The ObservSMART system is a proximity solution designed to solve one of the most significant challenges behavioral health facilities face on a daily basis: consistent, validated patient observation. Healthcare providers can rely on ObservSMART to monitor patients and ensure staff compliance using customized parameters that cater to the needs of their unique unit.
Shaina Smolowe, Director of Customer Success at InvisAlert Solutions, explains how the ObservSMART system serves as an indispensable tool for behavioral health professionals.
Q&A: How ObservSMART helps behavioral health patients and staff
Q: What is ObservSMART?
A: ObservSMART is a patented product that improves Q15 compliance, ensuring overall better patient safety and quality of care. This is achieved through patient wristbands that sync with software to perform patient checks. This equipment relies on proximity — health checks can only be performed and documented if a staff member is near the patient, therefore ensuring compliance.
Q: Why is ObservSMART important?
A: Patient safety is the number one priority. Patients go to these [behavioral health] facilities because it is the safer and better option for them. It is crucial that staff are seeing the patient on regular intervals to ensure that they are providing the safest environment possible.
And this remains especially true during the pandemic. Mental health didn't go anywhere — people are still suffering. Now, facilities are being overrun with patients who are seeking help during these difficult times.
Q: Why is ObservSMART more efficient than traditional Q15 checks?
A: Using traditional methods for patient checks, everything is documented on paper or e-tablets, but there is no validated compliance. If there was a sentinel event, leadership would have to gather everyone's paper records, check cameras, and document what was seen in order to understand if the event was avoidable. They check to see if the staff were doing their rounds like they were supposed to.
ObservSmart ensures compliance. The data that we provide on rounding and proximity is essential and eliminates the uncertainty of using paper. Seeing how close in proximity staff was to a patient is an invaluable measure that other systems aren't able to provide. There are supervisory alerts to help avoid sentinel events, so supervisors can intervene in real-time to make sure that the patient is getting the best care.
Q: Is ObservSMART flexible to specific patient needs?
A: Yes. For example, the health checks can be adjusted to intervals other than fifteen minutes. I have seen them as low as 5 minutes and as high as an hour.
It depends on the type of facility, whether it's inpatient, residential, substance abuse or detox. 15 minutes is the standard for inpatient, which is the most common interval. Now, we are seeing many more variables as we are growing and branching out to different types of facilities. We also accommodate 1:1 rounding for higher acuity patients.
Heart and Head for Patient Safety Checks
Q: Does ObservSMART actually improve client experience and patient safety?
A: Many organizations have reported noticeable improvements as a result of ObservSMART.
We've heard things like, "it helps me sleep better at night," and, "it's the smartest thing we've ever done," from our clients who have implemented ObservSMART in their facilities.
Melissa Larkin-Skinner, regional CEO of Centerstone, a not-for-profit health system, said in a press release, "This technology is vastly enhancing the way we observe and monitor patients in our care. Our staff is able to manage more efficiently the required round-the-clock 15-minute checks that are standard care for behavioral health patients. In turn, supervisory staff can validate that patients are being observed and clinicians can provide real-time feedback and care instructions."
Q: How does ObservSMART affect staff workload and workflow?
A: Designed by and for behavioral health staff, our solution supports the most complex workflows and improves communication among staff. Our proprietary management processes help you operationalize and offer your team the appropriate tools to effectively and efficiently perform their responsibilities. After implementation, our clients report an overall decrease in workload.
A decrease in workload and improvement of communication can allow for better overall quality of staff productivity.
Q: Why is analytics in healthcare important? How does it affect employee performance?
A: Staff and leadership can see real-time performance to quickly understand, if improvements need to be made. It also allows staff to be recognized when they are doing a good job.
We recommend pairing weaker performers with stronger performers. We find when a facility meets more regularly with the staff about compliance, these numbers start to go up and staff compliance improves.
Q: What happens after we implement ObersvSMART in our facility?
A: We develop strong customer relationships, and if we can work together to improve patient safety, then we are doing our job. After implementation, we meet with leadership weekly until they are comfortable, and then quarterly to keep everyone on track. We are invested in your success.
With ObservSMART's experience with other clients, we can help drive best practices and allow for positive changes.
As healthcare professionals ourselves, improving safety is our number-one priority. We designed ObservSMART to give healthcare staff — and patients — the peace of mind they deserve. With its ability to record essential patient data, improve staff workflow and performance, and set and ensure patient monitoring parameters, ObservSMART is a powerful tool capable of keeping patients safe and improving care.
Contact us to learn how InvisAlert Solutions can make your behavioral health facility a safer place for everyone.
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text:
Karama, seeks to access to all marginalized groups in the Palestinian society,
especially in the camps. Since the work of this Association is in Jalazoun
where the number of camp residents (14.000) people and they are mostly
low-income and part of a bad healthy environment, and the proportion of the
number of people is between (5-7) persons in housing units not exceeding
(65m - 90m), which affects the family negatively, especially in the field of
health and education.
From this standpoint,The charity Association for disabled rehabilitation and
family counseling seeks Family Service in many areas of education, culture,
social, health and the environment.
Is a Palestinian refugees camp, was founded in 1949 over an area of land of 0.25 square kilometers on a rocky hill at a distance of 7 kilometers north of Ramallah, is located near the village of Jaffna. the population of the camp is about 15000 people come out of 36 villages belonging to the regions of Lydda and Ramle.
Jalazon presents a score of Martyrs over the past two decades, and hundreds if not thousands of prisoners and detainees. In the recent period (20-6 to 11-7) more than 25 young people has been arrested from the camp, And the Israeli soldiers stormed the camp almost daily in the morning, the camp was known in the nineties as the green camp, as it called by Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


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Kids Math Sequences is the absolutely math resource specifically for students and children. A place where students can practice about number and sequences. In the app breaks into three parts are fill-in, ascending order and descending order. Fill-in is the way to learn about the number and fill-n a number in order. Two parts of order numbers in ascending and descending. Parents can setup number with 5, 10 or 20.
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text:
Forensic 3D Scanning
3D scanning of a crime scene prior to evidence collection is an imperative part of 21st century crime scene documentation and examination.
Scanning systems like the Artec Ray speed up the process of crime scene investigation by creating an accurate three-dimensional representation of the scene of a crime. Police and insurance companies can use forensic 3D scanning to take measurements, inspect evidence, and analyze blood splatter or bullet trajectory.
Three-dimensional scan data is also frequently used in the courtroom. Juries can be taken into a 3D world that's more readily understandable than simple pictures and verbal scene description.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


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How to Become Your Child's Talent Manager
A talent manager represents her client, arranging auditions, negotiating contracts and protecting her rights. When the client is your child, things become more complicated, both because of your responsibilities as a parent and because of the age of the talent in question. As a parent of a future child star, you not only need to perform thorough research on what lies ahead, but also take up a new career path -- all the while ensuring your child has a healthy childhood.
Now You're Both Students
No child talent manager worth her salt forgets to perform research on child rights and laws. Laws exist to protect you and your child from exploitation, such as by ensuring a minimum wage and requiring adult presence prior to a certain age. Don't be the least bit afraid to ask questions when you're first starting out. Your first priority should be your child's safety.
Striking Out on Your Own
As a talent manager, you will be searching for auditions for your child. Registering him for these auditions will require some marketing skills, such as creating demo videos, tapes and portfolios. In addition, time management is necessary, as juggling your work, the audition time and your child's schooling will be a monumental task. Finally, when your child succeeds at an audition, your negotiation skills will be the main tool for actually landing him a job and a suitable amount of compensation. Put all of this together, and essentially you're running a business. You might even want to actually register it as a business for tax and liability purposes.
A Three-Person Team
If you have no background in business or negotiations, you might benefit from working with a talent agency instead of striking out on your own. You can easily find a list of talent agencies online. By contacting these agencies and discussing your needs and expectations, you can have a professional act as your proxy, which might lead to better deals and remove from you some of the responsibility for understanding the legal side of things.
Wearing Two Hats
Though you're now technically your child's manager, you are still her parent. Ensure that the drive for a successful acting, modeling or singing career for your child doesn't take priority over her childhood. Children still need love, encouragement, education and time to just be children. The balance among stage time, school time and parent-child time is in your hands 1. While you should take your child's work seriously, that work shouldn't impede on her education and personal growth.
- sokolovsky/iStock/Getty Images


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Saba, Lakatan, and Bongolan bananas could be considered additional or alternative to Cavendish fibers as source of raw materials for textile manufacture.
In the study conducted by a senior science research specialist at the Philippine Textile Research Institute (PTRI) on the potential of fibers from the trunks of six banana cultivars—Saba, Lakatan, Bongolan, Pakil, Saksik, and Tordan—for textile production, Saba shows potential for high fiber yield based on this cultivar's low residual gum content. Ms. Marites S. de Leon, the researcher, explained that the residual gum content is one of the major considerations in assessing cellulosic fiber's suitability for textile use. She stressed that fiber with very high gum content will not be economically viable for textile use because such fiber will require higher pretreatment inputs to attain the desired gum content level which results in low fiber yield. Among the six cultivars, Saba fibers have residual gum content close to that of the Cavendish fibers, which have been identified as suitable for textile purposes. The residual gum content of Bongolan and Lakatan, although significantly different from that of the Cavendish, is still within the acceptable gum content range.
In terms of strength, results of the study show that Lakatan was the strongest among the six cultivars, with mean tensile strength even higher than that of the Cavendish.


