The Structure of Production
Why Are Gold and Commodities So Darn Volatile?
By Mark Skousen, Editor, Forecasts & Strategies
Why are commodities and commodity stocks so volatile? Commodity speculating is not for the faint of heart, and many investors give up on gold, silver, and mining stocks because they can lose 40-90% of their value in a short period of time. Gold's recent drop from $1,900 to $1,200 is a case in point. You have to expect a volatile market.
The reason why commodity prices vary so much can be found in an understanding of Austrian economics, the free-market school that is endorsed by Doug Casey, Rick Rule, and many other commodity experts. As developed by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek in the 20th century, the Austrian school of economics explains why commodity prices are so volatile.
Austrian economists call it "the structure of production." As a follower of the Austrian school, I wrote a book titled The Structure of Production (New York University Press, 1990). Rick Rule told me he loves the book and has bought hundreds of copies to give to his clients.
Austrian economists emphasize the structure of the economy—the structure of interest rates, production, employment, and inventories. It is a complex theory, but the basic idea is that price volatility depends on how far away the product or service is from final consumption. Consumer prices are the most stable, producer or wholesale prices less stable, and commodities are the furthest from final use; therefore, those prices are the most volatile. You can see this difference in the graph below, where the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is far more stable than the RBA Commodity Index.
Take oil and gasoline, for example. Oil is far removed from final use (gasoline) and has varied from $30 to $140 a barrel during the past ten years… and yet the gasoline price (final consumption) is far more stable, varying from $3 to $4 a gallon.
But there's a silver lining in this story. While commodity prices are far more volatile, it also means that commodities and commodity stocks can be much more profitable on the upside… if you buy right. And with commodity prices down 40% or more (with oil being an exception), now may be a great buying opportunity.
Mark Skousen Editor, Forecasts &
You must understand the structure of production if you invest in any cyclical business (and what business isn't cyclical?). Understanding time is critical in investing. After the over-building in 2005, the housing bubble needed time to clear away mal-investments. All the demand pumping, interest rate manipulating, and subsidies could not change that process. I highly recommend Skousen's book.
To learn more: Structure_Production_Reconsidered
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The purpose of the Division of Academic Outreach and Engagement is to expand the knowledge and instructional services provided by Morgan State University into larger Baltimore City and Maryland metropolitan communities. The Division organizes courses, programs, institutes, and initiatives designed to engage community residents, public officials, and business and civic leaders in the use of knowledge derived from faculty and student research, the sharing of mutually beneficial resources, and the appropriate and timely dispatch of University experts and professionals to collaborate in addressing community concerns.
Chief among the goals of the Division of Academic Outreach and Engagement are:
- facilitating the concentration of scholarly research, creative activities, and public service programs within a defined radius (i.e., the Morgan Mile) around the University in order to give significant priority to solving difficult social problems prevalent in urban communities like Baltimore;
- facilitating the civic engagement, community service, volunteer, and research activities of Morgan's faculty and students to improve academic performance among students enrolled in the public schools, promote economic development, enhance public safety and improve the health and social welfare of those residing in local communities;
- assisting in the internationalization of the University's curriculum, programs, and campus activities, in order to expand its relationship with people and institutions from a variety of countries and to enhance and diversify the learning experiences for students;
- developing collaborative relationships with small businesses, libraries, public officials, community and civic organizations to promote lifelong learning and increased employment opportunities; and,
- facilitating the extension of the research, instruction, and public service of faculty and students to improve the cultural and social quality of life for the residents of communities surrounding the University.
Current special programs include:

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


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Geared for children ages four through eight years old, this Box is a combination of extraordinary and innovative activities, games, storybooks, cards, and puzzles that are presented by Get Qurious and their FREE Augmented Reality App.
Manu and his good friends, Emma and Leo, blast off into space together and have fun adventures that appear to come to life. The children can create and combine scenes in an interactive world with physical game pieces, which encourages imaginative play and curiosity. The children are able to make up their own stories with 16 Build a Story Cards, build spaceships with 16 Build a Spaceship Cards, then be able to maneuver them in 3D space animations, and discover a large number of hidden artifacts in four brilliant 3D animated Treasure Hunt space worlds.
Build a Story allows multiple variations to the tales by choosing a different space ship, planet, characters, and 'problem' cards each time. When completed, the children then listen to or read along as the tale is told and at the same time learn about helping others on the imaginary space journeys.
Build a Space Ship means choosing from four different cards for building many variations of their customized spaceship, scan it with the corresponding App, and blast off into space!
Mask Play is role-playing that provides many creative hours of interaction as children put on a variety of masks, record their own voices, and play them back using an audio-mixer that creates silly-sounding variations of their voices!
Treasure Hunt 3D Game gives the children a chance to play together as they search for numerous fantasy artifacts that are hidden in the four planetary worlds. They move the mobile device around in a circle and explore the colorful planets from various angles.


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Cross-axis sensitivity or "angle orthogonal to the plane of measurement":
Cross axis sensitivity is a proportionality constant that relates the change of the inclinometer output induced by a cross acceleration/inclination input. The sensitivity can vary depending on the direction of the cross input.
For example: A liquid capacitive gravity based sensor needs to be mounted in a vertical position - if the back of the inclinometer is mounted 45° off of vertical one would expect the inclinometer to be accurate within 0.1° of the expected output when mounted vertical. Due to the unique cavity design the error is predictable without much overall change to the accuracy. The unit will still provide output along the sensor's degree range, however the error at larger cross angle inputs will be significantly higher - as much as 2 or 3 degrees - the further off vertical the sensor is mounted.
It is recommended to mount a gravity based inclinometer sensor as close to vertical as possible to maintain the integrity of the sensor's output.


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U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has introduced the State Border Defense Act to empower states to counteract President Biden's immigration policies, which critics argue have led to an influx of narcotics on American streets and an increase in child trafficking. Senator Hawley's legislation emerges in response to the Biden Administration's actions that some believe undermine states' ability to secure their borders. This includes hindering the installation of a buoy barrier and razor wire along the southern border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported a record 232,972 southern border encounters in August, marking the highest monthly total in 2023.
"Our southern border is overwhelmed. Joe Biden's policies are exacerbating the situation daily, leaving states like Missouri grappling with the fallout. As the federal government appears reluctant to enforce our immigration laws, states must have the capability to do so," Senator Hawley stated.
The State Border Defense Act proposes to:
- Allow states to deport illegal immigrants instead of relocating them to other states.
- Prosecute individuals who commit crimes upon illegal entry into the country.
- Erect barriers on federal lands or waters along the southern border to deter illegal immigration.
Read the full text of the bill by clicking or tapping here.


Breaking News :
Tourism in Palestine
 Tourism in Palestine
The State of Palestine is distinguished by its possession of many tourist and archeological sites that mix culture, history, art, civilization and religion, and many civilizations that passed or inhabited the State of Palestine, such as Canaanite, Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Greek, Phoenician, Roman, Christian, Hebrew and Islamic, have succeeded, which greatly affected the formation of a civilization And date
 The city of Bethlehem
The city of Bethlehem is the city of Bethlehem, one of the most attractive tourist cities in Palestine, where it is considered a holy city for Christians as it is the birthplace of Jesus Christ, and there are many religious festivals and exhibitions that continue for several days, and the popular tradition (Patriarch Parade) has been included as a tradition of world heritage UNESCO in the year 2012 AD.
Ramallah is one of the attractive tourist cities in the state of Palestine, Ramallah, which is the cultural capital of the West Bank. It also contains many historical sites such as mosques, churches and the famous Arafat's tomb.
 The city of Hebron
The city of Hebron, one of the attractive tourist cities in the state of Palestine, is the city of Hebron, which is famous for its historical and religious sites, and it is the city that contains the famous cave of the patriarchs, which is said to be a home to the graves of the patriarchs.
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BACKGROUND: Experimental and epidemiological evidence suggests that prolactin might play a role in the etiology of breast cancer. We analyzed the relationship of prediagnostic circulating prolactin levels with the risk of breast cancer by menopausal status, use of postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy (HRT) at blood donation, and by estrogen and progesterone receptor status of the breast tumors. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Conditional logistic regression was used to analyze the data from a case-control study nested within the prospective European EPIC cohort, including 2250 invasive breast cancer and their matched control subjects. RESULTS: Statistically significant heterogeneity in the association of prolactin levels with breast cancer risk between women who were either preor postmenopausal at the time of blood donation was observed (Phet = 0.04). Higher serum levels of prolactin were associated with significant increase in the risk of breast cancer among postmenopausal women [odds ratio (OR)Q4-Q1 = 1.29 (95% confidence interval, CI, 1.05-1.58), Ptrend = 0.09]; however, this increase in risk seemed to be confined to women who used postmenopausal HRT at blood donation [ORQ4-Q1 = 1.45 (95% CI 1.08-1.95), Ptrend = 0.01], whereas no statistically significant association was found for the non-users of HRT [ORQ4-Q1 = 1.11 (95%CI 0.83-1.49), Ptrend = 0.80] (Phet = 0.08). Among premenopausal women, a statistically non-significant inverse association was observed [ORQ4-Q1 = 0.70 (95% CI 0.48-1.03), Ptrend = 0.16]. There was no heterogeneity in the prolactin-breast cancer association by hormone receptor status of the tumor. CONCLUSION: Our study indicates that higher circulating levels of prolactin among the postmenopausal HRT users at baseline may be associated with increased breast cancer risk.
Original publication
Journal article
Ann Oncol
Publication Date
1422 - 1428
breast cancer, estrogen receptor, hormone replacement therapy, progesterone receptor, prolactin levels, prospective cohort, Breast Neoplasms, Case-Control Studies, Cohort Studies, Female, Humans, Postmenopause, Premenopause, Prolactin, Risk Factors


