text:
Tennis Instruction: Prepare Early — or — Wait
Have you ever wondered about the following (all too common) scenario? Most tennis players prefer to play "up" whether recreationally, in leagues, or in tournaments. Further, most players believe they actually play better with or against a superior opponent.
Certainly no one is expected to win in those situations, so perhaps playing with "nothing to lose" actually improves performance. But I think the reason lies elsewhere, and has more to do with rhythm and timing than with the supposed challenge of playing up. Somehow a lesser player gives us less pace, less rhythm, less predictable shots. If weaker players don't always know where their shots are going (fairly rude observation), then how could we? Further, their shots bear little resemblance to the even paced, well measured balls we receive from our local tennis pros. We play darn well in the latter scenario, but explore unfathomable depths in the former. What gives?
Consider the professional example. The rallies are generally fast and furious. The ball travels racquet to racquet in one second or less, such that a 10-stroke rally may occur in 10 seconds or less. Yet the pros always, repeat always, appear unhurried. They make this thing look effortless, and always with a surfeit of time. Revisit any of the Inner Game material where players are trained to say the word "bounce" at the bounce and "hit" at the hit. This timing mnemonic trains the rhythm of the turn and the preparation with the bounce. And certainly in the following example one can easily see the bounce hit rhythm.
Waiting is the Secret
We have all been schooled to "get the racquet back" (and quickly please). At our club I see so many well meaning fathers imploring their little ones, "Get the racquet back. Get the racquet back." But what should they, or anyone for that matter do, if they can prepare in one half of a second, but the soft, slow, poorly aimed floater from a supposed lesser opponent (who is not the lesser because he invariably beats us with his poor shots) takes two seconds to arrive. Rhythm, timing, and even self confidence go out the door with yet another inexplicable error.
To my somewhat trained teaching eye, I estimate most errors occur because players prepare too early rather than too late. And when listening to these players self critique after a sequence of errors, they invariably attribute the problem with not preparing early enough. But I see just the opposite, that they weren't patient enough to wait to initiate the step and swing.
In music, syncopation is the emphasis on a normally unstressed beat. For example, by moving the position of one note back in time by half a beat (thereby making it longer) a simple tune can be made to include syncopation.
Similarly, stay with me now, the timing required to wait on an extremely slow moving return occurs if and only when you can hold, syncopate, and wait between the turn and the step. The floaters, and the delightful pushers that bedevil us with that style of play, cause us to unravel when we wait, hesitate, or place the syncopated beat between the step and swing. But when on time, and in rhythm for this hideously slow moving floater, we turn and then wait. That is, we turn and then syncopate the remaining step and swing, lengthening the time, staying in rhythm, and handling this truly difficult shot with ease.
So my personal experience on this scenario occurred with Tom Stow, and it remains indelible to this day. I was in my mid '20s, having played four years of college tennis and at that point competing in open and satellite tournaments in Northern California, Florida, and the Pacific Northwest. I arrived for a lesson at Silverado and Tom had overbooked, and a young intermediate girl was on the court. So Tom said, "No problem Jim, just warm up with her." After a few moments I explained to him that I couldn't find any rhythm and he demanded, "Jim, the ball is the ball, you are not playing her, you are playing the ball, now move quickly, get on balance and play gracefully, no matter what."
And this took an incredible amount of footwork, more so than playing someone of a higher caliber. And the lesson was, and remains the same today, get to the ball early, keep your feet moving, and then wait to step and swing. To quote from the Tom Stow Teaching System, (and this is a priceless book) "To insure the pupil is in position in time, he should step to the ball, stop, then step in and finish. As he improves the stop changes to a pause, but a definite pause for some time…As the player continues to improve there should be less emphasis on taking the racquet back."
Now let's take this to court for some purposeful practice. Using a ball machine, as so many do at our club, set the machine not at the customary top speed with low incoming balls, but rather much slower and with much, much higher arcs. Moon balls, floaters, anything to challenge your timing. Rarely do players use this particular setting, but truly this speed, height, and arc perfectly mimic the difficulty we face when receiving these floaters in the real world.
Secondly, call that most difficult opponent at your club or park, the one who moves well and plays without any power or pace, and determine to be patient, be light on your feet, and willing to improve your rhythm against this guy or gal. Everyone appears to play better against their local pro and significantly worse against this type of player. There is an opportunity here.
Jim McLennan is a senior writer at TennisOne, see more of his instruction at _URL_.
Also Check Out:
Fernando Verdasco Tries Paddle Boarding In Miami, And Lives To Tell About It [Video]
Caroline Wozniacki Plays Cricket at MCG [Video]
Serena Williams: In 2009 I Went Out With a Bang, I Came In With a Bang Tonight
Tomas Berdych: The Wind Blew Me Away
Novak Djokovic: My Body Is Overloaded, My Mind Is Not Fresh, But I'm Confident For Australian Open


text:
Date: March 26, 2014
Who owns the world's forests, and who decides on their governance? The answers to these questions are still deeply contested. To many Indigenous Peoples and local communities who have lived in and around forests for generations, the forests belong to them, under locally defined systems of customary tenure. In most countries, however, governments have claimed ownership of much of the forest estate through historical processes of expropriation, and those claims have been formalized in statutory laws. While governments are increasingly recognizing local ownership and control of forests, forest tenure arrangements remain in dispute or unclear in many places, including low, middle, and high income countries.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


text:
What is the cause of spontaneously resolving pericardial effusion?
Q: A 30 year old man, presented with history of fever of 1 month duration and massive pericardial effusion on X-ray chest. There was no sign of cardiac tamponade. Repeat CXR after 3 days showed almost complete clearance of the pericardial effusion without any specific treatment. What is the most likely diagnosis? What is the mechanism of spontaneous clearance of pericardial effusion?
A:Pericardial effusion that resolves spontaneously is generally viral pericarditis; this a fairly common cause for pericardial effusion. The only unusual feature in your case is that the effusion, as you describe, was massive. It is therefore advisable for you to repeat an echocardiographic examination at 4wks and 3 months to exclude a recurrence, although this possibility is remote.


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|Noah Webster's Dictionary|
1. (n.) A change of place from higher to lower; as, a descent from a mountaintop.
2. (n.) Incursion; sudden attack; especially, hostile invasion from sea; -- often followed by upon or on; as, to make a descent upon the enemy.
3. (n.) Progress downward, as in station, virtue, as in station, virtue, and the like, from a higher to a lower state, from a higher to a lower state, from the more to the less important, from the better to the worse, etc.
4. (n.) Derivation, as from an ancestor; procedure by generation; lineage; birth; extraction.
5. (n.) Transmission of an estate by inheritance, usually, but not necessarily, in the descending line; title to inherit an estate by reason of consanguinity.
6. (n.) Inclination downward; a descending way; inclined or sloping surface; declivity; slope; as, a steep descent.
7. (n.) That which is descended; descendants; issue.
8. (n.) A step or remove downward in any scale of gradation; a degree in the scale of genealogy; a generation.
9. (n.) Lowest place; extreme downward place.
10. (n.) A passing from a higher to a lower tone.
Int. Standard Bible Encyclopedia
de-send', de-sent' (yaradh; katabaino, "go down"); (katabasis): Of Yahweh (Exodus 34:5); of the Spirit (Matthew 3:16); of angels (Genesis 28:12 Matthew 28:2 John 1:51); of Christ (1 Thessalonians 4:16 Ephesians 4:9). "He also descended into the lower parts of the earth" is variously interpreted, the two chief interpretations being the one of the incarnation, and the other of the "descent into hell" (1 Peter 3:19). The former regards the clause "of the earth," an appositive genitive, as when we speak of "the city of Rome," namely, "the lower parts, i.e. the earth." The other regards the genitive as possessive, or, with Meyer, as governed by the comparative, i.e. "parts lower than the earth." For the former view, see full discussion in Eadie; for the latter, Ellicott and especially Meyer, in commentaries on Eph.
H. E. Jacobs
DESCENT, OF JESUS
See APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS.
Descent (22 Occurrences)
Luke 19:37 As he was now getting near, at the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works which they had seen, (WEB KJV ASV DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV)
John 1:13 who were begotten as such not by human descent, nor through an impulse of their own nature, nor through the will of a human father, but from God. (WEY NIV)
Acts 4:6 Annas the high priest was there, with Caiaphas, John, Alexander, and as many as were relatives of the high priest. (See NAS)
Romans 1:3 who, as regards His human descent, belonged to the posterity of David, (WEY)
Romans 9:8 In other words, it is not the children by natural descent who count as God's children, but the children made such by the promise are regarded as Abraham's posterity. (WEY)
Hebrews 7:3 Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually. (KJV WBS)
Hebrews 7:6 But he whose descent is not counted from them received tithes of Abraham, and blessed him that had the promises. (KJV WBS NIV)
Hebrews 7:16 and hold His office not in obedience to any temporary Law, but by virtue of an indestructible Life. (See RSV)
Genesis 10:32 These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations. Of these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood. (See NIV)
Joshua 7:5 The men of Ai struck about thirty-six men of them, and they chased them from before the gate even to Shebarim, and struck them at the descent. The hearts of the people melted, and became like water. (WEB JPS ASV DBY NAS RSV)
Joshua 8:14 It happened, when the king of Ai saw it, that they hurried and rose up early, and the men of the city went out against Israel to battle, he and all his people, at the time appointed, before the Arabah; but he didn't know that there was an ambush against him behind the city. (See RSV)
Joshua 10:11 It happened, as they fled from before Israel, while they were at the descent of Beth Horon, that Yahweh cast down great stones from the sky on them to Azekah, and they died. There were more who died from the hailstones than who the children of Israel killed with the sword. (WEB JPS ASV DBY WBS YLT NAS)
2 Kings 12:20 And his servants rose up and made a conspiracy, and smote Joash in the house of Millo, at the descent of Silla. (DBY)
Ezra 2:59 These were those who went up from Tel Melah, Tel Harsha, Cherub, Addan, and Immer; but they could not show their fathers' houses, and their seed, whether they were of Israel: (See RSV)
Nehemiah 7:61 These were those who went up from Tel Melah, Tel Harsha, Cherub, Addon, and Immer; but they could not show their fathers' houses, nor their seed, whether they were of Israel: (See RSV)
Nehemiah 9:2 The seed of Israel separated themselves from all foreigners, and stood and confessed their sins, and the iniquities of their fathers. (See NIV)
Nehemiah 13:3 It came to pass, when they had heard the law, that they separated from Israel all the mixed multitude. (See RSV NIV)
Esther 6:13 Haman recounted to Zeresh his wife and all his friends everything that had happened to him. Then his wise men and Zeresh his wife said to him, "If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of Jewish descent, you will not prevail against him, but you will surely fall before him." (WEB)
Isaiah 30:30 Yahweh will cause his glorious voice to be heard, and will show the descent of his arm, with the indignation of his anger, and the flame of a devouring fire, with a blast, storm, and hailstones. (WEB)
Jeremiah 48:5 For by the ascent of Luhith with continual weeping shall they go up; for at the descent of Horonaim they have heard the distress of the cry of destruction. (WEB ASV DBY WBS YLT NAS RSV)
Ezekiel 44:22 Neither shall they take for their wives a widow, nor her who is put away; but they shall take virgins of the seed of the house of Israel, or a widow who is the widow of a priest. (See NIV)
Daniel 9:1 In the first year of Darius, son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, who hath been made king over the kingdom of the Chaldeans, (See NAS NIV)