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Figure out what all the latin means. Many muscles have either the attachments and/or functions in the name, which can help you figure out the rest of them.
If you've got a series of muscles in a row (like in the forearm, for example) figure out a way to remember what order they're in, so if you're asked to identify one of them, you can go through the order and see where it fits.
Think about the action to help figure out the attachment sites (if it's going to abduct, it's got to pull on the bone THIS way, so it's got to attach here) or vice versa.
Ask for easy ways to remember particular muscles ("So X muscle is the one with the really long, thin tendon, right?" "All the flexors are on this side of the arm, right?" and so on).
And yes, study a lot.
For me personally, it is easier for me to learn the muscles if I try to connect their action with where they're located in relation to other structures rather than making flashcards and memorizing the info for each muscle by itself. But if flashcards and memorization work for you, go for it. It just doesn't do me a darn bit of good.


Traveling Luck for Jasika, Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of (general), FYR Macedonia
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Where is Jasika?
What's around Jasika?
Wikipedia near Jasika
Where to stay near Jasika
The timezone in Jasika is Europe/Skopje
Sunrise at 04:57 and Sunset at 18:18. It's Dark
Latitude. 41.5314°, Longitude. 20.8403°
WeatherWeather near Jasika; Report from Ohrid, 47.8km away
Weather :
Temperature: 21°C / 70°F
Wind: 13.8km/h North
Cloud: Scattered at 4000ft
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Geographic features & Photographs around Jasika, in Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of (general), FYR Macedonia
populated place;
a place where ground water flows naturally out of the ground.
a tract of land without homogeneous character or boundaries.
a mountain range or a group of mountains or high ridges.
small primitive houses.
a high conspicuous structure, typically much higher than its diameter.
an elongated depression usually traversed by a stream.
Airports close to Jasika
Ohrid(OHD), Ohrid, Former macedonia (47.8km)
Skopje(SKP), Skopje, Former macedonia (96.2km)
Tirana rinas(TIA), Tirana, Albania (112.9km)
Pristina(PRN), Pristina, Yugoslavia (139km)
Aristotelis(KSO), Kastoria, Greece (150.8km)
Airfields or small airports close to Jasika
Alexandria, Alexandria, Greece (203.3km)
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Indian sub-continent voters to play a decisive role in general election
Over 25 constituencies have 40 per cent voters from ethnic minorities
14th April 2010: Indian sub-continent voters will play a more decisive role in the 2010 general election than ever before.
A new research suggests nothing less than 25 parliamentary constituencies have more than 40 per cent of their voting population from ethnic minorities. In fact, the voters are from the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities.
The parliamentary constituencies where over 40 per cent of the population was categorised as being from an ethnic minority in the 2001 census include East Harrow 66.3 per cent, Birmingham Ladywood 64.9 per cent, Birmingham Sparkbrook and Small Heath 64.8 per cent, and Brent South 64.6 per cent.
The research, by Prof. Muhammad Anwar of the University of Warwick, even suggests they are more likely to turn out to vote than their white neighbours.
Prof. Anwar has asserted that ethnic minorities voter registration is approaching levels of white voters; and their turnout is now higher than the national average.
In the previous general election held in 2005, the national average turnout was 61.4 per cent, but for Bangladeshi voters it was 76 per cent, Pakistanis 70 per cent and Indians 67 per cent.
The higher levels of turn-out among Asians and particularly Muslim groups are likely to continue in future.
The findings come just about for weeks before the general elections.
The research says the minorities are still 'massively undervalued and under-represented', even though the ethnic minority vote will be more important than ever before.
Prof. Anwar says in recent years Muslims in Britain and elsewhere have become a focus of attention for politicians and the media. As such, Muslims themselves have become more conscious of their rights and responsibilities as British citizens, including participation in the electoral process.
UKIP calls for end to mass uncontrolled immigration
Let illegal immigrants become British citizens: Lib-dem


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HARPER, TEXAS. Harper is on U.S. Highway 290 twenty-three miles west of Fredericksburg in far western Gillespie County. It is in the heart of the Hill Country and has an ideal climate. The site was first settled by the Matthew Taylor and Eli McDonald families in 1863. A historical marker shows the site of the McDonald massacre of August 1864, in which two members of the McDonald family were killed by Kiowa Indians, a young mother and four children were captured, and the elderly Aunt Hannah escaped. The first post office was established in 1883 by George Franklin Harper, for whom the town was named. Harper celebrated its centennial in 1963, and more than 15,000 visitors attended the festivities. In 1985 the town served a large ranching area and had six churches, a fire department and ambulance service, a public school, and growing residential subdivisions. As of 1982 Harper had the oldest bank still operating in Gillespie County. The population was 383 in 1982 and 1990. By 2000, however, it had grown to 1,006.
Kathleen E. and Clifton R. St. Clair, eds., Little Towns of Texas (Jacksonville, Texas: Jayroe Graphic Arts, 1982).
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.Ola Mae Hopf, "HARPER, TX," Handbook of Texas Online (_URL_ accessed June 16, 2013. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.


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Across the street from 'Iolani Palace sits Ali'iolani Hale. Built in 1874 by King Kamehameha V, the building was originally intended to house the royal palace and serve as the seat of government. Due to escalating costs--even then building costs could get out of control--the palace portion was skipped--giving the subsequent king--Kalakaua--something to build.
The story about this property that I find most interesting relates to the statue in front. It was cast in Paris, France in 1883 and is a monument to King Kamehameha I, also known as "King Kamehameha the Great." As the statue made its way from France to Hawai'i, the ship that was carrying it sank near the Falkland Islands. So a second statue--this one--was commissioned and, eventually, installed in front of Ali'iolani Hale. Surprisingly, though, the first one was eventually recovered, cleaned up and placed in Kapa'au on Big Island--the birthplace of King Kamehameha I. Every year on the day set aside as a state holiday--June 11--both statues are adorned with lei in an elaborate ceremony to celebrate the monarch who conquered the Hawaiian Islands and established the Kingdom of Hawai'i in 1810.
King Kamehameha is remembered for the Kanawai Mamalahoe or the "Law of the Splintered Paddle," which promotes compassion and protection for noncombatants during war. He declared, "Let every elderly person, woman and child lie by the roadside in safety." It became the first written law of the Kingdom of Hawai'i and still exists in the state constitution (Article 9, Section 10) today as a public safety reminder.


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|scientific name Chrysanympha formosa (Grote)|
common name Formosa Looper Moth
Sandy jackpine forest and other well-drained boreal woodlands.
Adults are on the wing in Alberta in July and early August.
A medium-size (3.0-3.5 cm. wingspan) moth with pale grey (sometimes with a pinkbrown tint) forewings and dark hindwings. The forewing pattern is unusual and unmistakable. A wide, dirty white swath runs in an arc from the wing base along the leading edge to about mid-wing, with the area below this grey-brown. The outer half of the forewing has a series of narrow wavy bands of black, dark grey-brown, and brown shading into a broad subterminal pale grey band and a narrow blackish terminal band followed by fine pale and dark grey bands. Hindwings are dark smoky brown, faintly banded and slightly darkening toward the outer margin. The antennae are simple, and both the sexes are similar.
The adults are nocturnal and come to light. There is a single brood each year
At the western edge of the range in Alberta. No concerns.
No Alberta data. Elsewhere, the larvae are reported to feed on Blueberry (Vaccinium sp.) and Huckleberry (Gaylussacia sp.), both in the family, Ericaceae.
From Newfoundland west across the southern boreal forest to central and northern Alberta, south to Maryland, Kentucky and North Carolina. In Alberta, it has been collected in the Boreal forest in the eastern half of the province, from the Edmonton area north to Lake Athabasca.
Comments are published according to our submission guidelines. The EH Strickland Entomological Museum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed.


University of Colorado at Boulder
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ECEN 5682 - Theory and Practice of Error Control Codes
Catalog Data ECEN 5682 (3). Theory and Practice of Error Control Codes. Block and convolutional codes for reliable transmission of digital data over unreliable noisy channels. Algebraic and dsp characterizations of cyclic codes such as BCH/RS codes. Decoding algorithms for block codes and the Viterbi algorithm. Graph codes and iterative decoding.
Credits and Design 3 credit hours. Elective course.
Prerequisite(s) ECEN 3300, Linear Systems
Textbook Blahut, Algebraic Codes for Data Transmission, Cambridge Press.
Course Objectives To learn about the theory and usage of modern error-control codes.
Topics Covered
 1. Linear block codes.
 2. Galois fields, finite field arithmetic.
 3. Cyclic codes.
 4. Decoding algorithms for BCH codes and RS codes.
 5. Spectral description of cyclic codes.
 6. Convolutional codes.


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Our Kindergym program involves participation by you and your child in a fun, safe environment with qualified coaches.
The 45 minute program teaches children aged 18 months to 5 years, movement skills and develops overall coordination. Kids will enjoy free play as well as structured activities making learning fun.
- Creatively explore and practise skills safely, building self-confidence and self-esteem.
- Positive experiences influencing a child's outlook on physical activity for life.
- Child and parent/carer interact in a fun environment.
- Activities are safe, stimulating and challenging.
- Parent/Carer involvement reinforces the healthy lifestyle message.
- Free Play – children have the opportunity to explore and interact at their own pace.
- Group Activities – music is used to encourage movement and rhythm in combination with hand held apparatus.
- Circuit Activities – incorporate climbing, balancing, swinging, rolling and jumping.
We are endorsed by Gymnastics Australia as a Kindergym Australia Provider.