Sutra Study Guide – April 11, 2013 Meditation
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Sutra Study Guide
Today I would like to offer you a strategic way you might want to use when you are studying the Lotus Sutra. You may or may not find it a useful tool, that is alright. Perhaps it will help you develope a tool for yourself. However it may be nice place to begin.
Some people benefit from a structured or guided study approach so this my help them. Others do not want to be encumbered by such a structured approach, that too is fine.
I offer this because I think it is a helpful place to begin a strategic study of the Lotus Sutra.
First of course is to select the passage you wish to study. You may do this by going sytematically from the beginning of the sutra to the end working your way through a select number of pages each day or week. You might also just decide you want to focus on one parable at a time. However you choose to plan out your study, try to actually have a plan and stick with it. Remember a large accumulation of wisdom from the Sutra begins with a steady approach of small additions.
I. Read the selection.
First of course is to read the selection. Take your time reading. On this first read just enjoy the experience of reading the Buddha's words and letting them be absorbed by your life; just open up to feelings and not understandings. You may feel noting but confusion, that is perfectly acceptable, as acceptable as being blown away.
II. Observation – What does the selection say?
Now you are going to take a much closer look at the details. You might consider answering some of these questions.
a. Who are the people involved?
b. What happened?
c. What ideas are being expressed?
d. What resulted?
e. Who is the speaker?
f. What is the purpose?
g. What is the stated reason?
h. How are things accomplished? How well? How quickly? By what method?
i. Are there key words in the passage?
j. What images are in the passage?
III. Interpretation – What does it mean?
Write down questions about what you don't understand in the passage.
What do you think the passage meant to the original audience that received the teachings?
In light of its meaning to the original audience, what does it mean to you?
Are there words you need to look up and understand better?
Finally, what is a single primary meaning of this passage for you now (this may change over time).
IV. Illustration – How can I pass this on?
Draw a picture,or diagram, or write a word picture, or in some other way illustrate what you have discovered from this passage.
V. Application – What do I need to do?
The following questions may help you apply this passage to your life.
1. Is there something for me to avoid, i.e. doing, thinking
2. Is there a promise for me to claim?
3. Is there an example for me to follow? or not follow?
4. What knowledge have I gained? Is there other knowledge I should pursue?
About Ryusho Shonin
This entry was posted in Basics, Buddhism, by Ryusho 龍昇, Dharma Talks, Good Things, Lotus Sutra, Myosho-ji Temple, Nichiren Shu. Bookmark the permalink.


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Assessment of spatial reference points and spatial relations in indoor environments for orientation tasks from natural language descriptions
Cristiane K Marchi Fagundes, Rhaíssa Viana Sarot, Luciene Stamato Delazari
Spatial Relations and Spatial Reference Points have been studied for decades in the areas of cognition, geography, computer science, geosciences and recently, in robotics and artificial intelligence. Moreover, the process of orientation and navigation in outdoor and indoor environments requires a thorough study with Spatial Relations and Spatial Reference Points. However, there are experiments performed with computational resources, by means of simulations or illustrations. Considering this, the objective of this research was the realization of experiments in natural language that considered the human spatial orientation used in tasks performed in people's daily routine in indoor environments. Furthermore, it will contribute to the studies that have considered descriptions of everyday environments performed in daily natural language. The methodology consisted of collecting descriptions that were used to the indoor environment in real routine. Finally, the descriptions were analysed and provided the classification of spatial reference points and spatial relations most expressive in the Brazilian Portuguese language. Thus, these results contributed to the understanding of the process of user's spatial orientation, especially in indoor environments.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.


A computer analysis of photographs could help doctors diagnose which condition a child with a rare genetic disorder has, using a computer program that recognizes facial features in photographs, looks for similarities with facial structures for various conditions, such as Down's syndrome, Angelman syndrome, or Progeria, and returns possible matches ranked by likelihood.
This image shows an average face taking on the average facial features of eight rare genetic disorders that have been built from a growing bank of photographs of people diagnosed with different syndromes. Oxford University scientists have developed a computer program to help doctors diagnose rare genetic disorders by recognizing facial structure in photographs. Credit: Christoffer Nellåker/Oxford University
Zisserman says, 'It is great to see such an inventive and beneficial use of modern face representation methods.'
Identifying a suspected developmental disorder tends to require clinical geneticists to come to a conclusion based on facial features, follow up tests and their own expertise. It's thought that 30–40% of rare genetic disorders involve some form of change in the face and skull, possibly because so many genes are involved in development of the face and cranium as a baby grows in the womb.
They developed a programme that – like Google, Picasa and other photo software – recognises faces in ordinary, everyday photographs. The programme accounts for variations in lighting, image quality, background, pose, facial expression and identity. It builds a description of the face structure by identifying corners of eyes, nose, mouth and other features, and compares this against what it has learnt from other photographs fed into the system.
Source: University of Oxford


Straightness of the curve
There are around one million words in English though probably less than 200,000 in active use.
The number of possible words is infinite.
The number of valid word combinations is determined by the meanings of the words and the meaning to be conveyed by the combination.
Just playing ……
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Beware: Your Text Messages Could Be Rerouted to Hackers for as Little as $16
A nasty new attack has recently come to light thanks to Motherboard/Vice: attackers silently redirecting your text messages so they can compromise your two-factor accounts that rely on text messaging.
The attacks use a legitimate text messaging management service designed to help businesses with marketing and mass messaging people. However, attackers are using this service to redirect your text messages and cause great harm.
How does this happen?
The process for signing up and verifying a victim's phone number on a text management platform is shockingly easy. A little forgery on a Letter of Authorization form, a self-regulated process the FCC should be handling but doesn't, and bam -- the hacker is approved for redirection. There is no warning to the phone number owner before the redirection service's activation goes live.
What's more? Often, to attack a number, it can only cost the hacker $16 (reference). Companies providing redirection services are often aware of this but do not disclose itto owners using their services. When asked how an attack like this is possible, many companies are quick to deny claims and redirect questions to the trade organization for the wireless industry (CTIA).
Cellular phones have long since been victims of the attack, but SMS attacks have one key difference. In the past known attacks have used SIM swapping orSS7 attacks, and it is usually clear that your phone is being attacked because it will be completely disconnected from the cellular network. SMS redirection is different, because you may not know you're being attacked as it won't be clear that someone else is getting your text messages while voice still works, allowing hackers just enough time to take control of your accounts. The "silent," invisible nature of SMS redirection is what makes it such a genuine and unique threat for individuals.
What is the primary security concern with SMS redirection attacks?
The main security concern is hackers gaining access to your accounts. The nature of SMS authentication is to verify account access and passwords. If hackers are instigating or intercepting this process, they gain access to the account(s) you were attempting to verify instead of you.
What should we learn from these new types of attacks?
SMS (text messaging) ideally should not be used for anything security-related or highly sensitive. If using two-factor authentication, it is better to use apps like Authy, Google Authenticator, or Microsoft Authenticator. Password managers that have 2FA support built-in are even better. We put together a list of our most recommended password managers here. For industries like banking that use SMS authentication as industry-standard, ensure that your passwords are unique and secure to protect access to your sensitive financial information.
UPDATE: T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T Stop SMS Hijacks thanks to the Vice article as of 3/25/21. We still strongly recommend avoiding SMS for two-factor authentication.
Does your business use SMS two-factor authentication for anything sensitive? We're here to help. Contact us here


_USER_{Lundberg2010Personality, abstract = {This paper uses data from the German Socio-economic Panel Study to examine the relationship between psychological traits, in particular personality, and the formation and dissolution of marital and cohabiting partnerships. Changing patterns of selection into and out of relationships indicate that the determinants of marital surplus have altered between older cohorts who were born in the years after World War II and younger cohorts born in the 1960s. For younger cohorts, relationships between personality traits and the probability of marriage are identical for men and women, which is consistent with returns to marriage that are based on joint consumption. Tastes for marital public goods are negatively related to openness to experience (a desire for change and variety) and positively related to conscientiousness for both men and women. Selection into marriage is associated with distinctly different personality profiles for older men and older women, suggesting that gender-specialized contributions to household public goods were an important source of marital surplus for these cohorts.}, address = {Bonn}, author = {Shelly Lundberg}, copyright = {_URL_ keywords = {J12; 330; Personality; marriage; divorce; Ehe; Haushaltsproduktion; Pers\"{o}nlichkeitspsychologie; Geschlecht; Scheidung; Lebensgemeinschaft; Sch\"{a}tzung; Deutschland}, language = {eng}, number = {4945}, publisher = {IZA}, title = {Personality and marital surplus}, type = {Discussion paper series // Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit}, url = {_URL_ year = {2010} }


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The answer is b. The organization is well positioned to provide primary prevention programs in partnership with other agencies. Many now have community development departments, health promotion staff, etc., that extends their role beyond "secondary prevention" clinics
- How can health care leaders strategically orient themselves and their organizations for the future?
- Briefly discuss 5 ways health care leaders can build effective teams within organizations.


