Selenium Webdriver PageFactory Worked Example
I found that, while adequate, the standard selenium examples for PageFactory were not quite enough to smoothly get me started. After asking around I saw that, contrary to the example, the most common practice seems to be to use the PageFactory inside the PageObject's constructor rather than from the client class. I will illustrate this with code to test Blackboard Learn, my employer's product starting with a simple login test. It is my hope that through more examples people can help get started more easily.
So, first the client code that uses this PageFactory generated PageObject
public class LearnQA {
 public static void main(String[] args) {
 WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
 String url = "";
 LearnLoginPage loginPage = new LearnLoginPage(driver, url);
 // Creds set elsewhere
 LearnHomePage homePage = loginPage.loginAs(USERNAME, PASS);
Basically, with a nice neat PageObject all we need to do is instantiate the page, "LearnLoginPage" in this example, and then perform the requested test such as logging in as a particular user. This hides the complexity of the page from the user of the class and we can change things internally without impacting anyone.
As for the actual LearnLoginPage, this uses the convenience of the PageFactory to reduce boiler plate code. First the listing -
public class LearnLoginPage {
 _USER_(how = How.CLASS_NAME, using = "login-page")
 private WebElement loginPageClass;
 _USER_(how = How.ID, using = "user_id")
 private WebElement usernameBox;
 _USER_(how = How.ID, using = "password")
 private WebElement passwordBox;
 _USER_(how = How.NAME, using = "login")
 private WebElement loginButton;
 private WebDriver driver;
 private String url;
 protected LearnLoginPage(WebDriver driver, String url) {
 this.driver = driver;
 this.url = url;
 PageFactory.initElements(driver, this);
 By loginPageTag = By.tagName("body");
 if (! "login-page".equals(driver.findElement(loginPageTag).getAttribute("class"))) {
 throw new IllegalStateException("This is not the login page");
 public LearnLoginPage typeUsername(String username) {
 return this;
 public LearnLoginPage typePassword(String password) {
 return this;
 public LearnHomePage submitLogin() {
 return new LearnHomePage(driver);
 public LearnHomePage loginAs(String username, String password) {
 return submitLogin();
Instead of the tedious WebElement finding we can now use the "FindBy" annotations to pre-populate the various web elements we are going to use. Such as the username/password fields and the login button. I believe this results in much more readible code.
Finally we have a couple of methods to
 - Type the username - typeUsername
 - Type the password - typePassword
 - Submit the login - submitLogin
 - And, finally, a convenience method that combines all of the above into one operation called "loginAs".
Categories:,


5 Ways to Bring Home a Moroccan Flair
Inspiration Corner
A distinct style inspired by Moorish architecture, Moroccan décor has recently developed as a new and exciting trend in home decoration. Reflecting the country's cultural and historic heritage, Moroccan décor incorporates the elegance of Islamic features, blending together vibrant colours, geometric designs and floral motifs.
(Image Source: internationaltravellermag.com)
Rich and varied, here are 5 typical elements of Moroccan decor that can help you bring an exotic ambience into your home!
Tiling, a prominent form of Islamic art, is one of the main characteristics of Moroccan architecture. Terracotta tile work covered with enamel, called zellige, is used to decorate walls, ceilings, floors, tables and more, usually with geometrically patterned mosaics. Seen as a statement of luxury and sophistication, such tile work is found in homes around the world!
(Image Source: destinia.com)
(Riad Dar Chrifa, Fez. Image Source: _USER_)
(Image Source: Architectural Digest via _USER_)
If elaborate tile work is not practical to incorporate within your home, candle sconces and wall art made with mosaic tiles, could be perfect for adding an element of Moroccan style décor!
(Mosaic Candle Sconces inspired by Moroccan tilework; available on Artisera)
Rugs & Cushions
Made by the indigenous people of Morocco since the Palaeolithic era, traditional Moroccan carpets and textiles have seen a surge in popularity, with their bright colours and tribal designs, fitting in wonderfully with modernist décor!
(Image Source: loomandkiln.com)
(Image Source: theselby.com)
(Image Source: _USER_)
(Image Source: loomandkiln.com)
Moroccan décor is known for its vivid and colourful designs. The diverse colours are known for their varied connotations. Reds and similar colours like salmon, rosy pink, fuchsia represent femininity, sexuality, fertility and childbirth and are used on walls, carpets and pottery. Turquoise, greens and blues are common colours used extensively in tiling, floors, doors and window panes.
(Image Source: _USER_)
(Image Source: maisonvalentina.net)
(Image Source: _USER_)
(Image Source: riad-yasmine.com)
Lanterns are elaborate décor elements integral to Moroccan décor. Traditional Moroccan lanterns and candle lamps often have classic, tapered shapes, with intricately carved metal chiselled carefully by master craftsmen. Whether hung from the ceiling or placed on the floor, they bring a gorgeous luminosity to the surroundings.
(Image Source: anthropologie.com)
(Image Source: blacktomato.com)
Traditional Moroccan houses, called Riads, are characterized by interior gardens or courtyards. With water playing an important role in Moroccan culture, marble or cement water fountains, representing paradise, are a conspicuous feature in every courtyard.
(Image Source: _USER_)
While fountains may seem unconventional, there is nothing more so quintessentially Moroccan, helping bring an exotic ambience into your living room, porch, terrace or balcony!
(Image Source: _USER_)
Influenced by Andalusian, French and Islamic styles, the appeal of Moroccan décor lies in it being the perfect blend of East and West, bringing the best of both worlds together, in a single, gorgeous approach to décor!
Share Post:


text:
The definition of a network is a structure with cords, threads or wires crossing each other.(noun)
An example of network is a telephone system for a large business.
Network is defined as to exchange contact and career information with other people.(verb)
An example of network is an amateur model talking with and gathering business cards from every person she can at a fashion industry party.
See network in Webster's New World College Dictionary
Origin: net + work
See network in American Heritage Dictionary 4
Learn more about network

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


The Home Category The Home: family money matters
What Are the Benefits of Tenants in Common?
There are several ways to hold title to real estate.
When two or more people hold title to one property together, a form of co-ownership must be selected.
"Tenants in common" (TIC) is just one form of co-ownership available.
It offers distinct benefits over other options, such as joint tenancy. It is important to carefully consider all available options and to consult with an attorney before making a final decision regarding title, as each form carries different legal and tax obligations.
Equal or Unequal Interests
Tenancy in common allows two or more owners to hold a title to property with unequal or equal interests. For example, one owner may have one-third, one-fourth or one-half interest in the property.
In addition, if five people own the property, they may each own one-fifth or some other fraction. It is important to note that it is only the interest in the property, and not the property itself, that is divided in this way.
Unity of Ownership
The tenants in common co-owners have "unity of possession." This means that all owners, despite their unequal or equal interests, are entitled to possess, or enjoy, the whole property and not just a fraction of it.
Transfer of Interest
Co-owners have separate rights to the property and may sell, convey or transfer their own share of the interest as they desire. Such action does not require the consent of the other owners. A co-owner's interest is passed on to heirs upon death, as specified by a will, if any.


"It's easy to find information about women and science and engineering and about underrepresented minorities in science and engineering, but it's very difficult to find
information about the intersection of the two."
Mahlet Mesfin, National Academy of Sciences
Understanding Interventions recognizes the chronic underrepresentation of specific populations in STEM education and careers. The mission of Understanding Interventions is to
1. To inform scholarship and practice in mutually beneficial ways. Scholars approach STEM education as a research problem to be analyzed. Their labor results in new insights into teaching, learning, and training. Program Directors prepare students at all degree levels for careers in the STEM workforce. Their production of new human resources requires research-based approaches that imbue graduates with skills and knowledge that enrich science-intensive organizations. The needs of scholarship and practice must be served in an ongoing way.
2. To develop and enhance the community that understands and utilizes the results of educational interventions. UI is a movement, a site, and an avenue for: (a) disseminating emerging knowledge of intervention efforts in the classroom and beyond, and (b) convening STEM practitioners from all sectors, disciplines, and institutional types to not only exchange information, but also to form collaborations that yield more effective and enduring interventions.
3. To provide training and professional development for all STEM personnel. Such direct intervention with students and faculty centers on enhancing individual skills and advancement, improving organizational practice and performance, and broadening participation by those facing disadvantage, bias, or otherwise arrested opportunity. In this way, UI is dedicated to increasing the number and diversity of contributors to STEM.
View Publication
Nearly a decade ago, the National Institute for General Medical Sciences funded the National Research Council to organize a workshop on "Understanding Interventions That Encourage Minorities to Pursue Research Careers." Little did NIGMS know then that the response would ignite a peer community that has become a recognizable brand. This community of training program directors in various disciplines, social and behavioral science researchers, and project/program evaluators has created a niche for activities that disciplines honor in word but not always in deed.
UI activities center on practices that are research-based and tested to change student outcomes. To intervene is to insert one thing between others, to interrupt so as to influence what happens. Interventions occur in law, medicine, and closest to UI's concerns, education. But intervening alone is not the UI mission. Rather, understanding why the intervention had the effect observed requires a different set of skills anchored in research, design, analysis, and interpretation.
This is what the UI community has wrought: a multidisciplinary cadre of specialists focused on the many facets of participation. Today we are collectively wiser about who participates in what. It is not only minorities, but women and persons with disabilities, who are prepared at rates that lag those of men for careers in science—not just its research path and not just science, but technology, engineering, and mathematics. What deters participation in some parts of STEM prevails in others.
Translating insights for those responsible for inducting students into a discipline with the skills and moxie to build a career and contribute in a variety of ways to a greater good is the mission of UI. Our goal is not to make every member of the community a social scientist or immersed in a technical literature. Rather, UI seeks to develop strategies and offer tools that aid practitioners in serving students and accumulating knowledge. Only by making this knowledge accessible and usable can the UI mission be realized.
Through seven conferences and the codification of their lessons, Understanding Interventions as a community has expectations for the presentation of new work. Five components are essential. Every written or oral contribution should include all five:
 1. Focus of the intervention—describe it; what is studied and why
 2. Outcomes of the intervention—what was found in what time frame
 3. Contextual factors—if a case study, what is adaptable; if other kinds of study, what was measured and how; what informs interpretation
 4. Study population—describe it; was there a comparison or control group
 5. Relevance to the UI community—is the motivation practical or theoretical; how does it connect the intuitive to something in the literature; what does it spur as a next step
Given that UI members are in varying stages of developing "interventions intelligence," their needs also vary. They will find some UI tools more helpful than others. Therefore the UI portal features different content for different needs, and multiple ways to access it.
 - The conference is an annual face-to-face event that travels to different regions of the U.S. Its report is a plain-language compilation of themes and issues summarized for those who did not attend but wish to pursue an issue or a presenter for guidance and/or collaboration. Links to the registration, housing, and abstract submission forms can be found there.
 - The UI Index, launched in 2015, is an interactive database that extends to the origins of UI that can be searched in several ways. Its contents will continue to expand.
 - To provide feedback on anything UI, you are invited to register for the UI Blog.
Other innovations are in the works as well, but the UI niche has been carved. We hope you find the resources at this portal worth returning to, and that you consider joining us as an active contributor to Understanding Interventions.
"We are educating students to be the next innovators of our country. To do that, our programs also need to be innovative."
—Patrick Valdez, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities


