Datasets:

Query-of-CC
/

Retrieve-Pile

Dataset card Data Studio Files Files and versions Community

Split (1)

train · ~75.4M rows (showing the first 781k)

content stringlengths 0 1.88M	url stringlengths 0 5.28k
Founded by Ted Forman in 1966, Forman Realtors is one of Central Ohio’s oldest independent real estate companies. We have remained a thriving brokerage in both strong and weak markets because we give every client our undivided attention along with the most expert and complete representation possible. Our clients benefit from our fully integrated knowledge base in residential and commercial real estate. We are one of the few brokerages in our area that can offer our clients a full suite of real estate services. Our realtors have collectively developed subdivisions, invested in residential and commercial building projects, and provided complex tax and relocation transactions for our clients. We’ve been involved in some of the most distinctive residential real estate transactions in our area. We’re proud of our rich heritage. From the first-time home buyer to the developer to the busy executive relocating in Central Ohio, Forman Realtors is uniquely positioned to provide an uncompromising level of service for our clients. Thinking of buying, selling, or investing?	https://formanrealtors.com/your-home-team/
SHARE THIS ARTICLE A woman cooks food on a gas-connected stove at her home in the village of Mangrauli, Uttar Pradesh, India. Photographer: Prashanth Vishwanathan/Bloomberg Photographer: Prashanth Vishwanathan/Bloomberg A fuel primarily used for cooking has surpassed gasoline as India’s second most popular oil product following a boost from a government buying program, cold weather and stay-at-home orders due to Covid-19. Consumption in 2020 of liquefied petroleum gas -- which is also used for heating -- was higher than motor fuel for the first time ever over a calendar year, data from the government showed. Demand got an additional boost later in the year following a six-month extension of a government program providing free LPG cylinders to lower-income people and an early start to winter. While LPG use rose as more people cooked at home due to tighter coronavirus restrictions, India’s full-year consumption of gasoline never fully recovered from a collapse in demand during a nationwide lockdown in the second-quarter of 2020. Virus Proof LPG surged ahead in 2020 as lockdowns crushed gasoline demand Source: India's oil ministry “Despite Covid-19 causing a major slowdown in the world economy, LPG imports into India have grown in 2020,” said Sam Sng, a Singapore-based analyst at industry consultant FGE. Consumption has been fueled by greater residential demand for cooking fuel and the government providing free cylinders to lower-income people, he said. Indian LPG consumption in 2020 was at 27.41 million tons, 4.3% higher than a year earlier, according to government data. Gasoline demand over the same period plunged 9.3% to 27.27 million tons. Diesel remained the top consumed fuel at 71.91 million tons, although 14.5% lower than a year earlier. India has been encouraging wider adoption of LPG to replace the more polluting coal and firewood in a bid to clean up one of the world’s most toxic air. The nation imports most of its LPG supplies and the boost in demand last year led to greater tanker congestion off its ports. Ships waited about 5.5 days on average to unload in 2020 -- peaking at 11 days in July -- compared with 4.6 days in 2019, according to data intelligence firm Kpler. Motoring Back Strong LPG demand has also led to higher prices in Asia. Propane swaps were about $638 a ton on Friday, the highest since October 2018, according to PVM data. Prices rose 13% last year, capping a second annual gain. Motor fuel demand, however, is expected to regain its long-standing position this year as India’s second most consumed oil product after diesel as drivers hit the roads again, according to FGE. Gasoline consumption is seen at 32.3 million tons, while LPG is estimated at 28.3 million tons. “I think gasoline will come back this year with more people using private vehicles,” said Mukesh Kumar Surana, chairman of state-run oil refiner Hindustan Petroleum Corp. “All said and done, we are still not 100% out of the pandemic, and people are still working from home.”
Published: This is an archived release. More diesel - less gasoline Total sales of petroleum products came to 807 million litres in July 2007, a marginal increase of 1.5 per cent compared with July last year. The largest increases in sales were in sales of auto diesel and marine gas oil, while the larges decrease was in sales of heavy fuel oil. Compared with July 2006, the sales of auto diesel increased by 14.1 per cent and ended at 234 million litres. Sales of motor gasoline on the other hand decreased with about 5 per cent. Auto diesel and motor gasoline accounted for 52 per cent of total sales of petroleum products. Sales of heavy fuel oil decreased by 14.5 per cent, while sales of marine gas oil and diesel increased by 9.2 per cent compared to July 2006. There were 22 delivery days in July, compared to 21 in July 2006. Tables:	https://www.ssb.no/en/energi-og-industri/statistikker/petroleumsalg/arkiv/2007-08-15
Background ========== There is some international evidence available that home treatment of severely mentally ill persons provided by multidisciplinary psychosocial intervention teams has the potential to be effective. Home treatment was shown to reduce the need for inpatient treatment; it decreased suicidality, improved patients' functional status and also increased satisfaction with treatment \[[@B1]-[@B3]\]. The efficiency of home treatment as part of integrated care models has also been shown under the care conditions of the German health care system \[[@B4]\]. While models of home treatment are currently becoming more and more popular in Germany, as well as in other Western countries, it is not known what structures and processes are needed to make home treatment of the severely mentally ill effective with regard to patient outcome. However, it is known that the efficiency of home treatment is closely related to its structures and processes. The research described in this article aims to identify structures and processes in home treatment of severely mentally ill persons that can be linked to patient-related outcomes. The research question to be answered is therefore: "What structures and processes are necessary for providing effective and needs-related home treatment to severely mentally ill persons within the context of the German health care system?" The outcome of this research should provide the basis for evidence-based recommendations on how structures and processes should be in the home treatment of severely mentally ill persons. Methods/Design ============== The research question will be addressed by analyzing 14 (13 + 1) regional care networks that provide similar, but nonetheless individually different home treatments within the framework of integrated care. The networks/samples -------------------- In 2009, one of the largest statutory health insurance companies in Germany, the Techniker Krankenkasse (TK) (8.5 million insured persons), set up a model for the integrated care of severely mentally ill persons called \"NetzWerk psychische Gesundheit\" (NWpG). Today, this model is provided by networks in a number of regions all over Germany. The networks aim to improve the coordination and continuity of care, thus reducing the need for inpatient care. The core services that all networks mandatorily offer include: home treatment and case-management, socio-therapy, psychoeducation, 24-hour crisis-hotline as well as the possibility for patients to stay temporarily in a crisis intervention apartment instead of hospitalization. The networks receive an annual fixed budget per patient to organize their care based on the patient's individual needs and preferences. Beyond these core elements, the networks are free to choose how they organize themselves and with what other services they cooperate. This has led to differences in how regional networks are run. There are networks whose organization centres around office-based psychiatrists who closely collaborate with ambulatory nursing services to provide home treatment. Other networks are built on the structure of existing providers of psychosocial care where social workers or nurses might provide home treatment. Psychiatrists are also involved in these models but play a less prominent role in service provision and in particular, in navigating patients through the services. Some networks collaborate more closely with vocational rehabilitation or housing facilities; others offer services also for children. One of the networks distinguishes itself from the other networks (13) that focus on severe mental illness by specializing in eating disorders (+1). Only patients insured with specific statutory insurance companies, for example the TK, are eligible for the services provided by the 13 + 1 networks. Patients are recruited by the TK based on a specific predictive risk model that uses claims data on diagnosis, medication and past hospitalization \[[@B5]\]. Patients who consent to participate in the service model are enrolled in the networks. Since 2009, more than 6000 patients have been recruited and treated. A very comprehensive dataset is needed in order to analyze these networks and to be able to determine what structures and processes promote the provision of effective and needs-related treatment. Therefore, the study comprises of three methodological approaches (triangulation): a quantitative approach, a qualitative approach and a synthesis and feedback approach (see also Figure [1](#F1){ref-type="fig"}). ![Flow and contents of analyzing 13 + 1 networks providing home treatment for the severely mentally ill.](1471-244X-13-283-1){#F1} ### *Quantitative approach* The quantitative approach aims to assess in detail care structures, processes and patient-related outcomes. It will look for differences in the 14 networks in respect to these measures. Structures and processes will be related to outcomes by multilevel regression analysis. The following questions will guide the quantitative research: 1\. How do the 13 + 1 networks differ in respect to structures and processes? 2\. How do the 13 + 1 networks differ in respect to their patient-related outcomes? 3\. What structures and processes are related to patient-related outcomes? Structures to be assessed could include, for example, professional composition of the network, availability of supervision and number of patients per case manager. Processes to be assessed could include number of patients receiving home treatment, number of case review meetings per patient, time case managers spend with patients and additional services used by patients. Data on structures and processes will be drawn from four different sources: (1) claims data of the health insurance companies that include data on service use, medication and diagnosis; (2) annual reports from the networks to the health insurance companies; (3) additional assessment of structures and processes by way of a questionnaire that will be answered by the management of the networks; and by (4) a questionnaire aimed at the staff of the networks. Both questionnaires (the questionnaire to be answered by network-management and the one for the staff) will be compiled, based on a systematic literature review of topics relevant to the structures and processes, i.e., how the networks function. These topics will be presented to the networks. Each network will be visited and the topics will be discussed in detail with the network's management and staff. These discussions will focus on whether management and staff believe that the topics compiled are relevant, those which are missing, and whether it is feasible to obtain data on these topics. Based on this information, the final questionnaires will be compiled, sent for comments to the networks and pre-tested. Patient-related outcomes of a network are primarily defined as the average improvement in psychosocial functioning that network-enrolled patients achieve. Further, the improvement of a patient's quality of life as well as the average reduction in the number of hospital admissions and days spent in hospital will be used as secondary outcomes of a network. Data on the patients' psychosocial functioning and on the quality of life are available by routine assessment within the networks. After enrollment and consecutively, every six months, case managers routinely assess psychosocial functioning by means of the Health of the Nation Outcome Scale (HoNOS). Patients assess their quality of life by means of the WHO-Quality of Life (WHOQoL). Data on these outcomes have been collected for all patients insured by the TK from 2009 up until now. Data on hospitalization is available through the claims data of the TK. Patient-reported outcomes (HoNOS and WHOQol) will be linked to the claims data by pseudonyms. In this way, the aggregate and average outcomes for each network can be determined. By way of multilevel regression, primary and secondary outcomes will be set in relation to structures and processes. ### *Qualitative approach* The qualitative approach focuses on expectations, hopes and needs of the patients, their relatives and network staff. It aims to add to the results of the quantitative approach by offering explanations and additional material for understanding and interpreting the data. Therefore, focus groups with patients, patients' relatives and providers will be held in four of the networks and in the network that specializes in eating disorders. The following questions will guide the focus group discussions: 1\. What expectations, needs and hopes do patients have concerning service provision and cooperation within provider networks? What kind of processes help to meet these expectations, needs and hopes? 2\. What expectations, needs and hopes do relatives have concerning service provision and cooperation within provider networks? What kind of processes help to meet these expectations, needs and hopes? 3\. What expectations, needs and hopes do providers have concerning service provision and cooperation within provider networks? What kind of processes help to meet these expectations, needs and hopes? Networks will be selected for focus group participation according to their differences in structures and processes or patient-related outcomes. Selected networks will assist the project in recruiting participants. The discussion in the focus groups will be audio recorded and then analyzed using the content analysis methodology. ### *Synthesis and feedback* In this part of the research results of both the quantitative and qualitative approach will be merged and results fed back to the networks. Each participating network will receive a customized feedback report that presents its own quantitative results on structures, processes and outcomes in relation to the benchmark of the average results of all networks. This will be a specific part of the feedback report and, hence, different for each network. In addition, these individual reports will also contain a general part where overall results of the quantitative analysis will be presented, in particular those concerning structures and processes that determine a good outcome. Further, in the general part of the report, the outcomes of the focus group discussions will be presented to all of the networks. In a next step, it is intended that all networks be visited by the project team to present, explain and discuss the results, in particular the individual results with the network management and staff. This should be the basis on which networks develop their own targets for the improvement of structures and processes. This methodology of providing individual benchmarked feedback to services, discussing them and, on this basis, developing targets for improvement, is derived from the experience and evidence that the AQUA-Institute, which is the lead of this study, has gathered while conducting the European Practice Assessment (EPA) \[[@B6]\]. EPA is based exactly on this method and as such, the project will be able to benefit from prior existing infrastructure such as the Visotool®, an internet-based feedback tool to visualize results. The experiences gained from the discussion of the feedback reports together with the overall results from the quantitative and qualitative research approaches will be used to form recommendations for necessary structures and processes in networks providing home treatment to severely mentally ill persons in Germany. These recommendations will be presented, discussed and finalized in a workshop with all relevant stakeholders at national level. This would include representatives of the networks, patients and their families, medical and social service providers, health insurance companies, policy makers and researchers. Ethics and data protection -------------------------- Ethical approval for the quantitative approach has been obtained from the ethics committee at the State Medical Chamber of Lower Saxony. They voted that no formal approval for the quantitative approach is required since no direct patient contact is involved. Information on patients' characteristics, patient-related outcomes, patient service utilization and other process information will be conducted from pseudonymized claims and primary data. Patient-related results will only be published in an aggregate form and at network level. Ethical approval for the qualitative approach will be obtained from the University of Heidelberg in the context of preparation of the focus groups which will start the following year. Discussion ========== More and more care models are being implemented in Germany as well as worldwide that offer in one way or another home treatment, case management and multi-disciplinary care to persons who are severely mentally ill \[[@B7]\]. While there is evidence that such approaches to treatment can be effective \[[@B4],[@B8]\], there has not been much research yet as to what elements of these services contribute to their effectiveness. What the sparse research on this issue does reveal is that the following aspects do indeed contribute to the effectiveness of home treatment: visiting patients regularly at home and having dual responsibility for both health and social care \[[@B9]\]. The relevance of the number of patients per case manager \[[@B10]\] and the intensity of care \[[@B8]\] are discussed controversially with regard to their impact on patient outcomes. By way of this study, we aim to add evidence to the discussion on what are the relevant structures and processes for successful home treatment of severely mentally ill persons. One of the strengths of this research will be that it incorporates a comprehensive approach, including quantitative and qualitative methods and a process of feedback of results to services. This feedback process will enable the validation of results in relation to the day-to-day practice of services. In addition, the feedback process provides the study subjects, e.g. the networks, with benchmark data on their structures and processes which could provide a basis for service improvement. A further strength of the research relates to the use of various longitudinal data sources for determining patient-related outcomes (claims data and routine assessment of psychosocial functioning and quality of life). Further, we will also be able to draw on various data sources for determining networks structures and processes, including questionnaires developed with the staff of the networks. By developing these questionnaires in an intensive discussion and exchange process with the networks' management and staff, we hope to be able to consider the most relevant factors for the quality of services from the provider's point of view. One limitation of this research is related to the fact that while network outcomes will be determined by longitudinal data that can date back to 2009, all structures and processes will be assessed using current cross-cutting analysis. So it might be the case that patient improvement achieved in 2010 was accomplished with a slightly different service structure. We need to consider this when analyzing and interpreting the data. Further risks and challenges of this research are related to the following parts of the study: • Differences in network outcomes might be related also to service provision, as well as to patient characteristics, in particular their medical risk profiles. We will have to take this into account when using information from the claims data. Since all patients in this study were selected by the TK using predictive modelling, all patients should have comparable risk-profiles \[[@B11]\]. We will be able to attain patients' risk profiles from the TK. • Further differences in outcomes, represented by the average changes in inpatient service use, might be related more to the regional availability of hospital beds than to treatment factors. There are reports that in particular in regions where there is an excess supply of hospital beds, in particular, beds in psychosomatic-psychotherapeutic units, it becomes difficult to keep patients out of hospital, despite providing home treatment. We will have to consider this when interpreting the results. Therefore, close dialogue with the networks to understand context factors is necessary throughout this research. • A final risk could be that we might not find any differences between networks with regard to patient-related outcomes. This could be caused by HoNOS and WHOQoL not being care sensitive to the patient group of the home treatment networks. It might also be that simply all networks are performing equally well on the outcome side. However, besides the primary outcome in psychosocial functioning, we have several secondary outcomes including service use. Further, in the event that all networks are performing equally well on outcomes, despite different structures and processes, the results from the focus groups will become even more relevant to explain results and determine priorities in structures and processes. Conclusion ========== In light of the rising popularity of home treatment for severely mentally ill persons, it is necessary and timely to add evidence to the discussion of what structures and processes are needed -- or better still -- what structures and processes would be essential for well-functioning home treatment that supports patients' recovery and addresses their needs best. This research aims to contribute to this. Competing interests =================== TR is employed by the TK which is the health insurance company that insures the patients in the networks under evaluation. He implemented NWpG and served as project manager from 2007 to 2011. BB is employed by WINEG which is a research institute belonging to the TK. However, WINEG is independent from the operating business of the TK and reports solely to its steering board. Other authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors' contributions ====================== CS wrote the paper, AB supervised her, AB, KG, BB, JS developed the study design, TR provided information about and contacts to networks, EB is accountable for data preparation and statistical analysis. All authors have read and commented on the paper. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. Pre-publication history ======================= The pre-publication history for this paper can be accessed here: <http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-244X/13/283/prepub> Acknowledgments =============== This study is financed by the Federal Ministry of Health in Germany, grant number: IIA5 - 2513FSB013. We are very grateful to Sharon Janicki for editing our English writing.
The Behavioural Political Economy Group Members of our group work on a wide variety of projects broadly in the area of political economy and behaviour using experimental methods. Some of us have our formal home in the politics department, some in psychology and others in economics. We get together weekly to workshop projects and discuss research. And we host a visiting speaker series — when there isn't a global pandemic. Iva Srbinovska Hi, I’m Iva. Nice to meet you! I began my journey with political science while studying a BA in Politics and Governance at Ryerson University. Upon completing my degree, I was inspired to continue on to a Master’s degree in Comparative and International Studies at ETH Zürich. My research interests are political violence, migration, political behaviour, elections and voting. Outside of academia, I’m an avid sci-fi and rock ’n roll fan who enjoys travelling with a book and relaxing with a beer. Jonah Davids I am a psychology undergraduate student in my final year at Ryerson. I work as a Research Assistant with the Behavioural Political Economy group with Professor Rubenson and I also volunteer in the Social and Political Psychology lab in the Psych Department, with Professor Becky Choma. My research interests include political psychology, populism, social issues, and ideology. João Pacheco I am currently a student in Ryerson’s undergrad program of Economics and Management Science. Before Ryerson, I was studying business administration at George Brown College. I am a big football fan who also enjoys politics and economics. Working on projects that combine all three is a perfect opportunity. Natassja Bilinski I'm a Master student in the Public Policy and Administration program, focussing on citizen-oriented governance. I recently graduated from the University of Waterloo with an Honours Political Science and Legal Studies degree. My research interests include topics relating to citizen-oriented governance and democratic engagement practices in policy making, biopolitics, political economy, and Canadian political culture. A fun fact about me is that my second language is Mandarin-Chinese, which I learned while living in Taiwan as a Rotary International Canadian Ambassador. Amber Hey-Yon Lee I'm a postdoctoral fellow with C-Dem. I have recently completed a joint PhD in Communication and Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. My research interests are in American public opinion, political communication, and political psychology, with a focus on polarization and social identity. My work has been published in the American Political Science Review, Political Communication, Political Behavior, and Computers in Human Behavior. John McAndrews I'm an adjunct professor in the Department of Politics at Ryerson University and a postdoctoral fellow and managing director of the Policy, Elections, and Representation Lab (PEARL) in the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. I earned my PhD at the University of British Columbia. My latest project — funded through a two-year SSHRC Insight Development Grant — uses a series of original survey experiments to explore the impact of role models on the political engagement of under-represented groups in Canada. My work has been published in Legislative Studies Quarterly, Parliamentary Affairs, the Journal of Experimental Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, and the Canadian Journal of Political Science. David Sumantry I'm a PhD student studying social and political Psychology at Ryerson. My Master’s research investigated prejudice toward people with foreign accents, and my dissertation will study predictors of political polarization and methods of reducing hatred across the political divide. Broadly, I specialize in applying quantitative methods to social science, whether it be power analyses, multilevel modeling, structural equation modeling, or computational text analysis. I also own a statistical consulting company Sumantry Data and Statistics. For fun, I love board games, building computers, baking, and improving his French.	https://www.rubenson.org/research-group
NEW YORK (CelebrityAccess) — Dan Chertoff has been named to the post of Vice President at RCA Records. Chertoff will be responsible for signing and developing artists for the label and will report to label CEO Peter Edge as well as David Wolter, SVP, A&R. Chertoff will be based at the label’s New York headquarters. No stranger to A&R, Chertoff worked for Steve Ralbovsky Canvasback Music/ Atlantic Records, where he served as Director of A&R, signing Alt-J and The Orwells to the label. Alt-J's first album, An Awesome Wave, has sold over 1 million copies worldwide to date. Prior to joining Atlantic, Chertoff studied Producing and Engineering at the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at NYU's Tisch School Of The Arts.	https://celebrityaccess.com/caarchive/dan-chertoff-to-rca/
This position will support research efforts looking at the effectiveness of vaccine education on possible future possible COVID vaccination rates. The position requires interaction over the phone with various health care clinics and basic computer record keeping. This position will also require face-to-face interaction with the team and basic report writing. Demonstrated Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion The ideal candidate must have the ability to promote an inclusive environment that reflects the broad diversity and backgrounds represented by our students, employees, and our local community, one in which every individual feels respected and valued. The Research Assistant must demonstrate cultural humility and the ability to work in a college community with diverse academic, socioeconomic, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds, including those with disabilities and veterans. Education and Experience Required - Ability to use a computer and type at a functional level. - Ability to professionally interact with members of the community and healthcare staff. - Basic knowledge of Microsoft applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). Preferred - Student pursuing a degree in Science or Sociology. Duties and Responsibilities - Recruitment and follow-ups of health clinics by telephone. - Basic internet and database research. - Computer work (Microsoft Word, Excel). - Attendance at meetings/conferences. - Other duties as assigned. Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities - Must be able to organize and prioritize projects and programs to meet deadlines, have the ability to work independently, be able to prepare official documents, and have strong articulation and people skills. Application Process To apply, send cover letter, resume, proof of education/enrollment, and contact information for three professional references to: [email protected] (put Student Research Assistant in the subject line) The committee will begin the review of applications immediately. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. All applications are confidential, and references will not be contacted without the expressed authorization of the applicant. It is the policy of Nunez Community College not to discriminate based on sex, creed, color, race, sexual orientation, age, national origin, or disability in its educational programs, activities, or employment policies as required by Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments and other Federal and State anti- discrimination laws.	https://www.nunez.edu/human-resources/unclassified-employment-opportunities/student-research-assistant
General and generic info of copper, brass and bronze alloys, UNS No. and composition. - Copper sulfate \| CuSO4 - PubChem Copper sulfate is a sulfate salt of copper. It is a potent emetic and is used as an antidote for poisoning by phosphorus. It also can be used to prevent the growth of algae. - Lead and Copper Rule \| Drinking Water Requirements for ... Lead and copper enter drinking water primarily through plumbing materials. Exposure to lead and copper may cause health problems ranging from stomach distress to brain damage. In 1991, EPA published a regulation to control lead and copper in drinking water. This … - Scrap Metal Classifications \| Accepted Metals #1 Big Insulated (Large insulated copper wire - yields 85% or greater) #1 Copper (Tubing with no solder or fittings, Some insulated wire that is stripped but not shiny, bright sheet copper, non-insulated stripped house wire that is tarnished from weather exposure) #1 Insulated (wire with copper #12 gauge up to #1 big but still insulated, solid spaghetti wire used commercially, Romex and most ... - Copper: Copper mineral information and data. - Mindat.org Copper Group. Copper was one of the first metals to be worked into implements and the first metal to be smelted from ores. Its excellent ductility and high conductivity assure its use in modern society. - ASTM B224 - 16 Standard Classification of Coppers 4.1 This classification lists the types of copper available from refineries or fabricators, or both, defines the common terms used, and gives the characteristics of many of the coppers available. It is useful to the neophyte looking for the appropriate copper for a particular application. - Facts About Copper - Live Science Shiny, reddish copper was the first metal manipulated by humans, and it remains an important metal in industry today. The oldest metal object found in the Middle East consists of copper; it was a ... - Classification of copper alloys [SubsTech] Classification of copper alloys Dr. Dmitri Kopeliovich Classification of copper alloys is determined by the Unified Numbering System (UNS),developed by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and the Copper Development Association (CDA). - Classification and Properties of Copper Alloys :: Total ... Copper and copper alloys are some of the most versatile engineering materials available. The combination of physical properties such as strength, conductivity, corrosion resistance, machinability and ductility make copper suitable for a wide range of applications. These properties can be further ... - List of copper alloys - Wikipedia Copper alloys are metal alloys that have copper as their principal component. They have high resistance against corrosion . The best known traditional types are bronze, where tin is a significant addition, and brass, using zinc instead. - Standard Metal Numbers: Grades, Classifications ... Aluminum Metal Numbers or Classifications indicate the Use of Alloys such as Zinc, Magnesium, Silicon, Manganese, and Copper. The first digit represents the major alloying. The second digit classifies any alloy modifications (a zero indicates it is the original alloy). - WebElements Periodic Table » Copper » the essentials Copper appears in the periodic table at the top of Group 11 above silver and gold. Collectively these are sometimes referred to as the coinage metals, although in modern times these metals are used less frequently than in the past. - Standards & Specifications - Copper Standards & Specifications UNS Standard Designation for Wrought and Cast Copper and Copper Alloys Introduction to Unified Numbering System, Chemical Symbols and Standard Chemical Composition Limits. ASTM Standard Designations for Wrought and Cast Copper and Copper Alloys Composition of UNS alloys. - Copper - Element information, properties and uses ... Copper beads have been excavated in northern Iraq and which are more than ten thousand years old and presumably made from native copper, nuggets of which can sometimes be found. Copper was widely used in the ancient world as bronze, its alloy with tin, which was used to make cutlery, coins, and tools. - copper classification - alibaba.com Related Searches for copper classification: gl classification society company size classifications chain classification easy classification rina classification society international classification of goods fruit classification animal classification decor classification oil classification china classification plastic classificator industry ... - Copper - espimetals.com Acute and Chronic Effects: Copper is a trace element that is essential for human health. Chronic exposure to copper dust can irritate the respiratory tract, nose, mouth and eyes, and cause headaches, dizziness, nausea and diarrhea. - A Comprehensive Introduction of Copper Clad Laminate \| PCBCart Copper clad laminates (CCL) are the most popular substrate material for PCBs. This article talks about CCLs from 6 aspects: features of copper as a type of material, CCL application fields, classification, model numbers, and technology standard. - What Is The Classification Of copper - Answers.com Classification means to put things into groups according to theircharacteristics. Living organisms are arranged in different groups due to theirsimilarities and differences. T…his grouping is ... - Metal Alloys - Classification and Properties of Copper and ... Copper and copper alloys are one of the major groups of commercial metals. They offer a wide range of properties, including excellent electrical and thermal conductivity, outstanding corrosion resistance, good strength and fatigue resistance, and appearance. - Different Grades of Copper Scrap - Copper wire granulator HOME >> Different Grades of Copper Scrap. In case of copper, there are some grades, like #1, #2, that we often encountered but may be confused with. Scrap copper prices vary depending on the grade of scrap. Recycling companies tend to have their own rules of classification. Knowing about the common rules of some common grades will help us know ... - ATSDR - Toxic Substances - Copper Mar 03, 2011· Copper is a metal that occurs naturally throughout the environment, in rocks, soil, water, and air. Copper is an essential element in plants and animals (including humans), which means it is necessary for us to live. Therefore, plants and animals must absorb some copper from eating, drinking, and breathing. Copper is used to make many different kinds of products like wire, plumbing pipes, … - Copper Pipe Types \| The Family Handyman Copper Pipe Types. The pros and cons of thicker and thinner copper pipe ... The difference is the wall thickness of the copper pipe sizes and therefore the pressure it can handle. The exterior dimensions are identical, meaning you use the same copper fittings. You also use the same tools, materials and techniques to cut and sweat them. The ... - COPPER CHLORIDE HAZARD SUMMARY Copper Chloride COPPER CHLORIDE page 3 of 6 * If there is the possibility of skin exposure, emergency shower facilities should be provided. * On skin contact with Copper Chloride, immediately wash or shower to remove the chemical. - It's Elemental - The Element Copper Hydrated copper sulfate (CuSO 4 ·H 2 O), also known as blue vitriol, is the best known copper compound. It is used as an agricultural poison, as an algicide in water purification and as a … - Copper toxicity - Wikipedia Copper toxicity, also called copperiedus, is a type of metal poisoning caused by an excess of copper in the body. Copperiedus can occur from eating acidic foods cooked in uncoated copper cookware, or from exposure to excess copper in drinking water or other environmental sources. - Copper: smelting, producing and classification-Metalpedia Copper: smelting and classification; The smelting of copper; Copper that is mined from copper ore, after beneficiation, becomes high quality copper concentrate. Then, after being smelted, refined copper and copper products are yielded. There are two ways of smelting copper, one is pyrometallurgy, the other hydrometallurgical. - What is Copper? - Periodic Table Periodic Table Group and Classification of the Copper Element Elements can be classified based on their physical states (States of Matter) e.g. gas, solid or liquid. This element is a solid. Copper is classified as a "Transition Metal" which are located in Groups 3 - 12 of the Periodic Table. Elements classified as Transition Metals are ... - 6: Euroclass classification \| CPR Cables Classification a1: Classification a1 Reduced acidity and corrosiveness of emitted gases with conductivity < 2,5 µS/mm and pH > 4,3 6: Euroclass classification Examples of application: Class E - It satisfies the non-flame propagation test, without additional classifications. - Copper - Specifications, Properties, Classifications and ... Copper alloys are some of the most versatile materials. The combination of properties like strength, conductivity, corrosion resistance, machinability and ductility make copper suitable for many applications. The Specifications, Properties, Classifications and Classes are provided for copper alloys. - Copper \| Cu - PubChem Copper is a metal that occurs naturally throughout the environment, in rocks, soil, water, and air.Copper is an essential element in plants and animals (including humans), which means it … - The Most Common Types of Copper Piping The actual outside diameter (OD) of rigid copper type is always 1/8 inch larger than the nominal size, or what the pipe is called. For example, a "1/2-inch" copper pipe has an outside diameter of 5/8 inch. - Copper - FDA prescribing information, side effects and uses Copper 0.4 mg/mL (Cupric Chloride Injection, USP) is a sterile, nonpyrogenic solution intended for use as an additive to intravenous solutions for total parenteral nutrition (TPN).	https://www.portretenco.nl/2018_05_05-34609-copper-classification.html
Objectives: The aim of this study was to ascertain if and to what extent TiN coatings increase the corrosion resistance of and decrease metal ion release from NiCr- and CoCr- based dental alloys. Methods: Two kinds of non-precious dental alloys: HERAENIUM-NA and VIRONIT were coated with TiN using the arc-PVD method. The coatings were examined by means of diffraction techniques and X-ray microanalysis in order to determine the chemical composition and structure of their layers. The approximate thicknesses of layers were measured. Corrosion behaviour was examined. The amount of ions from the metallic base penetrating through the coating into the corrosive solution was determined. The OCP versus time measurements and potentiodynamic polarization technique were used to determine the corrosion resistance of the coated samples. The surfaces of samples were observed using SEM. Results: In general, more ions were released from both uncoated alloys. The OCP v/s time plots and polarization curves indicated that the TiN coated alloys exhibited better corrosion resistance. Conclusions: TiN coatings on Ni-Cr and Co-Cr alloys may improve the corrosion resistance and decrease metal ion release. It is suggested that TiN coatings could have an application in prosthetic dentistry under conditions of procedures optimalization in order to obtain more dense compact layers. Keywords: Ni-, Co-based Alloys, Tin, Corrosion Resistance, Ion Release, Electrochemical Tests, SEM In Press 04 Aug 2022 : Original articleLong-Term Patency of All-in-One Sleeve Patch Graft Venoplasty in 16 Patients Who Underwent Living Donor Liv... Ann Transplant In Press; DOI: 10.12659/AOT.936888 22 Jul 2022 : Original articleDiagnostic Role of Tumor Markers for Hepatocellular Carcinoma in Liver Transplantation Candidates: An Analy... Ann Transplant In Press; DOI: 10.12659/AOT.936937 22 Jul 2022 : Original articleDevelopment of a Novel Model for Predicting Postoperative Short-Term Outcome in Patients with Hepatitis B-R... Ann Transplant In Press; DOI: 10.12659/AOT.936732 22 Jul 2022 : Original articleLeucine-Rich Alpha-2-Glycoprotein (LRG-1) as a Potential Kidney Injury Marker in Kidney Transplant Recipients Ann Transplant In Press; DOI: 10.12659/AOT.936751 Most Viewed Current Articles 26 Jan 2022 : Review articleRecurrence of Hepatocellular Carcinoma After Liver Transplantation: Risk Factors and Predictive Models DOI :10.12659/AOT.934924 Ann Transplant 2022; 27:e934924 29 Dec 2021 : Original articleEfficacy and Safety of Tacrolimus-Based Maintenance Regimens in De Novo Kidney Transplant Recipients: A Sys... DOI :10.12659/AOT.933588 Ann Transplant 2021; 26:e933588 24 Jul 2020 : Review articleKidney Transplantation in the Times of COVID-19 – A Literature Review DOI :10.12659/AOT.925755 Ann Transplant 2020; 25:e925755 15 Mar 2022 : Case reportCombined Liver, Pancreas-Duodenum, and Kidney Transplantation for Patients with Hepatitis B Cirrhosis, Urem...	https://annalsoftransplantation.com/abstract/index/idArt/15648
In the places I have lived and worked I have found that something almost magical happens over time. The energy that I carry fills the space and the structure of the place. Just as the energy that you carry fills your workplace and home. It touches the yard/garden and grounds as well. The plants become your friends and allies. You can come to recognize the birds and other fauna that live on or around the place. If there has been upset in your life, making changes in your home and work spaces can help the healing process. Or, sometimes, we simply need a change. You can switch things around and modify them. You can rearrange the furniture, wall art, plants, shelves, work station, to suit your mood, the seasons, or the flow. This is helpful in many different ways (the list could be much longer!): - to create new ways of looking at things - to usher out unwanted energy - for creative expression - to place beneficial and positive energy - to lighten the mood - to invite inspiration - to accommodate other people coming into the space - to change the energy when other people leave - to create harmony and flow - for tranquility - for social connections and fun times - to make room for relaxation - make space for hobbies Whether you live alone or with others, your home (and any other place that you spend a chunk of time) is a living and sacred work of art, a soul expression. Approached in that way, a host of possibilities will arise.	https://www.maryaomalley.com/a-living-sacred-work-of-art/
Performance Management Process UHR has partnered with leaders throughout the university to create a new performance management process that focuses on the professional development of our employees. This new process encourages frequent conversations around employee potential, career aspirations and performance. The process was also designed to support managers through the full performance management life cycle of goal setting, mid-year and end-of-year conversations. Employee Development The new Performance Management Process focuses on employee development and encourages frequent and honest development conversations throughout the year. Continuous feedback and coaching are essential to this process and help to ensure that development occurs on a consistent and ongoing basis. Goal Alignment The new performance management process not only supports employee development but is also crucial in aligning manager, department and university-wide goals. It is a powerful tool that enables employees to see how their goals tie to the University’s strategic vision. Online Tool The new online performance management tool makes it easy to set, track and share goals from manager to employee and across teams. All you need is an internet connection and you can access the system from anywhere at any time.	https://uhr.rutgers.edu/index.php/performance-management/home
DVD Wholesale Quick Overview: THE LONG WINTER IS HERE. Throughout seven thrilling seasons, the penultimate Season 7 focuses on a convergence of armies and attitudes that have been brewing for years. As the season begins, Daenerys Targaryen – accompanied by her Unsullied army and emboldened Dothraki/Ironborn allies and her lethal trio of dragons – has finally set sail for Westeros with Tyrion Lannister, her newly appointed Hand. Jon Snow has apparently consolidated power in the North after his spectacular conquest of Ramsay Bolton and the return of Winterfell to Stark control. In King’s Landing, Cersei Lannister, bereft of any surviving heirs, has successfully seized the Iron Throne. But as these and other factions drive towards new alliances or (more likely) violent conflicts, the cold specter of another, apocalyptic threat- in the form of an army of undead White Walkers – threatens to undermine the status quo and obliterate the outcome of these smaller, all-too-human rivalries. George R.R. Martin’s best-selling book series `A Song of Ice and Fire’ is brought to the screen as HBO sinks its considerable storytelling teeth into the medieval fantasy epic. It’s the depiction of two powerful families – kings and queens, knights and renegades, liars and honest men – playing a deadly game for control of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, and to sit atop the Iron Throne. Martin is credited as a co-executive producer and one of the writers for the series, which was filmed in Northern Ireland and Malta. DVD Wholesale Main Features:	http://dvdii.com/game-thrones-seasons-7-blu-ray
XOM, Thus far, the Fed has been the laggard among is central-bank peers in this regard. However, a rapidly changing climate may present just the kind of “shock” to the economic system that she and colleagues believe can no longer be ignored, Fed Gov. Lael Brainard said in prepared remarks to the summit. “Because there is considerable uncertainty about the persistence, breadth, and magnitude of climate-related shocks to the economy, it could be challenging to assess what adjustments to monetary policy are likely to be most effective at keeping the economy operating at potential with maximum employment and price stability,” Brainard wrote in prepared remarks. “Increasingly, it will be important for the Federal Reserve to take into account the effects of climate change and associated policies in setting monetary policy to achieve our objectives of maximum employment and price stability,” she said. Don’t miss: Climate-change deniers may be propping up home prices in waterfront communities, research suggests Not only are there short-term natural disasters like the wild fires in California, but “to the extent that climate change and the associated policy responses affect productivity and long-run economic growth, there may be implications for the long-run neutral level of the real interest rate, which is a key consideration in monetary policy,” Brainard said. In one paper presented in San Francisco, the authors said climate change could subtract 7% from real world per-capita gross domestic product by 2100. A separate essay weighed the effectiveness of taxing carbon against subsidies that boosted wind and solar power. Yet another paper took the position that trade agreements should be more transparent on their effect in boosting greenhouse-gas emissions. When it comes to climate change, “we’re actually just looking at the data,” Mary Daly, the president of the San Francisco Fed, told reporters ahead of the summit, according to the Wall Street Journal. With climate change, “it becomes prudent for us to consider what the fallout on the economy is, and on the payment system and on the supervision and regulation [of banks],” Daly said. “So I don’t see that as anything outside of our mission. In fact, I think it’s squarely in our mission and important for us to do that.” Read:Climate change will break the housing market, says David Burt, who predicted the 2008 financial crisis Others have weighed in. “There has been an increased willingness to engage on climate-change issues,” New York Fed President John Williams agreed in remarks earlier this month. “As the Fed, we are careful not to tell Congress what to do, but we can inform the debate.” Increased attention on the risks has made its way to the top of the central bank. In a letter to Congress earlier this year, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell wrote that “over the short term, these events have the potential to inflict serious damage on the lives of individuals and families, devastate local economies (including financial institutions), and even temporarily affect national economic output and employment.” He added, “As such, these events may affect economic conditions, which we take into account in our assessment of the outlook for the economy.” For its part, the Trump administration has been rolling back regulations that have direct impacts on energy sectors, including undoing Obama-era limits on coal. And earlier this month, the White House began the official steps to withdraw the U.S. from the largely globally embraced Paris climate accord, which the president has said isn’t uniformly enforced. The time lapse between U.S. seriousness toward climate risks and earlier attention from others in power haven’t gone unnoticed. Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney said in an October speech in Tokyo that central banks will have to consider the physical risks of climate change when weighing monetary policy. That ranges from the impact on mortgages from flooding to severe weather’s toll on the pricing of government bonds. Related:How climate change is ‘creating a dilemma’ for the world’s central bankers Patrick Honohan, nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, former governor of the Central Bank of Ireland and a member of the governing council of the European Central Bank from September 2009 to November 2015, has written recently to soothe central bankers from the notion that wading into climate-change issues will sully their political independence in setting monetary policy, saying central banks have been behind the curve of society’s response to these issues.	https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fed-can-no-longer-ignore-the-economic-shocks-of-climate-change-lael-brainard-and-panel-say-2019-11-08
Beauty and excitement are the defining qualities of Ayia Napa. This resort town, which lies on the southeast shores of Cyprus, has long been a favorite destination among travelers. Tourists can also find an abundance of interesting sites and fun activities during their stay. In spite of its status as a vibrant vacation spot, Ayia Napa has a surprisingly humble history. Legend has it that a hunter pursuing his prey stumbled across an icon of the Virgin Mary at the present-day site of the town. A monastery was built at the site during the early 16th century. Other settlers did not start coming into the town until the latter part of the 18th century. Many people come to Ayia Napa to enjoy the festive nightlife scene. The Square, one of the main gathering spots in the town, is also home to some of Ayia Napa's most popular restaurants, bars and nightclubs. The town is often compared to other popular party destinations such as Mykonos and Ibiza. Ayia Napa is also well-known for its gorgeous beaches. Nissi Beach, which is considered to be the town's most popular beach, features golden sand and clear blue seawater. The beach at Grecian Bay is another fun place to enjoy a day of swimming, surfing and boating. Beautiful palm trees and other forms of lush vegetation indigenous to the island can be found at Konnos Bay. Limanaki Beach is ideal for families. In addition to the beaches and party atmosphere, visitors have the option of seeing several wonderful sites throughout the town. The old monastery still stands as a testament to Ayia Napa's history. An ancient burial site known as the Makronissos Tombs is another fascinating site. Tourists can also learn more about the history of Ayia Napa and Cyprus by visiting one of the town's museums. A visit to Ayia Napa should be on the list of any avid traveler. The sights, sounds and overall appeal of the town will provide a memorable and worthwhile experience. Find information about selected Hotels, apartments and rooms in Ayia Napa to choose the perfect place for your accommodation.	https://www.perfectcyprus.com/ayia-napa.html
Scientists and resource managers are interested in water temperature, nutrient concentration, and other water-quality characteristics because they influence a range of ecosystem components, from support of aquatic bacteria and invertebrates to the behavior of fish. In particular, declines of Colorado River Basin native fish and changes in their condition have been attributed, in part, to low water temperatures downstream from dams, such as Glen Canyon Dam, that release water from deeper portions of the reservoir. USGS Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center and its cooperators monitor a range of water-quality parameters for Lake Powell, the Lees Ferry reach of the river below Glen Canyon Dam, and the mainstem of the Colorado River from Lees Ferry to Lake Mead. The purpose of water quality monitoring in Lake Powell is to document and understand changes that occur while water is in the reservoir and how those changes may affect the quality of water released from Glen Canyon Dam. Water quality monitoring of Lake Powell has two components: monthly surveys of the forebay, the pool of water in front of the dam, and quarterly reservoir-wide surveys. Scientists collect data for basic water quality parameters, including temperature, specific conductance, dissolved oxygen, pH, oxide-reduction potential, and turbidity. Chemical and biological sampling is performed in some instances. Water quality monitoring activities in the Lees Ferry reach assess the initial quality of water leaving the reservoir and entering Grand Canyon National Park. The parameters measured are similar to those monitored for Lake Powell and are important for detecting change and understanding the relationship between the quality of the water leaving the reservoir and the downstream aquatic ecosystem. Water quality monitoring downstream of Lees Ferry includes the measurement of water stage and discharge throughout the river ecosystem in addition to basic water quality parameters. Suspended sediment concentration and grain size are also measured in support of research related to stable flow testing, evaluation of alternative fluctuating flows, tests of high flows, and ongoing development and evaluation of numerical modeling. Some of these files may require the ability to read Portable Document Format (PDF) documents; the latest version of Adobe Reader or similar software is required to view it. Download the latest version of Adobe Reader, free of charge.	https://www.gcmrc.gov/research_areas/water_quality/water_quality_default.aspx
His Holiness has far greater challenges ahead of him than upstart leaders of Italian communes, however. As the head of the Catholic faith, the Pope has a unique responsibility to protect the faith and spread the Word of God far beyond the confines of the Papal States' worldly borders. To the east across the Adriatic Sea, the Ottomans threaten the Christian bastions of the Balkans, and left unchecked could march into the heart of the Holy Roman Empire itself. Far to the north, the venerable monastic states of the Teutonic Order and Livonian Order, tasked by the Church with serving as Christendom's bulwarks in the Baltic, are being torn apart by envious princes, and left unsupported could be extinguished entirely. Most worrying of all, dark murmurs are beginning to spread, speaking ill not just of the Pope, but of the entire structure of the Catholic Church! These muttered calls for some sort of Reformation, left unchecked, could spell disaster for the Papacy.All the diplomatic skills of the Pope should not be used purely in reaction to events, of course. With all the power and prestige of the Church supporting him, His Holiness could construct a great Holy League to tackle the Ottoman menace. New crusades can be called, and if they succeed then Christianity can at last be restored in Jerusalem. As explorers chart the unknown corners of the globe, missionaries can follow, spreading the faith to such far-flung regions as China and Japan. With all the prestige and power which canny Popes could possibly acquire, it might be possible to even reunite the Catholic and Orthodox churches and end the schism. The Papal State is the manifestation of the temporal power of the pope. Beginning with Urbino and Perugia as vassals and with the provinces of Roma, Ancona, Spoleto, Terracina and Avignon, it is relatively large and prosperous compared to other states in the region. Despite this, it is often subject to early invasion by neighbouring states such as Florence and also Provence which often seeks to acquire the landlocked and isolated province of Avignon with which it shares a border. Naples, while not posing any immediate threat due to its starting situation as a lesser partner in a personal union, will often seek to conquer the Papal State should it ever break free from Aragonese vassalage. The Papal State will never accept diplo-vassalization; they have a −1000 acceptance modifier for the diplomatic action. If the Papal State is annexed then a surviving Catholic theocracy may cede their province to recreate the Papacy. The Papal State is an end game tag and is not allowed to form any other countries. As such, it is the only starting Italian country that can't form Italy. Contents Missions - Main article: Papal missions Papal missions centre around eradicating other Christian denominations from the Italian region and reacquiring lands that once belonged to it before the game start. Events - Main article: Papal events The Papal State's events center around the inner workings of the Catholic Church. If a Catholic country other than the Papal State owns Rome, they may cede it, unless they have a better claim (i.e. they're Italy or the Roman Empire). Otherwise, another European Catholic country may release them if they have ceased to exist. Papal State \|Trigger conditions \|\|Mean time to happen \| 2 months We will never support such a state Rome is rightfully theirs The Papal State \|Trigger conditions \|\|Mean time to happen \| 6 months \|Immediate effects \| For the Glory of God! Perhaps not. Decisions Declare the Kingdom of God \|Potential requirements \|\|Allow \| \|Effects \| Strategy Advantages of the Papal State The Papal State is virtually guaranteed maximum prestige. Their unique government type gives +0.33 prestige per development per missionary and their national ideas give another −1 prestige decay. With another +1 possible from 100 Devotion the Papal State's prestige drifts to 100 with little player intervention. This provides another −10% aggressive expansion impact and a +50% Improve relations bonus in addition to the −10% aggressive expansion impact from the national ideas. On top of this, the Papal State has a −25% cost to fabricate claims bonus. Claimed provinces are easier to core and start with lower local autonomy—autonomy that will quickly drop thanks to the Papal State's government type. On top of these bonuses, 100 devotion, high clergy estate influence and one of the Papal ideas can provide a total of +65% global tax modifier in a region with high tax base. The papacy government type is also a fixed rank Kingdom tier government (Empire-tier with the Kingdom of God reform), thus granting the unique ability to join the HRE while keeping the Kingdom Rank, even without an electorate. Like all the theocracies the Papal State does not suffer a stability hit on monarch death, nor regencies. The Papal State is similar to other theocracies in not being allowed to turn their ruler into a general (unless it takes the Magister Militum Dei reform), though The Papal State does not choose an heir. The Papal State has several unique events and decisions that provide several permanent perks: - The Vatican library grants the player's choice of - The Sistine Chapel gives +0.1 yearly devotion just for building it, and when decorated, can give an additional +0.1 yearly devotion and the player's choice of - The Swiss Guard may give +10% global manpower modifier if the player has good relations with Switzerland. - The Papal State can also form the Kingdom Of God, which provides another +10% manpower as well as additional prestige and devotion. Lastly, since the yearly papal influence gained by Catholic nations is based on the Papal State relation score with them, all the Catholic nations will try to keep their relationship maxed, avoiding cases of the Papal State being unable to ally a Catholic nation because his own opinion toward said nation is negative. This also means that Catholic nations who become hostile or rival towards the Papal State will rarely gain control of the curia and are going to lose most of the perks of the Catholicism, thus granting the Papal State an automatic advantage toward enemies and rivals in the Catholic world. All of this means that as soon as the Papal State negotiates the opening stages of the game, perhaps by appeasing Austria and joining the Holy Roman Empire, is set to become a very offensive player in the European scenario, capable of expanding fast with minimal negative repercussions. Pitfalls The Papal State starts small, surrounded by acquisitive opponents. The right combination of alliances should forestall aggression, but the fact that almost all the northern Italian states are in the HRE will hinder expansion. The Shadow Empire event in 1490 may remove the Italian princes from the HRE (sooner with Emperor's imperial incident). Venice and Naples are potential non-HRE rivals. As with all theocracies, the Papal State cannot have royal marriages or personal unions, and since it is not a monastic order cannot make its leader a general unless the government reform "Magister Militum Dei" is taken. Unlike other theocracies it cannot become an Empire, and cannot change its fixed government type. Papal State is also locked into Catholicism, but cannot get the perks other Catholics get from spending papal influence and has to deal with the Reformation without the ability to adopt a more tolerant religion, starts the game with the Blasphemy Act modifier that grants +1% missionary strength, but also a −1 tolerance of heretics that stacks with the usual Catholic low heretic tolerance for a total of −4 tolerance of heretics at the start of the game. Provinces that convert during the Reformation will be locked out of conversion for 30 years, and that is a massive swing towards rebellion and due to the very low heretic tolerance, not even adopting the humanist idea group can prevent the Papal State from a loss in religious unity. Low religious unity will raise corruption, that will increase all monarch power costs up to intolerable amounts unless rooted out by investing time and an exorbitant amount of gold. Luckily the usually high stability will help in keeping rebellion and corruption under control, and the Papal State starts with a +25% religious unity modifier that will prevent things from getting truly nasty. Other than that, the main problem is that after Italy is consolidated the Papal State is going to be surrounded by France, Austria, Hungary, and the Ottomans. Avoiding a direct border will help France remain friendly. Influence Over the Curia The Papal State starts the game as the Curia Controller, but since it can't gain papal influence it can't invest influence to keep its Curia Controller status. Instead the Papal State has an automatic amount of influence invested in the curia controller election based on the number of the existing cardinals in the Catholic world, so struggling to keep the full 49 cardinal seats filled, when chance is given by event, will maximize the Papal State ability to be the next Curia Controller. Influence can also be gained by appointing loyal cardinals to Papal provinces or conquering provinces with Cardinals. Encouraging a hostile diplomatic game towards nations that gain several cardinal seats, with an intelligent use of rivalries, hostile diplomatic relationships and event choices, will eventually lower considerably their papal influence gains, thus reducing the influence over the Curia of the most active participants to the papal election. A more uncommon way the Papal State has to improve its control over the Curia is the ability to willingly increase the death chance of the Pope to cause an immediate new election. A few events available to the papacy include choices that could result in the death of the Pope, so picking those choices when the Curia is under foreign control will give a chance for a new election. Due to the papacy government type there will be no stability hit on monarch death. Reform Desire Control Among all the Catholic Nations the Papal State is in the unique position of being actually capable of greatly lowering the reform desire and slowing down the reformation process. The Veneration of relics, Indulgences and Simony related events for the Papal State grant a choice between a small source of income for free and the banishment of said practices from the Catholic world at the cost of −1 stability. For each practice banished not only the reform desire is decreased by a notable −10%, but also the related event is permanently disabled for all the Catholic nations, thus permanently stopping one of the most important sources of reform desire. Lastly the witch trial event can grant another −10% decrease to the global reform desire for no cost. If the Papal State is willing to pick all the reform desire lowering choices the reform can be slowed to the point of being irrelevant for most of the game. Due to the Papal State's abysmal heretic religion tolerance and the consequent rise in corruption due to low religious unity, this strategy has long term benefits that could outweigh the costs. The Kingdom of God This decision is available once most of the north Italian peninsula has been annexed. Doing this can be very valuable, since it offers +10% manpower, +1 prestige, +1 devotion and permanent claims on all of the Italian region. Moreover, it significantly reduces the cost of appointing new cardinals (both inside and outside the Papal lands) and increases the benefits from cardinals within the Papal State. Starting tips - The Papal State begins in control of the Curia, allowing the player to begin the game with large bonuses and the ability to excommunicate rivals. - Allying Austria and improving relations to maximum can allow the player to join the HRE. Further, being allied to Austria as an HRE prince will prevent demands for unlawful territory as long as Austria remains the emperor. - Since the Papal State begins with two vassals, the Strong Duchies estate privilege can be granted immediately for more relationship slots. - If the player joins the HRE, Florence is an attractive first target. If excommunicated, Florence incurs just under 50 aggressive expansion (no longer true for 1.30.4) and gives the player 3 very rich provinces and 2 more trade centers in the lucrative Genoa trade node. - Venice is a tempting early target. The Papal State begins with Urbino as a vassal, and Urbino has claims on Venetian territory. Austria will usually rival Venice, so if they are allied they will be an enthusiastic participant. - Naples may be vulnerable if they break out of their personal union with Aragon. You might even get a Subjugation CB by event. - France can be a powerful ally – at least until the player shares a border with them. - Selling Avignon to France might be easier than trying to defend it, however Provence is a possible starting rival that owns an estuary city in the Genoa trade node – making it a profitable conquest. By excommunicating them first you might get rid of their allies, and you get a casus belli with reduced aggressive expansion impact. - Influence has a lot of synergy with the Papal State's national ideas, while the core costs discount from Administrative is very helpful in the Italian region and synergize well with all the Papal State administrative power discounts and gains. Either of them should be the first idea group. Achievements As the Papacy, own Jerusalem and have Livonian Order, Teutonic Order and The Knights as Marches. Starting as the Papal State, become the Kingdom of God.	https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Papal_State
