement of the human spirit towards anandam furnished the central purpose of all the arts. It was to enable the experience of this inner bliss, which is the heart of the true aesthetic experience.
This then is the common ground of Indian aesthetics, of which Buddhist art is a branch that has some particular inflections and ideas. In my view there are four defining characteristics of traditional or contemporary Buddhist aesthetics and art.
Unique Aesthetics
The first is the focus on the beauty of inner reality, not merely human but of all nature. What makes Buddhist art interesting is that Buddhism is a philosophy of the mind. Its central concern is inner, not external, reality. As a result, to the extent Buddhist art made visibly manifest deeper mental states, beyond the sensory, it was dealing with the aesthetics, the beauty, of inner peace, nirvana, emptiness, compassion, transience, and interconnectedness.
The second is the attempt to create an art experience that includes and integrates the different levels of human experience: sense perception, feelings and emotions, thoughts, cognition and understanding. Art that works at all these levels in a harmonious and interconnected way is, I think, part of all good art and aesthetics, but has a particularly Buddhist resonance because of the stress in Buddhism on the nature of mind and the reality of profound interconnectedness.
The third is the motivation of the artist to induce a shift in consciousness in the viewer: to create an object that would be so arresting that it would induce a radical, and if possible complete, temporary break in the stream of everyday concerns. This break would lead to the experience of anandam, the gateway to a cognitive understanding of truth.
The fourth is the quality of attention and mindfulness the artist brings to art making. One doesn’t have to be a Buddhist to make Buddhist art. It is thought that much of the classical art made from the second to twelfth centuries AD, was made by highly skilled, traveling artists who went from project to project across India, and even to neighboring Cambodia and Indonesia, and it is entirely possible that the same artist may have made beautiful statues of a meditating Buddha, a Mahavira and possibly a dancing Shiva. But one did need to be mindfully present, to have the meditative skills to become absorbed. Buddhist meditation practices have been used to bring this about, something strongly seen in Zen art.
I see these principles as having great relevance to our times: to an understanding of the experience of aesthetics, the purpose of art making and the attitudes of the artist and the viewer.
This is not to argue for any school of art or aesthetics or for any formalization in the making of art. There is a problem with formalization in art and indeed, of the Buddha’s teaching as well. The special quality of real personal experience, “be lamps unto yourselves”, the Buddha’s final words, rather than apish followers of any formalization gets lost.
For art to have that special quality, it must be made in the here-and-now, on the anvil of the artist’s life, what she is seeing, feeling, thinking, and her present state of consciousness. It is the being made richly in the present that imparts that quality to art, which we can call alive or true. It is there in all great art. The artist is searching, struggling to manifest what she is experiencing with all faculties. I think the strength of contemporary artists making dharma art is this quality of engagement in the Buddhist path combined with the search for new ways of expressing timeless teachings.
True Art
The challenge of art is not just of the artist but of the viewers as well. For viewers to get the full aesthetic experience we have been describing, they must give sufficient attention in their act of seeing. Unfortunately, most often the viewers’ engagement seems to be merely informational. We look at a work of art and ask: “What is it? What is it saying?” The more powerful engagement is when we seek an experience at all levels: sensory, emotional, intellectual and spiritual.
I think the idea that emerged in the 20th century, that art is an end in itself, was both foolish and false. Art is a means of sharing, of communication. Yet for the viewer’s experience to be significant, the work of art must be about them. John Steinbeck said something insightful about the relationship between art and the viewer in East of Eden. He was talking about the story and I have paraphrased it for the art image: “If the work of art is not about the viewer, he will not see. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting work of art is about everyone or it will not last.”
What excites me about making and seeing true Buddhist art is what I found stirring about Buddhism when I first encountered it: human access to an inner experiential reality that was outside the constrictions of belief, dogma, discursive thinking and afflictive emotions. When art shifts our awareness into that larger flow of integration and connectedness, of spaciousness and timelessness, we are in touch with true beauty. The arrival of such contemporary dharma art is an exciting impact of Buddhism in modern life.
Shakti Maira is a noted artist who now lives in New Delhi. He has been recognised as a leading practitioner of contemporary dharma art.
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Miriam Pelusi is five years in to a six year part-time doctorate at Leeds Beckett University.
“Why does public relations need philosophy?” I was asked at the Annual Progression meeting at the end of my 4th year of study. Public relations needs philosophy in order to understand its very essence, I replied to the panel. This is a field, I argued, that can find its centre of gravity in key concepts, such as dialogue and ethics, which are highly philosophical. In my view, philosophy helps scholars to elevate the intellectual status of public relations as an academically respectable discipline.
My progression was approved by the panel, and I am currently in my fifth year of study.
Stimulated and intrigued, I keep refining my philosophical inquiry throughout my PhD journey. There are a variety of philosophers from different schools of thought, academic cultures and historical periods who have studied dialogue. Dialogue is a philosophical concept that has in its DNA the thought of philosophers like Socrates, Bakhtin, Buber, and Habermas.
Initially, dealing with the philosophy of dialogue seemed like blue-sky thinking and I grappled with the abstract thinking of certain philosophers. Later, I realised that in order to generate specialist knowledge in public relations I needed to open my mind on what dialogue is at an abstract level, then I could apply this understanding to real-life situations. There is nothing like philosophy for open-mindedness and original thinking; I use philosophy to sharpen my critical thinking.
Although philosophy may seem abstract and far removed from reality, philosophy shapes the way in which we define what reality is (i.e. ontology) and how we get to know this reality (i.e. epistemology).