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


Person:Edmund de Lacy, 2nd Earl of Lincoln (1)
Edmund de Lacy, 2nd Earl of Lincoln
d.2 Jun 1258
Facts and Events
Name Edmund de Lacy, 2nd Earl of Lincoln
Gender Male
Birth[1] 1227 or 1230 Of Lincolnshire, England
Alt Birth? May 1227 Halton, Runcorn, Cheshire, England
Marriage May 1247 Woodstock, Oxfordshire, Englandto Alasia of Saluzzo
Death? 2 Jun 1258
Burial[4] Stanlow Abbey, Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, England
the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia
Edmund de Lacy (c._PHONE_) was the son of John de Lacy, 2nd Earl of Lincoln. When his father died in 1240 he inherited his father's titles and lands which included Baron of Pontefract, Baron of Halton, Lord of Bowland, and Constable of Chester. As he was a minor his inheritance was held by him in wardship by his mother. Normally his inheritance would have been held in wardship until he reached the age of majority (21). However, Edmund was allowed to succeed his father at only 18 years of age. He was heir to his mother Margaret de Quincy and on her death would have inherited the Earldom of Lincoln that vested in her. (His father had only been Earl by rights of his wife.) As he predeceased his mother he never became the Earl of Lincoln.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Edmund de Lacy, 2nd Earl of Lincoln. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
 1. Edmund de Lacy, 2nd Earl of Lincoln, in Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. (Online: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.).
 2. Edmund de Lacy, 2nd Earl of Lincoln, in Lundy, Darryl. The Peerage: A genealogical survey of the peerage of Britain as well as the royal families of Europe.
 3. EDMUND (1230-2 Jun 1258, bur Stanlaw Abbey)., in Cawley, Charles. Medieval Lands: A prosopography of medieval European noble and royal families.
 4. Edmund De Lacy, in Find A Grave.
Peerage of England
Ranulf de Blondeville
Fourth creation
John de Lacy, 1st Earl of Lincoln
(Fifth creation)
his father
2nd Earl of Lincoln
Henry de Lacy, 3rd Earl of Lincoln
his son
Alice Plantagenet, 4th Countess of Lincoln
his grandaughter


Are humans wired for conflict? Lord of the Flies vs. Charles Darwin | Rutger Bregman | Big Think
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The iconic novel "Lord of the Flies" paints a picture of human beings as naturally selfish and prone to conflict, but that is not the most accurate depiction of humanity, argues historian Rutger Bregman.
Bregman shares a true story from his research about a group of Tongan students who survived on an island together for 15 months in 1965, not through brutal alliances, but by working together and forming a functional community.
Darwin's observation of domestication syndrome is apparent in humans, argues Bregman; our evolution into friendlier animals can be seen in our biological features and responses. Evolutionarily speaking, being "soft" is actually very smart, and we evolved to cooperate with one another for mutual gain.
Rutger Bregman is a historian and author. He has published five books on history, philosophy, and economics. His books Humankind (2020) and Utopia for Realists (2017) were both New York Times bestsellers and have been translated in more than 40 languages. Bregman has twice been nominated for the prestigious European Press Prize for his work at The Correspondent. He lives in Holland.
Rutger Bregman's latest book Humankind: A Hopeful History
RUTGER BREGMAN: One of the most famous examples of this theory that people are fundamentally selfish in literature is the book "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding. So many people have read it, right? Millions of kids around the globe were basically forced to read it in school. I read it when I was 16 years old, or 17, and I remember feeling quite depressed and cynical afterwards, and thinking, "Well, no more Harry Potter for me." But it was while I was researching this book that I thought hmm, has it ever happened that real kids shipwrecked on a real island, and how would they behave if something like that would happen? And so I went on this journey that started on an obscure blog where someone wrote that this actually happened near Tonga in the '60s. Tonga is an island group in the Pacific Ocean, and yeah, after a couple of months, I managed to track them down. So I found a guy named Peter Warner, who is an Australian captain, who was fishing the vicinity of an island called 'Ata, a small island, basically a rock that sticks out of the ocean in 1966, when suddenly he heard screaming, and he was looking through his binoculars and he saw these six kids, long hair, pretty wild appearance. You know, what happens if you live on an island for a long time. Then these kids came and said, 'You know what? We're part of this school in Tonga, we've been living here for 15 months. Can you bring us home?' Now, Peter didn't believe it, so he called with the school and they said yeah, actually funerals have already been held. These are the real kids.
So I spoke to Peter, the captain, and he put me in contact with his best friend, Mano Totau, who's one of the original "Lord of the Flies" kids. And so 50 years had passed since then, but they could still describe to me in vivid detail what happened and how these kids survived on this island for 15 months. Well, by working together, by cooperating. So they worked in teams of two. Two to be on the lookout, two to tend to the fire, two to tend to the garden. And yeah, sometimes they did end up in fights. So then one of the boys would go to one side of the island, the other would go to the other side of the island, would cool off a little bit, come back and say sorry. You know, that's how they kept going for months. So it wasn't easy, but they made it. And I think that can give us hope.
And the thing is if it would be a Hollywood story, a Hollywood movie, then people would say, well, this is very naive. That's not how kids would behave. It's very sentimental. But it's the real "Lord of the Flies." The real "Lord of the Flies" is a story of friendship, of hope, of working together. It's pretty much the opposite of what we've always heard. Now, I'm not saying it's a scientific experiment. It's obviously just an anecdote, but we humans tend to become the stories that we tell ourselves. And for decades, we've been telling ourselves this pretty cynical story of kids turning on one another. And I mean, what are kids supposed to learn from that? It's not a very happy message, is it? So I think that whenever any teacher says to the kids, well, you need to read…
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Consider the following in Haskell:
let p x = x ++ show x in putStrLn $ p"let p x = x ++ show x in putStrLn $ p"
Evaluate this expression in an interactive Haskell session and it prints itself out. But there's a nice little cheat that made this easy: the Haskell'show' function conveniently wraps a string in quotation marks. So we simply have two copies of once piece of code: one without quotes followed by one in quotes. In C, on the other hand, there is a bit of a gotcha. You need to explicitly write code to print those extra quotation marks. And of course, just like in Haskell, this code needs to appear twice, once out of quotes and once in. But the version in quotes needs the quotation marks to be 'escaped' using backslash so it's notactually the same as the first version. And that means we can't use exactly the same method as with Haskell. The standard workaround is not to represent the quotation marks directly in the strings, but instead to use the ASCII code for this character and use C's convenient %c mechanism to print at. For example:
Again we were lucky, C provides this great %c mechanism. What do you need in a language to be sure you can write a self-replicator?
It turns out there is a very general approach to writing self-replicators that's described in Vicious Circles. What follows is essentially from there except that I've simplified the proofs by reducing generality.
We'll use capital letters to represent programs. Typically these mean 'inert' strings of characters. I'll use square brackets to indicate the function that the program evaluates. So if P is a program to compute the mathematical function p, we write [P](x) = p(x). P is a program and [P] is a function. We'll consider both programs that take arguments like the P I just mentioned, and also programs, R, that take no arguments, so [R] is simply the output or return value of the program R.
Now we come to an important operation. We've defined [P](x) to be the result of running P with input x. Now we define P(x) to be the program P modified so that it no longer takes an argument or input but instead substitutes the 'hard-coded' value of x instead. In other words [P(x)] = [P](x). P(x) is, of course, another program. There are also many ways of implementing P(x). We could simply evaluate [P](x) and write a program to simply print this out or return it. On the other hand, we could do the absolute minimum and write a new piece of code that simply calls P and supplies it with a hard-coded argument. Whatever we choose is irrelevant to the following discussion. So here's the demand that we make of our programming language: that it's powerful enough for us to write a program that can compute P(x) from inputs P and x. This might not be a trivial program to write, but it's not conceptually hard either. It doesn't have gotchas like the quotation mark issue above. Typically we can compute P(x) by some kind of textual substitution on P.
With that assumption in mind, here's a theorem: any program P that takes one argument or input has a fixed point, X, in the sense that running P with input X gives the same result as just running X. Given an input X, P acts just like an interpreter for the programming language as it outputs the same thing as an
interpreter would given input X.
So here's a proof:
Define the function f(Q) = [P](Q(Q)). We've assumed that we can write a program that computes P(x) from P and x so we know we can write a program to compute Q(Q) for any Q. We can then feed this as an input to [P]. So f is obviously computable by some program which we call Q0. So [Q0](Q) = [P](Q(Q)).
Now the fun starts:
[P](Q0(Q0)) = [Q0](Q0) (by definition of Q0)
= [Q0(Q0)] (by definition of P(x))
In other words Q0(Q0) is our fixed point.
So now take P to compute the identity function. Then [Q0(Q0)] = [P](Q0(Q0)) = Q0(Q0). So Q0(Q0) outputs itself when run! What's more, this also tells us how to do other fun stuff like write a program to print itself out backwards. And it tells us how to do this in any reasonably powerful programming language. We don't need to worry about having to work around problems like 'escaping' quotation marks - we can always find a way to replicate the escape mechanism too.
So does it work in practice? Well it does for Haskell - I derived the Haskell fragment above by applying this theorem directly, and then simplifying a bit. For C++, however, it might give you a piece of code that is longer than you want. In fact, you can go one step further and write a program that automatically generates a self-replicator. Check out Samuel Moelius's kpp. It is a preprocessor that converts an ordinary C++ program into one that can access its own source code by including the code to generate its own source within it.
Another example of an application of these methods is Futamura's theorem which states that there exists a program that can take as input an interpreter for a language and output a compiler. I personally think this is a little bogus.