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1 Associate Degree Programs in Political Science in Kapolei, USA 2023
Political science attempts to analyze and deconstruct government entities and the social structures that they influence. A strong component of the study involves understanding the political behavior of citizens and various philosophical and ethical issues.
Education in the United States is mainly provided by the public sector, with control and funding coming from three levels: state, local, and federal, in that order. The common requirements to study at a higher education level in United States will include your admissions essay (also known as the statement of purpose or personal statement), transcript of records, recommendation/reference letters, language tests
An associate degree is an undergraduate degree that typically awarded by community colleges, technical colleges and 4-year colleges. If pursued on a full-time basis, an associate degree usually takes two years to obtain.
- Associate Degree
- Social Sciences
- Political Science


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Healthy Reasons for Eating Gulf Shrimp
The variety of gulf shrimps is wide and it ranges from brown shrimps, to white shrimps and finally to brown shrimps. A slight variation is caused on the taste as a result of the difference and variation in the species despite the fact that they share similar flavor and sweetness. Due to that, shrimp cocktail is almost in every menu and in almost every restaurant and hotels. Due to the health value and the nutritional content of the gulf shrimp, the demand and supply of the gulf shrimps is increasing significantly. Trying to order a shrimp cocktail in one of the many visits to the coastal region will never be regretted since it is highly advisable and recommended.
Gulf shrimps to be precise and crustaceans in general are sea foods that contain more than one benefit. If you are new to the coastal foods, it is high time you start ordering and eating the coastal foods. To begin with, sea foods such as gulf shrimps are low in calories hence healthy for your health. As compared to other sources of proteins such as chicken eggs which contain even higher calories, a single gulf shrimp provides about 7 calories which is good for your health.
The other importance of sea food such as gulf shrimp is that they are rich in protein. While seeking for an alternative sources of protein, more so people who are allergic to meat, considering the option of gulf shrimp is highly recommended. Gulf shrimps also contain minimal fats and carbohydrate other than the fact that they are rich in protein. By that, the combination is practically good for the purpose of maintaining a healthy body and health. As compared to the proteins from gulf shrimps provide about 20grams of proteins which is just a few less than that of chicken, when all factors are held constant.
Sea foods such as gulf shrimps also provide key nutrients. In our day to day life the nutrients provided by gulf shrimp plays an important role. Gulf shrimps contains and is also a source of two major types of antioxidant. For instance, selenium is the first one to plays a role in immunity and thyroid function besides being a major mineral, it is an important antitoxin which helps in fighting damaged particles called free radicals whose main aim is to damage cell membrane and the DNA thereby leading to early maturity, aging and your body immune system becomes viable to diseases. Astaxanthin is the next one and plays part in the primarily color pigment in shrimps. One main known trigger of aging and diseases is reducing inflammation which can easily be done by this mineral.


Saturday, August 30, 2008
Learning to Win
Recently Brett Steenbarger wrote on his blog that the inability to deal with trauma is often a trader's enemy. Not sexual trauma, not childhood traumas, but the trauma of losing money.
Ever since Freud psychotherapy has labored under the notion that the best way to deal with trauma is to talk it out. It has recommended telling the story of your trauma, gathering up a few insights, and then pretending that you understand the meaning of what happened to you. This enhanced consciousness is supposed to constitute cure.
Need I mention that it never works. In some recent posts Steenbarger offers a good explanation of why. Losing money in a bad trade or in a series of bad trades sets up a conditioned response, one that bypasses thought and reflection. Negative experiences-- like losing money-- are more powerful and influential because they cause people to vow "never again." If you have been hurt badly at some activity the chances are good that you will avoid, not only that activity, but anything that remotely suggests it.
Steenbarger adds that since traumas bypass thought to create automatic responses they cannot be influenced by more and better thinking.
Let us say that a trader was traumatized by a loss? How will he conduct himself to avoid it every happening again?
He may be too quick to take small profits because he panics about the possibility that they will disappear. He might allow his bad positions to decline too long because he refuses to take a small loss.
In the end he might become accustomed to losing money because he has gained extensive experience at it. And he will accept it because he will feel that trauma has defined him as a loser.
No one is going to get over this by talking it out or talking it over or talking it through. No one is going to learn to win by discovering why he likes to lose or why he wanted to lose.
Once traumatized a person might well need a trading coach to guide him back into the markets. A coach will teach him how to get out of his Self and back into reading the markets. He will not do as many therapists do and puff up his self-esteem. As Steenbarger said: "It's not about thinking more positively about yourself; it's about removing the self from pure performance skill."
Still and all, someone who has gotten too used to losing must figure out some way to learn how to win. And as Steenbarger suggests, he must do it through experience, through the experience of winning.
How do you do that? East... you take up golf... or tennis or bridge. You go outside of trading to find an activity where you can learn to win with humility and lose with grace.
Golf is like meditation, only with a competitive kicker. You do not have to introspect to discover how good your concentration is... the trajectory of the ball provides an instant reality check.
Golf will teach you how not to get too full of yourself when you sink a long putt or make a great chip shot. It will teach you how to get your concentration back when your drive lands in the lake.
Similarly, with bridge. If you are not in the bridge world you may not know but a great many of the finest bridge players are also traders, generally options traders.
I would add here that children need to learn how to win and how to lose, that is, how to complete, when they are growing up. This ought not to need emphasis, but there are enough mentally-deficient educators in our country who want to ban dodge ball and spelling bees, to say nothing of grades, because they are afraid someone's feelings will be hurt. What they are really doing is creating children who are incapable of dealing with failure. It is a sorry legacy of the self-esteem movement, and one can only hope it has not infected too many school systems.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Is Virtue Its Own Reward?
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Forever Nuance
You would have thought that one of the great lessons of the 2004 presidential election was: whatever you do, do not do nuance. Apparently not.
The word has recently been floated as the best explanation of Barack Obama's less than stellar performance last week at Saddleback.
When the candidate did not give straight answers to Pastor Warren's straight questions, the pundits lined up to explain that his mind was so subtle and so brilliant that it sees all sides of all issues. Only a great mind can see the complexities of all issues and weight all of the possible and imaginable considerations. The pundits want us all to think that Obama's answers exist on a higher plane, one that would barely be intelligible to people from Kansas. That plane is the plane of nuance.
The defense is similar to one offered by James Fallows in The Atlantic Monthly. Fallows declared that Obama was not very good in the candidate debates because he was the thinking person's candidate. Just like Pres. Adlai Stevenson.
Nuance did not work last time and it will not work this time... and not because it's a French word.
A president leads by setting policy, not by inspiring people with lofty thoughts or impressing them with how smart he is. A candidate must tell us what he is going to do. When he traffics in nuance people think that he is inviting them to wallow in his indecision.
Perhaps this appeals to people who have done a lot of therapy. They, in particular, have learned to refrain from taking action, the better to introspect, to free associate, to express their feelings, and to develop their poetic side. If you follow those guidelines strictly you will not become president, you will become dysfunctional.
If the candidate does not have a clear policy to address a problem then people will rightly assume that he is either not going to do anything or that he is going to make it up as he goes along.
If public policy were based on nuance then we would be writing the history of the Cuomo presidency. Policy has to be clear, precise, concise, and intelligible to large numbers of people. Otherwise how will the staff understand what it is supposed to do.
Given the choice between a wrong policy and no policy, an intelligent electorate will usually choose the former. Not for lack of intelligence but because they are smart enough to know what makes for leadership.
Most people would rather do something than nothing. In 1948 Harry Truman ran a successful campaign against a do-nothing Congress.
Deep thinkers love nuance. They love to get lost in their thoughts because then they feel that they are masters of their domain. The more detached they are from reality the more they love nuance.
They love it when a candidate offers nuanced answers because that makes them feel that he is one of them, and that he is raising their status in the world. They love it when they can feel that he is bright like them. Unfortunately then end up supporting candidates who would rather be bright than president.
Policy is like what Hollywood producers call "high concept." Anyone who has ever pitched a screen play knows that it must have a concept, a one-sentence plot synopsis. An effective script, like an effective presidency, must have a unity of action.
A policy is not a theme; it is not an inspirational message. To grasp what it is, take a few examples. Among the better know policies is: containment. George Kennan first proposed this one-word policy as the guiding principle of American conduct of the Cold War. It was surely different from the allied policy in World War II, which was: unconditional surrender.
The New Deal was a series of policy proposals. So was the Contract with America. In 2006 Congressional election Democrats ran on an end-the-war policy. Republicans seemed to be running on more-of-the-same. Of course, the Democrats won.
Both McCain and Obama became presumptive nominees because they articulated clear Iraq policies. McCain revived his candidacy by proposing a policy called: the surge. Obama rode his policy of "end the war" to the Democratic nomination.
Of course, that policy debate is now past history. Both candidates now need to redefine themselves by proposing new policies to address other issues.
This is being played out in the current debate over energy independence. McCain and the Republicans have been winning the debate because their policy: Drill here; drill now... is much clearer and actionable than any Democratic alternative. We may not be able to drill out way out of the problem, but we are certainly not going to think out way out of it.
I invite anyone to explain the Obama energy policy in four words or less. The Democrats may be right; they may be wrong. They are not going to win an election on an incoherent set of contradictory ideas that appear to be a grab-bag for special interest groups.
Despite what David Brooks says, I do not think that the Obama campaign needs a theme. I also do not think that it has been losing ground because it has been ineffective at counterpunching. And I do not believe that Obama is being dragged down by the company he kept in the past.
No, Obama's problem is that his candidacy is not defined by any policies. His master themes are not policies. "Change" is not a policy; "hope" is not a policy. A grammatically incorrect book title-- I hope I am not the only one who has noticed that The Audacity of Hope is incorrect in English grammar-- does not lead to policies.
For the Obama convention to succeed it must go beyond stirring rhetoric and inspirational messages. As the McCain campaign has already figured out, these easily lend themselves to ridicule. Obama is running for Commander in chief, not pastor in chief.
Success or failure will be measured by whether or not you can say after the convention what Obama's policy proposals are