text:
The Birds Fall Down (1966)
by Rebecca West
It actually took me just as long to read The Birds Fall Down(377 page) as The Recognitions (960 pages). The Birds Fall Down was West's last novel, so this is a good place to evaluate her contributions to the 1001 Books list, 2006 edition. Both The Birds Fall Down and Harriet Hume got the axe in the 2008 revision of the 1001 Books list. That leaves The Return of the Soldier and The Thinking Reed as her two remaining entries on the list.
There is a strong argument that The Return of the Soldier is a top 100 title on the strength of it having the first depiction of post-traumatic stress disorder (or "shell shock") in literature, in addition to a strong female protagonist and woman author. It's less clear that The Thinking Reed belongs. Based on my own post on that book, I can't make a case for it staying. West was also an important public intellectual who wrote non-fiction and criticism, so the 1001 Books project doesn't capture her full import. I've not read anything that would cause me to pursue her further afield. She is a significant 20th century writer, but not a life changer.
The Birds Fall Down is about a young Russian-English woman travelling with her exiled Russian Count Grandfather from Paris to the French countryside. While on the train they encounter a young Revolutionary, known to the Count, and it becomes clear that a trusted aide to the County is in fact a triple agent, betraying both the Czar and the Revolutionaries at the same time. He's accomplished this by using three different identities, a fact that only becomes clear during the train rider.
Based at least partially on the shock he experiences at the train-ride revelations about his trusted associate (the triple agent) the Count dies just after exiting the train. The rest of the book is occupied with funeral arrangements and the consequences of the discovery of the triple-agent. It sounds straight forward, but I was as confused during the intiial train ride as can be possible while reading a book that doesn't involve any complicated post-modern narration techniques. It's just three people sitting together on the train, but not until they got off the train did I figure out what had happened.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


Comic book artists putting in hidden meanings in comics
Recently, X-Men Gold #1 was criticized for how it had hidden religious, political meanings in the art. The artist responsible was fired because of it. This article would examine other comic book artists who faced a similar situation and the consequences of their actions.
 Want to write about Comics or other art forms?
 Create writer account


technical information
the machines
The helium liquefier is a TCF-20, and the nitrogen liquefier is a LINIT-25, both purchased from SULZER. The TCF-20 produces about 11 liter liquid helium per hour (up to 30 liters per hour with liquid nitrogen precooling), and the LINIT-25 produces about 20 liter liquid nitrogen per hour.
the control system
The original control system from 1985 has been improved in two steps, first with logging and control of critical parts by a Satt Control PLC-system built by former staff Henrik Laurila around 1996. Then in 2011 Tove Mattsson and present staff Leif Magnusson made a state of the art control system in National Instruments LabVIEW:
how does it work?
For refrigeration and liquefication, two processes are used, the Siemens cycle and the Hampson-Linde cycle.
The Siemens Cycle
In the Siemens cooling cycle (patented by W. Siemens 1857) a gas is compressed and thereby heated in a compressor [A]. Most of the heat is removed by a cooler [B]. The gas does then pass through a heat-exchanger [C]. Energy is then extracted from the gas by letting it do a work in an expansion-machine [D], with the result that the gas is expanded and cooled. Finally, the gas will pass the heat-exchanger [C], to cool the compressed gas stream from the compressor [A]. As the gas stream into the expansion-machine [D] becomes cooler, the gas stream out of it will also be cooler, thereby the temperature of the cold end of the cycle will continuously decrease.
The Hampson-Linde cycle
The Hampson-Linde cycle ( independently patented by W. Hampson and C. von Linde 1895) is very similar to the Siemens cycle, except that the expansion-machine is replaced by a Joule-Thomson orifice in [D]. First a few words about the Joule-Thomson effect. A gas could be cooled by letting it expand freely against the atmosphere. This could be explained by that the gas was doing a work against the atmosphere by lifting and/or heating it, and thereby loosing energy in form of heat. 1852 Joule and Thomson did some experiments to observe a gas, expanding without any work to be done. They let the gas flow through a pipe with a porous plug to restrict the flow. To their surprise the gas was cooled by passing the plug. This could first be explained twenty years later by van der Waals. The gas was not doing an external work, but an internal against the forces between the molecules. What Hampson and von Linde did was to combine Siemens cooling machine with Joules and Thomsons expansion plug, and put together a complete gas liquefication cycle. The disadvantage with the Hampson-Linde cycle is that it is very inefficient in compare to the Siemens cycle at higher temperatures. And depending of the initial temperature and which gas is used, it may not even start to cool down. On the other hand, it has the advantage over the Siemens cycle by not having any moving parts at the cold end.
The helium liquefier (click to enlarge image)
To liquefie helium a Hampson-Linde cycle [blue] is used, boosted by a two stage Siemens cycle [red] doing most of the refrigerating work. As an expansion-machines in the Siemens cycle, turbines are used.
the nitrogen liquefier
The nitrogen liquefier works much like the helium liquefier, but instead of helium the circulating gas is air. After the compression, moist and carbon-dioxide is absorbed in aluminium-oxide beds. Then the air is refrigerated and liquefied by a Siemens and a Hampson-Linde cycle, just as in the helium liquefier. And the last step is to distillate the liquid air to separate the nitrogen from the oxygen.


Saint Sava Temple
One of the largest Orthodox churches in the world
In the center of Belgrade
It was built in the Serbo-Byzantine style. Construction of the church has lasted for more than a century, mostly because of the wars and the unfavourable political conditions. The church is so large that it can accommodate more than 10,000 people at the same time.
The temple is dedicated to the famous Serbian medieval personality and archbishop Saint Sava (Rastko Nemanjic), the son of the powerful Serbian ruler Stefan Nemanja, the founder of the ruling Nemanjic dynasty. The temple was built on the site where the Ottoman Turks publicly burned the remains of his relics in the 16th century, following an uprising in which the Serbs used icon depictions of Sava as their war flags.
Come and visit Saint Sava Temple, the largest orthodox place of worship in the Balkans.