Community Blog Deploy an Image using Ansible and Jenkins
Deploy an Image using Ansible and Jenkins
In this tutorial, you are going to deploy an image that consists of Tomcat, Java, and MySQL using Ansible and Jenkins on Alibaba Cloud.
By Nadaraj Prabhu, Alibaba Cloud Community Blog author.
In this tutorial, you are going to deploy an image using DevOps tools and provision a corresponding infrastructure. The image will consist of Tomcat, Java, MySQL and will be running on an Alibaba Cloud Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance. As an Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) tool Ansible and an open-source Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CICD) Tool Jenkins are being used to for previsioning.
Before we get any further, let's discuss Jenkins a bit more. Well, you may ask, what exactly is it?
Jenkins is an open-source automation server that can help you to reliably build, test, and deploy software as well the infrastructure behind an application. Jenkins is a continuous integration build tool that builds and releases application code after any change is made to the code and, pushed to the code base. It saves development time by running automated testing against the code at every change pushed to the repos.
First, you'll require few prerequisites to be established to achieve the environment.
1. You need at least one Jenkins Server (for a Master only or a Master/Slave setup).
Then, once you've got the Jenkins server master/slave (agent) environment set up, make sure the agents are up and running fine by checking the status of the server. In my setup, in particular, I'm using a master node as Jenkins server and an agent machine for Ansible. If you prefer, you can have only one machine by installing Ansible on the master itself.
2. After that you'll want to install Ansible Tool in the master and agent machines.
 - Ansible: Ansible is a powerful tool for IT automation and can be used in a CI/CD process to provision the target environment and to then deploy the application on it. But, know that Ansible is cumbersome to maintain and it reuses scripts in the long run.
It helps if you perform the same set of tasks across different servers/environment from the centralized location where Ansible is installed. Ansible is completely agentless, which is an advantage over other Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) tools like Chef or Puppet. With Ansible, you do not need to have an agent be installed on client systems where the automation is taken through provided SSH communication between the client and server. All the automation will be easier when there are hundreds of instances in the specified region. Ansible playbooks are written are YAML/YML language.
When comes to Ansible, you'll also need to be familiar with the following:
 - Control node: The machine where Ansible is installed and responsible for servers you are managing
 - Inventory: The file that defines the hosts and groups of hosts upon which commands, modules, and tasks in a playbook operate. The file can be in one of many formats depending on your Ansible environment and plugins. It's used to create project-specific inventory files in alternate locations.
 - Playbook: Part of Ansible's configuration, deployment, and orchestration language. They can describe a policy you want your remote systems to enforce, or a set of steps.
Install Ansible and the Ansible Alicloud Module
First of all, you'll want to install the Ansible plugin on Jenkins. To do so, follow these steps:
1. Click Manage Jenkins in the Dashboard.
2. Click Manage Plugins and look for the Ansible plugin on the search bar which is on the top right of the page.
3. Select Ansible and click Download now and install after restart.
Note: Don't install the Ansible Tower, which is not required for current setup you are doing in this tutorial.
After the Ansible plugin is installed in Jenkins, you'll want to go on to the next steps for installing Ansible in the Client/Agent machine.
Install Ansible in the Client/Agent machine
Alibaba Ansible Modules are frequently updated, hence I recommend that you refer to the GitHub link for the most up-to-date version.
1. Open a terminal window in the agent machine and execute below commands.
 - If you're using CentOS 7.4, you'll want to use this command:
sudo yum check-update; sudo yum install -y gcc libffi-devel python-devel openssl-devel epel-release
sudo yum install -y python-pip python-wheel
 - If you're using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, use this command:
2. Enter the following commands to install the required packages Ansible for Alibaba:
sudo pip install ansible
sudo pip install ansible_alicloud
sudo pip install ansible_alicloud_module_utils
Configuring the Ansible Playbook.
I have created an Ansible playbook script to provision an Alibaba ECS, which you can find here. You can fork the source code and modify the parameters values as per your environment.
 alicloud_access_key:
 alicloud_secret_key:
 alicloud_region: e.g. - ap-south-1
 alicloud_zone: e.g. ap-south-1a
 password:
 image: "m-a2d4qmk8v2w9s5wmh0rw"
Note: I'm importing an image from Alibaba Application Stacks provided by Zhuyun, which you can find here. It consists of Linux, Nginx, MySQL and Jdk-Tomcat (Nginx1.6-jdk1.7-tomcat7-mysql5.5-vsFTPd2.2.2).
Generate Access key and Secret
Now, it's time to generate an access key and secret. To do this, you'll want to follow these steps below:
1. To obtain an access_key and secret_key, you'll want to go to the Alibaba Cloud console and select Resource Access Management (RAM) in the Product menu
2. Click the Users option on the left navigation pane, and then select Create User.
3. Create a new user, providing a login name and display name. Then, under Access Mode, check Programmatic Access. Note that you are not required to provide Console Password Logon access to this user.
4. Copy the AccessKeyId and AccessKeySecret, which will be your alicloud_access_key and alicloud_secret_key value in the playbook.
Note: The AccessKey information will not be available again after the dialog box is closed. Therefore, it is important that you copy and save this information before you close the dialog box.
5. Provide the appropriate permissions to provision resources like VPCs, V-Switchs, Security groups or an ECS instance. I have provided AdministratorAccess, which happens to provide full access to Alibaba Cloud services and resources.
The Regions and Zones of Alibaba Cloud
1. To get the full list, you can use the Alibaba Cloud Cloud CLI tool. It will spit out a wall of JSON, so it is also helpful to be on *nix and have the jq tool available. Given all that, all you need is this short shell script:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
for region in $( aliyun ecs DescribeRegions | jq '.Regions.Region[].RegionId' )
 echo $region
 reg=$( echo $region | sed s/\"//g )
 echo '---'
 for zone in $( aliyun ecs DescribeZones --RegionId $reg | jq '.Zones.Zone[].ZoneId' | sort )
 echo $zone
 echo ''
2. If you want to provision resource in below region/zone, then you'll need to complete real name registration, which you can do at this Link.
alicloud_region: cn-beijing
alicloud_zone: cn-beijing-a
Shown below is the Image ID of each region (for the Linux, Nginx, MySQL and Jdk-Tomcat Image). For this, of course, you'll want to change the image ID according to your region.
Create and Deploy an Alibaba VM using Jenkins job
To create and deploy an Alibaba VM using Jenkins job, follow these steps:
1. From Jenkins dashboard, select New Item.
2. Enter a name, select Freestyle project, and then click OK.
3. (Optional) Under General, provide a brief description for your reference.
4. Select the Source Code Management (SCM) tab on the top or scroll down and enter the following information:
SCM: - Git
Repository URL: - your GitHub link with modified parameter
e.g. _URL_
Credentials: - none (since it's a public repository, if private then store your credentials in Jenkins)
Branch Specifier (blank for 'any'): - */master
5. Next, skip build trigger for now and go to build environment. There are number of settings available when you create a new project. On this configuration page, you also have the option to Add build step to perform extra actions like running scripts. Rather, I will execute a shell script, which will download the Ansible Playbook file from GitHub. You can use the following commands:
sudo apt-get update (Optional)
sudo apt-get install -y libssl-dev libffi-dev python-dev python-pip (Optional)
sudo pip install ansible[azure]==2.7.0rc2 (


Lesson Viewed
Secured Transactions: Priority: Purchase Money Security Interests (PMSI) Part 1 Podcast
The topic of this podcast is which party will prevail in a competition for collateral as between sellers or lenders having a purchase money security interest ("PMSI") and other creditors with a security interest in the debtor's assets. While secured parties might expect to prevail with respect to their collateral most of the time, those sellers and lenders that have a purchase money security interest also have expectations. This podcast will examine the nature of a PMSI and the rules that come into play to determine which creditor has priority under § 9-324. These rules are commonly tested on law school and bar examinations. A PMSI is simply a specific type of security interest. In order to attach the interest, the attachment rules of § 9-203 still apply, At the conclusion of this podcast, you should be able to (1) identify and describe what a PMSI is; (2) describe how a secured party can create and perfect a security interest in purchase money collateral; (3) explain the rules governing priority of PMSIs; and (4) apply the rules related to purchase money security interests, including those related to proceeds.
A second podcast covering PMSIs is here
Lesson Authors
Creative Commons Licensing
Creative Commons Licence


text:
First Name: Xiaomeng (Charlene)
Department Dept of Accounting and Corporate Governance
Supervisor(s): Associate Professor Sue Wright, Dr Hai Wu (ANU)
The Effect of Exploration Intensity on Analysts' Forecasts
This study examines the relations between the intensity of reported exploration activity by mining and exploration companies and analysts' private information search activities and their forecast accuracy. Under Australian accounting standards, firms can either record exploration expenditure as an expense as it is incurred, or as an exploration asset (i.e., exploration expenditure is capitalised). The accounting choice for exploration expenditure could have potential impact on analysts' forecasts. It also examines the relations under the different accounting treatment for exploration expenditure.
This study examines whether greater intensity of exploration activity motivates analysts to acquire and process relatively more private information to meet investor demand and whether this affects the accuracy of analysts' consensus forecast. It also examines whether the capitalisation of exploration expenditure can reduce uncertainty analysts have about the future economic outcomes of exploration investments, and improve the accuracy of their forecasts.
The study finds that the proportion of private information contained in analysts' forecasts increases with the intensity of exploration activity. We also find that the accuracy of analysts' consensus forecast improves with the intensity of exploration activity. The results are robust for firms choosing to capitalise their exploration expenditure.
Using the extractive industry as a specific setting, this study evaluates the role of analysts in moderating high information asymmetry exhibited in this industry. The findings are useful to investors and academics because it addresses how accounting matters when investing.
Exploration intensity, analysts' forecasts