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Long-distance migration: evolution and determinants
Long distance migration has evolved in many organisms moving through different media and using various modes of locomotion and transport. Migration continues to evolve or become suppressed as shown by ongoing dynamic and rapid changes of migration patterns. This great evolutionary flexibility may seem surprising for such a complex attribute as migration. Even if migration in most cases has evolved basically as a strategy to maximise fitness in a seasonal environment, its occurrence and extent depend on a multitude of factors. We give a brief overview of different factors (e.g. physical, geographical, historical, ecological) likely to facilitate and/or constrain the evolution of long distance migration and discuss how they are likely to affect migration. The basic driving forces for migration are ecological and biogeographic factors like seasonality, spatiotemporal distributions of resources, habitats, predation and competition. The benefit of increased resource availability will be balanced by costs associated with the migratory process in terms of time (incl. losses of prior occupancy advantages), energy and mortality (incl. increased exposure to parasites). Furthermore, migration requires genetic instructions (allowing substantial room for learning in some of the traits) about timing, duration and distance of migration as well as about behavioural and physiological adaptations (fuelling, organ flexibility, locomotion, use of environmental transport etc) and control of orientation and navigation. To what degree these costs and requirements put constraints on migration often depends on body size according to different scaling relationships. From this expos it is clear that research on migration warrants a multitude of techniques and approaches for a complete as possible understanding of a very complex evolutionary syndrome. In addition, we also present examples of migratory distances in a variety of taxons. In recent years new techniques, especially satellite radio telemetry, provide new information of unprecedented accuracy about journeys of individual animals, allowing re-evaluation of migration, locomotion and navigation theories.
- Biology and Life Sciences
- ISSN: 0030-1299


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6. The angle of elevation of the sun, when the length of the shadow of a tree √3 times the height of the tree, is:
7. The angle of elevation of the top of a tower from a certain point is 30°. If the observed moves 20 m towards the tower, the angle of elevation the angle of elevation of top of the tower increases by 15°. The height of the tower is
8. On the same side of tower, two objects are located. Observed from the top of the tower, their angles of depression are 45° and 60°. If the height of the tower is 150 m, the distance between the objects is-
9. The angle of depression of a point situated at a distance of 70m from the base of a tower is 60°. The height of the tower is-
10. A man on the top of a vertical observation tower observes a car moving at a uniform speed coming directly towards it. If it takes 12 minutes for the angle of depression to change from 30° to 45°, how soon after this will the car reach the observation tower?
Read More Section(Height and Distance)
Each Section contains maximum 70 questions. To get more questions visit other sections.


Cirebon is one of the oldest towns in West Java, Indonesia. It is located on the north Coast of Java Island.
At first, Cirebon was founded by Ki Gedeng Tapa and it was given the name Caruban after it had transformed into a crowded village. In Cirebon dialect, Caruban means unity. The name Caruban was suitable for the small village because a lot of Javanese, Sudanese, Arabic and Chinese merchants ran their businesses there. Then, the name Caruban was changed to Carbon and then Cerbon. Nowadays, it is a strategic and crowded town and people call it Cirebon.
Besides fascinating cultures and delicious foods, it has a lot of mystery stories and one of the mystical locations is Plagon.
Plagon is a well-known tourist attraction of high historical value. However, there live a great number of monkeys and the population has unceasingly increased.
The monkeys at the sacred place
It is said that the monkeys living at Plangon are the incarnation of the people who begged for riches and worshipped the monkey king. People also believe that the monkeys will live forever because they were cursed while they were praying for wealth. It's the sin which sticks on them till the end of the world.
According to the folklore, the monkey king will be very angry if human beings damage or destroy the peace of his community. The court of the monkey kingdom will carry out death penalty for those who ruin their residence as soon as possible.
According to the witness, a visitor took a baby monkey home and then he returned it the next day. The visitor said all his family members fell sick after he took the baby monkey home.
Some ignorant guys who caused damage to the environment were severely attacked by a troop of monkeys. After a few days in the hospital, all the guys who were seriously wounded passed away. Those who dare to disturb the monkeys will end up in death.
It is also said that a young couple who had romantic relationship at that place couldn't be separated and were taken to hospital by the locals, but the doctors were unable to save them.
The sharp bend in the road
While you're driving near that location, you will see a sharp bend in the road. A lot of accidents happened as they were the sacrifice rituals of the monkey djinns. It is also believed that the sharp bend is the spot where the evil spirits hang out. A big evil snakes often crosses the road and disturbs the driver surprisingly. You should be very careful and keep calm while you're driving.
A motorcyclist passed there and was stopped by a woman who needed help. Then, the motorcyclist took her to the destination. However, the woman sitting behind him suddenly disappeared. Goosebumps rose over his whole body and he rolled on the throttle with all his fear. The engine of the motorbike roared angrily, leaving the place like a mad horse.
The Monkey Empire
Ordinary people see the monkeys as wild animals. But the psychics claim that some of these monkeys are evil spirits and some ordinary ones are the pets belong to Prince Panjunan.
The Monkey Empire is divided in three territories and there won't be any conflicts among them. Each territory has the leader of the troop.
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The Things We Do: Why are World Cup Fans so Crazy?
Roxanne Bauer's picture
The World Cup started in Brazil on June 12. This means that the next few weeks will be filled with anger, anguish, joy, and triumph. Sports fans have always been deeply emotional and obsessed… but also incomprehensible to those who 'don't get it.' Why do fans paint their faces, dye their hair, or engage in bizarre rituals for good luck? Why do we still cheer for our teams despite corruption or other misdeeds?
Edward Hirt, a psychology professor at Indiana University in the US, has researched sports psychology, and he says, "As human beings, we have this desire to feel a sense of belonging or a sense of social connectedness with others, and being a part of different groups (gives) us identities." Scientists have shown that fans who feel personally invested in a team or who attend games and cheer with their fellow fans reap mental health benefits that come from feeling social connected.
The Things We Do: Will Money Make You Mean?
Roxanne Bauer's picture
In a TEDTalk published Dec 20, 2013, social psychologist Paul Piff shares the results of several research studies on how people behave when they feel wealthy. He concludes that while inequality is a complex and formidable challenge, there are bright spots, too.
In the first study, two participants are asked to play Monopoly, but one player is given more money than the other. Throughout the course of the game, the 'rich' player moved around the board louder, made sounds of dominance and non-verbal displays of power, and became ruder and less sympathetic to the 'poor' player. After the game ended and the rich player won, the rich player talked about what he/she did and bought during the game to explain the outcomethey did not mention the unfair advantage they were given at the start of the game.
Piff believes that Monopoly can be used as a metaphor for many contemporary societies in which some people are born with more access to resources, money and power.
TED Talks, Paul Piff
Trauma and Psychosocial Well-being: Is it our Business?
Alys Willman's picture
Here is a situation that's happened to me; maybe it's happened to you, too. You're on mission, finishing up a meeting. You're closing your notebook, your head's in the next meeting already, and one of the people you've just met with asks if you have a second.
Before you can react, she's telling you her story. It's a very difficult story, full of experiences you can't imagine living through yourself. She seems to have gone back into the story in her mind – her eyes are focused beyond you, her hands tremble, and her eyes water.
Assuming you are not a trained social worker, it's likely you have few skills you can immediately draw on to help her. And you wonder how many others like her are facing similar circumstances.
What does any of this have to do with our business? Our work brings us into contact with people and groups that have experienced extremely stressful events and situations – from grinding poverty, to forced displacement, war and natural disasters. We come into contact with some of the most wounded and most resilient people in the world. While that strength helps them survive in the face of huge challenges, these "invisible wounds" – if not addressed – take a huge toll on them and their loved ones.
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In a previous blog post, I wrote about a small airfare tax that's been implemented in a number of countries to help fight three of the world's deadliest diseases. The idea behind the initiative (UNITAID) is to raise funds by applying a small levy on domestic and international flights; a levy so small that most people do not even take notice. It's interesting what the success of this method says about us and human behavior. Let's say, had a traveler been given the option to donate $1 before purchasing the air ticket, the outcome of UNITAID would probably have been very different. While studies show that there's a strong connection between giving and the level of happiness, most people opt out. Why?
David Brooks of The New York Times points out that "we spend trillions of dollars putting policies and practices into place, but most of these efforts are based on the crudest possible psychological guesswork." Understanding behavioral sciences is important. As he points out, sometimes "behavioral research leads us to completely change how we think about an issue," and result in new policy approaches. He's referring to one well-known example, which has to do with default settings: "Roughly 98 percent of people take part in organ donor programs in European countries where you have to check a box to opt out. Only 10 percent or 20 percent take part in neighboring countries where you have to check a box to opt in." There's something magical about the check box!
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Only one week remains before TIGER TIGER is released to the world. You can pre-purchase your copy now directly from the Samhain website!
In the process of writing it, we learned a lot about writing, editing, and life in general. Here are our five favorite things we learned:
1. Writing a novel is like anything else that requires a lot of sustained effort over time (weight loss, marathon running, etc.). Learn how to put small, consistent work in on the project so that you don't burn out, but that you keep the momentum going.
2. Editing can be tough. Allow yourself the time to do it, and use tools like 30 On/30 Off to make it doable.
3. Collect a master document of things to look for in edits. If you make consistent errors with something (spelling manger instead of manager, etc.) then put that in your document so you know to look for it during edits, and you don't have to be paranoid about it during the writing stage.
4. Remember that it's play. Relax and enjoy the project and keep foremost in your mind that you're doing this because you love the characters and the story.
5. Trust your Inner Storyteller. Trust that the Story should be told and give yourself enough time to get the whole thing out onto the page.
Check out TIGER TIGER today!


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the universal law of Yin and Yang.
15. Beautiful Azalea Tree
An old Azalea, probably a Satsuki type, from the Collection of the National Bonsai and Penjing Mueseum at The United States National Arboretum. Azaleas bloom in spring, their flowers often lasting several weeks. In Chinese culture, the azalea is known as "thinking of home bush" (xiangsi shu) and is immortalized in old poetry and contemporary stories.