local smoothing. An appropriate regularization on ϕ allows F to adapt to the degree of additivity in the data without over-fitting.
3. Regularization
A full Bayesian specification will require placing prior distribution on both ϕ and κ. However, such a specification requires tedious posterior sampling algorithms to sample from the posterior distribution as seen in [28]. Moreover, it is difficult to identify the role of ϕ l and κ j l, j = 1,, p since one can remove the effect of the lth component by either setting ϕ l to zero or by having κ l j = 0, j = 1,, p. This ambiguous representation causes mixing issues in a full-blown MCMC. To facilitate computation, we adopt a hybrid approach between frequentist and Bayesian to regularize ϕ and κ l j, respectively. The hybrid-algorithm is a combination of i) MCMC, to sample κ conditional on ϕ ii) and optimization to estimate ϕ conditional on κ. With this viewpoint, we propose the following regularization on κ and ϕ. With the parameter γ, each component controls the selection of variables and interaction among them. In addition to γ, the parameter Γ allows the model (1) to select significant components, which includes interested variables and interaction network. Together, Γ and γ are the global-local shrinkage on F.
3.1. L1 Regularization for f
Conditional on f 1,, f k, (1) with ϕ l, and ϕ l > 0. Hence we impose L 1 regularization on ϕ l, which is as following
1 n i = 1 N { y ( x i ) l = 1 k ϕ l f l ( x i ) } + λ l = 1 k ϕ l (3)
In the algorithm, ϕ l is updated using least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) [7] [32] [33]. The L 1 regularization enforces sparsity on ϕ at each stage of the algorithm, thereby pruning the unnecessary Gaussian process components in F. The parameter λ in (3) is selected using five fold cross validation.
3.2. Choice of k Components
The proposed model has the number of components, k, which determines how many components to fit the data and build the prediction. We propose using LASSO to choose k. First, we start with a large k value. As ϕ j is updated with the LASSO algorithm, the LASSO algorithm prunes unnecessary Gaussian process f l. Therefore, the value of k is updated, which is equal to the number of components which are not pruned.
3.3. Global-local shrinkage for κ l j
The parameters κ l j controls the effective number of variables within each component. For each l, { κ l j, j = 1,, p } are assumed to be sparse. As opposed to the two component mixture prior on κ l j in [28], we enforce weak-sparsity using a global-local continuous shrinkage prior which potentially have substantial computational advantages over mixture priors. Many continuous shrinkage priors have been proposed recently [34] - [39]. These priors can be unified through a global-local (GL) scale mixture representation of [40] below,
κ l j ~ N ( 0, ψ l j τ l ), τ l ~ f g, ψ l j ~ f l, (4)
for each fixed l, where f g and f l are densities on the positive real line. In (4), τ l controls global shrinkage towards the origin while the local parameters { ψ l j, j = 1,, p } allow local deviations in the degree of shrinkage for each predictor. Special cases include Bayesian lasso [34], relevance vector machine [35], normal-gamma mixtures [36] and the horseshoe [37] [38] among others. Motivated by the remarkable performance of horseshoe, we assume both f g and f l to be square-root of half-Cauchy distributions. Both τ l and ψ l j will be updated using the MCMC algorithm.
4. Hybrid Algorithm for Prediction, Selection and Interaction Recovery
In this section, we develop a fast algorithm which is a combination of L 1 optimization and conditional MCMC to estimate the parameters ϕ l, ψ l j, and τ l for l = 1,, k and j = 1,, p. Conditional on κ l j, (1) is linear in ϕ l and hence we resort to the least angle regression procedure [8] with five fold cross validation to estimate ϕ l, l = 1,, k. The computation of the lasso solutions is a quadratic programming problem, and can be tackled by standard numerical analysis algorithms.
The least angle regression procedure better approach which exploits the special structure of the lasso problem, and provides an efficient way to compute the solutions. Next, we describe the conditional MCMC to sample from κ l j and F ( x * ) at a new point x * conditional on the parameters ϕ l. For two collection of vectors X v and Y v of size m 1 and m 2 respectively, denote by c ( X v, Y v )
the m 1 × m 2 matrix { c ( x, y ) } x X v, y Y v. Let X = { x 1, x 2,, x n } and define
c ( X, X ), c ( x *, X ), c ( X, x * ) and c ( x *, x * ) denote the corresponding matrices. For a random variable q, we denote by q | the conditional distribution of q given the remaining random variables.
Observe that the algorithm does not necessarily produce samples which are approximately distributed as the true posterior distribution. The combination of optimization and conditional sampling is similar to stochastic EM [41] [42] which is employed to avoid computing costly integrals required to find maximum likelihood in latent variable models. Conditional on ϕ l, l = 1,, k, the MCMC algorithm to update ψ l j, τ l, and ϕ l is as following:
1) Compute the kernel k ( x, x ), k ( x, x * ), k ( x *, x ), k ( x *, x * ) with the kernel formula k ( x, x ) = exp ( γ d j x x 2 ).
2) Compute f l ( x i ) = j l ϕ j f j ( x i ). Compute the predictive mean
μ l * = k ( x *, x ) [ c ( X, X ) + σ 2 I ] 1 ( y f l ) (5)
3) Compute the predictive variance
Σ l * = c ( x *, x * ) c ( x *, X ) [ c ( X, X ) + σ 2 ] 1 c ( X, x * ). (6)
4) Sample f l |, y ~ N ( μ l *, Σ l * ).
5) Compute the predictive
F ( x * ) = ϕ 1 f 1 * + ϕ 2 f 2 * + + ϕ k f k *. (7)
6) Update ψ l j by sampling from the following posterior distribution, p ( ψ l j |, y )
p ( ψ l j |, y ) e x p { 1 2 y T [ c ( X, X ) + σ 2 I ] 1 y } | c ( X, X ) + σ 2 I | p ( ψ l j ). (8)
7) Update τ l, j = 1,, k by sampling from the following posterior distribution, p ( τ l |, y )
p ( τ l |, y ) e x p { 1 2 y T [ c ( X, X ) + σ 2 I ] 1 y } | c ( X, X ) + σ 2 I | p ( τ l ). (9)
8) Update γ d j by using the formula γ d j = τ j Ψ d j.
9) Update the vector Γ with the LASSO estimation.
10) Update κ l j by sampling
κ l j ~ N ( 0, ψ l j τ l ) (10)
11) Update ϕ j and prune unnecessary f j where j l with the LASSO algorithm.
The MCMC algorithm above is illustrated with the following flow-chart.
In the MCMC algorithm above, the conditional distributions of τ j and ψ l j are not available in closed form. Therefore, we sample them using MetropolisHastings algorithm [43]. In this paper, we give the algorithm for updating τ l only, as the steps for ψ l j are similar. Assuming that the chain is currently at the iteration t, the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm to sample τ l t + 1 independently for l = 1,, k proceeds as following:
1) Propose log τ l * ~ N ( log τ l t, σ τ 2 ).
2) Compute the Metropolis ratio:
p = min [ p ( τ l * | ) p ( τ l t | ), 1 ] (11)
3) Sample u ~ U ( 0,1 ). If u < p then log τ l t + 1 = log τ l *, else log τ l t + 1 = log τ l t.
The flowchart for the above Metropolis-Hast


surcoat, also spelled surcoteA man (left) wearing a surcoat with hanging sleeves and a woman (right) wearing a loose surcoat that reveals the sleeves of the garment underneath.Archives Photographiques, Parissleeved or sleeveless outer garment worn by European men and women during the 13th and 14th centuries. The surcoat for men was usually a tunic, or simple piece of material with a hole for the head, often worn over armour. For women, the surcoat was a more significant and characteristic garment, which originated in the 13th century as a voluminous outer cloak.
At the beginning of the 14th century, the armhole became a long vertical slit open to the hips, and the neck was cut low to create a narrow strip over the shoulders. The neck and armholes were frequently edged with fur or embroidery, sometimes elaborately. The skirt fell in loose folds from the hips. The sideless surcoat, popular for more than 90 years and often decorated with a row of buttons or jewels, offered an attractive contrast to the garment showing underneath.


text:
|Guitar Strings - A BRIEF EXPLANATION OF THE PHYSICS OF STRINGS|
Page 2 of 9
A BRIEF EXPLANATION OF THE PHYSICS OF STRINGS
When a string made from any material is progressively stretched between two fixed points (which determine its vibrating length), at a certain moment it reaches a frequency at which it breaks. This point corresponds to the breaking load of the string, which in the case of gut is about 32 kg/mm². The value of this limit frequency, known as the 'breaking frequency', is completely independent - strange as it may seem - of diameter, as may be easily demonstrated either mathematically (applying the general formula for the strings) or experimentally. This limit frequency is in direct proportion to the vibrating length of the string. In other words, the product of the vibrating length - in metres - and the breaking frequency - in Hz - is a constant defined as the 'breaking index'. The average breaking index of a modern gut string in experimental conditions is 240 Hz/m, obviously corresponding to a breaking load of 32 kg/mm². This means that at a vibrating length of a metre the string will break, theoretically, at 240 Hz. If one divides the breaking index by the tuning frequency chosen for the first string, this will produce the vibrating length at which the string will break. For the first string of a baroque guitar in E at the supposed seventeenth-century tuning standard of A = 415 Hz (according to which E = 315 Hz), the theoretical length at which the first string will break is 75 cm; the choice of a 'working' vibrating length will therefore have to consider a prudential shortening of this limit length. But by how much? To answer this question we must return briefly to the period preceding the advent of overspun bass strings. Musicians had always known that a string works best when, subjected to what seems to be the right degree of tension - that is to say, neither excessively taut nor excessively slack to the touch - it has the smallest possible diameter. Once this degree of tension was established, it then had to be distributed evenly across all the strings of the instrument. It was known, moreover, that as the section of a string increased - its tension and vibrating length being equal - it reached progressively lower frequencies, but that at the same time its total acoustic output (in terms of dynamics, the richness of overtones and the duration of the sound) diminished, to the point of becoming - above certain diameters - practically unacceptable. The only solution possible at that time - they were basically limited to gut - was to increase the vibrating length up to the physical limit determined by the first string, as seen above. Only in this way could one hope to reduce the diameter of all the strings as much as possible (particularly the bass strings, which were the thickest and therefore the most critical), thereby drawing from them their best sonority. Vibrating length and diameter are in fact inversely proportional. On the basis of the vibrating length in surviving plucked string instruments and the mechanical properties of gut strings, researchers have speculated that the working length probably entailed a prudential shortening of the hypothetical 'breaking' vibrating length by about 2-4 semitones. Thus, the above-mentioned vibrating-length limit for the guitar - 75 cm - corresponds to a 'working' length of about 69 cm, which is in fact very typical of surviving five-course instruments. With the appearance of overspun strings, the rule of increasing the vibrating length as much as possible no longer applied, in that the acoustic exuberance of the new bass strings was such as to recommend to eighteenth-century instrument makers a salutary shortening of the vibrating length (about two frets less) so as to increase agility of performance. It goes without saying that because the vibrating length was shortened and the tensions remained the same, the diameters of the first three strings, made purely of gut, had, by the laws of physics, to be increased, inevitably resulting in a certain loss of brilliance and a'sweeter' sound: more viola than violin, as it were.