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Table of Contents
- 1 How do seahorses die?
- 2 What is the life expectancy of a seahorse?
- 3 What is the longest living seahorse?
- 4 Are seahorses hard to keep alive?
- 5 Can seahorses hurt you?
- 6 Do seahorses fall in love?
- 7 Do seahorses eat their babies?
- 8 What happens if a seahorses mate dies?
- 9 Can you touch a seahorse?
- 10 What happens if you touch a seahorse?
- 11 Can males get pregnant?
- 12 How long do seahorses usually live in captivity?
- 13 What is the lifespan of a seahorse?
- 14 What is the average length of a seahorse?
- 15 Why is the Sea Horse threatened?
How do seahorses die?
Because of their body shape, seahorses are rather inept swimmers and can easily die of exhaustion when caught in storm-roiled seas.
What is the life expectancy of a seahorse?
In the wild, the lined seahorse has a lifespan of one to four years; however, in captivity their lifespan usually reaches the full four years. Four years is the maximum age reported for the species.
What is the longest living seahorse?
ingens has evolved to thrive in the cooler waters of our coast, inhabiting the sea grass beds and calm waters of our bays and estuaries. This seahorse species is the largest and longest lived in the world, with full grown adults measuring 12 inches and living up to six years.
Are seahorses hard to keep alive?
Though unique in their care needs, seahorses are surprisingly easy to keep (and even breed) if they are maintained in the proper type of fish aquarium system, kept with appropriate tankmates, and offered the right kinds of fish food. Most of all, they can be extremely rewarding to observe and care for.
Can seahorses hurt you?
With their slow, gentle demeanors and curlicue tails, seahorses might seem like the most harmless, unassuming creatures under the sea. But they're actually one of the most deadly.
Do seahorses fall in love?
Swimming side by side and holding tails, seahorses engage in a ritual of love that is both fascinating and magical. In the name of love, these animals engage in a spectacular display of courtship. The male may spend days courting his truly beloved as the two swim tail in tail in a harmonious and majestic fashion.
Do seahorses eat their babies?
In fact, some species of seahorse can give birth to more than 1,000 babies at once! That's right, males sometimes eat their own babies. It's tough being a baby seahorse. Of the hundreds of babies that the male gives birth to, only one or two will survive to become adults and have babies of their own.
What happens if a seahorses mate dies?
It's up to the male to carry those eggs until they're ready to be born. It is said that sea horses die of love. Once a mate dies, the other sea horse doesn't take long to die afterwards, since they can't live without one another.
Can you touch a seahorse?
Do not touch seahorses — period Touching, moving or manipulating animals in order to get the perfect image can cause abrasions or even break parts of their body. The researchers suggest that divers (and photographers) keep a minimum distance of 14 inches (36 cm) from seahorses to reduce stress to the animals.
What happens if you touch a seahorse?
Do not touch seahorses — period Seahorses exhibited a strong stress response when they were physically manipulated by photographers. Touching, moving or manipulating animals in order to get the perfect image can cause abrasions or even break parts of their body.
Can males get pregnant?
Is it possible? Yes, it's possible for men to become pregnant and give birth to children of their own. In fact, it's probably a lot more common than you might think.
How long do seahorses usually live in captivity?
The average life span in the wild for a seahorse ranges from 4 to 6 years. It is much less for those in captivity due to stress, poor conditions, and the high risk of disease. You can tell the difference from the males and females by looking at the abdominal area.
What is the lifespan of a seahorse?
Seahorses are small fish with a life span of one to five years. The seahorse life cycle includes males that get pregnant, which is as extreme as it gets for male parental care in the animal kingdom.
What is the average length of a seahorse?
Seahorses range in size from 1.5 to 35.5 cm (0.6 to 14.0 in). They are named for their equine appearance with bent necks and long snouted heads followed by their distinctive trunk and tail.
Why is the Sea Horse threatened?
However, seahorses are considered threatened around the world, largely from over-harvesting for traditional Chinese medicines, unintended capture in fish trawl nets, and the loss of natural habitats such as seagrasses and mangroves.


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Synthesis of SnO2versus Sn crystals within N-doped porous carbon nanofibers via electrospinning towards high-performance lithium ion batteries
The design of tin-based anode materials (SnO2 or Sn) has become a major concern for lithium ion batteries (LIBs) owing to their different inherent characteristics. Herein, particulate SnO2 or Sn crystals coupled with porous N-doped carbon nanofibers (denoted as SnO2/PCNFs and Sn/PCNFs, respectively) are fabricated via the electrospinning method. The electrochemical behaviors of both SnO2/PCNFs and Sn/PCNFs are systematically investigated as anodes for LIBs. When coupled with porous carbon nanofibers, both SnO2 nanoparticles and Sn micro/nanoparticles display superior cycling and rate performances. SnO2/PCNFs and Sn/PCNFs deliver discharge capacities of 998 and 710 mA h g−1 after 140 cycles (at 100, 200, 500 and 1000 mA g−1 each for 10 cycles and then 100 cycles at 100 mA g−1), respectively. However, the Sn/PCNF electrodes show better cycling stability at higher current densities, delivering higher discharge capacities of 700 and 550 mA h g−1 than that of SnO2/PCNFs (685 and 424 mA h g−1) after 160 cycles at 200 and 500 mA g−1, respectively. The different superior electrochemical performance is attributed to the introduction of porous N-doped carbon nanofibers and their self-constructed networks, which, on the one hand, greatly decrease the charge-transfer resistance due to the high conductivity of N-doped carbon fibers; on the other hand, the porous carbon nanofibers with numerous voids and flexible one-dimensional (1D) structures efficiently alleviate the volume changes of SnO2 and Sn during the Li–Sn alloying–dealloying processes. Moreover, the discussion of the electrochemical behaviors of SnO2vs. Sn would provide new insights into the design of tin-based anode materials for practical applications, and the current strategy demonstrates great potential in the rational design of metallic tin-based anode materials.


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Ari Thorgilsson the LearnedArticle Free Pass
Ari Thorgilsson the Learned, (born c. 1067—died November 9, 1148), Icelandic chieftain, priest, and historian whose Íslendingabók (Libellus Islandorum; The Book of the Icelanders) is the first history of Iceland written in the vernacular. Composed before 1133 and covering the period from the settlement of Iceland up to 1120, it includes information on the founding of the Althing (parliament) and on the settlement of Greenland and Vinland (North America). Ari is also believed to have written much of the original version of Landnámabók (The Book of Settlements), a work listing the genealogies and histories of noble Icelandic settlers. It served as a source for many of the 13th-century Icelanders' sagas.
What made you want to look up "Ari Thorgilsson the Learned"? Please share what surprised you most...

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


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THL Toolbox > Audio-Video > Overview
Contributor(s): David Germano, James Graves, Chelsea Hall, Eric Woelfel.
New developments in digital technology and the Web offer exciting new possibilities for the incorporation of audio-video into new areas of research, publication and teaching. They also allow us for the first time to use and explore audio-video creatively in ways previously only possible with texts, such as providing for powerful ways to search media files and giving users tools to creatively alter audio-video files to incorporate into their own work. However, working with audio-video can also be very frustrating, and thus THL has expended considerable energies in developing tools and documentation to provide a systematic framework for the creation, delivery and use of audio-video in research, publication and teaching.
For a beginner's lesson on how to use the AV Database website, please see: Using the THL AV Database.
The overall process from start to finish can be divided into five distinct phases:
- Create the audio-video through recording sessions
- Technically process the media into edited segments in formats usable on a computer
- Catalog the resultant media titles with metadata
- Linguistically process the media titles with transcription, translation, annotation and timecoding
- Package the media title into research publications, or into instructional units, including integration with reference databases, for delivery to end users
Given the demands of such a process, it is vital that an integrated set of tools with proper manuals and broader documentation are available which are free, open source, and suited for educational purposes. We are creating comprehensive documentation for each phase, which themselves involve a series of internal steps and processes often requiring separate documentation. As a whole, these materials form the basis for our training and reference with regard to audio-video materials.
1. Determine a title to be produced.
- Review/screen recorded material (i.e., video tapes) and decide how they might be broken down into discrete titles. Each title will be its own video. Consult standardized guidelines for generating titles, including standardized phraseology, etc.
- Generating Titles & Credits for Recordings
2. Propose a title (and corresponding credits for each title) and have them checked by Germano.
- (Typically, it's best to prepare a batch of titles and their corresponding credits, and submit that to Germano, rather than submitting titles to him one-by-one.)
3. Send the approved titles and credits to Penam in Lhasa, or a local Tibetan assigned to the task like Tsering Wangchuk and Tsering Perlo to be rendered into Tibetan and Chinese.
4. Meanwhile digitize and edit your titles in Final Cut Pro, inserting blank title and credit slates whose trilingual information can be added later, once translations are ready.
5. Complete catalog entries in BOTH the physical media (i.e., tapes) database AND Audio-Video database.
- Physical Media Database: Make sure the content of the tape is properly described in the physical media database. Also include the recording date, the tape format (i.e., NTSC, PAL, HD, etc.), and other useful data about the tape itself and its recording.
- AV Database: Give a short description of the title's content, fill out the relevant metadata (like language, etc.), propose collection classifications if not obvious, & record as much information as you can about participants involved in your title, under the "Credits" tab of each AVDB entry
- Consult with a native Tibetan speaker to help process participant information on handwritten forms as necessary. (Often such forms are filled out in the cursive script, not dbu can, and may therefore be harder to understand.)
6. Compress each title in Final Cut Pro, making sure you've included ending credits. Upload the files to the server after compression and after converting the audio files to MPEG-3 and generating thumbnails.
7. Alert a Transcription Center that the compression is ready for transcription, and eventual translation.
8. If relevant, once transcribed, it can be further processed for use in an instructional unit or other presentational context (see making language instructional units).
NOTE: If possible, use the fields under the workflow tab in order to mark processes as completed. In addition, you should keep track of the workflow in a more comprehensive fashion using the status reports for av, ie: titles waiting to be approved, completed titles, etc. In the future, we hope the new AV database will allow for tracking of workflow so that everyone involved can easily fnd what titles need to be translated, etc. by using the database itself.