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Welcome to the second part. In the last blog post on Linear Regression with R, we have discussed about what is regression? and how it is used? Now we will apply that learning on a specific problem of prediction. In this post, I will create a basic model to predict bounce rate as function of page load time components. In next blog, I'd share how to improve the model to improve the prediction.
We know that bounce rate is important for a web site. Here, we want to identify relationships between bounce rate and time components of a web page(e.g. average page download time, average page load time, average server response time, etc.) and how much these time components impact on bounce rate? For this problem, we have collected data of various web sites from Google analytics. The data set contains following parameters.
- x_id – Id of the page
- ismobile – page visited is by mobile or not
Each parameter is tracked for a single page. We have 8488 rows in data set and we have calculated bounce rate for each page as below.
Bounce rate = (bounces / entrances)*100
Here, we want to know the impact of average server response time, average server connection time, average redirection time, average domain look up time, average page download time and average page load time on the bounce rate. So, we have rearranged the data set and removed x_id, country, page path, page title, entrances, page views, exits and bounces from the data set and appended bouncerate after calculating it. Now data set contains following parameters.
Let's use regression on this data set. In this problem, we want to identify the dependency of the bounce rate on time components. So, we will consider bouncerate as dependent variable and the rest of the parameters from the data set as independent variables. Regression model for our data set in R is as below
>Model_1 <- lm(bouncerate ~ avgServerResponseTime + avgServerConnectionTime + avgRedirectionTime + avgPageDownloadTime +avgDomainLookupTime + avgPageLoadTime)
We have generated the model nicely, but we are interested to know the relationships between bounce rate and and time components. Let's check summary of the model.
>summary(model_1) Output Call: lm(formula = bouncerate ~ avgServerResponseTime + avgServerConnectionTime + avgRedirectionTime + avgPageDownloadTime + avgDomainLookupTime + avgPageLoadTime) Residuals: Min 1Q Median 3Q Max -98.276 -19.816 -1.169 19.805 107.705 Coefficients: Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|) (Intercept) 49.10686 0.32862 149.435 < 2e-16 *** avgServerResponseTime -0.85724 0.17154 -4.997 5.93e-07 *** avgServerConnectionTime 2.02335 0.55566 3.641 0.000273 *** avgRedirectionTime -0.37822 0.06368 -5.939 2.97e-09 *** avgPageDownloadTime 0.31975 0.12172 2.627 0.008631 ** avgDomainLookupTime 4.14929 0.88525 4.687 2.81e-06 *** avgPageLoadTime 0.04684 0.01896 2.470 0.013528 * --- Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1 Residual standard error: 26.74 on 8481 degrees of freedom Multiple R-squared: 0.01339, Adjusted R-squared: 0.0127 F-statistic: 19.19 on 6 and 8481 DF, p-value: < 2.2e-16
Let's understand the result. In the result, coefficients are shown in the column Estimate std. So, the equation for bounce rate becomes as below.
bouncerate = 49.107 + (-0.86)avgServerResponsetime + (2.03)avgServerconnectionTime + (-0.38)avgRedirectionTime + (0.32)avgPageDownloadTime + (4.14)avgDomainLookuptime + (.05)avgpageLoadtime
As we can see from the equation, avgDomainLookupTime impacts more on bounce rate. If avgDomainLookupTime increase by 1 unit then bounce rate increase by 4.14. At last, we succeed in identifying the relationship between bounce rate and time components of a web page using regression.
Here, we cannot say that the relationships estimated from this regression model(model_1) are perfect, because the model result is generated after model fitted to the data set(i.e. model learns from the data and then estimate coefficients values) and data set may contain some unreliable observations. It is necessary to improve the model, so we can identify the relationships of bounce rate and time components very precisely. In the next blog, we will discuss about how to improve the model? and summary of the improved model.


Microsoft Patents Realistic Avatars
Microsoft Patents Realistic Avatars
It appears that Microsoft plan on revamping its Avatar system after registering the patent "Avatar Individualised by Physical Characteristics".
Microsofts aim is to eliminate the sense of artificiality, allowing people to see if other players portray themselves as they actually are, as well as encouraging exercise.
The Patent states:
"An Avatar generator for a virtual environment reflects a physiological characteristic of the user, injecting a degree of reality into the capabilities or appearance.
"Thereby, many of the incentives of the real world are replicated in a virtual environment.
"Physiological data that reflect a degree of health of the real person can be linked to rewards of capabilities of a gaming Avatar, an amount of time budgeted to play, or a visible indication.
Thereby, people are encouraged to exercise. Physiological data that reflect the health and perhaps also mood also improve social interaction in virtual environments.
"People seeking to meet and become acquainted with particular types of people are not thwarted by the artificiality of Avatars,"
The data can apparantly be retrieved through the use of physiological monitors that determine heart rate, blood sugar levels etc.
Article from
Related posts:
 1. Microsoft Patents New Invite System
 2. Kinect Spotted in Microsoft Store For $149, Microsoft Still Denying Price
 3. Microsoft Changes Increments of Purchasable Microsoft Points
 4. Microsoft Reveal New Xbox Live Feature
 5. Microsoft's Natal to be available on PCs
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Imagine a system that uses large-ish hex string identifiers, e.g. similar to UUIDs. To make the math easy, lets say we make a table with a million have 20 character IDs:
create table ids1 (id character varying(20)); -- takes 2091 ms insert into ids1 select '0123456789ABCDEF0123' from generate_series(1, _PHONE_) num
We can get the size of the table pretty easily:
select nspname || '.' || relname as "relation", pg_size_pretty(pg_relation_size(C.oid)) AS "size" from pg_class C left join pg_namespace on (N.oid = C.relnamespace) where nspname not in ('pg_catalog', 'information_schema') and relname like 'ids%' order by pg_relation_size(C.oid) desc public.ids1 50 MB
So this isn't a huge table, but if you have 20 tables with only a single ID, you have 1 GB, and pretty soon you're at large sizes.
We can inspect the type information, and see that we're using 4 (!) bytes for each character, but since this is hex, each character is only worth a nibble (half byte), so we could be able to store this in ten bytes, rather than 96.
select data_type, character_maximum_length, character_octet_length from information_schema.columns where table_name like 'ids%' order by column_name, table_name
character varying 20 80
The character type looks the same, but lets try it, just to see:
-- 2300 ms to create / 50 MB disk create table ids2 (id character(20));
Postgres types can have both size and automatic checks on them. If you switch out to bytea, it does less checks, so it loads the table a lot faster, but it turns out it's the same size:
2091 ms to create / 50 MB disk create table ids3 (id bytea);
There is also a UUID type. This is more like what we want – but it has to be 32 bytes. Hopefully the internals are more sane than using a string – when I built this table, we've now lost some time in construction, but also 8 MB:
create table ids4 (id UUID); insert into ids4 select '0123456789ABCDEF0123000000000000'::UUID from generate_series(1, _PHONE_) num -- 2231 ms to create / 42 MB on disk
We can create a table that stores a bit array instead, which is interesting. Since we have 20 characters, and each is 4 characters, we need an 80 bit wide table:
create table ids5 (id bit(80)); -- 2251 ms to create / 42 MB on disk insert into ids5 select x'0123456789ABCDEF0123'::bit(80) from generate_series(1, _PHONE_) num
This is the same size as the UUID table but more accurately represents what we want (it would not surprise me if UUID used this internally).
Just to convince ourselves that this is correct (and not a weird storage method like ASCII -> Int -> Bits), we can do the following:
select x'A'::bit(4) -- 1010 select x'B'::bit(4) -- 1011 select x'C'::bit(4) -- 1100 select x'AB0C'::bit(16) -- _PHONE_ 0000 1100
A lot of your ID disk space will end up being consumed by indexes, so it's important to check that too. The effect on indexes is even more dramatic than on the base table:
-- 9621 ms / 39 MB create index idx1 on ids1(id); -- character varying -- 9772 ms / 39 MB create index idx2 on ids2(id); -- character(20) -- 1591 ms / 30 MB create index idx3 on ids3(id); -- bytea -- 2191 ms / 39 MB create index idx4 on ids4(id); -- uuid -- 3181 ms / 30 MB create index idx5 on ids5(id); -- bit(80)
I'm not sure why bytea loaded so fast – for this exercise I'm only interested in the total size, so bit(80) still wins.
Depending on your situation, you may also be able to use integer columns. Be warned, however, that these cannot be cast to a bigint:
select x'0123456789ABCDEF0123'::bigint ERROR: bigint out of range SQL state: 22003
Nor a numeric:
select x'0123456789ABCDEF0123'::numeric(20, 0) ERROR: cannot cast type bit to numeric SQL state: 42846
So, when using a system with excessively large data stores, you may be able to save some space by switching to bit strings. Integers data types can be feasible as well, but would be much easier if you start a system from scratch using unsigned integer IDs. They are otherwise quite small and preferred from the storage perspective, and popular in data warehousing situations (note that int types are usually multiples of some number of 2^n * 8 so you may have situations where bit() is still useful, like 24 string IDs).