Philosophy is the basis for doing research, I started from here. The decision-making involved in the research process derives from precise philosophical choices which indicate how to operate. The researcher takes a stance in deciding their research philosophy, which is their worldview. The need for ontological and epistemological assumptions requires the researcher to take a position and choose among a variety of possibilities. Above all, this is a key intellectual decision.
My research philosophy shapes not only my understanding of the nature of reality and what constitutes knowledge, but also my reasoning strategies, searching criteria and knowledge representations.
Philosophy means literally love for wisdom. The philosopher aspires to true knowledge, which is a vision of the world that, by nature, cannot be definite as it’s constantly evolving. The notion of science emerged from philosophy. At the origins of the idea of ‘scientific knowledge’ or what we know, there is philosophy, which is that search for knowing what exists and how it exists. Studying the philosophy of science offers a fascinating glimpse of a specific vision of reality. There are different perspectives, various and different interpretations for explaining the wide diversity of ways in which scholars pursue their work.
In critiquing Kent and Taylor’s (2002) dialogic theory in public relations, in the first instance I interrogated their ontological assumptions in respect of dialogue which they see as a product. I looked for holes in the argument, which are gaps in knowledge, in order to justify my analysis, so that I could then suggest an alternative approach and fit my study into the body of knowledge with a view to contributing to current scholarly debates.
Ultimately, a PhD has to produce new knowledge to contribute to the field of study. Looking at social science from a philosophical perspective helped me to see research as an opportunity to create new knowledge and catch all the possibilities that research offers. Nevertheless, such knowledge cannot be static, and it will evolve as definitions and explanations are refined, new insights are added, or approaches are changed.
This constant evolution of knowledge is the challenge, and beauty, of doing research.
A philosophical inquiry without empirical research may be abstract, distant from reality, or even too idealistic. Empirical research without philosophical grounding is just a data collection exercise, in my opinion.
It is in that balance between philosophical inquiry and empirical research that I have found my centre for doing research. I work at a fruitful interaction between philosophical and empirical research. These dynamics are why studying philosophy can be so fascinating and professionally helpful.
Mine is a naturalistic inquiry, transparent and real, in which I can expose myself in an incisive way. I take an interpretivist stance on the issue of the relationship between dialogue and ethics because I consider both dialogue and ethics as social phenomena constructed by people (my ontological position is social constructivism).
Dialogue is a complex process involving aspects like listening, understanding, caring or trusting. If the communication is not guided by ethical principles and values, it becomes an act of manipulating. Here, however, an in-depth analysis is necessary.
How dialogue and ethics are related, what maintains this relationship, and how they are experienced by specific individuals, are intriguing questions of fundamental importance. The one that intrigues me most is investigating the connections between the two concepts. I dive deeper into this connection with an empirical study of an anthropological nature.
I imagine the link between dialogue and ethics in public relations to be something of a cycle; the two are inextricably linked. Poor dialogue leads to poor ethical practice; poor ethical practice leads to poor dialogue.
The consideration of dialogue as a fundamental dimension of human existence and experience, and its connection with ethics, is a central element in the intellectual development of public relations. Today’s philosophy clarifies methodological and epistemological problems connected to specific disciplinary settings.
A more conscious grounding of public relations in philosophy may therefore help researchers to extend their knowledge and with modelling the field further. Such a philosophical grounding would indicate a higher specificity of public relations both as an academic discipline in the social sciences, and as a professional practice which is in constant relationship with people. Being aware of philosophical views advances theorising in PR research and reinforces PR practice.
Related topicsAcademic Dialogue Ethics Philosophy
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Ann Pendleton-Jullian Announced as a 2017-18 Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University
Knowlton School Professor of Architecture Ann Pendleton-Jullian has been named a 2017-2018 Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS). Professor Pendleton-Jullian’s work at CASBS will advance the theory and practice of DesUnbound, developed through six design studios and articulated in her book, Design Unbound. Designing for Emergence in a White Water World (MIT Press, 2017).
“As an architect, my work has gravitated towards projects that are complex culturally, environmentally and technologically,” Pendleton-Jullian commented, reflecting on the progression of knowledge and skills not directly associated with architecture. “I have had to develop methods to interrogate contexts as rich entanglements of behaviors, motivations, and meaning associated with diverse human populations.” In the introduction to Pendleton-Jullian spring lecture at the Knowlton School, Associate Professor of Architecture Andrew Cruse framed it this way:
“Ann has distilled these projects to their cultural, technical and ecological essence; she has framed them not as the tame problems you might expect, but as wicked problems . . . problems that are difficult or impossible to solve because they are incomplete, contradictory, and have changing requirements. While these problems are most commonly found in fields such as economics, politics and environmental policy, Ann Pendleton-Jullian identifies wicked problems in architectural design. In doing so, she recognizes how spatial, formal and programmatic thinking can be a personally and professionally productive ways to address some of the most challenging topics of our time.”
While at CASBS, Pendleton-Jullian will engage in intensive multi-disciplinary research that re-visions ways to work on increasingly complex problems most often associated with the social sciences. Drawing from DesUnbound, a system of theories and tools aimed at impact on complex, often intractable, problems, Pendleton-Jullian builds an approach predicated on architectural design as a process for designing contexts in which things happen. These contexts, Pendleton-Jullian stated, “can accommodate well practiced relationships and behaviors, or they can open up new possibilities of exchange, interaction and meaning creation.”