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here is usable for almost any messaging scheme - in Python you send strings, and you can use len() to determine its length (even if it has embedded \0 characters). It's mostly the receiving code that gets more complex. (And in C, it's not much worse, except you can't use strlen if the message has embedded \0s.)
The easiest enhancement is to make the first character of the message an indicator of message type, and have the type determine the length. Now you have two recvs - the first to get (at least) that first character so you can look up the length, and the second in a loop to get the rest. If you decide to go the delimited route, you'll be receiving in some arbitrary chunk size, (4096 or 8192 is frequently a good match for network buffer sizes), and scanning what you've received for a delimiter.
One complication to be aware of: if your conversational protocol allows multiple messages to be sent back to back (without some kind of reply), and you pass recv an arbitrary chunk size, you may end up reading the start of a following message. You'll need to put that aside and hold onto it, until it's needed.
Prefixing the message with it's length (say, as 5 numeric characters) gets more complex, because (believe it or not), you may not get all 5 characters in one recv. In playing around, you'll get away with it; but in high network loads, your code will very quickly break unless you use two recv loops - the first to determine the length, the second to get the data part of the message. Nasty. This is also when you'll discover that send does not always manage to get rid of everything in one pass. And despite having read this, you will eventually get bit by it!
In the interests of space, building your character, (and preserving my competitive position), these enhancements are left as an exercise for the reader. Lets move on to cleaning up.
It is perfectly possible to send binary data over a socket. The major problem is that not all machines use the same formats for binary data. For example, a Motorola chip will represent a 16 bit integer with the value 1 as the two hex bytes 00 01. Intel and DEC, however, are byte-reversed - that same 1 is 01 00. Socket libraries have calls for converting 16 and 32 bit integers - ntohl, htonl, ntohs, htons where "n" means network and "h" means host, "s" means short and "l" means long. Where network order is host order, these do nothing, but where the machine is byte-reversed, these swap the bytes around appropriately.
In these days of 32 bit machines, the ascii representation of binary data is frequently smaller than the binary representation. That's because a surprising amount of the time, all those longs have the value 0, or maybe 1. The string "0" would be two bytes, while binary is four. Of course, this doesn't fit well with fixed-length messages. Decisions, decisions.
Strictly speaking, you're supposed to use shutdown on a socket before you close it. The shutdown is an advisory to the socket at the other end. Depending on the argument you pass it, it can mean "I'm not going to send anymore, but I'll still listen", or "I'm not listening, good riddance!". Most socket libraries, however, are so used to programmers neglecting to use this piece of etiquette that normally a close is the same as shutdown(); close(). So in most situations, an explicit shutdown is not needed.
One way to use shutdown effectively is in an HTTP-like exchange. The client sends a request and then does a shutdown(1). This tells the server "This client is done sending, but can still receive." The server can detect "EOF" by a receive of 0 bytes. It can assume it has the complete request. The server sends a reply. If the send completes successfully then, indeed, the client was still receiving.
Python takes the automatic shutdown a step further, and says that when a socket is garbage collected, it will automatically do a close if it's needed. But relying on this is a very bad habit. If your socket just disappears without doing a close, the socket at the other end may hang indefinitely, thinking you're just being slow. Please close your sockets when you're done.
Probably the worst thing about using blocking sockets is what happens when the other side comes down hard (without doing a close). Your socket is likely to hang. SOCKSTREAM is a reliable protocol, and it will wait a long, long time before giving up on a connection. If you're using threads, the entire thread is essentially dead. There's not much you can do about it. As long as you aren't doing something dumb, like holding a lock while doing a blocking read, the thread isn't really consuming much in the way of resources. Do not try to kill the thread - part of the reason that threads are more efficient than processes is that they avoid the overhead associated with the automatic recycling of resources. In other words, if you do manage to kill the thread, your whole process is likely to be screwed up.
If you've understood the preceeding, you already know most of what you need to know about the mechanics of using sockets. You'll still use the same calls, in much the same ways. It's just that, if you do it right, your app will be almost inside-out.
In Python, you use socket.setblocking(0) to make it non-blocking. In C, it's more complex, (for one thing, you'll need to choose between the BSD flavor O_NONBLOCK and the almost indistinguishable Posix flavor O_NDELAY, which is completely different from TCP_NODELAY), but it's the exact same idea. You do this after creating the socket, but before using it. (Actually, if you're nuts, you can switch back and forth.)
The major mechanical difference is that send, recv, connect and accept can return without having done anything. You have (of course) a number of choices. You can check return code and error codes and generally drive yourself crazy. If you don't believe me, try it sometime. Your app will grow large, buggy and suck CPU. So let's skip the brain-dead solutions and do it right.
In C, coding select is fairly complex. In Python, it's a piece of cake, but it's close enough to the C version that if you understand select in Python, you'll have little trouble with it in C.
ready_to_read, ready_to_write, in_error = \ select.select( potential_readers, potential_writers, potential_errs, timeout)
You pass select three lists: the first contains all sockets that you might want to try reading; the second all the sockets you might want to try writing to, and the last (normally left empty) those that you want to check for errors. You should note that a socket can go into more than one list. The select call is blocking, but you can give it a timeout. This is generally a sensible thing to do - give it a nice long timeout (say a minute) unless you have good reason to do otherwise.
In return, you will get three lists. They have the sockets that are actually readable, writable and in error. Each of these lists is a subset (possibly empty) of the corresponding list you passed in. And if you put a socket in more than one input list, it will only be (at most) in one output list.
If a socket is in the output readable list, you can be as-close-to-certain-as-we-ever-get-in-this-business that a recv on that socket will return something. Same idea for the writable list. You'll be able to send something. Maybe not all you want to, but something is better than nothing. (Actually, any reasonably healthy socket will return as writable - it just means outbound network buffer space is available.)
If you have a "server" socket, put it in the potential_readers list. If it comes out in the readable list, your accept will (almost certainly) work. If you have created a new socket to connect to someone else, put it in the potential_writers list. If it shows up in the writable list, you have a decent chance that it has connected.
One very nasty problem with select: if somewhere in those input lists of sockets is one which has died a nasty death, the select will fail. You then need to loop through every single damn socket in all those lists and do a select([sock],,,0) until you find the bad one. That timeout of 0 means it won't take long, but it's ugly.
Actually, select can be handy even with blocking sockets. It's one way of determining whether you will block - the socket returns as readable when there's something in the buffers. However, this still doesn't help with the problem of determining whether the other end is done, or just busy with something else.
Portability alert: On Unix, select works both with the sockets and files. Don't try this on Windows. On Windows, select works with sockets only. Also note that in C, many of the more advanced socket options are done differently on Windows. In fact, on Windows I usually use threads (which work very, very well) with my sockets. Face it, if you want any kind of performance, your code will look very different on Windows than on Unix.
There's no question that the fastest sockets code uses non-blocking sockets and select to multiplex them. You can put together something that will saturate a LAN


text:
Section 5: Driveway Angle
Two-way driveways should intersect the roadway at an angle of ninety degrees unless it is determined that a lesser angle will provide satisfactory traffic operations for the highway. Suggested limiting values on driveway angles are:
Residential Driveway: 75o
Commercial Driveway: 75o; commercial driveways expected to have a volume of 400 vehicles per day or two or more trucks/large vehicles in a one-hour period shall be designed as normal intersections (public driveway).
Normal Intersection (Public Driveway), Service Driveway and Field Driveway: 80o.
The angle of intersection between the centerline of a one-way driveway and the edge of pavement of the public roadway may be between forty-five (45o) and ninety degrees (90o). Sixty degrees (60o) is a commonly used angle for one-way driveways.


Fill in the blanks with the correct answers. New requirements for marking of cable trays apply when the cable trays installed within substations contain conductors _________. The warning notice shall be installed in a conspicuous position along the cable tray at intervals not to exceed ____ ft.
 1. with 600V insulation; 20
 2. cable tray rated; 50
 3. rated higher than 600V; 10
 4. rated higher than 35kV; 20
Answer: C
A new section has been added to Art. 225 of the 2011 NEC. Section 225.70 outlines the warning sign requirements in substations. The term "substation" is also a new definition in Art. 100.
As noted in 225.70(A)(1)(c), a "DANGER — HIGH VOLTAGE" sign shall be placed "on all cable trays containing high-voltage conductors with the maximum spacing of warning notices not to exceed 10 ft." ANSI Z-535.2 or ANSI Z-535.4 may also provide guidelines for the warning notice.


text:
Kütahya Tiles and Ceramics
Forms and Motifs
Stylised floral motifs, religious motifs and human and animal figures decorate most of the 18th century tiles and ceramics in the Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation's Kütahya Tiles and Ceramics Collection. The pieces dating from this period have a white or cream coloured paste, white slip and transparent glaze. The motifs are painted underglaze in green, turquoise, yellow, cobalt blue and, from the mid-18th century onwards, manganese purple, the motifs being outlined in black.
A second group of Kütahya ware consisting of dishes, lemon squeezer, bowls, bottles, plates and cups dating from the 18th century are decorated with stylised flowers, leaves and curling tendrils in cobalt blue, with the occasional addition of yellow, green or turquoise. Ewers and jugs of various shapes and sizes are decorated with cypress tree motifs in relief, circular crosshatched medallions and floral scrolls worked in free brushstrokes.
One of the foremost characteristics of the Ottoman Empire was the tolerant attitude and absence of discrimination on grounds of religion, race or culture. Consequently Muslim and Christian potters work together in Kütahya producing objects designed to meet the needs of both communities. Striking examples in this exhibition are pottery and tiles with motifs relating to the Christian liturgy.
Kütahya's contribution to architectural decoration over the centuries is illustrated by tiles dating from various periods in the last section of the exhibition, showing how Kütahya pottery set its mark to Ottoman society at every level, from coffee cups to monumental building decoration.


