What is a stroker engine?
Updated Dec 31, 2020 | Same topic: Tuning & Mods
The used car you bought could come with a stroker engine.
1. What does a stroker engine mean?
There are numerous types of engines that we probably have heard of by now. With the continuous innovations the automotive industry is having, it is not a surprise anymore that one day we might drive a car with an unfamiliar and a new engine.
However, there is one type of engine which is probably not as commonly heard by most these days, and that is the stroker engine. So, what is a stroker engine? A stroker engine is, actually, simpler than it sounds. This type of engine only means that its engine size, or displacement, is modified or reworked to yield higher horsepower or torque output, or even both.
4-cylinder engine
Stroker engines involve two main aspects, namely the cylinder bore and compression stroke
The application of stroker engines is widely seen in race tracks and drag strips as the common use of this type of engine is to achieve higher power. So yes, using a stroker engine is one of the many ways you can increase the power of your car's engine.
Some of the common ways you can increase the power of your car are installing turbos that will kick in especially at high speeds, using performance tires for better traction on the road, and reducing the weight of your car by removing seats, panels, and body kits.
White BMW race car
Stroker engines are common in race cars
There are two main aspects of a stoker engine that we have to know to get started. These two include the engine's bore and stroke. Bore refers to the diameter of each cylinder. It is the round shape you see when you remove your car's cylinder head. Even if you are not the one working on your car, we're pretty sure you have seen one at least.
On the other hand, stroke refers to the distance a piston travels within a cylinder. Each stroke is responsible for keeping an engine cranking or moving. There are four common strokes used in almost all the cars you see. There are also two strokes but is mostly used by motorcycles only. Two-stroke engine cars are prominent around the 1950s so it's unlikely to see one these days.
>>> Related: Everything you need to know about torque
Classic car front view
Even the engine of old cars can be stroked
The first stroke in an engine is called the intake. This is the part where a mixture of fuel and gas is inducted into a cylinder and is dragged down along the piston going at the bottom dead center position. The second stroke is called compression. From here, the piston is moved straight up along the cylinder at the top dead center position and compresses the fuel and gas mixture.
The third stroke is called combustion. As the name implies, the air and fuel mixture is ignited by a spark plug located at the top of the cylinder. The ignited mixture then expands and produces power. This power is used to rotate the engine crankshaft through the piston going down by force at the bottom dead center position.
>>> Related: Engine protection: 5 engine parts you need keep close eyes on
Motorcycle engine
Most motorcycle engines come with a 2-stroke engine
The final stroke is the exhaust. This is the part where the burned fuel is released out of the cylinder through the exhaust valve. The position of the piston returns to the top dead center and is now ready to repeat the stroke back to one.
With all that in mind, increasing the size of the bore results in higher power output. Why? The more the engine size, the more air it can take. And the more a cylinder takes, the more power it can put up. A longer stroke will also increase the size of the cylinder when a piston is at the bottom dead center position.
>>> Related: Cold air vs Short ram intake: Know the differences
Engine of car
Be sure to have with you a professional if you decide to stroke your engine
Even if you have a huge amount of cash to rework your cylinders, increasing the size of the bore and length of the stroke come with limitations. This is limited by the construction of the manufacturer of the engine.
When engineers design an engine, they don't intend to make room for owners to build a stroker engine. The size of the bore is limited by the engine block, while the length of the stroke is only limited by the length of a cylinder. The actual numbers depend on the specifications of an engine.
2. What is a stroker kit for engines?
Stroker kits are the parts used to modify an engine's bore and stroke. These stroker kits are available in the aftermarket intended for those who wish to add more horsepower and torque to their car. Of note, if you decide to add stroker kits, it is highly recommended to call your mechanic as the installation process can be critical in the operation of your car's engine.
These kits include cylinder heads, piston pins, piston rods, and a crankshaft. Take note that the price of stroker kits can be relatively expensive. This means that there are two aspects that you need to consider when building a stroker engine, namely the construction of your engine and your budget.
>>> Related: OEM vs Aftermarket car parts: All you should know about its Pros & Cons
3. What is a stroker engine: FAQs
Q: What is a cylinder bore?
A bore refers to the diameter of each cylinder. Widening the bore will increase the horsepower and torque of an engine.
Q: Can I increase the size of my engine?
Yes, you can. There are two engine aspects that you need to know when increasing the size of your engine. These include cylinder bore and compression stroke.
Q: What is a compression stroke?
A compression stroke, or just stroke, refers to the distance a piston travels in a cylinder. Most cars these days come with 4 stroke cycle to keep an engine cranking.
Q: What are stroker kits?
Stroker kits include parts that are used to increase the compression stroke and cylinder bore. Some of which include cylinder head, piston rod, and piston pin.
Q: Is it ideal to build a stroker engine?
Theoretically, a stroked engine comes with increase engine size. This means that it consumes more fuel resulting in greater fuel consumption. But if you enjoy greater power, then you can consider stroking your engine.
Rex Sanchez
Rex Sanchez


Delivering Occupational Therapy Via Telehealth
Telehealth occupational therapy—yes, you read that right. You might be thinking, "How am I supposed to facilitate an activity with a child on the other side of a computer screen?" The key is occupation-based coaching. Rather than focusing on directing each intervention and doing the activity with the child, consider a parent-coaching model. Parent coaching involves the principles of a method called occupation-based coaching.
What is occupation-based coaching?
Occupation-based coaching provides interventions that include working directly with caregivers to create strategies to help the child participate in daily activities. This intervention model focuses on improving the parent-child interaction and creating child-learning opportunities within the child's routine and contexts.
Why does parent coaching work well with telehealth?