Churchill Downs, Inc. (NASDAQ: CHDN), a Louisville, Kentucky, company, fell to close at $223.22 Tuesday after losing $2.31 (1.02%) on volume of 226,389 shares. The stock ranged from a high of $227.77 to a low of $222.91 while Churchill Downs,’s market cap now stands at $8,537,970,352. About Churchill Downs, Inc. Churchill Downs Incorporated is an industry-leading racing, online wagering and gaming entertainment company anchored by iconic flagship event, the Kentucky Derby. The Company owns and operates three pari-mutuel gaming entertainment venues with approximately 3,050 historical racing machines in Kentucky. It also owns and operates TwinSpires, one of the largest and most profitable online wagering platforms for horse racing, sports and iGaming in the U.S. and it has seven retail sportsbooks. The Company is also a leader in brick-and-mortar casino gaming in eight states with approximately 11,000 slot machines and video lottery terminals and 200 table games. About The Nasdaq Stock Market The Nasdaq Stock Market is a global leader in trading data and services, and equities and options listing. Nasdaq is the world's leading exchange for options volume and is home to the five largest US companies - Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook. Sources: Chart is provided by TradingView based on 15-minute-delayed prices. All other data is provided by IEX Cloud as of 8:05 pm ET on the day of publication. DISCLOSURE: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors, and do not represent the views of equities.com. Readers should not consider statements made by the author as formal recommendations and should consult their financial advisor before making any investment decisions. To read our full disclosure, please go to: http://www.equities.com/disclaimer
Deadline: January 5, 2019. \| \| Location: Washington, D.C., United States (Partially Funded) The George Washington University – You Are Welcome Here Scholarship The George Washington University (GW) is a proud participant in the #YouAreWelcomeHereScholarship program. Starting in fall 2019, GW will offer two annual, renewable scholarships that cover at least 50 percent of tuition to selected international undergraduate students dedicated to advancing intercultural learning and bridging cultural divides. Opportunity Focus Areas: College of Arts & Sciences - Africana Studies - American Studies - Anthropology - Arabic Studies - Archaeology - Astronomy and Astrophysics - Biological Anthropology - Biology - Biophysics - Chemistry - Chinese Language and Literature - Classical Studies - Cognitive Neuroscience - Communication - Criminal Justice - Economics - English - English and Creative Writing - Environmental Studies - French Language and Literature - Geography - Geological Sciences - German Language and Literature - History - Human Services and Social Justice - Japanese Language and Literature - Judaic Studies - Mathematics - Neuroscience - Organizational Sciences - Peace Studies - Philosophy - Philosophy (Public Affairs) - Physics - Political Science - Political Science (Public Policy) - Psychology - Religion - Russian Language and Literature - Sociology - Spanish and Latin American Languages, Literatures, and Cultures - Speech and Hearing Sciences - Statistics - Women’s Studies School of the Arts & Design - Art History - Dance - Fine Art(B.A. in FIne Arts or B.F.A. in Fine Art) - Fine Art Photography - Graphic Design - Interaction Design - Interior Architecture - Music - Photojournalism - Theatre School of International Affairs - Comparative Political, Economic and Social Systems - Conflict Resolution - Contemporary Cultures and Societies - Global Public Health - International Development - International Economics - International Environmental Studies - International Politics - Security Policy - Africa - Asia - Europe and Eurasia - Latin America - Middle East School of Business - Business Administration - Accountancy - Business Analytics - Business Economics and Public Policy - Finance - Information Systems and Technology Management - Innovation and Entrepreneurship - International Business - Marketing - Real Estate - Sport, Event and Hospitality Management - Finance Institute School of Public Health - Pre-Athletic Training/Sports Medicine - Pre-Medical - Pre-Physical Therapy - Nutrition Science - Public Health Engineering & Applied Science - Applied Science and Technology - Biomedical Engineering - Civil Engineering - Computer Engineering - Computer Science - Electrical Engineering - Mechanical Engineering - Systems Engineering School of Media & Public Affairs - Journalism and Mass Communication - Political Communication For more information click here English. ALL WORLD COUNTRIES. 4 years - To apply for George Washington’s You Are Welcome Here Scholarship, applicants must: - seek first-year international admissions to GW. An international applicant is an individual who holds citizenship in a country outside of the United States and who does not also possess U.S. citizenship or permanent residency. - submit the CSS Profile as part of the GW admissions application. (The CSS PROFILE is required by many private colleges and universities to determine your eligibility for non-government financial aid, such as the institution’s own grants, loans and scholarships.) - attend (or have graduated from) a secondary school outside of the United States. - demonstrate interest and personal initiative in activities involving intercultural learning and exchange. - complete the scholarship application. (Partially Funded) scholarships that covers: - at least 50 percent of tuition - First Step: Students must first apply for admissions to GW university and submit all required application materials. Your application must include either an essay or video detailing your plans for bridging cultural divides,Personal Statement. Application requirements may vary according to school. - Second step Students must submit GW’s You Are Welcome Here Scholarship application by January 5, 2019. Apply Now Know more about this opportunity: Official Website To learn how to write CV, Essays, Personal statement, and know about recommendation letters click here: Marj3 recommended links This Scholarship Published by:	https://www.marj3.com/en/bachelors-scholarship-at-the-george-washington-university-in-us-2019.html
# Sheldon Gosline Sheldon Lee Gosline is an American Egyptologist who has extensively studied the ancient civilizations of the Far East. He is noted for proposing the existence of a developing literate civilization in southern China dating to the second millennium BCE. ## Biography Sheldon Lee Gosline began his professional education at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a B.A. degrees in Oriental Studies and Art History in 1985. He later continued his studies at the University of Cambridge, where he received a B.A. degree 1988 and was awarded an M.A. degree in Oriental Studies in 1993. He interrupted his stay at Cambridge to study at the University of Chicago, receiving an M.A. degree in Egyptology and Near Eastern Archaeology in 1992. After Cambridge he studied at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. in 2013 from University College London, where he researched at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine and the UCL Centre for the History of Medicine. His thesis concerned the intersection of business and medicine. ## Career Gosline is owner of Shangri-La Publications Art Design and Shangrila Gifts based in Warren Center, PA. Gosline has taught at Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China; and at UW-Madison. He was at Northeast Normal University through 2004. In 2011, he moved to London to pursue a Ph.D. in the history of medicine, at University College London. Once he completed the degree, he returned to China to research the writing of the country’s minority groups. He was first a visiting professor at Minzu University of China and Tsinghua University, both in Beijing. Since 2015, he has taught medical humanities at Peking University. He is a member of several professional associations. He states that he has become proficient in or conversant with nine contemporary or ancient languages. ## Lost civilization theory IN 2013 Gosline was shown some inscriptions found in Guangxi province and considered that several were based on the Indus script and Persian cuneiform. On a field trip to the area where they were found in 2014 he discovered what he considered evidence of further inscriptions made up of large rocks regularly spaced and what he called “a man-made platform of megalithic construction" and something that “appeared to be a carved chair or throne.” Sitting on it he “sensed a harmony and that I was in the midst of an ancient time calculating device". He returned to what he called an "observatory complex" with caver including royal burials in June 2014 with a group of researchers who examined the site and stated that “We confirmed most of the things I’d found as potential alignments, and we confirmed that there was artifact evidence in the area that showed human occupation.” He reported this in a talk to the New York Explorers Club later that year, saying that he believed he had found an unknown civilization. Reports from Chinese researchers who accompanied him were less positive. Dr. Ye Xiaohong reported that "Two suspected cave tombs are not man-made," "No artificial traces were found on the huge stone in the suspected artificial remains, neither the suspected structures for observation nor the suspected ancient topographic maps" and that what Gosline had interpreted as ancient writing on some rocks "were certainly produced by natural force". The Chinese researchers also surveyed the alignments that Gosline thought related to the chair (which they agreed was a natural water-created formation) and concluded that the stone could not have been used as part of an observatory. Another Chinese researcher who was part of Gosline's group stated that "Gosline proclaimed that he had found several megalithic sites including observatories, palaces, and ancient cave tombs，petro-glyphs and even plan maps at Gansang, Nadou, and Bupeng in Pingguo county, Guangxi". The conclusion was that "We have not found any artificial remains, artifacts, and occupation layer both at Nadou and Bupeng sites" and that most of the "scratches, the petro-glyphs and plan maps on the rocks called by Gosline, are natural" with a few that might be artificial and needed microscopic examination. However they did believe that the "Gansang site might have worked as an important settlement in Youjiang River Reach." Commenting on the engraved stones reported by Gosline, they commented that they seemed too new, that they were too intact with "the whole texts just fit to the sizes of the planks", that they lacked an archaeological context and that there were too few repetitions of characters. Gosline’s observation that the newly discovered inscriptions seemed to include Persian cuneiform is unproven as of 2016.	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Gosline
My research interests center on the transnational history of medicine and knowledge production especially from the perspectives of minorities, most notably Deaf and Black persons. I earned my Ph.D. degree in U.S. history from the University of Leipzig in 2006 with a dissertation on American Students at German Universities in the nineteenth century. From 2006 until 2009, I worked as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, a position in which, among other things, I coordinated the international Alexander-von-Humboldt in English-project, a collaboration with the University of Potsdam. After my return to Germany in 2010, I worked for two years in the field of German memory culture, including a year at the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the East German Communist Dictatorship (Stiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur). After research scholarships at the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC, I was a Post-Doctoral research associate in History of Medicine at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (2014 to 2019). I am currently focusing on finishing my second Ph.D. dissertation in the field of Transnational Deaf History. Research Interests/Forschungsschwerpunkte - Transatlantische Medizin- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte (19. und 20. Jahrhundert) / Transatlantic History of Medicine and Knowledge Production (19th and 20th Century) - Perspektiven sprachlich-kultureller Minderheiten / Perspectivs of Cultural and Linguistic Minorities - Deaf History (USA – Deutschland / USA – Germany) - Transnationale Geschichtsschreibung / Transnational Historiography - Intersektionalität / Intersectionality Ongoing Research / Laufende Forschung Expert-discourses about Deafness in the divided Germany In my ongoing book project, I examine expert-discourses about Deafness in the divided Germany, focusing on international input and contributions of Deaf stakeholders. Two leading questions serve as a red thread: One, to what extent can genuinely deaf persons partake in oral cultures, and, second, what role should national sign languages play in their education. The conflict between these two approaches may be traced to the 18th century, when the “oral” approach was first perceived to be the “German method” and the “manual” approach “the French method.” After World War II, new technological advances resulted in affordable hearing aids and Cochlear Implants (CI). Simultaneously, linguists began studying national sign languages, for the first time presenting solid academic proof of the fact that they indeed constitute actual languages. Since the 1970s, these findings have led to renewed, at times polemic discussions about the proper language instruction at schools for the deaf. However, in contrast to past methodological disagreements, two new elements had emerged: First, in 1951, Deaf adults initially mainly from Europe and North America formed the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD), an international organization of national Deaf Associations. Second, in 1959, the United Nations and the World Health Organization granted the WFD consultative status. Starting in the 1960s, the WFD actively contributed to UNESCO’s educational programs, which were thus also shaped by Deaf sign-language-using adults. National civil rights movements and decolonization efforts furthermore affected UNESCO guidelines on Deaf Education. The creation of international platforms for expert discourses and the active input of deaf adults impacted national debates about deafness. It allowed experts to distance themselves from national educational traditions, and thus opened doors for more complex educational approaches like “total communication” and “bimodal-bilingual education” – at least in theory. The process of translating expert concepts into practical educational work at schools for the deaf in Germany is ongoing to this day.	https://www.uni-erfurt.de/en/philosophische-fakultaet/seminare-professuren/historisches-seminar/professuren/neuere-und-zeitgeschichte-und-geschichtsdidaktik/profil-und-team/doktorandinnen-und-habilitandinnen/dr-anja-werner-habilitandin
Posted on Sep 15, 2021 Security compliance management is the process of monitoring and assessing systems, devices, and networks to ensure they comply with regulatory requirements, as well as industry and local cybersecurity standards. Staying on top of compliance isn’t always easy, especially for highly regulated industries and sectors. Regulations and standards change often, as do threats and vulnerabilities. Organizations often have to respond quickly to remain in compliance. This can be difficult in organizations with large, complex infrastructures or teams that are spread out over various platforms or geographic areas, but the stakes are high. The dangers of falling out of compliance puts you and your customers at risk of breaches, attacks, and of course, at risk of fines from regulatory agencies. For this reason, it’s important to be on top of security compliance management. Compliance is critical for many reasons — trust, reputation, safety, and the integrity of your data — but it also affects a business’s bottom line. In fact, the Ponemon Institute considers noncompliance to be the top factor that amplifies the cost of a data breach. According to Ponemon’s 2021 Cost of a Data Breach report, compliance is a major factor when it comes to the cost of data breaches; organizations with many compliance failures found that their data breaches cost an average of $2.30 million more than organizations who were in compliance with regulations. The average cost of a data breach with high levels of compliance failures was $5.65 million in 2020. Why? When companies are out of compliance, their breach costs include fines, penalties, and lawsuits. For this reason, organizations that are out of compliance in highly regulated industries — like healthcare, energy, and finance — tend to experience these additional costs long after the breach has happened, sometimes years later. Good security compliance is about more than avoiding fines, or even attacks. When an organization is on top of security compliance, they’re often on top of good data management practices as well. They’re able to keep track of sensitive assets, they know if they’re keeping personal identifiable information about customers, and they often have a plan in place in case a breach does occur. Compliance makes an organization more disciplined, ingrains good cybersecurity practices into the company culture, and streamlines data management practices. The following are some best practices to help your organization improve its security compliance management, no matter what regulations you have to comply with: SecurityScorecard continuously monitors your complete infrastructure, including your extended enterprise. Our platform is able to track both your internal and external adherence to established policies and practices — we let you capture, report, and remediate security risks in real-time, so you’re never in danger of falling out of compliance. Compliance can be tricky, but once you can monitor your whole cybersecurity infrastructure, you’ll have visibility into your sensitive data, your risks, and your compliance that will let you pinpoint any changes that need to be made, and adhere to regulations and standards. Vendor management is the process an organization utilizes to assess and manage a third- or fourth-party vendor. Learn how SecurityScorecard can help. Performing cybersecurity risk assessments is a key part of any organization’s information security management program. Read our guide. Templates and vendor evaluations are needed to level that playing field, in a time efficient and fair way, so that the best vendors are chosen. Co-founder and CEO, Alex Yampolskiy, speaks about the importance of measuring and acting on key indicators of cybersecurity risk. You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Check out our list of the top 20 cybersecurity KPIs to track in 2021. No waiting, 100% Free Get your free scorecard and learn how you stack up across 10 risk categories. Answer a few simple questions and we'll instantly send your score to your business email.	https://securityscorecard.com/blog/what-is-security-compliance-management
. The Greek Dark Ages (ca. 1200 BC–800 BC) refers to the period of Greek prehistory from the presumed Dorian invasion and end of the Mycenaean civilization in the 11th century BC to the rise of the first Greek city-states in the 9th century BC and the epics of Homer and earliest writings in alphabetic Greek in the 8th century BC. It is thought that the epics composed by Homer, a blind lonian poet, were passed down from generation to generation in the form of folk lore until the use of writing came back into style. The collapse of the Mycenaean cordinated with the fall of several other large empires in the near east, most notabley the Hittite and the Egyptian. The cause may be attributed do an invasion of the sea people wielding iron weapons. When the Dorians came down into Greece they also were equiped with superior iron weapson, easily dispersing the already weakened Mycenaeans. The period that follows these events is collectively known as the Greek Dark Ages. Archaeology shows a collapse of civilization in the Greek world in this period. The great palaces and cities of the Myceneans were destroyed or abandoned. The Greek language ceased to be written. Greek dark age pottery has simple geometric designs and lacks the figurative decoration of Mycenean ware. The Greeks of the dark age lived in fewer and smaller settlements, suggesting famine and depopulation, and foreign goods are not found, suggesting little international trade. Contact was also lost between foreign powers during this period, yeilding little cultural progress or growth of any sort. Kings are said to rule over this period of time. However, eventually they were replaced with an aristocracy, and later, in some areas, an aristocracy in a aristocracy; the elites of the elite. The weight of war changed from cavalry to infantry called hoplites. Iron became into use due to its cheapness to produce and mine. Slowly equality grew amoung the different sects of people, leading to the dethronement of the various Kings and the rise of the family. Families began to reconstruct their past in the attempt at linking their blood line with heroes from the Trojan War, but most precisly Heracles. Most of this was a jumble of lengend and hubris, but some were sorted by poets of the school of Hesiod. Most of these poems are lost, though, but some famous "storywriters", as they were called, were Hecataeus of Miletus and Acusilaus of Argos. At the end of this period of stagnation the Greek civilization was engulfed in a renaissance that spread the Greek world as far as the Black Sea and Spain. Writing was relearned from the Phoenicians, eventually spreading north into Italy and the Gauls. Literature Latacz, J. Between Troy and Homer. The so-called Dark Ages in Greece, in: Storia, Poesia e Pensiero nel Mondo antico. Studi in Onore di M. Gigante, Rome, 1994. \| \| Ancient Greece \| \| Medieval Greece / Byzantine Empire \| \| Modern Greece \| \| Science, Technology , Medicine , Warfare, , Biographies , Life , Cities/Places/Maps , Arts , Literature , Philosophy ,Olympics, Mythology , History , Images \| \| Science, Technology, Arts, , Warfare , Literature, Biographies, Icons, History \| \| Cities, Islands, Regions, Fauna/Flora ,Biographies , History , Warfare, Science/Technology, Literature, Music , Arts , Film/Actors , Sport , Fashion Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org"	http://hellenicaworld.com/Greece/History/en/FirstGreekDarkAge.html
This is a NO-2 contract. This kind of contract is known as National Professional Officers. It is normally only for nationals. It's a staff contract. More about NO-2 contracts. A fully-equipped health insurance made for remote workers who spend as much time abroad as they please. Full coverage in your home country. UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential. Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone. And we never give up. For every child, Health! Pakistan was the sixth country in the world to sign and ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, less than one year after it was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1989. However, children and adolescents living in Pakistan still face acute challenges. UNICEF supports the Government of Pakistan to accelerate progress for children, work to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and help children realize their rights under the Convention on the Rights of Children. This will be made through, among others things, strong partnerships with provincial authorities, teachers and health professionals, frontline workers and social mobilisers, communities and families, and of course the children and adolescents themselves. In particular, UNICEF will work so that: - Every child survives and thrives -- being in good health, immunised, protected from polio and accessing nutritious food. - Every child learns. - Every child is protected from violence and exploitation and registered at birth. - Every child lives in a safe and clean environment, with access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. To learn more about UNICEF’s work in Pakistan, please visit the country website www.unicef.org/pakistan and videos on YouTube and Vimeo The Pakistan Polio communication network, or COMNet, has been established in Pakistan. It provides the framework at provincial, district, union council and community levels through which communication efforts to eradicate polio will be channeled. The main task of the COMNet is to mobilize communities, particularly parents and childcare providers, to ensure all children in the areas of the deployed communication staff are vaccinated against polio in every vaccination round. COMNet communication staff is responsible particularly for identifying working with high-risk groups and involving influencers and governmental and non-governmental partners in polio advocacy activities, particularly those persons involved with high-risk groups, at their respective levels The purpose of this assignment is to provide technical oversight, guidance, and quality assurance to the multiple training activities and events sponsored and supported by the Polio Eradication Unit with particular focus to support ongoing eradication efforts in South KP. Responsibilities include the development of appropriate training curriculum and methodology, pre-testing and evaluating training, materials, tools, and events as to the appropriateness and effectiveness. Through regular review, evaluation, and analysis the position will provide quality assurance of contracted, third party training services including philosophy, methodology, and the appropriateness and competence of staffing structures. The Training Officer works at the Federal and Provincial levels with particular focus on South KP. The staff member works under the daily supervision of the Social and Behavior Change Specialist, NOD, Polio Eradication Unit, and with sector specific guidance and collaboration from and with the national and provincial teams and emergency coordination center coordinators. Social and Behavior Change Specialist, NOD in collaboration with the national and provincial teams and emergency center coordinators, provides guidance on the design and development of the programme. They also provide guidance on the management, monitoring and evaluation of the programme. The incumbent works independently on the implementation of the programme/project and provides regular reports to the supervisor. To make a difference, you will have the following main duties and responsibilities: - Support the development of an appropriate capacity development strategy with particular focus on South KP and in collaboration with GOP and WHO for frontline workers conducting social mobilization and interpersonal communication for community engagement, including developing appropriate content, modules and methodologies for a communication, social mobilization, advocacy and media skills, and other areas according to the needs of the programme, including vaccine management. Support the systematic implementation and roll-out of training activities identified in the capacity development strategy - In collaboration with Social and Behavior Change team and the COMNet Coordinator, support carrying out a training needs assessment which will form the basis for designing and implementing innovative training and capacity building activities for COMNet communication staff, namely District Health Communication Officers (DHCSOs), Union Council Communication Support Officers (UCOs), and Social Mobilizers (SMs) for implementation by the contracted training services and/or provincial Polio teams - Provide support to the COMNet Coordinator in monitoring and assessing the training sessions and how the training impacts the performance of COMNet in implementation of communication and social mobilization activities - Provide technical support to partners and government counterparts in the development of appropriate training methodologies and training modules aimed at all frontline workers in polio eradication, vaccine management and routine immunization programmes. - Assist in modifying, revising, and updating the content of existing training programme by taking stock of existing pool of trainers, carrying out TNA, developing training strategy and action plan in consultation with provincial polio teams for COMNet. Collaborates with functional experts to develop programmes that achieve the defined learning and business objectives - Support in development of a TOR and hiring a training vendor on long term agreement for conducting COMNet training - Develop a monitoring and evaluation plan for the training workshop to be conducted and ensure its effective implementation either through polio provincial teams or through third party - Required to interpret and apply guidelines; expected to make recommendations when deviation from the guidelines is necessary; - Makes decision on programme/project implementation, programme delivery targeted goals and objectives; - Makes recommendations on technical and policy advice national and provincial teams; - Makes recommendations on development and formulation of training planning, projects, and events and/or their components and appropriate adjustments and changes in implementation to improve efficiency and effectiveness of programme delivery. To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have… - An Advance University Degree (Master's or above) in the Social / behavioral sciences (Social Work, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Health Education) with practical training components. - *A first University Degree (Bachelor's) in a relevant field combined with 2 additional years of professional experience may be accepted in lieu of an Advanced University Degree. - Certificate as Master Trainer. Degree or training in media and communication with experience in strategic communication planning for behavior development / social mobilization / advocacy / participatory communication / development and production of creative materials / research, training or facilitation of communication / impact evaluation of communication interventions - A Minimum of two years’ relevant professional experience in development, social mobilization, and/or partnership and social network development - Programme implementation experience in polio eradication is an asset - Experience in health communication an asset - Preference to people with community-based work experience in KPK or Karachi - Fluency in English and Urdu is required. Knowledge of a local provincial language is an asset. For every Child, you demonstrate... UNICEF's core values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability and Sustainability (CRITAS). Click here to learn more about UNICEF’s values and competencies. The UNICEF competencies required for this post are Demonstrates Self Awareness and Ethical Awareness (1), Works Collaboratively with others (1), Builds and Maintains Partnerships (1), Innovates and Embraces Change (1), Thinks and Acts Strategically (1), Drive to achieve impactful results (1), Manages ambiguity and complexity (1) To view our competency framework, please visit here. UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization. UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check. Remarks: - Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process. - Verified educational certificates/ HEC Attested Degrees are a pre-requisite for employment at UNICEF. During the recruitment process candidates will be required to present HEC attested degrees/certificates. - UNICEF’s active commitment towards diversity and inclusion is critical to deliver the best results for children. For this position, eligible and suitable female candidates will be prioritized.	https://untalent.org/jobs/training-officer-polio-nob-islamabad-pakistan-120757-364-days
Description Of all those in the King of Alden’s retinue, the bloodbinders are the most prized. The magic they wield can forge invaluable weapons, ones that make soldiers like Lady Alix Black unerringly lethal. However, the bloodbinders’ powers can do so much more—and so much worse. A cunning and impetuous scout, Alix only wishes to serve quietly on the edges of the action. But when the king is betrayed by his own brother and left to die at the hands of attacking Oridian forces, she winds up single-handedly saving her sovereign. Suddenly, she is head of the king’s personal guard, an honor made all the more dubious by the king’s exile from his own court. Surrounded by enemies, Alix must help him reclaim his crown, all the while attempting to repel the relentless tide of invaders led by the Priest, most feared of Oridia’s lords.
Is the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior changing as you shift a culture or as you struggle with different generations of leaders who have varying ideas on what’s permissible at work? Do you feel like you have leaders or employees who are acting outside the lines of what might be considered ideal behavior? If these things are true for you, it may no longer make sense to continue to assume that everyone knows what behaviors are appropriate. What should a leader do to help the organization achieve clarity in this case? Consider that the “rules” or guidelines for acceptable – if not exemplary – leadership behavior can be developed collaboratively with your leadership team and then shared widely with all employees. If behavioral expectations are mutually developed and openly shared throughout the organization there is a smaller chance for slip-ups. With a set of behavioral norms in place, when they are not followed, there is a foundation for a conversation about them. I am suggesting that the organizational leaders begin the process because they are expected to model (appropriate) behaviors for others in the organization. Sit down with your leadership team and facilitate a dialog about the type of behaviors that you want to foster starting with yourselves. What you’ll be looking to develop are actual observable behaviors that you want to see and model for the organization. To get you started, here are some questions you can ask: - What behaviors do we want to model? - What will others see us actually doing and saying? - How will they see us doing and saying these things? - Why are these behaviors important? Here are some examples and how they could be described: Respect others: We know it’s possible to understand a colleague without agreeing with their opinion. We respect each other by listening to understand, even if we disagree. When we disagree, we verbalize it in a direct manner, calmly, and with kindness. When we respect others, it is returned not only to us, but to our customers and clients. Give feedback: We provide feedback to each other in an open and honest way as soon as possible after we observe a situation that calls for our reaction, criticism or advice. We give critical feedback privately and praise publicly. When we deliver feedback with respect in this way, we create culture of trust. Communicate: We communicate clearly, openly, and honestly as much as we can and as soon as we are able. We communicate things consistently and often, and in more than one way often using more than one tool. We don’t gossip or speculate about others’ motives; we ask them respectfully to clear up any misunderstandings or confusion. When we communicate in this way, we are all are better informed and better able to act consistent with our organizational mission. As you develop your own leadership code of behavior, you can communicate it to all employees in the organization, getting their input and setting expectations for their behavior as well. When leaders create a code of behavior for themselves and hold each other accountable to it, they are in the best position to communicate and expect such behavior from everyone else in the organization.	https://humancapitalleague.com/develop-a-leadership-code-of-behavior/
Many employers believe that provided they carry out regular inspections of their production machines in line with PUWER, they have done all that is necessary to meet their legal obligations in respect to machine safety. But if the machine incorporates electro-sensitive protection equipment that may not be true, says Gary Trewhitt of Safety Systems Technology, a division of TÜV SÜD Product Service. The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PUWER) are wide ranging, and most organisations in the manufacturing sector have become used to implementing their provisions. In particular, responsible organisations are careful to ensure that their machines are inspected in line with Section 6 which requires, among other things, that if the machines are exposed to conditions that may lead to deterioration, the inspections must be repeated "at suitable intervals". Since, in reality, every machine is exposed to conditions that may lead to deterioration, the requirement effectively means that all machines must be regularly inspected. It would seem reasonable to assume that, provided these PUWER inspections are conducted conscientiously and at appropriate intervals, employers have done all that is needed to ensure that their production machinery is safe. Unfortunately, if that machinery incorporates electro-sensitive protective equipment (ESPE), this may not be the case. ESPE which includes, for example, light guards and laser scanners, and is increasingly widely used on modern machines, where it often takes the place of traditional guarding. Because of the growing popularity of ESPE and the need to ensure that it is properly used and maintained, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has published guidance note HSG180, 'Application of electro-sensitive equipment using light curtains and light beam devices to machinery'. Justifying the decision This document, which can be downloaded free-of-charge from the HSE website (www.hse.gov.uk), is provided for guidance only. Nevertheless, because the use of ESPE is almost always safety related, any employer who chooses to disregard HSG180 should be very sure that they could justify their decision if they are called upon to do so - quite possibly in a court of law. The section of HSG180 that deals with inspection refers directly to Regulation 6 of PUWER, which as we have seen, includes a requirement for inspections to be conducted on a regular basis. If it stopped there, then regular PUWER inspections would indeed comply with the recommendations of HSG180. But there is more - paragraph 118 of HSG180 goes on to state, "inspection and testing is required where the safe operation [of the ESPE] is critically dependent on its condition in use and deterioration would lead to a significant risk to the operator or other worker. If this is the case, then installations using ESPE should be inspected at suitable intervals." Of course, this instantly raises the question of what a suitable interval is. The answer is provided in paragraph 124 of HSG180, which states, "the recommended maximum period between each periodic inspection and test is six months for type 4 ESPE and twelve months for type 2 ESPE, but this will depend on the equipment it is fitted to and the risk as a whole." The "types" of ESPE referred to are defined in IEC 61496-1, 'Safety of machinery, Electro-sensitive protective equipment; Part 1: General requirements and tests'. Type 2 ESPE has a means of periodic test to reveal a failure to danger, while type 4 will not fail to danger for a single fault and is resistant to an accumulation of single faults. By now it will be clear that the frequency of periodic testing required for ESPE depends on multiple factors, and that a six-month interval will apply in many cases. Annual assessments Now consider the periodic PUWER assessments. There is, of course, no simple answer to the question of how often these should be carried out, but there are very few cases where the interval between assessments is as short as six months. In fact, the norm seems to be for assessments to be carried out annually, which, in many cases will not be sufficiently often to meet the recommendations of HSG180 for ESPE installed on the machine. In other words, it is perfectly possible that inspection of ESPE will need to be treated as a separate task, and not simply as part of the routine PUWER assessments. But even that is not quite the end of the story, because HSG180 raises the issue of the competence of the person performing the inspection. This is not an issue that can be dismissed as trivial - inspecting ESPE installations may appear to be an easy task but, in reality, there are many factors that have to be carefully and skilfully evaluated. These include inspecting the positioning of the equipment to make sure that it is the correct distance from the danger zone, ensuring that suitable safeguards are in place to prevent access to the danger zone from directions not covered by the ESPE, testing the overall response time, testing the detection capability, inspecting the stopping performance monitor if one is fitted, and testing the primary machine control elements to ensure correct functionality. And, once the ESPE inspection has been completed it must, of course, be documented so that evidence can be produced, if required, to verify that the appropriate inspection regime has been followed. When all of these factors are taken into account, it is apparent that there are likely to be many companies that have neither the in-house expertise nor the capacity to perform these additional ESPE assessments. For this reason, Safety Systems Technology has a new standalone ESPE periodic inspection and test services that can be tailored to meet the precise needs of individual sites. The use of ESPE on machines offers many benefits and, if correctly applied, can provide levels of safety at least as good as those offered by more conventional guarding and protection techniques. For ESPE to dependably fulfil its purpose, however, it must be regularly inspected and tested as recommended in HSG180 - as we have seen, simply relying on routine PUWER inspections is not enough. So, while it is still fresh in your mind, it could be a very good idea to start making your ESPE inspection plans right now.	https://www.industrialtechnology.co.uk/products--when-puwer-isnt-enough.html?thread=No
This unit will introduce us to the Nakba, and touch on important historical events – before 1948, during 1948, and afterwards. We’ll also try to see how to handle the gap between what we know and the new information presented here. Goals - To become familiar with historical materials dealing with 1948 which aren’t part of the history curriculum. - To create a basis for a class discussion about the Nakba by providing everyone with the same information. - To raise questions about what we thought we knew about 1948. Activity 1. Introduction: What do you know about the war in 1948? Do you think that what you know is the only version, or are there others? Note to the teacher: You could begin by asking the students what they know about 1948, for example by asking what they know about the war in 1948, or by distributing to the class photographs from the time of the war. Ask the students to arrange the photographs in a way that allows them to recount the events of 1948. We recommend selecting photographs which show a variety of incidents. The students will see what they know reflected in the photographs. This introductory activity might require extra time. 2. Presentation of an historical slide show: The teacher will present a slide show dealing with a number of historical issues related to 1948: before, during, and afterwards (cf. Supplementary material 1). 3. Class discussion: - Much of the information in the slide show is unfamiliar to us. Did anything in it annoy you – anything you didn’t agree with? - Was there anything you could relate to? 4. Group activity: Divide the students into small work groups. Give each group a worksheet containing familiar quotations and statements about our history. After reading them, each group will discuss the questions on the worksheet (cf. Supplementary material 2). 5. Summing up: - What did you agree with? What did you disagree about? - What do you feel when you hear an historical account which contradicts the history you’re familiar with? - How can you handle the contradiction? - How can we evaluate the story we’re familiar with and the new story that we’ve heard? Suggestion for a follow-up activity: Using the computer and the internet: The national photographic website contains a collection of photographs covering a period beginning before 1948 and up to today. Students should look for photographs using specific search terms such as: “abandoned Arab village”, “sabra”, “Palestinian”. They should bring one or two photos to class, along with the caption accompanying the photograph on the website. Analyze in class what the photograph shows and what it doesn’t show, and discuss critically the accompanying caption. You could suggest that the students write a different caption. You could then prepare a mini-exhibit in class of the photographs with their original and revised captions (You could use the methodology presented in “Reading a photograph” – cf. the pedagogical rationale in Unit 2). Supplementary material 1: Slide show – the Nakba in history A slide show accompanying this unit addresses a number of historical issues connected to 1948 - before, during, and afterwards – and includes suggestions regarding how it may be used in class. The suggestions are contained in the attached envelope, as well as in the body of the slide show, in comments on each slide. The notes can be displayed on each slide when it is shown, or separately by changing the format to “Notes page” after clicking on the “View” menu. Supplementary material 2: Worksheet about history Theoretical background Most of the events of the Nakba occurred mainly in 1948 and they included destroying most Palestinian localities in the areas which became part of the State of Israel, turning their inhabitants into refugees, and erasing the rich Palestinian life existing here. The Nakba was part of the 1948 war (the War of Independence), and was one of the crucial events which shaped our lives. But the Nakba has been excluded from Israeli historiography, so we usually know very little about it. The answer to the question 'which historical events will be remembered and stressed, and which will be repressed and forgotten' often depends on what is needed at the time. History isn’t only an account of the past, but it also interprets the present. Learning about the Nakba leads to a more sophisticated and critical understanding not only of history, but also of the reality in which we live, of the different forces and interests operating today. We see 1948 as the “starting point,” an essential moment for understanding the conflict, and the fabric of our political, social and economic relations. History also shapes our identity - who we are. National identity, like personal identity, is constructed on the basis of our history as individuals, as a nation, as citizens. Today, even though the Nakba is mentioned in public discourse, it is presented primarily as a Palestinian story, as part of the Palestinian history, and Palestinian identity. Those who believe that Israeli Jews should know about the Nakba see such learning as a way of getting to know the Other, the Palestinian. The Nakba is in fact a foundational event for Palestinians. But it is also a foundational event for Israeli Jews. The Nakba is part of us: of the identity of whoever lives in the country, of the history, and of the present of where we live, even if it seems to be missing. Learning about the Nakba will allow the students, and us, to know ourselves better. Moreover, we believe that studying the history of the Nakba can improve understanding and dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. Pedagogical rationale This unit focuses on the events of 1947-1949, providing information and discussing the historical context. It gives a “bird’s eye view” of the Nakba, briefly describes what occurred, touches on the most important topics, and presents an initial overview of the subject. The first part of the unit employs a slide show presenting major aspects of the Nakba using primary and secondary historical sources. The second part goes more deeply into a number of topics by having students work in small groups. Many students know very little about the war of independence. Nevertheless, they’ve grown up in an environment in which the story of the establishment of the state is a familiar one, and that story can be the starting point for a critical examination of 1948. We should emphasize that we encourage a critical approach to both the accepted hegemonic interpretation as well as to the new information presented here. We’ve chosen to use the method of the slide show to provide a wide range of information and sources in a single mode of presentation. But the slide show has the serious disadvantage of presenting information schematically, superficially. The information contained in this unit comes from a variety of studies and sources, Israeli as well as Palestinian. Most provide a less familiar, and sometimes challenging, interpretation of the history of 1948. Along with the studies and the testimonies, we included quotations and statements from well-known Israeli figures. The topics included in the slide show will probably elicit strong feelings and responses from the students, since they present information inconsistent with what they’ve know up to now. We suggest dealing with these contradictions in a class discussion following the slide show, as well as through work in small groups using the worksheet that addresses the gap between what we’ve known up to now and the new material presented in the slide show (cf. Supplementary material 2). The history of the war of independence is usually taught as comprising a series of military operations. The result is a continuum of military history which leaves no room for other events which occurred, and it often silences them. The topics we’ve selected to include in this unit are, in our opinion, central to the period, and allow us to develop an alternative interpretation of the course of the war. We don’t pretend, of course, to deal with everything that occurred, but only to begin a discussion of the Nakba as an event which hasn’t been included in Israeli histories of the war of independence. The topics in the slide show, and their pedagogical goals, include: \| \| Topic \| \| Slide No. \| \| Pedagogical goal \| \| What is the Nakba? \| \| 2-7 \| \| \| \| Definition and data \| \| \| \| Provides a general overview to introduce the topic. \| \| Talking about the Nakba \| \| \| \| \| \| What was Palestine like before the Nakba? \| \| 8-16 \| \| \| \| Life in towns and villages, and relations between Palestinians and Jews \| \| \| \| Learning about the rich Palestinian life that existed here, and about the fabric of relationships between Jews and Palestinians \| \| When did it happen? \| \| 17-18 \| \| \| \| a. The Partition Plan, November 1947 \| \| \| \| To learn about Palestinian attitudes toward the Partition Plan \| \| b. Warfare from November 1947 to March 1948 \| \| \| \| To describe the outbreak of fighting between Palestinian and Israeli forces \| \| How did it happen? \| \| 19-24 30-37 \| \| \| \| a. March 1948: The Haganah’s “Plan D” \| \| \| \| Learning about the Haganah’s Plan D, which was an important strategic stage in the shift in Haganah's policy from defense to offense, and which inspired the expulsion of the inhabitants of the villages. \| \| b. Presenting historical research which examines the main reasons for which the Palestinians left and were expelled, including testimonies and quotes. \| \| \| \| To broaden the students’ knowledge about the reasons for which the Palestinians left their localities. The familiar claim is that the Palestinians left because their leaders ordered them to do so. But historical studies found that Israeli forces played a central role in expulsions and in encouraging people to leave. \| \| Preventing return \| \| 25-28 \| \| \| \| Steps taken to prevent refugees from returning \| \| \| \| To deepen the students’ understanding that the Nakba refers not only to the expulsion in 1948, but also to the destruction of villages in the following years, erasing evidence of Palestinian existence, and preventing refugees from returning to their homes. Suggestions for further reading Ophir, A. (1999), "H-Hour", in: Fifty to Forty-Eight, Theory and Criticism 12-13, Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute (in Hebrew). Morris, B. (1991), The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-1949, Cambridge University Press, 1989. Morris, B. (2000), Jews and Arabs in Palestine/Israel 1936-1956, Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publications (in Hebrew). Zochrot, booklets about Palestinian villages. http://zochrot.org/en/booklet/all Khalidi, Walid. (1992), All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, Washington DC: Institute for Palestine Studies. Pappe, Ilan. (2007), The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Oxford, England: Oneworld Publications. -------------------- 1. We borrow the idea of 1948 as a "starting point" from: Ophir, A. (1999), "H-Hour", in: Fifty to Forty-Eight, Theory and Criticism 12-13, Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute (in Hebrew).	https://zochrot.org/en/article/56463
Specifications of Lund 1750 Rebel XS The powerboat Lund 1750 Rebel XS is produced by the brand Lund since 2017. Lund 1750 Rebel XS is a 5.33 meters fishing boat with a draft of 0.70 meters. The powerboat with fiberglass / grp hull has CE certification class (C) and can go along the coastline, on rivers and canals. Your request has been sent. You will be contacted shortly Write to us if you want to add to the description. Found an error? Please report the error to us. Disclaimer: The content of this website does not constitute a public offer, and itBoat shall not be held liable for incorrect or incomplete information contained herein. The information provided herein is collected from open sources and may contain distortions, errors, typos, and inaccuracies.	https://itboat.com/en/models/9834-1750-rebel-xs
When working on software projects, they can become very complex. The order of different software functions are utilised in. the vast number of different inputs to do in the software. Software engineers must ensure that the multitude of operational possibilities is correctly defined and developed. Software errors can be present in a system by being entered by professionals by accident. This can be a major challenge. There can be shortcoming when it comes to testing or function integration due to lack of time of budget. Software consistency is often seen as a privilege for many business owners — something which can be sacrificed, if necessary, for additional features, quicker production, or lower costs. In practice, however, successful software development organizations have discovered that an organizational commitment to quality accelerates development, reduces costs, and makes it easier to add new features. To produce quality software that achieves these goals. There are certain requirements that the software must-have: - Reliability - Efficiency - Integrity - Usability - Maintainability - Testability - Portability - Reusability - Interoperability When designing new software, the software must have Reliability. Reliability requirements deal with failures to provide service. Reliability determines the maximum allowed failure rate in a software system. The software must be Efficient because Efficiency requirements deal with the hardware/cloud resources needed taking into account and other requirements like processing capabilities, data storage, and network infrastructure. This makes the software easier to work on and reduces delays. The software must have integrity, this story’s unauthorized people using the software. Integrity Requirements deal with the software system security, the software has requirements to prevent assess to unauthorized persons, this prevents breaking software by unauthorised commits and lessens confusion on job requirements because of access control, e.g. various different types of users with access to different cases. The software has to have a degree of Usability. If the software has a lack of usability, this can slow development due to learning curve and time takin the develop functionality. Consideration of human factors an important aspect. Maintainability requirements determine the involvement of users and maintained personnel to identify the reasons for software failures, to correct failures, and to verify the success of the corrections. These factors requirements refer to software design, implementation, documentation, and corrections. Modern software systems have extensible software architecture e.g. multi-tier application. This makes them better at adding functionality without major code refactoring. The skills and resources needed to support sustainable maintenance operations and protected by the criteria of versatility. These include the resources (ie, in people days) required to configure a software package for customers. These factors requirements also support perfect maintenance activities, such as changes and additions to software in order to improve its service and software changes due to changes to the underlying technology of software (change DB platform provider) Testability requirements Deal with testing and operation of the software. If testability was not considered when the software was developed all that can be done is to test software functionality. There are lots of automated software tools to perform this type of testing, eg of this would be Jenkins. Functional testing is where we treat the software as a black box and give it an input and then check its output to see if it performed correctly. (providing a range of inputs valid and invalid) If the codebase was designed with testability in mind then we can carry out both structural and functional testing. Structural tests determine parts of the structure determined by tests. This can speed up development because we can continue structural testing until the guidelines specified have been completed. Portability requirements relate to the adaptation of a software system to other hardware and software platforms. These specifications make it possible to proceed to use the same specific program in different cases, or to use it in different hardware and operating systems concurrently. More focus on web apps, java code in java VM ported to all operating systems. Microsoft has managed code. This is code that will only execute under the management of common language runtime VM. This has been proved in the current pandemic where software is being developed from home as opposed to the office. Reusability requirements can speed up development extremely fast. Reusability requirements deal with the use of software components originally designed for one project being used in the current software product, this is because it saves development resources, shortens development period, and provide higher quality software overall due to the extensibility. Interoperability Requirements focus on the creation of interfaces that other applications can utilize also utilizing interfaces for other software systems. Requirements can specify the full API specification of any interfaces provided or utilized. This saves development time and improves software quality. If people think of what it takes to create mission-critical and security-critical applications, they generally find the undertaking’s scope is very complex. There is a belief that to have quality, an organization needs to have a cumbersome process with oversight, standards, formality, and documentation. But such assumptions are not correct. When using SQA in a project, the benefit is immense, these benefits are listed below. An SQA system always utilizes a wide variety of SQA components. All components can be grouped into the six classes below. Pre-Planned components. This means that the project obligations have been properly defined taking into account the resources, timeline, and expenditure required; and the implementation and maintenance plans have been accurately identified. Software project life cycle. The life cycle of the project consists of two stages: the stage of the development life cycle and the period of operation – maintenance. The components of the program software life cycle stage identify errors in architecture design and programming. Its components are classified into the following subclasses: reviews, opinions of specialists, and Software testing. During the operation-maintenance process, the SQA components used include specialist maintenance components and also life-cycle development components that are primarily used for functionality to enhance maintenance activities. Infrastructure components for error prevention and improvements. The main purpose of these elements, which are implemented in the enterprise, is to minimize or at least decrease the failure rate, based on the historical SQA knowledge of the company. Management of SQA components. This class of components tackles multiple goals, like controlling development and maintenance operations, and implementing early administrative support actions that mainly avoid or mitigate scheduling and expenditure delays and their outcomes. SQA standards, system certification, and assessment components. These components within the organisation implement universal technical and organizational requirements. The key goals of this class are to use international technical expertise, to enhance communication of corporate quality systems with other organisations, and to compare the results of quality systems on a general scale. The different standards can be grouped into two main groups: quality management and criteria for the project standards. Organization for SQA –the human components. The organizational base for SQA includes managers, testing staff, the SQA team and those involved in software quality like SQA representatives, members of the SQA committee and members of the SQA board. Its key goals are to facilitate and help SQA component implementation, identify anomalies from SQA procedures and techniques, and recommend changes. Software is developed for a deal signed with a company or with an internal order to create a firmware to be installed in a hardware device. Under all these situations, the implementation unit is dedicated to a practical specification, budget and timetable agreed upon. The activities in this include: - Clarification of the customer’s requirements - Evaluation of the project’s schedule and resource requirement estimates - Calculation of the professional staff’s capacity to carry out the proposed project - Calculation of the customer’s capacity to fulfil his obligations - Calculation of development risks A project implementation strategy and the associated quality control procedures are planned following the signing of the software production contract with an organisation or an internal entity of the same organisation. These plans provide additional information and modifications required on the basis of previous plans which provided the basis for the proposed plan and contract. Because of the implementation of these the components, development of software has become much faster, higher quality and more satisfactory to clients. There are activities in place to plan software development and get requirements, this will make it more likely that the client will get what he is asking for and that it is done in a specific time frame with as little delays as possible due to clear requirements and rapid development, easier bug fixes, better bug prevention and easier and more portable environment to work in. Of course not all tech programs and teams are alike. Software projects come into a range of challenges and teams do likewise. Nonetheless, for any project which addresses the particular needs of the project and the unique skills of the team, any form of SQA can be adopted. Companies that don’t apply any SQA components into their projects will be left in the dust of companies that do and won’t be around for long. The multiple factors influencing the program are called software factors. These are generally divided into two groups. Classification is performed on a measurability basis. The first group of factors includes those that can be clearly calculated, such as the number of logical errors, and the second group clubs those factors that can only be calculated implicitly, like maintainability, but both of the variables must be measured to account for consistency and quality assurance. Few quality factors are possible, and are described below: - Correctness-degree to which a system fulfils the requirements and the intent of the client. - Reliability-to what degree a system can execute its task with the necessary precision. - Efficiency-the amount of computation and code a program takes to execute its task. - Maintenance- the work needed to find and correct an error in a system. - Flexibility- necessary initiative to change an operational program. - Testability- work needed to test the functionality of the software. - Portability- effort needed to run the software from one device to another, or with other hardware. - Reusability- level to which software or its components may be used as building blocks for other systems or as prototypes. - Integrity-level to which unauthorized users are refused access to the program and records. - Usability- the job needed to understand, operate, prepare inputs and analyze system outputs. - Interoperability- the work required to connect one system with another. Without Quality Factors, the software is likely to suffer due to the lack of development assistant and confusion, this can impact in short term, long term can be affected without reusable components and reuse of code and adding for extendibility because it will take longer to implement new functionality. For other reasons I have listed above is why Quality Factors is essential in any software project if the company wishes to compete in the market. A Software metric is a measurement of definable or countable software characteristics. For several purposes, software metrics are relevant like software performance measurement, work item planning, productivity measurement, and many other uses. Function points are used to measure the amount of effort necessary to construct an application. An alternative would be, for example, COCOMO which is based on the number of code lines. In initial stages of project development, FP-based approaches are often considered preferable to COCOMO when no reasonable estimate of the number of lines of code to be created can yet be obtained. Another benefit of the FP-based effort calculation is the existence of effort tables (e.g., in Capers Jones’ books) for different types of applications with different types of activities involved in a software project. Therefore, a much more detailed insight into the effort needed can be gained by using FPs project manager. The aim of software metrics monitoring and analysis is to assess the quality of the current product or process, to enhance the quality and to forecast the quality when the software development project is complete. In a software project, the software manager is responsible for; - Increase return on investment - Identify areas that can be improvement - Manage workloads - Reduce overtime - Reduce development costs These goals can be reached by offering knowledge and clarification to diverse software development programs within the enterprise. Metrics are really an important component of quality control, management, testing, performance and price evaluation and are useful for developers and team members in development. Because of software metrics, metrics offer an overview of the impact of the software development and important decisions made, this helps executives assess priorities and success objectives, and prioritize them. Once the number of defects per N lines of code can be metric because the total cost of mitigation, evaluation, system faults, and external faults. For applications these mean avoidance of defects, elimination of pre-test defects, monitoring and corrections after release, this metric can be used to calculate when code reviews should be done on system. This can reduce cost of defects. Average software module size is a useful metric, if the module has a much larger size then expected, there can be a review to see if it is useless parts attaches, if they can be dropped, by getting rid of uses parts or refactoring code to reduce size, then there is a decrease in defects or avoidance in defects which can cut costs and time. Software Quality Assurance Plan (SQAP) comprises the processes, techniques, and tools used to ensure that a software or service conforms to the specifications set out in the Software Requirement Specification. Provides instructions such that quality acts are not an afterthought but something that is intentionally and actively tried and implemented in the phase of development. This orients the project towards prevention, defining procedures for actively tracking and improving systems and results, ensuring the identification and execution of best practices, and guaranteeing that issues are found and addressed as quickly as possible. A person or organization is identified as responsible for the quality control on a project. They have the task of ensuring quality is integrated through all activities. Yet their presence does not alter the idea that the responsibility for consistency rests with all. As a standard, for every 3 to 7 programmer person-months, approximate. 1 QA person-month is required. The SQAP defines the documentation to be produced for a project, and how consistency should be tested. The Technical Specifications Standard (SRS), Software Design Document (SDD), Software Verification and Validation Plan (SVVP), Device Documentation and Software Configuration Management Plan (SCMP) are samples of these documents. Adopting consistent document formats helps generate reliable documents. Coding principles govern issues like naming, commenting, and logic structure of the variable and the module. The consistency measurements to be obtained and analyzed are described by the SQAP. Examples of consistency metrics include fault rate, mean fault time, customer issues and customer positives.	https://blablawriting.net/software-quality-alternative-assessment-essay
Effects of private-land use, livestock management, and human tolerance on diversity, distribution, and abundance of large african mammals. Successful conservation of large terrestrial mammals (wildlife) on private lands requires that landowners be empowered to manage wildlife so that benefits outweigh the costs. Laikipia County, Kenya, is predominantly unfenced, and the land uses in the area allow wide-ranging wildlife to move freely between different management systems on private land. We used camera traps to sample large mammals associated with 4 different management systems (rhinoceros sanctuaries, no livestock; conservancies, intermediate stocking level; fenced ranches, high stocking level; and group ranches, high stocking level, no fencing, pastoralist clan ownership) to examine whether management and stocking levels affect wildlife. We deployed cameras at 522 locations across 8 properties from January 2008 through October 2010 and used the photographs taken during this period to estimate richness, occupancy, and relative abundance of species. Species richness was highest in conservancies and sanctuaries and lowest on fenced and group ranches. Occupancy estimates were, on average, 2 and 5 times higher in sanctuaries and conservancies as on fenced and group ranches, respectively. Nineteen species on fenced ranches and 25 species on group ranches were considered uncommon (occupancy < 0.1). The relative abundance of most species was highest or second highest in sanctuaries and conservancies. Lack of rights to manage and utilize wildlife and uncertain land tenure dampen many owners' incentives to tolerate wildlife. We suggest national conservation strategies consider landscape-level approaches to land-use planning that aim to increase conserved areas by providing landowners with incentives to tolerate wildlife. Possible incentives include improving access to ecotourism benefits, forging agreements to maintain wildlife habitat and corridors, resolving land-ownership conflicts, restoring degraded rangelands, expanding opportunities for grazing leases, and allowing direct benefits to landowners through wildlife harvesting. .