Take the 2-minute tour ×
From the c2wiki page on coupling & cohesion:
Cohesion (interdependency within module) strength/level names : (from worse to better, high cohesion is good)
 - Coincidental Cohesion : (Worst) Module elements are unrelated
 - Logical Cohesion : Elements perform similar activities as selected from outside module, i.e. by a flag that selects operation to perform (see also CommandObject). i.e. body of function is one huge if-else/switch on operation flag
 - Temporal Cohesion : operations related only by general time performed (i.e. initialization() or FatalErrorShutdown?())
 - Procedural Cohesion : Elements involved in different but sequential activities, each on different data (usually could be trivially split into multiple modules along linear sequence boundaries)
 - Communicational Cohesion : unrelated operations except need same data or input
 - Sequential Cohesion : operations on same data in significant order; output from one function is input to next (pipeline)
 - Informational Cohesion: a module performs a number of actions, each with its own entry point, with independent code for each action, all performed on the same data structure. Essentially an implementation of an abstract data type. i.e. define structure of sales_region_table and its operators: init_table(), update_table(), print_table()
 - Functional Cohesion : all elements contribute to a single, well-defined task, i.e. a function that performs exactly one operation get_engine_temperature(), add_sales_tax()
(emphasis mine).
I don't fully understand the definition of logical cohesion. My questions are:
 - what is logical cohesion?
 - Why does it get such a bad rap (2nd worst kind of cohesion)?
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2 Answers
Logical cohesion can be bad because you end up grouping functionality by technical characteristics rather than functional characteristics. For example, consider an application consisting of multiple modules. Each module represents some business domain and has corresponding data access code. If you group all data access code across all modules then you have logical cohesion. After all, it is all data access and it in some cases it is beneficial to be able to evaluate the data access patterns of an application. This however is problematic because the business domain provides the module boundaries, not the technical domain. By achieving logical cohesion you end up losing on functional cohesion. Typically, the business domain defines a well-defined unit of deployment and technical aspects are there to support the business domain.
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That's a good answer, although to avoid confusion, I'd mention that in the context of object oriented programming (and the examples on Wikipedia and c2wiki), a module is essentially a class. This means that the comment about the "huge if/else" also makes more sense. – Daniel B Oct 3 '12 at 7:05
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From how it is described, I would say it is about coupling code together that has some cohesion, but breaks object orientation.
Example: calculation of a polygon's area. When you put the calculation for the square together with the calculation for the triangle, and only choose by the input-param, then you have grouped two things logically by their outcome, not taking into account their real nature.
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The Museum of HP Calculators
The American astronauts calculated critical course-correction maneuvers on their HP-65 programmable hand-held during the rendezvous of the U.S. and Russian spacecraft.
Twenty-four minutes before the rendezvous in space, when the Apollo and Soyuz were 12 miles apart, the American astronauts corrected their course to place their spacecraft into the same orbit as the Russian craft. Twelve minutes later, they made a second positioning maneuver just prior to braking, and coasted in to linkup.
In both cases, the Apollo astronauts made the course-correction calculations on their HP-65. Had the on-board computer failed, the spacecraft not being in communication with ground stations at the time, the HP-65 would have been the only way to make all the critical calculations. Using complex programs of nearly 1000 steps written by NASA scientists and pre-recorded on magnetic program cards, the astronauts made the calculations automatically, quickly, and with ten-digit accuracy.
The HP-65 also served as a backup for Apollo's on-board computer for two earlier maneuvers. Its answers provided a confidence-boosting double-check on the coelliptic (85 mile) maneuver, and the terminal phase initiation (22 mile) maneuver, which placed Apollo on an intercept trajectory with the Russian craft.
Periodically throughout their joint mission, the Apollo astronauts also used the HP-65 to calculate how to point a high-gain antenna precisely at an orbiting satellite to assure the best possible ground communications.
The first fully programmable hand-held calculator, the HP-65 automatically steps through lengthy or repetitive calculations. This advanced instrument relieves the user of the need to remember and execute the correct sequence of keystrokes, using programs recorded 100 steps at a time on tiny magnetic cards. Each program consists of any combination of the calculator's 51 key-stroke functions with branching, logical comparison, and conditional skip instructions.


The 3D Multiplication or TimesTables!
Each of these layers were cut out of wood (the old Dienes blocks) by Don, about 35 years ago. He has kept it around for his students to build up the layers, then look at the result and find patterns in it. His camera wasn't good at close shots, so the numbers on the layers weren't visible in the scan; he therefore drew and superimposed the numbers in his paint program.
To Patterns in Numbers
To download Don's materials
Mathman home


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ADRA Europe offices call on immediate climate action to avoid future catastrophes
ADRA offices in Europe have prepared a position paper before COP27 in Egypt starts this week, calling on immediate climate action to avoid future catastrophes. From 6 to 18 November, Heads of State, ministers, and negotiators, along with climate activists, mayors, civil society representatives and CEOs are meeting in the Egyptian coastal city of Sharm el-Sheikh for the largest annual gathering on climate action.
The effects of the climate crisis are being felt all over the world. Livelihoods and health are threatened. Extreme weather events are becoming more severe and more frequent. As humanitarian and development practitioners, we have seen first-hand how our global equilibrium is out of order. All science is precise, but we have an implementation problem.
The international ADRA network of 113 independent entities works in a federal structure. In our projects – humanitarian aid and development cooperation – we work in close partnership with the local population in supporting people in building up socio-economic resilience to lead lives in dignity and quality. People are at the centre of everything we do. As a value-based aid organisation, we help all, regardless of religion, ideology, origin or nationality. The offices have built valuable expertise in mitigation and adaptation over the years, responding to climate change disasters and building sustainable livelihoods in areas where climate change negatively affects communities.
Within the ADRA network, we aim to bring together different competencies and strengths in our advocacy working group of European offices. We aim to do our deed; offices in our network have started to move towards net zero, signed the Climate charter, shared our knowledge at COP26 and COP27, and published the comprehensive Carbon Reduction Guide in 2021. Our projects range from youth empowerment to livelihoods and disaster risk management. As civil society organisations in service to humankind, we want to act on the ground, but we also see the bigger system around the catastrophes that hit the poorest, least resilient communities the worst. We want to add our voices to the demands and bring attention to the steps needed to ensure our planet and humanity can recover into a safer, less climate-volatile future. We call on you as policymakers and influential personalities to take necessary decisions in the upcoming UN Climate Conference. As the historical perpetrators of the climate crisis, the industrialised countries must finally step up to promises made. The COP26 has set some course, but more steps are needed. With the next climate conference, we should seize this chance to come together and drive forward in combatting the climate crisis. Every step we take now is insurance for the future. We have formulated three demands.
- Stronger consideration of civil society actors
We advocate for the civil society actors active on the ground and fighting for the lives and livelihoods of the most targeted by climate crisis to be given considerably more space at the table. Mainly, disadvantaged and underrepresented actors should be more actively involved in implementing climate protection and adaptation measures, significantly if they are directly affected by the actions. Women and other marginalised groups are particularly affected as climate change exacerbates existing vulnerabilities and inequalities. Female-led and inclusive movements should be given special consideration in funding and decision-making. Governments worldwide should continuously allow peaceful protests and refrain from arbitrary arrests or other reprisals against people exercising their human rights – even beyond the end of the negotiations. We hope that the decision-making level will continue actively seeking out the collaboration and council of civil society actors. We, as an ADRA network, offer our expertise in future discussions. In our projects, we prioritise people as experts in their own lives. We need to work together and listen to each other to make the contributions that will bring us forward. We call to strengthen current transformative education to combat climate change at all levels and make sufficient resources available.
- More focus on Loss and Damage
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report shows: The climate crisis is claiming human lives, destroying the environment, causing economic costs, exacerbating conflicts and endangering human rights. We highly welcome that the Egyptian government has announced that Loss and Damage will be in greater focus this COP. The commitment of international civil society towards this topic stays strong. The Glasgow Dialogue on Loss and Damage is the first step and, at the same time, a minimum consensus of COP26. International financing falls far short of the developing countries' demand a concrete financing mechanism and of what is needed. Without clear milestones, the dialogue cannot lead to tangible results. People who are hit hardest by slow and sudden onsets should receive quick and sustainable relief to rebuild their homes and lives better. Those local communities and actors should be in the lead when designing and implementing loss and damage programs as it is the basis for any Climate Change action. Adaptation is essential – but the first step is immediate support.
- Meeting the pledge on global adaptation financing
The global adaptation target is intended for the adaptation and resilience of all countries in the interest of sustainable development and reducing vulnerabilities. To achieve this goal, countries must develop ambitious National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) and long-term strategies. The countries of the Global South should be supported in implementing their adaptation measures. We call on all industrialised countries to increase their climate financing contribution to fulfil the pledge at COP26 to adaptation funding by 2025 and to transparently outline the steps it will take to achieve this goal at COP27. We also call on working towards integrated and coherent programs (water and food security, biodiversity protection, gender equity, etc.), particularly in European financing of adaptation measures in developing countries and with multilateral donor organisations.