Telehealth is a "hands-off" approach. Occupational therapists have no choice but to facilitate the session with verbal and visual communication only. That means the occupational therapist takes the role of an observer while the parent takes the "hands-on" approach.
Active participation from parents during sessions results in improved child outcomes and increased parent competence. One way to accomplish this virtually is to make sure that you and your client have the same materials. That way, you're able to work on the same activity "together" even though you're not in the same room.
Is parent coaching effective?
Yes. Parent coaching results in the child meeting goals and participating in their occupations. It also yields increased satisfaction from the parent's perspective and better parent-child relationships. As the occupational therapist, you're not observing the child day in and day out. But the parent or caregiver is. So when the caregiver or parent receives effective coaching, they're able to apply those learned tools and skills outside of the designated session time.
SimplePractice Occupation Based Coaching
Strategies for Occupation-Based Coaching
1. Work with the parent/caregiver/guardian to establish the goals.
Start with the evaluation process. The occupation-based coaching model relies on regular collaboration between the occupational therapist and the parent—and that includes establishing united goals. Parents can identify goals that will impact the child's daily routine and are meaningful to their family.
2. Focus on the parent-child relationship.
Support the relationship between the caregiver and the child. Ask about the caregiver's insights about the child's behaviors. It's important to help both the parent and child better understand each other.
3. Observe.
Observation is key in occupational therapy, but it's the most important component of telehealth sessions. Observe how the parent and child interact. Take a good look at the child's home environment and context. Keen observation will make it easier to identify additional, new intervention ideas that'll make an impact.
4. Provide feedback.
Once you've observed the environment and context, have a conversation with the caregiver about how effective the strategies used during the sessions were. Engage in problem-solving with the caregiver in order to build their knowledge of the situation. That way, they can better identify what's working and what's not.
What Parents Think of Occupation-Based Coaching
Parents appreciate having interventions occur in the child's natural environment. They feel like they're able to establish a partnership with the occupational therapist and can truly collaborate with them. This gives the caregiver or parent more confidence to come up with their own strategies to help their child. Two common takeaways parents have with occupation-based coaching is a changed perspective of their child's behavior and an emphasis on their strengths.
Now pair that with telehealth, parents are able to reduce travel time, which is essential for travel with little ones. It also offers greater flexibility, especially with scheduling. Occupational therapy via telehealth has also shown to increase focus on the entire family, which enriches the experience and improves the outcomes for everyone involved. Plus, with the caregiver being the one to use a "hands-on" approach, they're naturally more engaged during sessions.
Telehealth occupational therapy services is an underutilized mode that complements real life—the way it is today, not how it was yesterday. Just be ready for some amazing results!
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Vy Vo, John Serences; The effects of attentional scope on voxel receptive fields and population codes for space. Journal of Vision 2018;18(10):1191. doi: 10.1167/18.10.1191.
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© ARVO (_PHONE_); The Authors (2016-present)
Prior studies in both humans and macaques have investigated how spatial attention alters the response properties of spatial encoding units -- e.g. single neurons in macaques, or single voxels in humans – across different cortical areas. These studies have all shown that spatial receptive fields (RFs) change their center, shape, and gain with spatial attention (for review, see Anton-Erxleben & Carrasco 2013; in humans, see Klein et al. 2014; Sprague & Serences 2013; de Haas et al. 2014; Kay et al. 2015; Sheremata & Silver 2015; Vo et al. 2017). In these studies, subjects typically attend to a single stimulus of a fixed size and scope (but see Niebergall et al. 2011). It remains unknown how patterns of RF changes across the visual field might support spatial attention divided across many stimuli. We had human participants perform a task in which they focused their attention on 1 of 3 locations or divided their attention across all 3 locations. As a control, they also performed a contrast change discrimination task at fixation. We threshholded task difficulty to equate performance across conditions. They then performed the task in an fMRI scanner as we measured BOLD signals across the whole brain. We compare how (1) voxel RFs (vRFs) changed across attention condition, and (2) how population codes for space changed across condition by using an inverted encoding model. Preliminary data suggest that altering the spatial scope of attention causes widespread changes in the preferred center, size, and gain of vRFs. These modulations across the whole population of vRFs jointly influence the quality of information encoded about spatial location in each condition.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018
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I have a datastore that is querying a database and outputting JSon... something like this:
$data[] = array('id' => $i, 'prod_id' => $product_id, 'link' => $link);
I'm wondering how you can pass back a link using the $link variable. If I had this for example:
$link = " Clicky ";
The datagrid would display Clicky and not the actual html link... Is there anyway to pass back html?
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2 Answers
I would suggest passing the link URL and the link text separately, then reconstructing them into an anchor link in JavaScript on the client-side.
You could also try escaping the HTML, then unescaping on the client-side.
I have no idea why it won't send linksperhaps the browser is trying to parse the sent HTML too early?
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You can use formatter in dojo grid to format the HTML displayed in each cell. When creating the grid, you can set a formatter for each column. The formatter is a JavaScript function that takes two parameters, the first one value means the value of the cell, the second one rowIndex means the index of current row. The return value of the formatter function is the HTML content displayed in the cell.