Developing country and emerging market firms often emerge from different historical paths, have different resources and capabilities and hence different strategic orientations compared to firms from developed countries. Differences in business environments, in combination with on-going changes (in terms of speed and content, like the Covid-19 impact), alter strategy formulation and implementation compared to developed countries. Strategy formulation and management in developing countries and emerging markets take place in a market context and regulatory environment that is significantly different from that of developed countries. The business management literature has only recently started focusing specifically on the particular strategies that local (developing country) firms undertake as well as the interface between those strategies and developing countries/emerging markets (DC/EM). The course “Business strategy in developing countries and emerging markets” is specifically designed to introduce students to this literature. In addition to the theoretically oriented literature, the course will also include introduction to a Critical Realist case study approach. This element is tied to the methods components of the MSc BLC BaDS program and will be taught with an emphasis on enhancing the student’s academic skills. The course will consist of four modules: Module I (Introduction) will provide a general introduction to the business and development studies literature and to the key issues of methodology. Concerning the first of these, the Introduction will take up the gap in the literature concerning the lacking perspectives of developing country firms as well as take account of the particular conditions of doing business in developing countries and emerging markets. Second, the Introduction will discuss the fact that the development literature has devoted too little attention to the role of local, developing country firm strategies and management in economic and social development. The introduction to a key element of methdology serves as an introduction to this issue at the MSc BLC BADS program in general. Module II introduces theories of business strategy and management in developing countries and emerging markets. The module will present and position key perspectives on business strategies, including theories of business management (e.g. the resource based perspective, internationalisation and network theory, principal agency theory, and institutional theory). Furthermore, it will discuss the applicability of the different theoretical frameworks to the Developing Countries & Emerging Markets contexts. The main issues addressed concern the scale of developing country firms (SMEs versus large firms and MNCs), degree of internationalisation and governance (in Global Value Chains). Module III presents and examines a number of different cases from a variety of settings (Africa, Asia and Latin-America), illustrating a number of possible strategies of developing country firms. The module has two Theme Days on respectively (i) internationalisation of developing country firms; and (ii) domestic/local market strategies of developing country SMEs. Secondly, the module includes lectures on a) the mobile telecommunication industry in a least developed context (Afghanistan), and b) Human Resource Management strategies among developing country firms. The methods component will emphasise the Critical Realist Approach to case studies. Module IV concludes the course summing up the content, evaluating the course and preparing for the exam including all aspects of the course (business strategies in developing countries and emerging markets, and methods). Pedagogical approach: The course is based on face-to-face lectures supplemented with a number of on-line elements (video-clips, Youtube and more). Active and engaged participation is expected from the students based on the curriculum (readings and undertaking specified student tasks mainly in relation to presentation of literature and cases). \|Description of the teaching methods\| \|The course will consist of 2-4 hour sessions over 6 weeks. These sessions will be a combination of lectures, cases, group work, student presentations and class discussions. Student presentations will be based on specific questions related to each of the lectures’ theme and last max. 10-15 minutes. Fellow students will be assigned the task of being discussants and hereby providing constructive feedback on the student presentatiions. Regarding the case work students will be divided in groups of 3-4 in each group as part of the Theme Days. The group will be responsible for preparing, presenting and taking part in the discussions of the cases. Class discussions and case teaching are integral parts of the course and all students should prepare and be ready to discuss the issues, questions and cases listed for each lecture.\| \|Feedback during the teaching period\| \|The course includes ‘teacher-to-student’ and ‘student-to-student’ feedback. Student feedback will occur regularly throughout the course, e.g. via the student presentations, the Theme Days cases, in-class discussions, and office hours. Students are encouraged to make use of the student presentations and take up the task as discussants to enhance their learning experience, of course in addition to regular participation and two-way communication in lectures. Students have the possibilities to receive feedback on presentations in class, if wished and to discuss content issues during the office hours of the responsible lecturers. Students are encouraged to use peer-to-peer feedback as a part of the learning process, e.g. in smaller study groups.\| \|Student workload\| \| \| \|Expected literature\| \| \| To be announced on Canvas - some indicate literature includes: * Hansen, M.W. and Schaumburg-Müller, H. (2010). “Firms in developing countries: A theoretical probe into the borderland of Business Studies and Development Studies”, European Journal of Development Research, pp. 197–216 * Luo, Y., & Tung, R. L. (2018). A general theory of springboard MNEs. Journal of International Business Studies, 49(2), 129–152. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-017-0114-8 * Peng, M., Sun, S. L.W., Pinkham, B. and Chen, H. (2009). “The Institution-Based View as a Third Leg for a Strategy Tripod”, Academy of Management Perspectives, August, pp. 63-81. * Thomsen, L. (2007). “Accessing global value chains? The role of business–state relations in the private clothing industry in Vietnam.” Journal of Economic Geography, 7(6), pp. 753-776. * Kuada, J. (2007). “Routes of Integration of Ghanaian Firms into the World Economy”, Chapter 2. In Kuada, J. (ed.) Internationalisation and Economic Growth Strategies in Ghana, London: Adonis and Abbey Publ. pp. 16-36. * Bhattacharya, A. K. and Michael, D.C. (2008). “How Local Companies Keep Multinationals at Bay.” Harvard Business Review (Winning in the World’s Emerging Markets, 2nd Edition), March, pp. 22-33. * Rahbek Pedersen, E. and Andersen, M. (2006). “Safeguarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) in global supply chains: how codes of conduct are managed in buyer-supplier relationships.” Journal of Public Affairs, 6, pp. 228-240. * Jeppesen, S. (2005). “Enhancing competitiveness and securing equitable development: can small, micro and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) do the trick?” Development in Practice, 15, issues 3-4: pp. 463-474. * Azizi, S. (2015). “CSR in Afghanistan”. Chapter 3, pp. 54-70, in Jamali, D., Karam, C. and Blowfield, M.E. (eds.), Development-Oriented Corporate Social Responsibility, Vol. 2, Greenleaf Publishing, Sheffield, UK.	https://kursuskatalog.cbs.dk/2022-2023/KAN-CCBDO1001U.aspx?lang=da-DK
EMA began publishing Communicator in 1981 to provide our clients and colleagues with useful and relevant information about industry topics, client success stories, and insights from our associates. Our dedication to that goal hasn’t changed, but other things certainly have. Advances in technology in just the first three years of publication included the IBM PC, the Global Positioning System, and the CD-ROM. Another change is the amount of media vying for readers’ attention. We’re inundated with content. While it can be great to have so much information and analysis at our fingertips, there is a flip side. We’re swamped with notifications for blogs, newsletters, white papers, infographics, videos, and podcasts that promise dubious value in return for our attention. We’re using the launch of our new blog to unite the best aspects of traditional publication with the cutting edge of modern media. Starting with our next issue, we’ll publish articles as blog posts as soon as they’re written so busy readers can stay up to date with timely content on important topics. For those who prefer hard copy, we’ll continue to publish Communicator, regularly collecting articles into a print issue with additional graphics and expanded content. The most recent issue of Communicator is available now as a complete issue, and we’ll highlight individual articles over the next few months as we transition to the new schedule. For future content updates, you can subscribe to receive full issues via email or in print, or follow us to be notified when we post individual articles.	https://www.ema-inc.com/news-insights/2018/07/communicator-2018-refreshed-recharged-and-reimagined/
Sin Ming Loo, Ph.D. Advisor John N. Chiasson, Ph.D. Advisor Hao Chen, Ph.D. Abstract Robotic devices currently solve many real-world problems but do so primarily on an individual basis. The ability to deploy large quantities of robots to solve problems has not yet been widely embraced partially due to the complex nature of robotics and levels of research investment. Existing research in robot collaboration largely exists in the forms of models and simulations. This work seeks to accelerate the next level of research in this area by providing a low cost, collaborative capable robotic system. This platform can be used as a gateway to transport simulations into physical representations. This research not only presents a completed robot but also provides a guide for fellow researchers to use when custom tailored systems are required. Harnessing the power of robotic collaboration will inspire a new generation of problem solving and eventually produce products that could even save lives. This work demonstrates the principles and technologies needed to design robots in general and for use in collaborative environments. Recommended Citation Wolin, Andrew Jacob, "On Designing Collaborative Robotic Systems with Real-Time Operating Systems and Wireless Networks" (2014). Boise State University Theses and Dissertations. 881.	https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/td/881/
Filter Results: Publication Year 2002 2015 Publication Type Co-author Publication Venue Key Phrases Learn More - Z. Havlice, J. Kunstar, I. Adamuscinova, O. Plocica - 2009 7th International Symposium on Applied… - 2009 Nowadays, knowledge about design and implementation models of current version of software system and also knowledge about application domain of software system are important for software engineering processes related to design, management, maintenance and modification of software system. Utilization of proper knowledge can streamline and speed up each phase… (More) - Z. Havlice, V. Szaboova, J. Vizi - 2013 IEEE 11th International Symposium on Applied… - 2013 This paper presents principles for model based testing of embedded systems with use of critical knowledge about system and their environment. For critical knowledge representation UML models can be used. These properties have different priority, impact, dependency, which creates different situations for testing. Critical properties mentioned in this article… (More) - Tomas Poklemba, Igor Sivy, Zdenek Havlice - 2011 9th International Conference on Emerging… - 2011 As we know all software products require maintenance and support. After observing time requirements for maintenance and all needed innovations and changes I realize that cost for those activities is somewhere around half of all bugged for software product. The more years is software used and alive the more time and costs are required. Linear dependency… (More) The paper presents a proposal of a method for MDA based " on-the-fly " modelling of Musical Real Time Applications. The method is based on use of the Executable and Translatable UML approach (xtUML) with regards to implementation on embedded systems. Since the goal is to implement a real-time application requiring certain real-time Quality of Service (QoS)… (More) Modeling is one of the most important factors in the process of computer systems development. It is the process of representing real-world concepts in the computer domains as a blueprint for the purpose of software development. Recent trends in software and system development have also revealed the value of developing systems at higher levels of… (More) A choice of suitable specifications of Information Systems (IS) in Software Life Cycle (SwLC) (represented by formal or semi-formal models, dependencies between them and the way they are used during SwLC phases execution) influence the cost and the outcomes quality for a given SwLC phase. Research area is oriented to analysis and design of the methods that… (More) - Otto Zeleznik, Zdenek Havlice - ISIM - 2007 The paper discusses a choice of appropriate software architecture with regards to the specifications of embedded applications as information systems particularly used in area of radio and television broadcast audio program processing. The main requirement of mentioned embedded systems is an extremely good real-time response and minimized latency between… (More) - Veronika Szaboova, Csaba Szabo, Zdenek Havlice, Tomas Guzlej - 2015 IEEE 13th International Scientific… - 2015 Approaches dealing with the problem of adaptive software design and implementation could be divided into two main categories. First, there are theoretical approaches usually dealing with foundations of design (i.e. architecture). Approaches of the second category address the problem from the point of view of existing technical solutions and search for the… (More) - Kristian Sestak, Zdenek Havlice - 2015 IEEE 13th International Symposium on Applied… - 2015 This paper is focused on a problematic about three-dimensional visualizations of data. The main task of visualization is to provide information to the user much more effective than raw data. We present an overview of current research in this area. Also we present our visualization tool for visualizing of critical properties of databases in the… (More) - Zdenek Havlice, Juraj Vizi, Veronika Szaboova - 2014 IEEE 12th International Symposium on Applied… - 2014 This paper represents methods and techniques used for testing medical embedded software with the main focus oriented to tests automatization.	https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/Zdenek-Havlice/1977052
Antibiotic prescribing practice and adherence to guidelines in primary care in the Cape Town Metro District, South Africa. Knowledge of antibiotic prescribing practice in primary care in South Africa is limited. As 80% of human antibiotic use is in primary care, this knowledge is important in view of the global problem of antibiotic resistance. To assess antibiotic prescribing in primary care facilities in the Cape Town Metro District and compare it with current national guidelines, and to assess the reasons why prescriptions were not adherent to guidelines. A retrospective medical record review was performed in April/May 2016. Records of all patients seen over 2 days in each of eight representative primary care facilities in the Cape Town Metro District were reviewed. The treatment of any patient who raised a new complaint on either of those days was recorded. Prophylactic antibiotic courses, tuberculosis treatment and patients with a non-infection diagnosis were excluded. Treatment was compared with the Standard Treatment Guidelines and Essential Medicines List for South Africa, Primary Healthcare Level, 2014 edition. Of 654 records included, 68.7% indicated that an antibiotic had been prescribed. Overall guideline adherence was 45.1%. Adherence differed significantly between facilities and according to the physiological system being treated, whether the prescription was for an adult or paediatric patient, and the antibiotic prescribed. Healthcare professional type and patient gender had no significant effect on adherence. The main reasons for non-adherence were an undocumented diagnosis (30.5%), antibiotic not required (21.6%), incorrect dose (12.9%), incorrect drug (11.5%), and incorrect duration of therapy (9.5%). This study demonstrates poor adherence to guidelines. Irrational use of antibiotics is associated with increased antibiotic resistance. There is an urgent need to improve antibiotic prescribing practice in primary care in the Cape Town Metro District.
I have a Redwood wand and I don’t know what special traits it has. What can I use it for? And how to use it. Search Jun 11, 2019 Wand Experts? Wand Experts? 0 Jul 27, 2019 Redwood (also known as Sequoia, which is the genus name), is one of the longest-lived lifeforms on Earth -- it's common for these trees to surpass two millenia, and the oldest (nicknamed "President"), located in California's Sierra Nevada, is estimated to be at least 3,500 years old and is still growing. This incredible lifespan has led Redwood to be associated with strength, endurance and longevity; it is also associated with the kind of wisdom that longevity is supposed to beget. Because Redwoods are also among the tallest trees on the planet (numerous trees are well over 300 feet tall), the wood is also seen as connecting the Earth with the heavens and as being imbued with strong Earth energies. Redwoods are easily capapble of surviving large fires and often take advantage of them to spread while other trees die, and are thus associated with protection (both in general terms as well as specifically against fire) and abundance. Their overwhelming presence in the forest as "parent" trees (one, killed by humans hacking all its bark off in the late 1800s as proof such trees existed, was even named "Mother of the Forest") has led the wood to also be associated with healing and medicinal spellcraft. Several sources noted that a Redwood wand is best adapted to someone with a strong sense of spiritual purpose, someone who makes good decisions, and someone who "lands on their feet" when things go wrong and who is able to take advantage of failure and disaster. I hope this helps! (And yes, I'm working on a book about wandwoods. <grin>) 0 Aug 29, 2019 0 Sep 2, 2019 Hi, Corvin! "Woods of the World: A Wandmaker's Reference" has got a way to go... I'm trying to be (perhaps overly) inclusive and am trying to decide what to include or not for the 1st edition -- assuming it's also not the only edition. <8-o At the moment the draft covers 569 naming variations of 259 woods, with some entries complete and others very much in progress. I'm thinking of cutting back to something like the 100 most commonly encountered woods... I neither want nor intend to do any actual advertising here but will probably post a note when it's approaching completion... along with another (totally unrelated but witchy-ish) book project. Thanks for your interest!	https://www.thewitchofwonderlust.com/forum/help-questions/wand-experts
Category: Dr Ludwig Lowenstein The Concept of Narcissistic Mortification Ludwig Eidelberg, M.D. To those who have happened to read some of my previous papers, another paper on the subject of the Narcissistic Mortification may be something of a surprise. After many years of preoccupation with the study of this phenomenon, it is embarrassing to be forced to admit that an important aspect of the problem has eluded my attention completely. In mitigation of such an ‘offence’, one may plead that if we stumble on something new there is rarely anybody around who would be able to explain it clearly and distinctly, and in consequence, a description of a phenomenon hitherto unknown must appear confused, blurred, and even contradictory. In addition to the ‘conscious‘ difficulty connected with an accurate portrayal of the Narcissistic Mortification, I have had also to overcome my own unconscious resistances. Probably, the recognition that the Narcissistic Mortification has nothing to do with our own desires was too difficult for me to accept, although I had recognized long ago that my patients, in addition to repressing their infantile wishes, eliminate from their conscious minds other phenomena, the so-called Narcissistic Mortifications. Using a descriptive approach, it was thought that a Narcissistic Mortification took place whenever the subject became an object of another subject. An attack by a robber was used as illustration in which the robber had the power to force the subject to do what he wanted. The consequent Narcissistic Mortification was defined as a sudden loss of control over external or internal reality, or both, by virtue of which the emotion of terror is produced, along with the damming up of narcissistic libido or destrudo. Continue reading “The Concept of Narcissistic Mortification Ludwig Eidelberg, M.D.” Publications by Dr. L.F. Lowenstein Parental Alienation – Dr. L.F. Lowenstein – Stockholm syndrome What follows is in great part fact and what is not fact is based on supposition and psychological assessment of how the Stockholm Syndrome develops and how it has worked in the case of Natascha Kampusch recently … http://www.parental-alienation.info/publications/46-thecomofparalitothestosyn.htm Parental Alienation – Dr. L.F. Lowenstein – Southern England Psychological Services The Possibilities and Limitations of Psychological Therapy in Cases of PA The Possibilities and Limitations of Psychological Therapy in Cases of Parental Alienation Ludwig.F. Lowenstein Ph.D It is clear that cases of parental alienation are extremely complex and therapy has certain limitations especially when the implacable hostility of an alienating parent works against the efforts of the psychologist to remedy the situation and provide contact for the absent parent. The article concerns itself with one particular case of a child who wanted contact with her father but was unable to exceed to it being provided due to the hostility which the mother felt towards the father. The example given is presented in the form of a dialogue between the psychologist and the child. This is followed by a therapy session of an alienating mother also in a dialogue between an alienating mother and the psychologist. The psychologist adopts a directive approach in the form of cognitive behaviour therapy. The Possibilities and Limitations of Psychological Therapy in Cases of Parental Alienation In what follows two examples will be provided on how one psychologist attempted to engage with a number of children, although only one child will be singled out in this case, to remove obstacles of contact between a child and an absent parent. In the first illustration the psychologist meets the obdurate refusal of the custodial parent to co-operate in encouraging a child to make contact with the now absent parent. In the second illustration the psychologist succeeds to a considerable degree in promoting good and regular contact between the child and the now absent parent. It will be noted that the therapy which is illustrated is directive, rational and emotional. This was found to be the best way forward. Most contact issues involve the lack of contact between the father and his child/children although there are cases when it is the mother who is prevented from contact with her child/children. The illustration which follows is the more common one and we will begin with a dialogue between the psychologist and the child. Continue reading “The Possibilities and Limitations of Psychological Therapy in Cases of PA” Treating the Alienator – Ludwig.F. Lowenstein Ph.D The treatment of the alienator is the most difficult of all. The trilogy of our alienator, child and victim of the alienation are the three involved in the process of Parental Alienation (PAS). The difficulty results due to the alienator feeling totally justified in the programming being carried out. Sometimes, but rarely, the alienator would not even be able to admit that he/she is programming a child against the target parent. This is commonly termed “denial”. Most alienators know exactly what they are doing and are prepared to avoid any form of treatment in order to continue doing what they are doing. This is because they feel totally justified in their action of seeking to destroy any possible relationship between a child in their care and the targeted parent. Normally, in order to reduce the resistance of an alienator and to get them to participate in therapy, there must be a Court resolution and pressure by the Judge that parental alienation syndrome or programming must be eliminated. The treatment process has three objectives: - To prepare the alienator for the treatment itself. - To treat the alienator. - To monitor the effects of the treatment vis a vis the child who has hitherto been programmed. Continue reading “Treating the Alienator – Ludwig.F. Lowenstein Ph.D” What Can Yet be Done With Older Children Who Have Been Long Term Victims of PA? Ludwig.F. Lowenstein Ph.D Southern England Psychological Services Causes and long term effects of alienation of children The causes of long term alienation is most often the unceasing, implacable hostility of the custodial parent against the now long term alienated parent. It may be noted, in at least one of the letters, that the process of turning a child against a parent starts early and is ongoing and relentless. The innocent parent often is not permitted to have any contact with the child and the child eventually adopts the view of the alienator and rejects what is so often a good parent. The alienated parent is not allowed to play any part in bringing up the child and of guiding that child. Such animosity of the hostile parent.s action is eventually difficult to reverse. The child, and later adolescent, increasingly believes he/she has indeed only one good parent and the other is a bad parent. The latter is the vilified, rejected father/mother. The alienated parent suffers tremendously from the unjust rejection he/she has to endure. Some parents such as those so unjustly treated eventually follow the advice of an expert psychologist understanding family problems and start another family. At the same time they should .keep the door open. for the child who has been alienated to make contact. This unfortunately seldom happens, especially with the passage of time. Judges frequently predict wrongly, that the child when an adult will untimately make contact with the rejected parent of their own volition. Here unfortunately is where we have the situation where the absence does not make .the heart grow fonder.. It is just the reverse: absence leads to the forgetting or total rejection of the absent parent.In the back of their minds, however, such children have a memory of eventually understanding how they have been unjustly and cruelly turned against the alienated parent. Sometimes this does not occur and they should be made aware of this by the psychologist seeking to remedy the situation.Frequently, I have told such parents that they should have counteracted such alienation earlier, and if necessary, to have sought a change of residence for such emotionally abused children. There response is a combination of regret, anger and a feeling of betrayal as well as helplessness now that they are seeking help so belatedly. Attempting to deal with the long term effects of parental alienation in the older child, adolescent and adult Continue reading “What Can Yet be Done With Older Children Who Have Been Long Term Victims of PA?” Southern England Psychological Services Publications by Dr. L.F. Lowenstein on Parental Alienation Syndrome The Vicious Alienator’s Game Plan The Vicious Alienator’s Game Plan Ludwig.F. Lowenstein Ph.D Southern England Psychological Services This article describes the motives and demeanour of the vicious and determined alienator in preventing, by whatever means, good contact and a good relationship with the absent, non custodial parent. Two illustrations are provided. One dealing with the father and the other with the mother as the alienator. A two-step approach is presented in how to deal with the implacable hostile and non-cooperative alienator. The importance of the expert witness working together with the court is required, as well as the court acting decisively to limit the “game plan” of the alienator is emphasised. Illustration 1 – the father as an alienator Mr Y had been given custody of a son aged 16 and a daughter aged 14 mainly due to the fact that the mother had suffered from depression. Mr Y was a highly controlling individual who did all he could to influence the children against a caring and loving mother. The divorce had been highly acrimonious. The mother Mrs N accepted that she suffered from depression but this was some time ago and was now under control due to the medication she was receiving. After leaving hospital, she tried unsuccessfully to communicate with her children and to have contact with Mr Y, but he had totally brainwashed the children against the mother stating she was a “crazy, unpredictable and violent woman”. Father also made it clear to the children that should they wish to have contact with their mother they would no longer have a home with him, they must choose one or the other. The children therefore never responded to telephone calls, emails and letters from the mother who pleaded to have the chance to be with them. The father had inculcated a fear of insecurity, if the children wished to have contact with their mother.	https://parentalalienation-pas.com/category/experts/dr-ludwig-lowenstein/
Maybe you’ve handed in your resignation letter or maybe your contract is almost over. However, it happened, your job is officially coming to an end. This is the time when your employer may invite you to an exit interview. An exit interview is a closing meeting between an employer and the employee leaving the organization (either voluntarily or through termination). It is an opportunity for employers to gain feedback from exiting employees in order to evaluate the company’s practices, retain employees and reduce turnover, and improve the organization. What to expect in an Exit Interview While it might be unnerving to meet with your soon-to-be previous employer and you may be tempted to decline, don’t turn down the invitation. Since you are leaving the position, you have nothing to lose and plenty to gain! It helps to be prepared to fully maximize the opportunity and end the employment relationship in a positive note. If the interview was initiated by the employer, then they set the agenda. Be ready to answer questions such as: - Your reasons for leaving (if you resigned) - Your feedback, both positive and negative, in terms of: - Duties and challenges of the position - Working relationships with colleagues and managers - What skills and qualifications does the position require - Offer suggestions for the new hire that will replace you - Your availability to support the new hire Do your best to answer the questions as honestly, constructively and as tactfully as you can. Employers who conduct exit interviews genuinely want to learn from your experience, so don’t be shy about offering helpful feedback. Your opinions might benefit the colleagues you are leaving behind. At the end of the interview, make sure to thank your employer for the opportunity to give your feedback and for any you received in return. Offer your gratitude for the employment experience. What you can gain from an Exit Interview Many employees dislike exit interviews, describing the experience as awkward or uncomfortable and without any benefit for the employee who is leaving. However, you may be surprised how useful exit interviews can be. 1. Reference Letters and Networking Contacts: Assuming that the job ended on relatively collegial terms, exit interviews are a chance to secure a strong reference. It’s a simple as asking who would be available to provide a reference for you. Keep in touch with your colleagues and supervisors, especially those who you want to keep as networking contacts. Make sure you connect on Linkedin. Job hunting is an unpredictable process and you never know when you may learn about a new employment opportunity from former supervisor or co-worker. 2. Evaluating your Skills: Before the interview ends, make sure to ask for time to address a few questions of your own – things you really want know about. Consider asking for: - Feedback about your performance on the job - Your strengths and weaknesses - Advice about professional development that might be useful for you If the job ended on negative terms and you’re still dealing with anger and resentment, it may not be a good idea to participate in an exit interview. Expressing your anger with an employer will only end your chances of a reference and may ruin your professional reputation. If you have a legal or human rights cause with your employer, discuss it with your union, lawyer or the Ministry of Labour; don’t handle it on your own at the exit interview. While first impressions are powerful, so are final, lasting impressions. Ending a job on a positive and constructive note will benefit both you and the company well into the future.	https://www.jvstoronto.org/career-blog/employment/
5 Ways to Handle Constant Job Rejections Many of us know the familiar pain and anxiety of submitting a job application, finishing your job interview, and waiting for what feels like ages for any sort of response only to receive a rejection letter, email, or phone call in the end. This scenario can be tough to digest. It's disheartening, frustrating, and could negatively affect your performance in future interviews. This is especially true if you get turned down multiple times in a row. However, while dealing with rejection is never fun, it is a natural part of the job-hunting process that you should view as a learning opportunity. So, instead of letting the anxiety and disappointment caused by rejection cloud your thinking, here are five things to remember for you to bounce back from rejection and avoid having such a setback keep you from applying for other options. - Don't take it personally and keep your emotions in check The hiring process is subjective, and again, rejection is a natural part of the job search. Recruiters are bound to make decisions based on several factors, and turning down a candidate has less to do with the applicant and more with the company and the number of people competing for the job, so don't read too much into it. If you get turned down, it's not because there's something innately wrong with you. You did the best you could and there really are things that we can't control, so give yourself a break and allow yourself to process your feelings. - Analyze and Reflect Once you've come to terms with the employer's or recruiter's decision, take this unfortunate event as a chance to improve yourself and prepare for future job opportunities by weighing in on your performance during the entirety of the hiring process and thinking about what you could have done differently. - Ask for feedback Asking for feedback is one way to turn a job rejection into a learning opportunity. While it may not end well as some employers or recruiters can not provide feedback due to internal policies or busy schedules, it's still worth a shot because asking for constructive feedback can help you understand what went right and wrong. Doing so can play a significant role not only in improving your resume and broadening your skillset but also in putting an end to self-doubt. - Maintain a fresh take Each job opportunity is different from one another, and each company has its own 'ideal candidate,' so if you've been taking on all your interviews in the same tone, you may want to tailor-fit your approach for each opportunity that comes your way to show you're the perfect-fit candidate. - Keep going You've pampered yourself, you've evaluated your performance, you've identified rooms for improvement, and hopefully, you've made an effort to actually improve yourself to prepare for future job openings you'd like to take. Now, all there's left to do to ultimately pick yourself back up is continue your hunt once again. There's still plenty of opportunities out there, and there may be more than one that's perfect for you. And there you have it. Happy hunting, job seekers! For more discussions and content about job search and professional growth, feel free to explore our IN THE MIDDLE and HEADHUNTED sections, where you will find solutions and career development advice for aspiring professionals and middle managers.	http://iconexecutive.asia/headhunted/5-ways-to-handle-constant-job-rejections-17
Finding the Best Introduction to Finite Mathematics The history of discrete mathematics has involved numerous challenging difficulties that have focused attention within regions of the area. The text may be used in a number of course lengths, levels, and regions of emphasis. Generally, mathematical models may consist of logical models. Upon successful completion of this training course, students physic essay will have the ability to address systems of linear equations and inequalities in a number of ways. A proof is understood to be a derivation of a single proposition from another. So as to cover Chapter 11, which consists of material on Markov chains, some understanding of matrix theory is essential. Introduction to Finite Mathematics Ideas Finite requires a great deal of time and energy. Newton, by way of example, was attempting to understand the impact of gravity which causes falling objects to constantly accelerate. The use of this calculator will enable the student to focus on the concepts being taught rather than the mechanical measures to solving the issues. What You Need to Know About Introduction to Finite Mathematics This course will act as a guide through the selected topics given below. Understanding and employing the Central Limit Theorem and standard distribution patterns are also critical to completely comprehend the area of Statistics. You have to obtain a MyMathLab Student Access Kit and register for the program number which will be provided to you by your TA. Therefore, if you do something to a side of the equation, you have to do precisely the same point to the other side. The objective is to rotate the faces of the cube until all the faces are a good color. Put simply, in combination, you can’t just rearrange the exact same letters and after that claim to get a different combination. Actually it’s reasonable to say that was among the reasons I chose to compose a book on knots. In reality, forget you even understand what a number is. The actual numbers are generalized to earn a number system known as the hyperreal numbers, which include infinitesimally compact numbers together with infinitely huge ones. Introduction to Finite Mathematics Explained A student has to be in good academic standing and might not be on academic probation of any sort. Keep reading to find out more about the advantages of working with a private finite math tutor if you feel as if you could use a little more help. If you have any suspicions, you may always contact us directly. Applied Statistics is among the most relevant and in-demand degrees in the world today, and this program gives a vibrant, supportive environment to learn. Normal attendance is vital for satisfactory completion of this class. Usually offered just in the summer session. The elimination way of solving systems of equations is also known as the addition technique. Inside this post, you will find a gentle introduction to probability distributions. A paradigmatic case in point is topology. Thus the results cannot be determined beforehand, so there aren’t any hidden variables, and the outcomes are really random. There are formulae that may permit us to figure out the sum. Sometimes you must use more than 1 step to address the equation. Choosing Introduction to Finite Mathematics Is Simple The sheet includes a list of issues from every section to do as practice troubles. The internet software MyMathLab is going to be employed with the textbook. An internet copy also needs to be submitted on Sakai. Want to Know More About Introduction to Finite Mathematics? But while the preface is the sole change, it’s an incredibly important one. These words are called connectives. The last region of the course addresses the tuning of musical scales and describing symmetries that spring up in musical composition. You will only get a succinct introduction to logic within this class, but the mathematics utilized in logic are observed at the center of computer programming and in designing electrical circuits. Generally, mathematical theories can be categorized as analytic or synthetic. Usually, simple physics. The Advantages of Introduction to Finite Mathematics Selected topics in a variety of areas of mathematics that are not covered by the conventional courses. Recommended for students who would like to satisfy their core mathematics requirement but don’t plan to take extra mathematics coursework. There’s mathematics tutoring readily available in room S116. Infinite series is going to be covered in the calculus tutorials. You don’t have to purchase any of the books mentioned. The Importance of Introduction to Finite Mathematics The summary here is, for your convenience, a succinct reminder of the primary points, but you ought to read here for additional information. From that point, you’ll need to create a Pearson account. Nevertheless, your private information wouldn’t be public. Understanding Introduction to Finite Mathematics All you will need is a scientific calculator or whenever you wish, you can use a graphing calculator. When you use WebAssign with the pedagogy and content found inside this textbook, you’ve got access to the best-in-breed answer to your homework and assessment requirements. The access card may also be purchased on the internet or at the bookstore by students who want access. Finding Introduction to Finite Mathematics Online In order to compute the probability of a specific event happening you should be able to count all the potential outcomes. So it’s just things grouped together with a specific property in common. Specifically, it’ll be applied to economic and business difficulties but also social interaction difficulties.	http://bankrollboosters.com/uncategorized/finding-best-introduction-finite-mathematics/
Kelly Port was nominated for Best Visual Effects for his work in Avengers: Infinity War. His work influenced the film and its true use of visual effects. Port speaks on his nomination and the future of visual effects in the film industry. ATM: How did you go about carrying out your responsibilities? KP: The responsibilities on this film were organized as such: The Russo brothers are the directors. Dan DeLeeuw was the overall visual effects supervisor for Marvel Studios. Dan and his team would give notes to all the visual effects houses from the director and himself. I would then contribute my added thoughts to a specific environment or character. I work with my team at Digital Domain, which is quite big. We had a team of 300 people working on it for a few years. It is a long process of back and forth and collaboration. You are sending material back and forth; getting it reviewed and making adjustments. ATM: What can you reflect on the creative atmosphere if visual effects were not implemented in this film? KP: Without visual effects, this movie would not have been made. The stories could not have been told. Out of 2700 total shots, I think there are only 80 shots in the film that did not have any visual effects. Over 97% of the movie had a visual effect component in it. The story and the film could be not told without visual effects. ATM: How does the visual effects continue the storytelling in a brilliant way? KP: Visual Effects enable all storytelling from a filmmaker perspective. It opens the possibility for any story to be told, which is an exciting time to be in. We are at a stage where there is nothing visual effects cannot do when given enough time and resources. It is only limited by imagination, coming up with a story and a script. We are at a place right now with the technology of visual effects that any story can be told beautifully. ATM: Do you think the infinite nature that is seen with visual effects in this movie is the same as the infinite nature in the ambition level of the characters? KP: The technology of visual effects can be used to tell stories. Of course, the stories have to be driven and told by writers who are guiding us in this creativity. In how they want us to tell this creative story. This is the creative process. For example, on Thanos, played by Josh Brolin, we used technology that was innovative for this particular project that was not used on a film before. This was being able to take the performance Josh Brolin and capture it with accuracy that had not been done before. It was important for this main villain character that we capture him at a high resolution and high-fidelity performance. We wanted to capture as much of this as possible. ATM: How does your Academy nomination highlight the hard work you put into this film? KP: It certainly makes me proud. It is exciting as you can imagine. I know that deep down this was a huge collaborative effort. My team at Digital Domain are so talented. We have so many different departments and each of them is amazingly skilled at what they do. It reflects nicely on us as a team. We all work together to make these creations, and we are proud of the work. ATM: What skills you are going to add with your future work after this nomination? KP: Skills are added with every new project. This is partly why I love this job and this role. Things are constantly changing both in terms of technology and collaborating with new people. New problems to critically and technically solve. I look forward to solving the next big problem. ATM: If holograms became the norm, possible Academy nomination, then how would this persuade viewers to watch more? KP: There will be new forms of storytelling. You have virtual reality, live shows like holograms, traditional filmmaking shown in 3d stereo or in wider scenes. They are all different forms of telling a story and all have their different merits. I do see traditional films staying around for a long time as a more organized form of storytelling. Virtual reality is more exploratory, and the viewers are immersed in the storytelling. Traditionally, filmmaking is a more focused approach where the storyteller, in this case, the director, is making creative choices in edits, close-ups, and wide shots. They are forcing you to consume, listen, and watch the story. They write it very specific to their intent. ATM: How would the new technology impact your curiosity and performance for your job? KP: I have always been curious and do not see this going away any time soon. Even as new projects are coming up, I am already exploring and playing around with new ideas and techniques. It is unknown. This is what’s exciting and what I look forward to.	https://atthemoviesonline.com/index.php/spotlight/interviews/2019/03/05/kelly-ports-visual-effects/
The experience of healing is something that all of us go through at some point in our lives. It may be something simple like a cold, or more complicated like cancer. Whatever is going on for us, I believe that a healing need happens to bring us back to a conscious awareness of what is going on for us and how we are to respond, in the present moment. Our lives and our minds are so busy with so many distractions that we forget to really look after ourselves. We forget, or choose not to take of our minds, hearts and bodies, and eventually they get our attention. When I get a healing need, I use it as an opportunity to ask myself what is going on for me and what do I need to do. If I get a cold I know I am to stop and rest; give my self time off from all that I think needs to be done to the important task of looking after myself. Other times there is a more proactive need – such as seeing a doctor or specialist. As we stop and get present to ourselves, we ‘make space’ to experience God in us as our inner wisdom and guidance. It is really important to listen. If there is action to be taken we keep our faith on God within us as our inner guidance and wisdom, and call on our divine qualities of strength and good judgement to follow through. One of the most important aspects of healing for me, however, is connecting with Love that is not just within us, it is the truth of us. Love in this context is unconditional acceptance, loving kindness and compassion to our selves. Bryon Katie teaches us to love what is. This is because, I believe, as we connect with Love, this God-felt experience enables the healing to occur. Any resistance we have to the problem encourages the problem, for we are always adding our energy to the mix. So let us, in whatever healing challenge is happening, find Love within. For me, Love is the activity of God at work through me and as me. As I listen, love and wait, I become aware of what is mine to do and not do. I then take the steps I am guided to take and I know that healing is happening. I speak words of release (by continuing to forgive and stop giving power to the problem) and affirm words of life and truth with feeling and gratitude. When we keep our focus on God as Love, Life, Strength, Wisdom and Power expressing through and as me, we open the door to our healing. So, if you are going through a healing challenge, please do not make it wrong. Love and bless your self and this opportunity to know wholeness as your truth. In every moment you have the God-felt opportunity to reconnect with who you are – a beautiful expression of God, with all of God available in every moment to enable your experience of healing.	http://www.unityuk.org/healing/
“The Torah is acquired by means of forty eight qualities, which are… being beloved, loving Hashem, loving (His) creatures…” This means that in order to receive the Torah upon myself, it’s not enough to love, I also need to be loved. The question is, how can this be required of me? Is it my choice to be loved? And what should I do if others don’t love me? Why is this one of the ways that the Torah is acquired? In order to answer these questions, we need to remind ourselves again: what is love? Love is an attribute which comes from the trait of kindness. Just as this attribute is the infrastructure for the existence of the world- “a world of kindness you shall build”, and just as only through this outlook of kindness, where the entire reality of evil is only exterior and an incorrect reflection of reality, the world has existence; so to in my private ‘world’ my existence is possible only through the attribute of kindness, which sees my current reality with a good eye, and believes that there is no negative reality in all of creation. Only in this way, by way of me accepting my current reality as it is, I can take the next step in teshuva and correcting my actions. These are the stages, first compassion and afterwards judgement, first comes kindness and then strength. To say ‘I’m not okay, I didn’t want’ etc., is to destroy my inner world, it’s putting strength before kindness, and that’s destruction, because from here going forward there is nobody who will rectify and repent. However, to say to myself ‘I’m okay, and it hurts me that I failed’, this is called correcting myself and repenting, my pain about my mistake is the beginning of the healing. When I find myself not connected, not serious, not behaving properly, if my reaction is: ‘why am I not’, then the immediate result is rejection, distance and lack of will to progress. The correct reaction is: “Hashem, thank you for showing me what I need to correct, I feel that you love me, tremendous love with no boundary, and you believe in my will to make progress. Please help me correct this, my will is to do your will, it’s just hard for me…” words like these are from the attribute of kindness, and it’s the basis of all service of Hashem. Love, way before it comes to me from the outside reality, it shines from me to the outside world. And if I’m in a state of love, first of all towards myself, in a state of accepting myself with correct compassion and kindness, which brings me afterwards to judgment and strength, then I’m fulfilling this acquisition of “being loved”, because to be loved is first of all to be loved by yourself. The moment that I’ll be loved by myself, others will already reflect this to me in return.	https://neveloffwellness.com/2016/12/21/who-do-you-love-part-three/
Electricity shortages and sky-high natural gas prices raise very real fears that millions of European households will experience power outages or will not be able to afford to stay warm this winter. However, the European Union (EU) has concrete measures in place to help alleviate this crisis and prevent future crises. The EU can and must diversify its energy sources to ensure that enough affordable, clean energy is always available. The most immediate cause of the energy crisis is a shortage of natural gas, which accounted for 22 percent of electricity generation in the EU in 2019. The EU receives natural gas directly from Russia through the Nord Stream pipeline, but Russia recently cut its supplies, causing prices soaring and fears of shortages. Russia claims the decreased supply is a seasonal change to divert more natural gas into storage caverns to prepare for higher domestic winter demand. However, the supply cut also coincides with the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and Russia’s efforts to get the EU Commission to back the final approval of the pipeline. The EU member states need to diversify their natural gas sources because Russia is clearly not a reliable partner. Although liquefied natural gas (LNG) is more expensive than pipeline natural gas, Member States should turn to US and Middle East LNG suppliers to diversify their natural gas sources. This will help avoid the need to turn to more heavily CO2 emitting energy sources like coal and oil to keep electricity flowing. The EU has been making a major switch to renewable energies for two decades, but has had little success. In 2020, less than 20 percent of electricity in the EU came from wind and solar power and only 13 percent from hydropower. While the percentages are increasing, there is simply not enough renewable energy on the block right now and it is unreliable when it is available. The solar power is switched off at night; The wind power fails when the wind stops blowing. Renewables have an important place in the energy landscape, but must be taken with a realistic view of the current capabilities of the technologies. The EU should continue to increase its renewable energy production, but not as a substitute for stable, reliable clean energy sources. Similarly, government regulations and policy choices related to nuclear technology prevent solutions to current and future energy crises. After the nuclear accident in Fukushima in Japan, Chancellor Angela Merkel promised to shut down nuclear power plants. Germany, the largest economy in the EU and once an electricity exporter, has thus become an importer. Nuclear power plants are the epitome of reliable electricity generation, delivering stable electricity at any time of the day all year round. Nuclear power plants are expensive and politically difficult to build, but the UK, France and Germany in particular should stop planned nuclear power plant closures and maintain safe and functional facilities. Although some of the largest economies in the EU have avoided nuclear energy in the past decade, other EU countries are actively seeking new sources of nuclear energy. This includes traditional light water reactors and next generation nuclear technologies. These measures should be encouraged as the expansion of the nuclear base load capacity in the EU will help to mitigate electricity price spikes related to the availability of natural gas. The recent announcement by France that it will now support the construction of new nuclear power plants is an encouraging sign, as are the recent agreements between the US and Romania and between the US and Ukraine. Apart from nuclear power, alternative energy technologies such as biofuels were insufficient to replace old fuels in the EU market. The Renewable Energy Directive, which regulates biofuels on the EU market, harms the bloc’s energy security. In particular, this directive sets out regulatory barriers for imported biofuels with the clear intention of moving the EU towards home-grown biofuels. The temperate climate of the European continent lends itself to growing rapeseed oil and soybeans, but not palm oil-based fuel, which offers several environmental benefits. Palm oil requires less than 15 percent of fertilizers and pesticides than rapeseed and soy and produces eleven times more fuel per hectare than soy oil, ten times more than sunflower oil and seven times more than rapeseed oil. However, the Renewable Energy Directive has de facto banned palm oil as a biofuel in order to support local producers. The EU wants to make a responsible contribution to environmental protection while supporting its own economy. It can both repeal the restrictive biofuel provisions of the Renewable Energy Sources Directive and once again advocate the future of biofuels by opening up palm oil imports with a view to sustainability and responsible action. Of course, the EU wants to protect the environment and preserve the lifestyle of its 450 million citizens. To boost its economy and the lifestyles of its people, it needs to diversify, not limit, its energy sources. Otherwise this crisis won’t be the last. Ellen Wald is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center and President of Transversal Consulting.	https://financialservicenetwork.com/2021/11/24/the-eu-contributed-to-its-own-energy-crisis-but-diversification-can-solve-it/
Massachusetts Joins New Jersey In Demanding Police Warrants For Cell Phone Tracking Police in Massachusetts must obtain court approval before obtaining data from, or tracking a mobile phone. Police in Massachusetts must obtain court approval before obtaining data from, or tracking a mobile phone. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court last week ruled that law enforcement within the state can no longer surveil the metadata of a mobile phone or track a mobile phone without first obtaining court approval. Citing 2012’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on United States v. Jones as precedence, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court used Associate Justice Samuel Alito’s concurrence as a primary argument. “[R]elatively short-term monitoring of a person’s movements on public streets accords with expectations of privacy that our society has recognized as reasonable,” the justice argued. “But the use of longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy. For such offenses, society’s expectation has been that law enforcement agents and others would not — and indeed, in the main, simply could not — secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an individual’s car for a very long period.” The case of Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Augustine centered around the Massachusetts State Police gathering two weeks of the plaintiff’s mobile phone records from Sprint via federal legislation (18 U.S. Code § 2703) and not direct approval from the state courts. The plaintiff, Shabazz Augustine, was a suspect in the murder of Julaine Jules. Investigators obtained the data as part of a criminal investigation in order to trace where Augustine was prior to the murder. Ultimately, the state would indict Augustine for murder, based partly on the mobile phone data obtained by police. The state appealed a lower court’s decision that ruled that the state police’s actions violated the state constitution. “Even though restricted to telephone calls sent and received (answered or unanswered), the tracking of the defendant’s movements in the urban Boston area for two weeks was more than sufficient to intrude upon the defendant’s expectation of privacy,” read the 5 – 2 majority opinion. This ruling adds to an increasingly contradictory set of precedence on cell phone tracking. On July 18, 2013, in the case of State of New Jersey v. Earls, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled, “Using a cell phone to determine the location of its owner … is akin to using a tracking device and … involves a degree of intrusion that a reasonable person would not anticipate.” Shortly after the New Jersey ruling, the United States Fifth Circuit’s Court of Appeals ruled 2 – 1 that probable-cause warrants are not needed to access cell phone location information. The court ruled that cell phone records are business records that were never in the subscriber’s possession and, therefore, are not protected under the Fourth Amendment’s protection against illegal search and seizures. Prior to this, the Maine Legislature approved legislation — overriding a veto — requiring police to obtain a warrant prior to tracking a cell phone, and the Florida Supreme Court ruled that a warrant is needed to search a defendant’s phone at the time of arrest. In 2012, the U.S. Seventh Circuit’s Court of Appeals ruled that a warrantless search of a suspect’s phone in order to collect its telephone number does not constitute an unreasonable search. Think about who gets rich off of the Venezuela regime-change agenda. It’s the same people that said we had to invade Iraq in order to prevent nuclear apocalypse. It’s the same people who said the world would stop turning on its axis if we didn’t carpet bomb Libya and Syria. Watch: From Colombia and Brazil, Kei Pritsker on the decades of US meddling in South America that preceded the ongoing coup in Venezuela. Kei Pritsker breaks down the nature of US humanitarian aid and how it’s weaponized to advance foreign policy objectives. Kei Pritsker explains how Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido came to have the backing of US corporations, political interests and ultimately, the Trump administration.	https://www.mintpressnews.com/massachusetts-joins-new-jersey-in-demanding-police-warrants-for-cell-phone-tracking/180424/
The invention discloses a dual-channel lateral shearing interferometer, which comprises two beam splitter membranes and two groups of reflector mirror assemblies, wherein the two beam splitter membranes are centrosymmetricaly arranged, and the two groups of reflector mirror assemblies are centrosymmetricaly arranged; distances between the centrosymmetric points of the two groups of reflector mirrors and arms of the two reflector mirrors in each group of reflector mirror assembly are unequal, and the first beam splitter membrane divides incident parallel light into two paths of transmission and reflection light beams; the included angle of the two reflector mirrors in each group of reflector mirror assembly is 45 degrees, and the two groups of reflector mirror assemblies respectively turn and reflect 90 degrees from the two paths of transmission and reflection light beams separated from the beam splitter membrane and then enter the other beam splitter membrane; and the other beam splitter membrane transmits and reflects the two paths of incident light beams, and then two channels are formed to output the light beams, and two light beams with fully equal shearing amount are output by the two channels. Accordingly, the requirements of lateral shearing are met, and the energy utilization rate is improved.
