Exploring Your Relationship With Alcohol: The Sober Curious Movement
Exploring Your Relationship With Alcohol: The Sober Curious Movement
In light of Alcohol Awareness Month, it's important to highlight a growing movement - becoming sober-curious. See what it is and if it might be right for you in your wellness journey.
If you're not aware, April is Alcohol Awareness Month. Rather than focus on my own issues with alcohol, as I've done in many posts before this, I wanted to take time to examine the sober curious movement — something that isn't entirely new, but has gained popularity in recent months due to several news publications and the aptly titled book "Sober Curious: The Blissful Sleep, Greater Focus, Limitless Presence, and Deep Connection Awaiting Us All on the Other Side of Alcohol."
In her book, Ruby Warrington defines sober-curious as
To choose to question, or get curious about every impulse, invitation and expectation to drink versus mindlessly going along with the dominant drinking culture.
What this means is that rather than jump in head-first to the prevalence and assumption of drinking at events, parties, dates, hanging out, etc., taking the time to step back and ask yourself "why" can actually be extremely enlightening in your own wellness journey.
With the increase of people taking the time to focus on their own well-being and health in general, becoming sober-curious has increased as well.
Changing aspects of your life for the better, such as increasing exercise and improving the foods you eat seems to clash with what commonly went unquestioned: blackouts, hangovers, and excessive social drinking. People are realizing that the trade-off for alcohol consumption may not be worth it in the long run and are taking a step back to reassess their relationship with the drink.
Sober-curious differentiates itself from being completely sober in that there's still the option to drink. Obviously, if someone considers themselves an alcoholic or has a dependence on alcohol, this choice is not appropriate.
While I'm not completely on board with the nomenclature, the movement itself is, for me, a step in the right direction. The term "sober-curious" carries the implication that "not sober" is the default way to live and that we are only now becoming aware of another, alcohol-free way. Had you asked me about it nine years ago when I was still drinking, I would have laughed at the prospect, but today it's something that I've often pondered as I listen to stories of hangovers and embarrassments from those that I know.
Why do you drink?
Before recovery (and putting the self-medicating aside), I would have told you that the real question is "why wouldn't you drink?" It's fun, it's emboldening, and it's just assumed that that's what you do.
It wasn't until I stopped drinking (sober, not sober-curious for this mess of an alcoholic), that I began looking around and realizing that the reason many people around me drank didn't really have anything to do with those reasons above. I realized that people were stressed. People were sad. People would rather escape for a few hours than sit with those feelings. Drinking was often a crutch for people and events like weddings and birthdays were socially acceptable places to escape in excess.
This is clearly not true of every person who drinks, but I fear that for a great majority, it is. As adults living in an alcohol-fueled culture, why else would we decide to put ourselves through debilitating hangovers, unnecessary cost spend, and risk social embarrassment time and time again? It is far easier to ignore problems than it is to face and work through them. I can attest to this and sometimes it's the easier way that wins.
Is the sober curious movement for you?
The beautiful thing about being sober-curious is just that — a curiosity. That means you are free to test things out at your own will and for as long or short as you like. It's far less daunting than completely abstaining from alcohol, especially when that abstinence carries a counter with it.
All it requires is that you pause before making the decision to drink. If you're out with friends, maybe start by drinking something non-alcoholic as you assess whether you feel like alcohol will actually add to the occasion. It doesn't mean that you have to never see your friends again or never go out for the night, it simply means that you're in control of your choice to drink or not.
The moment I realized that I didn't HAVE to drink was life-changing. It seems like an obvious understanding, but I needed to be told that drinking was actually an option rather than an obligation for me to realize that I had a choice.
You make the rules.
Ask yourself if the trade-off between drinking and how you feel the next day is worth it. If it is, go for it.
Decide on a time frame to abstain from drinking so that you can assess your relationship with it. That may be a week, a month, or more. As long as you don't have a clinical problem with alcohol, you can take what you've learned and decide how you want to proceed in terms of drinking.
The sober curious movement is not only eye-opening, but it's empowering. YOU take control of your health and wellness. YOU make the decision not to fall back on drinking to escape. YOU decide how you want your life to operate and what does and doesn't fit.
Sometimes all it takes is a little reminder that you are in control of yourself, your thoughts, and your actions. Remember — you don't have to drink. Or you can. It's up to you.
What are your thoughts on the sober curious movement?
5 comments on "Exploring Your Relationship With Alcohol: The Sober Curious Movement
 1. Something that seems so obvious but so enlightening to hear. It's interesting how the assumption is so often "why wouldn't you drink?" I like the idea of starting with a non-alcoholic drink and assessing my choice from there. Thanks for sharing!
 2. Great post Erin!! I know too many people who constantly say they NEED a drink because they had a bad day or work is stressful. That actually has turned me off from alcohol and the fact that even drinks I have tried with a single sip I don't like how the alcohol feels in my throat or even the feeling of being tipsy. I wish more people would take the time to think about why they drink. Your post described perfectly what I try to explain to my fiancé also I am going to have him read it too. I also want people to understand they don't need to have a drink to have fun. I can think of many other activities to do to have fun.
 3. People tend to have a lot of different reasons for drinking. Some want to just knock themselves out after a bad day while surprisingly some do it to celebrate a great accomplishment. Nevertheless, everyone should be aware and educated about the benefits and dangers of alcohol. Thanks so much for this wonderful piece.
 4. Anything that leads to a person becoming more self-aware & mindful about their relationship with substances is positive, but for people who are alcoholics/addicts, I just worry that a movement like this gives them one more reason to not accept that 1 drink it's too many and 1000 isn't enough for them. However, the world is full of more people who aren't alcoholics/addicts then are, so overall it seems like a good idea to me. People who aren't alcoholics/addicts could actually do this, where people who are alcoholics/addicts, just can't, no matter what.
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text:
At what age do hens start laying eggs?
On average, pullets, or juvenile hens, start laying eggs at about 6 months of age, depending on the breed. Larger, heavier birds like Wyandottes, Plymouth Rocks and Orpingtons will lay on the later side whereas lighter, smaller breeds like Leghorns, Stars, and Australorps will start laying sooner. However, if your birds come into maturity at the coldest, darkest part of the year, they will sometimes not begin laying until spring: six months is just the average! We guarantee you that every day past five months that they haven't begun to lay will seem like an eternity!

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


eng Crettaz, Eric La circulation des richesses: Working Poverty Among Immigrants and « Ethnic Minorities » : Theoretical Framework and Empirical Evidence Across Welfare Regimes _URL_ While the research that focuses on working poverty and low-wage employment usually explains the situation of immigrants and 'ethnic' minorities in terms of human capital, linguistic skills, social origin, and the like ('class-only' explanations), the literature that starts from the specific situation of minorities, especially the one that deals with immigration laws and/or labour market discrimination, tends to ignore what their situation has in common with that of disadvantaged 'native whites' in post-industrial economies. This paper attempts to build a theoretical bridge between these two strands of literature, and provides, in a first step, evidence as to the incidence of working poverty among immigrants (and 'ethnic' minorities when the information is available) across welfare regimes. In a second step, the impact of the citizenship status, the country of birth (and of 'race' in the US) is assessed, when the main working poverty factors and the main forms of labour market discrimination are controlled for. Interestingly, these variables have a significant impact in these models; hence, further factors must be at play, and some hypotheses are discussed, especially the role of 'ethnic economies'. 2011-05-26T12:47:42Z _URL_


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You can use the 2D shapes in Yenka Mathematics to construct your own nets, which can then be folded into 3D shapes.
When you move one 2D shape - like this square - close to another one, the shapes' edges will snap together. You'll see a square block between them when this happens. Yenka automatically forms a hinge where the shapes join.
Repeat this with several shapes, and you'll get a net. One square is darker than the others: this is the base of the net. You can fold the net up by dragging the corners of any other square, and check if it makes the shape you want.
Once you've folded the net completely, and made a 3D shape, you can double-click on that shape and click "Flatten" in the panel that appears, to flatten out the net.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


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Composting sites could generate odour nuisances in the environment if not operated optimally in terms of odour. The implementation of a continuous odour monitoring system, OdoWatch, based on e-nose technology allows operators to better understand how and when odour incidents occur and what actions can be taken to reduce emissions.
A continuous odour monitoring system, fitted with 5 e-noses, a weather station and an odour dispersion modelling software, was set up at one of the largest composting sites in Europe. Although several sources were identified from the beginning as being likely to generate odour nuisances, monitoring enabled the identification of the 0-3 week fermentation source as being responsible for 87% of the nuisances generated.
The operator's efforts reduced odour nuisances which had increased by more than 40% over a 6-month period and by nearly 75% after 2 years. The nuisance level in inhabited areas was, to start with, relatively low, but was greatly reduced by the operator's diligence, using measurements made by the OdoWatch system in real time, and by continuous improvement of the techniques used.


1 result for tag: RStudio
The task is a quantum of workflow
This post describes how we organize our work over ten years, twenty analysts, dozens of countries, and hundreds of projects: we start with a task. A task is a single chunk of work, a quantum of workflow. Each task is self-contained and self-documenting; I'll talk about these ideas at length below. We try to keep each task as small as possible, which makes it easy to understand what the task is doing, and how to test whether the results are correct. In the example I'll describe here, I'm going to describe work from our Syria database matching project, which includes about 100 tasks. I'll start with the first thing we do with files we receive...