For your case, I would suggest that you use a single column for both the link URL and anchor text. You can use a simple encoding, like _URL_$$$Clicky, where $$$ is used to separate these two fields. The PHP code would be:
$link = "_URL_$$$Clicky";
Then in your formatter function, you can use :
function(value, rowIndex) {
 var parts = value.split('$$$');
 return "" + parts[1] + "";
If you prefer to use one column for each field, e.g. url for URL and anchorText for the anchor text. Then you need to get the value of another column when formatting the cell. Suppose the grid uses the url field. Then the formatter function may look like below:
function(value, rowIndex) {
 var item = grid.getItem(rowIndex); // Get the store item by index, need the reference of the grid.
 var anchorText = grid.store.getValue(item, 'anchorText');
 return "" + anchorText + "";
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Thanks for the awesome explanation. I ended up using the escapeHTMLInData="false", however.. but will keep the formatter function in mind for later! :) – Paul Dec 1 '10 at 22:48
Ah, escapeHTMLInData='false', I didn't know that before. Thanks for the information. :) – Alex Cheng Dec 2 '10 at 9:38
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All states have enacted consumer protection statutes, which are modeled after the Federal Trade Commission Act, which prohibits ''unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce." Minnesota is no different. The state enacted the Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act (UDTPA) in 1973. The unfair and deceptive trade practices are just that: when a seller acts unfairly to a buyer or deceives a buyer. The statute is designed to address the unequal bargaining power of the consumer.
There are thirteen practices considered deceptive trade practices under UNDTPA:
When, in the course of business, a person:
- Passes off goods or services as those of another
- Causes likelihood of confusion or of misunderstanding as to the source, sponsorship, approval, or certification of goods or services
- Causes likelihood of confusion or of misunderstanding as to affiliation, connection, or association with, or certification by, another
- Uses deceptive representations or designations of geographic origin in connection with goods or services
- Represents that goods or services have sponsorship, approval, characteristics, ingredients, uses, benefits, or quantities that they do not have or that a person has a sponsorship, approval, status, affiliation, or connection that the person does not have
- Represents that goods are original or new if they are deteriorated, altered, reconditioned, reclaimed, used, or secondhand
- Represents that goods or services are of a particular standard, quality, or grade, or that goods are of a particular style or model, if they are of another
- Disparages the goods, services, or business of another by false or misleading representation of fact
- Advertises goods or services with intent not to sell them as advertised
- Advertises goods or services with intent not to supply a reasonable amount for public demand, unless the advertisement discloses a limitation of quantity;
- Makes false or misleading statements of fact concerning the reasons for, existence of, or amounts of price reductions
- In attempting to collect delinquent accounts, implies or suggests that health care services will be withheld in an emergency situation
- Engages in any other conduct which similarly creates a likelihood of confusion or of misunderstanding.
In addition to injunctive relief, the court may award attorney's fees to the prevailing party under two circumstances: 1) if the plaintiff has brought the claim knowing it to be groundless, or 2) the defendant has willfully engaged in the trade practice knowing it to be deceptive.
If a person engages in deceptive trade practices as part of personal activities, not in the course of business or trade, the statute does not apply. A claim will also fail if the plaintiff fails to establish a causal connection. Further if the allegedly deceptive statement is in fact true, no claim exists. The burden is on the plaintiff to prove the falsity of statements allegedly disparaging the goods, services, or business of another by false or misleading representations of fact. Generally, there is a six year statute of limitations for claims.
The analysis for claims under the Minnesota Deceptive Trade Practices Act is the same as that applied under the Lanham Act.
To establish a Lanham Act false advertising claim, a plaintiff must prove
- A false statement of fact by the defendant in a commercial advertisement about its own or another's product
- The statement actually deceived or has the tendency to deceive a substantial segment of its audience
- The deception is material, in that it is likely to influence the purchasing decision
- The defendant caused its false statement to enter interstate commerce
- The plaintiff has been or is likely to be injured as a result of the false statement, either by direct diversion of sales from itself to defendant or by a loss of goodwill associated with its products
However, when a competitor's advertisement, particularly a comparative ad, is proved to be literally false, the court may presume that consumers were misled and force the defendant to terminate circulation of the offending advertisement, without requiring consumer surveys or other evidence of the ad's impact on the buying public. Do note that when this principle applies in a Lanham Act dispute between competitors, the plaintiff "must show that it will suffer irreparable harm absent the injunction."
Examples of violations we might more commonly see are a refurbished computer sold as new, or a car with the odometer rolled back. In the news, we have seen:
- Fake Coach and Fendi purses sold at Target and Walmart respectively.
- Extra-virgin olive oil containing only seed oil, chlorophyll and beta-carotene to make it look and smell like the real thing.
- Market Pantry Brand Parmesan Cheese sold at Target containing no parmesan cheese.


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even for the Neandertal who had a flatter cranial base than modern man. If the actual Bolton Point is any lower than my estimate the retruded position of Pech's jaws becomes much more retruded. So this is an extremely safe estimate. The form of the nose and forehead in each comparison belongs to a modern day child.
The Gibraltar child
The child from Devil's Tower on the Island of Gibraltar was described by Dorothy Garrod in 1928. She says,
Figure 6. The lower jaw of the child from Gibraltar. On the right side there is an arrow pointing to an empty tooth socket. The middle tooth on the left side of the jaw is the same size as the tooth that was supposed to fit in this empty socket. Obviously it wouldn't fit.
'When the fragments were originally found we had only portions of the skull-cap on which to base our estimate of age. Since that time the discovery of the jaws, whose evidence is somewhat conflicting when compared with the skull cap, has made a fairly exact estimate possible.'10 (Emphasis mine.)
She goes on to specify,
'the most important evidence is necessarily provided by the teeth. It may be accepted as a good rule that the first permanent molars erupt in the sixth year.'11
Garrod was applying the rigid uniformitarian assumption that the modern day eruption time of the first permanent molars has always been the same throughout history. It has always been in the sixth year. Is this true? According to Garrod this fact made the Gibraltar child five years old.