To go beyond simply studying complex social problems to creating tangible impact on them, Pendleton-Jullian argued that new methodologies “requires thinking and designing with an understanding that one cannot design for absolute outcomes in a world that has become radically contingent – where propensities override causality. The future emerges out of actions in the present as they are influenced and interpreted through actions of the past. If we want to have agency, if we want to create impact, we need to understand how emergence works. We need to think in terms of emergence and we need to design for emergence.” Her own work, while still passionately involved with making elegant meaningful things (she is working on a new University in Kenya and a house in Big Sur, California) has extended this focus into the domains of education, public policy, human health/performance, and the applications of implications of technology on both cities and society.
Pendleton-Jullian’s specific work at CASBS will focus on how to develop heterogeneous information visualization methodologies and ‘templates’ for real-time data and information collection that produce insights across radically multi-disciplinary problems. Bringing her architectural practice and teaching to bear upon her fellowship project, Pendleton-Jullian stated, “What architecture, as a discipline, has going for it – what it can contribute to making tangible progress on tough multi-disciplinary socially complex problems - is the propensity to work in a multi-disciplinary way.” She added, “It has also developed methods to visualize information across different domain vernaculars, some of which are data rich and others that capture intangible and qualitative information.”
Since its inception in 1954, researchers associated with the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences have explored vexing questions and concerns. More than 2,500 fellows have flourished on the Center’s hilltop campus, among them luminary figures in the nation’s public and intellectual life: 25 Nobel Laureates, 23 Pulitzer Prize winners, 51 MacArthur fellows, and 26 National Medal of Science winners. | https://knowlton.osu.edu/news/2017/04/ann-pendleton-jullian-announced-2017-18-fellow-center-advanced-study-behavioral |
What is an example of imagery in a poem?
Short Examples of Imagery
The old man took the handful of dust, and sifted it through his fingers. The starry night sky looked so beautiful that it begged him to linger, but he reluctantly left for home. The fragrance of spring flowers made her joyful. The sound of a drum in the distance attracted him.
What is imagery poetry?
What Is Imagery in Poetry? In poetry, imagery is a vivid and vibrant form of description that appeals to readers’ senses and imagination.
What are some examples of imagery?
Common Examples of Imagery
- Taste: The familiar tang of his grandmother’s cranberry sauce reminded him of his youth.
- Sound: The concert was so loud that her ears rang for days afterward.
- Sight: The sunset was the most gorgeous they’d ever seen; the clouds were edged with pink and gold.
What are the 7 types of imagery?
Terms in this set (7)
- kinesthetic. movement.
- olfactory. smell.
- visual. sight.
- gustatory. taste.
- organic. feeling inside.
- tactile. touch.
- auditory. sound.
What are 5 types of imagery?
What Are the 5 Types of Imagery in Literature?
- Olfactory Imagery. Science has proven our sense of smell is our strongest link to the past. …
- Gustatory Imagery. Gustatory imagery has to do with our taste buds. …
- Tactile Imagery. Tactile imagery reaches out to our sense of touch. …
- Auditory Imagery. Finally, auditory imagery appeals to our sense of hearing. …
- Live in Literature.
What is imagery and examples?
When a writer attempts to describe something so that it appeals to our sense of smell, sight, taste, touch, or hearing; he/she has used imagery. … Examples of Imagery: 1. I could hear the popping and crackling as mom dropped the bacon into the frying pan, and soon the salty, greasy smell wafted toward me.
How do you explain imagery?
Imagery is language used by poets, novelists and other writers to create images in the mind of the reader. Imagery includes figurative and metaphorical language to improve the reader’s experience through their senses.
How do poets use imagery?
Imagery in poetry creates similar snapshots in a reader’s mind. Poets use imagery to draw readers into a sensory experience. Images will often provide us with mental snapshots that appeal to our senses of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell.27 мая 2015 г.
Which line is an example of imagery?
“Thou art fair, my love” “But fairest she when she doth display” “I think my love as rare/As any she belied with false compare” “black wires grow on her head”
What is an imagery for kids?
Imagery is when a writer uses very descriptive language, sometimes figurative language (like similes, metaphors, and personification) to appeal to all of your senses. When imagery is written well, the reader can see, hear, taste, touch, and feel the text.
How do we use imagery in writing?
Sensory Details
Sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. These five senses help the reader imagine your writing, making your words come to life. As you write, think about what you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. Using this imagery in writing helps the reader put him or herself in your shoes.
How do you use imagery in a sentence?
Imagery sentence examples
- It is true, the popular imagery is unworthy of such a god. …
- As nearly all its imagery is taken from the animal world, it is also known as the Bestiary. …
- Bathymetry and sidescan sonar imagery together reveal a slow-spreading ridge segment that has a large composite volcanic plateau at its center.
Is personification an imagery?
Explanation: Personification is used to put human qualities on something like an object. It is imagery because it is used to describe something using things people have seen or heard of.
Is metaphor a type of imagery?
A metaphor is another form of imagery. A metaphor is a less direct way of comparing two things. Instead of using like or as, a metaphor says that one thing is another. | https://www.inkbottlepress.com/interesting/poetry-imagery-example.html |
As performance analytics become increasingly advanced, with traditional means of tracking the effectiveness and efficiency of the HR function giving way to far more sophisticated methods, the question of how we measure recruiting success is more pertinent now than ever.
To find answers to this and other questions, Futurestep joined forces with HRO Today Magazine to undertake a primary market research study among users of recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) services.
We focused our investigation on three key areas:
• What Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are being used in the RPO space?
• How satisfied are users with those metrics?
• What metrics do users want that they don’t currently have?
We also took the opportunity to gauge feelings on other related topics including:
• How satisfied are clients with their RPO providers overall?
