text:
Galway was a busy place when it came to fairs and markets. These were occasions when Town met Country - when rural people came into Galway with their produce, and tried to convert it into cash. Some of this money would be spent on various necessities which were available in the city, some was probably spent on porter, and the rest saved for a rainy day.
In the mid-nineteenth century, there were regular cattle fairs at Fairhill in the Claddagh. Later they moved to Eyre Square, where they often spilled onto adjoining streets like Williamsgate Street or Forster Street. Later again, these fairs moved to the Fairgreen. The Square also hosted pig fairs, horse fairs and sheep fairs, and remember, if the farmer did not sell, he had to drive the animals all the way home again. Haymarkets were major events in the Square, at a time when the city people moved around on horseback, or in carriages. The large weighing scales were regularly used to measure and weigh cartloads of hay.
The Fishmarket was built especially to cater for Claddagh fishermen and their catches, or more specifically the Claddagh women who sold the fish. They would congregate there with all kinds of baskets of fish and sell to the townspeople. Some of these women would wander through the town, or out to Salthill with scibs on their heads callingout "Fresh fish, fresh mackerel, fresh cod" etc. selling from door to door. They would have each have had their own pitch.
The fruit and vegetable and poultry market has been a feature of Galway life for generations now. Time was when the Christmas fowl market was one of the busiest trading days in Galway as people bought their Christmas turkeys and potatoes and vegetables.Attached to this was a small egg and salted country butter market, usually along Church Street, where countrywomen sold buttermilk as well. The character of the market began to change in the fifties when some families came to sell crockery and cutlery (often seconds). Their ways of calling out the product and distracting passersby added considerably to the atmosphere. You can still buy your spuds here but now you can get crepes and cheeses and curries and other exotics.
The turf market was another important event. Townspeople needed fuel to cook with and heat their homes, so there were special days when cartloads of turf were sold in Eyre Square and also at Raven Terrace.
There was a regular potatoe market in Woodquay, to which many travelled down the river by boat to sell their produce. There was also a basket market here on a Saturday where they sold baskets of various shapes and sizes, many being made in Moycullen. There was also a potatoe market at The Small Crane where the large weighing scales were much used as farmers from Barna or Rahoon sold to shopkeepers or individual customers.
The worst kind of fair was that which dealt in humans�.the hiring fair.Groups of labourers known as Spailpins gathered at the railings opposite the Skeff in the Square, offering themselves for hire to farmers from east or south of the city, or to oyster growers from Clarinbridge. There can't have been much dignity there.
Today's photograph is of a sock market in Eyre Square. Country women knitted strong warm comfortable woollen men's socks, and sold them from here, or from a pitch outside Joe Young's in Eglinton Street, the monies collected being vital to their home economics. Just imagine all the bartering and bargaining that went on!
Please forward any queries/comments to _EMAIL_


What is the 2 letters after the account name for address books?
 - Hi,
 assume I have an CardDAV account named "account" with an address book called "Accounts Addresses" (Baikal server, if that matters).
 I my contacts app I now see something like "Accounts Addresses (account xy)" in the address book selection. What is that "xy"? It seem to be 2 random letters (containing uppercase/lowercase/numbers).
 - developer
 Please see here: _URL_
 DAVdroid address books accounts: They're named after the CardDAV address book which they are connected to, plus a hash of the URL, for instance: My addresses (UA). The hash is necessary when there are two address books with the same name. The address book account names will be shown in your contacts app as possible destinations for contacts.
 and here: _URL_
 Without the hash (the two letters), it would not be possible to have two address books with the same name (e.g. "Address book") in two different CardDAV accounts.
Similar topics
 - 2
 - 7
 - 2


text:
If you own a Volkswagen, you may have experienced the unsettling feeling of the EPC light coming on and your car shaking. The EPC light, which stands for "Electronic Power Control," is a warning light that indicates a problem with your vehicle's engine management system.
When the EPC light comes on, you may also notice your car shaking or vibrating while driving. This can be a cause for concern, as it can compromise your vehicle's and its passengers' safety.
In this guide, we'll explore the causes, signs and symptoms, and repair options for Volkswagen EPC light and car shaking issues.
So, let's dive in and learn more about this common issue that Volkswagen owners may encounter.
What is the EPC Light?
The EPC Light, or Electronic Power Control Light, is an indicator light that can appear on the dashboard of Volkswagen vehicles. It's designed to alert the driver that there's a problem with the engine's electronic control module (ECM) and related systems.
The ECM is responsible for regulating many important functions of your vehicle, such as fuel injection, ignition timing, and throttle control. If there's an issue with any of these systems, the EPC Light may illuminate to let you know that there's a problem that needs to be addressed.
Causes of Volkswagen EPC Light and Car Shaking
Here are some potential causes of Volkswagen EPC Light and Car Shaking:
1. Faulty Throttle Body or Sensor
The throttle body controls the amount of air that flows into the engine. If the throttle body or its sensors are faulty, it can cause issues with the engine's airflow and result in the car shaking and loss of power.
2. Vacuum Leaks
The engine relies on a vacuum system to operate certain components, such as the power brakes and the HVAC system. If there is a vacuum leak in the system, it can cause car shaking and also trigger the EPC light.
3. Fuel System Issues
A clogged fuel filter, a malfunctioning fuel pump, or a faulty fuel injector can all cause issues with the engine's fuel delivery, resulting in the car shaking and potentially triggering the EPC light.
4. Ignition Coil Problems
The ignition coil provides the spark that ignites the fuel in the engine. If the ignition coil is faulty, it can cause misfires and result in the car shaking and a loss of power.
5. Engine Misfires
Misfires occur when the fuel in the engine fails to ignite properly. This can be caused by a variety of issues, including a faulty ignition system, worn spark plugs, or a dirty fuel system. Misfires can cause car shaking and trigger the EPC light.
6. Transmission Issues
Transmission problems, such as slipping or shifting issues, can cause car shaking and also trigger the EPC light.
7. Other Potential Causes
Other potential causes of Volkswagen EPC Light and Car Shaking issues can include problems with the engine sensors, the catalytic converter, or the engine control module.
Signs and Symptoms of Volkswagen EPC Light and Car Shaking
1. EPC Light
The most obvious sign that there is an issue with your Volkswagen is when the EPC light comes on. This light is typically located on the dashboard and will illuminate when there is a problem with the engine management system. When the EPC light comes on, it's important to have your vehicle inspected as soon as possible to prevent any further damage.
2. Car Shaking or Vibrating
If you notice that your Volkswagen is shaking or vibrating while driving, it may be a sign of engine misfires or transmission issues. These issues can cause a loss of power and reduced performance, making it more difficult to drive your vehicle safely.
3. Reduced Power
If you notice a significant reduction in power when driving your Volkswagen, it may be a sign that the engine is not operating at full capacity. This can be caused by a variety of issues, including faulty sensors or engine misfires.
4. Engine Stalling
In some cases, the engine may stall or shut off completely when there is an issue with the EPC system. This can be particularly dangerous if it happens while driving at high speeds or in heavy traffic.
5. Warning Messages
Depending on the severity of the issue, your Volkswagen may display additional warning messages on the dashboard or through the infotainment system. These messages may include "Reduced Engine Power" or "Check Engine."
Fixing the Volkswagen EPC Light and Car Shaking
1. Throttle Body Cleaning or Replacement
If the issue concerns a faulty throttle body or sensor, cleaning or replacing the throttle body may solve the problem. This can be done by a professional mechanic and should be performed as soon as possible to prevent further engine damage.
2. Vacuum System Inspection and Repair
If there is a vacuum leak in the system, a professional mechanic can inspect and repair any damaged hoses or components to ensure proper vacuum operation. This can help prevent future EPC light and car shaking issues.
3. Fuel System Inspection and Repair
If the issue is related to the fuel system, a professional mechanic can perform a fuel system inspection and repair any faulty components, such as a clogged fuel filter or a malfunctioning fuel pump. This can help ensure proper fuel delivery to the engine and prevent further damage.
4. Ignition System Inspection and Repair
If the issue is related to the ignition system, a professional mechanic can inspect and repair any faulty components, such as the ignition coil or spark plugs. This can help prevent engine misfires and ensure proper engine operation.
5. Transmission Inspection and Repair
If the issue is related to the transmission, a professional mechanic can perform a transmission inspection and repair any faulty components, such as slipping or worn gears. This can help prevent further transmission damage and ensure proper transmission operation.
Prevention of Volkswagen EPC Light and Car Shaking
1. Regular Maintenance
Regular vehicle maintenance is key to preventing issues with the EPC system and car shaking. Follow the manufacturer's recommended maintenance schedule and have your vehicle inspected by a professional mechanic at least once a year.
2. Quality Fuel
Use high-quality fuel and keep your gas tank above a quarter tank to ensure proper fuel delivery to the engine. Low-quality fuel or a low fuel level can lead to engine misfires and other issues.
3. Clean Air Filters
Replace your air filters at least once a year to ensure proper airflow to the engine. Dirty air filters can lead to reduced engine performance and other issues.
4. Proper Driving Habits
Avoid harsh driving habits, such as sudden acceleration or hard braking, as this can put unnecessary stress on the engine and other components. Additionally, avoid overloading the vehicle, as this can put extra stress on the engine and transmission.
5. Address Issues Promptly
If you notice any signs or symptoms of an issue with your Volkswagen, such as the EPC light or car shaking, have your vehicle inspected by a professional mechanic as soon as possible. Ignoring the issue can lead to further damage and potentially dangerous driving conditions.
When experiencing the EPC Light and car shaking issue with your Volkswagen, it's crucial to take it seriously and have it diagnosed and repaired promptly.
Ignoring the issue could lead to further problems down the road. If you're not comfortable diagnosing or repairing the issue yourself, don't hesitate to seek out the help of a professional mechanic who has experience with Volkswagen vehicles.
With the right care and attention, you can keep your Volkswagen running smoothly for years to come.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