I examined the Gibralter child's upper and lower jaws in the British Museum in London, England. For some unexplained reason I was not allowed to see the skull-cap, or the bones of the ear. However, in the lower jaw I was able to discover an error in reconstruction that would have made a difference in the determination of its age if tooth levels were not allowed to dictate the conclusion. In Figure 6 the lower jaw shows two primary molars and one unerupted first permanent first molar on the left side. These teeth are absent on the right side. On the right side an artificial tooth has been put in place of the first permanent molar. There has been a break through the jaw, on the right side, in the socket of the second primary molar (see Figure 6). We know this socket has been compressed because if the left second primary molar on the other side (middle tooth) was moved over to the right, it could never have fitted into this position. The back piece of bone (ramus) has been rotated outward so that the artificial tooth (first permanent molar) has its top surface facing straight up. Notice the wide whitish outer edge of the compressed socket. That's the leading edge of the rotated back piece.
Figure 7. Diagram of the lower jaw of the Gibraltar child. The line from M1 to M2 is the midline which usually divides the jaw in two equal halves. CL is the point where the left condyle (knob at end of jaw) should be and CR is the point where the right condyle should be. The dashed line outlines the correct position of the broken piece of the right side of the jaw. The solid line is the actual position. B to B1 is the break line. ES is the empty socket. E is the tooth that should fit in ES. The distances CL to M2 and CR to M2 are 44.5 mm ± [plus or minus] 1 mm. The actual position (solid line) is about 10 mm too far from the midline.
Figure 7 is a diagram showing the extent of the movement of the right broken piece. The midline M1 to M2 divides the lower jaw in half. In most cases both sides are supposed to be approximately equal distances from this line. Certainly not all lower jaws are bilaterally symmetrical, but the broken and compressed socket casts a shadow over this alignment. Moreover, if an attempt was made for symmetry, the distances between CL and M2, and CR and M2, would be the same—44.5 mm. But they aren't, and the broken piece (ramus) has been pushed out about 10 mm and probably rotated forward 7–8 degrees. Most physical anthropologists know that a very young lower jaw shows a tipping in (toward the midline) and a tipping back of the condyle and upper part of the ramus. This imaginative adjustment in reconstructing the fossil jaw made it appear older, even though it was still small in comparison to a modern five year old.
Garrod finally admits that,
'the jaws are both absolutely and relatively small and the brain case large.'11
'The massive size of the cranium seems at first sight to be rather remarkable in one so young.'13
Figure 8. Radiograph of the side view of the Gibraltar child lower jaw. The two primary teeth that are erupted on the left side show large pulp spaces. These are called taurodont teeth, meaning bull-like. They are designed for longer and tougher wear. They show a lot of enamel wear. All Neandertal children I examined have taurodont baby teeth.
Garrod goes on to describe the following features which should have convinced her to abandon her uniform tooth eruption position but didn't. They are:
(a) very infantile inferior temporal bone (ear area),
(b) remarkable jaw muscle development,
(c) slow sutural growth on the side of the cranium,
(d) infantile character of the frontal bone (upright forehead, no supra-orbital brow ridges),
(e) rounded front surface of the upper jaw (very foetus-like),
(f) almost no chin development,
(g) very small mastoid process (lump of bone behind the ear), and
(h) the absence of many small foramina (holes in bone) for blood vessels in the mastoid area.14
In addition to these, Figure 8 shows that the two primary molars are taurodont teeth (bull-like). They are capable of much greater and longer wear than modern children's teeth. She saw these teeth and remarked,
'the crowns of the teeth are very much worn, to an unusual degree for temporary teeth.'15
Lastly, she came close to questioning her own presuppositions when she considered the growth of the side of the head. She said,
'Although the breadth of the parietal is unusually large, it is possible that it may be within the normal limits of variation, although here also, unless we presume a slower rate of growth in this region than modern man, we are certainly dealing with an unusual specimen.'16
She almost came to the conclusion that more than five years were necessary for the brain case to grow this large, even though the teeth only appear five years old. She almost broke away from the uniform tooth eruption schedule and followed the evidence. However, I think she knew that the evidence was leading to a child who had lived longer, had more tooth wear than five years and was maturing and growing very slowly.
The Engis child
At the University of Liège in Belgium I studied the Engis child. This fossil had been discovered in Belgium in 1830. Figure 9 is the loose upper jaw that was found with the skull. Most of the face is missing. This upper jaw displays four erupted primary teeth and two empty sockets. From the length of the primary left lateral incisor the age looks to be about five to six years (by modern standards).17 Charles Fraipont determined the age at death of this child as six to seven years from the teeth and skull.18 Figure 10 shows four loose primary molars and two first permanent molars that belonged to the Engis child. The length of the first primary molar roots and their root tips, which show some resorption (erosion) from this view, make it very difficult to age this child any older than five.19 Some contradictory evidence against Fraipont's estimate of age comes from a 1963 study by Morrees et al.20 Figure 10 shows that the Engis child's lower first permanent molar has just initiated its root formation at the time of this child's death. According to Morrees et al. modern children achieve this stage of lower first molar development between 3.1 years in the female and 3.2 years in the male. Today the root is half completed by 5.4 to 5.5 years. Therefore according to recent standards, this child could be as young as three.21
However, Fraipont did not have these modern standards and he was also looking at the 'Le bourrelet supraorbitaire de l'adulte se montre deja.'22 Which means, 'that the supraorbital torus of the adult is already showing itself.' Figure 11 shows this small supra-orbital ridge formation and slight swelling between the ridges. When faced with this mature and older look of the frontal bone and youthfulness in tooth age, he was faced with a dilemma. It seems he knew that he had to call the head accelerated rather than the teeth delayed based on his ape heritage beliefs [apes mature much faster than humans do], but he knew he couldn't call the head accelerated unless it were longer, henceforth he took the actual 164 mm length as seen in Figure 12 and inflated it to 188 mm.23 It is not 188 mm regardless of how you measure the length, even if the broken piece is repaired in the furthest back area (occipital bun). My measurement may be off by 1–2 mm, but not by 24 mm. His figure could not have been obtained by measurement. He then states,

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Shipwreck! Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibits 19th-century rescue scenes
Shipwreck! Winslow Homer and 'The Life Line' is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Dec. 16.