• Is it easy to link talent acquisition data with HRIS systems?
• How well do RPO applications meet user needs? | https://www.hrotoday.com/market-intelligence/research/measuring-up-what-companies-really-think-about-rpo-metrics-and-how-they-could-be-improved-in-the-future/ |
Homepage: http://postimpnarrative.ffzg.unizg.hr/.
This Research Project starts out from the thesis on possible points of convergence between different cultures of memory; in addition to that, the project will also investigate different points of convergence in joint cultural and literary structures in Central Europe. Special attention will be drawn to the Habsburg Monarchy in the time span of the last two centuries – starting from the beginning of the nation building process in the Modern Period and the related disintegration of multi-ethnic state formations. The term ‘empire’ implies a complex network of reciprocal relations in the Monarchy, established precisely through cultural difference and asymmetrical relations of power.
The term ‘empire’ is borrowed from geopolitical historiography and can be applied also to other state structures (Ottoman, Russian and German Empires), which are relevant to the research of the aforementioned temporal and spatial context. We understand the term ‘empire’ as a complex narrative, i.e. a type of narrative construct structured differently in different contexts and often used to describe or explain certain facts. The narrative context of the empire-concept is connected with our strong belief that not only national but also supranational, i.e. imperial cultures should be studied as ‘narrative communitie’ differing from each other mainly in terms of their narrative reservoirs.
This project is based on the study of literature as a medium with a unique ability to represent cultures of memory and processes of both individual and collective identity formation. In this context, the project poses the question how processes of national homogenization and imperial claims function in the medium of literature, how they come in contact and how they can be instrumentalized for concrete political, ideological or aesthetic purposes. | http://www.ffzg.unizg.hr/german/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1879&Itemid=262&lang=english |
Stamford, John D (2019) Using spectral signatures as a toolbox for determining crop health status. PhD thesis, University of Essex.
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Abstract
Spectral based techniques allow for rapid, non-invasive probing of plant and crop performance, and have potential to overcome current phenotyping bottlenecks for breeders and researchers while enabling farmers to optimise the inputs of fertilizer, irrigation and pesticides on their crops to maximise yields and reduce expenditure. The Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), uses the reflectance of near infra-red and visible red light to assess the performance and greenness of plants due to variation in chlorophyll content. Increasing the accessibility of NDVI imaging systems through the development of a small, low cost, and easy to use imaging system has potential to increase the uptake of NDVI imaging systems, especially amongst farmers and breeders. We first described a method for using a dual camera system based on the widely available Raspberry Pi platform to produce calibrated NDVI imagery, generating more robust estimates of NDVI than other low cost systems. Then, we developed novel reflectance based spectral indices to assess plant water status, exploiting water content induced changes in leaf internal structure and subsequent variation in the reflectance of NIR. These indices used visible and NIR wavelengths to allow for a reflectance based assessment of leaf water status with standard VIS-NIR spectrometry and imaging systems, which are widely available and already is use by farmers and researchers over other systems that measure water content via short wave infra-red wavelengths, expanding the availability of accessible tools that can be used to assess leaf water status . Finally, we developed a toolbox of spectral techniques can be used to track water and nitrogen of plants, as well as overall plant performance. The index of stomatal conductance (Ig), a thermographic technique, can be used to assess water content, predominantly soil relative water content (RWC). Chlorophyll fluorescence can be used to indicate overall plant performance and changes in soil RWC, and spectral reflectance indices can be used to measure both water and nitrogen content. To date, this is the first spectral toolbox developed utilizing these techniques that has been used to assess water and nitrogen content, demonstrating the potential of a multi-technique spectral toolbox to monitor plant performance. The advantage of a spectral toolbox is primarily through the remote, non-invasive and rapid measurement compared to other techniques, which allows for a higher throughput of measurements, benefiting farmers and crop breeders who need to monitor crops grown over a large area of land, and reduced labour requirements over conventional leaf level technique. The spectral toolbox serves as a foundation for future work using the combination of these techniques, intending to proliferate precision agriculture as a method to apply precise, site-specific applications of agricultural inputs such as fertilizer and irrigation based on crop requirements rather than blanket application, reducing costs to farmers through reduced inventory, fuel and labour. The rapid assessment of plant performance afforded by spectral techniques can additionally improve the phenotyping of future crop varieties for improved yields and growth, a necessary step in mitigating the effects of a changing climate and global population growth. | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/28330/ |
The underground water is the only source of drinking water in Buzău County. As a consequence the investigation of the underground water has a major importance. In the present study, a number of seven groundwater sources, located in Bisoca commune, NE of Buzău County, were selected in order to investigate the underground water quality. Several physico-chemical (temperature, pH, total dissolved solids, electrical conductivity, oxidation-reduction potential, salinity and turbidity) and chemical (Li+, Na+, K+, Mg2+, Ca2+, NH4+, F-, Cl-, Br-, NO2-, NO3-, PO43-, SO42-, Cu, Cd, Cr, Zn, Fe, Ni and Pb) parameters were analyzed. The waters proved to have low salinity values (0.1- 0.8‰) and electrical conductivity (89.5 – 1993.0 μS/cm). The dissolved ions distribution is dominated by the presence of sodium (3.6 – 232.9 mg/l), calcium (6.8 – 365.43 mg/l), sulphates (10.9 – 1301.4 mg/l), bicarbonates (427 – 793 mg/l) and chloride (5.1 – 166.1 mg/l). In the case of iron and lead there were registered exceeding’s of maximum permissible limits for drinking water. | http://managementjournal.usamv.ro/index.php/scientific-papers/952-groundwater-quality-in-a-rural-area-from-buzau-county-romania-952 |
Drag is friction that opposes movement through a fluid like liquid or air. The amount of drag depends on the shape and speed of the object with slower objects experiencing less drag than faster objects and more aerodynamic objects experiencing less drag than those with a large leading surface area.