text:
Estimating the girth of fish by applying an elliptic model
- A new method for estimating the maximum girth of roundfish is proposed as illustrated; this is based on an elliptic approximation of the cross sections of the fish body. Results derived from a small sample horse mackerel, Trachurus trachurus, suggest that maximum girth estimates based on the elliptic model are more precise than the values estimated by applying a conventional method.
- Miscellaneous themes
- Journal Article


text:
Introduction to Child Witnesses in Criminal Cases
Most everyone knows what happens when a witness is called to testify in a criminal case: that witness must swear to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" before he or she is allowed to testify. In fact, this is only part of the story: Before a witness is permitted to testify, he or she must be capable of understanding this oath or obligation and agree to carry it out. For most adults, this is not a difficult hurdle to surmount. However, in child abuse and child sex crime cases, the prosecution's "star witness" is often the underage child victim who may or may not be old enough to understand an oath or what it means to "promise to tell the truth."
Child Witnesses Must Be Able to Understand the Nature of the Oath
When a child witness is called to testify in a criminal case (often by the prosecution), the prosecution is taking a major risk. Testifying about abuse or sexual contact can be difficult for adults, much less children. The trauma of testifying is further magnified by the fact that the child is being asked sensitive questions in front of adult strangers and may be testifying against a family member. However, before any of these concerns arise comes a more basic problem: Does the child understand what it means to be a witness?
Courts have inherent power to declare that certain individuals – including children – are not qualified to testify as witnesses in cases. To determine whether a particular child in a specific case should be disqualified because the child cannot understand the witness's oath, a judge and/or the parties are permitted to ask questions of the child. For example, some judges will ask the child if the child understands the difference between the "truth" and a "lie." The judge may also ask the child which the child should tell in court – a "lie" or the "truth." Other judges may give the child an example of a truthful statement and a false statement and ask the child to indicate which statement is true and which is false. So long as the judge is ultimately satisfied that the child understands the difference between truth and falsehood and promises to tell the truth, the court can allow the child to testify. See the article on child witness examination by the Arizona Bar Association.
A Child Witness Who Is Not Able to Testify May Be "Unavailable"
Defendants in criminal cases alleged to have been committed against children should not rejoice prematurely just because the child victim in their case is found not able to testify. In many cases, a child who is not able to understand the difference between truth and falsehood (and, therefore, who cannot be a witness) is declared "unavailable." If this occurs, the prosecution may be able to admit the statements the child made concerning the alleged criminal act without the child needing to be present to testify. This can be especially harmful to a criminal defendant because:
- The jury does not get to see the child's demeanor while testifying;
- The defendant does not get to cross-examine the child about the veracity of the statement;
- The defendant is not able to ask the child any questions about the context of the statement.
Handling a child witness in a criminal case is a tricky matter. A judge may allow a child to testify as a witness so long as the judge is convinced the child knows the difference between truth and a lie and the child promises to tell the truth. While the experience of testifying can be traumatic to a child, having a child declared "unavailable" makes the defendant's task of combatting the child's statements much more difficult.


text:
(-42,17) is in the second quadrant
Work Step by Step
We are given that the location of the ordered pair is (-42,17). Therefore, the point has a negative x-coordinate and a positive y-coordinate, which corresponds to the second quadrant. Because $|-42|\gt|17|$, we know that the point is farther away from the y-axis than it is from the x-axis.


Social Media
Michelle Obama Picture in Google Image Results Creates Controversy
Search for Michelle Obama's name via Google's image search and you'll likely find an image that has been characterized as a racist caricature of the first lady of the US in the top results.
The image is offensive to many and while some are demanding it be removed, Google is holding firm and yet still apologizing. The Washington Post has uncovered a formal apology from Google in the form of an ad displayed above the offensive image that directs visitors to a page explaining how Google's search results algorithm works.
In short, while Google apologizes for upsetting searchers, it's standing by the algorithm. The full text of the statement reads:
The Google Team
michelle obama google image search
As the statement implies, Google will pull a photo should the site hosting it serve malware, which was apparently the case with the image in question at one point, as it was temporarily removed from search results. In any event, it is now back in the top spot.
Despite the inappropriateness of the image, we understand why Google would stand by their algorithm rather than play the role of censor. But do you? Let us know where you side on the heated image controversy in the comments.
Load Comments
What's New
What's Rising
What's Hot


NEWTON — As courthouses and city halls close, there is a logistical problem that arises for governmental boards — just how does the county commission or city council meet?
And, just as important, how do its members host a public meeting and comply with the Kansas Open Meetings Act?
Guidance from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, and an executive order from Gov. Laura Kelly, limits the number of people in one place at one time to 10. Social distancing guidelines ask those people to stay at least 6 feet apart.
According to Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, the Kansas Open Meetings Act requires public bodies to be "open to the public." Ordinarily, that requirement is met by allowing members of the public to enter the room where the meeting is taking place so they can listen and observe.
The answer to the problem of public governmental guidelines is popping up in meeting notices and agendas. Now appearing are internet links for video conferencing and phone numbers for voice conferences.
For some area government bodies, this is nothing really new. The McPherson City Commission has posted video of its meetings to YouTube, while the Newton USD 373 board of education started streaming live to Facebook on its own earlier this year.
The Harvey County Commission hosted its first online stream this week, making use of the service Zoom to provide video and telephone access. The commission met in the basement of the courthouse as the meeting was streamed.
Under new guidelines issued by the state, each entity will notify the public of the internet location of the meeting during the meeting notification process.
The attorney general's office has proposed formal rules for state and local governments to ensure their meetings remain open to the public during "social distancing" emergency restrictions on gathering in person. Basically, those new rules require for broadcast of the meeting, preferably with video, on either television of the internet or by audio by telephone conferencing.
"During a time of declared emergency when lives are disrupted, many people are apprehensive, and rumors can run rampant, the importance of ensuring openness and transparency in the government decision-making process is even greater than usual," Schmidt said. "An important way for public bodies to provide reassurance is to go the extra mile to ensure their actions are transparent during the time of emergency.
"This new guidance will help state and local government bodies throughout Kansas operate transparently even when the public cannot gather in person for meetings."


text:
TOPIC: Is embracing relapse an oxymoron? In contrast to academic studies that examine various aspects
of relapse, such as 'relapse risks,' 'relapse prevention,' and 'stages of relapse,' we decided to focus on
clinicians' experiences with relapse and how relapse might have a positive impact on recovery.
Uunraveling the gift of relapse ( deciphering the gift of relapse ) by Rosanna Mauro de Maya, MS, RD, CEDRD-S


text:
Network Diagram Examples
Seeking a solution for
maximizing the efficiencies throughout the network diagram?
How to make an network topology?
How indeed does one go about it, without seeing and examples of
Network Diagram? Not likely unless one has good
Network Diagram examples.
you can create clear and comprehensive network diagrams with no prior
experience. As you can see by studying the examples of network diagram
below, these types of diagrams are the ideal way to illustrate the network
design idea and network relativity.
Free Download Network Diagram Software and View All
Diagram a network, draw Computer Network
Diagrams, Designs, Schematics, Network Maps with our network
diagram tool - Edraw Max in a couple of minutes!
Pre-drawn network shapes representing computers, network devices
plus smart connectors help design diagram network, create
accurate network diagrams and documentation to be used in your
network diagram project.
Home Network Diagram
||Ethernet LAN Diagram|
Campus Network Diagram
Outlook Web Access
More Sample Network Diagrams
Edraw is a network diagramming tool that
includes task-specific libraries of highly detailed, accurate shapes and
graphics of computers, servers, hubs, switches, printers, mainframes, face
plates, routers etc. for computer networks, telecommunications, wireless
Internet, power, storage and other equipment.
Download Full Software Package and View
Examples for Free
How to draw network diagrams
Organizational chart examples
Business Form Examples
Network diagram examples
Recommend this page:

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text:
|Trouble Code||Fault Location||Probable Cause|
|P0021||Camshaft position (CMP); intake/left/front, bank 2 timing over -advanced/system performance||Valve timing, engine mechanical fault, CMP actuator|
We recommend Torque Pro
What Does Code P0021 Mean?
In most cases if P0021 comes up it is due to lack of oil lubrication. The best way to rectify the situation is to apply an engine cleaning product and do an engine rinse before re-installing a new VCT/VVT solenoid. If that is not done you will have near future failure of the new VCT/VVT solenoid. It is very important to note in the new VCT/VVT engines they are very susceptible to lower cost oils. You need to purchase high end oils in order to have a longer lasting camshaft oil timing system. You definitely get what you pay for in this case.
- VVTVariable Valve Timing
- VCTVariable Camshaft timing
- You have an intake camshaft solenoid error usually. Not manufacturer specific, is a generic code.
What are the common causes of code P0021?
- Why did the solenoid fail? It is usually from an oil maintenance problem
- Poor choice of oil product for this particular enginecauses carbon build up in the VCT engines and will produce small ball like substance (carbon build up). This was not seen before VVT engines were introduced. This is what causes the filter blockage of the solenoid and causes it to fail and potential engine failure.
What are the symptoms of code P0021?
- Loss of gas mileage
- Engine stalling
- Possibly engine failure
- Engine contamination
- If the actual solenoid does fail this will cause a retardation of the intake valve operation
- Check engine light will appear
- Possibly camshaft failure due to lack of lubrication
How do you troubleshoot code P0021?
- Use a multi meter and take resistance
- As a general ruleevery terminal needs to be checked for a solenoid failure. If it does not have a 7-12 ohm on the multi meter, it is most likely failed. Always pin test from the valve solenoid to PCM or ECM.
- Pin test means you must check continuity in the wiring harness between the actual valve solenoid and the brain (computer pcm/ecm)
- While pin testing in back probe, wiggle test all related harnesses and observe readings on vault meter/multi meter
- Check all engine grounds
- Also, clean and tighten every harness terminals from the valve solenoid to the pcm. The integrity of those contacts must be tightly mated and lubricated with grease to make sure full electric contact is present. The misdiagnosed problem is engine vibration which will loosen the harness connecters because most variable cam shaft timing systems rely on high revolution engines. So, any loose wiring or connections may cause this code. It does not mean the actual valve is a problem.
- First check the resistance of the actual valve. Most only have two terminals, will likely present 7-12 oms.
- Often the exhaust camshaft valve solenoid will be the issue, so interchange the two valves one for another and clearing codes.
- If the code changes to the exhaust then it is P0014
- The intake and the exhaust solenoid will have the same type of connection and are interchangeable. Try interchanging one solenoid for the other. If after erasing all present codes, a different code comes back, then you have essentially eliminated the actual valve solenoid and have saved hours of diagnostic work. By interchanging most times if one code changes to the other, you can got your parts guy and ask for the valve solenoid.
- The failure of the solenoid VVC or VCT is usually due to oil blockage from the screen/filter.
Codes Related to P0021
Type B codeswill erase itself without a scanner.
Type A code there is something else.
If these codes show it is unliikely to be the valve
If the initial P0021 sets and other codes are present then erase all codes and do five camshaft drive cycles and then re-investigate which codes come back. If any of these codes are present disregard and erase. If they come back it is electrical wiring or connection failure.
PCM/ECM has a particular algorithm to follow. If the valve does not respond to the criteria of the computer, it will recognize the algorithm. So, usually when the P0021 code shows it is failure due to lack of maintenance.
Most P0021 codes are almost always a result of bad oil changes and lack of car maintenance in regards to engine lubrication.
BAT Team Discussions for P0021
Thanks Kev I cranked it up and it ran good again for a couple miles and did it again. Codes: P0420 and P0430 P0011 and P0021 I guess my next question is.... which is causing which and where to start. *Fuel, oil, coolant all seemed good. No way to check exhaust or fuel pressure at the moment...