text:
|Visual Basic (Declaration)|
Public Class ObjectContext Inherits MarshalByRefObject
|Visual Basic (Usage)||Copy Code|
public class ObjectContext : MarshalByRefObject
|Managed Extensions for C++|
public __gc class ObjectContext : public MarshalByRefObject
public ref class ObjectContext : public MarshalByRefObject
Thread Safety: Any public static members of this type are thread safe. Any instance members are not guaranteed to be thread safe.
This class is the main point when loading, saving and deleting persistent objects to/from the storage. Whenever objects are loaded from the storage you need (don't use directly the storage) to request them by using an ObjectContext class. The class contains specialized methods (all generic) allowing the user to get single objects, a list of objects or an ObjectSet from the storage. Each object can also be marked for deletion by using the MarkForDeletion method of the ObjectContext. An object that has been marked for deletion is deleted the next time the changes are persisted to the storage.
When setting up an instance of the ObjectContext class you have to pass to the constructor an instance of a class that implements the IStorage interface. Those classes are so called "storages". They encapsulate a physical storage (like a database or anything else...) and each ObjectContext instance operates on one of those storages. The framework ships with a few storages for databases such as the OracleStorage, the MsSqlStorage and the OleDbStorage to mention any of them. When setting up the storage you have not to open it in any kind. This is done by the framework: the connections to the storage are handled by the classes internally (in the storages coming with the framework the ADO.NET connection pool is used).
Be aware that persistent objects loaded within one ObjectContext "life" in this ObjectContext. This means that the ObjectContext manages internally the state of the object (see ObjectInfo). This could cause problems when loading the persistent object with one ObjectContext and saving it on another that works on the same storage. To avoid this problem persistent objects that are loaded on one ObjectContext and saved on another have to implement the ISelfContaining interface. Persistent objects implementing this interface are ObjectContext independent and can be saved and loaded on any instance of an ObjectContext (if all of them are accessing the same storage). When implementing the interface the state is managed by the persisten object itself! The ISelfContainingObject interface is also implemented if a persistent object is remoted over the network or persisted (serialized) to any kind of storage for further use.
Before using an ObjectContext you should also connect an instance of a class that implements the IConcurrencyManager interface with the class by setting the ConcurrencyManager property of the ObjectContext. If the program works on a storage that is locally installed and if it is the only program working on that storage you could use no IConcurrencyManager. But it's not recommended! A concurrency manager checks if the persistent object to save has been changed by anybody else in the meantime (while being in memory). If somebody else changed the object in the storage you get a ConcurrencyException. With this excpetion you can inform the user that somebody else altered the object in the meantime. The object could then be reloaded or saved in any other place.
To save the changes of your objects you have to use PersistChanges of the ObjectContext. The method allows you to persist single objects or objects that implement the ICustomPersister interface. This interface is implemented by classes that persist more then one object. For an example look at the ObjectSet class.
If the class implementing the IStorage interface implements also the ITransactionStorage interface the ObjectContext supports also Transactions on that storage. Use StartTransaction, Rollback and Commit for transaction management. Please don't use directly the methods exposed by the storage.
The ObjectContext returns an ObjectSearcher when invoking GetObjectSearcher. You could use this class to specify your search queries for a given object type. For more information about creating your own ObjectSearcher check out the ObjectSearcher class.
Platforms: Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 2000, Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional, Windows Server 2003 family
Assembly: Chili.Opf3 (in Chili.Opf3.dll)


text:
Every Office and Classroom:
- Can hear the fire alarm when sounded
- Can hear the other alarms when sounded
- Can push a button on their alarm keypad by their door that will signal the alarm company to call the police or the fire department
The Following Locations:
Main office, Business Office, Plumeria Classroom, Jacaranda Classroom, Monkeypod Classroom, Banyan Classroom and Koa Classroom
- Has a portable battery/crank radio with charged batteries – if needed, tune to one of the civil defense channels noted on the back of the radio.
- Classrooms/Offices with radios are responsible for keeping their neighboring classrooms informed if possible.
- Main Office informs Maintenance and Development
- Business Office informs Ohia Classroom, Art and Library
- Plumeria informs Kukui Classroom
- Jacaranda informs WiliWili Classroom
- Monkeypod informs Nara and Kamani Classroom
- Banyan informs Mamane and 'Iliahi Classroom
- Koa informs anybody in Root Family Center (RFC)
All employees will receive instructions from the Emergency Management Team (EMT) on how parents will be contacted and what they will be told when contacted in the event of an emergency. The MOMI Emergency Management Team will instruct employees as to what information is to be released to parents.
All communication with the
media will come from the Head of School or the President of the Board of Directors.


text:
Dec. 27, 2012 A Chinese research team, led by Beijing Forestry University, BGI, Beijing Lin Fu Ke Yuan Flowers Co., Ltd, and other institutes, has completed the first genomic sequence of Prunus mume, known as mei. This work is extremely important for the deeper understanding of Rosaceae evolution and provides an invaluable resource for the improvement of fruit trees.
The latest study was published online December 27 in Nature Communication.
As one of the longest-lived flowering fruit trees, the P. mume was domesticated in China more than 3,000 years ago. It belongs to Rosaceae, the third most economically important plant family in temperate regions, and is characterized by high nutrition, medical value, and tolerance to low temperature in winter. Writers and artists have extolled the beauty of its flowers, and the blossom is considered to be the symbol of Chinese national spirit. The availability of P. mume genome will open a new way for better decoding the mysteries of this fascinating tree.
The plantation technique that makes P. mume so diverse--the artificial grafting--also makes their genomes difficult to assemble. In this study, researchers sequenced the genome of P. mume, a wild species from Tibet in China, using a robust approach integrated with next-generation sequencing (NGS) and whole-genome mapping (WGM) technologies. Then they constructed a high-density genetic map by applying restriction-site-associated DNA (RAD) marker strategy that further improves the quality of the genomic reference. Through all the efforts, researchers yielded the ~237Mb P. mume reference genome.
The poor phylogenetic resolution of the Rosaceae suggests rapid evolution within the family. In this study, the evolutionary analysis of P. mume genome demonstrated that there was no recent whole-genome duplication (WGD) event happened after the differentiation between P. mume and Malus x domestica (apple). However, the triplicated genomic arrangement was found in the P. mume genome by paleo-history analysis in Prunus.
Supported by the genomic data of apple and strawberry (Fragaria vesca), researchers successfully reconstructed nine ancestral chromosomes of Rosaceae family, and analyzed the chromosome fusion, fission and duplication history in three major subfamilies, including genera Prunus, Malus and Fragaria. Through analysis, they hypothesized that at least 11 fissions and 11 fusions occurred in P. mume from the nine common ancestral chromosomes. For apple, at least one WGD and five fusions took place to reach the 17-chromosome structure, compared with 15 fusions for strawberry to affect the 7-chromosome structure.
P. mume is one of the first trees that bloom in early spring, blooming even below 0℃. In this study, researchers investigated the genetic characteristics underlying the mechanisms related to acclimate to cold weather and release itself from dormancy. They found that dormancy-associated MADS-box transcription factors (DAM) family and C-repeat-binding transcription factors (CBF) were two important factors related with flowering dormancy.
As the saying goes, "Plum blossom incense from the cold weather," P. mume always has a special fragrance in winter. To understand its mechanism of floral scent, researchers identified a series genes related to the biosynthesis of volatile compounds, such as benzyl alcohol acetyltransferase (BEAT) gene. They supposed the expansion of the BEAT gene family might increase the content of benzyl acetate and therefore induces the special fragrance of P. mume.
The disease resistance related-genes may benefit the future breeding improvement. In this study, researchers found many related genes expanded tremendously in the P. mume genome, such as leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinase (LRR-RLK) genes, the nucleotide-binding site-coding resistant gene (NBS-coding R gene), and pathogenesis-related (PR) gene families. It was reported that PR proteins could mediate plant defence against pathogenic constraints and the general adaptation to stressful environments. Most PR gene families in P. mume were expanded notably especially PR10, suggesting their expansion might be related to the response of P. mume to salt, drought and fungal infection in roots and leaves.
Wenbin Chen, Project Manager of BGI, said, "The P. mume genome lays a solid foundation for identification of important economic traits, and provides a valuable resource for P. mume breeding and other Rosaceae species studies. The work here also brings a new approach for further exploring the biosynthesis of floral scent and regulation mechanism of early blooming in endodormancy, and other comparative genomics studies on Rosaceae species."
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Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
- Qixiang Zhang, Wenbin Chen, Lidan Sun, Fangying Zhao, Bangqing Huang, Weiru Yang, Ye Tao, Jia Wang, Zhiqiong Yuan, Guangyi Fan, Zhen Xing, Changlei Han, Huitang Pan, Xiao Zhong, Wenfang Shi, Xinming Liang, Dongliang Du, Fengming Sun, Zongda Xu, Ruijie Hao, Tian Lv, Yingmin Lv, Zequn Zheng, Ming Sun, Le Luo, Ming Cai, Yike Gao, Junyi Wang, Ye Yin, Xun Xu, Tangren Cheng, Jun Wang. The genome of Prunus mume. Nature Communications, 2012; 3: 1318 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2290
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.