Shoebox-sized Robots Deployed in Rescue Effort at Ground Zero Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, collapse of the World Trade Center towers, robotics expert Robin Murphy, an associate professor of computer science at the University of South Florida (USF), received the call. Within minutes of the attack, Murphy had also spoken with one of her former students, John Blitch, who directs the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) at USF. Murphy's research on experimental robots for urban rescue operations was originally funded by NSF. The CRASAR response team also included three graduate students -- Jenn Casper, Mark Micire and Brian Minten -- who helped Murphy develop the robots and their software-guided "marsupial" systems. The CRASAR team prepared its robots near Stewart Air Force Base in Newburgh, N.Y., where Murphy, Casper, Micire and Minten were fitted with asbestos-rated respirators. They gained access to Ground Zero at 8 p.m. on Sept. 12. Murphy, a veteran of many smaller-building collapse training sessions, knew instinctively that they had little chance of finding survivors. "The firefighters were grimly determined to find their colleagues," she said. "We were all determined to find whatever was possible. If we didn't find someone alive, finding remains and ensuring rescuer safety was just as important." The CRASAR team had expected to meet in New York under the direction of National Institute for Urban Search and Rescue (NIUSR) board member Raymond Downey, chief of the fire department's special operations section. However, Downey was among the rescue workers killed when the towers collapsed. Murphy and Blitch are also NIUSR board members. Murphy and her students had expected to deploy their intelligent anonymous "marsupial" robots, so called because the "mother" robot releases smaller robots to explore tight spaces unreachable by other means. The mother carries the little ones in her "pouch" as far as she can maneuver into the site, then provides power as the "babies" descend from her to perform their search, negotiating smaller crevices and hidden spaces. Equipped to maintain balance on rough terrain, the smaller team can reach, sense and report on spaces that may be too small or too dangerous for human rescue workers to approach or enter. The severity of the WTC damage, however, prevented the use of the mother; instead, the shoebox-sized robots were taken by backpack into the rubble. Over the next 11 days, the CRASAR teams made five insertions onto the massive rubble piles, often interrupted when safety concerns forced an evacuation. The hardiest of the robots -- which cost between $10,000 and $40,000 -- were sent into the rubble whenever requested by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) task force teams or sector chiefs. The mechanized prowlers had 100-foot tethers, far out-distancing the fire department's seven-foot camera wands. While CRASAR robots helped find five victims and another set of remains, Murphy expressed regret that they hadn't been more successful. The marsupial concept still remains promising, especially to handle remote tether management, says Murphy. In the future, tether-free robots enabled by artificial intelligence would guide themselves through collapsed buildings or other difficult terrain, Murphy believes. She also hopes to develop algorithms that could distinguish colors and shapes to help robots locate victims, living or dead. Before graduate school, Casper received an award under NSF’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates program. Now she and fellow students Micire and Minten have acquired the kind of field experience none of them would have hoped for, yet none would have missed. "This was the worst thing I or anyone else has seen in the field," Murphy said. "It says a lot for my students that they rose to the challenge. Now we'll take these lessons home, with new inspiration to make our next generation of search and rescue robots as advanced as possible."	https://beta.nsf.gov/news/shoebox-sized-robots-deployed-rescue-effort-ground
The brain tumor dataset is available for free download at <http://www.broadinstitute.org/MPR/CNS/>, while the breast cancer dataset corresponds to the dataset GSE38888 from the Gene Expression Omnibus database (<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE38888>). Introduction {#sec001} ============ Clustering is the process of partitioning elements into a number of groups (clusters) such that elements in the same cluster are more similar than elements in different clusters. Clustering has been applied in a wide variety of fields, ranging from medical sciences, economics, computer sciences, engineering, social sciences, to earth sciences \[[@pone.0152333.ref001], [@pone.0152333.ref002]\], reflecting its important role in scientific research. With several hundred clustering methods in existence \[[@pone.0152333.ref003]\], there is clearly no shortage of clustering algorithms but, at the same time, satisfactory answers to some basic questions are still to come. Clustering methods are nowadays essential tools for the analysis of gene expression data, becoming routinely used in many research projects \[[@pone.0152333.ref004]\]. Many papers have shown that genes or proteins of similar function cluster together \[[@pone.0152333.ref005]--[@pone.0152333.ref010]\], and clustering methods have been used to solve many problems of biological nature. One of the most interesting of these problems is related to disease subtyping, i.e. the stratification of different patients in terms of underlying disease characteristics. This is extremely important in the drug development process, in which the correct identification of the subgroup of patients who are most likely to respond to the drug may be needed in order to get the drug approved by FDA. Also, ultimately, disease subtyping is expected to be the key for personalized therapies. A widely used type of clustering is K-means \[[@pone.0152333.ref011]--[@pone.0152333.ref013]\], the best known squared error-based clustering algorithm \[[@pone.0152333.ref014]\]. This method consists in initializing a number of random centroids, one for each cluster, and then associating each element to the nearest centroid. This procedure is repeated until the locations of the centroids do not change anymore. A similar clustering algorithm is Partition Around Medoids (PAM) \[[@pone.0152333.ref015]\], which intend to find a sequence of elements called medoids that are centrally located in clusters, with the goal to minimize the sum of the dissimilarities of all elements to their nearest medoid. Also Affinity Propagation \[[@pone.0152333.ref016]\] starts from a similar idea, identifying exemplars among data points and building clusters around these exemplars. Another widely used clustering algorithm is Spectral clustering, which makes use of the eigenvalues of the similarity matrix of the data before clustering. Many of the most widely used clustering methods, including K-means, PAM, and Spectral clustering, require the estimation of the most appropriate number of clusters for the data. Ideally, the resulting clusters should not only have good properties (compact, well-separated, and stable), but also give biologically meaningful results. This is an issue that derives from the more general problem of defining the term "cluster" \[[@pone.0152333.ref003]\] and has been extensively treated in the literature \[[@pone.0152333.ref017]\]. Furthermore, K-means is not a deterministic method, because the results are dependent on the initialization of the algorithm and can change between successive runs. The same not-deterministic property is shared by SOM \[[@pone.0152333.ref018]\], a neural network clustering method, which, even if it does not need the number of clusters to be defined a priori, requires the user to specify the maximum number of clusters. Another similar clustering algorithm we consider is AutoSOME \[[@pone.0152333.ref019]\], which, however, is also able to estimate the number of clusters. Another very popular clustering methods category is hierarchical clustering (HC), where the term hierarchical refers to the relation between clusters, which are nested according to a pairwise distance matrix. Results obtained with HC methods are usually represented with a dendrogram, a tree diagram where the height of the vertical lines is proportional to the difference between each pair of elements or clusters. HC methods can be divided into agglomerative or divisive methods. Agglomerative clustering (also called bottom up) starts with each element belonging to one different cluster (singleton cluster). Following the initialization, a series of merge operations groups pairs of clusters based on a predefined distance metric, until only one cluster remains, containing all elements. Divisive clustering (also called top down) proceeds in the opposite way. At the beginning all elements belong to the same cluster and the algorithm successively divides it until all clusters are singleton clusters. Based on different definitions of the distance between two clusters, there are many agglomerative clustering algorithms. Two of the simplest and most popular methods include Complete-linkage (CL) \[[@pone.0152333.ref020]\] and Ward's minimum variance criterion \[[@pone.0152333.ref021]\] henceforth referred to as "Ward". The former uses the greatest among the distances of each pair of elements in a cluster to define the inter-cluster distance. The latter assumes that a cluster is represented by its centroid (the location that corresponds to the means of the coordinates in the multivariate space) and measures the proximity between two clusters in terms of the increase in the Sum of Squared Error (SSE) that results from merging two clusters. One advantage of HC is that the number of clusters is not required as a parameter. However, this method does not solve this issue completely, as the number of clusters is not determined exactly. In HC the number of clusters can be chosen after the inspection of the dendrogram, by cutting it at a certain depth or choosing a number of clusters based on intuition (see Chap. 18 in \[[@pone.0152333.ref004]\]). As a disadvantage, HC has a great computational complexity of the order of O(n^2^) where n is the number of data points to be clustered \[[@pone.0152333.ref014]\]. The determination of the number of clusters is a common issue in many clustering methods \[[@pone.0152333.ref017], [@pone.0152333.ref022]\]. This problem is often solved by involving the use of indices that measure the quality of clusters according to their compactness and separation. However, a disadvantage shared by most of these indices is that they do not offer any indication whether the data should be clustered at all \[[@pone.0152333.ref022]\]. The requirement that the number of clusters has to be known in advance is only one of the most common limitations of clustering methods. Many existing methods will assign all the input data to some cluster. Even if there exist methods that allow for overlapping clustering (an element can simultaneously belong to more than one group), and partial clustering (not every element belongs to a cluster), the most widely used methods result in complete clustering, where every element is assigned to exactly one cluster, disregarding the possibility that some elements might be outliers that do not belong to any real group. There are various applications for which it makes little or no sense to force all data items to belong to some group, and doing so inevitably leads to poorly-coherent clusters. For example, genetic data often contain a significant amount of noise, and complete clustering leads to the presence of many outliers among the genetic entities that are clustered. In this work we present the Cross-Clustering (CC) algorithm, a technique that combines two well-established bottom-up HC algorithms in order to identify the correct number of clusters with little input by the user, while also detecting and removing outliers that could undermine the quality of the clusters obtained. Methods {#sec002} ======= The CC algorithm proposed here overcomes four of the most common limitations of the existing clustering algorithms. First, it does not necessarily group all the elements into clusters, thus falling in the category of partial clustering methods. The basic assumption made in this algorithm is that the data points that greatly deteriorate the quality of the clusters represent noise, and thus should not be included in the final clustering. Second, the algorithm automatically identifies the optimal number of clusters. Third, CC allows the possibility of obtaining one cluster as result, suggesting that partitioning that specific data may not be appropriate. Fourth, CC is a deterministic algorithm that does not depend on any initialization, and always produces reproducible results. These results are obtained by combining the two basic principles of Ward and CL. In principle, we could consider all the possible combinations of clustering methods in order to find the combination that works best, but we decided to combine these two algorithms for two intuitive reasons: i) as Ward attempts to minimize the sum of the squared distances of points from their cluster centroids, it is able to build well-separated clusters and to provide a good estimate of the number of clusters; ii) as CL defines the proximity of two clusters as the maximum of the distance between any two points in the two different clusters, it is not optimal in separating clusters appropriately, but it is able to clearly identify outliers. The parameters required by CC are optional and include a reasonable interval of values for the number of clusters for Ward (n~W~), and a maximum number of clusters to be used in CL (n~C~). Partitions are computed for both methods for each value in the input range. Then, each partition obtained cutting the Ward dendrogram in correspondence with n~W~ clusters is combined with each partition resulting from the cutting of CL with a number of clusters n~C~, which has to be higher than n~W~, allowing for the identification of small and singleton clusters, likely to contain outliers. The algorithm then choses the partitioning yielding the maximum consensus between the two methods, providing the number of clusters and the elements to be considered as outliers. Note that n~W~ and n~C~ are there just to reduce the computational effort. In principle, the cluster range can always be set from a minimum of 2 clusters to a maximum number of clusters equal to the number of data points. The algorithm {#sec003} ------------- As explained above, CC can use two optional parameters in order to reduce the computational complexity. The first one is the range for the number of clusters $I^{W}\, = \,\lbrack n_{W_{min}},\ldots,n_{W_{max}}\rbrack$. This range can be chosen by performing Ward and choosing a reasonable interval after the visual inspection of the results though the dendrogram. A set of different partitions $\mathbf{k}_{i}^{W}$, where i = 1, ... , length(I^W^), is obtained by cutting the tree at the levels associated to each n~W~i~~ ∈ I^W^. The second parameter is the range for the number of clusters in CL, $I^{C}\, = \,\lbrack n_{W_{min}} + 1,\ldots,n_{W_{max}}\rbrack$, where n~C~max~~ is an arbitrary number, greater than n~W~max~~, but smaller than the number of elements minus one. Also this range can be chosen after the visual inspection of the CL dendrogram. Setting a high n~C~max~~ allows to isolate those elements which are less likely to belong to a cluster, eliminating them from the final partition. Then, the CC algorithm works as follows: 1. A set of different partitions $\mathbf{k}_{j}^{C}$, where j = 1, ..., length(I^C^), is obtained by cutting the tree at the levels associated to each n~C~j~~ ∈ I^C^. 2. For all the possible pairs $\mathbf{k}_{j}^{C}$,$\mathbf{k}_{i}^{W}$ such that n~C~j~~ \> n~W~i~~ build the contingency table A, where the element a~rs~ represents the number of elements belonging simultaneously to cluster $c_{r}^{W}$ (the r-th cluster obtained with Ward when the number of total clusters is set at $n_{i}^{W}$) and to cluster $c_{s}^{C}$ (the s-th cluster obtained with CL when the number of total clusters is set at $n_{j}^{C}$). The requirement n~C~j~~ \> n~W~i~~ if essential in order to isolate as much noise and singleton elements as possible. 3. Permute the columns of matrix A until the sum of elements on the diagonal of A, denoted as sum(diag(A)), is the largest possible. The term max(sum(diag(A))) represents the maximum amount of overlap between partitions $\mathbf{k}_{i}^{W}$ and $\mathbf{k}_{j}^{C}$, and it will be denoted henceforth as MO~ij~. 4. Choose the pair(i\,j\) = argmax~i,j~MO(i,j). The optimal number of clusters is indicated by $n_{W_{i}}^{}$, and this follows from the ability of Ward to identify well-separated clusters. The optimal partitioning is identified by the consensus clusters obtained by combining $\mathbf{k}_{j}^{C}$ and $\mathbf{k}_{i}^{W}$. For discussion on special cases and for an example refer to the Supporting Information. Results {#sec004} ======= In order to assess the performance of CC, we compared it on simulated data with the methods on which it is based, as well as with a method that attempts to find the correct number of clusters and to identify outliers, the DBSCAN method \[[@pone.0152333.ref023]\], and with PAM, Affinity propagation, autoSOME, and Spectral clustering. Furthermore, we also compared CC with Ward, CL, DBSCAN, K-means and SOM on three real datasets, showing that CC is able to obtain meaningful results that represent the underlying partitioning of the data. Finally, we compared CC with two approaches for cancer subtyping, non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) \[[@pone.0152333.ref024]\] and SPARCoC \[[@pone.0152333.ref025]\], applying the algorithms on the data from the paper where SPARCoC was first introduced. Simulation study {#sec005} ---------------- Our simulated study was set up as follows: we generated 100 simulated datasets, each describing the expression profiles of 2,000 genes for 5 samples. The expression profile of each gene was chosen among five distinct behaviors* over the samples: constant at a positive value (500 genes), increasing (250 genes), decreasing (700 genes), oscillating (300 genes), and convex (100 genes). We added random noise from $\mathcal{N}\left( \mu = 0,\sigma = 0.2 \right)$, $\mathcal{N}\left( \mu = 0,\sigma = 0.5 \right)$, $\mathcal{N}\left( \mu = 0,\sigma = 1 \right)$, $\mathcal{N}\left( \mu = 0,\sigma = 1.5 \right)$ to each of the 100 datasets, resulting in 4 groups of 100 datasets. An additional set of 150 gene profiles were drawn from a Uniform distribution between 0 and the maximum simulated value present in the dataset, and they were added to each of the 400 datasets. We performed principal component analysis (PCA) on the data, and plotted the first three principal components (cumulative percentage of variance explained 89.8%). Each gene in S1 Fig in S1 File has been plotted as a point in the three-dimensional space corresponding to the first three principal components, denoted with PC1, PC2, and PC3, and it shows how categories are well defined even when σ = 1.5, while the outlier genes are distributed uniformly around the center. We applied the Ward and CL algorithms to the data, using the Euclidean distance. The number of clusters k is chosen as follows. We computed the clusterings for each k in the interval \[[@pone.0152333.ref002], [@pone.0152333.ref020]\] and we used the value of k for which the Average Silhouette Width (ASW) was maximum. This represents a reasonably good choice for k, as the Silhouette Width is defined as the average of the degree of confidence of an element to be in a cluster. The Silhouette Width lies in \[−1, 1\] and should be maximized (more details about the Silhouette Width can be found in the Supporting Information). Intuitively, by using the maximum of the average Silhouette Width we are choosing in an unsupervised way the partition with the best quality of the results. The only parameters to be set in CC are the interval for the number of clusters in Ward, in this case set to k ∈ \[2: 19\], and the maximum number of clusters in CL, which is set to 20. These parameters have been used in all the applications of CC throughout this work. DBSCAN determines automatically the number of clusters and classifies points in low-density regions as noise. The issue with this algorithm is that it needs the user to determine two parameters, ϵ and MinPts. A point is a core point, i. e. is in the interior of a cluster, if it has more than a specified number of points (MinPts) within a radius of ϵ, the reachability index (a sort of radius essential in order to compute the density). The criterion suggested by the authors \[[@pone.0152333.ref023]\] for the choice of the parameters only works for two-dimensional datasets. The idea is that points in a cluster are roughly at same distance from their n^th^ nearest neighbor, while the distance from noise points is higher. The suggested n for two-dimensional data is 4. Therefore, plotting the sorted distances, sorted in descending order, of each point from its n^th^ nearest neighbor gives hints concerning the proximity of the elements in the data. A threshold point p should be chosen to be the first one in the first "valley" of the sorted distances: all the points on the left of the threshold are considered to be noise, while all other points are assigned to some cluster. The parameters are then set such as ϵ = dist(p) and MinPts = n. As it is not practical to use this criterion on 100 simulations, here we set ϵ ∈ \[0.1, 10\] and MinPts equal 5, the default value of the `fpc` R package \[[@pone.0152333.ref026]\]. The adjusted Rand Index (ARI) \[[@pone.0152333.ref027]\], an updated form of the Rand Index \[[@pone.0152333.ref028]\], measures the agreement between two partitionings correcting it for chance agreement. This index has an expected value of 0 for independent partitionings and maximal value 1 for identical clusterings. Negative values are possible and indicate less agreement than expected by chance. There are several external indices like the ARI in the literature, such as Hubbert \[[@pone.0152333.ref029]\] and Jaccard \[[@pone.0152333.ref030]\], but they can be sensitive to the number of classes in the partitions or to the distributions of elements in the cluster \[[@pone.0152333.ref031]\]. The ARI is not affected by any of these issues \[[@pone.0152333.ref032]\] and has been found to have the most desirable properties in a comparative study of several pairwise clustering agreement criteria \[[@pone.0152333.ref033]\], making it the choice as main measure of comparison. In this work, we used the ARI to compare the partitionings obtained with different clustering methods with the reality, in order to measure the quality of the prediction. However, as the ARI compares only partitions of the same length, elements identified to be outliers by CC have been considered as a single cluster. For computing the ARIs we used the R package `clues` \[[@pone.0152333.ref034]\]. S2 Fig in S1 File shows that CC had a good performance when compared with the methods that constitute it, resulting in values of ARI always higher than these coming from CL and very similar to Ward results. S3 Fig in S1 File shows a very similar performance also when the chosen distance is Chebychev. An issue in using the ARI to score different results is that we are considering the 150 outlier profiles as a single cluster, while they could represent 150 different clusters. Therefore, we analyzed the ability of various methods to cluster elements correctly. Assuming that we are analyzing a dataset with a specific method M that produces a partitioning of the genes into clusters. Given a real cluster C, assume that the majority of elements of C is clustered together by M in a cluster X. We then identify X as being representative of C. Given these assumptions, we can define: - True Positives: genes belonging to cluster C clustered together by M in the cluster with the largest number of genes actually coming from cluster C. - False Positives: genes not belonging to cluster C clustered together by M in the cluster with the largest number of genes actually coming from cluster C. - False Negatives: genes belonging to cluster C not clustered by M in the cluster with the largest number of genes actually coming from cluster C. - True Negatives: genes not belonging to cluster C not clustered by M in the cluster with the largest number of genes actually coming from cluster C. Once these categories are defined, we can plot, for each method, the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve, to study their ability to identify correct cluster memberships. The measure used to summarize the performance is the Area Under the Curve (AUC). The AUC combines sensitivity and specificity, where sensitivity measures the proportion of actual positives that are correctly identified as such, while specificity measures the proportion of negatives that are correctly identified as such. AUC for each of the K = 6 clusters (considering the outliers as a single cluster) has been computed with the R package `pROC` \[[@pone.0152333.ref035]\]. Also the sensitivity, the Positive Predictive Value (PPV), and geometrical accuracy (Acc_g) have been computed. S4--S7 Figs in S1 File show boxplots of the AUC for each of the six clusters over 100 simulations, with a varying σ in the added noise, for CC, CL, and Ward. The last group represents the outliers. S8--S11 Figs in S1 File show boxplots of the average AUC over the six clusters for 100 simulations, for various values of ϵ. The comparisons show that CC obtains an higher AUC in every cluster and with each σ with respect to the methods that constitute it, proving its ability in detecting the correct clusters and in identifying the outliers. S12--S15 Figs in S1 File show that CC obtains higher AUCs for each cluster with respect to Ward and CL also when the distance metric chosen is Chebychev. The comparison with DBSCAN shows a high variability of this method in the resulting AUC, showing its sensitivity to parameter choice and to σ, with performance decreasing as σ increases. S16--S51 Figs in S1 File show boxplots of the sensitivity, PPV, and geometrical accuracy for Ward, CL, and K-means methods, showing that CC performs generally better. We also compared the quality of the results in terms of entropy. The entropy is a common way to measure the level of impurity (confusion) in a group: the higher it is, the more the information content. The information gain can be used as a quality scoring of clustering results, as it estimates the amount estimates the amount of information gained by clustering data as measured by the reduction in class entropy \[[@pone.0152333.ref036]\] (the higher, the better). We computed the information gain of Ward, CL and CC for each number of clusters using the R package `FSelector` \[[@pone.0152333.ref037]\]. Results are shown through boxplots for σ = 0.5 in S128--S130 Figs in S1 File, and in terms of average information gain in S4 Table in S1 File. This analysis proves that CC always led to the highest information gain and to the lower standard deviation, meaning that the quality of the clusters in terms of purity is always higher when using CC. We also compared CC to Affinity Propagation, autoSOME, Partitioning Around Medoids (PAM), and Spectral clustering. Results are shown in S52--S103 Figs in S1 File, where the superiority of CC in terms of ARI, sensitivity, PPV, and geometrical accuracy is proven. Please, note that the comparisons are performed on 100 simulations for each method with each of the four different added variability, every time choosing the number of clusters in an unsupervised way. We compared the ability of CC to detect the correct number of clusters. In order to do so, we compared the results of CC with several well established methods: CH \[[@pone.0152333.ref038]\], Silhouette Width \[[@pone.0152333.ref039]\], Dunn Index \[[@pone.0152333.ref040]\], Beale Index \[[@pone.0152333.ref041]\], C-Index \[[@pone.0152333.ref042]\], Duda Index \[[@pone.0152333.ref043]\], H \[[@pone.0152333.ref001]\], KL \[[@pone.0152333.ref044]\], Gap \[[@pone.0152333.ref045]\], and Jump \[[@pone.0152333.ref046]\]. A good summary of these methods is given by \[[@pone.0152333.ref022]\], while \[[@pone.0152333.ref017]\] conducted a simulation study of the performance of 30 decision rules. These methods were combined with Ward, CL, and K-means. The results of such comparisons are reported in S104--S115 Figs in S1 File and in S5 Table in S1 File, and show that CC always detected the correct number of clusters, while the other methods showed variability in the results. Lastly, we wanted to assess how stable the method is with regard to the input parameters ($n_{W_{min}}$, $n_{W_{max}}$, and $n_{C_{max}}$). Therefore, we performed CC with 10 different pairs of values for the boundaries of I^W^, while setting a high $n_{C_{max}} = 99$ on the simulated data after the removal of outliers (a representation of the intervals can be seen in S116 Fig in S1 File). The results, in terms of number of clusters identified by CC, are shown in S117--S120 Figs in S1 File and prove the robustness of the method, which is always able to identify the correct number of clusters (K = 5) also with I^W^ very large or asymmetric and independently from σ. Application on real data {#sec006} ------------------------ ### Brain tumors dataset {#sec007} Central nervous system embryonal tumors (CNSET) are a group of tumors characterized by high heterogeneity. The understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying CNSET is still limited \[[@pone.0152333.ref047]\]. Although the classification of these tumors based on histopathological appearance is still debated, they are usually divided in: medulloblastoma (MD), CNS primitive neuroectodermal tumors (PNET), rhabdoid tumors (Rhab), and malignant glioma (Mglio). The public dataset used by \[[@pone.0152333.ref047]\] contains 5,299 gene expression profiles of 42 samples: 10 MD, 10 Rhab, 8 PNET, 10 Mglio, and 4 normal human cerebella (Ncer). One of the particular aspects of this case study is that we know the ground truth, i.e. we know the underlying clusters. The dataset has been log~2~ transformed and scaled to mean zero and variance one. Similarly to the analysis performed on simulated data, we used the ASW in order to choose the number of clusters and we compared the results obtained by applying CC, Ward, CL, DBSCAN, K-means, and SOM on the brain tumors dataset. Furthermore, we performed the Fisher exact test for count data in order to test if any cluster was over-represented in any particular subtype. All the p-values obtained were corrected for multiple testing with the BH method \[[@pone.0152333.ref048]\]. We applied Ward and CL to the data using the same parameters used for the simulation study. In order to address the dependence of K-means to the initialization of the parameters, we ran the algorithm 10 times, every time choosing the k in the interval \[[@pone.0152333.ref002], [@pone.0152333.ref020]\] that maximizes the ASW. We applied SOM with a rectangular topology and all the default parameters of the R package `kohonen` ( \[[@pone.0152333.ref049]\]---see the Supporting Information). In order to choose the dimensions of the grid, we applied SOM with 70 combinations of dimensions (see S6 Table in S1 File) and we computed the ASW for each combination. Classical approaches performed poorly, obtaining ARI values ranging from 0.003 to 0.19, the highest value being obtained by K-means. In terms of number of clusters, the ASW criterion for Ward, CL, and SOM identified two clusters (maximum ASW of 0.19 in each method), while K-means resulted in three clusters (maximum ASW of 0.17). Among the two clusters identified by Ward, one cluster represented the subtype Rhab (p-value of 3.81e^−06^). CL reported two clusters, one of which represented the Rhab subtype (p-value of 0.0003). K-means reported three clusters, one of which represented the PNET subtype (p-value of 0.0005). None of the clusters reported by SOM was over-represented in any subtype, as expected from the low ARI. In contrast, CC obtained an ARI of 0.64, identifying nine clusters and one sample as an outlier. Although CC identified more than five clusters, four of them almost perfectly represented MD, MGlio, Ncer, and Rhab subtypes (p-values, respectively, of 9.53e^−06^, 1.94e^−05^, 1.12e^−04^, 9.53e^−06^), as it is shown in [Fig 1](#pone.0152333.g001){ref-type="fig"}. The PNET subtype was represented by six of CC clusters. This particular subtype is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) with useful guidelines for diagnosis its heterogeneous histological characteristics and malignancy grade \[[@pone.0152333.ref050]\]. All the contingency tables reporting both the real classification in subtypes and the clusters identified by each method are shown in S7--S11 Tables in S1 File. A summarization of the results can be found in S12 Table in S1 File, while dendrograms for the HC methods can be seen in S121--S122 Figs in S1 File. ![Graphical representation of the true membership (first row) of the 42 samples in brain tumors data, compared with the memberships resulting from CC, DBSCAN, SOM, K-means, CL, and Ward.\ The five subtypes in the order of the first row of the image are: medulloblastoma (MD), malignant gliomas (MGlio), normal human cerebella (Ncer), primitive neuroectodermal tumors (PNET), and atypical teratoid/rhabdoid tumors (Rhab). The colors represent the index of the cluster given by each method. The white color represents outliers, only detected by CC and DBSCAN. Classical approaches performed poorly, obtaining ARI values ranging from 0.003 to 0.19, the highest value being obtained by K-means. In terms of number of clusters, the ASW criterion for Ward, CL, and SOM identified two clusters (maximum ASW of 0.19 in each method), while K-means resulted in three clusters (maximum ASW of 0.17). In contrast, CC obtained an ARI of 0.64, identifying nine clusters and one sample as an outlier. Although CC identified more than five clusters, four of them almost perfectly represented four of the real subtypes while PNET, a subtype known to present heterogeneous histological characteristics, was fragmented in six clusters.](pone.0152333.g001){#pone.0152333.g001} Lastly, we applied DBSCAN trying different types of n-th nearest neighbors. Setting the value of ϵ and MinPts to each of the pairs obtained for different values of n (ϵ = 25.50, MinPts = 4;ϵ = 27.41, MinPts = 5;ϵ = 27.12, MinPts = 6;ϵ = 27.65, MinPts = 7) always led to a unique non-noise cluster (2 outliers and 40 elements grouped in a single cluster). ### Breast cancer dataset {#sec008} More than 1.7 million new cases of breast cancer occurred among women worldwide in 2012 \[[@pone.0152333.ref051]\], making breast cancer the most common cancer in women worldwide. The incidence of breast cancer in women in 2011 (most recent data available) was of 124.3 per 100,000, while the mortality was of 21.5 per 100,000 \[[@pone.0152333.ref052]\]. Increasing evidence suggests that breast cancer can be classified in multiple subtypes based on the kind of treatment, level of aggressivity, risk factors, and survival rates. Depending on the number of biological markers (proteins associated with mechanisms underlying the disease), most studies divide breast cancer into four major molecular subtypes: luminal A, luminal B, triple negative/basal-like (TN), and HER2 over-expression (approximate prevalences of, respectively, 40%, 20%, 20%, and 15%). The remaining cases are less common and often listed as unclassified. The public dataset GSE38888 from the Gene Expression Omnibus database \[[@pone.0152333.ref053]\] describes the expression profiles of 719,690 probesets and 30 samples, classified in two subtypes: 16 luminal and 14 TN \[[@pone.0152333.ref054]\]. Similarly to the brain tumor dataset, we compared the results obtained by applying CC, Ward, CL, DBSCAN, K- means, and SOM. Classical approaches performed poorly, obtaining ARI values ranging from 0.04 to 0.1, the highest value being obtained by CL. In terms of number of clusters, the ASW criterion for Ward, CL, and K-means identified 11 clusters (maximum ASW of 0.24, 0.24, and 0.25 respectively), while SOM resulted in 18 clusters (maximum ASW of 0.18), out of which two were empty. DBSCAN detected one cluster containing 28 of the 30 elements. In contrast, CC obtained an ARI of 0.63, showing great agreement with the ground truth, and identifying correctly the number of clusters. Two out of the 30 elements were considered outliers. A graphical representation of the results is shown in [Fig 2](#pone.0152333.g002){ref-type="fig"}, while a summarization of the results can be found in S13 Table in S1 File, and dendrograms for the HC methods can be seen in S123 and S124 Figs in S1 File. ![Graphical representation of the true membership (first row) of the 30 samples in breast cancer data, compared with the memberships resulting from Cross-clustering (CC), DBSCAN, SOM, K-means, Complete-linkage (CL), and Ward.\ There are two subtypes: luminal and triple negative (TN). The yellow color represents the luminal subtype, the green color represents the TN subtype, while white color represents outliers, only detected by CC and DBSCAN. Different colors represent only the index of the cluster given by each method. Classical approaches performed poorly, obtaining ARI values ranging from 0.04 to 0.1, the highest value being obtained by CL. In terms of number of clusters, the ASW criterion for Ward, CL, and K-means identified 11 clusters (maximum ASW of 0.24, 0.24, and 0.25 respectively), while SOM resulted in 18 clusters (maximum ASW = 0.18), out of which two were empty. DBSCAN detected one cluster containing 28 of the 30 elements. In contrast, CC obtained an ARI of 0.63, showing great agreement with the ground truth, and identifying correctly the number of clusters. Two out of the 30 elements were considered outliers. Furthermore, it is important to notice that, while CC requires a loose set of parameters (a range where the real number of clusters has to be found), K-means require the correct number of clusters, to be found with one of the many techniques available, and SOM requires two parameters whose choice is not easy.](pone.0152333.g002){#pone.0152333.g002} CC was the only method to yield clusters that were over-represented in elements belonging to real subtypes. The two clusters identified by CC represented the two cancer subtypes, luminal with a p-value of 2.81e^−05^, TN with a p-value of 3.28e^−05^. All the contingency tables reporting both the real classification in subtypes and the clusters identified by each method are reported in S14--S18 Tables in S1 File. ### Olive oil dataset {#sec009} Finally, in order to prove that CC is general enough to be successfully used for clustering a wide range of data, we clustered the real, public, and not biological `oliveoil` data set in the `pdfCluster R` package. This data set contains eight measurements on 572 different specimen of olive oil produced in various regions in Italy: northern Apulia, southern Apulia, Calabria, Sicily, inland Sardinia, coast Sardinia, eastern and western Liguria, Umbria. The data set is used to evaluate the ability of the clustering methods of reconstructing the region of origin of the olive oils. CC outperformed the other methods, obtaining an ARI of 0.60. The other methods obtained sensibly lower values: Ward's 0.29, Complete-linkage 0.31, K-means 0.29, and SOM 0.30. A graphical representation of the results is shown in S125 Fig in S1 File, where the colors represent the index of the cluster given by each method. The white color represents outliers, only detected by CC and DBSCAN. CC detected three clusters and an outliers cluster, while other methods always detected only two clusters, with the exception of DBSCAN that identified only one cluster and a few outliers. As can be seen in S19 to S24 Tables in S1 File, identifying more than two clusters allowed to better represent the true classification. ### Other subtyping methods {#sec010} In order to compare CC with the two well-known subtyping methods SPARCoC \[[@pone.0152333.ref025]\] and NMF \[[@pone.0152333.ref024]\] we applied our method on two sub-datasets of the Jacob dataset (GSE68465 from the Gene Expression Omnibus database) on which SPARCoC has been validated and compared to NMF. Data were log~2~ transformed and scaled to mean zero and variance one, then it was divided in two distinct sub-datasets TM and HM (as done in the original SPARCoC paper). Kaplan-Meier plots (S126--S127 Figs in S1 File) show statistically significant differences in 5-year overall survival between the two clusters of patients for each dataset (p-values: p = 0.0426 for TM and p = 0.0002 for HM by log-rank test). In the original paper, SPARCoC proved to be more robust than NMF, achieving a p-value of 0.0032 for TM and p = 0.0106 for HM. These results show that CC is able to correctly separate the two groups, correctly determining the underlying biological differences among them. These results are comparable with SPARCoC and NMF over the two sub-datasets. Discussion {#sec011} ========== The CC algorithm provides an intuitive and easily implementable approach for clustering of gene expression data. CC presents several advantages over existing methods: i) it does not require a priori knowledge on the number of clusters, ii) it leaves outlier elements unassigned, and iii) it can yield only one cluster as result, suggesting that data should not be clustered at all. Furthermore, even though in this paper we only report results obtained on biological data, CC can be successfully applied on any type of data, as demonstrated by the results obtained on the simulated data. The only (unavoidable) weakness of CC is its quadratic computational complexity, inherited from the methods that constitute it. The expected time complexity of Ward's method is upper-bounded by O(n log n) \[[@pone.0152333.ref055]\], while the worse case time complexity of the Complete-linkage clustering is O(n^2^log n) \[[@pone.0152333.ref056]\], where n is the number of data points to be clustered. Defining with α the cardinality of the interval for the number of clusters I^W^ for Ward's algorithm, and with β the cardinality of the interval for the number of clusters I^C^ for Complete-linkage; in the worst case launching CC we are running αβ algorithms. Then, the maximum computational complexity of CC is equal to O(n^2^ αβ log n). Also in terms of running time CC resulted to be competitive with the other clustering and subtyping methods, as can be seen in S25 Table in S1 File. We compared CC with the most widely used clustering methods and CC consistently obtained partitions closer to the reality than the results obtained with these methods. As the distance is a key element in cluster analysis, we performed our comparisons using both Euclidean and Chebychev distances in order to check how sensible results are to the choice of the distance, and in both cases CC performed better than the methods it was compared with. Furthermore, CC proved to be an useful tool for detecting a suitable number of clusters in the data, better of most of the well established criteria proposed in the literature. When compared to DBSCAN, CC showed a good performance and more robustness, while DBSCAN was highly sensible to parameters choice and data variability. Furthermore, in DBSCAN the only available approach to parameters choice works only for two dimensional datasets. When applied on three real publicly available datasets, CC was able to identify subtypes better than the other approaches. K-means and SOM produced different results in different runs as the two methods are strictly dependent on the initialization of the algorithm, yielding results ranging from very good to very poor. In contrast, the results of CC were stable, as it does not involve any random initialization. Finally, when applying CC, NMF and SPARCoC on the same two sub-datasets, we obtained similar results in terms of ability to recognize cohorts with different survivals. Supporting Information {#sec012} ====================== ###### Contains supporting Figures S1--S130 and Tables S1--S25. (PDF) ###### Click here for additional data file. The authors acknowledge Corrado Lanera for the parallelization cores process and for the suggestions about computational complexity, and thank Tin Chi Nguyen for the assistence in data collection. [^1]: Competing Interests:The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. [^2]: Conceived and designed the experiments: PT MB. Performed the experiments: PT. Analyzed the data: PT. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: PT MD SD. Wrote the paper: PT. Help interpreting the results: MD SD ARB. Supervised the study: SD ARB.
Distinguished Neuropathologist Named Chair of Pathology Daniel Brat, MD, PhD, will join Feinberg as the new chair of Pathology. Daniel Brat, MD, PhD, will join Feinberg as the new chair of Pathology. Members of the class of 2017 joined faculty, friends and family members at the 158th commencement ceremony on May 22. Feinberg faculty members and fourth-year medical students were recognized for their achievements at the fifth annual Honors Day ceremony. Feinberg’s inaugural Medical Humanities and Bioethics Conference brought together faculty, students, staff and alumni to showcase the wide range of research taking place throughout the medical school. On April 28 and 29, graduates from across the country gathered on the Feinberg campus to celebrate Alumni Weekend 2017. On April 28 and 29, more than 450 Northwestern alumni and guests gathered on the medical school campus to meet up with former classmates, reminisce about their time in medical school and learn about the school’s latest updates. Computational Research Day brought together faculty members, investigators and students throughout Northwestern to showcase innovative research projects, share insights and tools, and strengthen the computational research community. Feinberg medical students recently traveled to Atlanta, participating in the Student National Medical Association’s annual Medical Education Conference, in order to support health equity efforts and to help recruit a diverse student body. Teresa Woodruff, ’89 PhD, chief of Reproductive Science in Medicine in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, has been named a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow in support of her research into reproductive health. Kelly Michelson, MD, MPH, ’04 GME, applies her clinical experience to research and education as the director of Northwestern’s Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities.	http://news.feinberg.northwestern.edu/category/campus-news/page/3/
Although Halloween was on a Monday this year, that didn’t stop us from having some early Halloween fun. Last Wednesday was USG’s annual Octoberfest hosted by the Student Event Board. For the new students who don’t know about our annual traditions, Octoberfest is one our many traditions that brings together students from all the different institutions at USG. The “spook-tacular” Octoberfest was filled with free food, games, and a whole lot of fun as always. This year in particular—at least for me—it was a welcomed break from exams to simply unwind and socialize. At the event, there were a number of fun activities to partake in. There was an intense game of musical chairs—you are never too old for musical chairs! College students can be particularly competitive about it. What better use of toilet paper than to use it to play wrap the mummy? Did I mention there was a pie-eating contest later too—who doesn’t love pie? Everyone who came really got into the spirit of the tradition, and it was nice to observe a sea of smiling faces during the event. Regardless of what you study or what school you go to, USG is its own community, and Octoberfest is one example of how we can bring this community together. I encourage all new students to branch out and meet new and different people. It is important to network in your own major, but it is equally important to network with people from all different types of academic backgrounds- especially since USG has such a diverse and talented pool of people. Not to mention, you never really know where your peers might end up. As an accounting major, I know that any type of business is going to need people who can perform accounting functions. Who knows- I could meet a student in the Nursing program or maybe a student in the Hospitality & Tourism Management program who will go on to start a business or work at a company that needs an accountant in the future. Beyond the professional development benefits, I have found it to be personally enriching to build relationships with a broad set of students. Everyone on campus here has such interesting and unique stories, and events like Octoberfest are great opportunities to take advantage of the diverse community here!	https://uatshadygrove.org/2016/11/01/spook-tacular-octoberfest/
We are seeking Therapists to provide individual, group and family counseling as well as conduct clinical assessments for new patients and on-going required assessments. The Counselor will demonstrate expertise in therapeutic interventions, treatment modalities and utilize evidence based practices. The Counselor will assist with the treatment team and provide service coordination as needed for patients. The patient ratio is 1-8 and the schedule and compensation range follows below. Additionally, the Counselors will enjoy a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, 401K with Matching contributions as well as excellent career path development. Full and Part-Time positions are available. One full unrestricted license – $63,000-$64,000 (Depending upon Experience) One full unrestricted license and one provisional license – $65,000-$67,000 (Depending Upon Experience) Two full unrestricted licenses – $68,000-$70,000 Schedules Available:	https://doctorjobs.com/jobs/mental-health-counselor/
Q: Unified distance measure to use in different implementations of OpenCV feature matching? I'm trying to do some key feature matching in OpenCV, and for now I've been using cv::DescriptorMatcher::match and, as expected, I'm getting quite a few false matches. Before I start to write my own filter and pruning procedures for the extracted matches, I wanted to try out the cv::DescriptorMatcher::radiusMatch function, which should only return the matches closer to each other than the given float maxDistance. I would like to write a wrapper for the available OpenCV matching algorithms so that I could use them through an interface which allows for additional functionalities as well as additional extern (mine) matching implementations. Since in my code, there is only one concrete class acting as a wrapper to OpenCV feature matching (similarly as cv::DescriptorMatcher, it takes the name of the specific matching algorithm and constructs it internally through a factory method), I would also like to write a universal method to implement matching utilizing cv::DescriptorMatcher::radiusMatch that would work for all the different matcher and feature choices (I have a similar wrapper that allows me to change between different OpenCV feature detectors and also implement some of my own). Unfortunately, after looking through the OpenCV documentation and the cv::DescriptorMatcher interface, I just can't find any information about the distance measure used to calculate the actual distance between the matches. I found a pretty good matching example here using Surf features and descriptors, but I did not manage to understand the actual meaning of a specific value of the argument. Since I would like to compare the results I'd get when using different feature/descriptor combinations, I would like to know what kind of distance measure is used (and if it can easily be changed), so that I can use something that makes sense with all the combinations I try out. Any ideas/suggestions? Update I've just printed out the feature distances I get when using cv::DescriptorMatcher::match with various feature/descriptor combinations, and what I got was: MSER/SIFT order of magnitude: 100 SURF/SURF order of magnitude: 0.1 SURF/SIFT order of magnitude: 50 MSER/SURF order of magnitude: 0.2 From this I can conclude that whichever distance measure is applied to the features, it is definitely not normalized. Since I am using OpenCV's and my own interfaces to work with different feature extraction, descriptor calculation and matching methods, I would like to have some argument for ::radiusMatch that I could use with all (most) of the different combinations. (I've tried matching using BruteForce and FlannBased matchers, and while the matches are slightly different, the discances between the matches are on the same order of magnitude for each of the combinations). Some context: I'm testing this on two pictures acquired from a camera mounted on top of a (slow) moving vehicle. The images should be around 5 frames (1 meter of vehicle motion) apart, so most of the features should be visible, and not much different (especially those that are far away from the camera in both images). A: The magnitude of the distance is indeed dependent on the type of feature used. That is because some specialized feature descriptors also come with a specialized feature matcher that makes optimal use of the descriptor. If you want to obtain weights for the match distances of different feature types, your best bet is probably to make a training set of a dozen or more 1:1 matches, unleash each feature detector/matcher on it, and normalize the distances so that each detector has an average distance of 1 over all matches. You can then use the obtained weights on other datasets.