text:
Segment of barbed wire from the German defenses at Pointe du Hoc, Omaha Beach, Normandy, France. Pointe du Hoc, a fortified German strong hold atop the cliffs west of Omaha Beach, was taken by Companies D, E, and F of the 2nd Ranger Battalion. The Rangers scaled the 100 foot high cliff using grapnel hooks, ropes, and ladders, while under heavy enemy fire. Once the concrete gun emplacements were reached it was discovered that the Germans had moved the five 155 mm guns that the Rangers had been sent to destroy. Patrols were sent out. Incredibly, the weapons were found a short way inland hidden in an orchard and temporally unattended. Sergeants Leonard Lomell and Jack Kuhn used their thermite grenades to damage the guns' firing mechanisms. Lommell later received the Distinguished Service Cross and Kuhn the Silver Star for destroying these menacing cannon that easily could have caused extensive casualties on the beaches below had they not been put out of action. The attack on Point-du-Hoc was costly and difficult largely due to the failure of the pre-invasion aerial and naval bombardments to seriously damage the site's defenses. This 1944 relic piece of barbed wire is from atop the cliff the 2nd Rangers scaled on D-Day.
Metal. L 12.3, H 14.3 cm
250 Eisenhower Farm Drive Gettysburg,Pennsylvania 17325
Eisenhower National Historic Site


Today's picks
 Is drinking ice water in hot weather bad for health?
 Drinking water is one of the most reliable way to keep body temperatures at an acceptable level during heat waves.
 In general, health experts recommend drinking at least two liters of water a day, but a little more in hot weather.
 Many people put ice cubes in the water to get a feeling of freshness and coolness, but is this safe for health?
 And every summer, numerous posts are published online urging people to avoid very cold water, as it can have serious consequences.
 Freezing fluids can upset the esophagus, causing unpleasant symptoms, including stomach cramps or chest pains and signs characteristic for esophageal spasm.
 In a widely spread video, a man said that he started seeing spots, feeling very nauseous in his stomach and numbness in his hands and feet after drinking ice water, and the man added that cold water disrupts the body's signals, and claimed that rapid exposure to cold water and air after sports makes the body rejuvenate.
 Distribution of blood from the hands, feet and head to the stomach.Health professionals don't think water is the culprit, and people rarely faint in hot weather.
 Doctors believe that some underlying health conditions, not just cold water, cause fainting in hot weather. At its most severe, conditions such as heat exhaustion, dehydration and others can lead to fainting, according to the British newspaper Express.
 Heat-related problems tend to affect people who work outside in hot weather, and heat stroke is a particular risk under these conditions, and its symptoms match those the video maker claims were caused by cold water.
 Related Articles


Syndicate content
Sanket Mohapatra's picture
Post offices typically have strong networks across the country, in part because of their strong orientation towards service, and are typically more familiar and accessible to the poorest living in remote, rural areas. In this study, Jose and Nils report that more than 80 percent of post offices in Sub-Saharan Africa are located outside the three largest cities in each country—in small and medium-sized towns and rural areas where more than four-fifth of the people in Africa live. This stands in sharp contrast to the mainstream commercial banks that are usually concentrated in the largest cities in Africa, and can appear forbidding and expensive for the poor, including migrants and remittance recipients. This provides postal networks a unique opportunity to become key players in both international and domestic remittances.
There is clearly a large potential for post offices to more fully participate in providing remittances and to bring the unbanked into the formal financial system. However, as the authors caution, there are several operational and policy constraints that must be overcome for posts to be able to realize this potential. Post offices often have outdated information technology (IT) systems and lack internet connectivity, for example, less than a fifth of post offices in Sub-Saharan Africa are equipped with computers. Posts are typically not linked to national payment, settlement and clearing systems, which can give rise to the problem of "empty cash drawer" in many post offices. Postal staff, who tend to be government or public sector employees, are often not sufficiently trained to handle financial transactions.
Many posts are not allowed to mobilize savings, an essential component of providing financial services. The application of anti-money-laundering regulations to small value cross-border transactions is often not proportional to the risk. There is need to clarify whether remittance and financial services offered by posts fall under the postal regulator or financial regulators. Finally, exclusivity arrangements of some post offices with international money-transfer companies (which can even cover branches of post offices that currently don't provide any remittance services) can hinder effective competition in the remittances markets and contributes to high remittance costs (see GEP 2006).
Some questions for discussion:
 - How can post offices be sufficiently equipped to handle remittances and financial transactions? What kind of training and support is necessary for postal stafff?
 - What are the regulatory issues that need to be addressed for posts to handle cross-border remittances? How can they be allowed to handle foreign exchange transactions?
 - How can exclusive partnerships between post offices and international money transfer operators be addressed?
 - How can the international community support the participation of this key player in the area of remittances and financial inclusion?
Submitted by Ali Afzal on
In my Point of View, First of all give proper training to staff as like to bank Staff.promote awareness,advertise that people use postal system more as bank advertised.provide them IT facilities etc.
Add new comment


text:
In what seemed like an unbelievable event, doctors had their hands full in addition to their already dazed minds. Doctors operating on a tumour in Nagabhushanam Siva's left eye were stunned to find the two fully-formed teeth embedded inside.
When asked, the 23 year old said: "I was born with an abnormal left eye and it continued to swell over the years. My family was too scared to send me to see a doctor and during the last few years it has grown much bigger. I had blurred vision so eventually I consulted a doctor for help."
Teratoma was the diagnosis that was given to Nagabhushanam by doctors at a government hospital in Chennai, southern India. The tumour had pushed her eye inside its socket and protruded the skin, blocking her vision and partially damaging the optic nerve. The growth also left her unable to move her eyeball and had developed lazy eye syndrome.
Doctors said they had seen a few past cases of Teratoma with tooth-like tissues embedded in the tumour, but fully formed teeth were very rare. Hospital Director, Dr K Vasantha, said: "A Teratoma is a mass of tissue that contains cysts and sometimes contains hard tissues but fully grown teeth is so very rare."
The removal of the tumour caused severe damage to Nagabhushanam's optic nerve which has tragically left her permanently blind.
"Because it was left untreated all these years the tumour was allowed to grow to extraordinary lengths. That resulted in the optic nerve damage," Dr Vasantha added. Orbital Teratomas are rare embryonic tumors composed of tissues that grow in the attempt to form an organ.
The first case of this condition was reported 149 years ago. Only 70 such cases have been found worldwide ever since.


text:
Filtering Posts By: "bias voltage"
02.05.2007| By Shure Notes|
Many users of professional audio equipment believe there is no difference between phantom power and bias voltage. Not true! Phantom and bias are not interchangeable. This bulletin explains the differences between phantom and bias, and addresses common misconceptions. Phantom power is a dc voltage (11 – 48 volts) which powers the preamplifier of a condenser microphone. Phantom power is normally supplied by the microphone mixer, but may also be supplied by a separate phantom power supply. Phantom requires a balanced circuit in which XLR pins 2 and 3 carry the same dc voltage relative to …