Ni.kou sterling silver triangle ring
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-Material: 925 sterling silver ●Size: The width is about 2mm, the thickness is about 1.5mm, the ring can be customized, please measure your international size after measurement. You can also type the word, if you need to type the word, please also note it
Ni.kou sterling silver triangle ring
-Material: 925 sterling silver ●Size: The width is about 2mm, the thickness is about 1.5mm, the ring can be customized, please measure your international size after measurement. You can also type the word, if you need to type the word, please also note it to the designer! ● Attention! Please be sure to confirm the size and type of the ring before ordering. Since the goods are all made after payment, if the payment is made two days after the order is placed, the modification fee will be charged and the part cannot be changed. ●Bound measurement method & comparison table For the production of the ring, the size of the "International Form of the Store Form" is the main one. Please note the required "International Fence Size" when placing the order. Due to the difference in the size of each country and the size of each family, if there is a measurement in the silver building or other stores, it is recommended to measure the comparison in the following ways to improve the accuracy. ✽Measurement method 1. Go directly to the Silver House. The jewellery shop asks the clerk to help measure the size of the "International Wai". Pay attention to the non-US Wai. Hong Kong Wai. Japan Wai. 2. Place your ring on the ruler, measure the "inner ring diameter" of the ring (excluding the ring thickness), and compare the "inner diameter" of the table below. 3. Use an inelastic paper strip or tape measure to tighten the "widest point" around the circle to wear your finger. The measured length is then compared to the ruler. (Because the measurement method varies from person to person, this method has a large error.) 4. Use NI.KOU ring card measurement, link as follows Reminder: If your joint is wider than your finger, use the joint size. Try to measure your fingers in the evening, so when the finger is at its maximum. The average person has left and right hands, and the size of the finger will vary. Because the fingers will be inflated and contracted, avoid measuring the fingers cold or touching the hot water to avoid inaccurate measurement. ●Up to 10 words for free (including spaces and symbols) This ring is limited to the inner ring. ● Font 1mm, limited to English uppercase font "ABC...Z" and the number "0~9" Symbol limit "." " & " ●**Before placing an order, please make sure that the size and the typing content are correct, and the customized products are not returned!** This item is "order-to-order" and will only be produced after payment. It will take an average of 7 production days (excluding holidays and delivery time). ●Because the goods are all handmade, there will be traces of hand-made, such as asymmetry, typing interval or typing force, etc. There is no way to be as perfect as a machine, the size and the knocking will be slightly different from the photo, within the ring The diameter will have an error of +/- 0.03cm, and the acceptor will place an order again. ●Performance rules 1. If you need to modify the ring after receiving, you will be charged the modification fee and the return shipping fee. Please refer to the following instructions for the modification fee. Please return the ring package and transfer the fee. 2. Provide the first modification fee within 1 ring, within one month after receipt of the item. Supplement: If it has been modified once and is modified to 1 within the second time, it is not in the free qualification. Change the cost of the ring: Within 0.5 ~ 3 rings, one modification fee is NT$100 Within 3.5 to 6 rings, a modification fee of NT$200 6 rings or above do not provide modification Change the small fee: 0.5 (inclusive) or more, one modification fee NT$200 ●Maintenance The silver chain part is not provided for maintenance. If the jewelry part is to be repaired, please provide pictures and discuss with the designer. Depending on the damage status, you need to pay the freight separately. ●About our hand made accessories We use 925 sterling silver and pure copper, each hand-finished jewelry, They are all completed by the traditional techniques of metalworking - sawing, knocking, carving, welding, boring, setting, throwing, etc. The texture of the hand that is welded and forged is retained. ●Maintenance knowledge 1. All accessories, no matter what kind of material are afraid of moisture, especially rain, sweat, perfume, bathing hot springs, chemical products, etc., will seriously damage the jewelry to produce oxidation, so should try to avoid and stay away. 2. Jewelry is recommended to wear often, the body's oil can make the jewelry produce a natural and lustrous beauty. 3. Jewelry will produce oxidation, vulcanization or oxidative yellowing and blackening signs with time. You can use a moist soft toothbrush with toothpaste or toothpaste to lightly brush the surface, or use a silver cloth or a copper cloth to wipe the original. Metallic luster. 4. If the jewelry is specially vulcanized, do not over-wipe it to avoid the vulcanization design effect disappearing. 5. If you are worried that the chemical emulsion of silver cloth and copper cloth will cause skin allergies, you can wash it off with water and dry it before wearing it. 6. Natural stone, crystal and pearl can be cleaned with water and then wiped with a soft cloth. 7. When not wearing, clean and put it in a sealed bag to save the oxidation speed. 8. Do not put all kinds of accessories in the same jewelry box. The hardness of the jewelry will rub against each other and cause wear and tear. 9. Never use any other tools to clean your accessories. It will leave scratches on the surface of the jewelry. If a brush is necessary, use a clean or very soft brush to brush your jewelry. Origin / manufacturing methods Made in Taiwan handmade
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|Cemetery notes and/or description:|
Grafton, Utah is a ghost town located in Washington County alongside the Virgin River, outside the canyon mouth of Zion National Park.
This area of Utah was called "Dixie" by early Mormon pioneers, who settled the St. George area soon after immigration to the west (the St. George LDS temple was completed before the Salt Lake City temple). The pioneers hoped to raise cotton in the valley of the Virgin River, plus other vital warm weather crops essential in the rugged and isolated intermountain region, an area they called "Deseret."
Efforts to grow cotton failed, leaving many ghost towns on the river above St. George. More successful were logging operations in the high country above Zion Canyon. Timber from this source was used to build the early city of St. George, along with the prominent. Ruins of early pioneer cable works built to lower timber down into the canyon can still be seen from the canyon floor today. The Dixie National Forest is a legacy which survives today.
The remaining buildings of the Grafton ghost town are a mix of authentic pioneer era structures and modern-built "period" movie sets constructed for the 1969 classic "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. These buildings are clearly recognizable to fans of the movie. All are located on private property, and trespassing will likely bring a quick visit from a Washington County Sheriff's deputy.
The Grafton Cemetery is an actual historic pioneer burial ground, and is open to the public. Located on a spur off the approach road leading to Grafton, the cemetery is tucked on high ground away from the river. Evidence of the early Mormon past is abundant within the cemetery, with graves of plural wives. Because this community failed during the pioneer era, burials at the Grafton Cemetery largely ceased before polygamy was banned within the LDS church in 1890. As a result, the Grafton Cemetery shows clear evidence of plural marriage without being obfuscated by ongoing burials in the modern era.
Another legacy of the Old West evident in Grafton Cemetery is deaths due to Indian attacks. Besides multiple graves of pioneer men identified as killed in specific incidents, the SE corner of the cemetery was reserved for burial of Native Americans who were killed in the same battles. The pioneers duly buried and marked the graves of these nameless warriors.
(text by D. Grizzle)


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For tax calculation, the law specifies that a business must deduct from an actual expense and must follow the regulation. Normally, a business which is a juristic person decides to calculate the tax from its net profit or be deductable at a lump-sum instead of actual expense.
For juristic person, the calculation for net profit is as follows;
Net profit for juristic person = (tax income - tax expenses)
This calculation derives from an amended item of net profit in accounting;
1. Tax revenue is a statement which is not recorded as an income for accounting principle, but it an income note for taxation principle; for example, a company's owner wants to take a loan from the company without any interest as the company is his own. Conversely, for tax law, there should be an interest for such loan as such money is the company's income, and the interest payment should not be lower than what specifies in the law.
2. Exempt revenue is some income unit. For the accounting principle it is considered as an income. However, for taxation principle it is not considered as an income. As a result, profit for taxation is lower than profit for accounting; for example, in case a dividend income from a limited company is calculated as a semi-income or the total amount is exempted.
3. Expense of forbidden expenditure is an expense occurred from of a business operation of juristic person, and it is recorded as an expense in an accounting period which such statement takes place. For taxation, however, this is not considered as an expense for net profit calculation. A limitation of expense for net profit calculation for a company or registered ordinary partnership as specified in Revenue Code.
4. Expense deductible at a greater amount is an expense statement that taxation principle specifies to deduct as an expense in a greater amount than accounting principle. As a result, profit for taxation is lower than accounting i.e. the more the expense in accounting is deducted, the double the expense in taxation is deducted.


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September 11, 2019
FDM allows you to print in various sparse fill densities, giving the molds an inherent porosity that results in a uniform vacuum to be drawn throughout the tool. This can greatly simplify the fabrication of the tool. In addition, FDM machines are capable of printing molds in a variety of durable, heat resistant plastics that prolong the life of the mold.
PolyJet (UV-Cured Photopolymer Jetting) is another common technology used for 3D printing molds. PolyJet-based machines build parts with fine layer resolution, and as a result, produce parts with very smooth surfaces. PolyJet vacuum form molds require little to no post processing and are great for making molds with organic and curvy surfaces.
PolyJet molds don't share the porosity of sparse fill FDM molds, but air vents can easily be designed into critical areas of the mold prior to printing, eliminating the labor and potential inconsistency of manual drilling.
Both technologies simplify the tool fabrication, allowing engineers and designers to test multiple tooling strategies concurrently, and shortening the time to produce the first articles of a design. Other additive manufacturing technologies can be considered.
TOOL DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
Draft - Adding draft to the vertical surfaces of a part will help when removing the mold from the newly formed plastic part. Best practice is to use a minimum draft angle of 1°-3° and a draft angle of 5° or more — this greatly helps when releasing the tool from formed parts. Undercuts can be successfully vacuum formed in special cases depending on your part geometry and material thickness.
Webbing - Geometries with deep draws and vertical walls are usually at risk for webbing during processing. More draft will help with webbing in these types of geometries. Shrink // Most plastic sheets shrink during the vacuum forming process. Shrinkage rates depend on the type of plastic used and its thickness, but usually range between 0.4% and 0.8%. You can accommodate for shrinkage in the mold design.
Sharp Corners - Use a minimum radius of curvature on tool features that is greater than the material thickness of the plastic you will be vacuum forming.
Venting - If molds are to be built in PolyJet, design vents to pull vacuum in female molds and in critical areas and recesses of male molds. Smaller diameter holes will be less noticeable on the surface of the formed parts, but size holes large enough that they are not too difficult to remove support from.