Beginning in the 20th century—especially following the rise of feminism in the 1970s—a number of holidays centering on women have been established. While many honor women’s achievements, they also typically reflect on the various challenges that remain. Although some are lesser-known, such as the UN’s International Day of Rural Women, others are celebrated around the world. We highlight four of these notable observances. Celebrated annually in the United States on August 26 since its inception in 1971, this event marks American women’s advancements toward equality with men. Since being designated in 1987 by the U.S. Congress, March has been a celebration of women’s many accomplishments throughout history. A variety of agencies, schools, and organizations observe the month by focusing on the “consistently overlooked and undervalued” role of American women in history. A national holiday in numerous countries, this day honors the achievements of women and promotes women’s rights. It has been sponsored by the United Nations since 1975. This holiday honors mothers and is celebrated around the world. In its modern form, the day originated in the United States, where it is observed on the second Sunday in May. Women's history Quizzes Featured Women's History Quiz: Famous Suffragettes How much do you know about suffragettes, the “soldiers in petticoats” who fought for women’s rights? Women in the United States were finally granted the right to vote with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. How much do you know about this important event and the people involved? Test your knowledge with this quiz. From an undercover bunny to the founder of the Me Too movement, test your knowledge of the activists who’ve fought for women’s rights. Test your knowledge with this quiz. How many women have served in the Senate? Who was the first female to hold a cabinet post? Discover how much you know about women in the U.S. government in this quiz. Test your knowledge with this quiz. They have been hostesses, helpers, advisers, gatekeepers, guardians, confidantes, and sometimes formidable powers behind the scenes. How much do you know about the first ladies of the United States?	https://www.britannica.com/explore/100women/important-dates
Running orders are determined by teams’ medal averages. First and Second ranked teams will run 2nd on Blue and Red. 3rd and 4th ranked teams run first on Blue and Red. All others follow in rank order starting in the 3rd position on Blue and Red. The running order also shows how many racers are registered to count and how many are actually racing. Some that are counting are racing on other teams and will have scores transferred. All racers run with highest seeded team with scores transferring to their lower seeded teams. Innsbruck - Saturday 12 pm Division 5 and 6 Will run at the same time. Awards will be given to both divisions Blue Red 500 Samurai Squad 600 Hoigaards 510 Ancient Ninjas 610 BBC 520 Sliders 620 Carving Turkeys 530 Ski2Die 630 Fast Fockers 540 Special Ed Racing 640 Gatecrashers 550 Wax Poachers 650 DTwSP 560 Rut Riders 660 Rather Be Knee Deep 570 Haute Cocoa 670 Need for Ski 580 Team Moderation 680 The Frozen Chicken Heads 600 Hoigaards 690 Shred the Bunny!	https://skichallenge.com/division-6-running-order/
The present invention is related to a light emitting device comprising a support (510); a second conductive layer (520) disposed on the support; a first conductive layer (530) disposed on the second conductive layer (520); an insulating layer (550) disposed on the second conductive layer (520); a second ohmic contact electrode (540) disposed on the first conductive layer (530); a light emitting structure (560) disposed on the second ohmic contact electrode (540), the light emitting structure (560) comprising an n-type group III-V nitride-based semiconductor layer, a group III-V nitride-based semiconductor active layer, and a p-type group III-V nitride-based semiconductor layer; a first ohmic contact electrode (570) disposed on the n-type group III-V nitride-based semiconductor layer; and a passivation layer (580) disposed on the insulating layer (550).
The federal appellate court ruled that Judge Legg used an unrealistic standard when measuring the statute’s possible benefits of protecting the public and lowering violent crime levels. The court rationed that no statute could ever eliminate all handgun related hazards, but the Maryland good and substantial reason does serve to lower the potential hazard. The three-judge panel concluded that the state “clearly demonstrated” that the law “advances the objectives of protecting public safety and crime because it reduces the number of handguns carried in public.” Additionally, the court ruled that it was constitutional for citizens to have the burden to provide evidence that proves he or she has a good and substantial need to carry. Counsel on behalf of the appellee and The Second Amendment Foundation argued that the Second Amendment right to bear arms has been held by the Supreme Court to be a fundamental right, and therefore citizens should not have to prove to the government that there is a reason to exercise this right. Had the appellate court not upheld the law, state police estimated that as many as 15,000 new permit applications would be filed in the next year. Police now estimate a more modest 3,500 new applications for the year following the court’s opinion. The recent ruling will likely be appealed via a petition to the Supreme Court, or in the 4th Circuit in an en banc review by all the appellate judges. It is reasonable to assume that the Supreme Court would decide to grant the petition, considering the impact this opinion may have on the future of gun control in America. For now though, the Maryland Attorney General’s office and Governor O’Malley received a shot in the arm that may help further their agenda to further tighten state gun laws. Legislation that may soon cross the Governor’s desk includes a ban on assault rifles and a requirement that all gun buyers submit to fingerprinting. The bill banning assault weapons is currently being debated in the House of Delegates, while the fingerprint plan awaits a vote in the Senate. Benjamin Herbst is a Maryland criminal defense lawyer specializing in all gun crimes. Contact Mr. Herbst for a free consultation about any pending legal or permit issues. Appeals court upholds key provision of Maryland’s gun-control law, washingtonpost.com.	https://www.baltimorecriminaldefenselawyerblog.com/federal-court-upholds-controversial-maryland-gun-law/
Hodgkin's disease, also referred to as Hodgkin’s lymphoma, is a cancer of the lymphatic system. The lymphatic system helps protect the body against infection and disease. It consists of a network of lymph vessels and small structures that are called lymph nodes. Lymph nodes are located throughout the body. Hodgkin’s disease is a specific form of lymphoma. Lymphoma occurs when lymph cells divide without control or order. If cells keep dividing uncontrollably, a mass of tissue forms called a growth or tumor. The term cancer refers to malignant tumors, which can invade nearby tissues and can spread to other parts of the body. A benign tumor does not invade or spread. The cause of Hodgkin's lymphoma remains unknown. Hodgkin’s disease usually starts in lymph nodes or lymphatic tissue and from there has the potential to spread throughout the body. Hodgkin’s lymphoma is one of the most curable types of cancer. People with localized Hodgkin’s are cured more than 90% of the time. About 8,220 Americans were diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease in 2008.	https://www.empowher.com/media/reference/conditions-indepth-hodgkin-s-disease
Keywords: psychologists, ethics, professional, mental health services [ethics], qualitative research. Abstract: objective: to analyze the meanings of caring for people who seek assistance in mental health, from the perspective of psychologists engaged in their daily activities within public health services. methodological procedures: an exploratory qualitative study was conducted in the city of fortaleza, northeastern brazil, in 2006. the sample was composed of eight female informants, all of which were psychologists working in the state public health network. data was obtained by means of non-directive interviews which were taped and transcribed. categories were obtained from the discourses based on a hermeneutical approach by means of which an interpretive network was constructed. analisys of results: the interpretative network indicated that psychologists recognize their insertion in the field of public health as distinct from the professional field in which they obtained their training and, consequently, as a challenge. the predominant conceptions of care were circumscribed to the technical dimension, although other dimensions, closer to ethical concerns and to those related to respect for the "other" were also identified. conclusions: in the daily routine of assistance within the public health network, care is perceived as a technical attitude. it involves control and nullification of alterity, being more closely aligned to the traditional models of biomedicine and clinical psychology. however, other practices were observed that overcome this attitude. these emerging practices assume a new configuration, oriented towards affection, dialogue between professionals and those seeking assistance and an ethical commitment forged within a political and socio-cultural perspective.	http://www.oalib.com/paper/1083367
Researchers at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Burnham) have discovered a new player in the development of a disorder called Sporadic Inclusion Body Myositis (sIBM). sIBM is a muscle disease that affects predominantly older men, causing muscles to gradually weaken and waste away. The number of people living with sIBM is unknown, but it is the most common muscle disease among those over the age of 50, and due to its unfamiliarity, it is probably underdiagnosed. This discovery provides a potential avenue for future diagnostic and therapeutic opportunities for this disease. In muscles, proteins are continuously made and broken down by the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), a “protein factory” in the cell. To assure that proteins produced pass quality control, a set of ER-based inspectors identify and remove those proteins that are not properly folded. Ubiquitin ligase RNF5 (or RING Finger Protein 5) acts much like one of these quality-control inspectors at the end of the assembly line by tagging defective protein products so that they can be recycled. Burnham scientists have found that RNF5 plays a key role in the progression of IBM. While the causes of sIBM or how it progresses are still mostly unknown, and there is no cure or standard treatment, this finding offers a new understanding for the mechanism underlying development of sIBM and points to possible use of new markers for diagnosis and mouse models to test for novel therapeutics. The results of this study appeared in PLoS ONE on February 13. The Burnham research team was led by Ze’ev Ronai, Ph.D., and included Agnes Delaunay, PhD., and P. Lorenzo Puri, M.D., Ph.D., with Diane Shelton, D.V.M. Ph.D of UCSD and international collaborators from Japan and Italy. Dr. Ronai had previously shown that RNF5 is important for muscle maintenance in the worm model C. elegans; now the team discovered that RNF5 is up-regulated in biopsies from sIBM patients. Following this discovery, the team developed three mouse models: one knockout model in which the RNF5 gene was missing, and two in which cells could be triggered to overproduce RNF5, with expression either limited to skeletal muscle, -or within muscle and a variety of other organs. A comparison of normal and knockout mice exposed to muscle-damaging toxin showed slower healing in the knockouts compared with the normal mice, demonstrating the importance of RNF5 in muscle repair. Pathologic changes within muscles of the transgenic models with RNF5 overexpression were similar to those found in muscle biopsies from patients with sIBM. Overproduction of RNF5 caused a rapid and significant muscle degeneration, weight loss and muscle weakness. Followed by extensive muscle regeneration. Similar to what is often seen in patients with IBM, muscle specimens from RNF5 overexpressing animals revealed the presence of structures known as rimmed vacuoles and congophilic inclusions, hallmarks of this disease. The researchers also found increased levels of markers characteristic of ER stress, a phenomenon that has been linked with a variety of human diseases, including sIBM. It is believed that ER stress is a response to misfolded-protein buildup; sensing the backlog, the ER recruits helpers through the Unfolded Protein Response (UPR)—chaperonins that increase the export of misfolded proteins to enable their breakdown and recycling. But, with prolonged stress, the UPR eventually fails to handle the overload, resulting in the accumulation of misfolded proteins in the cytoplasmic vacuoles, structures within the cell cytoplasm which are characteristic of sIBM patients. Whether RNF5 is the primary cause for sIBM, or an important contributor in the development of this muscle disorder is yet to be determined. Dr. Ronai, lead author of the study, says the link established between ER stress, RNF5 and sIBM strengthen one theory stating that ER stress is causative for the disease and will now allow further study of the mechanisms underlying this disabling and all too common muscle disease. This research is supported by a grant from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health. Burnham Institute for Medical Research uses an entrepreneurial, collaborative approach to medical research to reveal the fundamental molecular causes of disease and devise the innovative therapies of tomorrow. The Institute is organized into five research centers: a National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center; the Del E. Webb Center for Neurosciences, Aging and Stem Cell Research; an Infectious and Inflammatory Disease Research Center; a Diabetes and Obesity Research Center; and the Sanford Children’s Health Research Center. Thanks to the quality of its faculty members, Burnham ranks among the top 25 organizations worldwide (according to the Institute for Scientific Information) for its research impact and among the top four research institutes nationally for NIH grant funding. Burnham is a nonprofit, public benefit corporation headquartered in La Jolla, California, with campuses in Orlando, Florida and Santa Barbara, California.	https://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/life-sciences/report-107063.html
Visit one of the most important Modern Art Galleries: The Art Centre Reina Sofia. See works by Pablo Picasso,Salvador Dali and the amazing buildings they are displayed in. 1 hour 15 minutes approx Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 12:45 p.m. Read this information carefully: While visiting Madrid, don't miss the Reina Sofia Museum, Spain's most important modern art museum. The museum officially opened on 10 September 1992 and was named after the former Queen of Spain, Sofia. The museum is mainly dedicated to Spanish art, focusing on the three greatest masters of 20th century Spanish art: Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró. The most famous masterpiece in the museum is Picasso's painting, "El Guernica". The guide will explain this Spanish art, from abstractionism to cubism, surrealism and modernism, showing you the most important work of the main artists. This museum is housed in an old former hospital building, and its halls are the ideal place to discover many of Spain's most avant-garde painters and sculptors. The museum has the most extensive collection of modern art in Spain, and also offers temporary international exhibitions in its many galleries, making it one of the world's largest museums of contemporary art. Today, the Reina Sofía Museum holds a large number of works, explore the foyers and galleries with its halls and galleries with your guide, and learn about its works and artists. Highlights: INCLUDED: NOT INCLUDED: Additional information: On the tall statue next to the entrance of the museum, 52 St. Elisabeth Street.	https://www.panchotours.com/reina-sofia-guided-tour
Each company has a way of handling accounts receivable. It makes no difference if the company’s monthly revenue is $2,000 or $200,000. A process of this nature requires management, and there are “best practices” for it, just like any other business activity you can think of. It’s impossible to overlook the importance of accounts receivable management best practices, and entrepreneurs unfamiliar with the field can use them as a road map. In this article, we’re going to look at accounts receivable management best practices. 1. Keep Track of Your Billing The handling of your accounts receivable affects your bottom line. The amount of money flowing into your company is proportional to the amount your customers are willing to spend. Ensuring your company has access to cash means staying on top of billing. Invoices are essential to keeping track of money owed to businesses, as without them, customers may forget or be unwilling to pay. Set aside time every day to produce and monitor invoices. Also, instead of mailing invoices, you may try sending them by email. 2. Don’t Leave Your Receivables Uncollected for Long The longer an account remains unpaid, the more difficult it becomes to receive payment. Legally, some statutes prohibit debt collection after a specified period, specifically when an account becomes delinquent. You can work with a collection agency if you don’t wish to handle collections in-house. If you don’t receive it by the due date, the personnel overseeing and managing accounts receivables should get in touch with the customer as soon as possible. Authorize a member of the accounts receivable staff to communicate freely with the customer. Give them the floor to explain the holdup. It will aid in forging a solid connection with the client. If a significant amount of time has passed since the due date, your staff should begin sending more forceful communication. Warning letters and emails about potential legal action for late payment can be helpful. 3. Make Sure Your Credit Policy Is Good for Your Company You will need to remember two things when dealing with receivables. Firstly, not every individual or company is worthy of trust. A sound credit policy is essential for any company. Secondly, you shouldn’t put too much faith in your clientele. Remember that giving a customer more credit may lead to unmanageable debt that they can’t afford to pay. That may lead a client to default. 4. Encourage Customers to Sign Up for Online Billing Globally, businesses are increasingly encouraging customers to become paperless by providing them with electronic payments as an option. Paper bills are bad for the environment and the customer service department since they take too long to issue. Therefore, businesses should process bills electronically and payment reminders via app notifications or email. Allow customers to make payments using a credit card, PayPal, or electronic funds transfer. Provide incentives for others to follow suit. Furthermore, you’ll spare the client the anxiety of keeping track of when bills are due or whether or not they have sufficient funds to cover service charges. The easier you make it for your clients to make the payment, the more likely they will do so promptly and without complaint. You may accept different currencies if you have many overseas clients. The client experience will quickly and practically improve if you provide other payment options. Customers are more likely to pay promptly if you allow them to use their favorite method, mainly if there’s a convenient link within the digital invoice. 5. Develop a Reliable Collection Plan An easy way to stay on top of overdue invoices is to use a modern and effective accounts receivable management system. But it won’t help you much if you don’t put that knowledge into practice. You’ll have to devise a way to handle payments, like: - How much will late payments’ interest be? - How will you communicate with clients regarding overdue payments? - How often will clients receive notifications (payment date, one week late, four weeks late, etc.)? - How and where will the accounts receivable team document payment-related correspondence for your records? Establish a set of effective policies, and then adhere to them. When an account is overdue, your collection team should be able to act promptly and confidently by your company’s predetermined credit procedure. When dealing with long-term late payers, most small business owners will freeze up out of fear of alienating the client. However, non-payment problems and the resulting cash-flow crises become far more likely if you don’t have solid procedures. Ensure that bills get swift approval from all of their authorized signatures. Keep the number of people who need to sign off on an invoice to a minimum. Any further back-and-forth between departments only delays payment. 6. Keep an Eye On Slow Payers Anybody can delay payment, and a hiccup can occur when processing, but some individuals have serious trouble keeping up with their financial commitments. Retaining a client whose payments are routinely late may not be worth the potential future headaches. Maybe one of these alternatives may work better for you: - Putting an end to your business dealings with a client. - Lowering their credit limit. - Demanding future payments upfront. After all, one objective of receivables management is to decrease bad debt and boost your profit, which is challenging if you’ll have to depend on clients who consistently default on their payments. Of course, you’ll need to ensure that the policy you choose covers every client. Be careful not to seem to target particular client accounts. Instead, develop a consistent procedure for responding to overdue payments. Your terms of service should outline the repercussions for repeat violators. Final Thoughts Businesses suffer significant financial losses due to late payments and defaulting clients; even reliable payers sometimes have cash flow issues and default. Of course, it’s also possible to implement account receivable automation as well to facilitate the process and rely less on human input. Despite the likelihood that most clients will pay their bills on time, each business will occasionally have delinquent accounts. Adhering to the above best practices for accounts receivable management can reduce your company’s collection issues.	https://marketbusinessnews.com/accounts-receivable-management-policies-best-practices/311192/
We pride ourselves on our excellent working relationships with our clients and we are very pleased to say that we very rarely need to utilise this procedure. However, it is vital that we have a set procedure in place should an issue ever arise. We would look to resolve any issue with no need of the procedure but we are aware that there could be an instance where we may require more investigation and at that point we would look to initiate the following procedure. We will determine the most appropriate and fair option for all parties concerned. We will implement the resolution as soon as possible. Client will notify Rivervale of any ongoing concerns. The Rivervale salesperson will notify the Company Secretary, of the concern and the matter will be researched. The Company Secretary will contact the individual involved directly in the sale within one business day. The Company Secretary will then either provide the client with a resolution at that time or explain why more time is needed to identify the best possible solution. If the client is not satisfied with the proposed resolution, the Company Secretary will elevate the issue to the COO. If an agreeable resolution is not found the COO will escalate to a joint meeting between the Company Secretary and the Managing Director in order to facilitate a mutually agreeable solution. If you have a regulated consumer contract with us and are not satisfied with our final response, you may be eligible to refer the matter to the Financial Ombudsman Service. You must do this within six months of our final response. When we send you our final response, we will also provide you with a copy of the Financial Ombudsman Service's explanatory leaflet. In summary, we can confidently provide a service of the highest quality across all aspects of vehicle leasing.	https://www.rivervaleserviceandmot.co.uk/complaints-procedure
Seniors who have unique medical requirements can receive the care they need at the inpatient Acute Care for the Elderly (ACE) unit at McAllen Medical Center. The nurses and staff who work in the ACE unit provide care using standards established by a national geriatric program called NICHE (Nurses Improving Care for Health system Elders). The NICHE program designates ways in which care for older adults can be improved in specific units. Key elements of an ACE unit are environmental changes to accommodate the needs of older patients. Staff members receive special training in geriatrics and an interdisciplinary team focuses on addressing health issues in older patients. Standards of healthcare that are specific to the aging patient that will help prevent or limit issues such as fall-related injuries, pressure ulcers, delirium, sleep deprivation and inadequate pain management. Interdisciplinary rounds three times per week, including members of the following disciplines: nursing, case management, pharmacy, physical therapy, dietetics and attending physicians. Daily rounds completed before 5 p.m. by attending physicians. ACE clinical protocols: Safety measures include non-slip footwear, bed alarms to alert staff and private rooms within close proximity to the nurses station to help prevent potential falls or injuries to the patient. Progressive mobility: Patients are assessed and, when appropriate, plans of care are developed to enhance patient mobility. Geriatric safety protocols for fall prevention and early mobility. Patients are screened on admission to the unit for the risk of falling and are screened by nurses on every shift until they are released from the unit. Early mobility helps prevent functional decline and is clinically proven to help patients gain strength and help the staff to continually assess the patients' needs. Daily 10 a.m. family plan of care update: Family members and the patient can have a consistent schedule to know the progress and care plan for the day. If the family cannot be there, the schedule can be adjusted so that everybody is informed and updated. There is a centralized admitting process for ACE unit patients. Patients are admitted either through a physician referral or by patient request if they meet the criteria and are approved by the NICHE coordinator. Patients in the hospital can be admitted to the ACE unit as well. Call 956-632-4672 or 956-632-4580 to schedule a tour. Tours are provided Monday through Friday, between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. McAllen Medical Center is owned and operated by a subsidiary of Universal Health Services, Inc. (UHS), a King of Prussia, PA-based company, that is one of the largest healthcare management companies in the nation. The information on this website is provided as general health guidelines and may not be applicable to your particular health condition. Your individual health status and any required medical treatments can only be properly addressed by a professional healthcare provider of your choice. Remember: There is no adequate substitution for a personal consultation with your physician. Neither McAllen Medical Center, or any of their affiliates, nor any contributors shall have any liability for the content or any errors or omissions in the information provided by this website. © 2019 McAllen Medical Center. All rights reserved.	https://www.mcallenmedicalcenter.com/services/acute-care-for-the-elderly
Unit 7 - Reflections Today was the initial begging of my project proposal. Initially I did not know what I wanted to do. However, soon enough I started thinking about my own identity and how diverse it is. being Swedish and Armenian had caused me to become a person that has had an interesting upbringing when following traditions as well as having both viewpoints of the world. 23rd I started writing my project proposal, and what I want to convey is the contrast between these two cultures however contemporarily show the harmony that has allowed me to become the person I am today. To do so, I have a rough idea of having a final garment showing this juxtaposition however not look like to different dresses sewn together, therefore try to present a balanced harmony with my final garment. 25th Working in my sketchbook, I have started looking at folklore surrounding both cultures. Looking at Armenian plates, their recognisable patterns shows natural element painted in predominant blues. These flowers expand through the white plates have a similar aesthetic to Swedish folklore patterns and prints as well. Both countries show use of colour, however differently. Today I was mostly exploring Armenian patterns and learning a new technique - transfer printing I started being able to transfer specific images to others. I want to continue exploring this idea further in my pages. 26th As yesterday I had done some transfer printing, I continued doing so, however I started juxtaposing Swedish and Armenian prints as well as images of Armenian women. By being able to transfer images, it allows me to directly show the juxtaposition of cultures however them merging as well. However I quickly understood that the transfers where not as successful as yesterday as the ink of the images had dried making them less opaque on paper. However, I tried printing them on tracing paper and quite surprisingly it created an interesting weathered effect. 28th Looking at Swedish patterns, it is quite evident that embroidery is used often. Therefore, I want to explore this idea of embroidery by looking at Swedish and Armenian patterns/tiles. Both cultures have common floral patterns, however Armenian tapestries and garments also express a geometrical pattern to them. Looking at traditional clothes, similarities can be seen; both cultures wear garments that are loose fitting however sinched in at the waist. This is achieved through different techniques through their folklore clothing. Swedish garments explore the idea of a tighter upper part through corsets that are detailed with embroidery, whilst Armenian garments for women see the waist as ideal for accessory placement. Through woven fabrics, they resonate the aesthetic of Armenian rugs as they have a geometric quality whilst Swedish embroidery is mostly floral and an exploration of the natural forms. I want to therefore convey though my garment the idea of a sinched in waist that presents both floral and abstract geometric patterns. MARCH 7th As I have done enough research on patterns, my next step is to now look at architecture. This is because in my final garment I want to show a joining of folklore with architecture. Initially I will look at Scandinavian design and how it expresses minimalism and minute colour use. Exploring this element will allow me to create a final outcome that is more explorative and visually more interesting to visually look at then just recreating Swedish and Armenian patterns. Therefore I will want to overlay embroidery and crochet (as I have explored this within my sketchbook), with the geometric forms and shapes of Swedish architecture. My next step therefore is to join the pattern exploration in my sketchbook with architecture that I will look at as well. From then on I can then start questioning the application of my research on the body. 12th Today I had my progress tutorial, I got some feedback. My project proposal read well and was clear, I was also told that I had a clear focus on the project direction as my sketchbook pages show progression of ideas clearly. Moreover, after explaining what I will do as a progression in my sketchbook, I was given advice to start looking at the geometrical shapes and forms of Swedish architecture as well a joining Armenian structural elements. This is exactly what I was going to do as I will be experimenting with architectural dynamic shapes. Moreover, I was told that I have to correlate my work to fashion designers especially as I am applying the final outcome to the body I should look at how artists relate their work on the human form. Armenian Prints 23rd of March During Easter Break I started photographing Armenian prints and carpets that I have in my home. As the photographs I found on the internet, Armenian tapestry presents a geometric element I wish to convey in a final garment, moreover I think this can also be a nice connection to the geometric shapes within Swedish and Armenian Communist buildings. A reoccurring colour scheme within these prints was clear use of warm tones with hints of cool tones. The predominant use of maroons and browns is emblematic to Armenian colours used in crafts as well as folklore. This will be one of my main colour schemes for my future garment. Comments - IMG_5211.JPG Comments - IMG_5213.JPG Comments - IMG_5218.JPG By doing research on architecture I want to incorporate a more structured element to my future garment. By looking at Swedish design, a predominant technique used is cladding. Therefore to recreate this I started making a 'corset'. Not only will the corset be commenting on the Swedish architectural textures but also mimic the Armenian and Swedish belted and corseted that traditional garments had. I want to use a material that is opaque and stiff to be able to maintain the shape wanted. Therefore what I have found is a synthetic treated material that reminds has a certain grip to it. I started constructing the corset by creating pleats on the sides of the hips to create a protruding shape to the figure. Comments - Screen Shot 2018-04-14 at 22.13.47.png Comments - Screen Shot 2018-04-14 at 22.13.54.png Today was our first day back from Easter break. We were paired with our 4D buddy to peer assess each other. My peer told me that my work was interesting as well as there being a present flow in my work and ideas through my research on workflow as well as my sketchbook. She told me however that I had to have more sketchbook work as well as show my development in how my garment and more illustrations. I agree with her as I haven't been focusing on my sketchbook as much as I should be. I aim to do more illustrations of my future garment as this will lead me to my eventual construction of the garment. My team member said that by creating illustrations it will help me with the development of my work as well as hit criteria that I am currently missing - which is presentation of work as well as development of ideas. This is vital as I do not believe that the corset I made looks coherent and well integrated with the garment idea. I need to work on illustrations that will help me with a new idea that conveys the structural element I am trying to express within my final work. Comments - FullSizdddeRender 18.jpg Today I talked to Frances about my work and she agrees that the corset is not as successful as the rest of my work. She agrees that I can recreate the geometric idea with macrame. Moreover, when talking to Frances she believes that I should add white to the macrame as that will translate with the idea of Swedish minimalism and simplicity. I was initially worried as I do not have a lot of time to come up with a new idea that can replace the corset, however I was reassured that the macrame idea was interesting as well as it will be coherent with the architectural forms I want to convey. Comments - IMG_5256.JPG Comments - IMG_5260.JPG Comments - IMG_5273.JPG As I was constructing my garment, one big inconvenience was that it had to be all hand sewn. As the yarn is quite thick it cannot run through a sewing machine. This has shown to be a time consuming process, however I do believe that by hand sewing the circular weaves together, it gives me more control of their placement on the body. Moreover, having access to a mannequin has extensively helped me work out where I want to place my weaves. Being on Easter break I did not have a mannequin making my visualisation on the final end product more of an abstract thought. By using the mannequin it has allowed me to explore different placement not only of the weaves but also the macrame. As the corset was not successful in my opinion, I had to come up with another idea to distort or change the shape of the body. I came to the conclusion, after experimentation of the macrame on the mannequin, that by adding a sleeve that had tassels elongate the arm, giving the human figure a unsymmetrical form. However, when I made the sleeve I thought that the garment is now too unbalanced. Therefore, tonight I have been adding more macrame to the opposite side of the garment. This has been challenging as I do not have a mannequin, however by wearing my own garment I have started placing the macrame on the left hand side, hiding one leg. Initially I thought I wanted to make a belt out of the macrame technique, however I was not liking how the white yarn looked on the hips. Photoshoot Today the photoshoot. I was nervous to see how my garment would look photographed. However, I was pleasantlysurprised as the model quickly understood how to play with the garment's tassels and long sleeves. By doing so I believe the garment looked my dynamic and not just a stiff final piece. As I have not made a bottom half of the garment I was unsure if the nude underwear I had provided the model would catch too much attention, however by directing the model to place the sleeve in font of her body, it concealed the underwear. Moreover, when taking the photographs I liked the full body shots and allowing the tassels that would hit the floor. However, when we started taking close up shots, the photographer told me he liked the way in which the garment filled up the empty space in the shot. I do agree with him, especially because you can see more of the detail in the close ups. Comments - _MG_6459.JPG Transfer Printing of Armenian prints and overlaying them on old Swedish postcards. This overlaying is a good starting point for my work as I physically show the overlaying of my 'roots' as an individual. Moreover, the juxtaposition between the cool blue tones against the Swedish green and yellow garment creates an interesting colour scheme which I could experiment more with. Comments - FullSisssspzeRender 18.jpg I started experimenting with a crochet hook, and soon enough I started overlaying them on old pictures of notable Armenian women. I do believe this is a quite successful experimentation. This is because I am starting to look at how my samples can be overlaid on the body. Something I want to continue playing with are the circular shapes, especially on the upper body as it creates an interesting dimension to the body as well as giving it an organic natural feel. Comments - IMG_5214.JPG Comments - IMG_5216.JPG Comments - IMG_5217.JPG Today I went to buy yarns within the colour scheme I have explored as well as found within the Armenian prints in my house. I came across a circular wooden loom used to make round weaves. Looking at my sketchbook and the way in which I have already started playing with the idea of circular organic shapes to express Armenian folklore was what made me gravitate towards the loom. When I started using the loom, the weaves started having a three dimensionality to them as they would become slightly concave when i'd finish a weave. To express this dimensionality on a larger scale I started sewing the weaves together to create a bulbs shape. As I had chosen yarns with colour gradients, I created a gradient within my weaves that created more detail. However, I find the weaves to be quite empty looking, therefore I think I want to experiment with using crochet incorporated within my weaves to create more texture. Comments - IMG_5483.JPG Today I came across a photographer that photographed Soviet bus stops within the Eastern block. Looking at Chris Herwig's photographs, it is evident to see that the bus stops express brutality through jarring shapes as well as use of concrete. The bus stops express solitude as well as an insight in the dark sinister times many Eastern European countries went through during the 20th century. By using the corset as an addition I try and express those shapes, by letting the pleats protrude from the body and deform the human figure as well as conceal it. This will allow my final piece to become more of a structural piece than just a garment placed on the body. Comments - 2cee0645880e4dda3a2a95393e13befc.jpg.1 Today I started looking at joining the corset to the circular weaves. However, I unfortunately don't think it expresses the idea I am trying to put forward. The corset does not merge well with the weaves and feels as if it's not part of the garment. I am trying to figure out ways in which I can therefore express the geometry of architecture and shapes within my work in a successful matter that is succinct to my circular weaves and crochet. From the beginning of the project I knew that creating a piece that was not obtrusive to the organic shapes of the weaves would be challenging. However, I will be doing some development sheets within my sketchbook. I started looking at Jil Sander's new SS18 collection and I was interested in conveying a similar element present in their spring summer collection. Some of garments have macrame which could be interesting to try and recreate in yarn. By using the same material as the weaves it will allow the two elements of my work to join well together. Comments - 59-1280x1920.jpg.1 The way in which the model wears the top half expresses geometric shapes and creates form on the garment. I especially like the balance that has been created by coupling a dress that is loose with a more structural element with angular shapes. 11th and 12th of April In these two days I have been constructing the macrame segments of the garment. These two days in class I have been looking at possible solutions in which I can wrap the garment around the body, as well as how to place the macrame. Through experimentation on a mannequin I started adding the strips of macrame on the sleeves. By being long and having tassels I try and look at knitwear designers James Long and Jenny Postle, two recommendation from my tutor. Moreover, yesterday when I talked to my tutor I was told I should add more detail to the front of the garment. I do agree as I do believe by adding smaller circular shapes onto the front will allow the garment to tie in together more coherently with my use of colour. I do think it is vital to add these smaller crochet circles as I will be adding brighter reds, blues and earthy tones. Comments - 976a1663f67f559f198b6654be36b35a.jpg.1 Her use of thinner knit on conjunction with tassels as well as thicker yarns creates an interesting interplay of textures. This has definitely influenced me to experiment with different thickness of yarns as well as how I manipulate them through - crochet, yarn retention, colour use and general shape I form them into (i.e circular, knotted, loose yarn as tassels).
You have likely seen this iconic painting before, but did you know there are two future presidents depicted here? Washington takes center stage in this painting, leading his men across the Delaware on December 25, 1776. But, next to him, holding the flag, is James Monroe. It isn’t perfectly accurate (Monroe and Washington were actually on different boats), but it does bring to light the Revolutionary War service of our fifth president. Check out the map below to learn more. James Monroe was the last of the Virginia Dynasty who served as president during our founding era. The Federalist party had all but disappeared. Monroe, a framer of the Constitution and Revolutionary War hero, easily won. President Monroe ran unopposed in this election. Only one elector cast a vote for John Quincy Adams, possibly to protect the legacy of the unanimously elected Washington, or possibly because he did not like Monroe. BIRTHPLACE Colonial Beach, VA HOME Highland, Charlottesville, VA CROSSING THE DELAWARE Washington Crossing, PA GRAVESITE Richmond, VA BOOKS Davis, Kenneth C., and Pedro Martin. Don’t Know Much about the Presidents. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2014. DeGregorio, William A., and Aaron Jaffe. The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents. Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, Inc., 2017. Kane, Joseph Nathan, and Janet Podell. Facts about the Presidents: A Compilation of Biographical and Historical Information. New York: H.W. Wilson, 2009. WEBSITES Encyclopedia Britannica, britannica.com Library of Congress, loc.gov Miller Center, University of Virginia, millercenter.org/the-presidency The White House, whitehouse.gov Our Book If you enjoy our infographics, you’ll love our book! Our Posters Check out our full line of infographic posters for the classroom!	https://periodicpresidents.com/interactive-resources/presidents/james-monroe/
Welcome To Four Paws Animal Hospital Dr. Angela F. Thibodeaux and our team are committed to bringing you and your pets better health by practicing the science of Veterinary Medicine. Statham-based Four Paws Animal Hospital was founded in 2005. Since then our staff has been performing veterinary medicine and compassionate animal care in the Statham area. Four Paws Animal Hospital is a full-service Animal Hospital whose mission is to provide the highest standard of quality and compassion in veterinary care for our patients and a welcoming, informative, and supportive service for our clients while maintaining a superior working environment for our employees. Four Paws Animal Hospital offers the Statham animal community daytime emergency veterinary services in addition to standard medical, surgical, and dental veterinary care. Because we have an in-house pharmacy, lab, radiology, ultrasound, ophthalmic monitoring, and full-service hospitalization our facility enables you to make one stop for your pet’s medical care. We are open for appointments during normal business hours. Walk-ins and drop-off appointments are welcome.	https://fourpawsvets.net/about-our-clinic/
This invention relates generally to information storage media which has information stored thereon in an optically readable format and, more particularly, to storage media having a substrate with grooves fabricated thereon prior to having a dye material layer applied to the substrate by a spin-coating process. In one of the classes of optical information storage medium, a substrate is fabricated which has grooves formed in at least one surface of the substrate. Using a spin-coating technique, a dye material layer is applied to the surface of the storage media into which the grooves have been fabricated. The grooves can be used to define the track upon which information in the dye layer can be stored and accessed. The grooves are identified by a difference in phase for radiation traversing an optical path in the storage medium that includes a groove as compared to the phase of radiation traversing a path near to, but not including, the groove. This detection of this difference in phase for radiation transmitted by the storage medium, either using density tracking or phase tracking techniques, results in control signals which activate the servo tracking mechanisms. Through interaction with radiation applied to the storage medium, the optical properties of the dye material layer can be altered along the track defined by the groove(s). In this manner, information can be stored on the storage medium and, because of the alteration of the optical properties, the information can be retrieved through interaction of the storage medium with a suitable radiation beam and radiation detection apparatus. Referring to Fig. 1, the cross-sectional structure of an optical information storage media suitable for advantageously using the present invention is shown. A substrate 11, typically comprised of a polycarbonate material, has a groove 11A fabricated therein, the groove having a depth of G and a width W. A dye material layer 12 of thickness L is deposited on the substrate 11, typically by a spin coating procedure. A reflecting coating 13 is then deposited on the dye layer. In the immediate vicinity of the groove 11A, the application of the dye material layer does not result in a flat surface, but has a depression of height cG, where c is referred to as the conformality, caused by the presence of the groove. The difference in phase of a light beam reflected from a land (non-groove) area and a light beam reflected from groove area, when not constant over the storage region of the storage medium, can result in a degradation of the ability of the detection system to differentiate between the two types of regions. As result degradation, the groove tracking can become inoperative. In European Patent Application Number 92109463.7, filed in the name of T. Mizukuki, T. Koike, N. Kitagawa, and S. Hirose, an attempt has been made to solve the problem of the radial dependence of the difference in phase as a function of radius by varying the depth G and/or the width W of the grooves as a function of radius. While this attempt to eliminate the radial dependence of the difference in phase has resulted in improvement of the tracking characteristics of the detection system, the difficulty in distinguishing between an optical path that passes through a land region from an optical path that passes through a groove has continued to limit the performance of an optical storage system. In addition, it has been determined that unless the variation in the depth of the groove(s) are small, changes in the amplitude of the (read-out) signals during the accessing of the information written in the dye material layer can degrade the performance of the information storage system. A need has therefore been felt for an optical storage medium which provides a difference in the phase of a radiation beam transmitted through a groove and a radiation beam transmitted through a land area which is approximately constant as function of distance from the center of the storage medium. In addition, a need has been felt for a groove structure that can provide a constant difference in phase over the information bearing portion of the storage medium without compromising the performance of the read-out of information stored in the dye material layer. The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above. Briefly summarized, according to one aspect of the present invention, the radial dependence of the conformality of the dye material layer in the vicinity of a groove resulting from the spin-coating process of the dye is compensated by varying the shape of groove as a function of distance from the center of the optical information storage media. In particular, the depth of the groove is maintained at a generally constant value and the width of the groove opening is similarly maintained at a generally constant value. However, the width of the base of the groove is varied from approximately zero at the inner portion of the information bearing region to approximately the width of the groove opening at the outer portion of the information bearing region. In this manner, the difference in phase for a radiation beam passing through a groove region as compared to a radiation beam passing through a neighboring land region is approximately independent of distance from the center of the storage medium. By adjusting the width of the base of the groove, the difference in phase between an optical path through a groove region and an optical path through a neighboring land region is approximately independent of the distance from the center of the storage medium. In this manner, the tracking of the groove(s) over the information bearing region of the storage medium will not vary and can be adjusted for maximum detectability. In addition, the dependence with distance from the center of the storage medium of parameters controlling read-out from information stored in the dye material layer is minimized. These and other aspects, objects, features and advantages of the present invention will be more clearly understood and appreciated from a review of the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments and appended claims, and by reference to the accompanying drawings. Figure 1 is a cross-sectional view of a groove on a disk having a dye material layer spin-coated thereon. Figure 2 illustrates the change with radius of the conformality of the surface of a dye-coated layer spin-coated on a grooved substrate. OP Figure 3 illustrates the change in the groove geometry with radius which reduces the radial dependence of the difference in phase, Δ, of the surface irregularities formed the surface of a media as a result of spin-coating a dye material layer over a grooved surface according to the present invention. S D OP OP OP OP Δ OP = (4π/λ){(N D ·S) - (N S ·G + N D ·L)} S = [1-c]·G + L Δ OP = (4π/λ){N D ·[1-c]G - N S ·G} Δ OP = (4π/λ) {N D ·[1-c] - N S }G Δ OP = (4π/λ){N D ·[1 - c(r)] - N S }<Q(r)> Δ OP ≈ constant When the index of refraction for the substrate of an optical storage medium is given by N and the index of refraction of the dye material layer is given by N, then the difference in phase) Δ, of a beam of light of wavelength λ passing through the substrate 11 and dye layer 12 in a land region path (that is, a region without a groove) and a beam of light passing through the substrate 11 and dye layer 12 and includes passage through a groove 11A is given by: where the factor of 4π arises from the double passage through the storage medium as a result of reflection from the reflecting layer. Referring to Fig. 1; However, it has been observed that the difference in phase Δ is a function of the distance from the center of the storage medium r , or Δ(r). This difference in phase is a function of radius because the conformality c is a function of radius, c(r) (as a result of the spin-coating procedure). In the present invention, the shape of the groove is varied, rather than the depth. The depth G is therefore replaced by a shape or form factor <Q(r)> for the groove cross-section, the average value being a function of r. (The symbols < > are used to denote that an average value is being represented.) Thus the equation for difference in phase, Δ, becomes For optimum tracking, OP OP Referring to Fig. 3, the technique, according to the present invention, for compensating for the difference in phase, Δ, between an optical path that includes a groove and an optical path that does not include a groove in the optical storage media is illustrated. The conformality c decreases for c₁ through c₃ as a function of distance from the center of the optical storage media. The cross-section of the groove varies from approximately a triangle 11A'' through a trapezoid, 11A' to a rectangle 11A as a function of distance from the center of the optical storage media. By appropriate selection of parameters, the difference in phase, Δ, can be maintained at approximately a constant value. OP In the preferred embodiment, the information bearing portion of the disk extends from a radius of 23 mm to a radius of 57 mm. The conformality varies from c₁ ≈ 0.60 at the 23 mm dimension to c₃ ≈ 0.52 at the 57 mm dimension. The width of the groove opening, which remains approximately constant over the area of the information bearing region, is ≈ 500 nm. Similarly, the maximum depth dimension of the groove, which remains approximately constant over the information-bearing region of the disk, is ≈ 180 nm. The base dimension of the groove at the furthest extend (that is, 57 mm) of the information bearing region, is ≈ 500 nm. This base dimension then decreases with decreasing distance from the center of the optical storage media. In this region, the groove is approximately triangular in cross-section, that is, the base dimension is ≈ 0.0 nm. By controlling the geometry of the grooves, it has been found that the difference in phase, Δ, can be maintained at a constant value over the radius of the information-bearing region of the optical storage medium thereby improving the performance of the optical information system using the storage medium. By maintaining a constant maximum depth while changing the shape of the cross-section of the groove with distance from the center of the storage medium, the radial dependence for read-out parameters has been found to be minimized. OP It will be now appreciated that there has been presented a technique for maintaining the difference in phase, Δ, between an optical path including a groove and an optical path not including a groove, as constant as a function of distance from the center of the optical storage media. OP Operation of the present invention is believed to be apparent from the foregoing description and drawings, but a few words will be added for emphasis. By definition, the depth of the depression, x, in the vicinity of a groove is given by the conformality times the shape or form factor of the groove <Q(r)> of the groove, or x = c(r)·<Q(r)>. In fact, the depression is an average depression or, <x>. Consequently, <x> = c(r)·<Q(r)>. Because of the varying geometry of the grooves of the present invention, an optical beam will illuminate a region <Q(r)>, wherein said <Q(r)> is an average depth of said groove in the vicinity of the depression. The present invention can be understood as a selection of the shape or form factor <Q(r)> which results in a depression <x> which establishes the conformality c(r). Therefore, the form or shape factor <Q(r)> is selected to satisfy the condition that the difference in phase, Δ, is a constant as a function of distance from the center of the storage medium. The grooves are fabricated in the surface of the substrate of the optical storage medium through use of a master process. The structures of the groove(s) in the master and, consequently, in the optical storage medium are determined by appropriate irradiation of the photo-resist layer during the mastering process. While the invention has been described with particular reference to a preferred embodiment, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes may be made and equivalents may be substituted for elements of the preferred embodiment without departing from invention. In addition, many modifications may be made to adapt a particular situation and material to a teaching of the invention without departing from the essential teachings of the present invention.
Patricia A. Judd and Family Endowed Post-Doctoral Fellowship in ADHD Research The University of California at San Diego (UCSD) Department of Psychiatry and Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development TM study announces the availability of a one-year postdoctoral research position through the Patricia A. Judd and Family Endowed Post-Doctoral Fellowship in ADHD Research. The goal of the program is to foster the career of future scientists who will help develop deeper understanding of attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) including risk factors, course, and potential treatment targets. The scholar will collaborate with ABCD faculty based at UC San Diego on analyses of data from ABCD pertaining to ADHD, manuscript preparation, independent grant submissions, and presentations for scientific and community audiences. Further information about ABCD is at ABCDstudy.org<abcdstudy.org/>. To further the understanding of ADHD, analyses may: (1) characterize individual developmental pathways in terms of neural, cognitive, emotional, and academic functioning, and influencing factors; (2) examine brain development in youth with and without risk factors for or diagnoses of ADHD; (3) investigate the roles and interaction of genes and the environment on the course of ADHD; (4) examine how physical activity, sleep, screen time, sports injuries (including traumatic brain injuries), and other experiences influence the course of ADHD; (5) describe the co-morbid physical and mental health disorders of participants with ADHD; (6) characterize relationships between ADHD and substance use; and (7) explore how the use of medications and psychosocial treatments for ADHD affect developmental outcomes (e.g., performance in school, peer and family relationships); and (8) examine how early versus late medication use and no medication treatment influences outcomes. Previous data analysis experience is desired, including working in R. Salary is based upon the NIH pay scale and years of postdoctoral experience. Optional additional two years of support may be available depending upon the scholar’s progress and availability of funds. Potential applicants who wish to learn more about the program may contact Dr. Susan Tapert (<>). The formal application will require a letter of interest, curriculum vita and two letters of reference and should be emailed to Dr. Tapert.	https://fluxsociety.org/post-doctoral-fellowship-in-adhd-research/
The loss of Nikole Hannah-Jones by the UNC-Chapel Hill Hussman School of Journalism and Media is one more black eye for an overly politicized UNC System that has been punching itself in the eye for quite a while now. It’s also a loss for the UNC journalism students who could have benefited from Hannah-Jones’ intellect, talent and broad experience. It seemed at first like a dream acquisition. And it should have been. Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter and MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant recipient — and, incidentally, an alumna of UNC’s journalism school — was hired in April as the school’s Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism. Her appointment would instantly increase the school’s prestige. Would-be investigative journalists from throughout the country would flock to North Carolina to learn from her. But the school’s offer included a low ball: While previous Knight chairs had regularly received tenure upon being hired, Hannah-Jones was only offered a five-year contract. UNC board trustees prevaricated, with one claiming that her tenure application was halted because she didn’t come from a “traditional academic-type background” and another saying that he had “questions” — which one would think might be asked before she was offered a job in the first place. It also turns out that the school’s major donor, Arkansas newspaper publisher Walter Hussman, was working behind the scenes to undermine her appointment. And some conservatives complained to trustees about Hannah-Jones’ involvement in The 1619 Project, a groundbreaking examination of slavery’s role in the founding of America, which she produced for The New York Times Magazine. Supporters from all quarters rallied, including UNC staff and faculty. The foundation that endows Hannah-Jones’ position, the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism, urged the school to offer her tenure. The school’s trustees finally voted to do so, 9-4, last week. But Hannah-Jones declined, accepting a tenured position at Howard University instead. There, she will create and lead the new Center for Journalism and Democracy, with a mission to increase diversity in journalism. She has already elicited $20 million in donations for the school. After her announcement, a group of Hussman faculty members released a statement in which they attributed the trustees’ reluctance to grant Hannah-Jones tenure to racism. They noted the scarcity of Black women with tenure at UNC. “Hannah-Jones would have been the sole Black woman at the rank of full professor level in our school; at the university level, only 3.1% of tenured faculty are Black women. “We regret that the top echelons of leadership at UNC-Chapel Hill failed to follow established processes, did not conduct themselves professionally and transparently, and created a crisis that shamed our institution, all because of Ms. Hannah-Jones’s honest accounting of America’s racial history. It is understandable why Ms. Hannah-Jones would take her brilliance elsewhere.” Whether it is racism or incompetence, this isn’t the first time officials at UNC have taken what should be a simple administrative chore and created a politicized controversy; it has been a regular feature for several years now. Prominent, talented administrators like former UNC President Tom Ross; his replacement, Margaret Spellings; and UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt have been dismissed or chased away by heavy-handed political maneuvers. In 2019, a group of UNC leaders cut a deal that placed the controversial “Silent Sam” Confederate statue and $2.5 million in the hands of the N.C. Sons of Confederate Veterans. The result of many of their decisions has been to diminish the reputation of the UNC System. Also, under their leadership, African Americans at UNC have felt frustrated and shortchanged. “Right now, the relationship between the University of North Carolina and its Black students, faculty and staff is broken,” Jaci Field, advocacy committee co-chair of the Carolina Black Caucus, a faculty group, said earlier this week. Following the loss of Hannah-Jones, some of them have become energized and are demanding changes. There’s no reason UNC trustees should have let Hannah-Jones slip through their fingers. But we fear we’ll continue to see these embarrassing losses until lawmakers and UNC leaders stop pushing political agendas and serve the best interests of the university and the state.