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Contribution is part of the Academic Word List. It is important for students in college and university.
- A contribution is something that you give or add.
- Technology to reduce pollution could make a significant contribution to the solution.
- Some of his most important early contributions were his detailed descriptions and illustrations.
- Their contribution in October has been revised down from £300million to the same level.
- The money you give to someone, especially for a donation, is your contribution.
- The amount of work you did on a project.
- His contribution was very low. He did almost nothing.


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The first major construction project for the Air and Space Museum will start this summer.
- This is the first major construction project for the building in Southwest Washington, DC, since its opening 41 years ago.
- Visitors will start seeing changes to the museum in summer 2018.
- The museum will remain open through the project by dividing the construction into two major phases.
- The project is scheduled to take seven years.
- All 23 galleries and presentation spaces will be transformed.
- The museum is raising $250 million through private donations to fund the future galleries.
- The project also includes the complete re-facing of the exterior stone, replacement of outdated mechanical systems, and other improvements supported by federal funding.
By the numbers:
- 13,000: stone slabs replaced
- 23: new galleries or presentation spaces
- $250 million: fundraising goal
- 1,441: newly displayed artifacts
- 7: years scheduled for completion
- 0: days closed for construction
The museum has released artist renderings highlighting the exciting changes to come. These renderings represent the first nine galleries scheduled for renovation. New galleries will be organized by theme, helping you find your favorite stories and make connections across eras.
All information and images courtesy of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.


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For those with access to IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems online, PATH researcher Steven Shladover has written a 20 year retrospective of the organization. The abstract reads thusly:
The California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH) Program was founded in 1986, as the first research program in North America focused on the subject now known as intelligent transportation systems (ITS). This paper reviews the history of the founding of PATH and of the national ITS program in the U.S., providing perspective on the changes that have occurred during the past 20 years.
Schladover explains well the significance of 20 years for the booming ITS field and some of the generational shifts that have occurred since its inception.


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The Windows Sockets WSAAsyncGetHostByName function gets host information corresponding to a hostnameasynchronous version.
HANDLE WSAAsyncGetHostByName (
[in] The handle of the window which should receive a message when the
asynchronous request completes.
[in] The message to be received when the asynchronous request completes.
[in] A pointer to the null terminated name of the host.
[out] A pointer to the data area to receive the hostent data. Note that this must be larger than the size of a hostent structure.
This is because the data area supplied is used by Windows Sockets to contain not
only a hostent structure but any and all of the data which is referenced by
members of the hostent structure. It is recommended that you supply a buffer of
[in] The size of data area buf above.
This function is an asynchronous version of gethostbyname, and is used to retrieve host name and address information corresponding to a
hostname. Windows Sockets initiates the operation and returns to the caller
immediately, passing back an opaque "asynchronous task handle" which the
application can use to identify the operation. When the operation is completed, the
results (if any) are copied into the buffer provided by the caller and a message
is sent to the application's window.
When the asynchronous operation is complete the application's window hWnd receives message wMsg. The wParam argument contains the asynchronous task handle as returned by the original
function call. The high 16 bits of lParam contain any error code. The error code can be any error as defined in
WINSOCK2.H. An error code of zero indicates successful completion of the asynchronous
operation. On successful completion, the buffer supplied to the original
function call contains a hostent structure. To access the elements of this structure, the original buffer
address should be cast to a hostent structure pointer and accessed as appropriate.
Note that if the error code is WSAENOBUFS, it indicates that the size of the
buffer specified by buflen in the original call was too small to contain all the resultant information.
In this case, the low 16 bits of lParam contain the size of buffer required to supply ALL the requisite information.
If the application decides that the partial data is inadequate, it can reissue
the WSAAsyncGetHostByName function call with a buffer large enough to receive all the desired
information (that is, no smaller than the low 16 bits of lParam).
The error code and buffer length should be extracted from the lParam using the macros WSAGETASYNCERROR and WSAGETASYNCBUFLEN, defined in
_TAG_ WSAGETASYNCERROR(lParam) HIWORD(lParam)
_TAG_ WSAGETASYNCBUFLEN(lParam) LOWORD(lParam)
The use of these macros will maximize the portability of the source code for
WSAAsyncGetHostByName is guaranteed to resolve the string returned by a successful call to gethostname.
The return value specifies whether or not the asynchronous operation was
successfully initiated. Note that it does not imply success or failure of the
If the operation was successfully initiated, WSAAsyncGetHostByName returns a nonzero value of type HANDLE which is the asynchronous task handle
(not to be confused with a Windows HTASK) for the request. This value can be
used in two ways. It can be used to cancel the operation using WSACancelAsyncRequest. It can also be used to match up asynchronous operations and completion
messages, by examining the wParam message argument.
If the asynchronous operation could not be initiated, WSAAsyncGetHostByName returns a zero value, and a specific error number can be retrieved by calling WSAGetLastError.
The buffer supplied to this function is used by Windows Sockets to construct a hostent structure together with the contents of data areas referenced by members of
the same hostent structure. To avoid the WSAENOBUFS error noted above, the
application should provide a buffer of at least MAXGETHOSTSTRUCT bytes (as defined
The following error codes can be set when an application window receives a
message. As described above, they can be extracted from the lParam in the reply message using the WSAGETASYNCERROR macro.
| HWND hWnd,
| unsigned int wMsg,
| const char FAR * name,
| char FAR * buf,
| int buflen
The following errors can occur at the time of the function call, and indicate
that the asynchronous operation could not be initiated.
||The network subsystem has failed.
||Insufficient buffer space is available.
||name or buf is not in a valid part of the process address space.
||Authoritative Answer Host not found.
||Non-Authoritative Host not found, or SERVERFAIL.
||Nonrecoverable errors, FORMERR, REFUSED, NOTIMP.
||Valid name, no data record of requested type.
gethostbyname, hostent, WSACancelAsyncRequest
||A successful WSAStartup must occur before using this function.
||The network subsystem has failed.
||A blocking Windows Sockets 1.1 call is in progress, or the service provider is
still processing a callback function.
||The asynchronous operation cannot be scheduled at this time due to resource or
other constraints within the Windows Sockets implementation.
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The big mover in the first two years is wind. Small amounts of photovoltaic solar, geothermal and biomass are also added, helping to back-up the new wind power.
The combination of wind's massive growth, assisted by other technologies and immediate efficiency gains allows the first polluting coal plants to be retired. The capacity of other coal plants, including Hazelwood and Munmorah, is halved.
Several new technologies pick up pace, including concentrating solar power (CSP).
Australia's dirtiest power station, Hazelwood, closes in early 2013 after 42 years' operation. In NSW, wind and CSP combine to replace coal plants at Liddell and Munmorah. Other plants close down or reduce output in Queensland and WA.
Renewables are now making major headway in Australia's power sector. Ocean energy makes its first appearance supplying electricity to Victoria, while geothermal and solar continue to expand faster.
South Australia becomes the first state to phase out coal-fired electricity, as geothermal and wind power combine to replace Northern power station.
Ocean energy expands in Victoria, and begins supplying significant power needs for Tasmania, WA and SA.
Large-scale solar projects in SA and north-western Victoria help build the region's energy hub that geothermal power initiated.
Continued closures and phase-outs of coal plants, including Eraring in NSW.
The widespread deployment of CSP is the main source of around-the-clock electricity that replaces the remaining 10 coal plants.
By the end of 2020, Australia has replaced all of its coal-fired power stations with renewable energy.