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The Heating System of the Winter Moth
When winter comes, many insect species inhabiting cold regions of the world die from cold or lack of food. That is because insects are delicate creatures, but there are some exceptions to this rule. For example, owl moths look like butterflies and at first sight seem very delicate. In reality, however, they are strong enough to survive tough winter conditions. Therefore these moths are also called "winter moths".
Like butterflies, a winter moth has two wings and a trunk to which these wings are joined. In order for this moth to fly, the temperature of its thorax to which its wings are joined should be 30oC (86oF). But the temperature where they live is usually 0oC (32oF) and even drops below zero degrees from time to time. How can winter moths survive such cold? What prevents them from freezing when they are motionless, and what enables them to fly in cold weather?
This moth species is created together with a special heating system that enables it to live under winter conditions. This system consists of several complementary features.
Before flight winter moths continuously tense the main muscles that are connected to the wings and make their wings vibrate. The rapid vibrating of the wings leads to an increase in the temperature of the insect's thorax. As a result of this increase, the temperature of the thorax may rise from 0oC (32oF) to 30oC (86oF) or even more. However, this is only one of the features that the moth needs to survive. In order to fly it is not sufficient for the winter moth merely to increase its body temperature. That is because the difference between the temperatures of the insect's body and of the atmosphere will result in loss of heat. In the same way as a glass of hot tea cools after a while, the moth's body will also cool. Therefore it will not help even if the moth keeps its wings vibrating. In order for the winter moth to fly and thus survive, another method is required to maintain the heat it has produced. This need is also met by a special structure that Allah created in the moth's body. Moths are covered with dense scales that reduce heat loss. Scientists have determined after research that a moth without scales cools twice as fast as those with scales.
These are some of the mechanisms in a winter moth that protect it from cold. The features mentioned above must have existed since this moth species came into being. Otherwise, the moth would have died of cold and this species would be extinct. One does not need to reflect at great length to understand that it is not a coincidence that only those species inhabiting cold regions possess these features that make them different from all other moths. Taking all kinds of measures to enable these creatures to survive in cold, Allah introduces Himself to us. In the Qur'an, Allah reveals that He knows where all creatures live:
There is no creature on the earth which is not dependent upon Allah for its provision. He knows where it lives and where it dies. They are all in a Clear Book. (Surah Hud: 6)
Such features in living creatures enable us to grasp Allah's power and artistry, and increase our faith in and love for our Lord. Communicating the amazing information you read to others, you may also be the means to increase other people's faith in Allah.


The Habeas Citebook: Ineffective Assistance of Counsel (2nd Edition)
The Habeas Citebook by Brandon Sample
Paperback, 275 pages. Written by Brandon Sample and Alissa Hull
Prison Legal News Publishing (2016). ISBN 978-0-_PHONE_-4-7
The Habeas Citebook: Ineffective Assistance of Counsel is a neatly-organized resource designed to assist litigants in advancing claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, the most common claim presented in post-conviction, habeas corpus proceedings. Citing cases from the United States Courts of Appeals and United States District Courts, both published and unpublished, The Habeas Citebook breaks down ineffective assistance of counsel cases into 40 categories. From cases describing lawyers failing to investigate a defense, to conflicts of interests and misadvise on appeal, The Habeas Citebook is an essential resource for those examining former counsel's performance, as well as for the formulation of well-supported claims of ineffective assistance.
The Habeas Citebook also contains extensive resource information for the prisoner putting together a habeas petition or other collateral attack on their conviction, including various rules and procedural codes in their entirety, sample briefs, and informed advice on procedural matters.
As one would expect from a text published by Prison Legal News, The Habeas Citebook is a quality, well-researched resource for both prisoners and attorneys alike.
Buy The Habeas Citebook on Amazon.
Pardons and Commutations of Sentences: The Complete Guidebook to Applying for Clemency
Paperback, 259 pages. Written by David L. Mathis and Brandon Sample, Esq.
Pardons and Commutations of Sentences by Brandon Sample
Prisology Press (2019). ISBN 978-_PHONE_
The President of the United States and the Governor of each state are empowered to grant pardons and commutations. A pardon can eliminate the collateral consequences of a conviction. A commutation can reduce the length of a sentence. In general, a pardon is sought after release from prison. A commutation, on the other hand, is used by prisoners to lessen their sentence. This easy-to-read guidebook is designed to assist individuals who want to apply for a pardon or commutation of sentence. The guidebook gives practical information about the process for applying for clemency, what to include in your petition, and provides answers about executive clemency in general. The guidebook is a "must have" for any individual who wants to navigate the complex process of applying for a pardon or commutation of sentence.
Buy Pardons and Commutations on Amazon.


Sygic GPS Navigation for iOS (version 18.x)
Free app with option to subscribe to Premium+
Route did not calculate due to an error message
Route calculation failed: Download missing map error
 - This error usually occurs when you are creating a route from one country to another, and the app is missing crucial maps of countries that need to be passed through along the way (for example, if you create a route from Spain to Germany, but are missing the map of France, or from California to Washington without the maps of Oregon or Idaho).
 - To avoid this error, simply make sure that all maps necessary for the route are downloaded. Maps can be added via Menu → Maps, or by tapping on the download prompt which is displayed directly on the map over countries/states not yet downloaded.
 Please note that at the moment, it is not possible to create routes between certain countries if they are from 2 different map providers (this affects mostly the maps that were recently added in the app, most countries across the World are not affected). We are currently looking into a technical solution that should make it possible in the near future. Until then, the only way to navigate to or from affected countries is to create routes to and from the borders.
Route Calculation Has Failed, Roads Limit Reached error
This particular error message appears when the app's routing algorithm reaches it's limit. To further improve it, we would like to ask you to submit any route that you tried to set up in the app in a ticket form from this article. Usually, there are a few reasons why this error appears:
 - The route is too long due to a specific setting. The route would be normally calculated, but because of a specific routing setting, for example highway avoidance, the route possibilities would be exceeded before the route would finish calculating. Please check your settings in Menu → Settings → Route planning tab.
 - The starting point or destination is set in a no-drive zone. In this case, the application would try to calculate the route which cannot be completed and will go on with the calculation until the route processing limit is reached. Try adjusting the destination or starting points slightly.
Route Calculation Has Failed, Other error
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Status: Ghost Town
Current Population: A few
Peak Population: ~3,000
Elevation: 5,298 Feet
Primary Mineral: Many minerals mined here
The town of Gold Hill established in 1892, was named for a gold bearing mountain just east of town. Gold Hill became famous for its location of many minerals including silver, gold, copper, lead, tungsten, and arsenic. This first boom died and the area was left behind.
The Deep Creek railroad was built into Gold Hill in 1917 and the town quickly bloomed. Arsenic was badly needed during World War 1 to control insects destroying the cotton fields of the South. Over 3,000 people lived and worked here as stores, a school, a pool hall, and a newspaper flourished. Then cheaper foreign sources of arsenic became available and the town faded.
World War 2 reawakened the town due to high demands of tungsten used in steel and for electric filaments. Tones were shipped out until the need was gone and the town of Gold Hill dwindled again.
From a sign on site
A United States post office operated at Gold Hill from 1911 to 1949.


Congratulations to graduate student Jarrod Moore of the Emili Lab, now a Kilachand Fellow in the Multicellular Design Program (MDP). Jarrod's research will focus on studying the pro-fibrotic cross-talk between cardiomyocytes and cardiac fibroblasts in a novel model for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a leading cause of sudden cardiac death in young adults. This research seeks to generate holistic molecular maps of these interactions, which will assist in discovering novel approaches for counteracting this irreversible scarring process and advancing cardiac research for these patients.
The MDP aims to steward a self-sustaining, vibrant community of BU scientists by providing a platform for BU scientists from across computer science, physics, mathematics, engineering, biology, and medicine to uncover the design, assembly, and control principles governing multicellular systems.


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Definitions of act:
- noun: something that people do or cause to happen
- noun: a legal document codifying the result of deliberations of a committee or society or legislative body
- noun: a short theatrical performance that is part of a longer program
Example: "He did his act three times every evening"
- noun: a subdivision of a play or opera or ballet
- noun: a manifestation of insincerity
Example: "He put on quite an act for her benefit"
- verb: perform an action, or work out or perform (an action)
Example: "Think before you act"
- verb: be engaged in an activity, often for no particular purpose other than pleasure
- verb: be suitable for theatrical performance
Example: "This scene acts well"
- verb: discharge one's duties
Example: "She acts as the chair"
- verb: behave in a certain manner; show a certain behavior; conduct or comport oneself
Example: "You should act like an adult"
- verb: play a role or part
Example: "She wants to act Lady Macbeth, but she is too young for the role"
- verb: perform on a stage or theater
Example: "She acts in this play"
- verb: pretend to have certain qualities or state of mind
Example: "He acted the idiot"
- verb: have an effect or outcome; often the one desired or expected
Example: "How does your idea work in practice?"
- verb: behave unnaturally or affectedly
Example: "She's just acting"
Search for act at other dictionaries: OneLook, Answers.com, Merriam-Webster
Help, Feedback, Customize, Android app, iPhone/iPad app
Copyright © 2013 Datamuse


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This plot shows the orbital height of the ISS over the last year. Clearly visible
are the re-boosts which suddenly increase the height, and the gradual decay
in between. The height is averaged over one orbit, and the gradual decrease
is caused by atmospheric drag. As can
be seen from the plot, the rate of descent is not constant and this variation is caused by
changes in the density of the tenuous outer atmosphere due mainly to solar activity.