text:
June 15, 2011 Sing it with us: What lives in the rainforest, under a tree? Spongiforma squarepantsii, a new species of mushroom almost as strange as its cartoon namesake.
Its discovery in the forests of Borneo, says San Francisco State University researcher Dennis Desjardin, suggests that even some of the most charismatic characters in the fungal kingdom are yet to be identified.
Shaped like a sea sponge, S. squarepantsii was found in 2010 in the Lambir Hills in Sarawak, Malaysia. It is bright orange -- although it can turn purple when sprinkled with a strong chemical base -- and smells "vaguely fruity or strongly musty," according to Desjardin and colleagues' description published in the journal Mycologia.
Under a scanning electron microscope, the spore-producing area of the fungus looks like a seafloor carpeted in tube sponges, which further convinced the researchers to name their find after the famous Bob.
The new species is only one of two species in the Spongiforma genus. The other species is found in central Thailand, and differs in color and odor. But close examination of the fungi and genetic analysis revealed that the two were relatives living thousands of miles apart.
"We expect that it has a wider range than these two areas," said Desjardin, a professor in ecology and evolution in the SFSU Biology Department. "But perhaps we haven't seen it in more places because we haven't collected it yet in some of the underexplored forests of the region."
Desjardin said Spongiforma are related to a group of mushrooms that includes the tasty porcini. But the genus sports an unusual look that is far from the expected cap and stem style.
"It's just like a sponge with these big hollow holes," he explained. "When it's wet and moist and fresh, you can wring water out of it and it will spring back to its original size. Most mushrooms don't do that."
Spongiforma's ancestors had a cap and stem, but these characters have been lost over time -- a common occurrence in fungi, Desjardin noted.
The cap and stem design is an elegant evolutionary solution to a fungal problem. The stem lifts the fungus' reproductive spores off the ground so that they can be dispersed more easily by wind and passing animals, while the cap protects the spores from drying out in their lofty but exposed position.
In its humid home, Spongiforma has taken a different approach to keeping its spores wet. "It's become gelatinous or rubbery," Desjardin said. "Its adaptation is to revive very quickly if it dries out, by absorbing very small amounts of moisture from the air."
S. squarepantsii now has another claim to fame: It joins the five percent of species in the vast and diverse Kingdom Fungi that have been formally named. Researchers estimate that there may be anywhere from 1.5 to 3 million fungal species.
"Most of these are very cryptic, molds and little things, most of them are not mushrooms," Desjardin said. But even mushrooms -- which are sort of like the big game of the fungal world -- are mostly unknown.
"We go to underexplored forests around the world, and we spend months at a time collecting all the mushrooms and focusing on various groups," Desjardin said. "And when we do that type of work, on average, anywhere from 25 percent to 30 percent of the species are new to science."
Desjardin and his colleague Don Hemmes of the University of Hawaii at Hilo will describe five new white-spored species of mushrooms from the native mountain forests of Hawaii in an upcoming issue of Mycologia.
The Hawaiian species are among the diverse set of organisms found on the islands and nowhere else in the world. Desjardin and his colleagues are racing to discover and study the islands' fungi before native forests succumb to agriculture and grazing.
"We don't know what's there, and that keeps us from truly understanding how these habitats function," Desjardin said. "But we think that all this diversity is necessary to make the forests work the way they're supposed to work."
"Spongiforma squarepantsii, a new species of gasteroid bolete from Borneo," was published online on May 10, 2011 in Mycologia.
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
- Dennis E. Desjardin, Kabir G. Peay, Thomas D. Bruns. Spongiforma squarepantsii, a new species of gasteroid bolete from Borneo. Mycologia, 2011; DOI: 10.3852/10-433
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.


Letter to BS: A machine can solve a cognitive problem to an extent
Ajay Shah's column "AI revolution and jobs in India" (June 25) does well to allay the fears in Indian minds about the impact of artificial intelligence on job creation. AI has its limitations. For one, AI is created by a human mind and its ability to perform accurately depends on the programme a person makes. If, for example, in hiring, a programme is designed in a way that it is biased against a certain community, the screening done by using AI will show the same bias.
Robots are good only for repetitive jobs and a machine can solve a cognitive problem to an extent. But humans will be required in areas where display of soft skills — such as in counselling or negotiation —is crucial or where emotional issues are involved or when the problem is too complex such as at the top levels.
Thirdly, if AI will take away unskilled or repetitive jobs, it will create other jobs, albeit needing different or higher skills or in some other field. Thus, all machine learning requires training in data which will come from humans. When activities like recruitment and training were outsourced, there was an apprehension that the human resource department will collapse. But it has prospered using more sophisticated tools like human resource accounting or HR analytics.
The challenge in India will be in figuring out whether our employees will be motivated and able to learn new jobs in quick time.
YG Chouksey Pune
Letters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:
The Editor, Business Standard
Nehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg
New Delhi 110 002
Fax: (011) 23720201 • E-mail: _EMAIL_
All letters must have a postal address and telephone number
Business Standard is now on Telegram.


text:
Havre de Grace History: Big Names in a Small Town
[By Amanda Vitek]
There's a reason Havre de Grace means "harbor of grace." This little town at the mouth of the Susquehanna River is big in charm and personality that has developed over the last four centuries.
The town became known as Havre de Grace around 1782, when, in a letter to George Washington, Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette likened it to the French seaport, Le Havre. But the town's history actually dates all the way back to John Smith's exploration of the Upper Chesapeake Bay and Susquehanna River in 1608. During his journeys, Smith described the natives living here as "the most noble and heroic nation of Indians – large & warlike and for the most part seven feet tall – voices deep and hollow as coming out of a cave – stately and majestic – great warriors."
In keeping with Havre de Grace's reputation for "great warriors," a local hero emerged during the War of 1812, also known as America's Second War of Independence. When British Rear Admiral George Cockburn's troops attacked, Lieutenant John O"Neill single-handedly manned a cannon to help defend the town. O"Neill's efforts proved futile, and he was taken prisoner for a short time, but to show its thanks, Havre de Grace made O"Neill and his descendants the hereditary keepers of the Concord Point Lighthouse, which has been fully restored and still stands as the oldest continuously operating lighthouse in Maryland. Visitors will find it at the end of a boardwalk promenade linked to Tydings Park.
During the Civil War, Havre de Grace served as a safe haven for many free African Americans, and was one of seven sites used for the recruiting of "U.S. Colored Troops."
With the upcoming 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, as well as the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the city is hard at work to prepare many commemorative events and exhibitions. On October 8, Harford County Executive David Craig presents his talk, "Terrorism on the Home Front 19th Century Style," to begin Havre de Grace's tribute to the War of 1812. On October 29, the Heritage Museums of Havre de Grace host a free Community History Day to kick off the "War of 1812: Havre de Grace Under Fire" commemoration. Then, during the weekend of November 12, the waterfront Lock House Museum hosts a "Pirates By The Bay" program, exploring the history of piracy on the Chesapeake Bay.
More local history can be learned at the Havre de Grace Decoy Museum, which houses a brilliant collection of Chesapeake Bay waterfowl decoys, and the Havre de Grace Maritime Museum, where the story is told of life on the water.


The Crisis In Nagaland: Imposition of AFSPA
The entire state of Nagaland had been declared a "disturbed area" for 6 more months with effect from 30th December 2020, under Section 3 of the AFSPA.
You must be wondering what "AFSPA" is, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 permits security forces to conduct operations anywhere and arrest anyone without prior notice, enter and search premises without a warrant and ban the possession of firearms.
This Act has been in force in Nagaland for several decades now and has not been withdrawn even after the framework agreement signed by the Naga insurgent group NSCN-IM General Secretary Thuingaleng Muivah and the government interlocutor, R N Ravi in the presence of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Various organizations in the northeast as well as in Jammu and Kashmir, demand for the abolition of the controversial Act which they say gives "sweeping powers" to the security forces. The Act gives authority to the armed forces to prohibit a gathering of five or more people in an area and can open fire after furnishing a warning if they feel that a person is not adhering to the rules and regulations.
The definition of 'Disturbed Area' under Section 3 of the AFSPA includes the area which is disturbed due to the dispute between members of different religions, races, languages or regional groups, castes or communities. Once a region is declared 'disturbed' by the Central Government, or the Governor of the State or administrator of the Union Territory, the region is treated as such for three months straight.
This Act is currently enforced in Nagaland, Assam, Manipur and parts of Arunachal Pradesh (eight police stations). Jammu and Kashmir too had a similar Act imposed. The bone of contention in the application of the AFSPA act lies in the fact that it provides the security troupe with absolute powers without it being held accountable, which leads to extensive barbarity and human rights violations. It is also in derogation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the UN Convention against Torture.
There is a need for the AFSPA, as it is essential to combat insurgency in the country and to protect the borders. The security forces, in case of an emergency, are not able to operate without the imposition of the AFSPA and the Army officials also felt the need to protect the morale and integrity of the army as a reason not to look over the allegations against the army personnel.
Nagaland which was a peaceful state is now painted in a picture of chaos and lawlessness by the Center's notification. The world is a spectator of the fact that Nagaland is not what it is made to look like, thanks to the ill-intended notice of the Central Government. The federation has also restated its deep-rooted view that the AFSPA disobeys the Constitution as it infringes upon the Fundamental Rights of the citizens and that the law must be abolished. Should the Armed Forces Special Powers Act be repealed by the Government of India?
This question was asked to the people, the one's who voted "Yes" said that the AFSPA is a strict Act which could be enacted in a Military State but not in a Democratic State, individuals' demands and welfare must also be considered in a democratic country like India. This Act, like many other things, was taken from our colonial mastersThe British.
In the current scenario, the Act should be repealed, as India is a full-fledged democracy. This Act should not have a place at all in the 21st century, as it raises a finger on India's political grit to solve its internal problems.
People who voted "No", said that corruption is skyrocketing and it will become hard to survive without the absolute authority of the special forces. Moreover, it would be difficult to handle terrorism, hence, it should stay until the situation comes under control and Nagaland emerges a peaceful state.
AFSPA should be amended to include elaborate rules to ensure a routine investigation of alleged human rights violations thereby reducing the possibility of the Act being misused. The army should exercise strong scrutiny over the human rights violations it tends to cause, as it is the biggest threat to its credibility and the outstanding record of fighting insurgencies over the last 62 years.
Another disheartening issue is the rapes that occur in the regions, which come under the AFSPA, they fall into the category of rapes which are tacitly supported by the dominant majority, as most such rapes are inflicted with impunity being exercised by the members of the armed forces because of the protective provisions of the Act. The harsh reality is that such cases do not attract the attention of the general public just because the victims often belong to the minority, ethnic or religious groups. The irony is, that people who participated in protests after the Nirbhaya incident are not even aware of such barbaric crimes taking place in the North-East or the Kashmir Valley.
Resolution of the long-running insurgency in the north-eastern states can be achieved through dialogue between the government and the insurgent groups. The lack of development is a major contributor to the insurgency in the North-East region. The government should take steps to create a new channel of growth through industrialization and infrastructural development.
It is certain that it is a specific area-targeted 'Draconian Law' which has outlived its utility, as it does not deliver the interest of the civilians nor does it fulfil the purpose of the State to contain insurgent movements. It only allows the military to arbitrarily use it to violate civilians' rights. Due to its imposition, the armed forces have now become an enemy of the citizens.
Despite all of the problems, a glimmer of hope can be seen through the Indo-Naga peace talks, after the government-appointed interlocutor R.N. Ravi has taken over as the governor of Nagaland. There is a probability of the AFSPA being revoked in all of North-East India, once the ongoing Indo-Naga talks conclude.
Let us hope and pray for the Indo-Naga talks to steer towards promising waters and experience a new era of peace and development.
The sooner, the better!
146 views36 comments
Recent Posts
See All