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The rapid adoption of 400G technologies has seen a spike in bandwidth demands and a low tolerance for errors and latency in data transmission. Data centers are now rethinking the design of data communication systems to expand the available bandwidth while improving transmission quality.
Meeting this goal can be quite challenging, considering that improving one aspect of data transmission consequently hurts another. However, one solution seems to stand out from the rest as far as enabling reliable, efficient, and high-quality data transmission is concerned. We've discussed more on Forward Error Correction (FEC) and 400G technology in the sections below, including the FEC considerations for 400Gbps Ethernet.
What Is FEC?
Forward Error Correction is an error rectification method used in digital signals to improve data reliability. The technique is used to detect and correct errors in data being transmitted without retransmitting the data.
FEC introduces redundant data and the error-correcting code before data transmission is done. The redundant bits/data are complex functions of the original information and are sent multiple times since an error can appear in any transmitted samples. The receiver then corrects errors without requesting retransmission of the data by acknowledging only parts of the data with no apparent errors.
FEC codes can also generate bit-error-rate signals used as feedback to fine-tune analog receiving electronics. The FEC code design determines the number of missing bits that can be corrected. Block codes and convolutional codes are the two FEC code categories that are widely used. Convolutional codes handle arbitrary-length data and use the Viterbi algorithm for decoding purposes. On the other hand, block codes handle fixed-size data packets, and partial code blocks are decoded in polynomial time to the code block length.
What Is 400G?
This is the next generation of cloud infrastructure widely used by high-traffic volume data centers, telecommunication service providers, and other large enterprises with relentless data transmission needs. The rapidly increasing network traffic has seen network carriers continually face bandwidth challenges. This exponential sprout in traffic is driven by the increased deployments of machine learning, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and IoT devices.
Compared to the previous 100G solution, 400G, also known as 400GbE or 400GB/s, is four times faster. This Terabit Ethernet transmits data at 400 billion bits per second, i.e., in optical wavelength; hence it's finding application in high-speed, high-performance deployments.
The 400G technology also delivers the power, data density, and efficiency required for cutting-edge technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), 5G, and 4K video streaming. Besides consuming less power, the speeds also support scale-out and scale-up architectures by providing high density, low-cost-per-bit, and reliable throughput.
Why 400G Requires FEC
Several data centers are adopting 400 Gigabit Ethernet, thanks to the faster network speeds and expanded use cases that allow for new business opportunities. This 400GE data transmission standard uses the PAM4 technology, which offers twice the transmission speed of NRZ technology used for 100GE.
The increased speed and convenience of PAM4 also come with its own challenges. For instance, the PAM4 transmission speed is twice as fast as that of NRZ, but the signal levels are half that of 100G technology. This degrades the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR); hence 400G transmissions are more susceptible to distortion.
Therefore, forward error correction (FEC) is used to solve the waveform distortion challenge common with 400GE transmission. That said, the actual transmission rate of a 400G Ethernet link is 425Gbps, with the additional 25 bits used in establishing the FEC techniques. 400GE elements, such as DR4 and FR4 optics, have transmission errors, which FEC helps rectify.
FEC Considerations for 400Gbps Ethernet
With the 802.3bj standards, FEC-related latency is often targeted to be equal to or less than 100ns. Here, the receive time for FEC-frame takes approximately 50ns, with the rest time budget used for decoding. This FEC latency target is practical and achievable.
Using similar/same FEC code for the 400GbE transmission makes it possible to achieve lower latency. But when a higher coding gain FEC is required, e.g., at the PMD level, one can trade off FEC latency for the desired coding gain. It's therefore recommended to keep a similar latency target (preferably 100ns) while pushing for a higher coding gain of FEC.
Given that PAM4 modulation is used, FEC's target coding gain (CG) could be over 8dB. And since soft-decision FEC comes with excessive power consumption, it's not often preferred for 400GE deployments. Similarly, conventional block codes with their limited latency need a higher overclocking ratio to achieve the target.
Assuming that a transcoding scheme similar to that used in 802.3bj is included, the overclocking ratio should be less than 10%. This helps minimize the line rate increase while ensuring sufficient coding gain with limited latency.
So under 100ns latency and less than 10% overclocking ratio, FEC codes with about 8.5dB coding gain are realizable for 400GE transmission. Similarly, you can employ M (i.e., M>1) independent encoders for M-interleaved block codes instead of using parallel encoders to achieve 400G throughput.
400GE transmission offers several benefits to data centers and large enterprises that rely on high-speed data transmission for efficient operation. And while this 400G technology is highly reliable, it introduces some transmission errors that can be solved effectively using forward error correction techniques. There are also some FEC considerations for 400G Ethernet, most of which rely on your unique data transmission and network needs.
Article Source: Importance of FEC for 400G


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00:00 10 August 2009
The microscopic agents that infect humans are a diverse group of nasties. Find out about ten of the most important in our psychedelically coloured guide
Image 1 of 11
Transmission electron micrograph (TEM) of human herpes virus-6 (HHV-6)
, previously known as HBLV (human b-lymphotropic virus).
It causes exanthem subitum
, or Roseola, a disease that affects nearly every human baby.
Babies with the disease generally have a fever for about 3 days, which is then followed by a rash.
(Image: CDC / Science Photo Library)


Learning Objectives
 - List the three types of tasters in the population.
 - Understand the mechanisms involved in the nerve supply to the oral tissues affecting taste.
 - Logically assess the patient to determine if a referral to a specialist for taste and smell is warranted.
 - List the three ways to determine a supertaster.
 - List three foods that supertasters usually do not consume.
 - Discuss the benefits and/or the disease states associated with each of the tasters.
 - State the function of the taste buds and understand how taste is perceived.


text:
cause of the difficulty that exists in distinguishing it from the onyx
agate, which it much resembles. It is much harder than this stone, but
the difficulty of determining the degree of hardness without testing
the stone prevents the possibility of deciding whether a given
substance be really calcedonyx, except by the lapidary who tests it on
Barbot is said to have determined the, specific weight of this substance, which according to him is 2-6180.
It is often even more translucent than agate.
appears that it came from the East, and was not only known to, but
engraved by the ancients, and these engraved stones are the only
specimens in existence of the ealcedonyx, as, at present, none is
found in any part of the world that we are aware of.
the ancient collection of Genevosio, Caire saw an engraved ealcedonyx,
representing a warrior seated opposite a dead body. In the Viennese
cabinet of engraved gems there is another, which represents a young
man leaning on a column.
this name, of which every one understands the general signification, we
would specially indicate, technically, a mineral substance discovered
in Brazil in the year 1812, which was found mixed with deposits of
diamonds in alluvial lands and in the mud of rivers.


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Cotton Balls or Honduran White Bats?
Imagine you were walking along in the Honduran forest and you looked up into a leaf and saw these little white puffballs. You might think "Oh, how nice, I need some cotton balls to swab alcohol on my blisters" and reach up to find that they aren't cotton balls at all but little bats with yellow noses! What tricks the natural world presents to us sometimes! Bats are supposed to be slender, black, scary and sleeping in caves but not these Central American marshmallow puff balls. They prefer to make tent houses underneath broad-leaf flowering plants. They are so very tiny (about 1.5 – 2 inches or 3.7 – 4.7 cm) that the adults look like babies, a hole colony of a dozen or more can be comfortable under those big leaves.


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Buzz has reading difficulties. He has learned phonics and can sound out words, but his phonetic processing is slow. His word attack skills are significantly better, but his word identification and reading fluency have not improved at the same rate. Despite seeing a few reading tutors for help, trying a few reading programs, and generally having no difficulties with comprehension, Buzz continues to experience the frustrations of a struggling reader.
Buzz's reading difficulties are very common. Many struggling readers experience problems with establishing sight words and contextual fluency. These kinds of reading difficulties are not disabilities - they are symptoms. And, the root cause of these symptoms is usually a weakness in symbol imagery.
Symbol imagery is the ability to visualize the identity, number, and sequence of sounds and letters within words. Many children and adults who are thought to have reading disabilities are able to sound-out (decode) and comprehend words. However, like Buzz, these individuals struggle with difficulties in recognizing the visual (orthographic) patterns of letters. Symbol imagery not only allows readers to recognize and sound-out letters, but also to recognize and retain the orthographic patterns of letters and whole words (sight words) that do not play by the standard rules of decoding.
A weakness in symbol imagery can often result in difficulties with decoding, spelling, word recognition, and reading fluency. These reading problems often manifest through the following symptoms:
- Difficulty with word recognition (often resulting in inaccurate guessing)
- Difficulty with spelling (often phonetically accurate, though orthographically incorrect)
- Difficulty with visual memory
- Difficulty with contextual fluency
- Difficulty with reading comprehension
- Slow reading rate
- Symptoms of Dyslexia
The Seeing Stars®: Symbol Imagery for Phonemic Awareness, Sight Words and Spelling program helps struggling readers develop the sensory-cognitive function of symbol imagery. Unlike most reading programs, Seeing Stars instruction directly applies symbol imagery to sight word development, contextual fluency, spelling, and increasing the speed and stability of phonemic awareness. Students in the Seeing Stars program move through a series of steps - from single consonants/vowels to multisyllabic and contextual reading - to develop the imagery-language connection for competency in written language.
It is common for children and adults to gain years in reading, reading fluency, and spelling in just weeks of intensive instruction. Developing symbol imagery is necessary to becoming an independent reader, which is necessary to becoming a proficient learner in any subject. And, the process-based instruction provided by the Seeing Stars program has proven successful for individuals exhibiting symptoms of dyslexia, ADHD, ASD, CAPD, and other learning difficulties.