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why did the white man (settlers) fear the Indians?
Above: The Sioux suround a pawnee warrior who was in a war party that tried to kill the Sioux people.
The white men (settlers) thought that the Indians were savages, the people who took children in the night, the boogymen. Most of the settlers wanted the indians to assimilate or killed.
Above: John Dunbars first contact with the Indians
Why was John Dunbars contact with the Indians successful? what was his attitude
John Dunbar was confident and paitent when first trying to make contact with the Indians because he liked their culture and lifestyle better than his and he wanted to learn from them, this gave him the reason to be so paitent. At first Johns contact wasn't successful because the Indians were afraid of him be he gradually began to speak their language with the help of stands with a fist who could speak both languages
Who made decisions in the tribe? describe how you saw the process in action
In the tribe the decions are made in a council of only men but overall the cheif made the final call.
we saw this in action when they were deciding what to do with the ''white man' / John Dunbar
The Indians were very traditional, in their way of life, their tools, their ways to hunt. The indians traditions were very different from those of the white men.
The indians hunt was were a warrior gain respect, honnor, and prestige. Before the hunt the tribe did the buffalo dance around the fire through the night and in the morning they would oack up their tipis and follow the buffalo to where ever they had gone to hunt the buffalo and when the hunt was over they would cut the tounge out of a buffalo and eat it raw as a delicacy.
What aspects of the traditional way of life did you observe? Choose one to describe in detail
The importance of the buffalo to the indian people was shown in many ways the first being the buffalo dance to give the luck while hunting the buffalo. the second being the indians use of the whole buffalo and not just the skins like the white man. When the indians found the buffalo dead and skined they were very solum and sad.
What evidence did you see to support the idea that the buffalo were very important to the indian people
Below: The Pawnee warriors sneak upon the Sioux Tribe
When John Dunbar gave his guns to the indians when there was an imminent threat of attack from the Pawnee tribe while the young men were away attacking another tribe, the way they fought changed, the guns made one warrior like two, the Sioux were ferocious and the guns gave them the upperhand and they drove the attacking Pawnee away.
How did having guns change the way the indians fought their enemies


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video above, their system currently allows drivers to steer a car left and right as well as accelerate and decelerate.
To do this, they use an Emotiv neuroheadset, essentially a helmet with 16 sensors that reads electromagnetic signals produced by the brain. The headset is trained to recognize brain patterns associated with the commands of turn left, turn right, speed up and slow down.
Once trained, the neuroheadset-equipped driver is seated in a car that is already buffed out with video cameras, radar and laser sensors that provide a 3-D view of its surroundings. In one experiment, the driver heads towards an intersection and commands the car to turn right. After a slight delay, it does.
A second experiment performed at an abandoned airport in Berlin tests out the acceleration and deceleration commands, in addition to steering commands, all of which work with a slight delay.
The researchers caution that "this is just a proof of concept. The task here was to show free driving by detecting brain patterns. There is still a long way to go until we can take full control of the machines with our brains."
The team is cheery about the concept's prospects. Such a human-machine interface could, for example, be combined with an autonomous driving system. One example they point out is a telling a cab which way to turn at a crossroads as it drives you home.
More stories on using our brains to control things:
"The main reason is that this earthquake is basically under Christchurch whereas the one in September was approximately 30 miles away," Don Blakeman, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo., told me.
Although 30 miles doesn't seem all that far, he said the distance appears to have made all the difference. Another factor could be the shaking characteristics of the quake — this one may have had higher frequency waves, which cause more damage, but that's not known at this point.
Aftershocks Tuesday's event was likely an aftershock from the September event and is consistent with a migration pattern of aftershocks away from the epicenter of a major quake, according to Thomas Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center at the University of Southern California.
"What we are seeing now is that the aftershock activity has moved to the eastern side of that fault zone and that's not untypical. Sequences of earthquakes will propagate along a fault structure," he told me.
Although it was an aftershock, it was a large aftershock, he noted.
"Most aftershocks are typically small and they themselves don't generate many aftershocks, but occasionally, and as far as we can tell randomly, one of those will turn out to be a big earthquake itself and then it will have an aftershock sequence," he said.
Tens of aftershocks have already been felt in Christchurch since the 6.3 earthquake on Tuesday, according to news accounts.
Reports indicating that a contributor to Tuesday's death toll was the timing of the earthquake (it happened in the middle of the day when people were out and about, whereas the September quake was in the middle of the night when people were at home in bed) are misguided, Blakeman said.
"This is a very general thing, but there tend to be more injuries when people are at home in the evenings, especially at night, just because they are all in buildings," he explained.
"In Haiti, a lot of the structures are very, very poor," Blakeman said. Poor construction with an earthquake centered on the city was a recipe for disaster. Of course, the Haiti earthquake was also much larger — 7.0 versus 6.3.
One of the reasons Christchurch's infrastructure is built to withstand earthquakes is because New Zealand, like Southern California, is bracing for even bigger earthquakes in the future.
One of New Zealand's major fault systems, the Alpine Fault system, is analogous to the San Andreas Fault in California, noted Jordan, in that it has primarily strike-slip motion on it and is expected to rupture sometime in the future with a large earthquake.
"New Zealand has another aspect to it: it is also being squeezed, especially to the north but even in this region one can see the effects of that kind of compression from the plate tectonic motions that are occurring in the area," Jordan added. "That gives rise to subsidiary faulting such as you are seeing here."
How populous could Earth become? Some experts project that the peak population will hit 9 billion in the year 2050.
By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News
Some futurists predict that the next few decades will bring about wondrous revolutions in genetics and robotics, leading to resolutions of all the problems that afflict us today. But what if those revolutions don't work?
The darker visions for the next 40 years — widespread food and water shortages, a proliferation of failed governments, millions of "environmental refugees" fleeing to northern countries — came into the spotlight over the weekend at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington.
The year 2050 was the focus for the debate, because that's when experts have projected that the world's population will top out at 9 billion people. The big question is, how much heartache will humanity have to go through by the time it gets to 2050?
Unless current trends change, "by 2050 we will not have a planet left that is recognizable," said Jason Clay, the World Wildlife Fund's senior vice president for market transformation.
"If we don't get food right — where we produce it, and how we produce it — we can simply turn off the lights and go home," Clay told reporters.
Food issues on the rise So what's not right about food? Based on an analysis of Earth's resources, our planet should be able to sustain 11 billion people on a vegetarian diet, said Joel Cohen, a population expert at the Rockefeller University. But among the current population of 7 billion, "a billion of those are hungry" already, he said. One of the reasons he sees is that humans are sharing their agricultural grains with livestock as well as machines (in the form of feedstock for biofuel conversion).
"We're using less than half of the cereal we grow to feed humans," Cohen said.
African countries are expected to be flashpoints for future flare-ups involving food shortages and populations on the rise, but if climate change continues on its current track, that could bring about an increasingly international crisis. Cristina Tirado, a public health expert at the University of California at Los Angeles, said the United Nations has projected the northward movement of 50 million "environmental refugees" by the year 2020, due to the negative effects of climate change on food security.
"When people are not living in sustainable conditions, they migrate," she explained.
There's already an increased influx of migrants from Africa to southern Europe — and Clay said he expected to see three or four "failed states due to food prices." You could argue that such a failure has taken place already, in the form of the Tunisian government's recent fall.
"Most of the conflict is going to be domestic," Clay said. "I don't think it's going to be international for a while."
The food fix? So what is to be done? Clay said one part of the equation is to get serious about reforming agriculture, on a scale at least as big as the "green revolution" of the 1960s. "What we need to do is freeze the footprint of food — and then make [agriculture] more efficient," he said.
That means reducing the greenhouse-gas footprint of the agricultural production cycle, and it also means trimming back on the amount of energy, fertilizer and irrigation required to grow crops. The experts also said the shift toward converting food (such as corn) into biofuel should be reversed.
That's just one side of the equation, however. The solution also has to include methods to slow down population growth, such as family planning education in the developing world. John Casterline, director of the Initiative in Population Research at Ohio State University, said there are "high levels of unmet need for family planning" around the world. He cited figures indicating that one-fifth of married women in the developing world have unintended pregnancies, a proportion that goes up to a fourth in sub-Saharan Africa.
The idea of funding international family planning programs has been controversial in the United States, but the experts voiced hope that such efforts would gain more support as the planet rolls toward 2050.
Casterline noted that the best antidote to overpopulation woes appeared to be economic stability rather than misery. "It looks like when things get better, families get smaller," he told me.
Will things get better between now and 2050? Optimists such as inventor/futurist Ray Kurzweil are betting that rapidly accelerating technology will save us, but the population experts say their projections have to account for many factors, including advances in dealing with aging. If the average life expectancy heads toward 100 years by the year 2100, as some project, that would make for a more complicated century. The Population Council's John Bongaarts said some of the forecasts call for a peak population of as much as 13 billion.
"If I had to bet, I would bet on nine and a half billion by 2075," Bongaarts said.
How do you feel about the world in 2050... or 2075, for that matter? Optimistic or pessimistic? Weigh in with your comments below.
What would happen if we found out that we are not alone in the universe? Or, on the flip side, what would happen if we


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About James Sthreshley Jackson
James Streshly Jackson (September 27, 1823 – October 8, 1862) was a U.S. Representative from Kentucky and a brigadier general in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
Born in Fayette County, Kentucky, Jackson pursued classical studies at Centre College, Danville, Kentucky. He was graduated from Jefferson College, Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1844, and from the law department of Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky, in 1845. That same year he was admitted to the bar and began the practice of law in Greenupsburg, Kentucky.
During the Mexican-American War, Jackson enlisted as a private in the 1st Kentucky Cavalry, June 9, 1846; he was commissioned third lieutenant on July 9, 1846. Jackson participated in a duel with Captain Thomas Francis Marshall, but fearing a court martial, he resigned October 10, 1846.
Jackson moved to Hopkinsville in 1859. He was elected as a Unionist to the Thirty-seventh Congress and served from March 4 to December 13, 1861, when he resigned to enter the Union Army.
Jackson raised a troop of cavalrymen and was commissioned colonel of the 3rd Kentucky Cavalry on December 13, 1861. He became a brigadier general of volunteers on July 16, 1862. Jackson commanded the 10th Division in the Army of the Ohio and was killed at the Battle of Perryville on October 8, 1862. He was first buried in Louisville's Cave Hill Cemetery and reinterred March 24, 1863 in Riverside Cemetery in Hopkinsville.