AT(1) UNIX Reference Manual AT(1)
 at [-V] -c job [job...]
 atq [-V] [-q queue] [-v]
 atrm [-V] job [job...]
 At and batch read commands from standard input or a specified file which
 at executes commands at a specified time;
 in that case, everybody's jobs are listed;
 atrm deletes jobs;
 the invocation of atrun.
 At allows some moderately complex time specifications. It accepts times
 of the form HHMM or HH:MM to run a job at a specific time of day. (If
 that time is already past, the next day is assumed.) You may also specify midnight, noon, or teatime (4pm) and you can have a time-of-day suffixed with AM or PM for running in the morning or the evening. You can
 month-name day with an optional year, or giving a date of the form MMDDYY
 or MM/DD/YY or DD.MM.YY. The specification of a date must follow the
 specification of the time of day. You can also give times like [now] +
 allowed to use at.
 username not mentioned in it is then allowed to use at.
 default configuration.
 An empty /var/at/at.deny means that every user is allowed use these com-
 -V prints the version number to standard error.
 -q queue
 uses the specified queue. A queue designation consists of a single letter; valid queue designations range from a to z. and A to
 Queues with higher letters run with increased niceness. If a job
 is submitted to a queue designated with an uppercase letter, it
 that queue.
 was no output.
 -f file
 Reads the job from file rather than standard input.
 -l Is an alias for atq.
 -d Is an alias for atrm.
 -b Is an alias for batch.
 otherwise shows the time the job will be executed.
 -c Cats the jobs listed on the command line to standard output.
 /var/at/jobs Directory containing job files
 /var/at/spool Directory containing output spool files
 /var/run/utmp Login records
 /var/at/at.allow Allow permission control
 /var/at/at.deny Deny permission control
 /var/at/jobs/.lockfile Job-creation lock file.
 cron(8), nice(1), umask(2), sh(1), sendmail(8), atrun(8).
 empty, the current userid is assumed.
 At and batch as presently implemented are not suitable when users are
 want to consider another batch system, such as nqs.
 At was mostly written by Thomas Koenig <>. The
 time parsing routines are by
 David Parsons <>.
 FreeBSD April 12, 1995 1


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Webinars in Economics of Environment, Energy and Transports
At 4pm on Zoom and has a duration of 60 minutes, with questions at the end.
In order to attend the webinar, registration is mandatory. Please use the following link to access the registration form.
Etienne ESPAGNE (AFD) and Guilherme MAGACHO (AFD)
Impacts of CBAM on EU trade partners: consequences for developing countries
We analyse the impact of the introduction of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) on the European Union (EU) trade partners, focusing especially on its potential socio-economic and external consequences for developing and emerging economies. We use trade data and Multi-regional Input-Output (MRIO) matrices to investigate the uneven distribution of CBAM's impacts. The introduction of CBAM by the EU is under discussion, and most of the literature on the topic has analysed the consequences for the EU economies. However, this carbon adjustment mechanism, which seeks to reduce the incentives for firms to outsource their carbon emissions and promote a more generalized low-carbon transition, might disproportionally impact some non EU economies. Despite most carbon revenues (> 200 M€) would be generated by Russia, China and Ukraine, the degree of exposition of economies that export the CBAM products to Europe varies substantially, with many developing economies having more than 2% of their exports, and 1% of their production impacted by this measure. East European economies, mainly in the Balkans, as well as Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Cameroon, in Africa, are those where exports are the most exposed. In socio-economic terms, we can also include Morocco and Tajikistan in the group of most exposed economies. CBAM is certainly an important step towards a European pricing carbon dynamics. Its implementation conditions may also promote a global (rather than local) low-carbon transition if the carbon revenues generated by this mechanism are used to support the most impacted developing countries outside the EU.


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Henry Hamilton Honoré (February 19, 1824 – August 16, 1916) was an American businessman.
Honoré moved to Chicago, Illinois, from Louisville, Kentucky in 1855 and made his fortune in real estate. Henry Honoré fathered six children with his wife, Eliza J. Carr: Adrian C., Bertha (known as Cissie), Henry, Nathaniel, Ida, and Lockwood.
Honoré's daughter, Bertha, married millionaire real estate developer Potter Palmer in 1871, shortly before the Great Chicago Fire destroyed the Honoré Building at Adams and Dearborn in downtown Chicago.
Another daughter, Ida Marie Honoré, married General Frederick Dent Grant, son of President Ulysses S. Grant, in Chicago in 1874. Through this marriage, Honoré became the grandfather of American writer Julia Dent Cantacuzène Spiransky-Grant, also known as Princess Cantacuzène, who chronicled the Russian Revolution from a first-person perspective.
Honoré was responsible for the assemblage of lots and acreage along Dearborn Street, creating an office and commercial district. Honore St. (1832W) in Chicago is named after him.
Notes and references
- Marquis, Albert Nelson (1911). The Book of Chicagoans, p. 339. Chicago: A.N. Marquis & Company.
|This article about an American businessperson born in the 1820s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.|


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Prediction Of Sugar Yield From Sugar Cane Using Process Modeling
A study was undertaken to developed a model that will be used to predict sugar and the by-products from sugar cane. The model developed from MATLAB was used to predict the sugar, bagasse, filter cake and molasses yield from sugar cane. The predicted values from the model were compared to yield data obtained from the production of sugar cane from the Savannah Sugar Company, Numan, Nigeria for 90 days. The analysis gof variance (ANOVA) at p ≤ 0.01 was used to determine if there were significant difference in the yield predicted by the model and the measured factory yield. The F-LSD at p ≤ 0.01 was used to separate the means. The model is validated where there was no significant difference between its predicted yield and the factory-obtained yield. The sugar cane input of 2,150.52 MT was obtained from the Savannah Sugar factory. The corresponding imbibitions water pumped into the mixed juice was 673.12 MT. The predicted sugar, bagasse, molasses and filter cake yield using the MATLAB model was 279.5MT (13%), 1,049.46MT(48%), 111.828MT(5.2%) and 101.1MT(4.7%) respectively. The ANOVA showed that there was no significant difference between the MATLAB model and the factory-based model. It is concluded that the ANOVA validated MATLAB model for sugar yield prediction. Consequently, this model is recommended for use in predicting sugar and by-products yields from sugar cane. Statistical analysis using the F-LSD showed that the model satisfied such an invariant confidence in the model, and provided support for its validity.


text:
Hiragana Alphabet: "shi"
New languages are easier to learn the younger you are! Get your child excited to learn Japanese, with these great Hiragana alphabet worksheets. She can practice tracing letters, pronouncing sounds and she'll even get to learn a few new words in Japanese.
Follow the link to see the whole Hiragana Alphabet Chart.


text:
T1 definition communications
term for a digital carrier
facility used to transmit a DS1
formatted digital signal at 1.544 megabits per second.
T1 transmission uses a bipolar Return To Zero alternate mark inversion
line coding scheme to keep the DC carrier component from saturating the line.
Although some consider T1 signaling obsolete, much equipment operates at the "T1 rate" and such signals are either combined for transmission via faster circuits, or demultiplexed into 64 kilobit per second circuits for distribution to individual subscribers.
T1 signals can be transported on unshielded twisted pair
telephone lines. The transmitted signal consists of pips of a few hundred nanoseconds width, each inverted with respect to the one preceding. At the sending end the signal is 1 volt, and as received, greater than 0.01 volts. This requires repeaters about every 6000 feet.
The information is contained in the timing of the signals, not the polarity. When a long sequence of bits in the transmitted information would cause no pip to be sent, "bit stuffing
" is used so the receiving apparatus will not lose track of the sending clock.
A T1 circuit requires two twisted pair lines, one for each direction. Some newer equipment uses the two lines at half the T1 rate and in full-duplex
mode; the sent and received signals are separated at each end by components collectively called a "hybrid". Although this technique requires more sophisticated equipment and lowers the line length, an advantage is that half the sent and half the received information is mixed on any one line, making low-tech wiretaps less a threat.
See also Integrated Services Digital Network


text:
How To Let Certain Unix-User To Access Only One Directory, e.g.
I want to let the following username dimension to access the following directory only /var/opt/test/reports/*
How i can make that via Unix?
The simplest way to do that is use negative ACL, i.e., explicitly forbidding user (call him *user_no*) from using any directory, except the one you mentioned.
After installing ACL, the following command
will prevent him access to your home. You must remember to block explicitly every place from you wish to bar him, but you must remember to allow use of some directorie s (/usr, /bin..) otherwise you will bar him also from using regular Unix commands.
You should also allow him use of his home directory (I do no think an account can work with that at all), and the directory you mentioned above.
Alternatively, you can chroot the account. This can be done in two ways: in the first, you only allow ssh access, in the second you chroot the shell account. The second method is more complicated, and I never tried it, so I can offer no guidance. You can Google chroot shell account. The first method is simple, just modify the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config introducing these lines at the very bottom:
This binds the user to his home directory (%h above) and ensures that he has access to internal-sftp help. Also, add the user_no to the sftp group as follows:
The important command is the second one: it makes sure the user will never get shell access.
Lastly, create a symbolic link, in the user home directory, to the directory to which you wish to allow him access:
This creates a subdirectory to which he has access, but cannot create any file, only work on the existing ones. If you want to allow him to create files, you will have to change the permissions on /var/opt/test/reports.