A fixed pulley is used to change the direction of a force and does not multiply the force applied. As such, it has a mechanical advantage of one. The benefit of a fixed pulley is that it can allow the force to be applied at a more convenient angle, for example, pulling downward or horizontally to lift an object instead of upward.
For any given surface, the coefficient of static friction is higher than the coefficient of kinetic friction. More force is required to initally get an object moving than is required to keep it moving. Additionally, static friction only arises in response to an attempt to move an object (overcome the normal force between it and the surface).
Mechanics deals with motion and the forces that produce motion.
The modulus of elasticity measures how much a material or structure will deflect under stress. Stretch modulus is longitudinal stretch (like stretching raw bread dough), shear modulus is longitudinal deflection (like the horizontal displacement of a stack of magzines when a heavy object is placed upon them), and bulk modulus is compression of volume (like the compression of a loaf of bread under a heavy can at the bottom of a grocery bag).
Normal force (FN) represents the force a surface exerts when an object presses against it.
A screw is an inclined plane wrapped in ridges (threads) around a cylinder. The distance between these ridges defines the pitch of the screw and this distance is how far the screw advances when it is turned once. The mechanical advantage of a screw is its circumference divided by the pitch.
A concentrated load acts on a relatively small area of a structure, a static uniformly distributed load doesn't create specific stress points or vary with time, a dynamic load varies with time or affects a structure that experiences a high degree of movement, an impact load is sudden and for a relatively short duration and a non-uniformly distributed load creates different stresses at different locations on a structure.
The wedge is a moving inclined plane that is used to lift, hold, or break apart an object. A wedge converts force applied to its blunt end into force perpendicular to its inclined surface. In contrast to a stationary plane where force is applied to the object being moved, with a wedge the object is stationary and the force is being applied to the plane. Examples of a wedge include knives and chisels. | https://www.asvabtestbank.com/mechanical-comprehension/flash-cards/663428/10 |
Q:
prolog catch all clause that's only active if no other clause is
I have a predicate that relates a modal logic formula to its negative normal form. All connectives except the modal operators, conjunction, and disjunction are eliminated, and negation is pushed as far into the leaves of the expression as possible.
The rewrite/2✱ predicate has a catch-all clause rewrite(A, A). that is textually last. With this catch-all clause available, it's possible to extract a formula in negated normal form. In this example, e is a biconditional connective like in Łukasiewicz notation, and 4 and 7 are variables in the modal logic (and hence Prolog constants).
Z unified with the formula in negative normal form.
?- rewrite(e(4, 7), Z).
Z = a(k(4, 7), k(n(4), n(7)))
However, rewrite(<some constant>, <some constant>) always succeeds and I'd like it not to succeed. The catch-all clause really should be a catch-all, not something that could potentially fire if another clause is applicable.
?- rewrite(e(4, 7), e(4, 7)).
true.
I tried replacing the rewrite(A, A). with a guarded version:
wff_shallowly(WFF) :-
WFF = l(_);
WFF = m(_);
WFF = c(_, _);
WFF = f;
WFF = t;
WFF = k(_, _);
WFF = a(_, _);
WFF = n(_);
WFF = e(_, _).
rewrite(A, A) :- \+ wff_shallowly(A).
I thought that this would prevent the catch-all clause from being applicable if and only if A isn't headed by an atom/constructor with special meaning. However, after making that change, the rewrite always fails if invoked recursively.
?- rewrite(4, Z).
Z = 4.
?- rewrite(c(4, 7), Z).
false.
What's the correct way to set up a catch all clause.
✱ full text of program for reference:
% so the primitive connectives are
% l <-- necessity
% m <-- possibility
% c <-- implication
% f <-- falsehood
% t <-- truth
% k <-- conjunction
% a <-- alternative
% n <-- negation
% e <-- biconditional
% falsehood is primitive
rewrite(f, f).
% truth is primitive
rewrite(t, t).
% positive connectives
rewrite(a(A, B), a(C, D)) :- rewrite(A, C), rewrite(B, D).
rewrite(k(A, B), k(C, D)) :- rewrite(A, C), rewrite(B, D).
rewrite(l(A), l(C)) :- rewrite(A, C).
rewrite(m(A), m(C)) :- rewrite(A, C).
% implication
rewrite(c(A, B), a(NC, D)) :-
rewrite(n(A), NC), rewrite(B, D).
% biconditional
rewrite(e(A, B), a(k(C, D), k(NC, ND))) :-
rewrite(A, C),
rewrite(n(A), NC),
rewrite(B, D),
rewrite(n(B), ND).
% negated falsehood is truth
rewrite(n(f), t).
% negated truth is falsehood
rewrite(n(t), f).
% double negation elimination
rewrite(n(n(A)), C) :- rewrite(A, C).
% negated alternation
rewrite(n(a(A, B)), k(NC, ND)) :-
rewrite(n(A), NC), rewrite(n(B), ND).
% negated conjunction
rewrite(n(k(A, B)), a(NC, ND)) :-
rewrite(n(A), NC), rewrite(n(B), ND).
% negated biconditional
rewrite(n(e(A, B)), a(k(C, ND), k(NC, D))) :-
% negated necessity
rewrite(n(l(A)), m(NC)) :- rewrite(n(A), NC).