text:
- International relations
- Comparative politics
- International and comparative political economy
- American politics
- Italian politics
- Comparative tax policy and taxpayer behavior
Peer Reviewed Publications
Going Dutch? The Role of Gender in the Provision of Public Goods through Tax Compliance Forthcoming in the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics
with David M. Bruner and Sven Steinmo
The existing experimental literature suggests women are more compliant than men when paying taxes but may free ride more when contributing to public goods. It is unclear which effect dominates when paying for public goods through taxation. Experiments conducted in three European countries and the U.S. are used to investigate this issue. The results suggest the compliance effect dominates the free riding effect such that women pay more for public goods, although men are more willing to contribute. Moreover, the data analysis reveals the gender gap in compliance is due to differences in both the extensive and intensive margins.
"Willing to Share? Tax Compliance and Gender in Europe and America." Research & Politics.
with Clara Volintiru and Sven Steinmo.
Studies examining the effects of gender on honesty, deceptive behavior, pro-sociality, and risk aversion, often find significant differences between men and women. The present study contributes to the debate by exploiting one of the largest tax compliance experiments to date in a highly controlled environment conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Italy. Our expectation was that the differences between men and women's behavior would correlate broadly with the degree of gender equality in each country. In other words, where social, political and cultural gender equality is greater we expected behavioral differences between men and women to be smaller. In contrast, our evidence reveals that women are significantly more compliant than men in all countries. Furthermore, these patterns are quite consistent across countries in our study. In other words, the difference between men's and women's behavior is not significantly different in more gender neutral countries than in more traditional societies.
Full Text: Willing to Share
Divided Nation: The North-South Cleavage in Italian Tax Compliance in Polity. 2017. 42(1). 69-99.
Full Text – Divided Nation
Are some countries more honest than others? Evidence from a tax compliance experiment in Sweden and Italy
with Giulia Andrighetto, Stefania Ottone, Ferruccio Ponzano, Nan Zhang, and Sven Steinmo in Frontiers in Psychology.
This study examines cultural differences in ordinary dishonesty between Italy and Sweden, two countries with different reputations for trustworthiness and probity. Exploiting a set of cross-cultural tax compliance experiments, we find that the average level of tax evasion (as a measure of ordinary dishonesty) does not differ significantly between Swedes and Italians. However, we also uncover differences in national "styles" of dishonesty. Specifically, while Swedes are more likely to be either completely honest or completely dishonest in their fiscal declarations, Italians are more prone to fudging (i.e. cheating by a small amount). We discuss the implications of these findings for the evolution and enforcement of honesty norms.
"Hegemony or Dominance: A Gramscian Analysis of US Ascendancy." in Critique: A Worldwide Journal of Politics.
Hegemony, for Antonio Gramsci, is the use of consent and coercion in order to establish control over a population or a state. It is this balance between the two that is fundamental to Gramsci's theory. Furthermore, the distinction between two types of intellectuals, traditional and organic, is central to the diffusion of elite ideology and obtaining the consent of the masses. First, this study surveys the various Gramscian and neo-Gramscian literature, which develops the background for my central argument. The following section briefly examines the construction of a "common sense" in America focusing on two fundamental aspects: American exceptionalism and Liberalism. Finally, my study takes a critical look at American policy during the Regan Administration, specifically focusing on Ronald Reagan's ability to assume the role as an intellectual, used in the Gramscian tradition. However, I argue, although Ronald Reagan recaptured the common sense of the American people, manipulation and coercion were instrumental in reestablishing American dominance. Thus, power during the Reagan administration lacked a critical element of hegemony, consent, and can no longer be defined as hegemony in the Gramscian sense.
More Bang for Your Buck: Efficiency, Trust, and Tax Compliance
In the present study, we investigate the relationship between fiscal capacity and tax compliance using the largest tax compliance experiment to date. We argue that tax evasion and compliance are the product of either high-efficiency/high-trust equilibria or a low-efficiency/low-trust equilibria specific to individual countries. To test this, we utilize the experiments conducted in Italy, U.S., U.K., and Sweden. In the first test, we performed a simple public goods game framed within a tax context to uncover that increasing efficiency does indeed increase tax compliance. In a second experiment, we ask participants to actually pay taxes to their national government, pension fund, and fire department. Confirming our prediction, individuals are significantly more likely to pay taxes to institutions that they trust than institutions that they dislike.
What Explains the North-South Gap in Italian Tax Compliance? An Experimental Analysis.
Cross-national social surveys account for tax morale across a wide variety of political cultures. Since tax evasion, by definition, is difficult to estimate, researchers use the size of the underground economy as a core indicator. Only Greece (27.5% of GDP) surpasses Italy (17% of GDP) in the size of its underground economy among Western EU states. Italy's unique history and regional complexity provide researchers with a multitude of case study options in a single country. Using the 2004 Bank of Italy Survey of Household Wealth and Income and controlled tax compliance experiments, I undertake a comparative study assessing the regional effects of social capital and political culture on tax morale in Italy. I demonstrate that Southern Italy is substantively and significantly different than Northern Italy with regards to tax morale, and that social capital and civic culture positively affect tax morale. However, I find no difference when we control the institutional environment in our laboratory setting, suggesting that tax compliance is linked to the institutional environment with which an individual associates.
Mass Preferences on Budget Deficits
Budgets are one of the most important tools politicians have at their disposal. They set out the expected amount of revenue to be collected for the following scal year, as well as the amount of spending. The budget is also a fundamental political tool used to signal to constituents where the government's priorities lie. But government budgets are notstraight forward, parsimonious documents. The are complicated documents with important implications and trade-os. However, the public is rarely presented with the trade-offs that governments must make in order to successfully implement a budget. Governments make trade-os between higher (lower) taxes and more (less) spending or they face larger deficits. This article uses a novel survey experiment, incorporating an interactive budget tool, to examine what drives individual preferences for budget deficits.


Not using Time Doctor could be worse for you than smoking pot
It has been proven by researchers that multitasking can often double the amount of time it takes to accomplish a task, decreases your and effectiveness with each task AND even decreases your IQ – in one study the effects were worse than smoking pot.
In other words, when you multitask, you not only take longer to accomplish each task, but you are also less effective in accomplishing your tasks.
Time Doctor helps to reduce multitasking in a few different ways. Firstly there is the conscious attention of choosing exactly what you are working on. This is crucial. It's easy to go with the flow from activity to activity, but this makes you much more prone to interruptions. Time Doctor helps you to consciously direct your activities (and focus) to a specific task.
Also the activity bar on Time Doctor helps to remind users what task they should be working on.
Status Bar
The activity bar appears on the desktop screen at all times displaying the current priority.
Read more…


Representing the Legacy Non-XML Grammars in XML
Representing the Legacy Non-XML Grammars in XML
We'll take a detailed look in the next three chapters at each of the languages we'll use to describe the grammars of our legacy file formats. However, let's look at the overall approach since it will help clarify some of the classes and methods discussed later in this chapter. There are four major areas we want to address here.
 - The XML instance documents that correspond to our legacy file formats
 - The file description documents that describe the grammar and other characteristics of our legacy file formats
 - The schemas for our file description documents
 - The schemas that are optionally used to validate our instance documents
Instance Document Design
As discussed in Chapter 4, the place to start is how we want the instance document to look. The bullet items below outline the major decisions involved. In the next subsection we'll make the same decisions in regard to the file description documents that describe our legacy non-XML formats.
 - Elements and Attributes: I use Elements only for application data, mainly because the general purpose utilities we're discussing are designed to handle a wide variety of logical documents. The legacy formats in and of themselves offer little basis for deciding what should be an Attribute instead of an Element. For example, when dealing with a generic CSV row all the columns have the same significance. Building in the capability to designate some data fields as Attributes of others that are Elements adds complexity both for the end user and for the developer. The rationale is discussed in the section on DOM processing considerations (later in this chapter) in a bit more detail.
 - Naming conventions: The utilities are designed to enable users to assign Element names of their choice. I recommend simple, common business terms set in upper camel case. You are free to use whatever approach makes sense to you. You will probably only see and use these names when setting up the conversion utilities and in the XSLT stylesheets that convert to and from your chosen XML format.
 - Specific names versus qualifier/value pairs: This is somewhat of a moot point since our legacy formats already reflect the decision. Your XML document is going to look like your flat file or EDI document.
 - Structure: The structure will match the logical hierarchy of the legacy format, not necessarily its physical hierarchy. For example, our CSV format has only one record type, so the hierarchy is flat. Flat files and EDI formats can have groups nested within groups, yielding hierarchies that are sometimes several levels deep.
 - Namespaces: We're not using them; we're going to use the unnamed default target namespace. Named namespaces, versus the default unnamed namespace, are useful in many circumstances. For example, they can disambiguate Element and Attribute names that would otherwise be duplicates by associating them with different namespaces. They can also make it more explicit that certain names come from other domains. However, in the case of our legacy file converters, the XML instance documents that we read and write have relevance only to our utilities. They most often will serve as intermediate formats for XSLT transformations and won't be used directly by any other applications. Named namespaces, particularly if we require Elements to have namespace prefixes, add no clarity and add complexity to our code. We're following the principle of KISS, remember?
File Description Document Design
General Considerations
As I alluded to previously, in addition to specifying the grammars of our legacy non-XML formats, the file description documents also describe physical characteristics of the input files. For example, we specify record terminators and certain characteristics of the output XML documents such as schema URLs. Again, let's look first at the general choices we need to make about the design of these documents. In the previous section we made decisions about how our instance documents should look. Here we consider how the file description documents should look. We allowed a bit more flexibility in the instance document design than we will here largely due to the variation in legacy file formats. Also, we don't want to impose restrictions where they aren't absolutely required. However, in the case of the file description documents, our processing code is relatively more tightly linked with their document design style. We'll impose a bit more order to make our coding easier.
 - Naming conventions: I have chosen relatively intuitive, descriptive names for the Elements and Attributes, with no formal analysis behind them. I have also chosen to use upper camel case.
 - Specific names versus qualifier/value pairs: This is not much of a consideration for the file description documents. To the extent that it applies, I use specific names.
 - Structure: The structure follows a logical breakdown of the file and grammar characteristics. Where we have a flat grammar, as in CSV files, the XML representation is pretty flat with only three levels. More complex grammars such as EDI can have several levels.
 - Namespaces: Again, for most of the considerations noted in the previous section, we're not using them.
The other major choice that needs to be made about the general format of the file description documents is how we use Elements and Attributes. This one deserves a bit more discussion than just a bullet point. Reviewing my thought processes and what I ended up doing may help you with similar decisions in the future.
My initial inclination was to use only Elements, matching the appearance and processing approach used for the instance documents that correspond to our legacy formats. However, when dealing with the grammars, particularly when considering the grammars of flat files and EDI documents, I wanted to use some Attributes. I felt the grammars would be easier to work with if the nonterminal symbols, such as groups, records, and fields, were represented as Elements. There were a few properties of groups and records that I also needed to represent, but I didn't want to depict those as Elements on a peer level with the Elements representing the grammar symbols. For example, I didn't want a flat file's record identifier tag to be a sibling Element to those representing the fields in the record's grammar. That led to creating a few selected Attributes for such things. Then, as I began to design the code, it became apparent that certain field characteristics, such as column number and data type, might be more easily accessed as Attributes. This was leading me to an inconsistent design in which some parts of the document used only Elements and other parts, in particular the grammar, used only Attributes. In the end I decided to go completely the other way and just use Elements for structure and Attributes to depict all values. Basically, I decided to adopt the approach used in W3C Schema language. I felt consistency was important within the document, that it would make processing the document easier. More importantly, I felt it would be easier for end users of the utilities if I followed a consistent approach for all parts of the document.
Major Sections and Elements
The grammars of our legacy formats are described using the following basic items. The exact Element names may vary depending on the legacy grammar being described.
 - Grammar Element: In the file description document, this is the root Element of the subtree that describes the grammar. Depending on the legacy file grammar, it may have RecordDescription or GroupDescription Elements as children.
 - GroupDescription Element: This Element describes a set of records (and perhaps other groups). Its first child Element is always a RecordDescription. It may have one or more other RecordDescription or GroupDescription Elements as children. The GroupDescription Element is not used in our CSV file grammar since we support only one record type and therefore have no groups.
 - RecordDescription Element: This Element describes the structure and overall characteristics of a record. Its child Elements are FieldDescription Elements.
 - FieldDescription Element: This Element has a number of Attributes that describe characteristics of the field in the legacy format. It always specifies a name, a data type, and a number. Depending on the legacy format it may also specify information such as length, minimum or maximum length, offset, and fill character.
EDI grammars add another layer, but we'll talk about that in Chapter 9.
Schemas for File Description Documents
General Schema Design Considerations
I develop schemas for each of the file description documents and validate the documents against the schemas. Using schema validation enforces some predictability about the documents and makes writing the code to process them a bit easier.
As discussed in Chapter 4, several issues must be considered when designing schemas. We'll discuss schema design for application files in the next subsection and in more detail in Chapter 12, but here is a summary of some of the major design decisions regarding the schemas for the file description documents.
 - Naming conventions: We've discussed most of them already, but I do want to note that I adhere to a convention of appending "Type" to named types.
 - Structuring: One schema specifies the file description document when the legacy format is the source of the conversion; another is used when the legacy format is the target. Due to the fact that the two schemas have very similar data, I declare most of the named types in the common schema for that legacy format. The common schema is then included in the source and target schemas. In addition, a project-wide (or Babel Blaster–common) schema specifies types used in all the conversions. Figure shows the organization.
 1. Structuring of File Description Document Schemas
 - Global Elements versus named types and local Elements: I use named types and local Elements since, due to my programming background, this approach seems to come more naturally. It is very similar to declaring classes, extending them into subclasses, and creating objects of a class.
 - Named versus anonymous types: If a type is reused, it is named. This holds true for all the types in the include schema. The main