Christopher Ross is a New York sculptor whose work synthesizes sculpture techniques with contemporary influences. Commanding and curvaceous, his sculptures frequently reference the heroic female form and are informed by his interest in European art, historical research, and the relationship between male and female.
A horse head with its mouth agape and eyes wide open as if in full stride is the latest example of wearable works of art by the accomplished and prominent sculptor Christopher Ross. Available in exquisitely crafted sterling or gold, it is an Objet d'art or 'body armor', sculpted to be worn on an artisan made belt of walnut brown calfskin.
Christopher Ross envisioned sculpture to wear; works that exist between sculpture and bodily adornment. Each limited edition object is sculpted and finished from A-Z by Mr. Ross himself; numbered, signed and stamped with his signature thumbprint, date and copyright.
Notable collectors include The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City and The National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.
His sculptures to wear are eye-catching and unmistakable expressions of individuality and discerning taste.


text:
Apr 12, 2021
This major requires 12 hours of student teaching and is intended to lead to teaching licensure. Students should consult with their academic advisor in English or with Dr. Kristi Melancon for more information about the licensure process.
UNIVERSITY CORE (58 HOURS)
University Core - English (12 hours)
University Core - History (6 hours)
University Core - Bible (6 hours)
University Core - Social Sciences (6 hours)
Choose two courses representing two different subject areas.
University Core - Science (7 hours)
Seven hours of science hours are required, including one 4-hour lab course. Students are encouraged to choose from one of the following lab courses below:
- BIO 103 - Human Biology
- BIO 104 - Human Biology Laboratory
- BIO 105 - Plants and People
- BIO 106 - Plants and People Laboratory
- BIO 111 - Biology I
- CHE 112 - Chemistry in American Life II
- CHE 141 - General Chemistry I
- PHY 151 - General Physics I
- PHY 251 - Fundamentals of Physics I
The remaining course may be 3 or 4 hours from Biology, Chemistry, or Physics. A student may choose one course from each of two disciplines or two courses from the same discipline. However, course combinations NOT permitted include the following: BIO 101-203, 101-111, CHE 141-111, 141-124, 111-124, PHY 151-251, 251-104, 151-104. Evening students (those taking half or more of their courses as evening classes) may substitute a 3-hour non-laboratory course for the 4-hour laboratory course.
University Core - Mathematics (3 hours)
Any MAT course numbered 105 or higher, determined in consultation with the advisor.
University Core - Fine Arts (3 hours)
University Core - Physical Education (3 hours)
Three hours are required. Recommended courses are listed below:
University Core for BA and English Majors - Modern Languages (6-12 hours)
Twelve hours are usually required. Students must complete the intermediate or sophomore-level courses in their chosen language. Students with one high school unit may enter course 102 of the same language and thereby waive 3 hours of this requirement; those with two high school units may enter course 201, waiving 6 hours.
University Core - Chapel
Students at Mississippi College are required to complete chapel requirements based on the student classification at the time of enrollment as detailed below:
|Freshman (0-23 semester hours)
|Sophomore (24-53 semester hours)
|Junior (54-83 semester hours)
|Senior (84 or more semester hours)
Students classified as ADP (Accelerated Degree Program) and students enrolled in online degree programs are exempt from chapel requirements.
The student must complete the University Core Curriculum and must complete within the Department of English a total of 33 hours of work in addition to the core English courses. A Communication course is also required. The requirements for a major are as follows:
Fifteen semester hours composed of:
One 3-hour English Writing Elective
Choose one of the following:
Twelve hours to be composed of the following:
Additional English Electives (3 sem. hrs.)
- Choose three (3) semester hours from ENG 250, ENG 270, or any 300- or 400-level English courses in writing or literature.
Communication Course (3 Hours)
Choose one of the following Communication courses:
Secondary Education Requirements (28 Hours)
The student must be admitted to the Teacher Education Program in order to complete the Secondary Education requirements. Additional steps are required to earn a teaching license.
Sufficient elective hours must be taken to meet the minimum hour requirement for graduation in this program. Electives should be chosen in consultation with advisor.


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This image is a four-frame, horizontal art piece featuring four of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's vital mission phases. From left to right they are: launch, aerobraking, science and relay. Each frame is a colorful, surrealistic representation of that particular event done by artist Tina DiCicco. The launch frame features a stylistic, black rocket leaning away from Earth to simulate take off. The rocket is trailed by a tail of small red, orange and yellow shapes meant to represent the engines firing. The second frame is aerobraking and features a colorful, boxy spacecraft using its large, rectangular solar panels for drag in the martian atmosphere. The third frame represents the science phase of the mission when the spacecraft actually begins collecting vital data. In this artistic image, the boxy spacecraft is orbiting a red Mars, using its powerful HiRISE camera to view the surface in unprecedented detail. The swaths of data it takes are represented by purple and green triangles of color on the planet's surface. The final frame is meant to represent the relay phase. Against a purple sky, a rover on the martian surface sends information (drawn as a line) to the boxy Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the orbiter, in turn, returns the information (line) back to Earth.
Full Res JPG (1.6 Mb)
Important Stages of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
Artist Tina DiCicco's image highlights four important stages of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission: launch, aerobraking, science and relay.
Credit: NASA/JPL/DiCicco
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« Is Eucalyptus ready to be your private cloud? | Main | The Future of the Parallelism and its Challenges »
Scaling PostgreSQL using CUDA
Combining GPU power with PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL is one of the world's leading Open Source databases and it provides enormous flexibility as well as extensibility. One of the key features of PostgreSQL is that users can define their own procedures and functions in basically any known programming language. With the means of functions it is possible to write basically any server side codes easily.
Now, all this extensibility is basically not new. What does it all have to do with scaling and then? Well, imagine a world where the data in your database and enormous computing power are tightly integrated. Imagine a world where data inside your database has direct access to hundreds of FPUs. Welcome to the world of CUDA, NVIDIA's way of making the power of graphics cards available to normal, high-performance applications.
When it comes to complex computations databases might very well turn out to be a bottleneck. Depending on your application it might easily happen that adding more CPU power does not improve the overall performance of your system – the reason for that is simply that bringing data from your database to those units which actually do the computations is ways too slow (maybe because of remote calls and so on). Especially when data is flowing over a network, copying a lot of data might be limited by network latency or simply bandwidth. What if this bottleneck could be avoided?
CUDA is C / C++
Basically a CUDA program is simple a C program with some small extensions. The CUDA subsystem transforms your CUDA program to normal C code which can then be compiled and linked nicely with existing code. This also means that CUDA code can basically be used to work inside a PostgreSQL stored procedure easily. The advantages of this mechanism are obvious:
GPUs can do matrix and FPU related operations hundreds of times faster than any CPU
the GPU is used inside the database and thus no data has to be transported over slow lines
basically any NVIDIA graphics card can be used
you get enormous computing power for virtually zero cost
you can even build functional indexes on top of CUDA stored procedures
not so many boxes are needed because one box is ways faster
How to make it work?
How to make this all work now? The goal for this simplistic example is to generate a set of random number on the CPU, copy it to the GPU and make the code callable from PostgreSQL.
Here is the function to generate random numbers and to copy them to the GPU:
/* implement random generator and copy to CUDA */
generate_random_numbers(int number_of_values)
nn_precision *cuda_float_p;
/* allocate host memory and CUDA memory */
nn_precision *host_p = (nn_precision *)pg_palloc(sizeof(nn_precision) * number_of_values);
CUDATOOLS_SAFE_CALL( cudaMalloc( (void**) &cuda_float_p,
sizeof(nn_precision) * number_of_values));
/* create random numbers */
for (int i = 0; i < number_of_values; i++)
host_p[i] = (nn_precision) drand48();
/* copy data to CUDA and return pointer to CUDA structure */
CUDATOOLS_SAFE_CALL( cudaMemcpy(cuda_float_p, host_p,
sizeof(nn_precision) * number_of_values, cudaMemcpyHostToDevice) );
return cuda_float_p;
Now we can go and call this function from a PostgreSQL stored procedure:
/* import postgres internal stuff */
_TAG_ "postgres.h"
_TAG_ "fmgr.h"
_TAG_ "funcapi.h"
_TAG_ "utils/memutils.h"
_TAG_ "utils/elog.h"
_TAG_ "cuda_tools.h"
/* prototypes to silence compiler */
extern Datum test_random(PG_FUNCTION_ARGS);
/* define function to allocate N random values (0 - 1.0) and put it into the CUDA device */
int number = PG_GETARG_INT32(0);
nn_precision *p = generate_random_numbers(number);
This code then now be nicely compiled just like any other PostgreSQL C extension. The test random function can be called just like this:
SELECT test_random(1000);
Of course this is a just brief introduction to see how things can practically be done. A more realistic application will need more thinking and can be integrated into the database even more closely.
More information:
Professional CUDA programming
Professional PostgreSQL services
The official PostgreSQL Website
The official CUDA site
Reader Comments (6)
This is really interesting. I wonder how this can be used to speed up pgsql databases with TBs of data. I wonder if the Hadoop project has talked about integrating with CUDA to improve performance?
November 29, 1990 | Unregistered CommenterSteve C.
This looks really cool! I wonder how big the real-life effect will be though. Our apps are generally I/O and not CPU bound...
November 29, 1990 | Unregistered CommenterJan
Unless the Hadoop jobs are prepping huge data sets for post-processing by a GPU cluster, most of the time the Hadoop jobs will be I/O bound.
In principle this sounds like a great idea but IRL I'm not so sure it will be useful.
November 29, 1990 | Unregistered CommenterAaron deMello
hey man, your blog should indent code examples :D
it is hard to read. and colours could be nice too (but for me, indent is more important than fancy colours)
otherwise nice examples
November 29, 1990 | Unregistered CommenterAnonymous
CUDA is pretty much dead. OpenCL will replace CUDA and is cross vendor even though Nvidia does command GPGPU market pretty much.
It is probably better to think about implementing Database GPU Acceleration in OpenCL rather than CUDA for future code reuse
November 29, 1990 | Unregistered CommenterTS
We tried to implement a continuous map reduce framework on CUDA. Applications like these can use this framework to take advantage of the CUDA architecture without learning CUDA.
November 29, 1990 | Unregistered CommenterAnonymous
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.- Catholics and Muslims meeting at the Vatican this week discussed the responsibilities of religious leaders during times of crisis, agreeing that their most important responsibility is to faithfully live out their beliefs through "teaching, good deeds and example."
The religious leaders met as part of the 11th Colloquium organized by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the World Islamic Call Society (WICS) in order to discuss the responsibilities of religious leaders during times of crisis.
After meeting with the Holy Father briefly after today's general audience, the participants agreed upon the following conclusions:
First, the most important responsibility of religious leaders during times of crisis is to faithfully live out their religious beliefs through "teaching, good deeds and example, thus serving their communities for the glory of God," participants in the colloquium decided.
Religious leaders should also have a "cultural and social role to play in promoting fundamental ethical values, such as justice, solidarity, peace, social harmony and the common good of society as a whole, especially the needy, the weak, migrants and the oppressed," they continued.
The leaders also came to the conclusion that they cannot overlook their special responsibility toward the youth, so they "do not fall victim to religious fanaticism and radicalism, receiving rather, a sound education thereby helping them to become bridge builders and peace makers."
Finally, the religious leaders noted that they must pay particular attention to interreligious relations on both the national and international level to avoid religious violence. "This requires a mutual respect and reciprocal knowledge, both cherishing personal relations and building confidence and mutual trust, so as to be able to confront together crises when they occur."