% negated possibility
rewrite(n(m(A)), l(NC)) :- rewrite(n(A), NC).
% catch all, rewrite to self
rewrite(A, A) :- \+ wff_shallowly(A).
A:
These problems all go away if you use a clean representation of your data.
In this case, it means that you shall, in complete analogy to how you represent all other entities systematically via different functors, also use a dedicated functor to represent (modal) variables.
For example, let us use the functor v/1 to represent variables. This means that we use v(1), v(7) etc. to represent the modal variables 1, 7 etc.
Instead of your "catch all" clause, I add the following clauses that state what holds about modal variables:
% (negated) variable
rewrite(n(v(V)), n(v(V))).
rewrite(v(V), v(V)).
Now we get:
?- rewrite(e(v(4), v(7)), Z).
Z = a(k(v(4), v(7)), k(n(v(4)), n(v(7)))).
Note that we of course have to use the v/1 wrapper in queries, and also get the wrapper in answers. This is slightly harder to read and write than if the wrapper were not present. However, it makes reasoning about such formulas much easier, and I therefore strongly recommend to use it.
It is a straight-forward exercise to convert between such formulas and the defaulty representation you are currently using. It is called "defaulty" precisely because it requires a default ("catch all") case, and also because that is considered faulty. It is good practice to get rid of such representations as soon as possible, and then write the main logic around a clean representation.
A clean representation is good for generality, and also for efficiency: Your Prolog system's argument indexing can now readily tell all clauses apart via the principal functor of the first argument, and this improves performance in the important use case where that argument is fully instantiated (e.g., in the example you posted).
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It also gets me thinking about what I've observed and learned this year and how it will shape our district goals for the upcoming school year. For example, one of our schools drained its paper budget halfway through the year, which had more than a few teachers worried about how they'd manage to provide lesson materials for their students. Which begs the question, "What needs to change? And if we're experiencing these issues, aren't other districts as well?"
Change is tough; and it's usually based in fear--the fear of the unknown, the fear of failure, the fear of leaving our comfort zone. But fear prevents us from moving forward, and moving forward is what we need to constantly do in education. Of course, change is scary. And uncertain. And yes, risky.
Before you hit the copy machine to make another 30 copies of a worksheet, ask yourself, "Is there a way to do this online?" Make the move to digital content: post to your website, use tools like Wizer and Edulastic for worksheets and formatives, seek out online textbooks and Open Education Resources, direct students to create digital alternatives to research papers. Stop swimming in a sea of paper!
Let go of the reigns once in a while. If 90% of what we learn is what we teach, then shouldn't our current model be flipped? Your students are already engaged in collaborative groups and jigsaw activities, so take it a step further: let them create mini-lessons. They'll be more invested in their learning!
Students today grew up with and presently maintain constant Internet access: YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and a myriad of other digital resources. They're used to online content, so give it to them. Besides that, it makes sense to open up classroom time to working with students instead of sending them home to try out newly-learned (and often-not-yet-understood) concepts.
Sitting in rows of desks is an archaic concept, and certainly not aligned with post-school workspaces--which are often designed for creativity and collaboration. Physical spaces are central to creating a new paradigm for learning. Change up your seating configurations, create purposeful zones, bring in mood lighting. Get some great ideas here.
(See #3 above for justification.) Don't mistake social media for socializing. Besides, reaching out to students beyond the four walls of the classroom creates genuine connections and extends learning. Frankly, you can't be considered a 21st-century educator if you're not willing to adopt 21st-century technologies. Your students will be grateful for it!
Education is evolution. And it's worth the risk.
Next week I'll have the 8th graders journal about what they most enjoyed about this process, but it's clearly evident by the amount of time and effort they put into it that they were pretty pleased with themselves and engaged with the process. And I'm going to smugly assert that they learned way more about their individual books creating trailers than if they had been asked to write a book report. You can take a look at their trailers here at my YouTube channel.
I still demand that my son make flashcards for his science vocabulary, but now we make them on StudyBlue and turn it into a game. We review for math tests at Math Playground. And for his most recent language arts quiz, we drilled adjectives. Whatever the subject, we Google it for online games. The digital native and the digital immigrant have found some common ground when it comes to learning.
In future posts, I'll discuss some of my favorite teacher game sites, but here's one that's proven to be a reliable standby for me. Is there something in your current curriculum you could turn into a game?
I recently used QR codes for Valentine's Day with my 7th graders, so feel free to take a look at Lesson #22 on my class website to view an example of QR codes in the classroom.
Since I wrote this original post, I've discovered another idea for using QR codes in the classroom, but specific for math classes.
Geoffery Slack is a math teacher and the creator of Slackmath, a website with loads of algebra and geometry problems, each in a PDF worksheet. Each worksheet has a QR code, and when students complete the math problem, they scan the QR code to check their work and to view a video explanation of the solution. As Mr. Slack states, students "practice and get immediate feedback while studying on their own or in a classroom setting geared towards the individual learner."
Last year, I tried something similar to this idea with my 6th grade technology students. Each student was assigned a math concept (s)he had learned that year. Students created their own original problem worksheet and added a QR code with a link to a video tutorial of the concept. We then compiled it all into our own resource book the next year's sixth grade class. The screen shot below is an example of that performance-based task. | http://sdemichele.weebly.com/blog/category/digital-natives |
The scientific method is a system scientists and other people use to ask and answer questions about the natural world. In a nutshell, the scientific method works by making observations, asking a question or identifying a problem, and then designing and analyzing an experiment to test a prediction of what you expect will happen. It’s a powerful analytical tool because once you draw conclusions, you may be able to answer a question and make predictions about future events.