RMIT University has presented two international education leaders with its highest honour, an Honorary Doctorate. Professor Dennis Gibson AO (right) with RMIT Chancellor Dr Ziggy Switkowski. Professor Robert Dennis Gibson AO, former Chancellor of RMIT and first Vice-Chancellor of Queensland University of Technology, and Singaporean higher education leader, Adjunct Professor Lee Kwok Cheong, received their awards at a recent ceremony in Melbourne. Adjunct Professor Lee was presented with a Doctor of Business Honoris Causa, while Professor Gibson was admitted to the degree of Doctor of Science Honoris Causa. RMIT Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Margaret Gardner AO, said the pair had a passionate belief in quality higher education. "They are united in their commitment to higher education," Professor Gardner said. "They demonstrate values that RMIT seeks to live by. "Today they join the list of eminent past recipients, a list that crosses geographical, cultural and professional divides, but is consistent in its acknowledgment of an outstanding personal contribution to our community." Adjunct Professor Lee has been CEO of Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) Global Education since 2005 and is a member of its Board. For the past 27 years RMIT and SIM have worked in partnership, delivering quality higher education in Singapore. The collaboration is Australia's largest transnational education partnership and was the first to be established between Australian and Singapore educational institutions. Adjunct Professor Lee was awarded the Public Service Medal in the 2010 Singapore National Day Awards, in recognition of his contribution to education and IT, and in 2011 became a member of the Singapore Computer Society Hall of Fame in recognition of his contribution to the development of the IT industry in Singapore. In a long and distinguished career, Adjunct Professor Gibson has held various positions through which he has shaped Australia's Higher Education sector. He was Department Chair to the Australian Research Council, was instrumental in creating the Australian Technology Network of universities, and served on the Dawkins review of higher education in the late 1980s that created the unified national system under which institutions such as QUT and RMIT became universities. Adjunct Professor Gibson has a science degree with first class honours from the University of Hull, where he received the University prize in mathematics; and a PhD in a field of applied mathematics, magnetohydrodynamics, from the University of Newcastle (UK). He was awarded a Higher Doctorate of Science in 1987 by the UK Council for National Academic Awards and has honorary doctorates from QUT and the University of the Sunshine Coast. Forty-two PhD candidates graduated at the ceremony, and staff and students were also recognised for academic excellence and outstanding contributions to the University community. The Francis Ormond medal was presented to Elena Ayre in acknowledgement of staff commitment, dedication, excellence and exceptional service to the University. Ms Ayre has worked at RMIT for 17 years, starting out as a Technical Assistant (Dental) in the Department of Health and Clinical Sciences. Currently Senior Project Officer - Vocational Education in the Science, Engineering and Health College Office, her previous roles have included teaching in the Dental Assisting and Dental Technology program as well as Project Officer and Academic Services coordinator in the vocational engineering area. The Ralph McIntosh Medal was presented to Professor Felicity Roddick in acknowledgement of outstanding service to students. Professor Roddick is the Associate Dean (Research and Innovation) in the School of Civil, Environmental and Chemical Engineering. She began working at RMIT in 1971 and is the second longest serving member of staff. Professor Roddick has coached, mentored and empowered the school academic postgraduate coordinators to proactively address areas where student satisfaction could be improved. She has promoted the importance of publishing, timely completion and conference attendance to HDR students and supervisors. Other awards and prizes were: - RMIT Award for Higher Education - Jordan Lockett, who finished his Bachelor of Social Work with First Class Honours last year. - RMIT Award for VET - Sonam Sarita, who completed her Advanced Diploma of Engineering Technology - Electrical in 2013. - Patricia Guthrie Memorial Award - Katherine Babatsikos. who was conferred with the degree Bachelor of Business (Information Systems) last year. - Beazley Award - Michael Mortlock, who completed the Certificate III in Plumbing program in 2013. - J. N. McNicol Prize - Ricardo Saracoglu, who graduated with the Bachelor of Business (Economics and Finance) with Distinction last year. Professor Gardner (left) and Dr Switkowski (far right) with student award winners (left to right): Jordan Lockett, Sonam Sarita, Katherine Babatsikos, Ricardo Saracoglu and Michael Mortlock. For media enquiries contact [email protected].	http://www.rmit.edu.au/news/all-news/2014/may/rmit-honours-top-educators
CEPOL National Exchange Coordinators gathered together this week in Budapest for their annual meeting –the first one organised face-to-face since the outbreak of the pandemic. In a year-end look at how Covid-19 has reset CEPOL’s flagship programme, participants in this meeting examined the results achieved in an unusual and difficult year like 2021 and looked ahead to 2022 with optimism. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, almost 250 law enforcement officials from 41 countries (including 17 non-EU countries) took part this year in this European learning programme facilitating the exchange of knowledge and experiences between law enforcement officials, including police, customs, tax authorities, and prosecutors. Participation in the CEPOL Exchange Programme in 2021 was possible through: On the closing of the calls, 326 applications were received (314 for the General Programme and 12 for CEPOL-EJTN) and 190 were received for the International Cooperation Exchange Programme. With an overall satisfaction rate of 97%, the programme is highly valued by participants for the opportunity it offers to gain new knowledge and share experiences with like-minded professionals and to encourage collaboration between law enforcement agencies. Law enforcement staff interested in taking part in the CEPOL Exchange Programme in 2022 can contact their National Exchange Coordinator through their CEPOL National Unit. The applications for the next edition will open in January 2022. About CEPOL Exchange CEPOL Exchange is a two-way cross-border programme allowing selected law enforcement institutions to host officials from another country for a period of one week, giving them the chance to exchange insights and good practices, build trust, initiate cooperation projects and foster deep and long-lasting learning and networking opportunities. The programme fulfils one of CEPOL’s key objectives - developing a European law enforcement culture. More specifically, it seeks to enhance cooperation in combating crime through learning and provides participants with an opportunity to familiarise themselves with working methods of other countries, promoting trust and cooperation between law enforcement officials from across Europe and beyond.	https://www.cepol.europa.eu/media/news/cepol-exchange-programme-national-coordinators-take-stock-2021-achievements
September 17, 2022 by Marjorie R. Rogers, MA (English), Certified Consultant There are many reasons why women lie. Sometimes it’s to avoid getting in trouble, other times it’s to protect someone else. But whatever the reason may be, lying is never a good thing. It creates mistrust and can lead to bigger problems down the road. So why do women lie? Let’s take a look at some of the most common reasons. There are many reasons why women might lie. Maybe she’s trying to protect herself or someone else. Maybe she’s afraid of the truth. Or maybe she just wants to make her life seem more exciting than it really is. Whatever the reason, lying is a common trait among women. And while it may seem like harmless fun, lying can actually lead to some serious consequences. For one thing, lying can damage relationships. If you’re constantly lying to your friends and family, they’re eventually going to catch on. And when they do, they’ll likely feel betrayed and hurt. Additionally, lies can also come back to bite you in the future. Even if you manage to get away with a lie today, there’s always the chance that it will come back to haunt you down the road. So why do women lie? There could be any number of reasons. Why Do Women Lie So Much? Who Lies the Most in a Relationship There are many factors that contribute to how often people lie in a relationship. Some research suggests that men lie more than women, while other studies find no significant difference between the sexes. It’s also been shown that people in relationships tend to lie more than those who are single, likely because they’re trying to please their partner or avoid conflict. So, who lies the most in a relationship? It’s hard to say for sure, but it seems safe to assume that we all do it from time to time. If you’re concerned about your own lying habits, try being more honest with your partner and see how it goes. Honesty is always the best policy! Credit: www.salon.com Why Would a Girl Lie to You? There could be a number of reasons why a girl would lie to you. Maybe she’s not being completely honest about her feelings for you, or maybe she’s trying to protect herself from getting hurt. It could also be that she’s lying to you in order to avoid a difficult conversation. Whatever the reason, it’s important to try and figure out why she’s lying so that you can address the issue head-on. One possibility is that she doesn’t want to hurt your feelings by telling you the truth. For example, if she’s not interested in dating you, she may lie and say that she is just to spare your feelings. Similarly, if she knows there’s something about her that you don’t like, she may try and hide it from you instead of being upfront about it. In these cases, it might be best to directly ask her why she felt the need to lie rather than simply confront her about the issue at hand. Another possibility is that the girl is lying in order to protect herself emotionally. If she’s been hurt in the past or is afraid of getting hurt, she may try and distance herself from you by lying. For example, if you’ve been pushing for a serious relationship but she’s not ready for one, she may lie and say that she doesn’t want a relationship with anyone right now in order to push you away before things get too complicated or intense. If this is the case, then it would be beneficial to have an open and honest discussion with her about whatshe wants and needs from a relationship with you specifically. It’s also possible that the girl is avoiding a difficult conversation by lying. If there’s something going on in her life thatshe doesn’t wantto talk about or if there’s something bothering her about your relationship,shemay resorttolyingin orderto avoid havingto dealwiththe issue head-on. How Can You Tell If a Woman Lying? If you’re wondering whether or not a woman is lying to you, there are some telltale signs you can look for. First, pay attention to her body language. If she’s avoiding eye contact, fidgeting or playing with her hair, she may be trying to hide something. Next, listen to the tone of her voice; if she sounds nervous or evasive, she may be lying. Finally, watch for changes in her story; if she’s constantly changing details or gets caught in a lie, chances are she’s not being truthful. If you suspect a woman is lying to you, the best thing to do is ask questions and try to get her to open up about what’s really going on. What is the Most Common Reason for Lying? There are many reasons why people lie, but the most common reason is to avoid conflict or hurt feelings. People lie to protect themselves or others from potential harm. They may also lie to make themselves feel better or to avoid responsibility. What are the Five Reasons of Lying? Lying is a common human behavior that can occur for a variety of reasons. Below are five reasons why people may lie: 1. To avoid punishment or repercussions. This is perhaps the most common reason for lying as it is often used as a way to avoid getting in trouble. For example, if someone knows they did something wrong and are likely to get scolded or punished, they may lie about it in hopes of escaping any negative consequences. 2. To protect another person. Someone may lie to shield another individual from getting hurt or into trouble. For instance, if a friend confides in you about something sensitive and you think revealing the truth could jeopardize their safety or well-being, you might opt to lie instead. 3. To gain an advantage over others. In some cases, people may use lies as a way to get ahead of others or achieve something they wouldn’t be able to otherwise. For example, someone might embellish their qualifications on a resume in order to increase their chances of landing a job interview or stretching the truth about how much money they donate to charity in order to receive tax breaks. Conclusion Why Do Women Lie? It’s no secret that women lie. We’ve all been lied to by a woman at some point in our lives, whether it was a white lie or a whopper. But why do women feel the need to lie? Is it because we’re trying to protect ourselves or others? Or is there something deeper going on? There are many reasons why women lie, but one of the most common is to avoid conflict. We may lie about our feelings to keep the peace or to avoid hurtful arguments. We may also lie to save face or prevent someone from getting mad at us. Whatever the reason, lying can often make things worse in the long run. Another reason women lie is because we’re afraid of what others will think of us. We may be afraid of being judged or rejected, so we’ll tell a falsehood instead. This can be especially true when it comes to our appearance or weight. We want others to see us in a certain light, so we’ll say whatever it takes to maintain that image – even if it means telling a few lies along the way. Lastly, sometimes we lie simply because we don’t know how else to respond. If we’re caught off guard or feeling uncomfortable, we may blurt out something that isn’t true just to fill the silence. This can happen in social situations where we feel pressure to conform or fit in with those around us. Lying is never a good idea, but it’s something that most of us have done at one time or another. The next time you’re tempted to tell a fib, stop and think about why you’re doing it and what the consequences could be – for yourself and for those around you.	https://www.classifiedmom.com/why-do-women-lie/
Seven natural wonders of the worldBill Dennison · The original “seven wonders of the world” were manmade structures, often in iconic settings. The impact of seeing these manmade creations was what made them the wonders. Similarly, the seven natural wonders of the world are focused on the iconic settings that impact those viewing them. These natural wonders are both physical and biological, united in their ability to create lasting memories in those who view them. They are not everyday occurrences like sunrises or sunsets, but rare enough to induce a sense of awe and wonder in those viewing them. A common feature of the natural wonders is that photography rarely does them justice--the live experience of observing the natural wonders transcends the photographic memory. The seven natural wonders of the world are the following: 1) Aurora (borealis or australis), 2) eclipse (solar or lunar), 3) green flash at sunset, 4) storms or tectonic events (hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, volcanoes), 5) bioluminescence, 6) mass spawning, and 7) live birth of large animals. 1) Aurora borealis in the Northern Hemisphere (northern lights) or aurora australis in the Southern Hemisphere (southern lights) are natural light displays in high latitudes which can produce colorful curtains, dancing across the night sky. They are ephemeral and typically viewed in winter months standing outside in frigid conditions, as it is difficult to view night skies in high latitude summers. Thus, the experience of seeing them is made more memorable because of the viewing conditions. They are created from solar wind interactions with the earth's magnetic force, thus are a function of the earth's position within the solar system, a concept that reinforces their uniqueness. I have great memories of cross country skiing when I was at the Institute of Marine Science, University of Alaska, Fairbanks and watching magical aurora displays. 2) Another astronomical phenomenon which creates awe and wonder is when the alignment of the sun, earth and moon causes an eclipse, either a solar eclipse where the moon blocks out the sun or a lunar eclipse where the earth's shadow covers the moon. Total eclipses are rare occurrences, which combined with requiring clear skies make them difficult to view. Another type of eclipse is the transit of Venus across the sun that occurs at intervals of less than twice a century. The rarity of viewing these phenomena and the realization that they involve various celestial bodies makes them particularly special. For me, the solar eclipse is spectacular, but I enjoy watching some memorable lunar eclipses, because they are easy to watch (no special viewing aids needed) and really provide a three dimensional image of the moon. 3) One of the vigorously debated wonders is the green flash at sunset. There are many skeptics who believe the green flash is a myth, but there is photographic evidence as well an optical physics explanation. Part of the problem is that it is more of a green glow than a green flash, and it is best viewed with sunset over a water horizon. The green flash is a rare event, and some people view sunsets for years or decades without seeing a green flash. I had the good fortune of watching the green flash three days in a row while helping a friend deliver a 32’ double-ended Bristol Bay gill-netter from Seward to Sitka, Alaska across the Gulf of Alaska. 4) Experiencing nature in its full fury in either storms or tectonic events can be both frightening and memorable. Hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones (different names for the same large low pressure systems in different parts of the world) are awesome events, so much so that they are assigned unique names. Tornados or waterspouts are smaller, but more intense wind events that can be devastating. Tectonic events like earthquakes, volcanos and tsunamis can be devastating and unpredictable. I have experienced several hurricanes, the most memorable was aboard my boat in Hadley’s Harbor, near Woods Hole, Massachusetts during Hurricane Gloria in 1985. 5) Bioluminescence, the production of light by living organisms, can create wonder, particularly when large aggregations of fireflies, worms, dinoflagellates, jellyfish or fish congregate and bioluminescence. The flickering light generated by living organisms in an otherwise dark background provides a stark contrast. My favorite bioluminescence experience was Bahia Forforescente near La Parguera, Puerto Rico and the points of light in three dimensions when surrounded by bioluminescing organisms created an amazing immersive experience. 6) Mass spawning events occur when some species or groups of organisms synchronize their reproductive efforts to overwhelm predators and enhance fertilization success. The timing of these events can be quite precise and related to solar and lunar cues. For example, mass spawning of corals on the Great Barrier Reef occurs several hours after sunset, two days after the full moon approaching summer solstice. The sudden appearance of pink coral eggs and sperm packets in the water, triggering a feeding frenzy by worms and fish, is a remarkable event. I was able to take University of Queensland students to watch coral spawning on Heron Island reef for many years and it never ceased to amaze me. 7) Live birth (or hatching) of animals is a memorable event. While it is more common to witness birth of domesticated animals (e.g., horses, cattle, cats or dogs) than wild animals (e.g., whales, dolphins, bears or lions), both are remarkable events. Human birth is an awesome event, inspiring wonder. The settings for live births distinguish them, from hospitals to barns to wilderness, and the more remote births generate more awe and wonder. There is an element of danger in live births, for both the mother and the baby. Watching the mad scurry of sea turtle hatchlings from the nest to the water is an amazing event. About the author Bill Dennison Dr. Bill Dennison is a Professor of Marine Science and Vice President for Science Application at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES). Dr. Dennison’s primary mission within UMCES is to coordinate the Integration and Application Network. Next Post > Scaling Up: Future of Environmental Decisions workshop Comments - listofwonders 7 years ago Our world is full of wonders :) Thx you for your excellent article!	https://ian.umces.edu/blog/seven-natural-wonders-of-the-world/
It may be that you have a plot that suggests a theme, or a theme you need to find a plot for, but choosing a compelling theme is very useful when developing your screenplay. Some people see screenplays as arguments on a given theme. All the characters take positions on the theme. Minor characters’ single lines state a position on the theme. Subplots explore unintended consequences of the theme. Major characters can debate the theme directly. Some can even present the argument in monologues. If you need a subject for minor characters to be talking about, turn to the theme. The better themes can be argued more than one way. If everyone can agree on the point of the story, there’s not much point in debating it. In most cases you’ll be able to guess at the majority opinion, but great debating comes from being able to present the opposite point of view from what you believe yourself. Ambition leads to destruction OR Does ambition lead to destruction? In the first act the protagonist is unaware of the theme – their actions illustrate the negative aspects of disagreeing with the theme. In the second act the antagonist’s plans force the protagonist to react by acting as if they agreed with the theme without realising or agreeing with the statement of the theme. At the start of the third act the protagonist realises what lessons they have learned, come to an understanding of the theme and then make a choice to act in such a way that demonstrates the statement of the theme is correct. If your cop movie’s theme is “Ambition leads to destruction”, the protagonist acts according to the theme throughout the story. In the first act we are introduced to a cop whose ambition leads her into many frustrations: she’s come to believe that whatever she does, the entrenched system will stop her from getting the position that she deserves in the force. We are also introduced to the antagonist: a corrupt cop who believes that no rules should stop them from getting to the top – ambition works for him. In the end of the second act, the protagonist sees the results of actions she has taken. They have led her to the darkest possible place, but she realises that she has been making the right choices (possibly for the wrong reasons – she discovers that what she wanted wasn’t enough, she realises what she needs). In the third act, she uses the tools and ‘anti-theme’ against the antagonist to demonstrate that she is in agreement with the theme and to illustrate the perils in disagreeing. Have a look at some of the ideas you’ve been coming up with recently. If you look for the debates within the stories, you might see the themes that you want to debate at this point in your life. If you write a journal, the topic that you are most unsure of is the theme you need to write about. I liked the way that you had redesigned the site! I hope you will continue this blog when you are back in the UK.	https://blog.alex4d.com/2007/06/16/the-mass-debate/
Maple lawn and the Kotwal family have collaborated with Jawaharlal Nehru National Youth Center(JNNYC) to offer a well-rounded curriculum for the teacher training programme . But before designing their own learning experiences which would be relevant to the ‘toddlers’ and the ‘Teachers to Be’, Maple lawn had identified experts to explore and regenerate a novel syllabi. Keeping in mind the professional judgements regarding knowledge and skills to be acquired by the tutors a deep approach was adopted to understand the beliefs and values of families, their cultural context, and styles. MISSION “Early Childhood Education can never be considered a career it can only be a passion” - To fill passion, patience , creativity, sense of humour, communication , flexibility and many more to those who could perceive the fact that all children are different and it is we who have to be equipped to face the challenges - A contemporary Emotionally Electrifying Education - To cultivate and nurture a fresh brand of teacher who will be able convert/change ‘Play Schools into Serious Early Learning Centers OBJECTIVES OF THE COURSE - Making ordinary human beings as managers for designing the future generations - Perceive Vygotskian constructivism philosophy that both teachers and their toddlers are embedded in a social matrix which unfolds with love ,care and scaffolding - To practice Bronfenbrenner’s ecological maxim to understand the child’s immediate surroundings which is fundamental in developing complex range of relationships in their lives - To experiment and critically analyse the workability of socio-cultural, socio-behaviouristic theories before conceptualising the approaches and transferring them into strategies, methods and techniques in the teaching learning process for the toddlers. - Have an inquiry mind to generate ideas and innovate methodologies based on either Montessori method, Howard Gardeners Multiple Intelligence , or on constructive thinking .	http://mlmontessori.in/sec/teacher-training/
Wipro Recruitment 2022 : Wipro schedule to hire Graduate Engineer Trainee for 2022. The job location is Gurgaon. The details for the same are provided below. Wipro Limited is an Indian multinational corporation that provides information technology, consulting, and business process services. It is headquartered in Bangalore, Karnataka, India. In 2013, Wipro separated its non-IT businesses and formed the privately-owned Wipro Enterprises Wipro Recruitment 2022 : Company Name: Wipro India Job Role: Graduate Engineer Trainee Salary: Best In Industry Job Description: The purpose of this role is to design, test and maintain software programs for operating systems or applications which needs to be deployed at a client end and ensure they meet 100% quality assurance parameters Do: - Instrumental in understanding the requirements and design ofthe product/ software - Develop software solutions by studying information needs,studying systems flow, data usage and work processes - Investigating problem areas followed by the software developmentlife cycle - Facilitate root cause analysis of the system issues and problemstatement - Identify ideas to improve system performance and impactavailability - Analyze client requirements and convert requirements to feasibledesign - Collaborate with functional teams or systems analysts who carryout the detailed investigation into software requirements - Conferring with project managers to obtain information onsoftware capabilities - Perform coding and ensure optimal software/ moduledevelopment - Determine operational feasibility by evaluating analysis,problem definition, requirements, software development and proposedsoftware - Develop and automate processes for software validation by setting up and designing test cases/scenarios/usage cases, andexecuting these cases - Modifying software to fix errors, adapt it to new hardware,improve its performance, or upgrade interfaces. - Analyzing information to recommend and plan the installation ofnew systems or modifications of an existing system - Ensuring that code is error free or has no bugs and test failure - Preparing reports on programming project specifications,activities and status - Ensure all the codes are raised as per the norm defined forproject / program / account with clear description and replicationpatterns - Compile timely, comprehensive and accurate documentation andreports as requested - Coordinating with the team on daily project status and progressand documenting it - Providing feedback on usability and serviceability, trace theresult to quality risk and report it to concerned stakeholders - Status Reporting and Customer Focus on an ongoing basis withrespect to project and its execution - Capturing all the requirements and clarifications from theclient for better quality work - Taking feedback on the regular basis to ensure smooth and ontime delivery - Participating in continuing education and training to remaincurrent on best practices, learn new programming languages, and betterassist other team members. - Consulting with engineering staff to evaluate software-hardwareinterfaces and develop specifications and performance requirements - Document and demonstrate solutions by developing documentation,flowcharts, layouts, diagrams, charts, code comments and clear code - Documenting very necessary details and reports in a formal wayfor proper understanding of software from client proposal toimplementation - Ensure good quality of interaction with customer w.r.t. e-mailcontent, fault report tracking, voice calls, business etiquette etc - Timely Response to customer requests and no instances ofcomplaints either internally or externally How to Apply for for Wipro Recruitment 2022? All interested and eligible candidates can apply for the Wipro Recruitment drive online by the following link ASAP.	https://www.fresherscooker.com/wipro-recruitment-2022-3/
Within EMEA, the team works closely with senior finance leadership to assess the funding and liquidity impacts of the CIB’s legal entity strategy in the region, monitors and optimizes the liquidity and funding requirements of the CIB in the regional legal entities and supports regional legal entity governance requirements as well as providing input from a regional perspective to firmwide CIB initiatives. This team is looking for a high performing Associate for the EMEA (excluding EU) CIB Treasury Regional Markets Liquidity Team. The team is responsible for ongoing liquidity oversight for the CIB Markets activity in the region, as well as an array of initiatives in this space as the responsibilities for the group continue to grow. This role will have exposure and responsibility across varying levels of management and is an excellent opportunity for a candidate who is interested in a strategic view of the CIB’s activity and who has a keen interest in capital markets, liquidity risk management and funding. Specific responsibilities may include: - Working with the CIB Markets LOBs, Corporate Treasury and Regional Markets Liquidity teams to ensure appropriate measures and monitoring are in place to deliver robust management of CIB liquidity and funding in the region through: - Regular forecasting of future balance sheet, funding and liquidity requirements and tracking vs. actuals - Construction and ongoing maintenance of daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly reporting of liquidity metrics, working closely with Front Office, Product Control, Corporate Treasury, Legal Entity Control, Liquidity Risk Oversight and Regulatory Reporting teams as needed to ensure accurate and timely liquidity reporting - Regular reviews of EMEA legal entity liquidity stress test results (both internal and regulatory-mandated), working with the business to: - Ensure drivers of liquidity usage are well-understood - Improve forecasting of liquidity usage - Optimize liquidity usage where needed - Implement a methodology to charge the LOBs for liquidity usage at the legal entity level as the firm moves to a more LE-focused liquidity charging model - Providing thoughtful analyses to support ALCO (asset and liability committee) review - Working closely with Firmwide Liquidity Analytics, Front Office, Liquidity Risk Oversight and others as needed to ensure liquidity stress methodology is a fair and accurate representation of potential liquidity requirements of the CIB Markets businesses (for example, playing a strong role in liquidity stress methodology ‘deep dives’ or reviewing treatment of CIB activity in LCR/NSFR frameworks) - Partnering with Liquidity Risk Infrastructure (LRI) and Liquidity Controllers to ensure our liquidity risk reporting system is accurately reflecting business activity and liquidity risk methodology and requirements, highlighting issues or identifying enhancement opportunities and helping to drive to conclusion - Providing thoughtful analysis required by our regulators, such as annual ILAAP and ICAAP documentation, as well as developing responses to ad hoc regulatory requests from PRA, FCA, EBA, Federal Reserve, SEC, FINRA, OCC and potentially others regarding CIB Markets funding and liquidity in the region - Supporting legal entity strategy by contributing to the development of pro-forma analyses for the EMEA legal entities’ liquidity, funding and stress testing profiles, considering potential regulatory changes or internal strategy or risk appetite changes Qualifications The preferred candidate will be a dynamic individual with intellectual curiosity and a strong track record of insightful analysis and control focus coupled with delivery of process improvements.	https://work180.com/en-gb/for-women/employer/jpmorgan/job/466105/cib-treasury-associatesenior-associate
The Transportation Department provides transportation services to all students in grades K-12. The Transportation Department also provides transportation to our Metco students. Weston Public Schools owns and operates its own fleet of 29 school buses to serve in-town, Metco, athletic and field trips. The district operates 28 diesel buses and 1 gasoline bus. The district has developed a Transportation Handbook. The purpose of the handbook is to provide information about our school bus transportation system and to clarify expectations of employees and riders. Weston Public School parents can download the UbicaBus Parent App that allows them to see where their bus is on the route and receive alerts about arrival. At the start of each year, UbicaBus will send parents an email with your username and password. Please note that you cannot signup on your own; to ensure the security of student data, UbicaBus is invite only. If you have not received your invite, or have questions, the transportation office to request an account or seek assistance. Appropriate student and staff behavior on school buses is especially important to ensure the safety of passengers, drivers, and other drivers. Behavior that jeopardizes safety will not be tolerated. Conduct that is not acceptable in school is not acceptable on busses. Bus Driver/Bus Monitor Expectations: - Be courteous; - Set clear student behavior expectations for the bus; - Notify Principals of any behavioral issues that arise; - Maintain a safe driving record, current license, and all required training; - Abide by the laws of the road, including wearing seatbelts at all times; - Know the students on the bus by name; - Introduce yourself to the families of the students; - Pull off the road and/or stop to answer or use the bus hands-free phone; - Leave all personal electronic devices at the bus office; - Follow the assigned bus route unless a modification is approved by the Transportation Coordinator; - Maintain appropriate demeanor at all times, including appropriate language; - If a confrontation occurs, request the student/parent contact the Transportation Office for further discussion. Do not engage the individual; - Contact police in the event of an accident; and - In the case of an emergency, ensure all protocols are followed and student safety is prioritized. Parent Expectations: - Have students at the bus stop 5 minutes prior to expected bus arrival time; - Remind students to stay at assigned bus stop until the bus has come to a complete stop, the door has been opened, and the driver motions to the student to board; - Introduce yourself to your bus driver; - If appropriate and comfortable, discuss any medical issues regarding your child (i.e. EpiPen use, etc.) with the driver; - Discuss appropriate bus behavior with your child; - Never ‘chase’ the bus either on foot or by car; - Yield to a school bus; - Never pass a bus when the red stop sign is visible and/or the yellow flashing lights are on; - Abide by the Do Not Enter and / or Bus Only signs at the schools; - Contact the Transportation Coordinator or complete the on-line Bus Complaint Form to communicate concerns to the Transportation Office; - Do not confront the driver or distract driver from the completion of their route; - Do not board the bus for any reason; - Avoid gift giving to the drivers/monitors; and - Browse lost and found at the Transportation Office if missing items.	https://www.westonschools.org/district/administration/transportation-department/
Tips to Write a History Essay Some of us still have no idea why to write an essay on history if we have accurately described events in the textbooks? Writing a history essay from scratch develops the student's personality, teaches to make up his own mind, evaluate judgment on a particular historical event, and form priorities. A history essay tests the student's knowledge of historical events and his ability to collate information, present results in a free form, and understand the historical meaning of phenomena. If you want to get a great essay, you can get help from papercoach.net or use our effective tips to write an essay. Pick Up the Period You Know Pretty Well As a rule, any college essay is limited to a certain amount of words, and you need to use these words wisely to give a short overview of your problem. Your paper's main requirement is to demonstrate a good knowledge of the selected period in a brief form. The essay will be based on key facts like wars, rebellions, regime change, signing of significant documents, etc.), and you have to know the backgrounds for the events, their flows, and consequences. Plan Your Essay When you have chosen the period, you should make an essay plan to structure it and not feel confused. Your papers should consist of an introductory part, the main part (three or four paragraphs), and a conclusion. The main body passages have to be well-organized and follow a logical sequence. You can organize events in paragraphs chronologically or thematically. Write the First Draft Write a Catchy Introduction An introduction is the first stage when a reader experiences your work and form his opinion about it. Meanwhile, you are writing an introductory part; you address the main question of your essay and point out your essay's direction. Don’t waste time telling stories; get straight to the point. Start with a small context, answer your main question, and emphasize your support point of view. Main Part Some students make the same mistake. They think that paragraphs should contain the same amount of sentences as an introduction. But it’s not so. Each paragraph should contain 100-200 words, focus only on one topic or problem, and highlight the problem's essence. Don’t forget to include a strong opening sentence that introduces the paragraph’s issue and its explanation. Provides an example to support your idea. Create a Polished Conclusion A conclusion is the final part of your paper. What should a conclusion include? An ideal conclusion restates your essay's ideas and closes your essay with a polished and smooth ending. Your conclusion shouldn’t be too long. It’s enough to write 4 or 5 well-crafted sentences. Edit Your Essay Although your essay is historical and contains important events from our past, you need to avoid mistakes (grammar, lexical or punctuation), typos, repetitions, etc. You might ask someone to proofread your paper for you or use an online grammar checker. Read your essay aloud to make sure your essay sounds nice and have a logical flow of events.	http://tohum2018.org/tips-to-write-a-history-essay.php
Above: Ferial Govashiri, center, with students at Stockton University. Below: Stockton Women's Leadership Council Speaker Series sponsors and members Cristina Stummer, Johanna Johnson, Whitney Ullman, Alicia McMackin, Gayle Gross and Cookie Till. Atlantic City, N.J. - The Stockton Women’s Leadership Council (SWLC) kicked off its Distinguished Women. Distinctive Voices. series April 4 with Ferial Govashiri, former personal aide to President Barack Obama, as the inaugural speaker. The event brought more than 115 members of the community, as well as Stockton faculty, staff, alumni, and students, to the Fannie Lou Hamer Room at the Stockton University Atlantic City Academic Center. Cristina Stummer, partner at Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr and chair of the SWLC, introduced the new speaker series, which offers a platform for female leaders to share their experiences to inspire the next generation of female leaders. Stockton President Dr. Harvey Kesselman welcomed guests and encouraged support for the council. Govashiri reflected on how her identity as a first-generation American and her family’s experience as immigrants had a tremendous impact on her professional trajectory. She offered her perspective on how young women pursuing careers can thrive in the face of adversity. Earlier in the day, Govashiri discussed her experiences in the White House and the private sector with students and faculty on the Galloway campus. Stockton senior Matthew Assad moderated the conversation. Govashiri said one of the most important things she learned from President Obama is to seek out different points of view, even if you ultimately have the right answer. “Listen to everyone’s perspective before making a decision,” she said. Govashiri also highlighted the benefits of mentorship, networking and other tips for succeeding in the workforce. “Your name, your reputation, is all you have. Make sure if it has your name on it, it carries the weight of your brand,” she said. The event was sponsored by Dr. Johanna Johnson, founding member of the SWLC and chair of the Stockton University Foundation Board of Directors; Gayle Gross, founding member of the SWLC and member of the Stockton University Foundation Board of Directors; Pepsi; FantaSea Resorts; and Steve & Cookie’s By the Bay. The Stockton Women’s Leadership Council (SWLC) – a Stockton University Foundation initiative – is dedicated to the empowerment of women and seeks to promote networking among women and the community. The SWLC offers a platform for professionals to build relationships, discuss issues related to women, engage in mentorship opportunities, and explore ways that relevant program events and leadership development opportunities can be supported by enhanced philanthropy. Through the Council’s initiatives, faculty, staff, alumnae, friends and students will create a tradition of female leadership that will have a sustainable impact at Stockton University and across our region. Other founding members of the SWLC include: Cristina Stummer, chair of the SWLC; Donna Albano, Donna Buzby, Alexa D’Amato Barrera, Susan Davenport, Pamela Fields, Andrea Giannini, Lori Herndon, Lynne Kesselman, Jessica Kowal, Rita Mack, and Roxanne Passarella. For more information on the SWLC contact Alicia McMackin ’03 at (609) 652-4861 or [email protected].	https://stockton.edu/news/2019/womens-leadership-council-ferial-govashiri.html
Although jazz guitar is a formal discipline, you can mix it into your repertoire of original songs without formal training. Here are five easy ways to do this: Include Triads In Your Songs Triads (three-note chords) are your most accessible ally. There are two basic ones. I refer to the first one as the “L.” It looks like this: Although it can be strummed, the “L” chord sounds best when plucked (with your thumb, index, and middle fingers to be specific). When plucked, it makes an attractive “thumping” sound. When multiple “L” chords in different positions are played in quick succession, they can imitate walking bass patterns which are common to jazz. I refer to the other triad as the “triangle.” It looks like this: The “triangle” is a five (not six) string chord (ADGBE). Like the “L”, it can be easily transposed anywhere on the neck just by sliding it up or down. While writing a song, I recommend experimenting with both formations in as many different positions as possible. Combine Them With Barre Chords Jazz chords are typically more complex than the common first-position chords (C, D, E, F, G, A, and B7th). Sevenths, minors, and other chord variations are common. These two barre chord formations can easily be switched from major to seventh if you remove the note marked with an X. They can also be changed from major to minor by moving the Y back a half step. As with the triads, I recommend experimenting with barre chords in different positions too. Add Pentatonic Notes The pentatonic scale (“penta” meaning “five”) is comprised entirely of notes that make up the circle of fifths (C, G, D, A, E, B, Gb/F#, Db, Ab, Eb, Bb, and F): If you haven’t already done so, practice these scale patterns. Use the notes in these scales to improvise. Keep Your Progression Simple Although may be familiar with complicated-looking jazz guitar scores (and, yes, many of them contain laundry lists of intricate chords), you’ll benefit more as a songwriter by keeping your chords trim. Start with a I-IV-V pattern (such as A, D, and E7th) and embellish it with the suggestions above. Remember, your objective is not to win a prize for complexity. It’s to make memorable music. The easier it will be to learn to play, the more memorable it will be in the long run. Keep Your Subject Material Light Here’s the fun part – writing lyrics. Compared to other American genres, jazz involves soft and gentle themes. “Grab your coat. Grab your hat. Leave your worries on the doorstep,” is a good example of a great jazz lyric. So is “Stars shining bright above you. Night breezes seem to whisper ‘I love you.’ Birds singing in the sycamore trees. Dream a little dream of me.” Forget angry topics. You’re not out to take your audience on an emotional roller coaster. If you’re writing a song about heartache, it should be sad and not vindictive: Willow weep for me Willow weep for me Bend your branches down along the ground and cover me For me, jazz is a basically joyful-sounding music. It’s free from the raw exuberance, aggressive sounds, and gritty topics common to Chicago and Texas blues, contemporary country, and metal. Its music and lyrics should both reflect this by having been written in a peaceful state of mind. Working with a private guitar teacher is a great way to build your jazz guitar skills fast. Find your guitar teacher today! Samuel B. teaches beginner guitar lessons in Austin, TX. He teaches lessons face-to-face without sheet music, which is his adaptation of Japanese instruction (involving a call-and-response method). Learn more about Samuel here!	https://takelessons.com/blog/how-to-write-a-jazz-guitar-song-z01
The School of Mathematical Sciences offers broadly-based courses for students who wish to develop their mathematical knowledge and ability to a level that is highly valued by employers. Our students enjoy mathematics, were good at mathematics in school and want to make significant use of their mathematical skills in their careers. This course will help you to capitalise on your interest in mathematics by completing a strongly numerate degree. You will be able to study a wide range of topics across mathematics, financial mathematics and actuarial science, applied mathematics and statistics, concentrating on the areas you like most. The Mathematical Sciences, both as a language and as a body of knowledge and technique, have provided the fundamental underpinnings of science and technology for centuries. Today, the influence and applicability of the Mathematical Sciences reaches far beyond the physical sciences and engineering into medicine, business and finance, the life sciences and the social sciences. Apart from their wide-ranging applications, the Mathematical Sciences are also studied for the elegance and coherence of their ideas and the intellectual challenges they present. Pure mathematicians work on abstract problems independent of any immediate practical application – creating new mathematics, building new mathematical structures and unravelling new mathematical patterns. Applied mathematicians develop analytical and numerical techniques and utilise them in the construction of mathematical models capable of describing a wide range of physical and related phenomena. Statisticians are concerned with the collection, analysis and interpretation of numerical information as a basis for decision-making. Their particular expertise is coping with the variability in data and reducing the uncertainty of conclusions based on such data. The primary mission of the School is to provide high quality education in Mathematics, Applied Mathematics and Statistics and to carry out research to the highest international standards in a spirit of community and professional service. Our tradition of excellence dates back to George Boole (1815-1864), the first Professor of Mathematics at UCC.	https://www.ucc.ie/en/matsci/incoming/
Please note! Course description is confirmed for two academic years (1.8.2018-31.7.2020), which means that in general, e.g. Learning outcomes, assessment methods and key content stays unchanged. However, via course syllabus, it is possible to specify or change the course execution in each realization of the course, such as how the contact sessions are organized, assessment methods weighted or materials used. LEARNING OUTCOMES On successful completion of this course, students will be able to: illustrate users, use, concepts, contexts and their relationships to support human centred design process. focus and adjust the angle of scrutiny by choosing and designing appropriate representations. create design artefacts to invite stakeholders, stage collaboration, frame design opportunity, justify solutions and persuade audience. Credits: 5 Schedule: 10.09.2019 - 18.10.2019 Teacher in charge (valid 01.08.2020-31.07.2022): Turkka Keinonen Teacher in charge (applies in this implementation): Turkka Keinonen Contact information for the course (applies in this implementation): CEFR level (applies in this implementation): Language of instruction and studies (valid 01.08.2020-31.07.2022): Teaching language: English Languages of study attainment: English CONTENT, ASSESSMENT AND WORKLOAD Content Valid 01.08.2020-31.07.2022: The course addresses visual and narrative approaches to human-centred design to illustrate users, use, concepts and contexts for reflective design, collaboration, evaluation and persuasion purposes. The course gives students skills in illustrating and explicating different aspects of products and the use of products and services by visual and narrative means. The students learn to choose, compose and apply design artefacts for different communication purposes that are necessary for designing material and immaterial concepts and solutions for socio-technical systems. They learn how to create design artefacts that invite contributions and create stakeholders' commitment, material for iterating and annotating the progress of design, to adjust the angle of scrutiny by choosing appropriate representations, to clarify complex relationships and isolate critical issues, to convince their audiences and to justify their solutions, and to contextualize design concepts. They learn how to use visual media to support oral communication and how to create self-standing presentations with media such as drawings, photos, videos, interactive demonstrations, physical props or mock-ups. Assessment Methods and Criteria Valid 01.08.2020-31.07.2022: project portfolio: content, presentation, reflection peer evaluation: attendance, contribution, timeliness, quality, peer support Workload Valid 01.08.2020-31.07.2022: 5 ects, 135 h Contact teaching consisting of briefing sessions, workshops, excursions, and tutoring: 35h (≈ 12 x 3h) Weekly team assignments: 60h Project portfolio 20h Personal reflection 20h DETAILS Study Material Valid 01.08.2020-31.07.2022: Will be announced in the beginning of the course. Available through MyCourses Prerequisites Valid 01.08.2020-31.07.2022:	https://mycourses.aalto.fi/course/info.php?id=25804
SCANFIL PLC STOCK EXCHANGE RELEASE 17 AUGUST 2012 2.30 P.M. RAY SELECTS SCANFIL EMS OY AS A CONTRACT SUPPLIER FOR A SLOT MACHINE ASSEMBLY As a public procurement project, based on a competitive tendering as per the Act on Public Contracts, Finland’s Slot Machine Association (RAY) has selected Scanfil EMS Oy, a subsidiary of Scanfil plc, as the contract supplier for a slot machine assembly and proto series manufacturing. The agreement is valid until further notice. The decision is subject to an appeal period of at least two weeks. The decision does not mean that a contract has been signed with RAY on supplying the services. That is only done by signing a written delivery contract. Scanfil ESM Oy has been the contract manufacturer for RAY since 2008. Through the supply contract to be signed, it is estimated that the supplying of slot machines and other services to RAY will continue at the current level, i.e. about 20 million euros per year. Slot machines are manufactured by the Sievi factory of Scanfil EMS Oy. Scanfil plc will issue a separate release on the signing of the supply contract. SCANFIL PLC Harri Takanen President Additional information: President Harri Takanen Tel +358 8 4882 111 Distribution NASDAQ OMX, Helsinki Major Media www.scanfil.com Scanfil Group is engaged in contract manufacturing for international telecommunications technology and professional electronics manufacturers. Scanfil has 35 years of experience in demanding contract manufacturing. Scanfil is a systems supplier that offers its products and services to international telecommunications systems manufacturers and professional electronics customers. Typical products are equipment systems for mobile and public switched telephone networks, automation systems, frequency converters, lift control systems, equipment and systems for electricity production and transmission, analysers, slot machines and different meteorological instruments. The company has production facilities in China, Estonia, Hungary and Finland. The associated company of Scanfil Group:	https://www.scanfil.com/newsroom/stock_release/ray-selects-scanfil-ems-oy-as-a-contract-supplier-for-a-slot-machine-assembly
When Is Parent Rock The Same As Bedrock? When is parent rock the same as bedrock? When the rock formation that is the source of mineral fragments in the soil lies directly above the bedrock. Is parent rock and bedrock the same? Below the subsoil is the parent rock or C – horizon which consists of small pieces of rocks with cracks and crevices. The particles of rocks found in soil come from weathered rock in the C – horizon. Below this is solid rock called bedrock. How does parent rock or bedrock become sediments? Sedimentary rocks are formed when older rocks are broken apart by plant roots ice wedges and earth movements and become transported by glaciers waves currents and wind. Which horizon is parent rock and why? Bedrock or Horizon C Bedrock is also known as parent rock and lies just below the subsoil. It contains no organic matter and made up of stones and rocks so it is very hard. This layer represents a transition zone between the earth’s bedrock and horizon A and B. What is the difference between rock and bedrock? is that bedrock is (uncountable\|geology\|mining\|engineering\|construction) the solid rock that exists at some depth below the ground surface bedrock is rock “in place” as opposed to material that has been transported from another location by weathering and erosion while rock is (uncountable) the naturally occurring … Which rock is called parent rock? In the earth sciences parent rock also sometimes substratum is the original rock from which younger rock or soil is formed. … Parent rock can be sedimentary igneous or metamorphic. In the context of metamorphic rocks the parent rock (or protolith) is the original rock before metamorphism occurred. How is parent rock formed? Parent Material. … The parent material may be mineral rock and/or organic matter. When parent rock material is exposed to the atmosphere or when organic matter and/or minerals are deposited on the earth’s surface soil formation begins. Why is bedrock a parent material? What is weathered bedrock? Weathered bedrock Bedrock that is altered from its original state by chemical weathering processes (e.g. oxidation hydrolysis). Is Minecraft on phone bedrock edition? What is the C horizon? The C horizon is a mineral horizon excluding strongly cemented and hard bedrock and the horizon is little affected by pedogenic processes and by definition lacks the properties of O A E or B horizons (Soil Survey Staff 2014). … In many soils the bedrock is found below 200 cm depth. What are the 4 major soil horizons? What are the 5 Horizons? There are five soil horizons: O A E B and C. (R is used to denote bedrock.) There is no set order for these horizons within a soil. Some soil profiles have an A-C combination some have an O-E-B an O-A-B or just an O. Is bedrock the hardest rock? You’ve probably noticed if you’ve ever dug to the bottom of the world that bedrock is indestructible in survival mode. … Real-world bedrock is hard but absolutely breakable – and most large buildings are anchored into the bedrock with structures called “foundations”. What is the difference between basement rock and bedrock? These ancient igneous and metamorphic rocks called basement rocks compose much of the continental crust. However on the shield margins thick sequences of relatively undeformed sedimentary rocks cover the basement rocks. … Together the shield and platform make up the bedrock area known as the continental craton. Bedrock is the layer of rock beneath soil. In some cases the bedrock is the parent rock. In these cases the soil remains above the bedrock that weathered to form the soil. … Soil can be carried away from its parent rock by wind water ice or gravity. Are also called parent rocks? The parent rock is also called the bedrock. Soil is formed from the parent rock. … Sedimentary rocks are also called stratified rocks. Where is the parent rock? The term is also used in the context of metamorphic rocks where again the parent rock refers to the original rock before metamorphism takes place. Parent rocks can be sedimentary igneous or metamorphic. In these cases parent rock may be referred to as the protolith. Parent rock is the main source of soil. What rocks form metamorphic rocks? Metamorphic rocks form when sedimentary igneous or pre-existing metamorphic rocks are changed by heat pressure and chemically reactive waters. These rocks are identified by their minerals and texture. What is parent rock 8 geography? Parent Rock: The parent rock determines the colour texture permeability chemical property and mineral content of the soil. Climate: Temperature and rainfall influence the rate of weathering. Relief: Altitude and slope determine the accumulation of soil at a place. What is parent rock in Class 8? Answer. The rock from which soil is derived is called parent rock. What kinds of materials can be a parent rock? Parent material is the geologic material from which soil horizons form. There are seven variations of parent material. Weathered Bedrock Till Outwash Deposit Eolian Sand Loess Alluvium and Local Overwash. Can you break bedrock? What is another name for parent material? Parent material transported by wind has many names. The most common names are loess or aeolian. Parent material transported from volcanic eruptions is called tephra it can be carried great distances by wind after being spewed from a volcano. Wind is a good sorter of soil particles. What is the average depth of bedrock? When did bedrock Minecraft come out? August 16 2011 What is the hardest rock? How do you break bedrock in real life? Is PE bedrock or Java? Are Bedrock and Pocket Edition the same? Yes. While the game has evolved Mojang has since updated the name. Collectively most versions of Minecraft that are not the Java version fall under “Bedrock”. Can PE and bedrock play together? The Bedrock Edition allows users from the Minecraft Console version and PE version to crossplay through the same local wifi or if there is a Realm server. PS4 is the only console that is unable to crossplay with the other platforms. Can I play Hypixel on bedrock? Hypixel is only available on the Java Edition of Minecraft but was formerly available on the Bedrock Edition of the game as well. … C and R represent the master horizons and layers of soils. The capital letters are the base symbols to which other characters are added to complete the designation. Most horizons and layers are given a single capital letter symbol but some require two. Does the C horizon consists of weathered bedrock? the layer in a soil profile below the B horizon and immediately above the bedrock consisting chiefly of weathered partially decomposed rock. What contains the C horizon?	https://www.microblife.in/when-is-parent-rock-the-same-as-bedrock/
Input sought on first draft of Iowa’s Every Student Succeeds Act plan Iowa Department of Education Director Ryan Wise has announced that the first draft of Iowa’s state plan for meeting requirements of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is now available for public comment through an online feedback survey, as well as a two-week statewide tour that Department leaders have already kicked off. “We have spent several months collecting feedback from Iowans about what they think student success should look like in our state, and this first draft is a critical step in the process of implementing the ESSA,” Wise said. “I want to emphasize that this draft is not our final plan, and we need broad input from education stakeholders to guide our revisions so that we ultimately submit a final plan that makes sense for Iowa.” Wise and other department leaders have sought input on the ESSA through 13 public forums in 2016, a state advisory committee, focus groups with education advocates, education work teams focused on specific components of ESSA, and written comments. Iowans are invited to give feedback on the first draft of Iowa’s ESSA plan in the online feedback survey, which is open through Feb. 15, or in person during the statewide information tour from Jan. 9-19. A meeting schedule is available on the Iowa Department of Education’s website. Feedback also can be submitted via email at [email protected] or by mail at: Iowa Department of Education, Attn: Deputy Director David Tilly/ESSA Feedback, Grimes State Office Building, 400 E. 14th St., Des Moines, Iowa 50319-0146. Comments will be considered in a revised draft of Iowa’s ESSA plan, which is expected in May. ESSA is a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. This update, which received bipartisan support in Congress and was signed by the President in 2015, replaces the No Child Left Behind Act and will be fully implemented in the 2017-2018 school year. ESSA maintains a focus on transparency and accountability while returning more authority to states and local school districts to set goals and create systems of support that will improve student learning. Under ESSA, Iowa and other states must develop state plans that address academic standards, assessments, school and district accountability, funding, and support for struggling schools.	http://mt-pleasant-ia.villagesoup.com/p/input-sought-on-first-draft-of-iowa-s-every-student-succeeds-act-plan/1614350
51 billion – it is how many tons of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere every year. Of course, this number fluctuates from year to year, but in general it is increasing. Zero is a number you want to strive for. To avoid global warming and a climate catastrophe, it will be necessary to stop the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The amount of them, which is currently being released, leads to the fact that all processes associated with global warming are accelerating. There will be more and more hot days, the level of the world oceans will rise, hurricanes will become more intense, and forest fires will become more and more destructive. If we want to protect ourselves from the dire effects of global warming, we need to start reducing emissions today. It is not an easy task, therefore, its solution requires the participation of all countries and our global cooperation. THE GLOBAL CHALLENGE IS TO REDUCE EMISSIONS TO ZERO The standard of living is improving everywhere, which is good. But any field of activity – agriculture, industry, logistics is accompanied by an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. If nothing changes, humanity will create irreversible climatic changes and feel their monstrous consequences. To avoid a climate catastrophe, you need to get to zero. We need to use what we have today (for example, sun and wind) faster and more productively. We need new revolutionary technologies that will help to achieve the main goal. The key to tackling climate change is to make clean energy as cheap and reliable as fossil fuels. The cost of fossil fuels is irrelevant to the environmental damage, which it causes. But to reach zero, you will have to abandon fossil fuels and stop all activities that lead to the emission of greenhouse gases (such as the production of concrete, the use of fertilizers or cubic meters of leaks from gas power plants). There is no other way. In a carbon-free future, we will still continue to pollute the atmosphere, but we will have the opportunity to remove carbon dioxide from it. BILL GATES RECOMMENDS: #1 Watch the video lectures Earth’s Changing Climate by Professor Richard Wolfson #2 Read John Cox’s book Weather for Dummies #3 You can also watch the speech of Bill Gates at the TED-conference Innovating to Zero (the variant of the title – Update to Zero) BY THE END OF THE CENTURY WE WILL BE IN A HOT FRYING PAN Reducing emissions by 50% will not stop warming, but only slow it down, postpone, but will not prevent a climate catastrophe. To limit the rise in temperature, over time, more greenhouse gases will have to be removed from the atmosphere than we have produced. We have already raised temperatures by at least 1 ° C since the pre-industrial era, and if we do not reduce emissions, temperatures are likely to rise by 1.5-3 ° C by the middle of this century, and by 4-8 ° C by the end of the century. Climate changes will not manifest themselves individually, but in a complex, complementing each other, and their consequences will seriously affect humanity. People will have to change their lifestyles in all areas to avoid rising temperatures and a global climate catastrophe. Starting from how we receive and use energy resources, how we produce food, how we utilize and recycle waste, how we use cars. And even what we are doing with the accumulated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which create the greenhouse effect. TWO NEWS: GOOD AND BAD The good news – nowadays, there is a technology in the world that allows you to remove carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere – DAC (direct air capture). In short, it is a technology that makes it possible to “drive” air over a special device that absorbs carbon dioxide and stores it. The bad news is that the technology is expensive and poorly understood, plus the question is where and how safely we can store millions of tons of carbon. If the technology works on a large scale, it will enable us to capture greenhouse gases around the world. In terms of cost, according to Gates’s calculations, which he cites in the book, we will need at least $ 5.1 trillion / year to remove from the atmosphere 51 billion tons of CO₂ that we produce annually. ROLE OF INNOVATION. SUPPLY AND DEMAND In energy, software development, and virtually any other direction, innovation should not be taken in a strictly technological sense. Innovation is not just about inventing a new mechanism or a new process. It is also about new approaches to business model, supply chain, markets and policies that will breathe life into a new invention and help it go global. In other words, innovation is both new devices and new ways of working. I have divided the elements of my plan into 2 categories. They are no doubt familiar to everyone who has studied basic economics: the first category is about expanding the supply of innovations, and the second is about stimulating demand for these innovations. These two categories are interrelated and influence each other. Without a demand for innovation, inventors and legislators will have no incentive to push new ideas; without a stable supply, buyers will not have the green products, which the world needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero. THE PRICE OF INNOVATION Investment in research and development is one of the key factors that will help to combat climate change, but governments are not doing enough in this area. Public funding for R&D that deals with clean energy is about $ 22 billion a year, which is 0.02% of the global economy (Americans spend more on gasoline per month). The United States, which is the largest investor in clean energy research today, spends only about $ 7 billion a year on it. An independent HGP study found that for every dollar, which the government invests in developing new energy sources, on average, the country earns $ 141 in revenue. The private sector is systematically underfunding R&D in the energy sector. Energy companies spend on average only 0.3% of their revenues on energy R&D. By contrast, the electronics and pharmaceutical industries spend nearly 10% and 13% respectively. In general, the role of the government is to invest in R&D when the private sector is not motivated to do it. But when it becomes clear how the company can make money on it, the private sector turns on. In fact, it is how we got the products you probably use every day, including the Internet, medications, and the GPS system your smartphone needs to navigate the city. The personal computer business, including Microsoft, would never have achieved such success if the US government had not invested in research to create smaller, faster microprocessors. THE POLARITY OF THE WORLD Wealthy and middle class people are responsible for the vast majority of climate change. But the most unprepared, poor and undeveloped countries will suffer mostly from them. Extreme poverty has plummeted over the past quarter-century from 36% of the population of the world in 1990 to 10% in 2020, although COVID-19 has stalled this progress in many ways. In turn, climate change could increase the number of people living in extreme poverty by 13%. Therefore, the most responsible for the climate disaster must help the rest of the world get through it. For example, 500 million small farms which exist on the planet. On average, 2/3 of people below the poverty line are employed in agriculture. These people will suffer the most, since the slightest temperature drops mean crop failures, bankruptcy and collapse for them. They need help to adapt to warmer climates. We must provide incentives to farmers so that they can simultaneously reduce emissions and increase production as the global population grows and we need more food. What to do: - Risk reduction (special design of buildings, protection of water bodies, encouragement of resettlement from areas unsuitable for habitation). - Emergency preparedness and rapid response. - Disaster recovery (provision of medical care, access to education, insurance to accelerate the adaptation and recovery process). SWITCHING TO SOLAR AND WIND ENERGY I don’t give up this point of view immediately, but I softened it up when I had realized how much land it would take to generate a little more electricity from the sun and wind. A solar farm needs 5 to 50 times more land to generate as much electricity as a coal plant, and a wind farm 10 times more. No matter how we deceive ourselves, even if all our rosy dreams of renewable sources come true (we will build many wind turbines, solar and hydroelectric power plants), the world still cannot do without a new round in the development of nuclear energy. It is the only balancing capacity that does not contribute to CO₂ emissions.	https://huxley.media/en/how-can-we-avoid-a-climate-catastrophe-key-ideas-of-the-world-bestseller-part-ii/