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A team of researchers at the University of São Paulo in Brazil has developed a new levitation device that can hover a tiny object with more control than any instrument that has come before.
Featured on this week's cover of the journal Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing, the device can levitate polystyrene particles by reflecting sound waves from a source above off a concave reflector below. Changing the orientation of the reflector allow the hovering particle to be moved around.
Other researchers have built similar devices in the past, but they always required a precise setup where the sound source and reflector were at fixed "resonant" distances. This made controlling the levitating objects difficult. The new device shows that it is possible to build a "non-resonant" levitation device — one that does not require a fixed separation distance between the source and the reflector.
This breakthrough may be an important step toward building larger devices that could be used to handle hazardous materials, chemically-sensitive materials like pharmaceuticals — or to provide technology for a new generation of high-tech, gee-whiz children's toys.
"Modern factories have hundreds of robots to move parts from one place to another," said Marco Aurélio Brizzotti Andrade, who led the research. "Why not try to do the same without touching the parts to be transported?"The device Andrade and his colleagues devised was only able to levitate light particles (they tested it polystyrene blobs about 3 mm across). "The next step is to improve the device to levitate heavier materials," he said.
In recent years, there has been significant progress in the manipulation of small particles by acoustic levitation methods, Andrade said.
In a typical setup, an upper cylinder will emit high-frequency sound waves that, when they hit the bottom, concave part of the device, are reflected back. The reflected waves interact with newly emitted waves, producing what are known as standing waves, which have minimum acoustic pressure points (or nodes), and if the acoustical pressure at these nodes is strong enough, it can counteract the force of gravity and allow an object to float.
The first successful acoustical levitators could successfully trap small particles in a fixed position, but new advances in the past year or so have allowed researchers not only to trap but also to transport particles through short distances in space.
These were sorely won victories, however. In every levitation device made to date, the distance between the sound emitter and the reflector had to be carefully calibrated to achieve resonance before any levitation could occur. This meant that the separation distance had to be equal to a multiple of the half-wavelength of the sound waves. If this separation distance were changed even slightly, the standing wave pattern would be destroyed and the levitation would be lost.
The new levitation device does not require such a precise separation before operation. In fact, the distance between the sound emitter and the reflector can be continually changed in mid-flight without affecting the levitation performance at all, Andrade said.
"Just turn the levitator on and it is ready," Andrade said.


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The relationship between self -report and behavioral observation indices of multicultural counseling competence
Changing demographics in the United States have stirred an increase in attention to multicultural counseling issues. Counseling professionals have questioned whether current training programs adequately prepare counseling students to work with individuals from a culturally diverse client population. Specific competencies have been identified and enumerated. The need for training has been emphasized by professionals and professional organizations. The availability of training in existing counseling psychology programs and internships has been examined. As a result, the measurement and evaluation of multicultural counseling competencies has become increasingly important to counseling psychologists and other professionals who offer counseling services to culturally diverse clients. ^ In recent years 1 supervisor evaluation and 3 self-report instruments have been developed to measure dimensions of the multicultural counseling construct. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between behavioral evaluation and self-report in the measurement of this construct. The relationship between self-report and behavioral evaluation was examined across differences in training level. The existence of a multicultural counseling competence construct, distinct from general counseling competence, as observed and distinguished by expert judges, was also examined. ^ Participants for this study were master's level counseling students and doctoral level students in counseling psychology programs from 3 northeastern universities. The Multicultural Counseling Knowledge and Awareness Scale (MCKAS) was used as a self-report measure of multicultural counseling competency and the Cross Cultural Counseling Inventory-R (CCCI-R) was used as an objective behavioral measure. The Counselor Rating Form-Short Version (CRF-S) was used as a measure of general counseling competence. Two multicultural counseling experts rated participants' counseling response to an interactive video of a client presenting cultural/racial issues during a counseling session. Participants viewed and responded to a video of an African American or a White Confederate client. Both clients presented an identical script. The experts used their ratings to complete a CCCI-R and a CRF-S for each participant. Correlations between the MCKAS subscale scores, the CCCI-R total score, and the CRF-S total score were used to test hypotheses. ^ Results were examined, limitations enumerated, and implications to the field of counseling psychology and for future research were discussed. ^
Education, Bilingual and Multicultural|Education, Guidance and Counseling|Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies
Diane Eve Lewis,
"The relationship between self -report and behavioral observation indices of multicultural counseling competence"
(January 1, 2004).
ETD Collection for Fordham University.