text:
Doctors have found that Ebola can linger in some male survivors for up to nine months but aren't sure if that means they might still be infectious, according to new research. In a study of 93 men in Sierra Leone, scientists found the Ebola virus in semen samples from about half of them. The risk seemed to decline over time. Ebola was detected in all nine men tested at two to three months after their illness began but in only 11 of the 43 survivors tested at seven to nine months.
Researchers aren't sure why Ebola remains in semen as opposed to other bodily fluids and don't know if the lingering virus might sicken others. More


text:
Silver Buffalo Award
|Silver Buffalo Award|
The Silver Buffalo Award, created in 1925, is bestowed upon those who give truly noteworthy and extraordinary service to youth. This award, Scouting's highest commendation, recognizes the invaluable contributions that outstanding American men and women render to youth. The service must be national in character and can be directly connected with the BSA or independent of the movement.
The award consists of a silver buffalo suspended from a red and white ribbon worn around the neck. Recipients may wear the corresponding square knot, with a white strand over a red strand, on the BSA uniform.
The concept of the Silver Buffalo was based on the Silver Wolf award of the Boy Scout Association. The buffalo pendant was designed by A. Phimister Proctor. During the first presentation in 1926, twenty-two awards were presented in a particular order determined by Chief Scout Executive James E. West. Since then, the awards have been presented on an annual basis in alphabetical order. A red-white-red ribbon bar was introduced in 1934 for informal uniform wear. In 1946, ribbon bars were replaced by the current knot insignia.
The first Silver Buffalo Award was conferred upon Lord Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting movement and Chief Scout of the World. The second went to the Unknown Scout who inspired William D. Boyce to form the BSA — the only non-adult recipient. This award is represented by a small buffalo statue in Gilwell Park.
Other award recipients have included aviator Charles A. Lindbergh; artist Norman Rockwell, well-known for his many Scouting paintings; General Colin L. Powell; Apollo 13 commander James A. Lovell Jr.; artist and film producer Walt Disney; baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron; entertainer Bob Hope; Marian Anderson, first African American singer to appear at the Metropolitan Opera; football coach Vince Lombardi; Carlos P. Romulo, Pulitzer Prize-winner and cofounder, Boy Scouts of the Philippines; Neil Armstrong, first man to set foot on the moon; Dr. Ralph Bunche, former U.N. mediator and Nobel Peace Prize winner; cartoonist Charles M. Schulz; Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund; and 13 presidents of the United States. See the List of recipients of the Silver Buffalo Award for others.
For fifty years the Silver Buffalo was awarded only to men until LaVern W. Parmley became the first woman to receive the honor in 1976. As of 2008, 674 people have been presented the award, including 13 presidents of the United States.
The Silver Buffalo Award award is not earned but awarded based upon nomination.
Distinguished Service Awards
The Boy Scouts of America recognizes the need to acknowledge the invaluable services that men and women render to youth. Of the millions of registered adult volunteers in Scouting, only a select few are presented distinguished service awards at these level:
- District Award of Merit for outstanding service at the district level
- Silver Beaver for service at the unit, district or council level
- Silver Antelope for service at the regional or area level
- Silver Buffalo for service at the national level
- Silver World for service to Scouting at an international level
- Distinguished Service Awards Fact Sheets. Boy Scouts of America.
- Illustrated History of BSA Square Knot Evolution and Private Issues - SageVenture.
- Silver Beaver Medals Mitch Reis. Boy Scout Memorabilia, Patches And Collectibles
- The Silver Fawn Medal - The Virtual Cub Leader's Handbook.
- List of recipients of the Silver Buffalo Award
- Silver Buffalo Time magazine article, May 10, 1926
- Scouter Awards for information on over 30 adult leader awards
- Awards for information on over 30 awards for Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Varsity Scouts, and Venturers.


text:
THE CITY MANAGER PLAN IN
BY HENRY M. ALEXANDER
Charter revisions have been frequent in Kansas City.
It may be that this frequency is a reflection of the city's
rapid growth. At all events the structure and form of the
city's government have received much public attention.
The city government has been cast in many molds. "Tinkering with the charter" has been a popular pastime. A Democratic election commissioner, commenting in 1917 upon this
circumstance, complained that "every sixty days the 'nuts'
in this town want a new charter."
The first permanent settlement upon the present site of
Kansas City was made 118 years ago. This frontier community, known for twenty-nine years as Westport Landing,
was officially christened the Town of Kansas by the county
court of Jackson county on February 4, 1850. Three years
later the name was changed again. The Town of Kansas
then became the City of Kansas by special act of the State
legislature. This statute, enacted in 1853, was the first formal
charter of the municipality. The present name of the city
was acquired in 1889. The City of Kansas inherited little
from the Town of Kansas. Old records show a cash balance
of $7.22 in the municipal treasury. During the first year of
its corporate existence the City of Kansas collected less than
$5,000 in taxes.
Charter revisions were facilitated and even encouraged
by the general home rule provisions of the State constitution
adopted in 1875. These constitutional provisions, applying
only to cities with a population of over 100,000, enabled any
*This paper is listed as Research Paper Number 656, Journal Series, University of Arkansas. The author has here drawn freely upon material in his
study of Council-Manager Government in Kansas City, a doctoral dissertation
written in 1933 and 1934 at the University of Missouri and published in microfilm. Documentary source materials are there indicated. He wishes here to
acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr. Walter Matscheck, former director of the
Kansas City Civic Research Institute, for material taken from articles published
by him in the National Municipal Review and in Public Management.


text:
Civilians were often the casualties of fighting during the recent Liberian
civil conflict. Liberian health care workers played a crucial role in documenting
violence against women by soliders and fighters during the war.
To document women's experiences of violence, including rape and sexual
coercion, from a soldier or fighter during 5 years of the Liberian civil war
from 1989 through 1994.
Interview and survey.
High schools, markets, displaced persons camps, and urban communities
in Monrovia, Liberia, in 1994.
A random sample of 205 women and girls between the ages of 15 and 70
years (88% participation rate).
One hundred (49%) of 205 participants reported experiencing at least
1 act of physical or sexual violence by a soldier or fighter. Survey participants
reported being beaten, tied up, or detained in a room under armed guard (17%);
strip-searched 1 or more times (32%); and raped, subjected to attempted rape,
or sexually coerced (15%). Women who were accused of belonging to a particular
ethnic group or fighting faction or who were forced to cook for a soldier
or fighter were at increased risk for physical and sexual violence. Of the
106 women and girls accused of belonging to an ethnic group or faction, 65
(61%) reported that they were beaten, locked up, strip-searched, or subjected
to attempted rape, compared with 27 (27%) of the 99 women who were not accused
(P≤.02,.07,.001, and.06, respectively). Women
and girls who were forced to cook for a soldier or fighter were more likely
to report experiencing rape, attempted rape, or sexual coercion than those
who were not forced to cook (55% vs 10%; P≤.001,
.06, and.001, respectively). Young women (those younger than 25 years) were
more likely than women 25 years or older to report experiencing attempted
rape and sexual coercion (18% vs 4%, P=.02 and.04,
This collaborative research allowed Liberian women to document wartime
violence against women in their own communities and to develop a unique program
to address violence against women in Liberia.