This code identifies cases which contain component SNAP members and in which a discrepancy in the SNAP case exists.
Casework Action
 1. Identify the discrepancy in the case by the error message on the PAL.
 2. Review and correct the coding on Form 552 that caused the discrepancy. This includes, but is not limited to, the following factors:
 - unit composition;
 - the correct amount of income budgeted in the SNAP calculation;
 - the appropriate cross-reference case number in Item 60 for each member of the SNAP unit;
 - the number of people on the SNAP payee case for the component case matches the number on the Form 552 for the component case;
 - correct coding for SNAP in Items 15, 20, 22, 23, 60, 80, and 90.
 Contact other casework staff or the customer to obtain needed information, if necessary.
 3. Determine if a correction to Form 552 for the component case is required. If so, make the correction. If the component case is in a different caseload, initiate a referral to the appropriate supervisor for the change required.
 4. Determine the effect of any changes made on SNAP eligibility. Determine if an underpayment or overpayment occurred and take appropriate case action. Record the action taken on Form 514.
 5. When the discrepancy that caused the code to appear is corrected, the case no longer appears as Code F.


text:
2 runners(Alice, Bob) are running on the oval track at a constant speed. The tracklength is 200 meters.
First Alice ran with such low speed that Bob passed him every 2 minutes. To run faster than Bob, Alice sped up 2 times and now she is passing him every 6 minutes. What speed did Bob ran at in km/h?
How much was Bob faster than Alice at first speed?
1/30h is 2 minutes x km/h * 1/30h = 0.2km x = 6km/h
How much was Alice faster than Bob at second speed?
1/10h is 6 minutes 2x km/h * 1/10h = 0.2km x = 1km/h
Don't know how to create equation out of this.


text:
A dose of fetish. Good friends. An incomparable muse.
State of Emergency
Manqué (adjective). having failed, missed, or fallen short, especially because of circumstances or a defect of character; unsuccessful; unfulfilled or frustrated (usually used post positively).
Use at least 10 of the words to create a story or poem
The words can appear in an alternate form
Use the words in any order that you like.
Tag: Mindlovemisery's Menagerie and Wordle
Ping or leave your link in the comments below


text:
Capital improvement programs (CIPs) are often the largest portion of an organization's budget. With program costs ranging from a few million to several billion dollars, stakeholders want to know where and how funds are being spent. High-profile, high-dollar projects—such as infrastructure upgrades, new schools, and hospitals—likely receive extra scrutiny from the organization, the media, and the public.
Common program pitfalls might include cost overruns resulting from ineffective procurement practices, schedule delays that impact operations, or penalties for noncompliance with state or federal regulations. Expertise in construction programs and the related controls aren't typically core competencies for educational or governmental organizations and the individual departments within them and organizations that seek to keep programs on track and on budget should commit to a construction performance audit. The key is to select qualified performance auditors with CIP proficiency to identify program risks.
CIP Performance Audit
CIP performance audits provide objective analysis to assist stakeholders with information to improve performance and operations, reduce costs, facilitate decision making, and contribute to public accountability. Audit objectives should be clear and concise and address various performance aspects of the program, including but not limited to:
- Contractor charges
- Schedule, scope, and quality management
- Project funding and plan alignment
- Project controls, including contract administration and procurement
- Compliance with regulatory requirements
- Budgetary management and financial reporting
- Program staffing gaps and redundancies
- Master plan development and scope prioritization
- Change-order controls
- Project close-out
- Communication among stakeholders
For clarification, performance audits don't just apply to federal projects. Many state and local governments also require them, as do some private organizations when specified by contract, agreement, or law. Take California's Proposition 39, for example. The "Smaller Classes, Safer Schools and Financial Accountability Act" requires that the proceeds from the sale of school facilities bonds are expended only on the specific projects listed in the proposition authorizing the sale of bonds. Both the state constitution and Education Code require an annual independent performance audit to verify bond proceeds are used on listed projects. However, verifying the bond proceeds are used on listed projects may not be enough to prevent common areas of risk.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) issues the generally accepted government auditing standards (GAGAS)—also known as the Yellow Book—which provides performance auditors with standards and an understanding of how to apply them to complete audit objectives.
Applicable continuing professional education (CPE), measured in required credits, and technical knowledge of specialized subject matter are required for performance auditors. Paragraph 3.76 of GAGAS, Continuing Professional Education, states: "Auditors performing work in accordance with GAGAS, including planning, directing, performing audit procedures, or reporting on an audit conducted in accordance with GAGAS, should maintain their professional competence through continuing professional education." GAGAS requires 80 hours of CPE every two years. This includes:
- Twenty-four hours directly relating to government auditing, the government environment, or the specific or unique industry in which the audited entity operates
- An additional 56 hours that enhances the auditor's professional proficiency to perform audits
In addition to CPE, "the staff assigned to conduct an audit in accordance with GAGAS should collectively possess the technical knowledge, skills, and experience necessary to be competent for the type of work being performed before beginning work on that audit," according to paragraph 3.72 of GAGAS, Technical Knowledge. So, in addition to specialized construction knowledge, performance auditors on CIP audits also need to bring to the audit their expertise in CIP audit methodologies and analysis techniques. With this expertise, auditors can identify risks based on the audit objectives. These may include:
- Procurement practices and noncompliant procurement practices (board policies and procedures and state laws, for example)
- Staffing gaps and redundancies
- Excessive construction charges
- Schedule, scope, or quality management gaps
Reducing Risk with Performance Audits
It's important to note that not all performance audit reports result in conclusions that improve efficiency and reduce business risk exposures. Some performance audits are designed simply to validate that contract charges are within the total construction budget or that the scope or projects are included somewhere within the approved master plan. This may not be enough. This limited scope may not take advantage of the power of a performance audit. Further, the audit objectives may not be broad enough to provide information to an organization that would allow the organization to reduce its risks.
If an auditor doesn't have the technical background in construction and CIPs, the following performance audit components may be at risk:
- Objectives. The most appropriate objectives to address the various performance aspects of your capital program may not be selected. Your CIP may be experiencing cost overruns, gaps in funding availability, or schedule delays. Audit objectives may need to be selected that review project processes, procedures for managing scope, prioritization of projects, quality, schedule, budget, or change-control methodologies and reporting.
- Criteria. The most appropriate criteria to evaluate results, controls, efficiency, and compliance may not be utilized. Setting appropriate criteria is a critical step and may include purposes or goals prescribed by law, regulations, or the audited entity's officials, policies and procedures, and technically developed standards or norms.
- Methodology and scope. The methodology and scope selected may not result in sufficient and appropriate evidence to support meaningful audit conclusions. CIP scope and methodology should be designed to obtain evidence that addresses the program's objectives and provide reasonable assurance the evidence is satisfactory and appropriate to support the report's conclusions.
CIPs can be risky, but organizations can recoup investments of time and money by leveraging the knowledge and objective feedback that is provided by qualified, experienced construction and CIP performance auditors.
We're Here to Help
Our Construction Audits & Consulting team has provided hundreds of construction and performance audits. Our professionals have direct experience in the construction industry and meet GAGAS requirements. If you'd like more information about a construction cost audit and how it can benefit your project, contact your Moss Adams professional.


text:
is the difference between Package Performance testing and Package
Generally speaking, package performance testing is a quantitative analysis meaning that there are numbers involved. This assumes that one knows the fragility of the product in terms of peak transmitted deceleration tolerable, and the natural or resonant frequencies of the product. In this case, package performance testing consists of exciting the product/package system by means of impacts and vibration in order to determine that (1) the transmitted deceleration levels during impact are below product agility, and (2) that the package system attenuates vibration input at product natural frequencies. Both of these are quantitative functions and require monitoring of the product during the test.
Package integrity testing is a qualitative function in that there is no requirement to monitor the product during the test and the results of the test are a Pass/fail analysis based on the condition of the product following test completion. This test represents an attempt to bring the distribution environment hazards into the laboratory and to subject the product/package system to an intense version of that input. Both the input itself, its severity level, and its sequence anticipated during the distribution environment are important.
- What is a package system?
The package system is any device that contains and protects the contents from the harmful effects of distribution, or protects the environment from the potential harmful effects of the product. A typical package system can range anywhere from a minimal polymer bag to a very sophisticated and expensive system. All package systems are designed around a particular set of product specific requirements.
- Why test a package system?
The simple fact is that this question has already been answered. If you ship something, it will in fact be tested. The distribution environment will see to it. The only question remaining is "who will see the results first, you or your client?"
Testing of a completed or prototype package system is an easy and simple way to help guarantee successful delivery of your product without costly over packaging. By subjecting the product/package system to a standard group of test procedures, you can accurately determine its ability to withstand the rigors of distribution, shipping, and storage. You can easily and conveniently compare different materials, suppliers, designs, and a host of other variables that would require much time and high costs. Package shipping tests are also a required part product protocols, primarily medical devices and pharmaceuticals.
In today's global economy, package testing is considered a required component of all new product development for most companies.
- Who writes typical package test specifications?
Most package test specifications used routinely in the United States come from one of two sources: ASTM (American Society For Testing and Materials), or ISTA (International Safe Transit Association). The ASTM standards come from a committee that meets twice a year and is divided into subcommittees for various topic related purposes. These are considered consensus standards in that any negative input that is considered viable can result in a standard not being issued. On the other hand, the ISTA standards come from a technical committee of the organization. While they are not truly a consensus standard, they do represent the best thoughts and views of professionals in this industry. Both sets of package testing standards are considered extremely valuable and are widely utilized. In many cases, they are considered interchangeable.
Many international standards also exists. However, many of these are nearly identical to those found in the United States.
- What does a typical package test consists of?
There are two primary types of package testing conducted regularly. The first is package integrity testing (see above) wherein an attempt is made to bring the hazards of the distribution environment into the laboratory in a concentrated format, subject the product/package system to that input sequence, and evaluate the results. The second type of test is referred to as a package performance test and consists of monitoring a fragile product with accelerometers, packaging the unit in the intended container system, and subjecting it to impacts and vibration (among other inputs). The results of this quantitative test will tell the designer of the package system whether or not it will properly protect a product of known fragility in a given distribution environment.
The typical package integrity or package performance test would consist of a series of impacts (drops), vibration, temperature and humidity, altitude, top load compression, and similar.
- When does the package do its job?
In general, the package functions during product distribution, storage, and delivery. There are some products - cosmetics in particular - were the primary package continues to function throughout the lifecycle of the product itself.
- What are the "hazards" of the distribution environment?
The so-called hazards of the distribution environment consist of those inputs likely to cause damage to a product. Typical of these hazards are impacts (shock) normally from manual handling, vibration (from vehicles in which the product rides), compression (from stacking of products in vehicles and in warehouses), temperature and humidity (from typical outdoor exposure), and pressure differentials (from shipping to higher altitude levels in both truck and aircraft). There are other less common hazards including dust, ultraviolet light, corrosive atmospheres, and similar.
- What defines an "optimum" package and how do we know when that has been achieved?
An "optimum package system" is one that provides just enough protection for the product in the intended distribution environment without expensive over packaging. Clearly, in order to achieve this, one must have knowledge of the fragility levels of the product and the amount of protection afforded by the package system. This is a quantitative function and thus requires package performance testing as previously described. Furthermore, it requires that fragility testing be conducted on the product in order to quantify its fragility level to environment hazards.
It's important to recognize that most protective packaging in developed countries is really "over packaging" representing a huge waste of material, time, cost, and scrap. The reason that most products are over packaged is because fragility testing is not commonly conducted and therefore a package integrity test (qualitative) is normal. This results in a pass/fail analysis and no understanding of the "headspace" or amount of over packaging is ever determined. Westpak highly recommends product fragility analysis and package performance testing as the best method to achieve "optimum" packaging.
- What test procedures (specs) are most appropriate for my product/package system?
Different products, different distribution environments, and different requirements all demand different test inputs and therefore different test specifications. Westpak would be happy to assist anyone interested in further defining their test specification requirements for a given product.
- What role does packaging play in Supply Chain Management or Logistics?
Logistics, or more recently, Supply Chain Management, has come to mean the control of all movement of a product from your supplier's supplier to your customer's customer. Thus, it really means control over the storage, transportation, distribution, and other functions associated with building a product and getting it to the intended customer. It has been shown repeatedly that without control over the package design, Logistics is haphazard at best. Without control over Logistics, Supply Chain Management is a myth. When viewed in this light, it's obvious that packaging design is the foundation of Supply Chain Management. In addition, without a well-designed package test protocol, you really have no idea of the quality or value of the package system.
- How can package testing improve the environmental impact or sustainability of my product/package system?
It's no secret that about 30% of the typical landfill consists of packaging related materials. Most package systems and components complete their job once the product is delivered in good condition. After that point, the package is considered surplus and refuge. By designing a package system so that it is easily reusable and recyclable, a huge amount of waste can be avoided at little or no cost. In addition, substituting materials that are easily compostable will serve to improve our overall environment in substantial ways. Lots of other possibilities exist as well. It behooves us to pay attention to our stewardship of the earth's natural resources before they are irreversibly depleted. Package design can play a huge role in this regard. Please don't overlook it.