2020 ELECTIONS LESSONS LEARNED As 2020 comes to an end, and we get ready for 2021, the EAC would like to thank all of you for your hard work and dedication during these challenging times. As we move into the new year, we want to hear from election officials! During the 2020 elections, officials overcame significant challenges. The EAC is compiling lessons learned from the 2020 elections. If you would like to share information on what went well and what challenges you faced, and other improvements and solutions from the 2020 election please email the EAC at [email protected]. You can read our most recent statement How the United States Election Assistance Commission Facilitates Fair and Secure Elections here. Make sure that you never miss an update by signing up for the EAC Quarterly Newsletter. Email Rebecca at [email protected] to be added to the mailing list. DID YOU KNOW? During summer 2020, EAC partnered with the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) to offer no-cost online cybersecurity training for election officials and staff. Take advantage of this opportunity before it expires at the end of May 2021! WE HAVE MOVED! U.S. Election Assistance Commission 633 3rd Street NW, Suite 200 Washington, DC 20001 RESEARCH UPDATES ELECTION ADMINISTRATION AND VOTING SURVEY (EAVS) The EAC publishes biennial Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) Comprehensive Reports, which feature key election administration data findings from all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. On August 10, 2020, the EAC released an updated policy guide for EAVS detailing the process and timeline for state data submissions as well as other important information. The 2020 EAVS launched on November 9, 2020. State and local EAVS respondents have until February 1, 2021 to submit their first round of data. Respondents can find videos, newsletters, and other resources to assist in their EAVS submissions by checking out the EAVS Portal Resources page here. VOTE BY MAIL TURNOUT TRENDS In October 2020, the EAC published a blog that explains vote by mail and turnout trends for general elections from 2008 through 2018. The blog is can be reviewed here. The research department can be contacted at [email protected]. WORKING WITH RUTGERS & MIT In an upcoming partnership with MIT's Election Data and Science Lab (MEDSL), the EAC will also study the overall impact of the 2020 general election on election administration. The study will be geared toward assessing innovative ways election officials managed COVID-19, as well as identifying any lessons learned for future application. The EAC is also working with a team from Rutgers University to survey voters with disabilities about their experiences during the 2020 election season. The survey focuses on three areas: assessing poll worker assistance for voters with disabilities, current and future voting technological accessibility solutions - including security concerns, and accessible mail and absentee voting alternatives such as electronic ballot delivery and marking. Results from the survey should be available in early February. THE CYBER ACCESS AND SECURITY PROGRAM The EAC's Cyber Access and Security Program provides access to security training, best practices, expertise, and other assistance for election officials tasked with protecting critical election infrastructure. The program collaborates with public and private security experts to ensure that election officials have the most up-to-date and best in class information available through the EAC’s Clearinghouse. The CAS program offers training, webinars, and white papers on cyber risk and crisis management, and is hosting the CISA-developed election security risk profile tool. Finally, the program worked with CISA, FBI, and NIST to create the first of its kind risk assessment of remote voting technologies. These materials and more are available here. TESTING AND CERTIFICATION VVSG 2.0 EAC staff collaborated with the NIST Voting Systems Program to review and address public comments for the VVSG 2.0 Requirements throughout the summer and fall. EAC staff has also drafted test assertions for many of the requirements. Currently, EAC staff is reviewing the revised requirements, reviewing and revising the Testing and Certification and Voting System Test Laboratories Program Manuals, and drafting a VVSG 2.0 implementation policy. VOTING SYSTEM ANOMALY REPORTING Voting system anomaly reporting is an important pillar of the EAC’s Testing and Certification program. These reports help the EAC identify areas for improvement within our program, improve manufacturing quality, share information among jurisdictions who use similar systems, and increase voter confidence in the technology they use to cast their ballots. In some cases, information provided by you may also initiate an investigation of a voting system or voting system manufacturer that may warrant suspension or de-certification. The EAC’s Testing and Certification program relies on field reporting as a critical measure of its success. For more information, go to: https://www.eac.gov/voting-system-anomaly-reporting-january-28-2020 OCIO UPDATE SOLARWINDS ORION UPDATE The EAC is not directly affected by the Solarwinds Orion compromise as we do not run this software and we continue to closely monitor activity on our network for signs of malicious activity related to the compromise. Additionally, the EAC has reached out to its accredited laboratories and registered voting system manufacturers for information on whether or not their systems were exposed to the compromise. To date, the information we have received indicates that our laboratories and registered manufacturers were not affected. The EAC will continue to monitor the situation and work with our partners to ensure that the agency, its laboratories, and registered manufacturers have the most up-to-date information and mitigations for this activity. GRANTS AND FUNDING As election officials worked through the certification of their election results, they also submitted required reporting on how the CARES Act funds for coronavirus response were spent. We appreciate everyone's hard work submitting these reports during such a busy time. The reports can be found here. HAVA Security Grant reports are due December 29th and are usually reviewed and made available by middle of February. They will be posted here when available. CARES ACT GRANTS CARES Act Funding Webinar on April 9, 2020 The CARES Act of 2020: Meeting the Match Interview 1: Considerations for CARES Act Grant Funding Use (Alabama and Florida) Interview 2: Consideration for CARES Act Grant Funding Use for elections in this COVID environment (Pennsylvania and Kentucky) Interview 3: Considerations for CARES Act Grant Funding Use at the Local Level (Missouri and Iowa) Interview 4: Considerations for CARES Act Funding (Louisiana and Connecticut) 2020 CLEARIE AWARDS The EAC is accepting submissions for the 5th annual National Clearinghouse Awards. The Clearinghouse Awards, known as the “Clearies,” honor the enterprising spirit and hard work of election officials across the country. It’s easy to enter and a great way to celebrate the accomplishments of state and local election offices. Information on how to enter is available on the Clearie webpage. All sizes of jurisdictions are encouraged to submit their work. If you have an achievement to celebrate, or know of an achievement that deserves recognition, we want to hear from you. The 2020 Clearie award categories are: - Improving Accessibility for Voters with Disabilities; - Outstanding Innovations in Elections; - Best Practices in Recruiting, Retaining. and Training Poll Workers; - Creative and Original “I Voted” Stickers; and - Outstanding Innovation in Election Cybersecurity and Technology. The deadline for entries is January 22, 2021. Contact Patrick Leahy at [email protected] with questions. NATIONAL POLL WORKER RECRUITMENT DAY September 1, 2020 marked the first National Poll Worker Recruitment Day. The EAC established this day to help election administrators respond to poll worker shortages due to the coronavirus pandemic. The day was a huge success and received bipartisan support including 37 state election offices sharing information. The EAC's HelpAmericaVote.gov provided poll worker recruitment information and a lookup tool potential poll workers can utilize to sign up to work in their area. VOTE.GOV The EAC expanded their partnership with GSA to improve the usability of and information on vote.gov this year. Voter registration deadlines for in-person, online, and by mail were all checked and updated regularly to ensure that the website reflected the most accurate information as deadlines changed due to COVID-19, litigation, or other issues. The vote.gov team also worked to add COVID-19 information to each state or territory page so users could get accurate information for precautions or changes to Election Day in their specific state or territory. The EAC is committed to assisting election officials administer safe elections as the pandemic continues. Our COVID-19 election preparedness resources are still available online.	https://www.eac.gov/december-2020-newsletter
Location: Location not provided for purposes of confidentiality. Groundwater Monitoring: Leaaf conducted annual groundwater monitoring at an abandoned antifreeze recycling facility, revealing the need to prepare a Work Plan, QA/QC Plan, Technical Sampling, and Analysis Plan to conduct additional site investigation at the property based on the results of the groundwater sampling and previous investigations. Constituents of Concern (COCs) at the facility include chlorinated solvents from antifreeze processing, and petroleum hydrocarbons from fuel/waste oil storage. Leeaf gauged and sampled three monitor wells and prepared a report in accordance with RECAP comparing the findings to RECAP screening standards. Potentiometric surface and areas of concern were depicted on figures. The report was submitted to and approved by LDEQ. Based on the groundwater monitoring results and information provided in previous reports, Leaaf prepared a combined Work Plan, QA/QC Plan, Technical Sampling, and Analysis Plan to conduct additional soil and groundwater sampling and analysis. The objective of the additional site investigation is to delineate the soil area of investigation, to delineate the light volatile groundwater plume, and to provide data to determine whether a dense volatile plume is present and/or requires further investigation. The plan has been approved by LDEQ and incudes the installation of up to eight borings to a maximum depth of 65 feet. Three of the borings will be converted to permanent monitor wells, and up to 4 will be converted to temporary wells. The combined plan includes the required QA/QC elements outlined in EPA Requirements for Quality Assurance Project Plans (QA/R-5). Soil and groundwater will be sampled for volatile and semi volatile organic compounds, metals, glycols, PCBs, pesticides, and hydrocarbon fractions. The results will be evaluated in accordance with RECAP guidance and reported to LDEQ.	https://leaaf.com/project/abandoned-antifreeze-recycling-facility/
Tip #2: You should apply to the position you are most interested in and qualified to teach, as opposed to multiple positions (even though you have the option to do so). For example, if you majored in English or took many English courses in college, you might consider applying to be a middle or high school English Language Arts Teacher. You can learn more about teacher certification qualifications here. Tip #3: YES Prep uses a “Holistic Review” process, which means we look at your application in its entirety – we do not just look at one component or use absolute floors and ceilings to make decisions. We will carefully review your academic background at the undergraduate and/or graduate level, past professional experiences and accomplishments, as well as your essays. Revise, Proofread, Revise, Proofread. Submitting carefully reviewed essays will show us how much you care about the potential to work at YES Prep. Consider reaching out to a trusted peer, mentor or supervisor to ask for help reviewing your essays and resume before submission. Answer all parts of the question. Read the questions carefully, and ensure you address all parts of the question in your response. Strong answers demonstrate an understanding of YES Prep’s mission and work, and show vulnerability and humility on the part of the applicant. Ensure your essays are an appropriate length. We recommend a length of 250 – 300 words. Tip #5: For references, reach out to current and past supervisors, or professors (if you do not have work experience); refrain from including friends, family or peers. Be sure to inform your references that they will hear from us.
McDonald's Corporation, The Walt Disney Company, and a group of organizations working to improve working conditions in company supply chains, including Domini Social Investments, announced the release of the final report of Project Kaleidoscope, a multi-year collaborative project designed to promote sustained compliance with labor standards mandated by corporate codes of conduct for manufacturers. The project was piloted at 10 contractor factories in southern China that produce goods for McDonald's restaurants and Disney licensees. This collaborative effort developed and successfully field-tested an alternative approach to promoting and enhancing long-term, sustained code compliance. For many years, McDonald’s and Disney have maintained strict codes of conduct for their licensees and manufacturers. These codes address a range of key labor rights issues including the prohibition of forced and child labor and the setting of requirements in such areas as health and safety, working hours, compensation, and compliance with applicable laws. In addition, both companies report that they have been active in undertaking educational, monitoring, and remediation efforts to promote compliance with these codes at the factories where their products are sourced throughout the world. The project was launched as part of an ongoing effort to strengthen the effectiveness of these labor standards by drawing on the interest and expertise of interested investor organizations and jointly exploring means of promoting “sustained compliance” with labor codes. The project sought to foster the creation and testing of internal systems within factories in order to promote such compliance over time, including enhanced training and education for management, supervisors, and workers, and potential positive compliance incentives. The project also sought methods of encouraging remediation in facilities that demonstrate significant compliance issues, in order to minimize circumstances in which factory termination is the only business alternative. In pursuing the project the group worked with local nongovernmental organizations as well as individual factories with the goal of developing practical implementation approaches, including training and remediation methods and tools. The project’s first Interim Report was published in January 2005. The project grew out of mutual concerns discussed during the extended dialogue among the investor group and the two companies regarding ways to improve conditions in factories on a sustained basis. In addition to Domini, The Walt Disney Company and McDonalds, the Project Kaleidoscope Working Group consisted of the As You Sow Foundation; the Center for Reflection, Education and Action (CREA); the Connecticut State Treasurer's Office (fiduciary for the Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds); the General Board of Pension and Health Benefits of the United Methodist Church; the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR); and the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.	https://www.domini.com/insights/final-project-kaleidoscope-report-released
Parents, guardians and custodians of children have good reasons to want to know the legal parents of a child. In some cases, multiple parties might want full or partial custody of a child or visitation rights. Even when custody is not an issue, the courts must often set financial guidelines for the child’s support. In the case of a severe illness, knowing the ethnic heritage of both parents is important in helping diagnose potential diseases and conditions that can be passed genetically among people of a specific ethnicity. Whatever your reasons for needing a DNA paternity test, you can save time and money by knowing if your test is legally admissible in court. While different states might have different rules and regulations, knowing the basics of court-recognized DNA tests will help you get the right test you need the first time. Who Can Request a Test? Depending on the jurisdiction of your case, people who can request a DNA paternity test include the following: - Alleged mother or father - Legally recognized mother or father - An adult child or a minor child’s representative - Legal guardian or custodian - Government social services worker - Prosecuting attorney While some people can be legally required to take a paternity DNA test, the person requesting the test must be able to show some relationship between the child and alleged parent. The rules and regulations vary by state. What is the Process? Getting a legally admissible DNA paternity test is a three- or four-part process, depending on how you have your test performed. If any one of these steps isn’t handled correctly, the court might not accept your DNA sample. #1 Collect the DNA sample An independent, third-party professional must collect a DNA sample for a test to be legally valid in most cases. This is usually done with a cheek swab. The professional must be able to verify you are the person you say you are or the child is who you say he or she is, which requires providing a legally valid ID. Buying a home-DNA test kit, collecting your own sample and sending it to the company through the mail does not result in a court-recognized DNA test. In some jurisdictions, you might be able to use an independent third party to watch you collect the sample and properly transport it to a legally approved facility. If you’re interested in using a home-DNA test, first learn what the process is for making it legally admissible and what forms everyone will need to sign. #2 Transport the DNA sample to the lab Once the sample is collected, a court-approved third party must it is properly shipped to the lab doing the testing. This prevents the third-party collection agent from taking the sample and then giving it to a suing party to take to a lab. This could result in the suing party switching the sample. The process of taking a sample and then transporting it to a testing facility is referred to as chain of custody. Courts look at the chain of custody to determine if the sample was in the possession of acceptable third parties during the period from sample collection to transportation to a lab to actual testing. #3 Have the sample tested Once your sample is at the lab, it must be tested. Verify with your counsel or judge that the court will recognize the persons or organizations collecting, transporting and testing your sample. Use caution, even if you “know someone” at a lab who can do a DNA test for you. The facility might not be recognized by the court as acceptable for conducting a paternity test. At a minimum, the lab should be accredited by the AABB. #4 Send the results to the court for a ruling Once your test is completed, it must be submitted to the court correctly. If the results are sent to you, you must submit the paperwork provided by the lab. The courts might not accept a photocopy or scan of the documents, so discuss with your attorney whether or not you need original documents. Your best might be to have the lab send the results directly to the court, providing you with a second copy. Things to Avoid Don’t proceed without guidance from an attorney, the court, or at least a testing facility that can demonstrate to you that they are recognized by the court to collect to transport and test DNA samples. Don’t destroy your DNA sample until your case is settled. Opposing attorneys might challenge the validity of a test or ask the court to allow them to use the sample for testing at another facility. Ask the laboratory testing the DNA samples how long they keep samples. Don’t wait to start the testing process if you don’t have to. Even if you ordinarily have standing to seek a DNA test, your state might have a statute of limitations as to when you can require an alleged parent to take a test. Tampering with a DNA test can result in fines and jail time.	https://dnacenter.com/blog/makes-dna-paternity-test-legally-admissible/
FIELD BACKGROUND BRIEF SUMMARY OF EMBODIMENTS OF THE INVENTION DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS OF THE INVENTION In general, embodiments of the present invention relate to systems, methods, and computer program products for determining events that are likely to occur in the future based on community generated feedback. The more a company knows about its customers' vision of the future, the better that company can design and deliver products and services to suit its customers' needs. Also, the more customers know about a company's vision of the future, the better customers can position themselves to take advantage of the company's products and services. Scenario development is a process related to futures studies that is widely used by organizations as a way to document and share their vision of the future and as a way to test strategies against uncertain future developments. The product of scenario development is a scenario, which, as used herein, is a synopsis, written in a narrative format, of the future of a particular topic. The building blocks of a typical scenario include change drivers, market experiences, and trends. Change drivers are fundamental forces that change the nature of societies and economies across the globe. Change drivers are universal. That is, each change driver is happening all over the world at the same time. Some change drivers may occur independently, while others occur interdependently. When interdependent, changes in the rate and intensity of one change driver impact other change drivers and all forces that the other change drivers affect. Exemplary change drivers include: commoditization, which is the process by which previously distinguishable products become seen by consumers as interchangeable and differentiated only by price; democratization, which is the process by which autocratic or totalitarian political systems are replaced by a more or less representative or elected government accountable in some way to the will of the populace; demographicalization, which is the process by which changes in the numbers of people, birth and death rates, age distributions etc. emerge as major factors affecting virtually all aspects of life; disintermediation, which is the process by which barriers for direct interaction between consumers of goods and services and the producers or providers of goods and services are removed thus permitting direct interaction and transaction between consumers and producers/suppliers; environmentalization, which is the process through which economic activities are redirected in order to make them more compatible with the growing requirements of economic sustainability; globalization, which is the process by which peoples and economies are being linked together in ways that do not reflect existing geopolitical boundaries; informationalization, which is the process by which virtually all economic and socio-political activities within and between peoples and nations are based upon the development and exchange of information; spiritualization, which is the process of incorporating a holistic spiritual balance in all organizations or activities; technologicalization, which is the process by which technological innovations control change in virtually every aspect of human endeavor by virtue of the increases in human capabilities that they generate; and virtualization, which is the process by which organizations with set locations, staffs, structures, and processes are replaced by organizations that exist largely through temporary functional arrangements not dependent on location or formal structures many functioning via computer-centered networks including the Internet. A market experience describes how a change driver is experienced in a particular market. Identifying existing market experiences, in addition to market experiences that are predicted to develop in the future, is a key step in studying change in a market. Much can be learned from the comparison of cause, effect and development across market boundaries. Studying markets that have a mature market experience results in a wealth of real life knowledge that is applicable in markets that have a developing market experience. For illustrative purposes, three exemplary market experiences that describe how an exemplary change driver is experienced will now be provided. In one exemplary market experience, a local government begins contracting out to private companies operations that the government has traditionally performed itself. An underlying change driver for this market experience is virtualization. Here, virtualization is experienced by the process of outsourcing traditional government operations to private companies that exist largely through temporary functional arrangements not dependent on location or formal structures. In a second exemplary market experience, an automobile assembly plant begins exchanging detailed information with an original equipment manufacturer. An exemplary underlying change driver for this market experience is informalization, which is experienced by the development of complex patterns of information exchange between companies in a supply chain. In a third exemplary market experience, a book publishing company offers tailor-made e-books directly to customers over the Internet. An exemplary underlying change driver for this market experience is disintermediation. Here, disintermediation is experienced by the development of companies that are exclusively Internet based and that sell directly to consumers. Trends are the final building block of scenarios. Trends often exist in groups of similar market experiences and reveal the direction and speed of the ultimate impact of the market experiences. Trends establish a range of impact and a time horizon when applying all the building blocks to the creation or editing of a scenario. A trend cannot exist without a group of market experiences, and a market experience cannot exist without an underlying change driver. If a company's customers developed scenarios for their respective industries and shared those scenarios with the company, the company would know its customers' vision of the future in their respective industries. Accordingly, the company would have information that would enable it to design and deliver better products and services for its customers. Also, if the company developed scenarios for its vision of the future and shared those scenarios with its customers, then its customers would be able to position themselves to take advantage of the company's future products and services. Accordingly, there is a need for systems, devices, methods, and other tools that allow companies to create scenarios that provide companies with information about customers' visions of the future and that provide customers with information about companies' visions of the future. [To be completed after claims are finalized] Embodiments of the present invention now will be described more fully hereinafter with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which some, but not all, embodiments of the invention are shown. Indeed, the invention may be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the embodiments set forth herein; rather, these embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will satisfy applicable legal requirements. Like numbers refer to like elements throughout. Embodiments of the present invention are generally directed to systems, methods, and computer program products for creating scenarios about the future that are likely to occur. In some embodiments, the present invention: scans the Internet for already published scenarios about the future of a particular topic; identifies underlying trends and change drivers in the already published scenarios; scans the Internet for information about the underlying trends and change drivers; publishes, in the form of abstracts, to a community of stakeholders the information about the underlying trends and change drivers; receives from individual stakeholders feedback regarding the validity, relevance, and impact of the underlying trends and change drivers with respect to the future of the topic; publishes the feedback to the entire community of stakeholders; and provides a forum through which individual stakeholders, in light of the published abstracts and feedback, can collaboratively apply their knowledge to develop community-generated scenarios about the future of the topic. A brief example will now be provided to illustrate embodiments of the present invention. For purposes of this brief example, financial institutions, such as commercial banks, provide treasury products and services to a client-company. A consulting group advises the client-company on how to use the treasury products and services that are provided by the financial institutions to make payments and to collect receipts. In advising the client-company, the consulting group might use the present invention to provide guidance and suggestions calculated to help the client-company more effectively utilize the treasury products and services provided by the financial institution and to meet the client-company's future needs and expectations. More particularly, in this brief example, the consulting group uses the present invention to facilitate community-generated scenarios that provide a synopsis of the future of particular topics within the broad framework of treasury products and services. For purposes of this brief example, the particular topic is mobile payment services, which include, for example, services that enable the client-company to collect receipts from its customers via Internet payments and SMS-based payments. The consulting group can leverage information provided in these community-generated scenarios to implement proactive measures that position the client-company in a manner that enables the client-company to avoid future problems with its mobile payment services, which are provided by the financial institution, and to take advantage of future developments in mobile payment services. FIG. 1 100 104 100 This brief example will now be described in more detail with reference to , which provides a flow diagram illustrating a brief-exemplary process for creating community-generated scenarios about the future of mobile payment services. As represented by block , the brief-exemplary process generally begins with continuously scanning the Internet to identify already-published scenarios about the future of mobile payment services and presenting the already-published scenarios to a community of stakeholders. To accomplish the task of identifying already published scenarios, Internet-search queries are developed that search the Internet for already published scenarios about mobile payment services. For example, search strings are developed and repeatedly executed in an Internet search engine to uncover scenarios about the future of mobile payment services that are published on websites, blogs, traditional news sites, academic journals, books, videos, patents and published patent applications, etc. Multiple search strings are developed so as to locate scenarios about various aspects of mobile payment services. One search string may uncover already published scenarios about a particular subtype of mobile payment services, whereas another search string may uncover already published scenarios about a different subtype. For example, some search strings may uncover already published scenarios about SMS-based transactional payments, other search strings may uncover already published scenarios about direct mobile billing, and still other search strings may uncover already published scenarios about mobile web payments. All of these subtypes fall within the particular topic of mobile payment services, which falls within the broader topic of treasury products and services. 100 106 After a reliable set of search queries have been developed and already published scenarios are presented to the community of stakeholders, the brief-exemplary process involves classifying the search queries, including the content of the already published scenarios uncovered by the search queries, according to a taxonomic scheme, as represented at block . The community of stakeholders over time creates the taxonomic scheme for classifying the search queries and associated content. For example, individual stakeholders collaboratively create and manage tags that annotate and categorize content uncovered by each of the search queries. In this brief example, the taxonomic scheme is a traditional parent-child hierarchical scheme consisting of one parent category having the three child categories appended thereto. The parent category is mobile payment services generally. The three child categories are: (1) SMS-based transactional payments; (2) direct mobile billing; and (3) mobile web payments. Each of the search queries is classified as being a search query that uncovers already published scenarios having content associated with the parent category and/or one or more of the three child categories. This taxonomic scheme can evolve over time using the collective wisdom of the individual stakeholders. For example, the stakeholders can create new child categories for search queries that uncover content that does not fall into one of the above-mentioned child categories but is related to the parent category. Further, for example, the stakeholders can create grandchild categories for each of the child categories. Likewise, the stakeholders can create additional parent categories for search queries that uncover content that is related to treasury services and product but not to the above-mentioned parent category of mobile payment services, and child and grandchild categories can be appended from any new parent categories. This evolving taxonomic scheme, which is sometimes referred to as “Folksonomy”, allows an orderly structure but one that recognizes the opportunity to evolve as new content emerges that does not fit within the current structure. 108 100 112 100 As represented by block , the brief-exemplary process further involves identifying trends that underlie the previously published scenarios, which were uncovered by the search queries. To do so, the stakeholders review the previously published scenarios to identify trends that underlie the scenarios and then submit feedback indicating the trends that underlie the scenarios. Next, as represented by block , the brief-exemplary process involves building another set of search queries designed to search the Internet and identify trend papers that are directed to the trends that underlie the previously published scenarios. These search queries are designed to identify published trend papers, not scenarios, about the underlying trends. It should be understood that, for purposes of this brief example, the trend papers identified by this set of search queries are not limited to any of the above-mentioned parent or child categories. In fact, the trend papers identified by this set of search queries are not limited to treasury products and services. Instead, the trend papers can describe the trends in other, unrelated contexts. These trend papers give the community of shareholders valuable information about how the trends are affecting industries in areas other than treasury products and services. 100 116 Once the search queries that uncover trend papers have been designed, the brief-exemplary process , as represented by block , involves applying the search queries that uncover trend papers to the taxonomic scheme that was developed around the search queries that identify previously presented scenarios. As such, the taxonomy accounts for search queries that identify previously presented scenarios and search queries that identify trend papers. Within the taxonomy, search queries that identify trend papers are tagged as trend-paper search queries and any content from the trend papers is tagged as trend-paper content. Likewise, search queries that identify scenarios are tagged as scenario search queries and any content from the scenarios is tagged as scenario content. 120 100 Next, as represented by block , the brief-exemplary process involves presenting the trend papers to the community of stakeholders so that individual stakeholders can review the trend papers and identify change drivers that underlie the trends that are actually causing trends to take place. As an example, a particular change driver in mobile payment services is technologicalization, which manifests itself in the form of recent advances in wireless technologies that have led to lower costs and improved capability. 100 124 128 After the community of shareholders has identified underlying change drivers, the brief-exemplary process involves building yet another set of search queries designed to uncover change-driver papers that are directed to the identified change drivers, as represented by block . The search queries, along with the content of any associated change-driver papers, are then applied to the previously described taxonomic scheme and tagged as change driver search queries and any content from the change-driver papers is tagged as change-driver content, as represented by block . 132 100 136 100 Next, as represented at block , the brief-exemplary process involves generating an abstract for each of the identified trends and/or change drivers, where each abstract provides a summary of the trend or change driver. The abstracts are organized according to the existing taxonomic scheme. As represented at block , the brief-exemplary process further involves publishing the abstracts to the community of stakeholders in the form of a blog-like webpage that includes template, which instructs the community to discuss the trend or change driver disclosed in the abstract. For example, for the abstract that summarizes technologicalization that resulted in advances in wireless technology, the blog template instructs individual stakeholders to discuss the relevance of the advancements in wireless technology to mobile payment services, the impact that the advancements in wireless technology have had and will have on mobile payment services, and/or likelihood that the advancements in wireless technology will drive mobile payment services going forward. As discussed in more detail below, to publish the abstracts, instead of or in addition to a blog-like webpage, a wiki page may be created for each abstract. The wiki pages could be hyperlinked together to form a wiki, which would essentially be a database of abstracts. These wiki pages that publish abstracts could be hyperlinked to wiki pages that publish scenarios and/or other sorts of information, such as information about trends, change drivers, and market experiences. 140 100 144 100 As represented at block , the brief-exemplary process involves monitoring the stakeholders' comments on the abstracts and highlighting content that differs from the content flowing in from the Internet-search queries. In an embodiment, this is accomplished by content flow algorithms similar to those used to flag significant content-flow changes in the abstracts that would then inform changes to be made to the scenarios. The highlighted content represents new content that will be included in the community-generated scenarios about the future of mobile payment services. As represented at block , the brief-exemplary process involves creating a community-generated scenario about the future of mobile payment services. For example, the community-generated scenarios consist of at least two sections: change drivers and trends. The change driver section identifies the change drivers that underlie mobile payment systems and discusses how those change drivers will affect the future of mobile payment systems. Similarly, the trend section identifies the trends that underlie mobile payment systems and discusses how those trends will affect the future of mobile payment systems. In operation, a webpage having a template for creating a scenario is presented to the community of stakeholders. Individual stakeholders access the webpage and—relying on the published abstracts, including the highlighted content therein, which summarize the trends and change drivers that underlie mobile payment services—collaboratively fill out the template to create the community-generated scenario. For example, the template may include a list of questions to be answered by the community of stakeholders. The answers to these questions may be organized and presented according to the template to create the community-generated scenario. FIGS. 2-5 FIG. 2 200 204 200 208 200 Embodiments of the present invention will now be discussed in more detail with reference to . is a flow diagram that provides a process for building a community of stakeholders that participate in creating scenarios about the future of selected topics. As represented by block , the process generally begins with identifying individuals that share common expertise and interests. These individual may belong to the same professional or civic organization, the same Internet social network, or the same product affinity group, or these individuals may be individuals with similar qualifications and backgrounds. As represented by block , the process further involves inviting those identified individuals to join a community of stakeholders. This involves developing and executing a promotional campaign to generate awareness and interest in the community of stakeholders, or, if the community of stakeholders is to include intercompany stakeholders, identifying the appropriate participants. 212 200 200 216 FIG. 1 As represented by block , the process involves selecting a scope of topics for the community of stakeholders. Then, the process involves defining at least one specific topic of interest within the broader scope of topics, as represented by block . It should be appreciated that the community self-selects the at least on specific topic of interest. This topic of interest will be the focal point of the predictive scenarios that are ultimately created by the community of stakeholders. For example, in the brief example described with reference to , the scope of the topic was treasury products and services, and the topic of interest was mobile payment services. FIG. 3 FIG. 4 FIG. 3 300 400 300 400 300 400 300 is a flow diagram illustrating a process for performing continuous environmental scans to search the Internet to identify previously published scenarios about a particular topic and to identify trends and change drivers underlying the previously published scenarios. is a flow diagram illustrating a process for leveraging the trends and change drivers that were identified by the continuous environmental scans of to generate predictive scenarios about the future. In some embodiments, processes and are continuous loop processes. Process continuously scans the Internet searching for new content in the previously published scenarios that may provide new information about relevant trends and change drives. Process continuously leverages the new information resulting from process to refine and add new information to the scenarios. Accordingly, the predictive scenarios generated by the present invention are dynamic. The scenarios are continuously evolving and become more refined over time. FIG. 3 302 300 Referring now to , as represented by block , the process generally begins with developing search queries that search the Internet for already published scenarios about the particular topic, where, as discussed above, a scenario is a narrative description of the future of the particular topic. For example, search strings are developed and executed in an Internet search engine to uncover scenarios that are published on websites, blogs, traditional news sites, academic journals, books, videos, patents and published patent applications, etc. According to some embodiments, the search queries are developed by individual stakeholders. In other embodiments, community-generated search queries are submitted by individual stakeholders and accumulated by a system administrator for approval. If approved, the search queries are added to the set of search queries for relevant topic. In other embodiments, algorithms are provided that generate search queries using keywords and keyword combinations that are related to the particular topic of interest. 300 304 306 300 308 300 The process , as indicated at block , further involves creating algorithms that routinely execute Internet searches using the search queries. These algorithms are designed to review the results of the Internet searches and identify new content, where new content includes previously-published scenarios that had not been uncovered by previous search queries and amendments to previously-published scenarios that have already been uncovered. Then, as indicated by block , the process involves harvesting and publishing the new content such that the community of stakeholders can review and comment on the new content. As represented at block , the process further involves classifying the search queries and any new content uncovered by the search queries according to a taxonomic scheme. According to some embodiments, the community of stakeholders over time creates the taxonomy for classifying the search queries and the content resulting from execution of those search queries. For example, to derive the system of classification, the stakeholders collaboratively create and manage tags to annotate and categorize content for each of the search queries and associated content. According to an embodiment, aspects of the taxonomy are based around the factors used in a well-known business analysis, which is sometimes referred to as the STEEP analysis. The factors used in the STEEP analysis are: societal factors; technological factors; economic factors; environmental factors; and political factors. When classifying search queries according to a taxonomic scheme based on the STEEP factors, the search queries are labeled as being one or more of the STEEP factors. This taxonomy enables comparison across topics. For example, scenarios that are directed to one topic may share common trends and/or change drivers with scenarios that are directed to other topics. Accordingly, a taxonomic scheme based on the STEEP factors enables the community of stakeholders to learn how a particular trend or change driver affected one topic, and apply that information to predict how that trend or change driver will impact the topic in question. 312 300 As represented by block , the process further involves identifying trends that underlie the previously published scenarios. To do so, for example, technology is applied to read the actual text of the scenarios and highlight trends based on, for example, keywords and combinations of keywords. In some embodiments, these machine-identified trends are presented to the community of stakeholders for confirmation of whether the machine has properly identified something as a trend. Also for example, to identify trends, the scenarios are presented to the community of stakeholders such that the stakeholders can review the scenarios and manually identify trends in the scenarios. 314 300 Next, as represented by block , the process involves building another set of search queries designed to be executed in an Internet search engine for identifying trend papers that are directed to the trends that underlie the previously published scenarios. The trend papers identified by this set of search queries can be directed to subject matter beyond that of the particular topic in question. Here, the trends are of interest, not the particular topic. According to some embodiments, these search queries are developed by individual stakeholders. In some embodiments, these community-generated search queries are submitted to a system administrator for approval. If approved, the search queries are added to the set of search queries for relevant topic. 300 316 318 300 300 322 The process , as indicated at block , further involves creating algorithms that routinely execute Internet searches using the search queries to identify new content for a particular trend. Then, as indicated by block , the process involves harvesting and publishing to the community of stakeholders the new content about a particular trend. As search queries that identify trend papers are developed, the process , as represented by block , involves organizing the search queries according to the previously described taxonomic scheme. Within the taxonomy, search queries that uncover trend papers are tagged as trend paper search queries, and search queries that uncover scenarios are tagged as scenario search queries. 324 300 As represented by block , the process further involves identifying change drivers that are actually causing trends to take place. To do so, for example, software is used to read the text of the trend papers and highlight change drivers based on, for example, keywords and combinations of keywords. In some embodiments, these machine-identified change drivers are presented to the community of stakeholders for confirmation of whether the machine correctly identified something as a change driver. Also for example, to identify change drivers, the trend papers are presented to the community of stakeholders such that the stakeholders can review the trend papers and manually identify the change driver or change drivers that are driving the trends. 326 300 Next, as represented by block , the process involves building yet another set of search queries designed to be executed in an Internet search engine for identifying change driver papers that are directed to the change drivers that are driving the trends. Like trend papers, the change driver papers uncovered by this set of search queries can be directed to subject matter beyond that of the particular topic. Here, the change drivers are of interest, not the particular topic of interest or the trends. According to some embodiments, these change driver search queries are developed by individual stakeholders. In some embodiments, these community-generated search queries are submitted to a system administrator for approval. If approved, the search queries are added to the set of search queries for particular change driver. 300 328 330 300 300 332 The process , as indicated at block , further involves creating algorithms that routinely execute Internet searches using the search queries to identify new content for a particular change driver. Then, as indicated by block , the process involves harvesting and publishing to the community of stakeholders the new content about the particular change driver. As search queries that identify change driver papers are developed, the process , as represented by block , involves organizing the search queries according to the previously described taxonomic scheme. Within the taxonomy, search queries that uncover change driver papers are tagged as change driver search queries, search queries that uncover trend papers are tagged as trend paper search queries, and search queries that uncover scenarios are tagged as scenario search queries. 300 300 300 In operation, the process continuously loops and, accordingly, continuously creates, refines, and executes search queries that continuously uncover new content. And the taxonomy continuously evolves around the new content. This new content includes new scenarios, trend papers, and change driver papers, or new amendments to scenarios, trend papers, and change driver papers. From new scenario content, the process uncovers new trends and change drivers. From new trend content, the process uncovers new change drivers. FIG. 4 402 400 402 400 Referring now to , as represented by block , the process generally begins with monitoring the content flow and generating and editing abstracts. For example, at block , the process monitors the Internet for activity related to the identified trends and change drivers. Any new and/or important content is flagged. The community can then review the flagged content. Then, the community can edit existing abstracts to reflect the flagged content or, if no relevant abstracts already exist, create new abstract(s) for the flagged content. It should be appreciated that an abstract could provide an executive summary of the flagged content, such as a particular trend or change driver or a particular aspect of a trend or change driver. According to some embodiments, technology is applied to facilitate the creation of an abstract for each trend and change driver. For example, an application recognizes when a new trend or change driver is uncovered and creates a blog-like webpage and/or wiki page for the new trend or change driver. The blog-like webpage or wiki page, which is organized according to the existing taxonomy, includes a template for creating an abstract. Individual stakeholders locate the blog-type webpage or wiki page through the taxonomy and then access the blog-like webpage or wiki page and build out the abstract. It should be appreciated that it is not necessary to build out a new abstract each time. Instead, prior abstracts can be modified to reflect the new content. FIG. 1 300 For example, stakeholders build out the abstract for a trend or change driver in the context of the selected topic. Referring to the brief example provided with reference to , where the selected topic is mobile payment services and where the abstract is directed to the change driver represented by advances in wireless technology, the template provided on the blog-like webpage or wiki page may instruct the community of stakeholders to build out the abstract in an organized manner. For example, the template could instruct stakeholders to discuss the relevance of advancements in wireless technology to mobile payment services, the impact advancements in wireless technology has had and will have on mobile payment services, and/or likelihood that advancements in wireless technology will drive mobile payment services going forward. Abstracts are continuously updated by the community of stakeholders as the process uncovers and publishes new content and as more and more individual stakeholders participate. 400 406 300 300 400 406 402 FIG. 1 According to an embodiment, instead of or in addition to generating and publishing an abstract, the process involves generating a change driver activity and a trend paper activity report at block . According to an embodiment, the change driver/trend activity report is a continuously updated report that lists the change drivers and trends identified by the process . Referring again to the brief example provided with reference to , suppose, pursuant to an embodiment of process , one-hundred search queries are being executed in an Internet search engine for monitoring the flow of content about the change drivers and trends that were identified for mobile payment services. Each day, each search query uncovers new content. To generate the change driver activity report, the process , at block , flags the search queries that uncover the most new content. These flagged search queries are included on the change driver/trend activity report. In some embodiments, the community of stakeholders reviews the new content flowing from the flagged search queries and, as represented by block , generates new abstracts and updates existing abstracts in light of the new content. According to an embodiment, each of the stakeholders, using the taxonomy as a navigation tool, can identify the topics that he or she wants to track. In this case, each stakeholder receives a change driver/trend activity report that includes the flagged search queries, if any, for each topic that the particular stakeholder is tracking. This enables the stakeholder to obtain continuous information for the topics he or she is interested in. Each stakeholder's report is customized to his or her taxonomy. 410 400 414 400 300 Next, as represented at block , the process involves monitoring the abstracts that are being built by the community of stakeholders. Here, for example, the frequency and content of stakeholder contributions to abstracts are monitored. Then, as represented at block , the process involves highlighting content provided by the community of stakeholders that differs from the content flowing from the Internet search queries. Highlighted content represents new content, which is content that the community of stakeholders is generating by applying its knowledge to content that is being culled from the Internet by process . 418 400 As represented at block , the process further involves creating community-generated scenarios about the future of the particular topic in question. According to some embodiments, the community-generated scenarios consist of at least two sections: change drivers and trends. The change driver section identifies the change drivers that underlie the particular topic and describes how those change drivers will affect the future of the particular topic. Similarly, the trend section identifies the trends that underlie particular topic and describe how those trends will affect the future of the particular topic. According to an embodiment, the scenarios are created in a webpage, such as a wiki page. As used here, the term “wiki page” refers to a type of webpage that enables documents to be written collaboratively using a web browser. A single page in a wiki website is referred to as a “wiki page”, while the entire collection of pages, which are interconnected by hyperlinks, is referred to herein as a “wiki”. A wiki is essentially a database for creating, browsing, and searching through information. Accordingly, in some embodiments, a wiki page is created for each trend, change driver, market experience and/or scenario, and all of the wiki pages are interconnected to create a wiki. According to some embodiments, each wiki page is written according to a structured format that includes specific components. For example, when collaborating to write a wiki page for a scenario, individual stakeholders access the wiki page and—relying on the published abstracts, including the highlighted content therein, which summarize the trends and change drivers that underlie the particular topic—collaboratively create the community-generated scenario in the wiki page. According to some embodiments, a rating scale is provided that indicates the completeness of each scenario and which sections of each scenario need to be built out in order to complete the scenario template. According to an embodiment, the community writes a set of scenarios for each topic. For example, the community writes four versions of a scenario about the future of a particular topic. One scenario is the most extreme version of the scenarios. In this scenario, the change drivers and trends have a significant future impact on the topic. The additional scenarios are gradually less extreme and the fourth scenario predicts that the identified change drivers and trends will have no impact on the topic. FIG. 5 500 Referring now to , which provides a flow diagram illustrating a process for trading scenarios in a predictive market. According to some embodiments, each stakeholder has an account in which he or she can trade community-generated scenarios based on which scenarios he or she believes are the most relevant and likely to actually happen. 502 500 506 510 For example, in the embodiment where multiple versions of a scenario exist for a particular topic, stakeholders trade based on which version they believe will most likely occur in the future. As represented by block , the process generally begins with the stakeholder logging into an online account and then, as represented by block , accessing a particular topic about which the community has created community-generated scenarios. The stakeholder is directed to a webpage that presents the four scenarios and the value that the predictive market placed on each of those scenarios. Then, as represented by block , the stakeholder decides whether to participate in that market and/or to go upstream and participate in the monitoring and editing of the community-generated scenarios for that topic. The predictive market has the effect of assigning values to each scenario. Each value reflects the community's assessment of whether a particular scenario accurately predicts the future. Accordingly, a company that is attempting to solicit its customers' visions of the future can review the scenarios that are relevant its lines of business. The business can identify the scenarios on which the predictive market places a high value and then begin to develop its products and services around those scenarios. This will enable the company to anticipate its customers' needs. Likewise, a customer that is interested in taking advantage of a company's products and services can access the predictive market and identify scenarios about topics that relate to the company's products and services. The customer can review the scenarios on which the predictive market places a high value, and then begin to position itself to take advantage of the products and services described in those scenarios. FIG. 6 FIGS. 1-5 600 600 610 630 640 620 provides a block diagram of a system generally configured to execute the processes of for creating community-generated scenarios about the future, in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention. The system generally includes an input apparatus , an output apparatus , and a memory apparatus operatively coupled to a processing apparatus . As used herein, the term apparatus refers to a device or a combination of devices having the hardware and/or software configured to perform one or more specified functions. Therefore, an apparatus is not necessarily a single device and may, instead, include a plurality of devices that make up the apparatus. The plurality of devices may be directly coupled to one another or may be remote from one another, such as distributed over a network. FIG. 6 610 630 640 620 610 620 640 610 620 640 620 620 640 Furthermore, it will be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art in view of this disclosure that, although illustrates the input apparatus , output apparatus , memory apparatus , and processing apparatus as separate blocks in the block diagram, these separations may be merely conceptual. In other words, in some instances, the input apparatus , for example, is a separate and distinct device from the processing apparatus and the memory apparatus and therefore may have its own processor, memory, and software. In other instances, however, the input apparatus is directly coupled to or integral with at least one part of the processing apparatus and at least part one part of the memory apparatus and includes the input hardware used by the processing apparatus when the processing apparatus executes user input software stored in the memory apparatus . 600 600 FIG. 6 In one embodiment, the system is entirely contained within a user terminal, such as a personal computer or mobile terminal, while, in other embodiments, the system includes a central computing system, one or more network servers, and one or more user terminals in communication with the central computing system via a network and the one or more network servers. is intended to cover both types of configurations as well as other configurations that will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art in view of this disclosure. 610 600 610 610 610 The input apparatus includes hardware and/or software for receiving input into the system . For example, in some embodiments, the input apparatus includes a network interface configured to receive electronic input from other devices in a network. The network may include a direct connection between a plurality of devices, a global area network such as the Internet, a wide area network such as an intranet, a local area network, a wireline network, a wireless network, a virtual private network, other types of networks, and/or a combination of the foregoing. In some embodiments, the input apparatus includes one or more user input devices, such as a keyboard, keypad, mouse, microphone, touch screen, touch pad, controller, and/or the like. In one embodiment, the input apparatus includes a user terminal, or at least the user input devices of a user terminal, where the user terminal is configured to be used by an employee of the facility owner. 630 600 630 630 630 The output apparatus includes hardware and/or software for communicating output from the system . For example, in some embodiments, the output apparatus includes a network interface configured to send electronic output to other devices in a network. In some embodiments, the output apparatus includes one or more user output devices, such as a display (e.g., a monitor, liquid crystal display, one or more light emitting diodes, etc.), a speaker, a tactile output device, a printer, and/or other sensory devices that can be used to communicate information to a person. In one embodiment, the output apparatus includes a user terminal, or at least the user output devices of a user terminal, where the user terminal is configured to be used by an employee of the facility owner or agent. 620 600 620 600 620 640 640 642 644 645 646 648 640 200 500 640 FIGS. 2-5 The processing apparatus includes circuitry used for implementing communication and logic functions of the system . For example, the processing apparatus may include a digital signal processor device, a microprocessor device, and various analog-to-digital converters, digital-to-analog converters, and other support circuits. Control and signal processing functions of the system are allocated between these devices according to their respective capabilities. The processing apparatus may include functionality to operate one or more software programs based on computer-readable instructions thereof, which may be stored in the memory apparatus . In one embodiment of the invention, the memory apparatus includes a community builder application , a continuous environmental scanning application , a content flow monitoring application , a scenario generating application , and a predictive market application stored therein for instructing the processing apparatus to perform one or more operations of the processes - respectively described in . Some embodiments of the invention may include other computer programs stored in the memory apparatus . 640 620 640 640 640 600 600 In general, the memory apparatus is communicatively coupled to the processor and includes computer-readable storage medium for storing computer-readable program code and instructions, as well as datastores containing data and/or databases. More particularly, the memory apparatus may include volatile memory, such as volatile Random Access Memory (RAM) including a cache area for the temporary storage of data. The memory apparatus may also include non-volatile memory that can be embedded and/or may be removable. The non-volatile memory can, for example, comprise an EEPROM, flash memory, or the like. The memory apparatus can store any of a number of pieces of information and data used by the system to implement the functions of the system described herein. 640 650 In the illustrated embodiment, the memory apparatus includes a datastore containing Internet search queries and associated content, abstracts, and community-generated scenarios, all of which are organized according to the above-described taxonomy. 642 644 646 648 120 As used herein, the term “application” generally refers to computer-readable program code comprising computer-readable instructions and stored on a computer-readable storage medium, where the instructions instruct a processor to perform certain functions, such as logic functions, read and write functions, and/or the like. In this regard, each of the community builder application , continuous environmental scanning application , scenario generating application , and predictive market application includes computer-readable instructions for instructing the processing apparatus and/or other devices to perform one or more of the functions described herein. As will be appreciated by one of ordinary skill in the art in view of this disclosure, the present invention may be embodied as a method, system, apparatus, computer program product, or a combination of the foregoing. Accordingly, embodiments of the present invention may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc.), or an embodiment combining software and hardware aspects that may generally be referred to herein as a “system.” Furthermore, embodiments of the present invention may take the form of a computer program product comprising a computer-readable medium having computer-usable program code embodied in the medium. Any suitable computer-readable medium may be utilized, including a computer-readable storage medium and/or a computer-readable signal medium. The computer-readable storage medium may be, for example but not limited to, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor storage system, apparatus, or device. More specific examples of the computer-readable storage medium include, but are not limited to, the following: an electrical connection having one or more wires; a tangible storage medium such as a portable computer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or Flash memory), a compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), or other optical or magnetic storage device. A computer-readable signal medium may include a propagated data signal with computer program instructions embodied therein, for example, in base band or as part of a carrier wave. Such a propagated signal may take any of a variety of forms, including, but not limited to, electro-magnetic, optical, or any suitable combination thereof. In the context of this document, a computer-readable medium may be any medium that can contain, store, communicate, and/or transport the program for use by or in connection with the instruction execution system, apparatus, or device. Computer program code for carrying out operations of embodiments of the present invention may be written in an object-oriented, scripted or unscripted programming language such as Java, Perl, Smalltalk, C++, or the like. However, the computer program code for carrying out operations of embodiments of the present invention may also be written in conventional procedural programming languages, such as the “C” programming language or similar programming languages. Embodiments of the present invention are described above with reference to flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus (systems), and computer program products. It will be understood that each block of the flowchart illustrations, and/or combinations of blocks in the flowchart illustrations, can be implemented by computer program instructions. These computer program instructions may be provided to a processor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus to produce a particular machine, such that the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computer or other programmable data processing apparatus, create mechanisms for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart block or blocks. These computer program instructions may also be stored in a computer-readable memory that can direct a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to function in a particular manner, such that the instructions stored in the computer-readable memory produce an article of manufacture, including instruction means which implement the function/act specified in the flowchart block(s). The computer program instructions may also be loaded onto a computer or other programmable data processing apparatus to cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer or other programmable apparatus to produce a computer-implemented process, such that the instructions which execute on the computer or other programmable apparatus provide steps for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart block(s). Alternatively, computer program implemented steps or acts may be combined with operator or human implemented steps or acts in order to carry out an embodiment of the invention. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS Having thus described embodiments of the present invention in general terms, reference will now be made to the accompanying drawings, wherein: FIG. 1 is a flow diagram illustrating a brief-exemplary process for creating community-generated scenarios about the future of mobile payment services, in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention; FIG. 2 is a flow diagram illustrating a process for building a community of stakeholders that participate in creating scenarios about the future of selected topics, in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention; FIG. 3 is a flow diagram illustrating a process for performing continuous environmental scans to search the Internet to identify previously published scenarios about a particular topic and to identify trends and change drivers underlying the previously published scenarios, in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention; FIG. 4 FIG. 3 is a flow diagram illustrating a process for leveraging the trends and change drivers that were identified by the continuous environmental scans executed by the process of to generate predictive scenarios about the future, in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention; FIG. 5 is a flow diagram illustrating a process for trading scenarios in a predictive market, in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention; and FIG. 6 FIGS. 1-5 is a block diagram illustrating a system and environment for executing the processes disclosed in , in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.