PHILADELPHIA—Even today, when few people except professional sailors and fishermen are compelled to step foot on a boat, shipwreck is a powerful fear. Drowning may be a relatively painless way to go, but the idea of a cold, lonely death in a howling sea can make the most dedicated landlubber's spine tingle.
With thousands of miles of coastline, and a burgeoning immigrant population arriving by boat, that fear was vividly felt by millions of Americans in the 19th century, when shipwreck was not just something one read about in Shakespeare, but a common and terrifying disaster, claiming hundreds of lives every year.
In 1884, Winslow Homer painted a large and dynamic canvas that played on the fear and fascination of maritime disaster. The Life Line depicted the rescue of an unconscious woman by a heroic male figure whose face is obscured by a billowing red shawl. The two figures sprawl on a "life chair," suspended from a taut life line that connects the ship to shore. They dangle precariously above a ferocious trough of churning waves, and with neither the wrecked boat nor the safe shore in sight, they seem suspended in time, not yet safe, but happily above the watery maw that foams and sprays all around them.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art has devoted an entire exhibition to the Homer work, analyzing a small subgenus of sea painting that turns out to have deep roots not just in the history of maritime art, but in philosophical, historical and political debates as well. Shipwreck! Winslow Homer and 'The Life Line' brings together diverse strands of intellectual history, from the now largely forgotten tradition of life-saving and rescue along the Atlantic seacoast to the persistent question of American exceptionalism: Are we the sort of people who put women and children first, who will go to exceptional lengths to preserve life, or are we a dog-eat-dog nation, where every-man-for-himself is the ruling ethos?
Homer's picture was a popular and critical success during the artist's lifetime, but it has been overshadowed since by his later sea paintings, in which the abstract drama of water takes precedence over the narrative drama in The Life Line. Homer was never really comfortable painting faces, and his figure painting is often clumsy. But in The Life Line he finessed his weaknesses, obscuring the male face entirely and painting the woman lost in an expressionless swoon. What emerges is the pure drama of their predicament, and the implied sexual tension in their close embrace.
Homer was building on a long and established tradition of shipwreck painting. The exhibition uses a 1772 painting by the French artist Claude-Joseph Vernet (borrowed from the National Gallery of Art) to show the respectable roots of this often overly melodramatic and formulaic genus. But it also includes several decidedly lesser samples of what was a common recipe: broken masts and surly skies, drenched and exhausted survivors clambering ashore, brooding rocks and wild water framing the human tragedy.
By the 19th century, the iconography of rescue — from all manner of disasters including fire — was a convenient way to broach sexual themes. Just as religious ecstasy was a safe way to suggest sexual pleasure, women could be placed in the arms of strong men without any overt scandal so long as the man was a rescuer, doing his heroic, manly duty. Women's bodies could also be depicted a bit more lasciviously than was normally allowed if they were dead, washed ashore and scantily clad. Wet T-shirts were OK so long as there was a good reason why they were wet.
Two popular images by the atrocious 19th-century artist Henry Edward Dawe show the range and reach of this conceit. The 1832 My Child! My Child! shows a woman overboard, holding her baby aloft in hope of rescue. They're Saved! They're Saved! completes the drama, with a sailor plucking them from the water and hoisting them to safety. But the content of the images is mildly pornographic: The bare breasts of the woman and the rippling muscled back of the sailor. Displayed nearby are two porcelain vases that use the same Dawe images as decoration and there are subtle but telling differences between the prints and their reproduction on a standard bit of houseware: There are no bare breasts on the vases, which would presumably have been on open display and thus subject to a more public, moralizing gaze.
A close examination of Homer's The Life Line suggests the artist was going the opposite direction as he refined the image: heightening the sexuality for greater impact. Close analysis of the painting, including modern imaging techniques and comparison with related images and a preparatory drawing, show Homer making his female figure more dainty and playing with the arrangement of the man's hands in a way that emphasizes her weakness and subtly calls attention to her breasts. By painting a shawl over the man's face, Homer not only avoided his own artistic weakness, he made the man anonymous and mysterious, far from the generic boy scout physiognomy of most contemporary rescue images.
The exhibition loses focus with a sidetrack into the parallel tradition of painting peasants and fishing communities, which is only tangentially related to the Homer work. But a room devoted to the professionalization of life-saving and coast guard work is surprisingly timely. After several deadly shipwrecks in the 1870s, including the wreck of the Atlantic in 1873 (with more than 500 lost), popular outrage led to government action, and the establishment of a professional network of coastal life-saving. The results were impressive: The use of lifelines (fired from a cannon on shore), lifeboats and the presence of skilled lifesavers along the shoreline saved thousands of lives.
Over the course of the 19th century, boats became safer, and navigation more precise. But human fears have deep vestigial roots, and paradoxically as the danger diminished, the fear grew more intense. And it lives on in films such as Titanic, and The Perfect Storm, and in the trailers for Life of Pi. But the appetite for the disaster image has shifted over the past century: It's hard to imagine, for example, that images of bodies from the 9-11 attacks would be popular fare for artists today. Disaster imagery must today be either at a geopolitical remove (happening to other people safely remote from people like us) or so stylized as to be no more terrifying than an Aesop fable.