5e SRD >Creatures >
Medium humanoid, neutral evil
Armor Class 13
Hit Points 22 (4d8 + 4)
Speed 30 ft.
12 (+1) 16 (+3) 13 (+1) 14 (+2) 16 (+3) 14 (+2)
Skills Animal Handling +5, Deception +4, Intimidation +4, Perception +5
Damage Immunities acid
Condition Immunities paralyzed
Senses blindsight 60 ft. (blind beyond this radius), passive Perception 15
Languages Deep Speech, Undercommon
Challenge 1/2 (100 XP)
Special Traits
 - Bound in Jelly. The mydnari and its jelly are wholly reliant on each other. If the mydnari's jelly is somehow separated from its master, the jelly dies within 1 minute. If the mydnari is separated from its jelly, it loses its blindsight, Acid Glob action, and Jelly Symbiosis trait.
 - Jelly Symbiosis. A creature that touches the mydnari or hits it with a melee attack while within 5 feet of it takes 2 (1d4) acid damage.
 - Ooze Empathy. A mydnari can use its Animal Handling skill on ooze type creatures with an Intelligence score of 5 or lower. An ooze never attacks a mydnari unless provoked.
 - Shortsword. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d6 + 3) piercing damage.
 - Acid Glob. Ranged Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, range 30/60 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d4 + 3) acid damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or be poisoned for 1 minute. The target can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success.
This tall, lanky humanoid is sightless, its eyes nothing more than useless spots in its otherwise human face. The creature is encased in a sheath of thick orange jelly, almost as if it had been dipped in a giant pot of honey. The jelly wobbles and slides over the creature's body as if alive.
Sightless Alchemists. The mydnari are an eyeless, evil subterranean race that lives alongside oozes. They delight in capturing other creatures and using the creatures for experimentation or as food for their colonies of oozes and slimes. They constantly experiment with new serums, tonics, and concoctions, striving to always improve themselves and their connection with their oozes.
Bound in Jelly. Each mydnari enters into a symbiotic relationship with a mutated strain of ochre jelly as soon as it is born. This is a sacred rite among the mydnari, and without this link a mydnari is cast out and soon succumbs to the elements.
The mydnari provides long-term sustenance for the jelly, and the jelly provides the sightless mydnari with protection and the ability to better sense its environment.
Oozing Cities. The cities of the mydnari are dominated by flowing spires and twisting walkways, and they are always bathed in a sickly yellow-green radiance. Oozes and slimes are found almost everywhere, whether simply wandering along the street to clean up refuse or serving as living baths for mydnari nobles. Their cities also boast a large section dedicated to alchemy, and the sulfurous and sometimes noxious odors from the many alchemical labs float through the city for all to smell.
Detested Necessity. The mydnari are viewed with revulsion by duergar and other subterranean races who rely on their alchemy. Only derro and aboleths are known to tolerate the mydnari for any length of time.
Oozebound Nature. A mydnari doesn't require sleep.
Section 15: Copyright Notice


Year: 1847
School: Harvard
Protests broke out after Harvard admitted its first black student, Beverly Garnett Williams, in 1847. Students, faculty, and pro-slavery Southerners (apparently a large faction back then) rioted upon hearing the news. But the anger was all harbored in vain.
Williams died just before the academic year began, and thus never entered the college. Harvard wouldn't accept another black student for 23 years. School higher-ups surely didn't regret admitting Richard T. Greener in 1870. The first African-American to enter the college and complete the undergraduate curriculum went on to win the school's chief prizes in writing and speaking. Not too shabby for someone of any race.


Search Button
Account Button
Basket Button
Basket Basket
Search Suggestions
View All Results
Find Oils & Parts
Select Your Motorcycle:
Manually Enter
Modified Vehicles
DPF (Diesel Particulate Filters) Explained
Learn all the Facts and Why you need a Compatible Engine Oil
A DPF is a common part of a vehicles exhaust systems these days, however not many people know what they do, and fewer know that you have to have a compatible engine oil to ensure no damage or blocking occurs.
Shop For DPF Cleaner
What is a DPF / Diesel Particulate Filter.
The diesel particulate filter (DPF) was introduced in 2009 to ensure diesel engine'd vehicles met the emission requirements of "Euro 5". This standard aims to deliver an 80% reduction in soot and so massively reducing the amount of physical pollution into the atmosphere.
The filter, in essence, is a fairly straightforward idea of just trapping the larger soot particles within the exhaust system (basically like a area of meshing that acts like a net to capture the particles) while still allowing gasses to escape through and out. Once the filter becomes full or at the specified level (normally around 40/45%) then "regeneration" occurs, which is a burning of the soot within the filter to reduce it down to a more manageable finer ash residue, this "regeneration" takes the place of physically emptying it.
Need to clean your DPF? Why not buy Millers Oils Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) Cleaner & Regenerator
Regeneration of the DPF occurs in two types of way, either passive or active.
 - Passive: this automatically takes place during prolonged fast placed driving were exhaust temperatures reach a high enough temperature to burn the soot down, a good example would be a good hour or more trip on a motorway.
 - Active: because not everyone is guaranteed to do enough fast paced driving to passively burn down the DPF soot, "active" soot management happens. This is automatically done by a vehicles ECU and is done by fuelling after the combustion process and allowing the fuel to go through the exhaust to burn the soot build up.
Where are they, and how do i check if i have one?
Although the diesel particulate filter (DPF) was introduced in 2009, many vehicle manufacturers were already producing their cars / vans etc with the filter in place, this was in anticipation of the change in standards... so simply ruling out your vehicle because it was produced before 2009 isn't enough.
As you'd expect this filter is part of your exhaust system and comes in all manner of shapes and sizes, however most commonly looks similar to a catalytic converter, or large vertically fitted cylindrical item at the back of a vehicle engine block... so pretty annoying to spot and confirm.
Check your handbook, this could possibly be the easiest way to determine if your vehicle has one fitted as generally they'll have a whole section dedicated to Diesel Particulate Filters and which vehicle models are fitted with them.
Engine Oil & your DPF.
One thing that is worth note: if your vehicle isn't able to perform a full DPF "active" regeneration process and a warning light appears on your dash. This means over fuelling is occurring and it's recommended you continue your journey for a further 10 to 15min at speeds around 40mph to allow the ECU to finish the process. Failing to allow this can leave fuel within the piston cylinders that can drain into a vehicles sump severely damaging the integrity of your vehicles engine oil.
Within the combustion process a small amount of engine oil is burnt off (don't worry this is by design), hence why you need to regularly check and top up levels in-between services. These burnt off bits of oil could potentially, and very quickly, block or permanently damage a DPF (through physical particles and DPF damaging burnt oil gases). This is where a Low SAPS (Sulphated Ash, Phosphorous, Sulphur) motor oil comes in, it's basically a low Sulphated Ash, Phosphorous and Sulphur based oil, if a normal engine oil was used these elements would quickly block and the gases would terminally damage the intercut internal of a DPF.
So you need a Low SAPS engine oil, what now? well a good place to check would be your handbook, you'll most likely find an Acea Specification engine oil is recommended by your vehicle manufacturer. Once you know the spec use the links below to go shopping, remember the most important thing is the spec, once you've got the correct range of oils in front of you it boils down to personal preference and budgeting restrictions
Go shopping for Acea spec engine oils:
If you're unsure of which engine oil, or how to find a Low SAPS diesel particulate filter (DPF) compatible engine oil, then why not use our engine oil lookup page.
Replacing a DPF is expensive, ensure you use the correct oil to keep it clear and blockage free.
MOT: Remember not having a DPF present on a vehicle that was manufacturer with one will result in MOT failure (since February 2014).
Review Opie Oils
Review Stars
Rated Excellent


text:
I've had great success with some of the replies before and I am looking to get my head around this figure which popped up.
I am ok with the general idea around Confidence limits but I got stuck when asked this question that deals with finding confidence levels of probabilities for example I was asked;
Please state the 95% Confidence Limits as a whole number percentage, for the proportion of cars that are Black.
There are 43 Black cars out of 144 all together.
For 95% confidence Z=1.9600 p=43/144=0.29861 So in percentage terms lower limit = (0.29861 -1.96x0.038137)*100 upper limit = (0.29861 +1.96x0.038137)*100What I was finding difficult was locating the number 0.038137?
Where would this number come from? I am happy about finding the percentage then taking away the 95% confidence level of 1.96 to find the lower limit but what are they multiplying it by?


text:
Color is dynamic. We all see it a little differently, because color is the physical response of the eye to light + the mental interpretation of those responses. This makes printing color accurately a bit tricky until one has a basic understanding of color space.
First, all color starts with light. The color of a physical object is the result of projected light reflecting off the object. Your eyes + brain interpret what gets reflected, and the result is the color you see. A red apple, for example, reflects red wavelengths of light and absorbs all others. You see the reflected red wavelengths. As ambient light decreases, colors appear to fade because there is less light and, therefore, less color.


text:
Simply begin typing or use the editing tools above to add to this article.
Once you are finished and click submit, your modifications will be sent to our editors for review.
discussed in biography
In his treatises—of which the most important is the collection Fūshi kaden (1400–18; "The Transmission of the Flower of Acting Style," also known as the Kaden sho), "flower" representing the freshness and appropriateness of fine acting—written as manuals for his pupils, Zeami said the actor must master three basic...
influence on Nō theatre
...plays who codified the form in 21 treatises, the most influential of which is the Fūshi kaden (1400–18; "Appearance of Flower Transmission"), also known as the Kaden sho. Zeami's teachings, originally intended for his descendants in the Kanze school of Nō, discuss both philosophical and practical considerations regarding actors' training, and his...
What made you want to look up "Fushi kaden"? Please share what surprised you most...