RidgeRun Auto exposure/Auto white balance library for DM368 and DM365
From RidgeRun Developer Connection
Revision as of 15:42, 28 June 2011 by Mmadrigal (Talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search
CMOS or CCD sensor video capture quality can be enhance with image processing, like auto white balance (AWB) and auto exposure algorithms (AE):
Some camera sensors don't include auto white balance and/or auto exposure processing, so RidgeRun offers a library with AE and AWB algorithms called librraew. This library was initially developed for the DM365 platform. The DM365 video processing front end (VPFE) has an H3A module designed to support control loops for auto focus, auto white balance and auto exposure by collecting statistics about the imaging/video data. There are two blocks in this module:
 - Auto focus engine
 - Auto exposure and auto white balance engine
 - Accumulation of the sum of squared pixels per color.
 - Minimum and maximum pixels values in each window per color.
The AE/AWB engine can be configured to use up to 36 horizontal windows with sum + {sum of squares or min+max} output or up to 56 horizontal windows with sum output. The AE/AWB engine can also be configure to use up to 128 vertical windows. The width and height for the windows is programmable.
Currently, librraew has testing has focused on Aptina CMOS sensor mt9p031, but if you provide the appropriate functions for the library, it can works with any sensor. The implementation is a plain C library and can be re-used with and integrated with any application. RidgeRun uses ipiped (see below) for testing and demonstration.
Auto white balance
When an image of a scene is captured by a digital camera sensor, the sensor response at each pixel depends on the scene illumination. Depending of the illumination, a distinct color cast appears over the captured scene. This effect appears in the captured image due to the color temperature of the light. If a white object is illuminated with a low color temperature light source, the object in the captured image will be reddish. Similarly, when the white object is illuminated with a high color temperature light source, the object in the captured image will be bluish. The human eye compensates for color cast automatically through a characteristic known as color constancy, allowing the colors to be independent of the illumination. Auto white balance tries to simulate the color constancy for images capture.
Many AWB algorithms follow a two-stage process:
 - Illumination estimation: can be done explicitly by choosing from a known set of possible illuminations or implicitly with assumptions about the effect of such illuminations. The algorithms implemented in librraew use the implicitly estimation.
 - Image color correction: is achieved through an independent gain adjustment of the three color signals. Commonly only the blue and red gains are adjusted.
The librraew supports several AWB algorithms:
Gray World
White Patch
The White Patch algorithm assumes that the maximum response in an image is caused by a perfect reflector, that represents the color of the illumination. White balancing attempts to equalize the maximum value of the three channels to produce a white patch. This algorithm must be used on scenes that ensure the captured image does not include saturated pixels.
White Patch 2
This variation of the White Patch algorithm aims to resolve the problems with the saturated pixels. White Patch 2 ses an average of local maximums instead of an absolute maximum. The results can change depending of the number of sample windows used in processing the image.
Auto exposure
One of the main problems affecting image quality, leading to unpleasant pictures, comes from improper exposure to light. The exposure is the amount of light that reaches the image sensor. Exposure determines the lightness or darkness of the resulting image. If too much light strikes the image sensor, the image will be overexposed, washed out, and faded. If too little light reaches the camera sensor produces an underexposed image, dark and lacking in details especially in shadow areas. Auto exposure (AE) algorithms adjust the captured image in an attempt to reproduce the most important regions (according to contextual or perceptive criteria) with a level of brightness, more or less in the middle of the possible range.
Auto exposure algorithms involves three processes:
 - Light metering: generally accomplished using the camera sensor itself or an external device as exposure detector.
 - Scene analysis: brightness metering methods used to estimate the scene illumination according to image metrics. Using this value, calculates the brightness adjustments to have the best exposure.
 - Image brightness correction: ensures that the correct amount of light reaches the image sensor, illumination and shutter time parameters are adjusted. The CMOS image sensor parameter is often called exposure time. The exposure time is defined as the amount of time that the sensor integrates light. In other words, it determines how long the sensor photo diodes array is exposed to light.
Center weighted
Implementation Details
Three applications are used to support the auto exposure and auto white-balance (AEW) adjustments in the RidgeRun's SDK:
 - librraew, a library that includes auto white balance and auto exposure algorithms.
Running Ipiped
Ipiped must run in background. If you are using RidgeRun's SDK and enabled ipiped it will be setup to start automatically when the system boots.
 ipiped &
Running Ipipe-client
To quit the interactive console you can use quit or exit.
In order to know the commands that are available run:
ipipe-client help
or get into the interactive console and execute help.
This shows a description of each command, as follows:
Command Description
set-debug Enable/Disable debug messages.
init-aew Initialize AEW algorithms.
stop-aew End AEW algorithm.
shell Execute a shell command(shell_cmd) using interactive console.
ping Show if ipipe-daemon is alive.
quit Quit from the interactive console.
exit Exit from the interactive console.
get-sensor Show the sensor that is being used.
If you want more detailed information about a command execute:
ipipe-client help
Controlling librraew with ipipe
Command: init-aew
Description: Initialize AEW algorithms
 WB: white balance algorithm, the options are:
 G -for gray world algorithm
 W -for retinex algorithm
 W2 -for variant of retinex algorithm
 N -for none
 AE: auto exposure algorithm, the options are
 EC -for electronic centric
 N -for none
 G: gain type, the options are:
 S -to use the sensor gain
 D -to use the digital
 EM: exposure metering method, the options are:
 P -for partial metering that take into account the light
 information of a portion in the center and the rest of
 the frame is ignored. The size of the center depends of
 of the parameter center_percentage
 C -for center weighted metering that take into account
 the light information coming from the entire frame with
 emphasis placed on the center area
 A -for average metering that take into account the light
 information from the entire frame without weighting
 SG -for segmented metering that divides the frame
 on 6 pieces and weighting them to avoid backlighting
 T: wait time in us, specifies the time between
 algorithm adjustments, max value=1s=1000000us
 fps: minimum frame rate
 seg: frame segmentation factor, each frame is segmented into
 regions, this factor represents the percentage of the
 maximum number of possible regions
 width: captured video/image horizontal size
 height: captured video/image vertical size
 center_percentage: defines the percentage of the image width
 and height to be used as the center size
Also you can stop automatic adjustments with the command stop-aew
Using librraew with other software rather than ipiped
librraew is a plain C library and can be re-used and integrated with any custom application. Please contact RidgeRun for the documentation of the librraew API.
Using the demo version of librraew
You can request a demo version of librraew in order to test the auto-white balance and auto-exposure algorithms before you decide to buy it. This library will allow you to use all the features that comes with the full version of the librraew but with the following limitations:
 - The algorithm will be darken the image periodically.
 - After a while the algorithm will stop working and the image capturing will be done with the last values calculated by the library. In order to test the library again you will need to restart the algorithm.
Basic example of use
In this section it will be shown a basic example of use of the ipiped and the librraew library. Once your board has started run the following commands:
ipipe-client run-config-script dm365_mt9p031_config
ipipe-client init-aew G EC S C 200000 30 50 640 480 50
The first command will chain the ipiped using an existing script. The second one will start the auto-white balance and the auto-exposure algorithms for an image size of 640x480 pixels and a minimum frame rate of 30fps (See Controlling librraew with ipipe section for more details).
Once you have the ipiped and the AEW algorithms running you can run any image/video capture GStreamer pipeline to test it.
As an example it was used the pipeline shown below which captures 30 images from the camera


text:
Try the following:
- Lift your finger, and then tap the tap sensor rather firmly.
- If you do not put the headset's units on both of your ears, you can't adjust the volume, even if you tap the tap sensors.
- If the tap sensors are disabled, you can't adjust the volume. Use the following procedure to reactivate the tap sensors.
- Put the headset's units on both of your ears.
- If the Bluetooth® function is on, hold down the button on the left (L) unit for 2 seconds to turn off the Bluetooth function.
- Hold down the button on the right (R) unit for 4 seconds.
- You can also reactivate the tap sensors when the headset's units are set in the charging case.


keywords for etsy
Play With Keywords for Etsy and Rank Your Etsy Store High!
Play With Keywords for Etsy and Rank Your Etsy Store High!
Play Now
Are you a store owner at Etsy? If yes, then you most probably be aware of the fact that SEO is necessary for your Etsy shop rank.
Are you aware of the factors that affect your ranking? If your answer is 'Keywords,' then it's correct. Utilizing keywords for Etsy correctly can exhilarate your SEO ranking greatly. You can play around with keywords to rank your Etsy store in search rankings.
If you are still somewhat unaware about what keywords are, here is a brief descriptionWhat Are Keywords?
In the purest form, keywords are the phrases you type-in on the search bar. Now, it may be the phrases that most people are referring to, or it can be a very new phrase/word that you just typed-in. These phrases that are obtained after simmering down any content(it can even be a physical item being sold in an online store.) are called Keywords.
keywords for etsy
They are the terms used while searching for anything on the internet. If the search phrase matches any content, they are displayed as per the relevance. Most relevant content to the search term will surface up first in the search results, and lesser relevant content is ranked much lower.
That's how search engines rank and rack the contents.
For the search term "Banana Backpack," the most relevant content must have this term intact. If the exact phrase match is not found, then the search engine moves on to other most relevant options like "Banana Bag" or "Backpack" least relevant terms will be "Bag," "Banana," etc.
Keywords are of mainly three types.
Types of Keywords
There are primarily three types of keywords, Mid tail vs Longtail vs Short tail Keywords that you can target for your products. You can use these keywords for Etsy while filling up the details of your product like the Product Title, tags, descriptions, and your shop policies.
rank your Etsy store
Source: Ceralytics
Long-Tail Keywords
Phrases that form a sentence and narrow down the search to something specific are known as long-tail keywords. The fundamental difference that comes from Longtail vs Short tail keywords is the numbers of words. The Etsy long tail keywords comprise of more than three words.
E.g., "baby girl coming home from hospital outfit winter "
Etsy long tail Keywords
In the above example, the long tail keyword is like a full sentence with eight words. So all those listings that are titled as the same words or related words have shown up as search results. Adding "winter" in the keyword made the results more specific to the seasonal clothing. Thus "knotted caps" also came up in the results.
Etsy long tail keywords: Target very specific results, have low search volume and high conversion rate
Mid Tail Keywords
Keywords that have a perfect balance of short-tail and long-tail keywords are mid-tail keywords. Mid tail keywords are mainly between 2-4 words keywords.
E.g. "newborn baby girl outfit."
Keywords for Etsy
In the above example, the mid-tail keywords have four words that show all those listings for newborn baby girl clothing. This keyword gives you more comprehensive results and not specific to any season or characteristics.
Etsy mid-tail keywords: Target wider search results, have medium search volume and considerable conversion rate.
Short Tail Keywords
Keywords consisting of a maximum of 2 words are short-tail keywords. These keywords are also known as the "head keyword" as they are the very first keywords that start the research process.
E.g., "newborn outfits."
longtail vs short tail keyword
In the above example, the short tail keyword shows extensive results of the baby outfits. The results are irrespective of any filters — the related search results for baby girl as well as the boy has shown up.
Etsy short-tail keywords: Target much broader search results, high search volume, and low conversion rate.
The Significance Of Long Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are precise, used by a majority of internet users, as these keywords narrow down their search and save time.
The competition on a long tail keyword is shallow, and it's easier to rank on them, but then you may have to compromise on the search volume as well because they show up only in specific searches.
It is essential to frame up the Etsy long tail keywords carefully after conducting thorough research on the search volume and each term that forms the longtail keywords.
play around with keywords
Source: Neil Patel
There is a higher chance of being searched out frequently, through the specific terms used in longtail keywords than being searched out for the entire keyword.
You can play around with keywords and use Etsy long tail keywords as the page slug (URL that is easy to remember) and even in the product description to rank your Etsy store.
Catch our WebinarTips to unwrap huge sales on Etsy: Holiday Shopping Season! Get an astute analysis of the holiday season planning and make the most of the grand selling opportunity!
The Significance Of Mid Tail Keywords
Mid-tail keywords, if used precisely, can gratify with much-needed traffic that your shop needs.
E.g., yellow peep-toe pumps, Orange polka dot ballets, etc.
Use mid-tail keywords for Etsy product names, tags, etc.
Etsy long tail keywords
The Significance of Short Tail keywords
Short tail keywords are the toughest nut to crack but wield the potential of yielding the apical amount of organic traffic to your site.
As you are already aware of the fact that short-tail keywords are generic and cover a broad spectrum since they are ubiquitous. You need to plant them discreetly throughout your content.
Having a good density of the generic keywords can help your store rank higher even for the generic terms like shoes, jewelry, stickers, etc.
Keywords for etsy
There are several keyword tools and planners, so go through these tools, and you will be able to deduce quality keyword options for your products and page, relatively searched on the internet.
Google Keyword Planner, Google Search Console, LSI Graph, Keyword Sh!tter, etc. are some of the keyword research tools. Besides, there is a keyword tool that helps you explicitly to pivot your keywords around your Etsy store.
How can you improve your Etsy shop rank with the help of keywords?
There might not be a broad scope to use the keywords the way you want, on your store page, but take the full chance to do so in your blogs, and that's how you can play around with keywords to rank your Etsy store.
 - Write blogs relevant to your products on a well-searched guest platform and link your Etsy store with those blogs. You can easily monitor the search queries on Google and frame your blogs accordingly.
 - Use the social media platform regularly and amply, make use of the proper hashtags, and also link your store and products with your social media posts.
 - While updating the listings, don't forget to check the most relevant keywords to your products and their most searched alternatives, which you may use later for social media postings.
 - Keep changing your keyword planning strategy regularly while keeping track of the ongoing trends. The outdated approach can't keep your rankings high for long.
By keeping these tips in mind, you can play around with keywords to rank your Etsy store by manifolds.
What Are Tags?
Tags are metadata related to any particular thing you search within a website.
If you visit a clothing website and search for linen shirts, then the products with the tags 'Linen' 'Shirts' 'Linen Shirts' or any other terms that include either of these words will surface up in the search results.
E.g., Enter the search term bag pack in the search bar
Keywords for etsy
These are the results that surface up
Etsy Shop rank
I checked out one of the products
Rank your etsy store
And these are the tags used for the item
Keywords for etsy
You can see that the tags contain the search term in some form or the other.
These tags can be keywords for Etsy as well; in fact, most of the Etsy shop owners use keywords as tags to increase the chances of them being searches not only within Etsy's website but on every search engine as well.
You should play around with keywords and use them as tags, as we mentioned above, as it will help you rank your Etsy store.
Where to Start?
Where do you think you should start now?
No matter how late you are to realize the importance of keywords in escalating your Etsy shop rank, but there is always room for improvement. Optimize your shops with the right selection of long tail vs short-tail keywords.
You can refer to the Etsy dedicated Keywords 101, to get ideas about what role keywords play in your Listing Title, Descriptions, Tags, and Attributes.
If you are a newbie seller, offering your creative products from your store, Etsy is a profitable option for your business to grow and find the right and targeted audience for your offerings.
The good part is, you don't need to shut your stores and start new rather, you can sell simultaneously on one or more platforms with the same list of products in no time and with little efforts.
Leave a Reply