The exhibition ends with a room of Homer's later sea paintings, made while the artist lived in Maine and as artistic taste tended to modernism. Ships and people are increasingly remote in these works, just a ghostly grey shadow in the distance, as in the 1904 Summer Squall. These later paintings engage with the sublime, a theme of maritime painting for centuries. What is the real extent of man's power? Can he indeed take arms against a sea of troubles and end them? Or is the colossus of nature always triumphant in the end? A painting is essentially a container, holding in, for a moment, some aspect of life. Homer's later work aims to stretch that container to its ultimate limits, moving away from the small dramas of people to the larger contest between life and death and oblivion.
Seen in that context, the earlier The Life Line has yet more resonance. The sexuality of the work becomes allegorical, a statement about making life in the midst of a nasty, hostile, meaningless world. A shipwreck painting transcends its own traditions by eliminating the shipwreck and focusing entirely on two people, joined together, suspended momentarily above doom.
Shipwreck! Winslow Homer and 'The Life Line' is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Dec. 16. For more information, visit _URL_.
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The famous singer-songwriter, 69, reminisces in a one-on-one interview with the Star as she prepares for Luminato Festival tribute to her, Joni: a Portrait in Song, on at Massey Hall June 18 and 19.
At first listen, Yeezus is abrasive and intentionally off-putting, as if to test the loyalty of even his most ardent fans. But, as usual, that's only the beginning of West's new detour.


Where is the highest tide in the world?
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asked May 14, 2017 in Nature by Needa Petkar (1,010 points)
What is a tide? Mention its importance and also the geographical importance of the highest tide.
1 Answer
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answered May 14, 2017 by Soham (508 points)
The highest tides in the world can be found in Canada at the Bay of Fundy, which separates New Brunswick from Nova Scotia. At some times of the year the difference between high and low tide in this Bay is., taller than a three-story building.
Make sure your Question & Answer should be appropriate and useful to the reader. Don't just copy and paste content from other sources.


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§24.1.1/3 from C++03 Standard reads,
For input iterators, a == b does not imply ++a == ++b. (Equality does not guarantee the substitution property or referential transparency.) Algorithms on input iterators should never attempt to pass through the same iterator twice. They should be single pass algorithms. Value type T is not required to be an Assignable type (23.1). These algorithms can be used with istreams as the source of the input data through the istream_iterator class.
I couldn't understand the bold text in the above quotation. Can anyone help me understanding this?
Also, what does the following statement (italicized text in the above quotation) mean? How is it related to a==b and ++a==++b expressions?
Equality does not guarantee the substitution property or referential transparency.
share|improve this question
5 Answers 5
up vote 3 down vote accepted
The properties referred to are:
Substitution Property
For any quantities a and b and any expression F(x), if a = b, then F(a) = F(b) (if either side makes sense, i.e. is well-formed).
Referential Transparency
Informally, it means that there is no difference between a value and a reference to this value (thus how the term was coined).
In imperative programming it is a difficult concept to get, because we are used to modify our variables. Rick Hickey (behind Clojure) gives a nice talk about the distinction between Identity and State that may help you. The gist of it is that a variable is an Identity. At any point in time an Identity refers to a State. A State never changes, however an Identity may be altered to refer to another State.
Input Iterators
The substitution property violation is "obvious" here, if we define F(x) in the above to mean ++x, then we have that if input iterators verified the substitution property, the following would hold a == b => ++a == ++b.
This is not true, however, because incrementing an input iterator may invalidate all other input iterators from the same source. From table 107 in n3290 (page 831, just above the paragraph you quoted):
pre: r is dereferenceable.
post: r is dereferenceable or r is past-the-end.
post: any copies of the previous value of r are no longer required either to be dereferenceable or to be in the domain of ==.
That is, when we perform ++a, then b may become invalid, and therefore ++b itself will be undefined behavior.
This is a direct violation of ++a == ++b, therefore the substitution property does not hold.
The referential transparency is a bit more evident here. If Input Iterators were referentially transparent, it would mean that they would be indifferentiable from the value they point to. Clearly this is not the case, as applying ++ does not increment the value, but the iterator.
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+1. Nice post, Matthieu. :-). Last paragraph is very cogent. – Nawaz May 10 '11 at 15:59
By the way, I found an interesting explanation in wikipedia : "Because of this they lack referential transparency, i.e. the same language expression can result in different values at different times depending on the state of the executing program." – Nawaz May 10 '11 at 16:22
_USER_: yes, in general you need purity for referential transparency of expression (that is, no reading from some global state and no writing to global state). For example, i = rand() cannot (and should not) be memoized, while i, RandState = rand(RandState) could be, because the state is now explicit. – Matthieu M. May 10 '11 at 17:37
_USER_. Could you elaborate on That is, when we perform ++a, then b may become invalid, and therefore ++b itself will be undefined behavior. I don't see how b may become invalid. – newprint Oct 6 '13 at 20:08
_USER_: Imagine that you use an iterator over the bytes of a buffer. When you point to the last byte of the buffer with a and b and execute ++a, it may signal: "I am done with this, bring the next one", at which point b could be a dangling pointer. – Matthieu M. Oct 7 '13 at 6:26
For Input Iterators, incrementing an iterator invalidates copies of the same iterator.
auto a = istream_iterator(something);
auto b = a;
a == b; // true
++a; // b is now invalid
++b; // undefined behavior, I think, but in any case not guaranteed to
 // result in anything sensible.
So certainly ++a == ++b is not guaranteed. That is, a == b does not imply ++a == ++b.