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Assement of the impact of Lafenwa Market waste on the zooplankton and phytoplankton diversity in Ogun River, Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria.
This study investigated types of waste generated and patterns of waste disposal in relation to activities in Lafenwa market, Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria. It also characterised the abundance of plankton species and physico-chemical properties in the adjoining Ogun River. This was with a view to determining the impact of market waste on the physico-chemical and biological quality of the receiving river. A preliminary survey of the market was carried out to determine patterns of daily activities in different sectors of the market. A structured questionnaire was administered on 5% of randomly selected individuals from each sector to collect information on the type of waste generated, and patterns of disposing such waste. Polythene bags were assigned to each selected individual to collect waste generated for six consecutive days. The bags were retrieved each morning and waste weighed using a standard weighing balance. Plankton samples were collected from eight sampling stations (two upstream, three within the market, and three downstream) once every three months for 12 months and analysed for plankton species diversity and number. Twenty litres of each water sample was strained through a fine meshed plankton net (mesh size = 45 µm) to a concentrate volume of 30 ml and preserved with 5% formalin solution. Water samples for the analysis of physico-chemical properties were collected in 2-L plastic bottles and returned to the laboratory and analysed using both instrumentation and non-instrumentation methods. Data were analysed using ANOVA and correlation coefficient. Ninety-nine of 150 selected respondents (66.0%) disposed their waste directly to dumpsite and 22.7% directly to Ogun River. The major types of waste generated were polythene, vegetables, food waste, smoke/ashes, paper/carton, waste water and chaff. Rice milling sector generated the heaviest mean waste weight of 1,527.5 kg and saloon sector the least (6.95 kg). The differences were statistically significant at p < 0.05. Seven genera and thirty-seven species of phytoplankton recorded were Bacillariophyta and Chlorophyta (14 species each), Cyanophyta (5 species), Chrysophyta, Dinophyta, Euglenophyta, and Rhodophyta (1 species each). The most abundant phytoplankton was Skeletonemacostatum (54.68 ± 19.49 org/m3), while the least was Gyrosigmafasciola (1.56 ± 1.56 org/m3). Similarly, four genera and 10 species of zooplankton were recorded namely, Rotifers (4 species), Copepoda (3 species), Insecta (2 species), and Cladocera(1 species). The most abundant zooplankton were Chaoborussp (31.25 ± 10.4 org/m3), while the least was Eudiaptomussp (4.69 ± 2.62 org/m3). Phytoplankton species abundance decreased from upstream to downstream while zooplankton followed an inverse direction. The peak abundance of biological indicators of pollution (Oscillatoriasp 87.5 ± 37.5 org/m3, Nitzchiasp 62.5 ± 36.29 org/m3, Brachionusdimiadiatus 41.67 ± 14.86 org/m3 and Euglena sp 6.25 ± 6.25 or/m3) was recorded at the market area while the least upstream (29.17 ± 37.5 org/m3, 33.33 ± 17.77 org/m3, 0 ± 0 org/m3, 4.17 ± 4.17 org/m3) respectively. Mean biochemical oxygen demand ranged from 2.90 ± 0.40 mg/l (upstream) to 6.80 ± 1.92 mg/l (market) while the dissolved oxygen ranged from 3.80 ± 0.41 mg/l (upstream) to 5.00 ± 0.73 mg/l (market). The correlation coefficients showed both negative and positive statistical significance between plankton species and some physico-chemical parameters. The study concluded that the peak abundance of biological indicators of pollution at the market area was a clear indication of pollution due to direct waste disposal to the river.


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Trick question — which drawing is 3 dimensional?
Answer – neither. They are both 2 dimensional although the one on the right looks like it is 3D. That is because of light and shadow.
To create paintings and drawings in realistic style, or as I like to say, so that you don't have to explain, you must understand that you as the artist are really an illusionist.
The first step in creating an illusion of dimension requires an understanding of light and shadow. Luckily, it is really easy.
First decide where the light is coming from. When in doubt, make it come from over your left shoulder for the most pleasing results.
Form shadows are the shadows on the object itself. They give the object the appearance of dimension.
To create realistic form shadows, paint your object in a medium shade color. For instance, if your object is red, paint it a medium shade of red. At this stage it will look flat.
NOW for the magic — paint a small area of the object a lighter shade of red where the light hits it and blend this lighter red into the medium red as you move further away from the light source. This is called the highlight. The shinier your object, the lighter the highlight color should be.
Paint the object a darker shade of red on the side furthest away from the light source and blend it into the medium shade. This section is called the shadow. Again, the shinier the object, the darker the shadow.
Your object should now look 3 dimensional. But you are not quite done yet, it's time to create a cast shadow which is caused because the object itself blocks light.
A cast shadow appears on the surface that the object is sitting on. Start with a dark gray paint and thin it out with airbrush medium. Paint a gray shadow in the shape of the object on the surface, getting lighter and thinner as you move away from the object.
Not quite finished — Take a thin liner brush and paint a thin black line where the object meets the surface. This is called an occlusion shadow and it is always the darkest part of the shadow.
The more you study light and shadow, the easier it is to create the illusion in your paintings. Experiment by shining a flashlight on an object that is sitting on a white sheet of paper. Move the flashlight around the object and observe the form and cast shadows. You will soon discover that as you move the light source away from the object, the cast shadow gets longer but lighter in shade.
Once you feel comfortable, try painting trees in the snow and have fun with light and shadow.


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Why buy personalised square labels and stickers?
In the vast majority of cases, you can't go wrong with squares and rectangles. They are certainly up there with circles as some of the most popular shapes – and for good reason. Unless your artwork consists of a truly elaborate shape, then virtually any design can fit comfortably into a square or rectangle. Plus, with the ability to adjust the height and width to tailor the overall shape to your needs, it means that you can almost always find the right sized rectangle or square to go with your artwork.
The versatility of rectangles
Rectangle stickers are one of the few types where you can not only change the size, but also the shape. For example, circle and triangle shapes remain fixed, allowing you to simply increase or decrease the size of them. However, rectangles allow you to manipulate the overall dimensions by being able to use custom height and width measurements with FastPrint. Read More
Whilst this means that you can have small or large square labels and stickers of any size, it also means that you can adapt the rectangular shapes to your needs. For example, if you artwork is thin and long, then a smaller height measurement and a larger width measurement will create the ideal shape which is perfectly suited to your artwork. If you have something which is tall but narrow, then simply adjust the height and width to create a shape which suits. If you need a traditional square, then identical height and width measurements will create a square shape in any size you wish.
With this approach, your stickers can be catered to your artwork instead of catering your artwork to pre-set dimensions which you have no control over. This avoids wastage, avoids any unused white background and ultimately makes your square and rectangle stickers look much more professional.
How can I use them?
Printed rectangle labels and stickers are extremely versatile and allow for the vast majority of uses whilst being suitable for any type of artwork. You can use them for promotional advertising, informational needs, branding purposes and more. The shape of the sticker is especially useful if there's a lot of text or individual graphical elements, as the full area of the shape is usable from corner to corner. This is contrary to other shapes such as circles or triangles, where the actual usable space may be far lower depending on the overall shape of the artwork.