cmdline && fastboot get_staged /dev/stdout. The parameter lists the name of the panel node in the device tree.
Note: The generated panel driver should usually work without larger changes (follow the README). As usual, it is recommended to ask in the chat for further advice before running it.
You also need to add the display panel to your device tree. The panel driver generator also generates a device tree fragment in the.dtsi file that you can use as a base. Typically you just need to fill in the reset-gpios, which can be found downstream. You should also add pinctrl to the &dsi0 node. See commits for other devices for examples.
Note: If you have qcom,regulator-ldo-mode defined downstream you should add (do not add it if you do not have this property downstream!):
&dsi_phy0 {
In some cases, you may need to turn on a GPIO to enable the power supply of the panel. On mainline, this is implemented using a fixed regulator, which represents the hw component that creates the required voltage. You can then use the --regulator option in the panel driver generator to add code to automatically turn on that GPIO.
Note: On downstream, you can often run into drivers which pretend that the GPIO is instead routed to some magic "enable" pin of the panel controller. Ideally, you can dispute this by looking at schematics, respectively by looking at datasheet of said controller and attempting to locate said pin.
Some devices have an extra backlight IC that needs to be controlled separately in the kernel. The easy case is where it is simply enabled using a GPIO: in this case one can simply treat it like a fixed regulator. (It may, in fact, actually be one.) But some backlight ICs have an I²C interface and then need an extra driver in the kernel.
There are different approaches used to dim the brightness of the screen. The approach used in downstream is usually defined by the qcom,mdss-dsi-bl-pmic-control-type property in the panel node of the downstream device tree:
 - Pulse-width modulation (PWM) (bl_ctrl_pwm): In this case there is an external PWM generator that generates a PWM signal for the display. PM8916 (the PMIC of MSM8916) contains one PWM generator that can be configured for the display. arm64: dts: msm8916-longcheer-l8150: Add PWM backlight support is an example of how to set it up.
 - MIPI DCS commands (bl_ctrl_dcs): In this case the panel controller handles the brightness automatically. The generated panel driver should implement brightness without further changes.
 - Custom: Some devices (e.g. Samsung AMOLED panels) have bl_ctrl_dcs or something else listed, but actually use an entirely custom way to control display brightness. This needs to be implemented manually in the panel driver (or using an extra backlight driver).
The touchscreen is usually connected to an I²C bus, e.g. blsp_i2c5. Often it is either supplied by some PM8916 regulators or a set of fixed regulators. (This is often visible when the touchscreen has some "enable" GPIOs listed downstream; those usually represent a chip that can be enabled through a GPIO and then supplies a fixed voltage to the touchscreen...) This is where similarities end. There can be all sorts of touchscreens connected to the I²C bus and manufacturers like to use many different ones. Look through the supported touchscreen in mainline to see if a driver exists already, or can be modified eventually to support another version of a similar chip. Otherwise, you may need to write a simple driver yourself.
Note: if you are really unlucky (this is probably quite unlikely for a device with MSM8916), you may have a so-called incell touchscreen, that is, a touchscreen that is integrated into the panel. That is not necessarily an issue, but sadly these often have some integration with the display (e.g being configured using dsi commands), that is probably quite ugly and doesn't as of yet have a solution in mainline. If you suspect this to be the case, don't hesitate to ask for help in the chat!
Like the touchscreen, sensors are usually connected to an I²C bus, e.g. blsp_i2c2 and usually supplied by L17. This is where similarities end. There can be all sorts of sensors connected to the I²C bus and manufacturers like to use many different ones. Look through the supported sensors in mainline to see if a driver exists already, or can be modified eventually to support another version of a similar chip. Otherwise, you may need to write a simple driver yourself.
Some devices have a Hall effect sensor that is used to detect if the screen is covered by some kind of flip cover. It is usually a simple GPIO like the buttons, and can be set up easily using gpio-keys.
 - The sensor should show up in sysfs (/sys/bus/iio/devices/...). Usually there are some in_*_raw files you can read for initial testing.
 - Accelerometer: The accelerometer is used for automatic screen rotation, so let's make sure that works correctly.
 - Install iio-sensor-proxy (note: need to restart after installing it), start it (rc-service iio-sensor-proxy start) and use monitor-sensor.
 - Check if the orientations are reported correctly. See File:PhoneRotation.png for a visualization of the different orientations.
 - If the orientations are not correct you need a mount-matrix in your device tree. See e.g. [this explanation].
 - Interrupts: If your sensor has interrupts listed downstream you should also add them on mainline and check if they work correctly.
 - Install linux-tools-iio, then use sudo iio_generic_buffer -a -c -1 -N where is the number of the IIO device in sysfs (e.g. /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:deviceN.
 - It should continuously print weird values.
 - Check /proc/interrupts if some interrupts were triggered for the sensor.
Audio functionality is split up in 3 main blocks (4 when using the modem):
 - LPASS (Low Power Audio Subsystem): The "sound card". Reads/writes digital audio data from/to memory and transmits it via I²S.
 - Digital Codec (msm8916-wcd-digital): Accepts digital audio via I²S, post-processes it (e.g. to change volume). Transmits it via PDM to analog codec. (A proprietary Qualcomm protocol but perhaps there are similiarities to Pulse-density modulation...)
 - Analog Codec (msm8916-wcd-analog): Integrated into PMIC (PM8916). Contains DACs (playback) and ADCs (capture) and amplifiers for Speaker, Earpiece and Headphones.
 - Audio DSP (qdsp6): Can optionally sit between CPU and LPASS to offload audio decoding (e.g. MP3, AC,...). Also handles voice call audio.
Here is diagram how the blocks relate to each other:
| MSM8916 GPIO| Some devices use
| | a custom speaker
| +--------+ |Quaternary amplifier!
| +-------+ | Modem | +-------+ | MI²S +-------------+
| | |<-->| (ADSP) |<-->| |<--> 112|<---->| Digital |
| | Linux | +--------+ | LPASS |<--> 117|<---->| Audio Codec |--> Speaker
| | (CPU) | Memory | |<--> 118|<---->| + Amplifier |
| | |<---------------->| |<--> 119|<---->+-------------+
| Primary | ^ Tertiary | +---------------+
| MI²S | | MI²S | | PM8916 |
| v | |PDM | |
| +-------+<---> 63|<-->|CLK +--------+|
| | |<---> 64|<-->|SYNC | ||<-- Microphone 1
| |Digital|<---> 65|<---|TX | Analog ||<-- Microphone 2
| | Codec |<---> 66|--->|RX0 | Codec ||--> Earpiece
| | |<---> 67|--->|RX1 | ||--> Headphones
| +-------+<---> 68|--->|RX2 +--------+|--> Speaker
Note: MI²S (multichannel I²S) is basically I²S with multiple data lines. This allows using more audio channels, although this is typically not used on MSM8916.
TODO For now, check related commits for other devices and ask on Matrix if you have any questions :)
Custom Speaker Amplifier
The analog codec in PM8916 contains a mono Class-D (audio) amplifier. However, there are several devices that do not make use of it. Perhaps because the manufacturer thought it's not powerful enough, or because they wanted to include stereo speakers. In that case they have likely included a custom speaker amplifier. There are two types of this:
 - Digital codec + speaker amplifier: This can be seen in the diagram above. It's connected via the Quaternary MI²S interface and contains it's own