Liudolf COUNT OF BRUNSWICK (c. 1016- )
1. Liudolf COUNT OF BRUNSWICK was born circa 1016 in Brunswick. He married Gertrud COUNTESS OF NORDGAU.
Gertrud COUNTESS OF NORDGAU was born circa 1006. She died on 21 July 1077. She and Liudolf COUNT OF BRUNSWICK had the following children:
Agatha of Brunswick (c. _PHONE_)
Second Generation
2. Agatha of Brunswick, daughter of Liudolf COUNT OF BRUNSWICK and Gertrud COUNTESS OF NORDGAU, was born circa 1018 in Braunschweig, Prussia. She died on 13 July 1024. She married Edward KING OF ENGLAND (UNCROWNED) circa 1035 in London, Middlesex.
Edward KING OF ENGLAND (UNCROWNED), son of Edmund II Ironside KING OF THE ENGLISH (_PHONE_) and Ealdgyth (_PHONE_), was born in 1016 in Kiev or Hungary. He died in 1057. He and Agatha of Brunswick had the following children:
Saint Margaret "the Exile" (_PHONE_)
Edgar "Aetheling" PRINCE OF ENGLAND (c. 1051-c. 1126)
Third Generation
3. Saint Margaret "the Exile", daughter of Edward KING OF ENGLAND (UNCROWNED) and Agatha of Brunswick, was born in 1045 in Hungary. She died on [Julian] 16 November 1093 in Edinburgh Castle. She married Malcolm III KING OF SCOTLAND.
Saint Margaret 'the Exile' was the daughter of Edward 'Atheling' and Agatha. She was born in 1045 at Hungary. She married Malcolm III 'Caennmor', King of Scotland, son of Duncan I 'the Gracious', King of Scotland and Sybilla of Northumbria, in 1069 at Dunfermline Abbey, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. She died on 16 November 1093 at Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland. She was buried at Dunfermline Abbey, Dunfermline, Fife. She was buried at Jesuit College, Douai, France.
She was the granddaughter of Edmund Ironsides and 7th in descent from Alfred the Great
In 1250 she was canonised as Saint Margaret.
Born about 1045, Princess Margaret was a daughter of Edward "Outremere", or "the Exile", and Agatha, kinswoman of Gisela, the wife of St. Stephen of Hungary. She was the granddaughter of Edmund Ironside.
The chief authority for Margaret's life is the contemporary biography printed in Roman " Acta SS.", II, June, 320. Its authorship has been ascribed to Turgot, the Saint's confessor, a monk of Durham and later Archbishop of St. Andrews, as well as to Theodoric, a somewhat obscure monk
The Norman conquest forced the Anglo Margaret and her family to flee to Scotland in 1070 where shortly thereafter she married the King, Malcom II (Canmore). As Queen and co-Regent, Margaret bore eight children (two daughters and six sons). She was known to have been a particularly involved and good mother - a departure from the contemporary practice of leaving the rearing of children to servants and tutors. Margaret's daughter Matilda married Henry I of England, making her an ancestress of the present British royal house.
Queen Margaret was renown for her moderating and good influence on her husband and for her devout piety and religious observance. As Queen, Margaret used her influence to bring Scotland into the more modern practices, disciplines of European Christianity and is celebrated as a clerical reformer. Though strong-willed, Margaret used reason and encouragement to influence change, not her authority as co-Regent and Queen. Under Queen Margaret's leadership the Rite of the Celebration of the Mass was brought under standardized norms, the vernacular of the Mass was changed from the many dialects of Gaelic spoken throughout Scotland to the unifying Latin, the Scots began to receive Communion regularly, and the observance of Lent was improved.
Although her influence in causing the clergy to adopt Latin to celebrate the Mass was intended as a tool by which all Scots could worship in unity, along with the other Christians of Western Europe, Queen Margaret's introduction of Anglo-Norman manners and values into Celtic Scotland laid the cultural groundwork for the future induction of her land and people into a greater England and Britain. While many hagiographers view Queen Margaret's goals as not simply uniting the Scots, but Scotland and England together as a way of ending bloody warfare amongst the clannish highlanders, Scotland returned to a period of isolation immediately following her death.
In 1093, King Malcom was murdered through treachery near Alnwick and was buried at Dunfermline Abbey, which had been founded by in 1072 Margaret. She foretold the day of her death, joining her husband's eternal rest on 16 November 1093, her body being buried before the high altar at Dunfermline.
St. Margaret is remembered for her fervent faith, practiced piety and religious observance and continues to be celebrated as Scotland's most beloved saint. St. Margaret was loved by the poor, especially orphans to whom she was particularly attached in personal care and through the unceasing distribution of alms. She was the foundress of many churches, convents and monasteries, including the Abbey of Dunfermline, built to enshrine her greatest treasure, a relic of the true Cross. Her book of the Gospels, richly adorned with jewels, which one day dropped into a river and was according to legend miraculously recovered, is now in the Bodleian library at Oxford. St. Margaret's son King David of Scotland is also celebrated by the people of Scotland as a Saint.
Feast of St. Margaret of Scotland
The feast of St. Margaret is observed by the whole Roman Catholic Church on 10 June. The Episcopal Church Commemorates St. Margaret each year on the Sunday closest to the anniversary of her death November, 16 th.
This is the fast that I choose, says the Lord: to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hid yourself from your own kin. Isaiah 58:6-7.
Malcolm III KING OF SCOTLAND, son of Duncan I KING OF SCOTLAND (c. _PHONE_) and Sybilla of Northumbria ( - ), was born circa 1031. He died on [Julian] 13 November 1093. He and Saint Margaret "the Exile" had the following children:
Editha of Scotland (c. _PHONE_) (known as 'Matilda'). Matilda was born circa 1079 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland. She had the title 'Queen Consort Matilda'. She married Henry I KING OF ENGLAND on [Julian] 11 November 1100. She died on [Julian] 1 May 1118 in Westminster Palace.
Mary of Scotland ( - )
4. Edgar "Aetheling" PRINCE OF ENGLAND, son of Edward KING OF ENGLAND (UNCROWNED) and Agatha of Brunswick, was born circa 1051. He died circa 1126. He married Margaret of Scotland.
Edgar Ætheling or Eadgar II (c. 1051 – c. 1126) was proclaimed, but never crowned, King of England. He was the last member of the Anglo-Saxon royal house in the Kingdom of England. Born in Hungary, he was also known as Edgar the Outlaw. The Anglo-Saxon name Atheling or, as it was spelled during the Anglo-Saxon period, Æþeling, means "man of noble blood, chief, prince" and was used in the later part of the period to designate specifically the sons of the king. Proclaimed king by the witan following the death of Harold II in the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066, Edgar was never crowned and submitted to William I some eight weeks later. He was only about thirteen or fourteen years old.
Edgar was the only son of Edward the Exile, heir to the English throne, and grandson of King Edmund II Ironside. Upon his father's death in 1057, Edgar was nominated as Heir Apparent by the king Edward the Confessor. Edgar was brought up at Edward's court, together with his sisters, Saint Margaret of Scotland and Christina. However he was too young at the time of the king's death in January 1066 to defend the country against impending invasion, and his election as king after Harold's death was no more than a symbolic token of defiance against the invading Norman forces.
Edgar relied largely for his support upon Archbishop Stigand and upon Earls Edwin of Mercia and Morcar of Northumbria and, when this weakened within a matter of days of the witan, Edgar was forced inevitably to submit to William at Berkhamstead in either late November or early December 1066.
William treated Edgar well. Seeing political advantage, he kept him in his custody and eventually took him back to his court in Normandy. However