In their online education experience, students and professors can face various risks, like cyberbullying, harassment, the danger of unintentionally publishing private information, and phishing, which is defined by cybersecurity professionals as the use of emails or messages to trick people into revealing personal information that can compromise their online financial accounts, or clicking on malicious links or attachments and unintentionally downloading malware. Experts specialized in distance education and cybersecurity advise institutions, professors and students to follow some basic guidelines to ensure privacy, protect and monitor personal data, and prevent hacking online educational platforms, as well as some best practices for safety in online communications. Universities should support cybersecurity and privacy on their platforms and means of communication with their students by implementing plans to always update their programs, and purchase advanced versions of communication software rather than the free versions, as the advanced versions allow longer meetings and provide a larger space to upload data. Students and professors should take some necessary steps. First and foremost among them is to continuously update their computer or smartphone with the latest operating system. This is especially important for Windows users, because that system is more vulnerable to hacking, compared to Apple’s Mac operating system. Installing Linux on computers, an open-source operating system that enjoys a relatively higher degree of protection compared to the Windows system, besides a periodic updating of antivirus programs, as the continuous use of the same program increases the risk of being exposed to cyberattacks. Institutions should offer importance of rethinking the entire educational environment, including but not limited to developing the skills and competencies of faculty members; identifying and designing new pedagogical curricula suitable for distance learning; creating an advanced virtual-learning environment; and reconsidering the student overall, including the experience of extracurricular activities. Students should follow a number of tips to increase their interaction on online educational platforms while maintaining their cybersecurity. These tips include: acquiring technical skills, which include the ability to use programs like MS Office and their institution’s learning-management system, navigating the Internet, using social-media tools, and downloading software. Educational institutions that manage digital infrastructure have greater responsibilities in ensuring safety. This requires them to take into consideration security while designing a technical strategy for the programs they use or platforms they launch for their students, along with developing a plan to deal with potential attacks.	https://beteacher.betechie.in/cybersecurity-advice-for-students-and-teachers/
ATLANTA ( March 27, 2019) – A Spelman College student has been selected as one of 10 students across the country to earn the prestigious Frederick Douglass Global Fellowship. As a Frederick Douglass Global Fellow, Briya Malia Todd, C’2021, has received a full scholarship to study abroad program in London this summer. “We congratulate Briya Malia Todd for being the first Spelman student to win the Frederick Douglass Global Fellowship that will provide her the opportunity to participate in a Council on International Educational Exchange four-week course on leadership and intercultural engagement in London. We are proud of her,” said ‘Dimeji R. Togunde, Ph.D., associate provost for global education and professor of international studies at Spelman, where 75 percent of the class of 2018 participated in study abroad. Of the 332,727 U.S. college students who studied abroad in 2017, less than 30 percent were students of color — 0.4 percent American Indian/Alaskan Native, 4.3 percent multiracial, 6.1 percent African American, 8.2 percent Asian/Pacific Islander and 10 percent Hispanic Americans, according to data from the Institute of International Education. The data shows that students of color largely miss out on international education experiences that can play a critical role in their personal growth, as well as academic and career success. The Frederick Douglass Fellowship, which launched in 2017, is representative of efforts by the Council on International Educational Exchange, the nation’s largest non-profit facilitator of studying abroad, and the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions, to increase diversity in study abroad by breaking down the barriers of cost, curriculum, and culture that prevent students from participating in international education experiences. A native of LaGrange, Georgia, Todd said the Fellowship will allow her to accomplish many of her personal goals, such as exploring communities across the globe outside of her small hometown. Passionate about social justice, Todd has a long-term goal to be an attorney and challenge issues that impact communities of color like mass incarceration and the school-to-prison pipeline. “I also aspire to be an ambassador in my lifetime,” said Todd, a political science major. “This career is not easy to obtain. But the Frederick Douglass Global Fellowship will put me on a fast track towards that goal. I’m proud that the Fellowship seeks out students who excel and believes in us enough to invest in our future and believes in furthering the dreams of students like myself.” The Fellows are nominated by the presidents of their respective institutions and selected during a national competition. The winners demonstrate high academic achievement, possess exemplary communication skills, display the hallmarks of self-determination, exhibit characteristics of bold leadership, and have a history of service to others. “The students selected for the Frederick Douglass Global Fellowship are 10 exemplary student leaders who demonstrate the iconic leadership, keen intellect, and natural change-agent attributes of Frederick Douglass,” said James P. Pellow, president and CEO of CIEE. “These students will be the next generation of leaders and I know that the intercultural competence and global perspective they will gain during the London program will benefit them throughout their lives.” Todd said she looks forward to returning to Spelman after her summer abroad and sharing the knowledge she gains, noting that she takes pride in being a mentor and a student leader. “Spelman encourages its students to become global citizens,” she said. “It is important to acknowledge your own footprint in this world. Through this opportunity, I will become a better global citizen and I will create a larger footprint.” About The Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions The Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions brings together researchers and practitioners from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions. The Center’s goals include: elevating the educational contributions of MSIs; ensuring that they are a part of national conversations; bringing awareness to the vital role MSIs play in the nation’s economic development; increasing the rigorous scholarship of MSIs; connecting MSIs’ academic and administrative leadership to promote reform initiatives; and strengthening efforts to close educational achievement gaps among disadvantaged communities. For further information about the Center, please visit www.gse.upenn.edu/cmsi About CIEE CIEE, the country’s oldest and largest nonprofit study abroad and intercultural exchange organization, transforms lives and builds bridges by promoting the exchange of ideas and experiences. To help people develop skills for living in a globally interdependent and culturally diverse world, CIEE sponsors a wide variety of opportunities for cultural exchange, including work exchange programs, teach abroad programs, and a worldwide portfolio of study abroad and internship programs for college and high school students. Visit www.ciee.org. About Spelman College Founded in 1881, Spelman College is a leading liberal arts college widely recognized as the global leader in the education of women of African descent. Located in Atlanta, the College’s picturesque campus is home to 2,100 students. Spelman is the country’s leading producer of Black women who complete Ph.D.s in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The College’s status is confirmed by U.S. News and World Report, which ranked Spelman No. 51 among all liberal arts colleges and No. 1 among historically Black colleges and universities. The Wall Street Journal ranked the College No. 3, nationally, in terms of student satisfaction. Outstanding alumnae include Children’s Defense Fund Founder Marian Wright Edelman, Starbucks Group President and COO Rosalind Brewer, former Acting Surgeon General and Spelman’s first alumna President Audrey Forbes Manley, global bioinformatics geneticist Janina Jeff and authors Pearl Cleage and Tayari Jones. For more information, visit www.spelman.edu.	https://hbcubuzz.com/2019/03/briya-todd-becomes-first-frederick-douglass-fellow-from-spelman-college/
Cryolophosaurus is a genus of theropod dinosaur that is characterized by its distinctive crest formed by dorsally expanded lacrimals. Although its fossils are rare, currently recognized materials suggest this taxon was the largest predator in the Early Jurassic times in Antarctica, indicating it was the apex predator in its ecosystem. The skeleton of Cryolophosaurus bears both advanced and basal characteristics of theropods, making its position within theropod phylogenetic tree controversial. Its unusual anatomical features, size, and the habitat located close to the Jurassic polar circle all differ from other Early Jurassic theropods, indicating it was one of the most ecologically significant taxon of all theropods. Keywords Cryolophosaurus, Dinosauria, Theropoda, ecology, Antarctica Full Text:PDF Refbacks - There are currently no refbacks.	https://vjs.pgi.gov.pl/article/view/26918/0
In this chapter: - Cash Receipts Schemes - Disbursement Schemes - Noncash Schemes One common type of asset misappropriation scheme is payroll fraud. From the book: Inflating hours worked, benefits earned, or pay rates are some of the most common and straightforward ways of committing payroll fraud. Manual timekeeping obviously creates more risks for overstatement of hours worked. Computerized timekeeping systems make manipulation more difficult, although not impossible. Paid leave time is ripe for abuse, because so many companies simply do not have procedures in place to prevent employees from taking time off but getting paid regular wages for that time, instead of using their sick leave or vacation time. It is not uncommon for employees to use paid leave during a week but then get paid overtime hours later in the week, even if their actual work hours haven’t exceeded 40 hours. Controls should be in place to flag these instances and prevent them. In a properly controlled environment, a supervisor would be required to sign off manually or electronically on the hours worked by employees. Failure to verify the hours or weaknesses in the sign-off process allows fraud to occur at this point in the payroll function. It is, of course, possible for a supervisor to collude with an employee to inflate her or his payroll. It is harder to detect a fraud in which employees are colluding, especially when a management member is involved. The parties to the fraud are going to jointly cover up for each other, and that will make many frauds difficult to find. Random checks by people outside of the payroll or supervisory function may help cut down on collusion. If the supervisor knows that auditors are going to periodically test the records and look for irregularities, she or he may be less likely to engage in fraud. Ghost employees are an age-old type of internal fraud, in which a perpetrator has a nonexistent employee receive a paycheck from the company. The ghost employee might be a real person who cashes the check at her or his bank with no problems, or the ghost employee could be a fictitious person altogether, requiring a little more work in order to cash the paycheck. In theory, it should be difficult to issue a paycheck to someone who is not an employee. In an environment with good controls, an employee could not be added to the accounting system without proper documentation and authorization by one or more levels of management. These controls are aimed at determining that the company has hired a real person, for an authorized position, at a proper pay rate, and in the proper department. However, not all companies follow such procedures to verify the existence of the employee and the job. In many cases, it is relatively easy for a payroll processor to add someone to the payroll, and as long as the amounts do not get too large, it can go undetected for a long time. Ghost employees could be detected at the point of payment if a company had the right procedures in place. Requiring direct deposit of payroll checks discourages ghost employees, because it creates a verifiable paper trail that is often easier to trace than with paper checks. If a company is insistent on using paper checks, it is advisable to make employees receive checks in person, to reduce the risk that a fake employee could receive a check. Payroll records and personnel records should be maintained by different people or departments. The personnel department should verify any changes to payroll, and new hires should be verified through reference checks and background checks. Commission and bonus schemes are centered around inflating sales figures so that compensation that is based on company revenue is also increased. By creating fictitious sales or by causing sales to be recorded early, an employee can receive higher pay. Commissions are often paid as a percentage of sales, and bonuses can be calculated in a similar fashion, although sometimes they are also based on whether a certain threshold is passed. The detection of payroll fraud schemes will largely be based on a detailed examination of records to determine whether hours and pay rates are being properly recorded and paid. Other procedures that can help detect payroll schemes include: - Examine payroll records in detail to verify the existence of employees. - Look for missing data in payroll records, such as missing social security numbers or addresses, which could indicate ghost employees. - Search for employees with unusually low income tax withholding, suggesting the potential for a ghost employee with a scheme to make the net paycheck as high as possible. - Examine and verify all pay rate changes for the year. - Look for anomalies in overtime pay, specifically looking for employees who have unusually high overtime compared to others or as a percentage of base pay. - Conduct occasional audits of paychecks, including both leave pay and overtime pay, looking for instances of improper overtime pay. - Compare budgeted payroll to actual, looking for unusual variances. - Examine commissions and bonuses paid as a percentage of revenue, looking for unusual variations. - Inspect aged receivables by salesperson or other commissioned employee, to determine whether old unpaid balances are more frequently related to one or two employees. - Review uncollectible accounts receivable to determine whether any of the sales may have been fictitious and related to a payroll scheme. - Look for unusual spikes in sales for certain regions, salespeople, or product lines, which could be related to a payroll fraud scheme.	http://www.expertfraud.com/investigation-of-asset-misappropriation-schemes/
Background {#s1} ========== Biobanks are a key element in the advancement of precision medicine by facilitating research. The majority of biobanks accomplish this through the use of stored samples, but some also enable efficient re-contact and enrollment of subjects into new research projects. The Mayo Clinic Biobank ([@B1]) is one such collection that allows additional contacts for embedded follow-up studies. Understanding the factors related to participation in existing biobanks can aid in identifying patterns that predict recruitment to future collections. For example, the NIH funded All of Us study cohort is currently enrolling and has plans to allow future studies in the cohort ([@B2]). However, current biobanking literature has limited data on the rate at which subjects are willing to participate in additional embedded follow-up studies within biobanks to which they had consented. Understanding participant engagement in follow-up studies can further demonstrate the benefit of biobanking and increase efficiency in these types of recruitment. This study sought to investigate the factors associated with consent to the Mayo Clinic Biobank (MCB) as well as willingness to participate in additional follow-up research projects embedded in the MCB. Particpants and Methods {#s2} ======================= The MCB initiated recruitment of adult patients in April, 2009. Briefly, the initial recruitment phase identified patients through upcoming clinical appointments in Rochester, MN (MCR) starting in April, 2009. Minimal eligibility criteria were required for the MCB: Mayo Clinic Patients who were 18 or older, current residents of the United States, and able to provide informed consent. Appointments were selected largely from departments that provided primary care ([@B1]). The initial recruitment phase identified Mayo Clinic patients through the clinic appointment database in Rochester, MN (MCR) starting in April, 2009. Recruitment was expanded to the other Mayo Clinic sites in Jacksonville, FL (MCF) in June, 2012 and La Crosse, WI (MCW) in August, 2013. December, 2015 marked the end of active recruitment as the recruitment goal of enrolling 50,000 had been met. Since then, a passive enrollment continues as subjects approach the Biobank to request enrollment. One of the key elements included in the Mayo Clinic Biobank consent was allowance for up to two requests per year for additional studies ([@B3]). Over 40 follow-up studies with new patient contact have been conducted to date; each reviewed and approved by Mayo Clinic Institutional Review Board (IRB). Mayo Clinic Biobank Enrollment ------------------------------ In the original Biobank enrollment, we identified 272,013 Mayo Clinic patients with scheduled appointments up to 3 weeks in the future and mailed invitation packets to patient home addresses. Those who had not responded to the invitation were contacted via phone, unless the date of the scheduled appointment had passed. All subjects were given a remuneration valued at \$20 after all required elements (consent, sample, survey) were completed. The 272,102 patients that were invited to the Mayo Clinic Biobank ranged in age from 18 to 95, with a mean age of 55 (SD: 17.4). Fifty-eight percent were female and 84% were of the white race. For the current analyses, we excluded 20,911 patients: 3,632 were identified to be ineligible (i.e., unable to provide informed consent), 6,853 were unsolicited volunteers, and 10,426 were subjects for whom we were unable to contact due to patient refusal of Minnesota Research authorization (Sec. 144.295 MN Statutes) ([@B1]). Among the remaining 251,102 patients, 48,312 participated, 23,944 refused, and 178,846 did not respond within 90 days. To understand consent rates, we compared subjects who participated to those that refused and did not respond. Responses to recruitment were truncated at 90 days to evaluate the initial recruitment and limit potential cofounding, such as additional recruitment contacts that occurred more than a year after the initial invitation. We evaluated differences in consent rates by basic demographic information: age at invitation, gender, race, ethnicity, distance from the clinic, and month of invitation. Other potentially important factors (such as education level) were unavailable to us due to IRB restrictions on accessing non-responder and refuser data. Follow-Up Studies Within Mayo Clinic Biobank -------------------------------------------- As described above, the MCB informed consent allowed contact of study participants up to two times per calendar year to participate in follow-up studies. These studies requested participants to provide additional samples (saliva, stool, blood, and/or urine), complete additional questionnaires, and/or release their contact information to the follow-up study to allow recruitment to a separate IRB approved protocol. Investigators conducting these follow-up studies provided selection criteria to the MCB staff who then subset to eligible participants through queries of patient provided information and/or electronic health record (EHR) data. MCB staff mailed the appropriate information to these participants outlining the request and describing the remuneration for the given study. Typically, follow-up studies offered remuneration in various amounts. Remuneration ranged from \$0 for studies with only questionnaires, \$10 for new samples to upwards of \$800 for studies with greater subject burden (i.e., numerous clinic visits, invasive procedures, study diaries). Remuneration was mentioned at the time of the study invitation and distributed after all study requirements were complete. Invited subjects indicated willingness to participate by completing an opt-in form and returning their response to the MCB study team personnel via the U.S. Postal service. Those who did not provide any response to the initial opt-in form were sent reminder letters 4 weeks after the initial mailing. All questions or clarifications received via mail, telephone, email, or in person were tracked in the study database. We evaluated difference in participation rates by study type and by basic demographic information: age at invitation, gender, race, ethnicity, education, and time from MCB consent to follow-up study invitation. Statistical Methods {#s3} =================== Consent rates into the MCB were summarized as total number of consented participants divided by the total number of eligible subjects invited to participate within each category of a variable. Continuous variables (age, residential distance from the recruitment site, and years since MCB consent to follow-up study invitation) were categorized as follows: age in 20 year windows; distance from MCB was split into local (\<30 miles), care in catchment area (31--99 miles), regional (100--249 miles), and national (250 or more miles). Time from initial Biobank consent was grouped into time frames with similar consent rates: \<1, 2--3, and more than 3 years. Consent to the MCB was summarized across the three sites (Rochester, MN; La Crosse, WI; and Jacksonville, FL) separately and as a whole. Participation rates to follow-up studies were summarized as weighted means by sample size to account for the multiple studies to which participants were invited to participate. Weights were calculated for each category of a variable across follow-up studies. Weights were calculated as number invited to a given study within a level divided by the total number of patients invited in that variables level to all sub-studies. Age/gender interactions were investigated using logistic regression with a splined age with 3 degrees of freedom ([@B4]). P-values were calculated but not presented for the majority of analyses in this study due to the large sample size which causes statistical significance for even trivial differences. Statistical analysis was performed using SAS software version 9.4 (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC) and R 3.1.1 (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria). Results {#s4} ======= MCB Participation ----------------- Of the 251,102 patients actively invited to participate in the Mayo Clinic Biobank between April 1, 2009 and the end of December, 2015, 48,312 (19%) consented, 23,944 (10%) refused, and 178,846 (71%) did not respond within 90 days of initial invitation. Mayo Clinic Rochester had the highest overall consent rate at 24% with Mayo Clinic Florida and Mayo Clinic Wisconsin having \~50% lower consent rates at 12 and 11%, respectively. A majority of consents were received within 30 days of initial invitation with 89% at MCR, 80% at MCF, and 81% at MCW. The rate of consent to MCB declined over time ([Figure 1](#F1){ref-type="fig"}), with consent rates of 32--26% prior to 2011 decreasing down to 19--17% from 2013 to 2015. ![Variations in monthly consent rate to the Mayo Clinic Biobank during the Biobank enrollment period from April 1, 2009 through the end of 2015 at the three recruitment centers (MCR, Mayo Clinic Rochester; MCF, Mayo Clinic Florida; MCHS, Mayo Clinic Health System site in La Crosse, Wisconsin).](fpubh-08-00009-g0001){#F1} The highest rate of consent was seen among the 70--89 year olds with 26% of patients consenting across the three sites. In MCR, the consent rate for 70--89 year olds was 32% and the consent rates for 50--69 year olds was 28%. MCF and MCW had substantially lower consent rates at these ages, 12% at both sites ([Table A1](#TA1){ref-type="table"}). Within each of the three sites, consent rates were similar for males and females with an overall consent rate of 19% for both genders. However, we noted a significant interaction between age and gender. As shown in [Figure 2](#F2){ref-type="fig"}, male and female consent rates steadily increased across age until the age of 78 years and then began to decline. Females had a significantly higher consent rate than males until the age of 65, at which time the male consent rate became higher ([Figure 2](#F2){ref-type="fig"}). Patients who self-reported their race as white were most likely to consent at all sites (20% overall) with American Indian/Alaskan Native patients consenting at the second highest levels at 13% overall. Patients who self-reported as Asian or Black/African American consented at lower rates than any other group, at 10 and 7%, respectively. A slight difference in consent rates was noted between patients who lived 30--99 miles from their recruitment center and patients who lived 100 miles or more from their recruitment sites, 21 and 23%, respectively. We also evaluated whether time of year affected consent rates and saw that patient consent rates were lowest when patients were invited in November and December and highest in March, April, and October. ![Age by gender interaction with 95% prediction interval for follow-up study consent rate among participants in the Mayo Clinic Biobank invited to participate in follow-up studies, 2010 through 2018.](fpubh-08-00009-g0002){#F2} Follow-Up Studies Participation ------------------------------- Of the 57,041 patients consented to the Biobank over the lifetime of the recruitment, 33,487 (59%) have been invited to participate in at least one follow-up study between 2009 and 2018 ([Table 1](#T1){ref-type="table"}). The median number of follow-up studies to which patients were invited was 2 (IQR: 1, 3) but ranged as high as 10. Among those invited to at least one follow-up study, 71% of subjects agreed to participate in at least one follow-up study and 30% participated in more than one study. Ninety-three percent (93%) of patients invited to follow-up studies were white, 60% were female, and 34% had some college education. These distributions were not meaningfully different from the overall Mayo Clinic Biobank population ([Table 1](#T1){ref-type="table"}). About 90% of follow-up study patients were recruited from patients enrolled at the Rochester site even though that group comprised only 77% of the MCB. This was due in large part to requests in many follow-up studies for geography-matched controls for their Rochester-based case-control studies. ###### Demographic characteristics among Mayo Clinic Biobank participants invited to follow-up studies compared to the underlying MCB population from which they were selected. Follow-up study Biobank cohort --------------------------- --------------------- -------------------- Female 19,952 (60%) 33,515 (59%) White 30,741 (93%) 51,588 (92%) Age at Biobank enrollment 57.1 (15) 59.5 (16) Recruitment center Florida 2,387 (7%) 10,412 (18%) Wisconsin 925 (3%) 2,659 (5%) Rochester 30,175 (90%) 43,970 (77%) Education High school or less 5,380 (16%) 9,137 (16%) Some college 11,192 (34.0%) 18,464 (33%) 4 year degree 8,452 (26%) 13,998 (25%) Advanced degree 7,965 (24%) 14,218 (26%) The type of follow-up studies conducted influenced the participation rates ([Table 2](#T2){ref-type="table"}). Of the 43 follow-up studies considered, 33 included a request for identifier release from participants, 13 included a request for additional questionnaire data, and 16 included a request for additional biological samples ([Table 2](#T2){ref-type="table"}). Twenty-two studies included more than one type of request from the participants with 11 asking for both new samples and identifier release. Participation rates were highest in studies requesting additional questionnaires with a weighted mean participation rate of 69% (SD: 10%). Follow-up studies that requested identifier release or new samples had very similar participation rates, 56% (SD: 13%) and 54% (SD: 13%), respectively ([Table 2](#T2){ref-type="table"}). The limited number of studies that requested stool or urine samples had the lowest consent rates ranging from 14 to 45%. Seven of the follow-up studies above involved sequencing data, such as pharmacogenomics or genome wide association studies. The weighted mean consent rate to these studies was 56% (SD: 6%) and ranged from 14 to 85%. ###### Overview of follow-up study participation rates by type of follow-up study data request. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Study type **N studies\ Inter quartile\ Range\ Mean consent\ (N = 43) range (consent rate) rate (weighted)** ------------------------- ------------------ --------------------- -------------------- --------------------- Identifier release 33 49--67% 13--85% 56% (SD: 13%) New samples 16 30--59% 14--85% 54% (SD: 16%) Blood 12 42--65% 19--85% 58% (SD: 13%) Blood and urine spot 2 -- -- 45%, 20% 24 h urine 1 -- -- 14% Stool 1 -- -- 34% Questionnaire 13 61--73% 57--87% 69% (SD: 10%) Genetic studies 7 43--59% 14--85% 56% (SD: 6%) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Many follow-up studies included more than one type of request and are included multiple times in the table above. Consent weights are weighted by sample size. [Table 3](#T3){ref-type="table"} presents weighted mean consent rates across the various types of follow-up studies. We saw no meaningful difference in the consent rates of males (58%) and females (59%) to follow-up studies. Non-white patients were significantly less likely to participate in follow-up studies than white patients, 46 and 59%, respectively. For each age group, we saw an \~10% increase in the participation rates up to 49 years of age; a significant decrease was observed in participants who are over the age of 90, which is similar to the consent rates to the MCB. A similar age/gender interaction observed for MCB consent rates was also seen in the follow-up study participation rates. The follow-up study response rate was 53% among those who had been consented to MCB between 3 and 10 years earlier. In contrast, the response rate was 80% among those who had consented to MCB \<12 months earlier. Participants with more education tended to participate more frequently in follow-up studies than those with less education ([Table 3](#T3){ref-type="table"}). These trends were consistent across follow-up study types. ###### Weighted mean participation rates across various demographic factors by follow-up study type among Mayo Clinic Biobank participants invited to participate in follow-up studies, 2010 through 2018. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ID\ Additional\ Questionnaire\ All follow-\ releases samples requests up studies ------------------------ -------------- ----------------- -------------------- ------------------ Gender Female 56 (2.3) 55 (4.3) 69 (2.7) 59 (2.2) Male 55 (2.5) 53 (3.8) 68 (3.0) 58 (2.3) Race Non-white 43 (2.3) 39 (3.5) 57 (3.8) 46 (2.3) White 57 (2.3) 55 (4.1) 70 (2.8) 59 (2.2) Age at Invitation 18--29 43 (3.3) 37 (5.0) 52 (4.9) 42 (2.9) 30--49 51 (2.0) 49 (3.8) 62 (3.3) 52 (2.0) 50--69 58 (2.7) 57 (4.4) 70 (2.8) 61 (2.4) 70--89 58 (2.8) 61 (5.2) 72 (3.2) 62 (2.7) 90+ 25 (3.8) 37 (5.2) 49 (6.0) 37 (4.4) Time from MCB consent \<1 year 70 (2.7) 59 (3.5) 84 (1.7) 80 (1.9) 1--3 years 63 (2.2) 55 (4.5) 70 (2.4) 63 (1.9) 3.1--10+ years 52 (2.2) 53 (4.2) 62 (1.4) 53 (2.00) Education High school or less 48 (2.3) 48 (3.3) 63 (3.6) 52 (2.3) Some college 53 (2.2) 53 (4.2) 67 (2.8) 56 (2.2) 4 year degree 58 (2.4) 56 (4.4) 71 (2.7) 60 (2.3) Advanced degree 62 (2.5) 59 (4.2) 74 (2.5) 65 (2.3) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sample size weighted means and standard deviations are shown. Discussion {#s5} ========== The goals of this current analysis were to investigate factors associated with consent rates to the Mayo Clinic Biobank as well as with willingness to participate in additional research projects through involvement in follow-up studies. We found that consent rates to the Mayo Clinic Biobank were associated with year of consent, declining from 32% in 2009 to 17% in 2015 with an overall consent rate of 19%. These rates are higher than what was observed for similar biobanks without a specific disease focus, such as the UK Biobank, which reported a 5.5% consent rate ([@B5]). The MCB\'s recruitment was targeted to patients with upcoming clinical appointments which is likely a large contributing factor to the improved consent rates compared to the UK Biobank. When comparing our consent rate to those seen in disease specific registries, MCB rates were much lower than the 32% reported across 37 disease-specific collections ([@B6]). Disease registries have the added benefit of perceived patient engagement as patients presumably have more of a vested interest in advancing research for conditions for which they or family members suffer. The reason for the downward trend of consent rates over time is not fully understood. One possible explanation is that patients who were likely to participate were captured early in the recruitment process. However, when recruitment was expanded to MCF and MCW we observed participation rates similar to concurrent rates observed in MCR. There were no protocol or recruitment changes that explain the observed trend. This suggests that there may be larger environmental factors influencing consent rates over time. We found that males and females had comparable consent rates as a main effect; however, we noted an age by gender interaction. Other recruitments have shown various differences in consent rates for males and females with 7% increase in female consent shown for a sleep medicine trial ([@B7]) and the UK Biobank reporting a 5% consent rate for males and 6.5% for females ([@B5]). Observing differences in consent across males and females by age can be insightful in managing recruitment. The phenomena of young patients consenting at lower rates than older patients was expected, but the increased consent for older males was unexpected. This could be due to the increased health awareness in older males compared to young males. This trend suggests accounting for these expected differences during recruitment would allow studies to better balance their final cohorts. One of the primary strengths of biobanks such as the MCB has been the ability to invite the participants to take part in additional follow-up studies. We have observed that MCB patients respond to these follow-up studies at rates higher than seen in patient populations external to the MCB. No publications could be found outlining rates of participation to additional follow-up studies in patients from non-disease-specific biobanks. We found that consent rates to follow-up studies followed the same downward trends over time noted in the rates of consent to the MCB. These trends seem to be fairly uniform across recruitment site. Of note is the time point between initial consent and invitation to additional follow-up studies. The greater the time since initial consent the less likely patients were to consent to follow-up studies. Participants were most likely to consent to additional follow-up studies within a year of initial MCB consent. The downward trend appears to stabilize from 3 to 10 years with a weighted mean consent rate of 53%. However, we will continue to monitor this trend over the lifetime of the MCB, as a continued downward trend may make recruitment less viable. A limitation of this study is the relatively low frequency of non-white subjects enrolled to the MCB. This is being addressed by development of two separate biobanks focused on non-white populations, including the Sangre Por Salud Biobank ([@B8]) which targeted Latino and Latina patients, and Biobank Mississippi, which is enriched for persons with African descent (unpublished). Another limitation is the low response rates to the Mayo Clinic Biobank that would suggest that generalizations to other populations should be done cautiously. The type of request in each follow-up study was important. Although we have had only a small number of studies requesting patients provide urine or stool samples, these follow-up studies had lower participation rates than other types of follow-up studies. Several of the follow-up studies included some sort of genetic component. These studies included sequencing patient samples with potential return of results and we had expected lower rates of participation in these types of follow-up studies. However, we saw no meaningful differences in patient consent rates for these studies compared to other types of follow-up studies. One concern throughout was the differences in consent across the various racial groups. Not only did we see lower rates of consent to the overall Biobank in the non-white populations, but we saw lower rates of consent to follow-up studies in the same groups even among persons that had already consented to take part in the Mayo Clinic Biobank. This suggests that we may need to utilize different methods among these groups in future recruitment efforts, even for follow-up studies. Conclusion {#s6} ========== In conclusion, we describe factors related to participation in the Mayo Clinic Biobank as well in studies embedded within it. We found that consent rates among younger and non-white patients were lower than in older, white patients. However, we also found that participation rates among those already enrolled in the biobank were much higher than those seen in new recruitment efforts, external to an existing biobank. We thus demonstrate an important way that biobanks can advance precision medicine goals: through provision of populations from which studies can draw participants for future studies. Data Availability Statement {#s7} =========================== To apply for access to data, contact <[email protected]> and request the current application for access to samples and/or data. Due to the specifics of the informed consent language, a Mayo Clinic researcher must be included as a collaborator on all projects. Ethics Statement {#s8} ================ The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Mayo Clinic Institutional Review Board. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study. Author Contributions {#s9} ==================== MH planned the manuscript with input from JO. MH and CK equally contributed to all drafts of the manuscript. JO, JC, ER, NL, JB, RG, LW, ST, and MC critically reviewed and updated the manuscript and approved the final version. Conflict of Interest -------------------- The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Funding. This manuscript was supported by the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine. ###### Consent rates to MCB by recruitment center across basic demographic factors. Consent rate (number invited) ----------------------------------- ----------------------------------- ---------------------- ---------------------- ----------------------- Total 12% (N = 69,628) 10.8% (N = 21,861) 24% (N = 159,613) 19.2% (N = 251,102) Female 12% (N = 38,906) 10.8% (N = 14,475) 24% (N = 91,134) 19.2% (N = 144,515) Male 12% (N = 30,722) 9.6% (N = 7,386) 22.8% (N = 68,479) 19.2% (N = 106,587) Age at recruitment 18--29 4.8% (N = 3,918) 4.8% (N = 2,616) 12% (N = 19,187) 9.6% (N = 25,721) 30--49 8.4% (N = 15,151) 7.2% (N = 6,004) 16.8% (N = 41,486) 13.2% (N = 62,641) 50--69 12% (N = 32,037) 12% (N = 9,815) 27.6% (N = 64,499) 21.6% (N = 106,351) 70--89 16.8% (N = 17,598) 15.6% (N = 3,281) 32.4% (N = 33,136) 26.4% (N = 54,015) 90+ 8.4% (N = 924) 4.8% (N = 145) 12% (N = 1,305) 9.6% (N = 2,374) Race American Indian/Alaskan Native 9.6% (N = 111) 12% (N = 24) 14.4% (N = 460) 13.2% (N = 595) Asian 4.8% (N = 1,433) 3.6% (N = 188) 12% (N = 2,434) 9.6% (N = 4,055) Black or African American 6% (N = 5,093) 3.6% (N = 226) 9.6% (N = 2,448) 7.2% (N = 7,767) Choose Not To disclose 8.4% (N = 1,220) 0% (N = 3) 15.6% (N = 942) 12% (N = 2,165) Native Hawaii/Pacific Islander 3.6% (N = 54) 9.6% (N = 10) 13.2% (N = 103) 9.6% (N = 167) Other 6% (N = 669) 8.4% (N = 213) 13.2% (N = 2,369) 10.8% (N = 3,251) Unknown 8.4% (N = 5,563) 7.2% (N = 705) 21.6% (N = 15,558) 18% (N = 21,826) Unable to Provide 4.8% (N = 175) 4.8% (N = 61) 26.4% (N = 23) 7.2% (N = 259) White 13.2% (N = 55,310) 10.8% (N = 20,431) 24% (N = 135,276) 20.4% (N = 211,017) Distance from the clinic 0--29 miles 10.8% (N = 37,300) 10.8% (N = 19,574) 21.6% (N = 72,974) 16.8% (N = 129,848) 30--99 miles 13.2% (N = 12,615) 10.8% (N = 2,063) 24% (N = 35,855) 20.4% (N = 50,533) 100--249 miles 13.2% (N = 11,552) 8.4% (N = 157) 27.6% (N = 19,730) 22.8% (N = 31,439) 250+ miles 13.2% (N = 8,160) 8.4% (N = 67) 25.2% (N = 31,239) 22.8% (N = 39,466) [^1]: Edited by: Ronald M. Przygodzki, United States Department of Veterans Affairs, United States [^2]: Reviewed by: Afolaranmi Olumide Tolulope, Jos University Teaching Hospital, Nigeria; Qun Mai, Government of Western Australia Department of Health, Australia [^3]: This article was submitted to Public Health Policy, a section of the journal Frontiers in Public Health [^4]: †These authors have contributed equally to this work
Hundreds of millions of physical, electronic and financial transactions are conducted each day via postal networks worldwide, which constitute a vehicle for exchanges and economic development. Postal economics studies economic issues relating to these markets, analyzes supply and demand and trends, and compares the sectoral policies implemented in various countries. New information and communication technologies, reform, the global economic and financial crisis and efforts to combat poverty all impact on the postal sector and need to be estimated and evaluated as a result. The economic situation of all countries, be they least developed, emerging or industrialized, is the subject of economic studies aimed at facilitating the sharing of costs, the fostering of partnerships, associations and network interconnectivity, and the development of truly global public assets. Latest results Designated postal operators' infrastructure has diminished slightly in recent years. The number of post offices is estimated at 655,000 worldwide and the number of staff fluctuates at around 5.3 million, but the trend over the last three years points downwards. Domestic letter-post volumes in 2018 were 10% less than in 2014. The share of letter post in total revenue has also dropped, although not at the same pace. Conversely, volumes of domestic parcels have increased by around 46% since 2014. As for international traffic during the same period, parcel post has almost doubled in volume, whereas letter post has decreased by 5%. International traffic, however, both for letters and parcels, represents only around 1% of the total volume. Designated operators' revenue (in nominal terms) has increased by 4%, reaching 267 billion SDR in 2018. The COVID-19 crisis and the postal sector A new report by the Universal Postal Union (UPU), the UN specialized agency for postal matters, titled, “The COVID-19 crisis and the postal sector” shows postal volumes dropping by 21 percent in 2020. The steep decline is the largest seen by the UPU since it began recording exchanges of electronic data between its 192 member countries in 2010.	https://upu.int/en/Universal-Postal-Union/Activities/Research-Publications/Postal-Economics
response in strategic ways. Initial efforts focused on cataloguing the variety and scope of needs and timeline within broad categories of preparation, rescue, and relief. While a hurricane appears to be an equal opportunity event, health impact is not. Preparation well in advance is essential for a person with end stage renal disease requiring dialysis and a specialized bed. Emergency support, communication, and transportation are essential needs for care of people affected by flooding, injury, or dwelling damage. Storm recovery occurs in many stages and durations. Differentiating the efforts of preparation, rescue, and relief allows for volunteers to be aligned with efforts that match skills, expertise, and personal preferences. Volunteering for an activity that is not well suited for a participant is not an effective use of resources and may tarnish an experience for a learner. While this organizational construct promotes more efficient utilization of people and supplies, it is essential that local efforts remain the primary delivery system. The doctor’s office in a small town is often the hub of medical care and the first place to go during a weather emergency. Hurricane Florence reminded us that a physician and a nurse, using only power from a generator, could treat a man suffering a heart attack and care for a woman giving birth. This team, cut off by locally flooded roads, then summoned a helicopter for transport and continued care for three people—who will always have a story to tell. These highly personal experiences remind us of the humanity in healthcare and service to one another. A robust organization in the background furthers a message that help is on the way. While a hurricane appears to be an equal opportunity event, health impact is not. Located along the Pacific Ring of Fire, Indonesia has to cope with the perpetual challenges of many natural disasters when healthcare services and logistics are undoubtedly required. As one of the leading health institutions in Indonesia, the Faculty of Medicine University of Indonesia responds to crises with both humanitarian assistance and disaster relief programs. For example, UI Peduli (UI Cares) is a program supported by alumni with the government in which we delegate our staff and students from various fields to volunteer as teams in times of disasters. This crisis management program responds to multiple concerns. In 2018, several earthquakes and tsunamis in Lombok, Palu, Donggala, and Sunda Strait claimed over 2,500 lives and left more than 11,000 others injured. This experience tested our crisis management—not only in providing immediate healthcare relief to survivors, but also in responding to post-disaster health impacts. In addition to the constant flow of injured victims, unidentified bodies and risks of infection from decaying human remains presented another immediate concern. As part of our crisis management program, we send out experts from the Forensic Medicine Department to carry out a Disaster Victim Investigation process. These responders properly identify the dead to enable immediate, yet appropriate, burial that both respects the deceased’s family while also reducing infectious hazards. Additionally, we consign our best staff and students to help out at local healthcare settings around and within a disaster area, from primary care to public hospitals to areas of medic shortages. Commonly, the majority of post-disaster patients present traumatic injuries, most of which are fractures. We have developed triage systems with both quantity and quality in mind. Based on their fields of practice, our healthcare professionals are assigned responsibilities ranging from pharmacology to surgery. It is important to note that in times of natural disaster, crisis management requires maintaining focus on both human resources and healthcare facilities. Our institution engages in capacity building programs that equip local doctors with both logistics and proper training in order to maximize their performances and prepare for potential crises. We also include mobile clinic units in our disaster response medical service infrastructure, especially for survivors lacking access to healthcare delivery settings. In managing crises, our goal is to not only sustain and improve our contributions in the nation’s disaster response and preparedness in the aftermath stages, but to also focus on implementing preventive measures. ...in times of natural disaster, crisis management requires maintaining focus on both human resources and healthcare facilities. “In the Central Gulf Coast states, many of us divide history into two parts— ‘Before Katrina’ and ‘After Katrina.’ After all, the powerful hurricane that made landfall on the Louisiana coast in 2005 is still the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history, at $125 billion, with as many as 1,800 deaths attributed to the storm and its aftermath. Although New Orleans rightly received much of the national attention, many areas along the Mississippi Gulf Coast were destroyed by the winds and storm surge. In the lower third of Mississippi, nearly all of the hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, and ambulance services were forced to shut down and evacuate patients by whatever means available. Before Hurricane Katrina, the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) did not have a formal statewide role for disaster response, so expectations of us and our own expectations of ourselves were low. Our experience in major medical emergencies had primarily been to react locally, receive patients, and possibly assist around the margins. We did all that and more during Katrina. Once the storm passed, however, the Mississippi State Department of Health asked UMMC to send emergency personnel to the coast to help victims. We mounted a seat-of-our-pants operation of eight volunteers who became completely overwhelmed by the magnitude of the need. We also were asked to coordinate all ambulance movement in the affected area, which we did with cell phones, spotty radio coverage, and sticky notes on a dry erase board. After Katrina, we made a deliberate decision to never again be unprepared and overmatched when responding to a crisis. We completely overhauled our emergency response capability to be more proactive and forward leaning, so UMMC is now able to play a lead role in statewide crisis management. Today, among other capabilities, we are able to deploy and staff up to three mobile field hospitals and a mobile ER/ICU. We operate Mississippi MEDCOM as a high-tech communications hub, coordinating the movement of ambulances and other medical assets statewide. We operate four medical helicopters (compared to one before Katrina) that have statewide reach. And, we are building a state-of-the-art Center for Emergency Services to integrate all of our emergency resources and serve as the state’s lead training site for first responders. This ‘before and after’ story is one we are much more comfortable with and even proud of, because now we stand ready to respond, come what may. After Katrina, we made a deliberate decision to never again be unprepared and overmatched when responding to a crisis. I recently visited New Orleans, and the individual driving me back to the airport told me about his experiences during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He and his family evacuated to Atlanta in a van loaded with a mattress and a small grill. During that long trip, his children could sleep on the mattress and he could grill food for his family. He was one of the fortunate individuals who survived, but he bore witness to significant loss and suffering. His personal story, like so many others, reminds us of the central role that academic health centers play during natural disasters, providing urgent and emergency care, among other services. The three commentators in this issue of Leadership Perspectives share their personal stories as leaders who have experienced major disasters, learned from the challenges, and built programs and infrastructure that draw upon the best of what academic health centers have to offer. Their insights, based on severely trying events, can provide an exemplary guidepost for all. Mark Stacy, MD, dean of the Brody School of Medicine and vice chancellor for health sciences at East Carolina University, highlights the importance of academic health centers to ensure that post-disaster services reach everyone in the community. This entails a disaster preparedness management structure to “unify disaster response in strategic ways.” An essential element of this unified response is a respect for the local healthcare providers who can provide the personal response to individuals in their communities. Ari Fahrial Syam, MD, dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Universitas Indonesia, raises the importance of the role that academic health centers play, not only with immediate healthcare response for those injured, but also in post-disaster health efforts, such as identifying the victims and honoring their families’ traditions. Importantly, he notes that crisis management in times of natural disasters requires a strategic eye for the human resources and the healthcare facilities needed for quality medical care. LouAnn Woodward, MD, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Mississippi, discusses the overwhelming experience of responding to one of the most powerful hurricanes that hit the U.S.—Katrina. That experience led to a “deliberate decision to never again be unprepared and overmatched when responding to a crisis” and to the development of a proactive crisis management program, including construction of a Center for Emergency Services, to fully integrate all emergency resources and responder training. Academic health centers are trusted on local, national, and global levels to provide urgent and emergency care in times of crisis such as hurricanes and floods. And the only way an academic health center can be maximally effective is to be prepared.	https://www.aahcdc.org/Publications-Resources/Series/Leadership-Perspectives/View/ArticleId/23547/Crisis-Management-Hurricanes-and-Flooding

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.