I think the "substitution property" means "anything you do with the value of a has the same result as doing the same with the value of b", or similar - there are various versions of substitution that it might refer to, but something along those lines. I think in this context it must mean "later doing the same with b", since if a == b and I haven't done anything invalid yet, then it doesn't matter which of a and b I use, they refer to the same point in the stream. But when I increment, I do have to pick one and lose the other, hence the difficulty with ++a == ++b.
"Referential transparency" means that different objects are independent, i.e. they're not references/pointers to or aliases of each other. In combination with "substitution property" this means:
Later? There is no earlier or later since operations don't have global side-effects. If you can't substitute "later" then you can't substitute
Input iterators in the same sequence typically refer to the same "actual data", like a file handle or whatever, which itself contains mutable state. Since a and b refer to the same file handle, and their value is dependent on its state, you don't have referential transparency. This lack is why substitution fails.
Forward iterators typically also refer to the same underlying data (like a container), but as long as you use them read-only (and don't otherwise modify the container), they don't betray this fact, at least not until you start comparing the addresses of the values they return. So they have a limited kind of referential transparency of their own value, that input iterators don't. They're still references themselves, so the things they refer to are still aliased.
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While true, is that really what the paragraph is specifically talking about? – Lightness Races in Orbit May 10 '11 at 9:04
_USER_: That doesn't explain what I've asked. Also, is this code valid in C++03? – Nawaz May 10 '11 at 9:07
_USER_: I believe so. The paragraph is talking about input iterators working for a single pass only, and to me, "increment invalidates copies" is the simplest way to express that. It also explains in simple terms why a == b doesn't imply ++a == ++b (since it provides a counter-example). No doubt there are other explanations possible, some of them also simple :-) – Steve Jessop May 10 '11 at 9:07
_USER_: no, I'm using auto because I'm too lazy to duplicate the type or even write a typedef. If it's virtuous not to be that lazy, feel free to earn a place in Heaven by editing my code! – Steve Jessop May 10 '11 at 9:08
_USER_: I've now attempted to answer your second question in addition to your first. – Steve Jessop May 10 '11 at 9:28
As the explanation says: "They should be single pass algorithms."
The point is that an iterator on an input stream represents a transient state. Once the iterator is changed, that state no longer exists; all other iterators representing that state are invalidated: once you increment a, the iterator b becomes invalid.
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Input iterators define a sequence which can only be read once; input from a keyboard or a pipe would be a good example. Incrementing an istream_iterator effectively means reading further in the istream, extracting characters, so other istream_iterator on the same stream will no longer be valid with regards to their position. Imagine a stream of characters "abcdefg..." (the alphabet, in sum), with two istream_iterator pointing to the 'a'. Incrementing one of them will cause the 'b' to be read from the stream, and no other iterator can ever see it.
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Consider that an input iterator could be connected to a stream reading from the keyboard. Incrementing the iterator means reading the next character.
Also incrementing a copy of the iterator does not mean reading the same character.
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Your Answer


text:
WordCount Example in Python
The program reads text files and counts how often words occur. The input is text files and the output is text files, each line of which contains a word and the count of how often it occured, separated by a tab. To create some input, take your a directory of text files and put it into DFS.
bin/hadoop dfs -put my-dir in-dir
Each mapper takes a line as input and breaks it into words. It then emits a key/value pair of the word and 1. Each reducer sums the counts for each word and emits a single key/value with the word and sum.
As an optimization, the reducer is also used as a combiner on the map outputs. This reduces the amount of data sent across the network by combining each word into a single record.
To compile the example, build the Hadoop code and the python word count example:
ant cd src/examples/python./compile cd../../..
Note that you need to have jythonc and javac on your path for the compilation to work.
To run the example, the command syntax is:
bin/hadoop jar src/examples/python/wc.jar in-dir out-dir
The results of the word count will be in out-dir/part-*.


text:
Studying law & finance16/03/2013
This is probably the most frequently asked question I receive regarding my studies. However, so far I have not been able to provide a straight forward answer. That is mainly because there is no simple right or wrong answer. Instead of just thinking about the combination generally, the question should rather be targeted individually to a person studying these subjects. What are his or her underlying meanings, goals, and ambitions?
To start with, both degrees are widely recognized to require a lot of work. However, the working methods are completely different. Law studies require endless amount of hours spent in the library reading books, usually by oneself. In contrast, finance studies are typically spent in front of a computer screen enjoying the wonders MS Excel has to offer. In addition, finance studies are much more social, meaning that you have a lot of group assignments and lectures to attend, whereas law studies, at least in theory, can be conducted without a single group work or mandatory lecture.
Besides the studying methods, there is also another significant factor distinguishing the two degrees: the Finnish law degree is still an official degree. With an official degree I mean that all Finnish lawyers study almost all the same courses, with just minor variation. This means that both a corporate lawyer as well as a judge have received similar educational backgrounds. Therefore, at least in the beginning, Finnish lawyers are generalists, whereas finance graduates are educated to be specialists. Moreover, finance is a global subject whereas law is bound to the country where it is studied and thereafter practiced.
Then, to the core questions: what are the benefits/downsides of taking both degrees and are there any synergies between them? In my opinion the degrees support each other, at least to some extent. A corporate lawyer without the understanding of financials is useless. The same implies to e.g. a corporate manager with a business school background, not perceiving the frameworks where he or she is operating or what kind of legal liabilities and consequences arise from his or her actions. Sure, one can always consult a colleague but understanding both sides makes your life easier. What about the downsides then? Without any doubts the biggest drawback is the loss of time. Are you willing to sacrifice so much of your time for school? That is the question that a student going for a double degree has to ask themselves.