'Unnatural' DNA letters demonstrate natural function for first time, Scripps' study shows
For billions of years, life has been stuck with just four letters of DNA's genetic code: adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine, or ACGT.
Now there are six, according to a new study by scientists from The Scripps Research Institute.
The two new lab-created letters function in lab experiments almost exactly like natural DNA, said Floyd E. Romesberg, senior author of the paper. The study was published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
This is the first time that "unnatural" letters have been shown to work like natural DNA, Romesberg said. In research published last month, the Romesberg team had shown that these unnatural letters, dubbed d5SICS and dNaM, are faithfully copied like natural letters. But the new research actually demonstrates function.
There's a lot more to expanding the DNA alphabet than simply sticking new chemicals into DNA, Romesberg said.
"It has to be an independent letter to the alphabet," Romesberg said. "To do that, you have to be able to work it into different words. You have to be able to use it in lots of ways. And that's what no one had ever shown."
With the new letters, scientists can add any desired function to DNA, and the related molecule RNA, along with increasing its information-carrying capability, Romesberg said.
Pairing up
A quick primer: DNA letters pair up in a complementary fashion on the double helix to form a "base pair," like the natural letters. Just as A teams up with T and G teams up with C, d5SICS pairs with dNaM, although the two unnatural letters are held in place by different molecular forces than the natural ones.
These new letters can be used immediately in the laboratory, said Romesberg and Denis Malyshev, a graduate student in Romesberg's lab and first author of the paper.
For example, the unnatural letters function with a common tool of biotechnology called polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, that creates millions of exact copies of DNA.
"With linkers added to the unnatural nucleotides the unnatural base pair should find uses in different in vitro applications, where it could be used to site-specifically modify DNA or RNA with any functionality of interest, even if requiring massive and sequence-independent amplification," the study stated.
Artificial life
Eventually, the scientists say they'd like to perform the much more difficult task of incorporating the unnatural DNA into living cells, creating life forms that never could have existed in nature.
This quest for artificial life is being pursued by several teams of scientists, including one led by famed gene pioneer J. Craig Venter.
Venter's team synthesized the genome of a bacterium in 2008, proving that the complete genetic code of a living creature could be made in the laboratory. In 2010, they put together a bacterial genome with natural and artificial DNA sequences, then inserted the synthetic DNA into a bacterium that had been deprived of its own DNA.
The bacterium's molecular machinery worked with the DNA, or "booted up," as the scientists put it. This creation marked the first time scientists had designed a new life form, however, most of its genes are natural. So it is not a wholly synthetic life form.
Romesberg said Venter's approach differs from his, and that of a friendly rival to his, Steven A. Benner. Venter is designing new genes and combinations of genes, but using the same four letters found in nature, Romesberg said.
Romesberg and Benner's teams are designing new letters for the DNA alphabet that do not appear in nature.
Benner's approach is to create letters that chemically bond to DNA in a similar way to how the natural letters bond. Romesberg, Malyshev and colleagues are working with unnatural letters that are held in place by different forces than those of natural DNA letters. The mechanism is so different than the natural method that the Romesberg team at first feared they had made an error.
According to conventional chemistry, the unnatural letters could not be duplicated by the body's DNA copier, an enzyme called DNA polymerase, because of how they're held in position. However, the Romesberg team found that the enzyme copies the unnatural letters by placing them into the correct position, the so-called "Watson-Crick geometry" that the natural base pairs conform to.


text:
jugfuls is a valid word in this word list. For a definition, see the external dictionary links below.
The word "jugfuls" uses 7 letters: F G J L S U U.
Direct anagrams of jugfuls:
Adding one letter to jugfuls does not form any other word in this word list.
Shorter words found within jugfuls:
flu flus fug fugs fugu fugus gul gulf gulfs guls jug jugful jugs jus lug lugs slug sulu ulu ulus us
List shorter words within jugfuls, sorted by length
Words formed from any letters in jugfuls, plus an optional blank or existing letter
Try a search for jugfuls in these online resources (some words may not be found):
OneLook Dictionaries -
Each search will normally open in a new window.
List all words starting with jugfuls, words containing jugfuls or words ending with jugfuls
All words formed from jugfuls by changing one letter
Other words with the same letter pairs: ju ug gf fu ul ls
Browse words starting with jugfuls by next letter
Previous word in list: jugful
Next word in list: jugged
Some random words: iolite


text:
by Michelle Fraboni, Queens College/CUNY
Developed for the NYC Region 4/Queens College Teaching American History grant, this webquest will provide elementary teachers with a guide for developing a webquest within the social studies curriculum.
A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. A well-designed webquest uses the best of the web within a well-designed framework, motivates students, and encourages higher order, critical thinking. This webquest will walk you through the necessary steps in creating and publishing a webquest for your students.


text:
Throughout history, women have made a name for themselves by being pioneers in their fields. From Sally Ride to Marie Curie, Elizabeth Blackwell to Rosa Parks, women have worked hard to change the world.
My Name is Not Isabella is a children's book by Jennifer Fosberry with pictures by Mike Litwin that tells the story of a day in the life of a little girl named Isabella who dared to dream. She dreams of being an astronaut, a doctor, and an activist among other things, telling her mom what she will do to help change the world.
This is a great story for any little girl to inspire her to dream big and believe in herself. You can never start believing in yourself too soon and never dream too big. In a world full of stories about princesses and fairies, it's refreshing to see a book teaching girls that they can be whatever they set their minds to.
Not only is this a great story to help inspire little girls, it's a great book to help teach any child about women's history.
This book retails for $16.99 and is published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.


text:
All previous human mobility studies have compared ancient individuals directly against various geologies that imprecisely deduced that person's history of movement. The authors spend some time describing why this is problematic, the obvious problem being that without context, the isotopic values are even more difficult to interpret.
What they do here is slightly different in that they look at the variation of an area and subtract the obvious movers (or account for greater variation). They presume that the majority of non-misfits are local (and on predicted values by the local geology) and then create a profile for what a local of a given area looks like. (I read it quickly, but I think that is close to the reduced version)
This is part of steady drip from the Beaker People Project.
Tooth enamel oxygen "isoscapes" show a high degree of mobility in prehistoric Britain
Pellegrini, M. et al. Tooth enamel oxygen "isoscapes" show a high degree of human mobility in prehistoric Britain. Sci. Rep. 6, 34986; doi: 10.1038/srep34986 (2016)
A geostatistical model to predict human skeletal oxygen isotope values (δ18Op) in Britain is presented here based on a new dataset of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age human teeth. The spatial statistics which underpin this model allow the identification of individuals interpreted as 'non-local' to the areas where they were buried (spatial outliers). A marked variation in δ18Op is observed in several areas, including the Stonehenge region, the Peak District, and the Yorkshire Wolds, suggesting a high degree of human mobility. These areas, rich in funerary and ceremonial monuments, may have formed focal points for people, some of whom would have travelled long distances, ultimately being buried there. The dataset and model represent a baseline for future archaeological studies, avoiding the complex conversions from skeletal to water δ18O values–a process known to be problematic.


text:
Beginning in August 2011, most large cruise ships will no longer be able to sail in Antarctica.
The International Maritime Organization this week adopted a ban on using and carrying heavy fuel oil on ships operating in Antarctic waters.
The regulation, which was expected to be adopted, essentially bans cruise ships with more than 500 passengers from sailing in Antarctica, because even though they would agree to use lighter fuels there, the ban on carriage would prove too costly for those vessels.
The largest cruise ships that cruise Antarctic waters can carry more than 2,000 passengers, operated by lines like Princess Cruises and Holland America Line. Those ships do cruise-only trips to Antarctica, not allowing passengers to disembark, but getting close enough for them to see Antarctic land, observe penguins and encounter icebergs.
Cruise operators, represented by the International Association of Antarctica Tourism Operators, support the principles behind the ban, said Steve Wellmeier, IAATO's executive director.
"Largely, it will be the large cruise-only vessels that are affected, rather than the smaller expedition ships that most people think of as Antarctic cruising," Wellmeier said.
According to IAATO, the number of cruise-only passengers that will visit Antarctic waters is expected to fall from 15,531 this past Antarctica season to 6,400 once the ban takes effect.
The smaller ships use light marine gas oil, which is less harmful than many fuels and dissipates quickly in water, posing less environmental damage in the event of a leak.
In 2005, the Antarctic Treaty Parties requested that the IMO restrict use of heavy fuel in Antarctic waters due to the risk of an oil spill in the event of a collision with an iceberg.
Several incidents over the last few years raised concerns about such incidents as sailings increased in popularity, including the sinking of one expedition vessel after colliding with an iceberg.