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Welcome to Paliesius Clinic!
Cardiac health and exercise therapy clinic
In Paliesius, travelers encounter a licensed clinic nestled in the stunning landscapes of Lithuania, dedicated to health, cardiac wellness, and advanced test-driven, tailored treatments intertwined with physical activity. We harness the potency of physical exercise to enhance well-being, elevate the quality of life, and strengthen the heart – our mission is to accompany you on this transformative journey.
Paliesius Clinic is a licensed cardiac health and medical exercise therapy clinic that welcomes international patients. Exercise therapy is evidence-based and individualized, with prescribed physical exercise in medical treatment. Paliesius clinic is situated in Paliesius mansion, a calm and relaxing environment. In 2019, it was named the most attractive health tourism destination in Lithuania.
During the 7-day program, you stay at the beautiful Paliesius mansion, where attention to detail will amaze you.
We help people, who:
Want preventive care and wellness
Have high or low blood pressure
Have a goal to overcome obesity-related diseases, metabolic syndrome
Suffer from diseases of the heart system
Suffer from diabetes
Aim to reduce the risk of stroke
Suffer from chronic fatigue, fight stress
How we help
Treatment in Paliesius Clinic is based on physical activity and cardiac health, specialized, evidence-based, and patient-centered
Evidence shows that over 30 different states of illness – both physical and mental disorders – can be treated with physical activity. This includes heart and vessel issues, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, asthma, obesity, depression, stress syndromes and dementia. Physical activity as treatment is unique due to its ability to affect many biological and physiological systems simultaneously, which is why it is very effective in comorbidities.
The treatment with physical activity consists of 3 main steps:
Establishment of a patient's clinical profile and testing of the patient
Implementation of the physical exercise program
Why choose Paliesius Clinic?
Evidence shows that over 30 different states of illness – both physical and mental disorders – can be treated and prevented with physical exercise. This includes heart and vessel issues, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, asthma, obesity, depression, stress syndromes and dementia.
Your heart and its health are always taken seriously during testing and treatment at Paliesius Clinic. We monitor and adapt all aspects of the program to increase the health of your heart so you can feel safe.
In order to achieve objective results, Paliesius Clinic doctors and other specialists perform laboratory and functional diagnostic tests based on medical science. The results of treatment in our clinic are measurable and presented to patients with objective readings.
All treatment at Paliesius clinic is individualized and patient-centered.
We work with your individual situation.
At the clinic, complex treatment is performed by a cohesive team of doctors and other specialists. Professionals in their field communicate with the patient, collect their health and body condition history, conduct research, analyze the results, which are then summarized and used to find the best solution to restore and improve the health of that particular patient. The team of specialists of the clinic consists of:
- Internal medicine doctors
- Medical doctors
- Sports medicine doctors
- Medical psychologists
- Physiotherapists – masseurs
- Occupational therapists
The treatment provided in the Paliesius Physical Exercise Therapy Clinic is individual and safe.
- Patients' health status is monitored and assessed in real time, remotely, using the latest medical and information technology solutions.
- Patients' cardiac activity is monitored during exercise and rest. Electrocardiograms and heart rate indicators are regularly evaluated by doctors and thus ensure safety of exercises and the effectiveness of treatment.
- Laboratory and functional diagnostic tests are carried out to assess the condition of patients based on physiological parameters.
Laboratory and functional diagnostic tests performed during exercise ensure safe and clinically effective treatment or prevention of diseases.


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Editor, Indicators and Analysis Division, Directorate for Education
Results from PISA 2009 show that although native students generally outperform students with immigrant backgrounds, some countries have been able to narrow the performance gap between the two groups considerably—even as the proportion of immigrant students has grown.
The latest issue of PISA in Focus notes that the percentage of 15-year-old students with an immigrant background grew by two percentage points, on average, between 2000 and 2009 among OECD countries with comparable data. Immigrant students now constitute more than 5% of the 15-year-old student populations in 13 OECD and partner countries and economies. In Ireland, New Zealand, Spain, the United States, and the partner countries Liechtenstein and the Russian Federation, the percentage of students with an immigrant background increased by five percentage points or more over the past decade, and these students now represent from 8% to 30% of these countries' student populations.
During the same time period, a few countries narrowed the performance gap between native and immigrant students. In Belgium and Switzerland, for example, the performance gap shrank by nearly 40 score points, even though native students still outperform students with an immigrant background by 68 score points in Belgium and by 48 score points in Switzerland. And Switzerland was able to reduce the performance gap despite the fact that the percentage of students with an immigrant background rose during the period. Germany, New Zealand and the partner country Liechtenstein also show a narrowing of the performance gap between these two groups of students.
What these trends tell us is that there are ways that governments and schools can help students from immigrant backgrounds to overcome some of the disadvantages associated with that background. Often, students with an immigrant background are socio-economically disadvantaged. On average across OECD countries, the performance gap is reduced from 43 to 27 score points when comparing students of similar socio-economic status, regardless of whether they are from immigrant backgrounds or are native to the country in which they were tested.
But the fact that a 27-point performance gap–equivalent to well over half a school year–persists, even after accounting for socio-economic status, implies that other factors also have an impact on student performance. These may be related to whether the students were born in the country in which they were tested or elsewhere, or whether, when they're at home, they speak the same language as that used in the PISA test. Yet given that the performance gap varies so widely across countries, even taking into account these other characteristics, and given that in some countries the performance gap has changed markedly over time, it is clear that public policy can make a difference to these students' progress in school.
For more information:
on PISA: _URL_
Full set of PISA in Focus: _URL_
PISA 2009 Results: Overcoming Social Background
PISA 2009 Results: Learning Trends
Related blog posts:
All immigration is local: How Regional Factors Shape Global Migration


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Mecsek MountainsArticle Free Pass
Mecsek Mountains, also called Baranya Mountains, mountain range in southern Hungary. The range consists of a fractured local fold system of an origin contemporaneous with the Carpathian Mountains. The Mecsek emerged from beneath the sea in the Mesozoic Era (which began about 250 million years ago) and reached mountain proportions when the surrounding crystalline rocks sank again. Its present appearance is that of a broad dissected limestone plateau, with cols and valleys along the fault lines. The largest transverse fault line breaks the system into two parts: the Eastern Mecsek rises to 2,237 feet (682 metres) at Zengő; the Western Mecsek, reaching 2,008 feet (612 metres) at Tubes, has extensive sandstones and shales. Toward the north, the Mecsek range merges into the Tolna-Baranya hills. The south margin sharply overlooks the Pécs plain. A Mediterranean climate and a high total of annual sunshine hours are favourable to fruit growing (even figs) and viticulture.
What made you want to look up "Mecsek Mountains"? Please share what surprised you most...


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A How-to-Guide for Student Leadership Summits
September 24, 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. ET, 1.0 PDH credit
This free webinar has been developed by ITE Student Chapters for ITE Student Chapters and will focus on the Student Leadership Summit (SLS). Students who attend this webinar will receive background information on what SLS is and why it is important for chapters to be involved. The webinar will also share some brief statistics on other ITE Student Chapters' involvement with SLS, including budgets, attendees, and qualitative assessments on how SLS has helped their chapters.
Furthermore, students attending this webinar will receive tips on how they can maximize the value of attending SLS for their chapter. In terms of hosting SLS, the information will be provided to help student chapters determine if hosting is right for them. Useful advice from students who have recently hosted an SLS will also be provided to help student chapters overcome common challenges and barriers.
- Understand what SLS is and why it is important
- Gain insight on other student chapters' involvement levels in SLS and their views on its advantages and disadvantages
- Learns ways to make attending SLS effective for your chapter
- Understand the advantages and disadvantages of hosting an SLS
- Gain advice on hosting an SLS


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Parkdale Secondary College
Our focus is based on effective teaching and learning policies, creating a secure and orderly school environment, free from discrimination.
Effective teachers genuinely care for students and show this through consistency, fairness and the creation of an ordered learning environment. Effective teachers make learning and how to learn, the critical issue through interest, high expectations and good communication skills.
Effective Teachers promote these values by:
Valuing student work
Sharing the learning responsibility with students
Including all students in the learning process
Modelling the desired behaviours and values
Providing regular feedback that emphasises the positive aspects of overall performance.
We believe effective learning is based on teaching students to understand how they learn through their academic, physical and social experiences, to develop into independent learners who are aware of their preferred learning styles
Academic Results and Trends
Year 12 ATAR |


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The Australian Die Casting Association (also known as ADCA) represents the Die Casting industry in Australia. The objectives of the Association are to promote research and development activities in Die Casting.
In 1971, the Die Casting industry, through the Australian Zinc Development Association, SDCEA, and the DIA, actively and effectively assisted in setting up the first serious R & D facility at CSIRO.
A small but dedicated team of research workers was brought together and very soon they began to produce findings and knowledge of lasting benefit to the Die Casting Industry. This information became available in the form of published papers, conference presentations and industrial reports and soon gained international recognition for its innovation and high standard. The industry also appreciated this work because much of it was done in close cooperation with Die Casting companies, and they could see the practical way it could be implemented.
This activity has continued to grow, and the benefits continue to accrue. It remains a prime focus of ADCA to encourage all Die Casting companies, whether big or small, to play a part in this vital activity. Participation in cooperative Research and Development enables both costs and benefits to be shared. People benefit by gaining new ways of thinking about manufacturing problems, and by being part of a widely based team, gain new skills in the process.