Properties and Benefits of Cherimoya
Chirimoya, cherimoya, chirimoyo or 'custard apple' is the exotic fruit of the cherimoya (Annona cherimola) tree. The fruit is cultivated extensively in Central and South America, Tanzania, Egypt, Italy, India, Thailand and Singapore. Cherimoya is a good source of vitamins C and B6 and contains small amounts of important minerals such as copper, potassium, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus and iron which give it tonic properties and an invigorating effect.
Being a good source of fiber, this fragrant fruit boasts cholesterol-lowering properties and promotes cardiovascular health. Cherimoya is not only low in calories, but also has an extremely low fat content, as well as a high water content. Regular consumption promotes weight loss naturally, helps regulate digestion, boost immunity and manage anemia caused by iron deficiency. Moreover, the fruit contains elements with antioxidant, anti-aging and anti-inflammatory properties and benefits bone health.
Cherimoya benefits
What does cherimoya (custard apple) look like?
Cherimoya is either a roundish apple shaped or heart-shaped fruit with light green skin, covered in bumps that I find look very similar to scales. While some varieties have a softer skin, others have more prominent, almost pointy bumps. Although some varieties can reach a few kilos, usually only medium-sized 300-400 g fruit are marketed (cherimoya are quite pricey outside their production areas). Ripe cherimoya are green or yellow-green and have a creamy-white, soft-textured, somewhat mushy or custard-like pulp. Cherimoya seeds are hard, shiny, dark brown-colored and evenly spread throughout the pulp. Neither the seeds, nor the skin are edible.
What does cherimoya taste like and why is it called 'custard apple'?
Well ripe, fresh cherimoya fruit are quite fragrant and kind of sweet. The reason why they are called 'custard apple' is that they have a custard-textured pulp which taste somewhat like custard. Cherimoya tastes something between vanilla and banana, with a mushy pear-pulp texture, occasionally gritty, but a good kind of gritty. The fruit also has a particular sweet fragrance that reminds me of peaches or pineapple.
How to choose good, ripe cherimoya
Choose the largest green, slightly yellow-green cherimoya and avoid the fruit with brown spots because they may be well past their season. Ripe cherimoya has a soft, ready to crack skin. If the fruit is hard, leave it to soften (a.k.a. ripe) for a few days at room temperature. Remember to also give it a sniff: if it gives off a pleasant, fragrant smell, then it should be good to eat.
 - What happens if you put cherimoya in the refrigerator?
The same thing that happens with bananas: their skin gets damaged by the cold and turns brown, but they are still good on the inside. If your cherimoya lacks flavor, if it tastes bland, like a flavorless custard, then it might be overripe.
Cherimoya benefits and uses
Cherimoya has about 70 kcal/ 100 g of raw pulp. Not only this, but it is 79.39% water and only 0.68% fat. What this basically means is that cherimoya can help you lose weight and keep you hydrated, provided you replace some of the unhealthier foods in your diet with 1-2 helpings of the fruit. If you find this fruit to you liking and want to change the way you eat it, you can juice it, add it to smoothies, even ice cream.
Because it contains no saturated fats and no cholesterol and provides 3 g of fiber/100 g of pulp, cherimoya is a safe food for anyone struggling with high cholesterol levels or battling cardiovascular disease. Dietary fiber, for instance, prevents fat from food from being absorbed by the intestines, thus indirectly contributing to lowering cholesterol levels. Increasing your fiber intake also adds bulk to stools and makes them softer and thus easier to pass. This translates into improved intestinal motility and constipation relief as well as promotes colon health and helps manage hemorrhoids symptoms.
Nutritional Facts Cherimoya
Cherimoya was found to contain several antioxidants called acetogenins. According to preliminary research, these compounds have anti-malaria, anthelminthic (killing intestinal parasites) as well as anticancer properties which may prove useful for the development of future treatments.
Nevertheless, a study suggests that the same antioxidant acetogenins, when consumed in excess, may cause damage to nerve cells, possibly resulting in symptoms similar to Parkinson's syndrome: instability, tremors, shaking and other movement problems. However, it has yet to be proven that a moderate consumption of cherimoya may cause any health issues.
As you can see from the nutrition table above, cherimoya is a good source of vitamin C, providing 20% of RDA. Vitamin C stimulates the production of collagen, a protein that maintains the structure of our skin, blood vessels, organs and bones. Basically, a good vitamin C intake stimulates our body to produce enough collagen to keep us looking young and wrinkle-free.
In addition to this, vitamin C prevents scurvy, helps strengthen the immune system against viral infections, accelerates wound healing and protects cells and DNA against free radical damage. Introducing foods rich in vitamin C or supplementing to meet our daily requirements is important for good health and general wellbeing.
Cherimoya contains good amounts of pyridoxine (vitamin B6) and riboflavin (vitamin B2), thiamine (vitamin B1) and pantothenic acid (vitamin B5). B complex vitamins supports the activity of the nervous, digestive, muscular and respiratory systems. Last but not least, the fruit boasts small amounts of important minerals such as copper, potassium, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus and iron, which protect against oxidative stress, boast anti-aging and blood pressure-lowering effects, contribute to hormonal balance, bone health and anemia prevention and management.
Overall, cherimoya is a healthy choice, worth including in our diets. Considering its nutritional profile, the fruit contributes to good digestion and good energy levels, supports nervous system function and boosts immunity. The fact that is has a soft texture and a sweet, fragrant taste with fruity flavors makes it even more appetizing and more of a reason to include it into your diet.


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Chile's Ministry of Energy presented a hydrogen strategy with 3 main objectives:
- Have 5GW of electrolysis capacity under development by 2025;
- Produce the cheapest green hydrogen in the world by 2030;
- Be among the world's three largest hydrogen exporters by 2040.
Policy measures currently at the design stage include:
- accelerating R&D at research centers and universities
- financing pilot projects that may not be competitive initially while operating at a smaller scale
- accelerating permit processes
- creating economic incentives, potentially through carbon pricing mechanisms
- planning land use and creating production hubs
- improving transportation infrastructure
- finding hydrogen offtakers domestically and abroad
On 12-05-2021, the Regional Environmental Commission of Magallanes approved the Environmental Impact Statement related to the green hydrogen project Haru Oni. The initiative, led by the company Highly Innovative Fuels (HIF), consists of building a hydrogen-based fuel production plant in Magallanes, located in South Chile. The project aims to produce hydrogen powered by 3.4 MW wind turbines. In addition, the project involves a plant for the production of e-fuels (e-methanol and e-gasoline). The expectations for the production levels are: 350 tons of crude methanol per year, 130,000 litres of gasoline per year and 16 tons of carbon-neutral liquefied gas from 2022.
Chile has signed several international agreements with foreign countries to strengthen its hydrogen industry. The countries involved are:
- Germany, on 29-06-2021. The joint agreement between the two countries has the objective of enhancing cooperation in green hydrogen project development. Experience and knowledge will be exchanged through the creation of a working group, that will also establish a regulatory framework. The aim of the group is also to develop low-carbon certification systems.
- The Netherlands, on 01-07-2021. The joint agreement between the two countries aims at establishing green hydrogen import-export corridors. It also seeks to align the investment agenda and to improve private companies collaboration.
- Belgium, MoU signed to enhance green hydrogen production, in cooperation with the ports of Antwerp and Zeebrugge. The two ports aim to become the main hubs for hydrogen imports to Europe.
- Korea, on 9-11-2021, MoU signed to expand cooperation in the low-carbon hydrogen sector and exchange technologies of producing, storing, transporting, and usage of clean hydrogen.
In 2022, Government has awarded USD 50 million for green hydrogen projects. It is estimated that the awarded projects will attract investments of USD 1 billion, with an electrolysis capacity of 388 MW and size equivalent to what is currently in operation worldwide.


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Abstract: In this paper an algorithm is presented for the fitting of a tube shaped B-spline surface of (3,2) degrees to another surface along a given connection curve. Satisfying prescribed first and second order boundary conditions at a finite number of interpolation points on the connection curve several vertices of the control net of the bordering patches are computed from a fairness condition. The resulting B-spline surface joins the second surface with almost curvature continuity at those common points in which the tangent planes and the normal curvatures in one prescribed direction of both surfaces coincide.
Keywords: Computer-aided design, B-spline surface, boundary conditions, fairing
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Mathematical Proof That the Lightning Network Cannot Be a Decentralized Bitcoin Scaling Solution
Have you heard of the Bitcoin Lightning Network? It is a proposal that claims that:
"using a network of these micropayment channels, Bitcoin can scale to billions of transactions per day"
What it doesn't tell you is that this can only be accomplished by using large, centralized "banking" hubs.
Many in the Bitcoin community mistakenly assumed or were led to believe that the Lightning Network (LN) would be a distributed peer-to-peer network.
However, this is infeasible. In fact, even using a generous set of assumptions, we will prove it is mathematically impossible.
We will divide this document into sections. Part one will be a brief general overview of the LN. Part two will explain in simple terms why it cannot provide decentralized scaling. Part three will be a more rigorous mathematical proof.
PART I: OVERVIEW OF LIGHTNING NETWORK
The Bitcoin Scaling Debate
Bitcoin was originally designed as peer to peer cash that would scale with simple blocksize increases. However, the discussion over how to scale the network has become a lot more complicated and controversial.
57 Bitcoin "Core" developers have signed their support to an official Capacity Increase Roadmap that advocates the Lightning Network as a "non-bandwidth scaling mechanism" that may provide "very high decentralization".
We disagree and will prove it does not. After reading and understanding the information here, we recommend you draw your own conclusions.
What is the Lightning Network and How Does it Work?
Lightning Network (LN) is a protocol allowing for a series of off-chain bidirectional payment channels. Here is an excellent 3 part series by Aaron van Wirdum, if you would like to understand the technicalities.
"Bidirectional" simply means two directions, so Alice and Bob could open up a private channel and send bitcoins back and forth (outside of the blockchain):
In order to open the channel, one or both parties have to deposit bitcoins into a special Bitcoin address.¹ After that, they can do as many transactions as they want inside the channel, until either of them decide to close it, which settles (pays out the appropriate final balances) on the main Bitcoin blockchain.
Linking Multiple Channels
Going one step farther, if Alice had a channel with Bob, and Bob also had a channel with Carol, then Alice could indirectly send money to Carol: Bob would first pay Carol, and then Alice would reimburse Bob.
The Envisioned Network
LN evangelists promote the idea that if Alice can pay Carol through Bob, we should be able to keep extending this idea to build an entire network of payment channels, thus allowing a large percentage of transactions to occur off-chain.
However, this cannot be realistically accomplished as a peer-to-peer network, at least not one of any significant size.
"Decentralized" Vs "Distributed" Semantics
In everyday talk about Bitcoin, most people say "decentralized" to mean what is technically a "distributed topology".
Conversely, a network with centralized hubs can technically be called "decentralized" if it doesn't have a singular center.
But let's not get caught up in word games. The diagram² below should clear things up:
PART II: AN EXPLANATION FOR THE LAYMAN: WHY THE LIGHTNING NETWORK CANNOT SCALE
I'll make this explanation as short as I can.
First, you must understand that the Lightning Network is not like other networks in that you cannot simply connect to another user whenever you want.
To send or receive bitcoins, you need either a payment channel with that specific user, or a linked series of payment channels (a "route").
It's pointless to create a payment channel for the sole purpose of sending an off-chain transaction, since it requires an on-chain transaction to open the channel (and another one to close). You might as well just send an on-chain transaction instead; you don't need the LN.
The idea is that you're supposed to be able to route your payment to any destination through a series of connections. From the viewpoint of a user, the potential path to anyone else looks like a tree structure:
It Starts Off Like a Basic Math Problem
We're going to assume the goal is to scale to one million users.
Let's think about this: If you have a tree with 10 branches, and each of those branches has 10 leaves, you can reach 100 leaves.
And if you have a tree with 10 branches, and each has 10 sub-branches, and each of those in turn has 10 sub-branches, etc… you can go 6 levels "deep" and get: 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 x 10, or simply: 10⁶, which equals one million.
Since you have to hop from branch to branch 6 times to reach the leaf, we can say we have "6 hops". So that's 10 branches with 6 hops, or in our case: 10 channels with 6 hops.
So, what's the challenge?
Your Money Can't Be In Two Places At the Same Time
If we assume we need 10 payment channels to reach the entire network in 6 hops, that means you'd have to divide up your bitcoins into 10 parts.
But, probably only one of these channels will reach the intended recipient at any given time. That means you'll only be able to send part of your money, for example 10%.
Could we get around this by just having 2 channels and, say 20 hops? We'll come back to this question. First, let's understand another important fact:
Everyone is Lending to Everyone Else
Imagine Alice wants to send 1 BTC to Carol through Bob like so: Alice->Bob->Carol
In order to route the money, Bob has to have at least 1 BTC in his "balance" in the channel with Carol. Essentially, Alice is borrowing from Bob to pay Carol.
Bob transfers his 1 BTC to Carol in the [Bob->Carol] channel, and Alice transfers 1 BTC to Bob in the [Alice->Bob] channel. That's how it works — Alice cannot "give" the 1 BTC to Bob to then pass along to Carol.
It really is a loan because the network uses timelocks to eliminate custodial risk: Alice can't repay Bob safely until she's sure Bob has paid Carol.
In fact, EVERY hop en route to a destination must have the funds available for each transaction. So, the more hops that are used, the more this lending burden is multiplied.
Why is this a big deal?
It Means a Large Number of Hops is a Deal-Breaker
Let's say that everyone was using routes with 20 hops, and most users spent about $1000/month. If everyone did their fair share to help route payments, each user would need to route $20,000/month.
Would that even be possible?
It depends on many factors including: the amount of time required for a route and the number of transactions.
Even if we make a (possibly generous) assumption that a user can route 20 times his normal transaction load and only suffer a reduction of 50% in the availability of his channels, then he would need double the number of channels he normally would have.
In Reality, It's Even Worse
There's at least 5 additional problems which worsen the situation.
- Even the basic math we started with: 10⁶=1,000,000 isn't quite applicable. If we assume peers form mostly random connections without a central authority to plan routes, then there's a certain probability of success. A one-in-a-million chance, repeated a million times, only produces a 63% success rate. Choosing 2 million times improves this to 84%, which would mean increasing the number of channels.³
- As users spend their income, available routes degrade, until the time that more funds are deposited. In other words, when a person receives a salary payment and deposits funds in the network, their channels are at a maximum, with full routing power. But as their money is spent, this power drops toward zero. Averaged out, this pattern cuts the routing power by about half, requiring double the number of channels.
- Routing funds for others disrupts an otherwise even distribution of funds, which also diminishes the number of usable channels.
- There is a large wealth disparity in any population. Therefore, the number of users that can route funds for any other random user is only a fraction of the network. And this problem is magnified exponentially with an increasing number of hops.
- There always exists a risk of a routing channel becoming unresponsive (either intentionally or unintentionally). This risk also grows exponentially with an increasing number of hops.
The "TLDR" Summary
To reach anyone in a big network with a series of branching channel connections, you either need a large number of channels, or a large number of hops.
Both are a huge problem. A large number of channels means users have to divide up their funds and can't do anything except tiny purchases. And a large number of hops means everyone's money will be tied up routing everybody else's money.
Conclusion: A Completely Unworkable System
As the network reaches a million users, it seems there will be no realistic way to avoid these problems. Dividing funds into many channels and continually loaning out money both make the network unusable.
The only conceivable visions are either A) everyone deposits MUCH much more than they need to transact with, or B) the system depends on large centralized hubs.
Neither is a decentralized scaling solution, or even a major part of one.
PART III: INFORMAL MATHEMATICAL PROOF
Modeling a theoretical network