Spartan Lifestyle: Ways To Live Like A Spartan In Modern World
Jan 5 2020 By Aayushma B.
Spartan lifestyle and values
Spartan lifestyle and values
Sparta was an ancient city in Greece from the 750 to around 3rd Century BCE. Spartan lifestyles and values have been glorified all around the world. Located in the ancient grounds of Laconia in Greece, Spartan people built an empire. There are many claims that life in the ancient city wasn't as good as we think it was. The constitution of Sparta believed in slaves and killing them in order to avoid uprisings. An average man spent their whole life training to be a warrior. Even at that time, the Spartan mentality was very different from the rest of the world. An antique idol of Sparta Warrior
However, there are many principles which made the civilization successful for centuries. The Spartan men and women lived a lifestyle that kept them safe from the world outside. Currently, some people want to be away from the technological world that has made us materialistic. Spartan lifestyle and mentality will instill values different from the modern world.
There are many things that we can learn from these warrior men which can keep us content. You might not be able to follow all their principles as it would be absurd in the modern world to even think of some, but you can adopt the good ones.
The 12 things you must do in order to live your life like a spartan soldier are given below:
1. Minimalism in Spartan Lifestyle:
Spartan lifestyle and values
To this date, you will find thousands of people trying to adopt a minimalistic lifestyle. People have become so spoilt with all the possession that it is almost impossible to survive without them. So, adopting this spartan mentality might be helpful in case you are one of them.
From a very young age, Spartan soldiers were taught to be happy with very little in life. Some might even consider it ruthless keeping a child from their basic needs. But as a Spartan soldier, this was the way of life. Today, people need thousands of things just to go by a single day. This was completely opposite as per the Spartan values. The only piece of clothing that the children could get was a robe.
2. Spartan Diet:
Today, you can order something online that will reach your doorsteps in a few minutes. However, in ancient Sparta, you had to basically earn everything that you ate. From the training period, men were trained to feed themselves. They used to eat whatever they could steal or earn. They had to work hard to be able to feed themselves.
Whatever they ate was healthier compared to the greasy food items that we find today. You have to feed your body protein and veggies that are essential to help you build muscles. However, you didn't feed yourself excessively because that would make you fat and slow.
3. Physique:
Spartan Mentality
The ancient Spartan soldiers had ripped bodies from all the training that they had to undergo. So, if your goal is to develop a Spartan lifestyle and value, you'd better start working on your physical training. The Spartans soldiers used to have lean muscles that enabled them to fight with others, physically and mentally.
4. Spartan Psyche and Mentality:
An average Spartan man had to train himself mentally as well as physically. Only being strong didn't help them all the time. The Spartan soldier lived a lifestyle that required constant fight for survival and had to value whatever they would earn. They would have to steal from people without being caught, otherwise, they would be punished. Such activities made them instinctive.
5. The goal or purpose of Spartan Education:
In modern society, the primary thing for the people mostly become feeding themselves and gather as much wealth as possible. But the Spartan lifestyle and values teach you to follow a goal completely different. If you want to live like a Spartan soldier, you must dedicate your life to serve a particular place or person. Having personal materialistic goals isn't the purpose of a Spartan soldier.
6. Waking Up:
Spartan Mentality
If you are someone who wakes up after 5 snoozes of your alarm, then we have something bad for y0u. Waking up early was one of the very essential lifestyles and values in the Spartan mentality. You will need to start using your time much more efficiently and most importantly, you must wake up early.
7. Training:
Spartan Mentality
Whether you want to grow up to become an army, fighter, engineer or even a doctor, you must follow some Spartans rules and regulations. in order to lead a spartan lifestyle, you will have to train yourself much harder.
The training period in the Spartan lifestyle goes until you die. So, you need to give yourself time to learn and grow. Whatever career you pursue, you need to be able to give it all you have got. Giving up will never be an option.
8. Working in a Team:
Spartan lifestyle and values
As a Spartan, you had to fight in a team. The Spartans army used to form a wall by sticking onto each other during the war that hardly let anyone else pass through. If someone gets injured during the war, the other Spartan soldier used to come and take their place, and they would continue to move forward. So, if you want to work like a Spartan, you will have to learn to work in a team as well.
9. Intellect in Spartan Lifestyle and Value:
Spartan lifestyle and values
As we mentioned above, being strong wasn't enough for the Spartan soldiers. Also, they needed to think smartly. So, sharpening your intellect is extremely important if you want to develop a spartan mentality.
Also, read: 8 Cryptic Texts That Nobody Has Been Able to Decipher Yet
10. Practise Abstinence:
Spartans never involved themselves in any activity that would not result in either making them stronger or smarter. So, they believed all the other activities such as sex and drinking would lead them to get distracted from their values and training. Therefore, if you align your lifestyle by the values the Spartan society, you might have to restrain yourself from such things.
11. Fight Your Way Out:
Spartan lifestyle and values
The Spartan mentality was to do anything they had to for survival. So, you need to be ready to fight through all the tough moments in life. If you didn't, you get killed. If you also want to live that way, you will have to learn to fight with toff situations in life.
12. Discipline in Spartan Lifestyle:
Finally, this has to be one of the most important values you need to live by in a Spartan lifestyle. From the young age of seven, the kids were taught to take care of themselves. They were all taught to fulfill their purpose of becoming ready for the battle.
At present, even if this might not be your goal, whatever goal you have in mind, you need to establish a strong discipline in yourself. Every principle mentioned above will not be possible without considering the disciplined lifestyle that the Spartan's value.
Related Article: 9 Biggest Ancient Civilizations That Disappeared Without A Trace
Related Posts


Select Page
Both villains and monsters are considered antagonists, but there are differences between the two. You'll want to choose which version of antagonist you're using based on the purpose and tone of your story.
Monsters and Villains: What's the Difference and When Do I Use Them?
The Main Difference Between Villains and Monsters
You probably think this is an easy one. "Well, monsters are... monstrous. Villains aren't." This isn't quite correct. The concentration in this statement is on looks. You're probably thinking about size, shape, and "otherness." But there can be "monstrous-looking" villains (Two-Face, for instance) and monsters that are humanoid (Sil, discussed later).
The main difference between villains and monsters is pretty simple: it all comes down to motivation.
You probably consider motivation with your protagonist, but do you do it with your antagonist? You should. Otherwise, your antagonist is flat and uninteresting. Not to mention probably not really scary (if scary's what you're going for).
No matter what character you're writing (including B characters!), you should always, always understand their motivation.
The Monster vs. Villain Spectrum
Consider a spectrum. On the left side is a pure monster. The right side is a pure villain. There's a sliding scale in between.
I said this all comes down to motivation, right? So your pure monster on the left has base motivations, like breeding, feeding, and surviving. There's no reasoning with a monster, as they have no sympathy for you. They are pure id.
Examples: Jaws, The BlobAlien. All of these monsters have the desire to eat and/or breed. They are a machine in that respect.
(A machine can also be an antagonist, by the way, though whether it's a monster or a villain depends on how it came to be. A sentient AI, for example, would be more villain. A rogue robot would be more monster.)
Note: Just because monsters have simplistic motivation doesn't mean you don't have to put work into their development. Check out this post on how to create great monsters.
Now let's look at the right side of the spectrum and consider the motivation of the pure villain. There is no right answer to the motivation of a villain. A villain is (typically) humanoid, and as such has a wealth of backstory, personality traits, and goals/desires. A villain is more difficult to develop because of this. You need to spend just as much time considering them as you do your protagonist.
Examples: Hannibal Lecter, Voldemort, Nurse Ratched, Lex Luthor, the Joker, Darth Vader... I think you get the point. Villains are rounded characters with often relatable and/or sympathetic characteristics. They're capable of interacting without violence and can be thoughtful instead of rash. They're complicated.
The Spectrum's Middle
So you've got your pure monster to the left and your pure villain to the right. What's in the middle?
Let's consider Dracula. He's humanoid, but he's not human. His motivations include feeding, but that's not the only thing he wants. He's a complicated mix of monster and villain, so he goes in the middle. I would place him to the right of the middle, as his motivations (and looks) are more humanoid than monstrous.
Now let's look at Pennywise, the clown from Stephen King's It. He's mostly inhuman in appearance (especially in the book), compulsively generates fear, and feeding is definitely up there on his priority list. Those are checkmarks for the monster column.
But he also loathes the band of friends, is able to communicate without being violent, and revenge plays a major part in his motivation to terrorize the main characters. Those are villainous qualities. Pennywise goes in the middle of the spectrum as a nice mix of villain and monster.
One more example of someone in the middle: Sil from the movie Species. Sil is humanoid (she's alien DNA spliced with human DNA and considered very beautiful), yet her motivation is to survive so she can breed.
While Sil does have a sympathetic background (she was made in a lab and her creators tried to kill her as a child), she's not a sympathetic character in the slightest. She's single-minded and often unnecessarily violent.
Sil belongs in the middle, quite close to the left/monster side of the spectrum, despite being humanoid in appearance most of the time. See, not every monster is monstrous-looking.
When to Use a Monster
Since monsters have rather simplistic motivations, they add a threat to a story and to your main characters. There's a lot of fear surrounding monsters, so they are much more common in horror stories than anywhere else. Not that villains can't inspire fear, but the nature of a monster makes fear a more natural state.
Monsters are, after all, "other" and more unsympathetic. It's easier for the protagonist to kill a monster.
A story using a monster as an antagonist has plenty of room for character development for your protagonist. Use a monster when you want to put a lot of focus on your main character and their struggles.
There's very little in the way of explaining a monster's backstory or worrying about his motivations (because he's trying to eat you). The focus is on survival for the main characters and their character arcs in the process.
The most common character arc here is the main character going from "weak" to "strong" in order to defeat the monster.
When to Use a Villain
Villains bring tension to your story. Like monsters, they can also bring fear, but since their motivations are more cerebral and they tend to look human, pure fear is less common.
The character arc of your protagonist is directly affected by the villain, as it is by monsters, but in a more nuanced way. Protagonists can often be tempted by, or sympathetic toward, villains in a way they can't be with monsters. Character arcs for your main characters when up against a villain are also more interesting.
Rather than focusing more on survival for your main characters, you can look at morality, wit, dedication to ideals, anything really.
What's the Purpose of Your Story?
The purpose is where you should start with every story. In other words, what's your story's motivation?
Are you going for a fear fest? Are you wanting to point out problems with society? Are you wanting your main character to struggle with their own morality? Do you want to develop a really kickass creature to let loose on a town?
What if it's a little bit of all of the above? Then develop a monstrous villain or a villainous monster!
Your antagonist in every situation is there to serve your story. Think about how you want them to serve your story, and the best way to have them do so, before you start writing and you'll be well on your way to developing an awesome story!
Think about Frankenstein's monster. Where do you think he falls on the Monster vs. Villain Spectrum? Let me know in the comments!
Today you're going to develop an antagonist. First, choose whether you want to develop a monster or a villain. (If you're going for monster, definitely check out this post on building great monsters. If you're going for a villain, you'll need backstory, personality traits, etc.)
Then, set a timer for fifteen minutes. Develop your monster or villain. In either case, DON'T FORGET THE MOTIVATION!
When you're done, share your writing in the comments. Don't forget to comment on your fellow writers' work!
Sarah Gribble
Sarah Gribble
Sarah Gribble is the author of dozens of short stories that explore uncomfortable situations, basic fears, and the general awe and fascination of the unknown. She just released Surviving Death, her first novel, and is currently working on her next book.
Follow her on Instagram or join her email list for free scares.
Add Comment
Viewing Highlight


text:
ICH bin ICH – Online game
design, animation, programming of Html5 backgrounds, scenes and games
In „ICH bin ICH" children tell their stories. In the game they can customize their name. They have to think and choose themselves. The kids can discover and participate. They can use it to design birthday or name cards individually.
- By order B+M Entertainment for Kinderkanal von ARD und ZDF
- HTML5 Animation


text:
A groin, often at the end of a littoral cell or at the updrift side of an inlet, intended to prevent sediment passage into the channel beyond. As with other shoreline structures there are often unintended consequences, primarily downdrift erosion on adjacent beaches. Terminal groins are typically used as part of a beach fill program to help contain the placed sand and reduce erosional loss.
The State of North Carolina recently passed legislation that would allow the use of terminal groins despite the state's long standing ban on hardened shoreline structures. See more discussion on the history of this issue and the legislation here.