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National Intercollegiate Band
History of the NIB
One of the most exciting programs Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma began over half of a century ago has been the National Intercollegiate Band. This ensemble continues to make a significant contribution to the advancement of the collegiate band. Open to all qualified musicians, whether or not they are members of the Fraternity or Sorority, the NIB brings members face-to-baton with some of the most dynamically stimulating composers and respected conductors in America. Dr. F. Lee Bowling, Kappa Kappa Psi National President (Alpha Iota) from _PHONE_, is regarded as the Founder of the National Intercollegiate Band.
The NIB was Bowling's cherished idea and through the years he worked to develop a plan that firmly established the organization as a national service project for the Fraternity and Sorority. Bowling had placed his belief in such an organization on the results of the intercollegiate band which had been held since 1933 by the colleges and universities of the Rocky Mountain area. Each college sent representatives to a chosen place where much time and effort was given to the preparation of a concert. These concerts were sponsored by the chapters of Kappa Kappa Psi. The success of this movement gained headway to some extent before the war and district intercollegiate band concerts were held in the states of Oklahoma and Ohio. He presented such a plan to the Tenth National Convention at Corvallis, Oregon, in August, 1941. It received the endorsement of the convention and a promise was made to have the first National Intercollegiate Band at the next National Convention.
However, due to the Declaration of War and subsequent changes in the nation, the national conventions scheduled for 1943 and 1945 were not held. In fact, ninety percent of all fraternity chapters became inactive and only five chapters were able to remain active throughout this period. After the close of the war Bowling revived his plans and started to build an intercollegiate band which would perform as part of the 14th Biennial Convention in 1947 at Oklahoma A and M College (now Oklahoma State University) in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
The first NIB featured 125 select student musicians from more than 16 colleges. The program from this concert featured eleven musical selections and ten different conductors -- including Bowling, Charles Wiley, Hugh E. McMillen, J. Lee Burke, William A. Scroggs, and Dr. Bohumil Makovsky. The concert opened with John Philip Sousa's famous march, Semper Fidelis, always faithful. In the words of Dr. Bowling:
"The 1947 National Intercollegiate Band had been in the planning stages for many years. Actually, the prototype of this national venture had been well established. This was the Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Band which rendered the first concert by an intercollegiate band in Macky Auditorium at the University of Colorado in February, 1933. The Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Band gave five concerts in Colorado in 1933 and represented six colleges -- the University of Colorado, University of Denver, Colorado College, University of Northern Colorado, Colorado State University, and Colorado School of Mines. These Intercollegiate Bands continued as a great musical experience during the spring terms, the last concert being given during Music Week each year in the Denver Auditorium with a KOA broadcast. The University of Utah was also represented at the Music Week concert in 1933. The University of Wyoming became a regular participant in 1934. The first concert following the interruption caused by World War II was at the University of Northern Colorado. During the post-war years District Intercollegiate Bands have played an important role at a few district confabs."
Dr. Bowling's patient, competent, and concerned guidance also secured for the Sorority the necessary action taken by Kappa Kappa Psi to include Tau Beta Sigma in its national programs of service to bands. The National Convention of 1947 was the first convention that established mutual cooperation and shared concerns between the Fraternity and the Sorority. The Kappa Kappa Psi delegates voted to accept Tau Beta Sigma as a sister organization, and extended in perpetuity to the new Sorority the courtesy of sharing in all of its publications and in the NIB program. In 1949, Dr. William Revelli served as guest conductor for the Second National Intercollegiate Band with the final concert being presented at the Red Rocks Amphitheater near Denver before an audience of over 10,000 people. Revelli would again serve as conductor of the NIB in 1971 -- the only conductor in the history of the NIB to serve twice.
At the 1997 National Convention, Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the National Intercollegiate Band. The 1997 National Intercollegiate Band was conducted by Professor John L. Whitwell, Director of Bands at Michigan State University. Renowned composer John Zdechlik conducted the premiere performance of the 1997 commissioned work, entitled Rondo Jubiloso. Alan Bonner, National Executive Director of Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma and former Commander and Conductor of the United States Air Force Band, served as guest conductor. Colonel Bonner conducted John Philip Sousa's Semper Fidelis, which was the first selection on the program of the first National Intercollegiate Band in 1947.
The 1999 National Intercollegiate Band Concert was conducted by Dr. David A. Waybright from the University of Florida. The concert featured the world premier of two exciting peices: Unusual Behavior in Ceremonies Involving Drums by Daniel Bukvich, the 1999 Commisioned Composer, and From This Wilderness..., a KKY commissioned work, by Roland Barrett. The later was conducted by the Kappa Kappa Psi National President and Director of Bands at Iowa State University Dr. Michael Golemo. Other selections included The Thunderer, John Philip Sousa; Symphony on Themes of John Philip Sousa, Mvt. II, Ira Hearshen; Pineapple Poll Suite from the Ballet, Mackerras-Duthoit, arranged by Arthur Sullivan; Blue Shades, Frank Ticheli; and Chester Overture for Band, William Schuman.
The following is a list of the professionals that have
joined in making the National Intercollegiate Band the
successful program that it has become over the years:
Roger Fenn, Conductor, Director of Bands, University of Tulsa;
Hugh E. McMillen, Conductor, Director of Bands, University of Colorado;
Leonard Haugh, Conductor, Director of Bands, University of Oklahoma.
Dr. William D. Revelli, Conductor, Director of Bands, University of Michigan.
Dr. Thor Johnson, Conductor, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
Dr. A. Austin Harding, Conductor, Director of Bands, University of Illinois.
Dr. Frederick Fennell, Conductor, Eastman Wind Ensemble.
Lt Col William F. Santelmann, Conductor, United States Marine Corps Band.
Paul Creston, Composer-Conductor, White Plains, NY;
Dr. Manley R. Whitcomb, Conductor, Director of Bands, Florida State University.
Dr. Richard Franko Goldman, Conductor, The Goldman Band of New York City.
Cmdr Charles Brendler, Conductor, United States Navy Band.
Vaclav Nehlybel, Composer-Conductor, New York City.
Keith Wilson, Conductor, Director of Bands, Yale University;
Siguard Rascher, Guest Artist, Clinician.
Norman Dello Joio, Composer-Conductor, New York City;
Dr. Leonard Smith, Guest Artist, Conductor-Soloist, Detroit Concert Band;
Mr. T. N. Retif, Guest Artist, Choral Faculty, Tarrant County Junior College.
Dr. W. Francis McBeth, Composer-Conductor, Arkadelphia, AR;
Dr. William D. Revelli, Conductor, Director of Bands, University of Michigan [retired];
Dr. John D. Mohler, Guest Artist, Associate Professor of Clarinet, University of Michigan.
Col Arnald Gabriel, Conductor, United States Air Force Band;
Raymond Crisara, Guest Artist.
Dr. Martin Mailman, Composer-Conductor, University of North Texas;
William C. Moffit, Conductor, Professor of Instrumental Music, University of Houston.
Carmen Dragon, Conductor, Glendale Symphony, Glendale, CA.
Dr. Donald E. McGinnis, Conductor, Director of Bands, Ohio State University [retired].
Dr. Gary T. Garner, Conductor, Director of Bands, West Texas A & M University;
Dr. Terry Milligan, Conductor, Faculty, University of Cincinnati.
Dr. Donald Hunsberger, Conductor, Professor of Conducting and Ensembles, Eastman School of Music;
James Sudduth, Conductor, Director of Bands, Texas Tech University.
Dr. William P. Foster, Conductor, Director of Bands, Florida A & M University;
Robert E. Foster, Conductor, Director of Bands, University of Kansas.
Dr. Harry Begian, Conductor, Director of Bands, University of Illinois [retired];
John Wakefield, Conductor, Director of Bands, University of Maryland.
John Paynter, Conductor, Director of Bands, Northwestern University;
Joseph Missal, Conductor, Director of Bands, Oklahoma State University.
Ray E. Cramer, Conductor, Director of Bands, Indiana University.
Paula Crider, Conductor, Assistant Director of Bands, University