Sex Differences in Immunology and Drug Therapy
Manage episode 271008033 series _PHONE_
Show Notes for Episode Fifteen of seX & whY: Sex Differences in Immunology and Drug Therapy
Host: Jeannette Wolfe
Evelyne Bischof MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Shanghai University of Medicine and Health Sciences and internist at University Hospital of Basel Switzerland
Sabra Klein, PhD, Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
This podcast focused on sex differences in immunology and pharmacology and its relevance to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Key points
 - Males are more likely to be admitted to the ICU and die from COVID-19 compared to females
 - Males and females have differences in both innate and adaptive immunity (which likely are a combo of chromosomal, hormonal and epigentic differences)
 - One difference in Innate immunity (the initial non-specific reaction to a foreign pathogen) is Toll-like receptor 7 (TLR7) This is a major player in the initial physiological response to a foreign pathogen and the gene for it is on the X chromosome. X-lined genes (like Ace-2 which is the receptor which SARS-Cov-2 initially binds to in the body) are interesting because they immediately bring up two considerations. First, if someone has a specific variant of that gene, it could change their susceptibility to certain pathogens. Males, as they have an XY pair of sex chromosomes, only have one X chromosome and thus could be more adversely impacted than females (XX) who have a second copy of the gene (which may or may not express the same variant) from their other X chromosome. The second consideration is that in the cells of most females, one of the X chromosomes is automatically turned off (X inactivation). It appears however, that some X-linked immune cellslike TLR7- don't do this, leading to the possibility of increased expression of the gene like getting an "extra dose".
 - In adaptive immunity (which involved B and T cells), females generally have a greater immunological response to most pathogens.
 - As such, females generally exhibit a more robust immune response to natural infections and vaccinations. The flip side, however, is compared to men, women are also at greater risk for autoimmune diseases and are more likely to get local and systemic reactions after a vaccination.
 - When testing the effectiveness and side effects of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines it would be ideal to consider the variables of biological sex and age.
 - In an influenza study, when women were given a ½ dose of the flu vaccine, they mounted a similar immune response to males who got full dose. If the same held true for developing SARS-Cov2 vaccinations, it could potentially increase the amount of vaccine available (though it is unclear if this is even being considered in early vaccine trials).
 - Aging can also impair the immune response and older adults may require higher doses of booster doses of some vaccines to optimize their immune response
 - The use of Artificial Intelligence in drug development may revolutionize the pharmaceutical research industry by allowing more predictive drug modeling leading to more successful drug development.
 - This could also be used to better identify potentially important biological sexbased pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic differences earlier in drug development.
Two unexpected findings associated with COVID-19
 - Males appear to be more vulnerable to cytokine storm (mechanism still not entirely clear may be differences in ACE-2 receptors, or chromosomal/hormonal differences in innate/adaptive immune system)
 - Elderly sick males who survived COVID-19 appear to have significant protective antibody production against SARS-Cov2
Bischof E, Wolfe J, Klein S: Clinical trials for Covid-19 should include Sex as a Variable. JCI 2020
Engler R, Nelson M, Klote M, et al. Halfvs Full-Dose Trivalent Inactivated Influenza Vaccine (2004-2005) Age, Dose, and Sex Effects on Immune Responses, JAMA Internal Medicine 2008
Gender and COVID-19 Working Group website
Global Health 50/50 global deaths disaggregated by sex
Klein S, Pekosz A, Park H. et al. Sex, age and hospitalization drive antibody responses in a Covid-19 convalescent plasma donor population. JCI 2020
Roberts M, Genway S How Artificial Intelligence is transforming drug design. DDW
Souyris M, Cenac C, Azar P, et al. TLR7 Escapes X Chromosome Inactivation in Immune Cells. Autoimmune Disease 2018
Takehiro T, Ellingson M, Wong P et al. Sex Differences in Immune Responses that underlie COVID-19 disease outcomes. Nature 2020
Zucker I, Prendergast B. Sex differences in pharmacokinetics predict adverse drug reactions in women. Biology of Sex Differences 2020
Special thanks to Doug Deems for help with editing
29 episodes