_USER_ {export:210795, abstract = {
Many developing countries are suffering from air pollution recently. Governments have built a few air quality monitoring stations in cities to inform people the concentration of air pollutants. Unfortunately, urban air quality is highly skewed in a city, depending on multiple complex factors, such as the meteorology, traffic volume, and land uses. Building more monitoring stations is very costly in terms of money, land uses, and human resources. As a result, people do not really know the fine-grained air quality of a location without a monitoring station. In this paper, we introduce a cloud-based knowledge discovery system that infers the real-time and fine-grained air quality information throughout a city based on the (historical and real-time) air quality data reported by existing monitor stations and a variety of data sources observed in the city, such as meteorology, traffic flow, human mobility, structure of road networks, and point of interests (POIs). The system also provides a mobile client, with which a user can monitor the air quality of multiple locations in a city (e.g. the current location, home and work places), and a web service that allows other applications to call the air quality of any location. The system has been evaluated based on the real data from 9 cities in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guanzhou, and Shenzhen, etc. The system is running on Microsoft Azure and the mobile client is publicly available in Window Phone App Store, entitled Urban Air. Our system gives a cost-efficient example for enabling a knowledge discovery prototype involving big data on the cloud.
}, author = {Yu Zheng and Xuxu Chen and Qiwei Jin and Yubiao Chen and Xiangyun Qu and Xin Liu and Eric Chang and Wei-Ying Ma and Yong Rui and Weiwei Sun}, month = {March}, number = {MSR-TR-2014-40}, title = {A Cloud-Based Knowledge Discovery System for Monitoring Fine-Grained Air Quality}, url = {_URL_ year = {2014}, }


text: Research is thought to be a transformative experience in which students gain disciplinary knowledge and skills, become more expert in the practices of science, develop confidence and a sense of belonging in the scientific community, and develop their educational and career plans. Extensive research has shown that mentors play a critical role in this process. However, minimal research has focused on the negative or problematic experiences that students have with their mentors. Prior qualitative work by this research group has identified the range of negative mentoring that undergraduates can experience while doing research. The goal of the current study is to develop and validate a survey measure to quantitatively measure negative mentoring, including its prevalence and impact. This survey will be an important tool that will enable research to explore how negative mentoring impacts undergraduates and allow programs and mentors to evaluate their mentoring quality.


that the minimal value of the transformation of each set, say \(A=\{e,i,o\}\) and \(B=\{a,e\}\), according to a new orderding, \(\pi_X\), is equal to the Jackard Coefficient. In this case we can compute the Jackard Coefficient exactly and it is:
$$\frac{|\{e,i,o\}\cap\{a,e\}|}{|\{e,i,o\}\cup\{a,e\}|} =\frac{|\{e\}|}{|\{a,e,i,o\}|} = \frac{1}{4} $$
This number means that whenever we pick a transformation \(\pi\) from the set of all possible transformations \(\Pi\) the probability that the smaller number is the same in both sets is equal to 0.25. Think that we are talking here about a probability and that it is not a rule. If the permutation choosen at random was the previously defined function \(\pi_X\) then we would have, \(\min\pi_X(A)=\min\{2,3,1\}=1\) that is not the same value as \(\min\pi_X(B)=\min\{5,2\}=2\).
Hashing functions
Defining a random ordering for all the elements of a universe is costly. We have to maintain in memory the tables we saw for the vowels and that can not be practical when the universe of objects is large. So instead of maintaining the explicit random permutation we use the implicit permutation that hashing functions with good properties give us. The good properties we need is that the probability of collision in the universe is low because a random permutation is a 1 to 1 relationship between elements and positions and thus collisions in the hashing function would break this property.
From now on, I'm going to assume that every universe we need to work with is smaller than the range of integers and thus restrict all the derivations to integer since every set and ordering could be mapped to the natural integer ordering (\([0..2^{32}]\)).
Possible hashing functions for integers could be:
 - Use the FNV-1 hashing function of the string representation of your integer. This has the advantage that naturally deals with hashing sets of integers by means of concatenating their string representations.
 - Use a pseudo-random number generator by picking a large prime number, say \(p=_PHONE_\) and a set of coefficients \(\{a_i,b_i\}\) such our hashing functions are defined as \(\pi_i = (a_i x + b_i) \% p \)
In this post we will use the second kind of functions expresed in this Haskell code:
p :: Int
coefs :: [Int]
coefs = unfoldr (Just. randomR (0,p)) $ mkStdGen 0
hashFuncs :: [Int->Int]
hashFuncs = go coefs
 go theCoefs = let (a:b:[],rest) = splitAt 2 theCoefs
 in (\x -> (a*x+b) 'mod' p) : go rest
So, given a hashing function, which is the minimum hash over a given set? This code gives you that result
minHash :: (Int->Int) -> [Int] -> Int
minHash f = foldl' hashAndMin maxBound
 hashAndMin a b = min a (f b)
OK, now you want to compare two sets, A and B to see how similar they are. The similarity measure here will be the number of items they both share, the Jackard coefficient. The time complexity of the set intersection is \(O(n+m)\) if you first build a Hash Map and then query it with the second set for existence. If both sets are already sorted you can compare them in \(O(n)\) \(O(m+n\log n+ m\log m)\).
Can you compare them faster? Yes, but only if you want to trade accuracy. The property in the probability formula at the beginning of the post states that with probability the Jackard coefficient the min hashes of the two sets will be equal. That means that if we take r different hashing functions (permutations) and we name s the Jackard coefficient between the tow sets, the probability that all k hashes of each set are equal is \(s^r\). Since this is a collection of Bernoulli trials, the distribution of having k min hashes equal in both sets follows a Binomial distribution with density probability function equal to:
$$f(k;r,s)= {r \choose k}s^k(1-s)^{r-k}$$
It is known that a random variable distributed according to the binomial distribution, \(X \sim B(r,s)\) has \(E[X]=rs\), so a good estimator of \(s\) would be to divide the number of matches by the number of hashing functions. This would give you the estimated value of the Jackard coefficient. But before comparing two fingerprints we have to compute them:
shingle :: Int -> [Int] -> [Int]
shingle c nums = [minHash f nums | f <- take c hashFuncs]
The shingle function gives us a set of c fingerprints of our original big set of numbers.
So let's see it in action. Imagine that we want to compute the Jackard coefficient between the bag of letters in the phrase Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall and Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. First let's compute the Jackard coefficient according to the definition
import Data.List
import System.Random
import Data.Char
import Data.List
phrase1="Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall"
phrase2="Humpty Dumpty had a great fall"
mkSet = nub. filter isAlpha. map toLower
-- Set 1 is the collection of letters in the first phrase
-- "humptydsaonw"
set1 = map ord $ mkSet phrase1 -- "humptydsaonwl"
-- Set 2 is the collection of letters in the second phrase
-- "humptydagrefl"
set2 = map ord $ mkSet phrase2 -- "humptydagrefl"
jackard = a/b
 a = fromIntegral $ length (set1 'intersect' set2) ::Double
 b = fromIntegral $ length (set1 'union' set2) ::Double
p :: Int
coefs :: [Int]
hashFuncs :: [Int->Int]
hashFuncs = go coefs
minHash f = foldl' hashAndMin maxBound
 hashAndMin a b = min a (f b)
shingles1 = map (\x -> shingle x set1) [1..]
shingles2 = map (\x -> shingle x set2) [1..]
jackard2 = map approxJackard shingles
 shingles = zip shingles1 shingles2
 approxJackard :: ([Int],[Int]) -> Double
 approxJackard (as,bs) = let pairs = zip as bs
 matches = filter (\(a,b) -> a == b) pairs
 num = fromIntegral $length matches :: Double
 den = fromIntegral $ length as :: Double
 in num/den
If we plot jackard2 we have an approximation based on the number of shingles:
Approximating Jackard Coefficient
OK, let me summarize a little bit.
 1. You came here because you have a problem of comparing and object against N different objects and N is very large.
 2. The comparison you want to perform is by computing intersections between the attributes of objects and compute how many are equal.
 3. You want a cheap procedure for computing 2)
So the solution is to transform each object into a set of different values, and then perform the Jackard coefficient on the reduced set of values. For instance, each object could be the set of friends in a social network, and the value c could be for instance just 10. Here we reduce the computation of the intersection from the hundreds to just 10 values. Your friends got summarized in a set of 10 values.
Can we do better? Yes. Here we reduced the number of comparison from the cardinality of the number of features of the object to the small number c. But we still have to perform N comparisons against the N individuals in the population. Wouldn't it be nice to just pick the individuals we think are more likely to have a high Jackard Coefficient? That's possible with the use of bands but since this post is already very long, I'll leave that for another post.
 1. Minwise independent permutations The paper with the math that demonstrates the link between the Jackard Coefficient and the probability.
 2. Chapter 3 of the excellent book "Minning massive datasets"
Categories: Data Mining Tags:,
Training Gradient Boosting Trees with Python
November 5th, 2012 6 comments
I've been doing some data mining lately and specially looking into Gradient Boosting Trees since it is claimed that this is one of the techniques with best performance out of the box. In order to have a better understanding of the technique I've reproduced the example of section 10.14.1 California Housing in the book The Elements of Statistical Learning. Each point of this dataset represents the house value of a property with some attributes of that house. You can get the data and the description of those attributes from here.
I know that the whole exercise here