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Now, doctoral research by evolutionary biologist Kathryn Lord at the University of Massachusetts Amherst suggests the different behaviors are related to the animals' earliest sensory experiences and the critical period of socialization. Details appear in the current issue of Ethology.
Until now, little was known about sensory development in wolf pups, and assumptions were usually extrapolated from what is known for dogs, Lord explains. This would be reasonable, except scientists already know there are significant differences in early development between wolf and dog pups, chief among them timing of the ability to walk, she adds.
To address this knowledge gap, she studied responses of seven wolf pups and 43 dogs to both familiar and new smells, sounds and visual stimuli, tested them weekly, and found they did develop their senses at the same time. But her study also revealed new information about how the two subspecies of Canis lupus experience their environment during a four-week developmental window called the critical period of socialization, and the new facts may significantly change understanding of wolf and dog development.
When the socialization window is open, wolf and dog pups begin walking and exploring without fear and will retain familiarity throughout their lives with those things they contact. Domestic dogs can be introduced to humans, horses and even cats at this stage and be comfortable with them forever. But as the period progresses, fear increases and after the window closes, new sights, sounds and smells will elicit a fear response.
Through observations, Lord confirmed that both wolf pups and dogs develop the sense of smell at age two weeks, hearing at four weeks and vision by age six weeks on average. However, these two subspecies enter the critical period of socialization at different ages. Dogs begin the period at four weeks, while wolves begin at two weeks. Therefore, how each subspecies experiences the world during that all-important month is extremely different, and likely leads to different developmental paths, she says.
Lord reports for the first time that wolf pups are still blind and deaf when they begin to walk and explore their environment at age two weeks. "No one knew this about wolves, that when they begin exploring they're blind and deaf and rely primarily on smell at this stage, so this is very exciting," she notes.
She adds, "When wolf pups first start to hear, they are frightened of the new sounds initially, and when they first start to see they are also initially afraid of new visual stimuli. As each sense engages, wolf pups experience a new round of sensory shocks that dog puppies do not."
Meanwhile, dog pups only begin to explore and walk after all three senses, smell, hearing and sight, are functioning. Overall, "It's quite startling how different dogs and wolves are from each other at that early age, given how close they are genetically. A litter of dog puppies at two weeks are just basically little puddles, unable to get up or walk around. But wolf pups are exploring actively, walking strongly with good coordination and starting to be able to climb up little steps and hills."
These significant, development-related differences in dog and wolf pups' experiences put them on distinctly different trajectories in relation to the ability to form interspecies social attachments, notably with humans, Lord says. This new information has implications for managing wild and captive wolf populations, she says.
Her experiments analyzed the behavior of three groups of young animals: 11 wolves from three litters and 43 dogs total. Of the dogs, 33 border collies and German shepherds were raised by their mothers and a control group of 10 German shepherd pups were hand-raised, meaning a human was introduced soon after birth.
At the gene level, she adds, "the difference may not be in the gene itself, but in when the gene is turned on. The data help to explain why, if you want to socialize a dog with a human or a horse, all you need is 90 minutes to introduce them between the ages of four and eight weeks. After that, a dog will not be afraid of humans or whatever else you introduced. Of course, to build a real relationship takes more time. But with a wolf pup, achieving even close to the same fear reduction requires 24-hour contact starting before age three weeks, and even then you won't get the same attachment or lack of fear."
Kathryn Lord | Source: Newswise
Further information: _URL_
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Option #1 (Preferred): Apply for allocation from NSF XSEDE
For users based in the United States, you are able to apply for XSEDE Startup or XRAC computing allocations. Read more here. This can obtain up to hundreds of thousands of CPU-hours for free if your application is approved.
Option #2: COSMIC² community computing allocation supplement
For users who 1) do not have time to apply for XSEDE Startup or XRAC or 2) are not based in the United States, COSMIC² has a system in place to review applications for computing allocation supplements.
Please fill out the form below and you will hear back within 48 hours regarding your application.
As a part of the supplement request form, we ask that users provide a detailed report justifying why they need more computing time. In the application document, we expect the following information. Please note that we do NOT need to know anything about your sample or biological question that you are trying to answer.
- Justification about what the initial allocation went towards. Questions to consider:
- Why do you need more time?
- What structures / analyses did you complete with your initial allocation and why aren't they enough to obtain individual XSEDE allocations?
- Evidence of sample analysis working
- This needs to include FSC curves and euler angle distribution
- Dataset size – particle number, box size
- Additional amount requested
- For additional computing time requested, we expect a layout of number of structures required and expected run times.
- For these calculations, we would like the requested amount of time in GPU-hours. This means if you are running a single job for 3 hours on 4 GPUs, then this job would require 12 GPU-hours.


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Color Meaning: Meaning of The Color Brown
Brown, the color of earth, wood, stone, wholesomeness, reliability, elegance, security, healing, home, grounding, foundations, stability, warmth, and honesty, is a natural, neutral color that is typically associated with the seasons of fall and winter.
The color brown is a warm color that stimulates the appetite. While it is sometimes considered dull, it also represents steadfastness, simplicity, friendliness, dependability, and health.
Shades of brown when combined with green create a palette often used to convey concepts of recycling, earth-friendly, or all natural. Dark brown can be used in place of black and brings warmth to color palettes.
The brown color says stability, reliability, dependability, and approachability. It is the color of our soil, growth, fertility, and earth, and it is associated the concepts of "all natural" and "organic." Brown is the color of the Earth and is comforting and nurturing.
The color brown affects the mind and body by creating feelings of wholesomeness, stability, and peace. Brown provides feelings of organization, history, and connection, as well as cozy feelings of relaxation and warmth.
Brown is believed to help create a wholesome feeling, a connection with the earth, and a sense of orderliness and convention. Brown is a stable and grounded color that is believed to help you feel like you fit in and belong.
Other meanings associated with the color brown:
 - The term "brown bottle" refers to a bottle of beer.
 - To "brown" something is to cook or burn it.
 - The saying "brown-nose" refers to someone who sucks up, or kisses butt to someone of authority.
 - The phrase "brown study" is used to describe someone who is aloof, indifferent.
 - The expression "brown out" refers to a partial loss of service.
Additional words that represent different shades, tints, and values of the color brown: sienna, bay, sand, wood, dapple, auburn, chestnut, nut-brown, cinnamon, russet, tawny, chocolate, tan, brunette, fawn, liver-colored, mahogany, oak, bronze, terra-cotta, toast, umber, cocoa, coffee, copper, ecru, ginger, hazel, khaki, ochre, puce, snuff-colored.
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Proton beam writing
This article does not cite any sources. (January 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Proton beam writing (or p-beam writing) is a direct-write lithography process that uses a focused beam of high energy (MeV) protons to pattern resist material at nanodimensions. The process, although similar in many ways to direct writing using electrons, nevertheless offers some interesting and unique advantages.
Protons, which are approximately 1800 times more massive than electrons, have deeper penetration in materials and travel in an almost straight path. This feature allows the fabrication of three-dimensional, high aspect ratio structures with vertical, smooth sidewalls and low line-edge roughness. Calculations have also indicated that p-beam writing exhibits minimal proximity effects (unwanted exposure due to secondary electrons), since the secondary electrons induced in proton/electron collisions have low energy. A further advantage stems from the ability of protons to displace atoms while traversing material, thereby increasing localized damage especially at the end of range. P-beam writing produces resistive patterns at depth in silicon, allowing patterning of selective regions with different optical properties as well as the removal of undamaged regions via electrochemical etching.
The primary mechanisms for producing structures in resist materials is, in general, bond scissioning in positive resists such as PMMA (polymethylmethacrylate), or cross-linking in negative resists such as SU-8. In positive resists the regions damaged by protons are removed by chemical development to produce structures, whereas in negative resists the development procedures remove the undamaged resist leaving the cross-linked structures behind. In e-beam writing, the primary and secondary electrons create the scissioning or cross-linking, whereas in p-beam writing the damage is caused by short range proton-induced secondary electrons. The proton fluence required for exposure varies from 30-150 nCmm−2 depending on the resist material, and is around 80-100 times less than that required by e-beam writing. Remark: The unit of the fluence in proton beam writing is usually given in "charge/area". It can be converted into "particles/area" by dividing "charge/area" by the charge of a proton, Q = 1,602·10−19C.
P-beam writing is a new technology of great potential, and both current experimental data and theoretical predictions indicate that sub-10 nm 3D structuring is feasible. However, the lack of a user friendly commercial instrument with a small footprint is currently holding back the potentially wide range of application fields in which p-beam writing could make a substantial impact. Hopefully, this will be addressed in the near future.


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The Mazza Museum Resource Center offers story kits
to help teach students about picture book artist and/or themes. Kits
include books, puppets or soft toys, and media. Each kit includes a
teacher notebook containing background information about the artist, a
book list and ideas for relating lessons to these books. These
resources will make it easy and fun to introduce art and literature by
these renowned artists!
Your class can learn about Norman Bridwell, Jan Brett, Eric Carle or
have fun celebrating the 100th Day of School or Dr. Seuss. We also have
kits that will reinforce skills like Maps and Poetry.
Kits can be checked out to teachers or librarians by visiting the
Mazza Resource Center. They are yours to borrow for one month with a
$20.00 refundable deposit. Reserve a kit by contacting Mary Miller by
phone at _PHONE_ or email at _EMAIL_.
Themed Story Kit Contents
Artist Story Kit Contents


Tools And Methods
Who pays tax? The teacher, the vendor and the farmer.
The facilitator uses a series of questions to three taxpayers (a teacher, a market vendor and a farmer) to introduce the idea of different tax payments.
 1. To explore how almost everyone pays tax.
 2. To introduce two tax payment types, on things you earn and things you buy.
Steps in the process
 1. The facilitator recaps what tax is: Tax is a compulsory contribution of money from people and businesses to their government to help pay for common services such as education and health.
 2. The facilitator asks three volunteers (if possible, participants who know real examples first hand) to play the role of: a teacher, a market vendor and a home farmer.
 3. The facilitator now asks each participant: do you pay tax?
 - If they say yes, ask which ones and write them down in a list (e.g. VAT, PAYE, profit tax, import/export taxes, land rents, market fees).
 - If someone says no, ask them if they buy products in the local market and briefly introduce the idea of VAT (Value Added Tax), which is a tax paid when we buy.
 4. The facilitator may want to summarise that there are two types of taxes, both taxes go to the national government (not the employer or the seller):
 - The ones you pay for earning money from your work.
 - The ones you pay when you buy a product like soap that are included in the price.
 5. The facilitator can conclude by asking:
 - Do participants know of anyone who does not pay tax?
 - Which of these two taxes do people most know they are paying?
 6. [Optional]: The facilitator may also want to ask:
 - Do men and women pay the same taxes? Which taxes does the group think affect women the most, taxes on things we earn, or taxes on things we buy? And the youth? This will depend on the type of activities they do and the different goods they buy.
Tip to the facilitator: People don't often realise they are paying tax when buying and that it's making prices higher. This means they get less angry about it.
Moving to action
 - Is there any action point you may want to do based on this tool?
 - 'A Day in the Life of a Tax Payer', 2013, Seatini and ActionAid Uganda.
Here you can download some useful resources.
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