Tu sei qui
Yogic Living: Yogic Numerology & the 10 Bodies of Light
Yogic Numerology is a simple, elegant tool for self-mastery. It gives us a framework to understand our strengths and weaknesses. The system is simple to learn, quick to apply, and accurate.
This is a good time to learn something new and start a practice that will help you embrace your individual gifts and overcome your personal weaknesses. It is also a time when we can share Yogic Numerology with friends and family—strengthen connections while offering something new, simple, fun and uplifting.
Yogic Numerology provides an effective way to align with your higher Self and excel via the technology of Kundalini Yoga.
The Yogic Numerology System
Yogic Numerology
Free Numerology Reading
Suggested Personal Sadhanas
Calculating the Numbers
The Ten Bodies
Introduction to the Ten Bodies by Shakti Parwha Kaur
Characteristics of the Ten Bodies
Kundalini Yoga and Tantric Numerology by Guruka Singh
Kundalini Yoga Technology
Kriya for Awakening to Your Ten Bodies
A great favorite Kundalini Kriya - 16 exercises take a minimum of 35 minutes.
To Master the 1st Body (Soul):
 1. Recite Japji Sahib by Guru Nanak daily for 1,000 days.
 2. Come from a place of great humility, relax into the flow of God energy and use it to create beauty. Raise the Kundalini and open the heart.
 3. Exercise Set for Balancing Head and Heart
 4. Pulse Meditation
 5. Guidance of the Soul meditation.
 6. Meditation into Being - I Am I Am
To Master the 2nd Body (Negative Mind):
 1. Recite Shabad Hazare by Guru Arjan daily.
 2. Value your discipline; develop conscious relationships of integrity; strengthen the Positive Mind if the Negative Mind is overdeveloped
 3. Chant the mantra Wahe Guru, Wahe Guru, Wahe Guru, Wahe Jio, out loud, 8 repetitions per breath, for 31 minutes daily.
 4. Meditation for Negating False Identity in The Ten Light Bodies of Consciousness (page 52).
 5. Meditation for the Negative Mind.
 6. Chii-a Kriya
 7. Chant Ang Sang Wahe Guru.
To Master the 3rd Body (Positive Mind):
 1. Read Anand Sahib by Guru Amar Das daily.
 2. Strengthen the Navel Point (Third Chakra); use positive affirmations; strengthen the Negative Mind if the Positive Mind is overdeveloped.
 3. Rebirthing Meditation
 4. Sing or meditate on the mantra Ardas Bhaee.
 5. Meditation for the Positive Mind.
 6. Kirtan Kriya.
To Master the 4th Body (Neutral Mind):
 1. Sing the songs of Guru Ram Das or meditate on Guru Ram Das using the mantra Guru Guru Wahe Guru, Guru Ram Das Guru.
 2. Regular meditation practice.
 3. Meditation for the Neutral Mind.
 4. Meditation for Guidance.
 5. Sodarshan Chakra Kriya.
To Master the 5th Body (Physical Body):
 1. Engage in strong physical exercise daily.
 2. Read Sukhmani Sahib by Guru Arjan every day.
 3. Teach.
 4. Meditation for Protection and Projection from the Heart.
 5. Prosperity Meditation in The Ten Light Bodies of Consciousness (page 135).
 6. Kriya for Healing the Self.
 7. Breath of Fire.
 8. Kundalini Bhakti Mantra.
To Master the 6th Body (Arcline)
 1. Meditate daily for at least 31 minutes with any meditation.
 2. Awaken the pituitary gland.
 3. Chant Mere Man Lochai daily.
 4. Drib Dhristi Lochina Karma Kriya
 5. Ajna Stimulation Kriya
 6. 8 Stroke Breath Meditation in Man to Man on page116.
 7. Meditation for the Arcline and to Clear the Karmas.
To Master the 7th (Auric) Body:
 1. Sing out loud, often and joyfully. Elevate others with your singing.
 2. Wear white clothing made of natural fibers.
 3. Balancing the Aura.
 4. Meditation for the Divine Shield.
 5. Strengthening the Aura.
 6. The Seventh Body Meditation.
 7. Grace of God Meditation.
To Master the 8th (Pranic) Body:
 1. All pranayama.
 2. Narayan Kriya on p. 96, Man to Man.
 4. Do any or all of the Ra Ma Da Sa, Sa Say So Hung Healing Meditations.
 5. Master the technique of Long Deep Breathing.
 6. Develop Your Pranic Energy.
 7. Meditation for a Stable Self.
To Master the 9th (Subtle) Body:
 1. Any meditation that you do consistently for 1,000 days will work on the ninth body.
 2. Breath Meditation Series for Glandular Balance in Kundalini Yoga Sadhana Guidelines.
 3. Meditation for Conquering Death in The Ten Light Bodies of Consciousness (pages 196 & 197).
 4. Meditation to Clarify the Subtle Body.
 5. Laya Yoga Chant
 6. Chant Gobinday Mukunday.
To Master the 10th (Radiant) Body:
 1. Keep your hair long and uncut.
 2. Recite Jaap Sahib by Guru Gobind Singh daily.
 3. Guru Gobind Singh Shakti Mantra Meditation.
 4. Archer Pose for 11 minutes (each side) every day.
 5. Varuyas Kriya in Kundalini Yoga Sadhana Guidelines.
 6. Gobinda Meditation in The Ten Light Bodies of Consciousness (page 223).
 7. Meditation to Develop the Radiant Body.
 8. The Radiant Body Meditation for Women.
 9. Chattra Chakkra Vartee.
To Master the Number Eleven:
 1. Read from the Siri Guru Granth Sahib every day for 1,000 days.
 2. Chant Long Ek Ong Kars
 3. Chant the mantra Ek Ong Kar Sat Gur Prasad Sat Gur Prasad Ek Ong Kar for 31 minutes daily.
 4. Ra Ma Meditation
 5. Chant the Aquarian Sadhana Mantras.
Yoga manuals, books and other resources are available through KRISikh Dharma International, or Spirit Voyage.
From the Blog
Master the Moment with Your Mastery Number by Nam Hari Kaur
The 11th Body in the 10 Body System by Lynn Roulo
My Heart Number by Nam Hari Kaur
Gemstones for the 10 Bodies By Alyson Atma Simms
All About the 3 Mental Bodies by Nirvair Singh
Mastering My Negative Mind by Sewa Singh
Numerology and the Sacred Science of Sound by Sangeet Kaur
Strengthening Your Radiance: Be the Light
Gemstones and the 10 Bodies by Siri Radha Kaur
The 3 Functional Minds
Our 7th and 8th Bodies: Living Life Strong by Savitree Kaur
The 3 Minds in Relationship: He Said, She Said, Soul Said by Catalyst Yogi
For More Information:
Akara Numerology by Nam Hari Kaur
The Ten Light Bodies of Consciousness by Nirvair Singh
Tantric Numerology: Create your Destiny by Guruchander and Kirn Khalsa
Numerology for Self Mastery by Guruchander Khalsa
Let the Numbers Guide You: The Spiritual Science of Numerology by Shiv Charan Singh


There are lessons in life which cannot be taught, they can only be experienced; such is the case when it comes to the art of sensuality. While the majority of people in today's society live disconnected from their body's senses, there are others who have been born quite in touch with their sensuality; to them sensuality is more than just technique or cheap arousal…to them it is a state of being.
To discover the art of sensuality is to discover the magic which arises when sensibility, strength, desire, fascination and energy are combined.
When it comes to the art of sensuality nobody teaches us how essential it is to refine our ability to feel without analyzing, without wanting to achieve anything, without exercising power; behind our dreams of control there is an exciting territory worth exploring.
When talking about sensuality most people automatically think of sexuality yet sexuality is but a small fragment of sensual life. There are many stereotypes about the concept of sensuality but I focus on is its original meaning "To live consciously focusing on our senses and emotions"The lack of proper understanding on what sensuality encompasses is due to the fact that we live in a over rationalized, extremist culture, where education on the art of sensuality is practically non-existent. It's only natural when dealing with extremes, that over time and with the help of modern media, more and more people would confuse sensuality with classless, tasteless exposure.
Sensuality is not about covering your body from head to toe, neither it is about showing every inch of your body in a way that doesn't evoke PURE lust mixed with desire for wanting to know the person behind the body….
Let's take for example sensual photography. These days very few artists actually know what to do when it comes to photographing a naked body. Most photos show images which are empty and easily forgettable by most who look at them. Their forgetful reaction is natural as in today's society there are countless images which claim sensuality but simply evoke an animal desire which goes not further than the next image. No one teaches us anymore the art of glancing, the art of taking time to explore, the pleasure of listening, etc. We have forgotten the art of consciously using our senses to live authentic physical and emotional relationships.
People who understand what sensuality truly encompasses; whom are trained in the real art of sensuality; and who are in touch with their duality can be seductive without becoming ambiguous. They can be passionate, strong, gentle and spontaneous without compromising who they are. Sensuality has nothing to do with age, sex or appearance. It has nothing to do with the concept of physical beauty according to the traditional canons nor with the false stereotypes of our time….true sensuality is an essence and it transcends it all…
When talking about sensuality I am talking about the subtle harmony of gestures and movements, the sound of our voice, the warmth and relax tension of our bodies, the tuning of our skin to express itself in a constant and fluid way regardless of whether or not there are others there to watch. A natural sensual being does not need an audience; he/she embraces it when presented but does not require one in order to feel sensuous. A sensual individual simply enjoys the sensations of life which can give great pleasure. A sensual individual lives without schemes, exploring the depths of the meaning of life; for sensuality is deeply connected to our mind and spirit; living every moment with total absolute attention as if one were a child all over again.
Is sensuality only reserved for a few?…certainly NOT; this wonderful gift is our right and heritage which we have only forgotten how to claim and possess. Sensuality as joy, presence, spontaneity and absolute passion for life is present in all of us from birth; some would say even before that moment.
Sensuality is an art which is totally linked to our senses and to learn any art one needs two things: Masters/Teachers and works of Art/Pupils. In order to get in touch with our true sensuality, we need models of deep intimacy– healthy and conscious. We need to learn to appreciate our bodies and spirits as works of art; the more complex and different the art the better! Sensual people are often compared to a rollercoaster; an unforgettable one; as very few people in our society allow themselves to explore all their range of emotions and feel the rawness of their spirit which feeds their physical senses. We need to use touch the same way a master musician uses his ear to compose a beautiful symphony.
We are a society full of cheap sexual explicit images and sexually explicit behavior yet not many of us have given ourselves permission to explore our senses and to discover the meaning of making love.
Sensuality is the art of practicing pleasure, not only physical pleasure but to live within our body consciously which is key to cultivating a full life, and to keep alive the flame of our own natural sensuality.
Here are a few easy steps to help you reclaim your own sensuality.
 1. Start by feeling your body….If you are sitting feel your body's points of support on the chair; if you are standing feel the contact with the ground. Relax your belly, your sex, your neck, jaw, tongue and breathe long and deep. Slightly draw small circles with your pelvis keeping your spine soft. Do it as many times a day as you would like.
 2. Do this on your bed upon waking up and before going to sleep….With your eyes close, breathe deeply allowing your belly to expand and claim more space as you inhale. Move your pelvis with small circular movements in harmony with your breathing, keep your body relaxed and maintain a lazy and pleasant rhythm.
 3. When you are under the shower….Keep your attention on the water as it falls and caresses your body, stay focus on this liquid massage and the sensations it produces on your skin.
 4. Awaken the sensitivity of your skin….Our skin is our most extensive organ, therefore touch is valuable. Close your eyes while naked and relax your breath, caress your body slowly and smoothly; awaken your curiosity by doing this, as if you were exploring and unknown landscape. Pay attention and appreciate the temperature, the texture, the pressure; do not leave anything unexplored.
 5. Pay attention to one of your senses at a time….Doing this is incredibly powerful. Have you ever tasted eating something delicious? well think about how much better it would taste if you focus on each bite and the sensations it produces. Take the time to learn to enjoy and explore different smells or listen to music blindfolded.
 6. Face your partner with your eyes closed…Lay very close to your partner; close but without touching. Do the first exercise written here and when your bodies are relaxed, slowly and while keeping your eyes close, slowly begin to explore each other's bodies; discovering, feeling, staying with the sensations.
At every moment of our lives we use our sensory capacities but we do this as if we were in automatic pilot; without realizing the wide range of our senses. We have become like robots who do not perceive movement, the musculature, the skeleton which supports us. Most of us are tense and take small shallow breaths. We touch our bodies and the bodies of others without realizing the messages our bodies are transmitting. We eat distractedly, most of the time thinking about other things without paying attention to the taste of our food. Thousands of smells are perceived by our noses which send messages to our brain but we do not even become concious of them. A bunch of sounds reache our ears but we cannot really listen with full attention. Our eyes receive a multitude of images but we do not really see. Our senses are the key to enter into direct and real contact with the world around us. To reconnect with our senses means to enjoy the wonders of life; to unite our senses with our conscious is the secret to discovering the magic of sensuality.
Move in your own body with total connection, be present and awake at every moment; let this guide you through the sensations and enjoy them completely. Use your senses as tools of knowledge and source of pleasure, by doing this we return to our origin, we remember to be part of the whole and simply LIVE; living every moment in a sensual magical way…making love with life!
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