These are the steps of the scientific method:
- Make observations.
Sometimes this step is omitted in the list, but you always make observations before asking a question, whether you recognize it or not. You always have some background information about a topic. However, it’s a good idea to be systematic about your observations and to record them in a lab book or another way. Often, these initial observations can help you identify a question. Later on, this information may help you decide on another area of investigation of a topic.
- Ask a question, identify a problem, or state an objective.
There are various forms of this step. Sometimes you may want to state an objective and a problem and then phrase it in the form of a question. The reason it’s good to state a question is because it’s easiest to design an experiment to answer a question. A question helps you form a hypothesis, which focuses your study.
- Research the topic.
You should conduct background research on your topic to learn as much as you can about it. This can occur both before and after you state an objective and form a hypothesis. In fact, you may find yourself researching the topic throughout the entire process.
- Formulate a hypothesis.
A hypothesis is a formal prediction. There are two forms of a hypothesis that are particularly easy to test. One is to state the hypothesis as an “if, then” statement. An example of an if-then hypothesis is: “If plants are grown under red light, then they will be taller than plants grown under white light.” Another good type of hypothesis is what is called a “null hypothesis” or “no difference” hypothesis. An example of a null hypothesis is: “There is no difference in the rate of growth of plants grown under red light compared with plants grown under white light.”
- Design and perform an experiment to test the hypothesis.
Once you have a hypothesis, you need to find a way to test it. This involves an experiment. There are many ways to set up an experiment. A basic experiment contains variables, which are factors you can measure. The two main variables are the independent variable (the one you control or change) and the dependent variable (the one you measure to see if it is affected when you change the independent variable).
- Record and analyze the data you obtain from the experiment.
It’s a good idea to record notes alongside your data, stating anything unusual or unexpected. Once you have the data, draw a chart, table, or graph to present your results. Next, analyze the results to understand what it all means.
- Determine whether you accept or reject the hypothesis.
Do the results support the hypothesis or not? Keep in mind, it’s okay if the hypothesis is not supported, especially if you are testing a null hypothesis. Sometimes excluding an explanation answers your question! There is no “right” or “wrong” here. However, if you obtain an unexpected result, you might want to perform another experiment.
- Draw a conclusion and report the results of the experiment.
What good is knowing something if you keep it to yourself? You should report the outcome of the experiment, even if it’s just in a notebook. What did you learn from the experiment?
How Many Steps Are There?
You may be asked to list the 5 steps of the scientific method or the 6 steps of the method or some other number. There are different ways of grouping together the steps outlined here, so it’s a good idea to learn the way an instructor wants you to list the steps. No matter how many steps there are, the order is always the same. | https://sciencenotes.org/steps-scientific-method/ |
During the past five years Indonesia’s economy has grown at an average rate of 5.8%. Stable growth and rising incomes have lifted millions of people out of poverty and propelled Indonesia into the ranks of middle-income countries. The poverty ratio dropped from 17.8% in 2006 to 11.3% in 2014. However, economic growth in recent years has also come at the expense of widespread environmental degradation. A recent study using satellite imagery suggests that Indonesia’s rate of deforestation increased by an average of 47,600 hectares per year between 2002 and 2012, which is the highest rate of deforestation in the world. Deforestation has contributed to increasing greenhouse gas emissions (Indonesia has become the world’s third largest emitter) and loss of biodiversity. Indonesia also has the highest number of mammal species under threat of any country in the world.
Environmental degradation has incalculable long-term economic impacts, and exacerbates inequality by threatening the livelihoods of poor and marginalized communities that derive incomes from local ecosystems. Analysis of the factors behind illegal logging, unsustainable forest and watershed management, unregulated and unreported fishing highlight several challenges that need to be addressed: (a) economic incentives that encourage over exploitation of natural resources; (b) uncontrolled and illegal issuance of permits and concessions; (c) weak capacity in spatial planning; (d) lack of civil society oversight; (e) corruption, (f) overlapping institutional mandates, and (g) weak enforcement capacities.
Ecosystems are being pushed to their limit. Human demands imply that key ecosystems are now increasingly approaching their carrying capacity to the extent that abrupt changes which may be prohibitively costly or simply impossible to reverse can no longer be ruled out. Increasing demand for food, energy, human habitat, transportation, and others has created direct pressures on the Indonesia environment. While the new national medium term plan reflects a number of environmental targets the policy agenda to translate these objectives needs further articulation. UNDP recognizes that past successes in institutional building and policy advocacy at the national level have been made possible by UNDP’s work at the local level. UNDP’s pilot programmes provide an important evidence base for national policy advocacy work.
Given the centrality of natural resources to Indonesia’s economy, and the fact that millions of Indonesia’s poor depend on fragile ecosystems for their livelihoods, the new administration’s policy choices will have far-reaching impacts on equitable growth and sustainable human development. Indonesia’s new administration has already signaled that growth must be accompanied by stronger environmental management. Indonesia must urgently move toward more sustainable development pathways. The costs of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss must be included as part of GDP calculations. The country must also find ways to stimulate resource efficiency in the economy, in particular through technology and innovation. More efficient use of water resources, better conservation of terrestrial and marine resources and protection of biodiversity will be needed.