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Frequently Asked Questions
In this section one finds a number of FAQ answered.
1. How many casualties fell during the May War in the Netherlands?
The Dutch army lost 2,300 men KIA during the five days of war in the Netherlands (including the eight days in the province Zeeland). The number of WIA is not specifically known, but over 7,000 men were treated for wounds suffered during the war days. Probably a significant number suffered only light wounds and were not registered at all.
The German army losses during the battle for the Netherlands were almost identical to the Dutch losses. About 2,100 registered KIA, perhaps slightly higher.
The number of German military WIA is unknown. The benchmark ratio KIA:WIA gives an average of one KIA to 3,5 to 4 WIA, which would lead to a German WIA ratio of 7,000 - 8,000 men.
The Dutch expedited around 1,300 German POW's to the UK. These men were German write-offs for the duration of the war. The bulk of this number comprised Luftwaffe personnel as well as airlanded infantry of 22nd Infantry Division and airbornes from the Hague theatre of operations.
The French army lost 206 registered KIA in the Netherlands. In Noord-Brabant 62 and in Zeeland 154. The number of wounded is unknown, as is the number of POW's. Numbers of 800 WIA are mentioned in the buzz, but have up to now not been substantiated by reliable sources. Some estimates say that around 3,000 Frenchmen were captured in the Netherlands during the periode 10-18 May 1940. But these estimates are non-substantiated either and probably too low.
2. What were the strengths of the opposing forces?
The Dutch army had a total force of around 280,000 men under arms in May 1940. Often foreign sources erroneously mention figures of 350,000 - 400,000. That is wrong and very inaccurate.
The Dutch army comprised 240,000 men and around 40,000 men in other branches (army air force, coastal artillery defences, volunteer formations). The navy and marines (in the Netherlands) had some 10,000 more, not included in the 280.000.
The Dutch army was only partially organized in field army units. Often foreign sources only mention the major field army units, being eight infantry divisions (organised in four army corpses), one independant division (Peel-division) and one light (mobile) division. Besides these large units there were three field army brigades (A, B and G) and 30 independant border infantry battalions and companies. The fortress army had no divisional structure. It was organised in companies, battalions and regiments only. The fortress army, that occupied the defences within the Fortress Holland and Zeeland province, contained the bulk of elder reservists.
The Dutch army had 48 infantry regiments (2,200 - 2,500 men each), 24 independant Border Infantry Battalions (around 700 men each), a number of Border Infantry Companies and two regiments of bicylce infantry. Furthermore 2 regiments of motorbike-infantry, 6 regiments of cavalry (partially horse, partially bicycle mounted), 15 independant regiments of artillery comprising three battalions each, 4 independant regiments of artillery comprising two battalions each and 8 independant artillery battalions. The total number of active artillery pieces was 692 (excluding the obsolete 8-staal guns; excluding 6-veld and AT guns).
Next to these combattant forces there was a large representation of non-com formations, like engineers, pioneers, logistics, medical troops, etc.etc..
For further specifics we refer to the Introduction chapter on this website.
The German army assigned the 18th Armee to the Dutch theatre. This army comprised 10.Corps (two infantry divisions, two SS regiments, one occupational division of brigade strength), 26. Corps (six divisions, including one tank division and one SS division) and the independant 1st Cavalry Division. The Luftwaffe provided the 7th Flieger Korps comprising the (two regiments strong) 7th Airborne Division and the 22.Infantry Airlanding Division (reinforced by a battalion of IR.72). The strength of the 18.Armee was about 180,000 men. The combined Airlanding Corps had an operational strength of about 12,000 men (3,500 airbornes; 8,500 airlanding troops).
On the first two days of the invasion two divisions of the 6th Armee covered the left flank of the 26.Corps in Noord-Brabant. Furthermore the bulk of the 6th Armee crossed the most southeastern province of the Netherlands (Limburg), where on the first day some units opposed the few Dutch battalions defending the Meuse region in Limburg. Although these numbers are significant, they should not be added to the invasion force for the Dutch theatre, for they were designated to invade Belgium.
All in all the strength of the German invasion force opposing the Dutch was around 200,000 men landforces (including Students' Airlanding Corps).
3. Who were the most principal commanders on either side?
The Dutch Commander in Chief was General Henri G. Winkelman. He was commander of the Dutch land-, airand navy forces in the homeland. He had become CiC in February 1940. His was preluded by General I.H. Reynders, who was sacked in January 1940 over a dispute (with the Dutch cabinet) on the defense strategy.
The commander of the Field Army was Lieutenant-General J.J.G. (Baron) van Voorst tot Voorst. His younger brother General-Major H.F.M. (Baron) van Voorst tot Voorst was chief of the army staff. Commander Fortress Holland was Lieutenant-General J. van Andel.
Commander of the Air-Defence and Army Air Force was Lieutenant-General. P.W. Best.
The commander of the Dutch navy was the chief of navy staff Vice-Admiral J.T. Furstner.
The four army Corpses were led by General-Major N.T. Carstens [1.Corps], General-Major J. Harberts [2.Corps], General-Major A.A. van Nijnatten [3.Corps] and General-Major A.R. van den Bent [4.Corps].
The German Commander in Chief of the operations in the Netherlands was the commander of the 18.Armee, General der Artillerie Georg von Küchler. His direct superior was the Commander Heeresgruppe B, Generaloberst von Bock.
The operations of the 7th Fliegerkorps [commanded by Generalleutnant der Flieger Kurt Student] in Fortress Holland were developed and led by the Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe Hermann Göring (and his staff), and the Commander Luftflotte 2, Generalleutnant von Kesselring was commander of the Luftwaffe operations in the Netherlands.
The most principle German units were commanded by Generalleutnant K. Student [7th Airborne Corps and commander of 7th Flieger Division], Generalleutnant Graf von Sponeck [22.ID], General-major Kurt Feldt [1.Cav.Div.], General der Artillerie Christian Hansen [10.Corps], General der Artillerie Albert Wodrig [26.Corps], Generalleutnant Schmidt [commander of 39.Corps, which was activated as of 13 May 1940] and Generalmajor Ritter von Hubicki [9.Panzer Division].
4. Was the Lex Belli [or Ius in Bello, law of war] often infringed by the belligerents, or was it generally respected?
The internation code, mainly given shape by Geneva and Hague conventions, was mandatory to and (generally) respected by all belligerents in May 1940 in the Dutch theatre.
There were the inevitable occasional infringements too. The Dutch and the Germans both recorded some infringements of the other side and for both sides there is proof of some incidents that were mild, or occasionally gross, infringements in itself. Here and there a prisoner of war was abused, assaulted or even shot on the spot (both sides were guilty of those occasional attrocities), and quite a number of incidents were recorded where either side abused the white flag or the international sign of the red cross.
There is one remarkable exception, where the Ius in Bello was quite generally disregarded by one particular German unit. This occurs during the operations of the SS regiment Der Führer during the three days' battle of the Grebbeberg. There is sufficient proof that the laws of war were poorly adhered to (to say the least) during the SS operations on 11, 12 and 13 of May 1940. There were several incidents involving massacres in the trenches (especially on the 11th of May), systematic abuse of POW's and particularly the common use of POW's as human shields against opposing fire. These infringements were reported and sometimes proven in such an overwhelming quantity that it is very likely that some sort of methodical abuse was applicable. This only applies


Use the CONNECT command to establish a connection between RMAN and a target, auxiliary, or recovery catalog database.
See Also:
RMAN for command-line connection options
You can only run the CONNECT TARGET, CONNECT CATALOG, and CONNECT AUXILIARY commands at the RMAN prompt and only if RMAN is not already connected to the databases specified by these commands. To connect to a different target, catalog, or auxiliary database you must start a new RMAN session.
Usage Notes
An RMAN session runs in NOCATALOG mode by default if all of the following conditions are met:
 - You did not specify CATALOG or NOCATALOG when you started RMAN.
 - You have not yet run CONNECT CATALOG in an RMAN session.
 - You run a command such as BACKUP that requires an RMAN repository connection (as shown in Example 2-49).
Description of connect.gif follows
Description of the illustration connect.gif
Syntax Element Description
CONNECT AUXILIARY Establishes a connection between RMAN and an auxiliary database instance.
Auxiliary instances are used with the TRANSPORT TABLESPACE and DUPLICATE commands, and during RMAN TSPITR.
CONNECT CATALOG Establishes a connection between RMAN and a recovery catalog database.
If the recovery catalog is a virtual private catalog (see CREATE CATALOG), then the RMAN client connecting to this catalog must be at patch level or Oracle9i RMAN clients cannot connect to a virtual private catalog. This version restriction does not affect RMAN client connections to an Oracle Database 11g base recovery catalog, even if it has some virtual private catalog users.
RMAN issues an RMAN-06445 error if you attempt to use the CONNECT CATALOG command in an RMAN session when RMAN is already in the default NOCATALOG mode (see "Usage Notes").
Note: You must use RMAN with a recovery catalog in a Data Guard environment.
CONNECT TARGET Establishes a connection between RMAN and a target database.
Note: RMAN can connect to physical standby databases as TARGET in a Data Guard environment. If you run CONNECT TARGET for a database that has a DB_UNIQUE_NAME that is unknown to the recovery catalog, but the DBID is the same as a registered database, then RMAN automatically and implicitly registers the database in the recovery catalog.
 connectStringSpec Specifies the connection information for the database.
Example 2-48 Connecting to a Target Database Without a Recovery Catalog
This example starts RMAN in NOCATALOG mode and then connects to the target database with an Oracle Net service name prod1. RMAN prompts for the SYS password.
target database Password: password
connected to target database: PROD1 (DBID=39525561)
Example 2-49 Connecting to a Target Database in the Default NOCATALOG Mode
This example starts RMAN without specifying either CATALOG or NOCATALOG and then uses operating system authentication to connect to a target database with operating system authentication. Because no CONNECT CATALOG command has been run, RMAN defaults to NOCATALOG mode when you run the BACKUP command.
% rman
At this point in the RMAN session, you cannot run CONNECT CATALOG because the session has defaulted to NOCATALOG mode. An attempt to connect to the catalog in this session receives an error:
Example 2-50 Connecting to Target, Recovery Catalog, and Auxiliary Databases
This example connects to a target database by means of operating system authentication and connects to the recovery catalog and auxiliary databases by means of password files. RMAN prompts for the password.
% rman
connected to target database: PROD (DBID=39525561)
recovery catalog database Password: password
connected to recovery catalog database
auxiliary database Password: password
connected to auxiliary database: DUPDB (not mounted)


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| Food Composition Data: A User's Perspective (1987) |
Food Composition Data Are Important
Food is a major component of man's environment. Data on what is actually in foods are critical to important activities of a great variety of individuals and groups including those involved with epidemiological research into disease patterns, government regulation formulation and enforcement, health assessment of individuals and populations, and national and international trade in foods.
Food Composition Data Are Currently Inadequate and Getting Worse
Current activities involved with the gathering and compiling of food composition data are for the most part isolated and often produce inaccessible, incompatible, inconsistent, and redundant information. Additionally, there are large gaps in the available data on what is in foods; data on many biologically important components of many commonly consumed foods simply do not exist. Moreover, very little information exists on the variability of food components and the attendant problems are almost totally neglected by data compilers and users.
Most food data bases are compiled for specific usages and often are unsuitable for other purposes. Thus, many of the data that do exist are difficult to find and use because of the limiting ways in which they are gathered, stored, and described. Interest in food components is expanding rapidly, as are the varieties of foods that are available and consumed. The need for access to more data on more foods is far outstripping the amount of data that are being made available.
There Is a Need for Co-ordinated Activity in the Field
The importance of food composition data and the relatively limited resources that are available necessitate a co-ordination of activity in the area. It is recommended that INFOODS pursue this goal by:
1. Serving as a focal point as it strives to set up a network of global communication between workers in the field.
2. Formulating guidelines for the various aspects of gathering, compiling, communicating, and using food composition data. This, of necessity, will include guidelines for methodologies for data gathering, data description, data storage and retrieval, data interchange, and data manipulation.
3. Pursuing the appropriate involvement of modern computer and information systems technology within the field of food composition data. Any such involvement must recognize that flexibility is a key element and that work in this area must be primarily directed towards providing the users with better tools.