To address above-mentioned problems, UNDP established partnership with the Government of Indonesia through development of sound biodiversity management programme and mobilize resources to implement the programme. Referring to UNDP’s monitoring and evaluation guidelines, it is important to ensure that reporting arrangements and requirements are in place and are being implemented in a timely manner. Monitoring, as well as evaluation, provides opportunities at regular predetermined points to validate the logic of a programme, relevancy of activities with project outputs/targets and to make adjustment as needed.
The M&R Officer will be under direct supervision of Programme Manager of NRM Cluster. The incumbent will work closely with relevant National Project Managers (NPMs) of on-going projects. He/she will be responsible and accountable for the overall monitoring and evaluation of the project implementation, based on the project log frame, and project monitoring and evaluation plan. It will include monitoring of project results, development of donor report and other relevant reports, and communicating project results and best practices. S/he will contribute to the effective implementation of the evaluation policy, ensures that minimum monitoring and evaluation requirements for projects are met, and participates in the conduct of thematic and crosscutting evaluations. S/he will be responsible to ensure that project evaluations are carried out according to schedules and that findings and recommendations are implemented and followed up. | https://www.joshswaterjobs.com/jobs/4878/ |
According to the 2019 Global State of Cybersecurity in Small and Medium-Sized Businesses, 60% of businesses have experienced losses due to sensitive data theft. 2021 Global Data Risk Report says that 33% of business data is publicly available.
When it comes to artwork development, you must collaborate with people both inside and outside the company. You need to share sensitive data with external entities such as printers and design agencies. In these cases, there is a fair risk of theft of intellectual property.
Furthermore, the efficiency of your workflow also depends on how to store and organize your files. Does your storage system come with versioning and backups? What are your recovery plans in case of any data loss? Can you revoke access after you have shared files with someone?
Here are some of the best practices when it comes to working with sensitive data during artwork development.
1. Use a Secured File Storage
While there are no fool-proof solutions, you can take steps to ensure that a simple password theft or data breach does not compromise your files. Here are some things that you can do to ensure that.
- Pick a storage service that takes security seriously. Ensure that they encrypt user files when they store them. Ensure that they use proper security standards and enforce the use of secured network connections.
- As a user, you can use a password manager to generate strong passwords. Password managers are not integrated into most popular browsers to make authentication easier. If possible, make use of two-factor authentication.
2. Encrypt Files Before You Share Them
When working with sensitive files, it is a good practice to encrypt them before sharing them. There are simple ways of password-protecting files, providing you with an extra layer of security.
Microsoft Office documents and PDF files have support for passwords. You can add a password to documents using Office programs or Adobe Acrobat.
This password protection provides you an extra layer of security that protects you from data breaches.
3. Make Use Of Role-based Access
While sharing files, you have the option to give your collaborators read and write permissions. Some platforms provide more granular permissions, such as view, comment, and edit.
Providing permissions requires careful thought. Does the legal department need the write control of the file? Should the printing agency be able to comment on the documents?
These requirements vary from company to company. As a manager, you should not give any individual or group any more access than they need.
4. Make Use Of Version Control To Preserve Old Files
Make sure that your storage service supports file versioning. File versioning is a crucial part of digital asset management.
As designers develop the artwork file, multiple versions of the file will be created. Now, they can manually keep different versions of the file, but file organization and change tracking become chaotic. With file versioning,
- All the versions of the same file are stored as one element, where you can switch between the versions seamlessly.
- You can easily go back to an older version whenever needed.
- Version tracking allows you to track changes across versions.
- Version control also acts as a systematic backup for old files, preventing accidental overwrites.
5. Track Changes With Audit Trails
Your storage system will be used by multiple collaborators. With multiple projects running, people will be working on different files at a time. This makes it difficult to see who made what changes. With audit trails, you can bring accountability to your projects. Audit trails allow you to:
- Track changes for every artwork asset.
- See who made what change and when.
- Find accidental deletions and overwrites.
With version control and audit trails, you will no longer have to worry about accidental data loss.
6. Use Secured Network Connections
Most browsers now enforce the use of HTTPS. Ensure that your storage service also uses secured connections. If you are using file transfer protocol to manage files on the cloud, use the secured version or SFTP. SFTP also supports encryption, data integrity, and authenticity checks.
7. Use A Proper Digital Asset Management Platform
There are software services dedicated to storing and managing artwork assets. These come with secured cloud storage for all your assets. A proper digital asset management platform comes with
- Collaborative tools that allow multiple people to work on a single project.
- File versioning and audit trails to track and log changes across multiple versions of the same file.
- Easy onboarding of collaborators and role-based access to digital assets
- Online proofing tools allow reviewers to view and comment on artworks right from their browsers without having to download a single file.
- Workflow management for projects of any scale.
Do You Need Digital Asset Management For Artwork Approval?
Here are a few questions that can help you decide if you really need a digital asset management platform for artwork development and approval.
- Do you share digital assets using emails or via messaging platforms such as Teams or Slack?
- Do you have a way to restrict your collaborators from further sharing content?
- Do you have any means of versioning digital assets?
- Do you have any means of tracking how a digital asset is being used by collaborators?
- Can you revoke access from a collaborator when needed?
- Do you or your organization use file encryption for data storage?
- Do the security of your digital assets solely rely on passwords?
If the answer to any three or more questions is an “yes”, then you should seriously consider a digital asset management platform for artwork approval.
Wrapping Up
When it comes to security, nothing beats awareness and common sense. However, some tools can simplify security for digital assets. How do you secure digital assets for your artwork projects? Let us know in the comments below. | https://www.artworkflowhq.com/resources/best-practices-for-secure-artwork-file-sharing-tips-solutions |
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