In conclusion, I believe that having a double degree is beneficial, at least for me. The combination widens your way of thinking and provides you more tools for solving various kinds of problems. One supports another. Moreover, having both degrees enables you to act more independently and provides more options. However, it is a question of choice and usage of the limited amount of time. Do you need to acquire the knowledge yourself or is it enough that someone else has it? Nevertheless, one must always decide whether he or she is a lawyer with a financial background or the other way around. Therefore, taking into account the amount of time one is willing to sacrifice for school, a balanced combination of the two might be the best choice.


text:
Choosing where to lay eggs is critical to an organism's fitness. Make the wrong choice, and your offspring are toast. It's no surprise, then, that variation in habitat quality can often lead to variation in colonization, which is a key process during community assembly. Quality is defined in various ways, but one of the most obvious is the presence of predators, and organisms will often avoid colonizing habitats with predators when given the choice. But two features may complicate this choice, 1) predator diversity, and 2) the location of predator-free habitats in the landscape.
We measured insect colonization of aquatic mesocosms that contained predatory trout, dragonflies, or both. In addition, we varied the position of predator-free controls; some were adjacent to mesocosms with predators, while others were isolated. Based on previous research, we expected colonization in the adjacent controls to be intermediate between colonization in the predator treatments and isolated controls. We also expected colonization in the treatment with two predator species to be lower than colonization in treatments with single species.
Surprisingly, rather than showing intermediate preferences, we found that egg-laying insects (mostly chironomids) did not distinguish between treatments with single predator species, multiple predator species, or adjacent controls. They avoided all of these in favor of isolated predator-free mesocosms. This occurred despite the fact that adjacent and isolated predator-free controls were identical. Thus, colonization did not vary solely as a result of intrinsic habitat quality, but also as a result of the quality of adjacent habitats. This means that habitats that might appear identical to us based on intrinsic sampling may be perceived differently by organisms that colonize them. If these response scale-up, our results have consequences for traditional habitat models, as well as the design of conservation reserves.


text:
height of a given pressure
approximates the actual height of a pressure surface above mean sea-level.
Therefore, a geopotential height observation represents the height of the
pressure surface on which the observation was taken.
A line drawn on a weather map connecting points of equal height (in meters)
is called a height contour. That means, at every point along a
given contour, the values of geopotential height are the same. An image
depicting the geopotential height field is given below.
Height contours are represented by the solid lines.
The small numbers along the contours are labels which identify the value of a
particular height contour (for example 5640 meters, 5580 meters, etc.).
This example depicts the 500 mb geopotential height field and temperatures
(color filled regions). The height field is given in meters with an
interval of 60 meters.
Geopotential height is valuable for locating
which are the upper level counterparts of
surface cyclones and


text:
Capturing connector logging can be very helpful when diagnosing error messages or other unexpected behavior.
You will simply need to set two connection properties to begin capturing connector logging.
- Logfile: A filepath which designates the name and location of the log file.
- Verbosity: This is a numerical value (1-5) that determines the amount of detail in the log. See the page in the Connection Properties section for a breakdown of the five levels.
- MaxLogFileSize: When the limit is hit, a new log is created in the same folder with the date and time appended to the end. The default limit is 100 MB. Values lower than 100 kB will use 100 kB as the value instead.
- MaxLogFileCount: A string specifying the maximum file count of log files. When the limit is hit, a new log is created in the same folder with the date and time appended to the end and the oldest log file will be deleted. Minimum supported value is 2. A value of 0 or a negative value indicates no limit on the count.
Once this property is set, the connector will populate the log file as it carries out various tasks, such as when authentication is performed or queries are executed. If the specified file doesn't already exist, it will be created.
The verbosity level determines the amount of detail that the connector reports to the Logfile. Verbosity levels from 1 to 5 are supported. These are described in the following list:
|1||Setting Verbosity to 1 will log the query, the number of rows returned by it, the start of execution and the time taken, and any errors.|
|2||Setting Verbosity to 2 will log everything included in Verbosity 1 and additional information about the request.|
|3||Setting Verbosity to 3 will additionally log HTTP headers, as well as the body of the request and the response.|
|4||Setting Verbosity to 4 will additionally log transport-level communication with the data source. This includes SSL negotiation.|
|5||Setting Verbosity to 5 will additionally log communication with the data source and additional details that may be helpful in troubleshooting problems. This includes interface commands.|
The Verbosity should not be set to greater than 1 for normal operation. Substantial amounts of data can be logged at higher verbosities, which can delay execution times.
To refine the logged content further by showing/hiding specific categories of information, see LogModules.
You may want to refine the exact information that is recorded to the log file. This can be accomplished using the LogModules property.
This property allows you to filter the logging using a semicolon-separated list of logging modules.
All modules are four characters long. Please note that modules containing three letters have a required trailing blank space. The available modules are:
- EXEC: Query Execution. Includes execution messages for original SQL queries, parsed SQL queries, and normalized SQL queries. Query and page success/failure messages appear here as well.
- INFO: General Information. Includes the connection string, driver version (build number), and initial connection messages.
- HTTP: HTTP Protocol messages. Includes HTTP requests/responses (including POST messages), as well as Kerberos related messages.
- SSL : SSL certificate messages.
- OAUT: OAuth related failure/success messages.
- SQL : Includes SQL transactions, SQL bulk transfer messages, and SQL result set messages.
- META: Metadata cache and schema messages.
- TCP : Incoming and Ongoing raw bytes on TCP transport layer messages.
LogModules=INFO;EXEC;SSL ;SQL ;META;
Note that these modules refine the information as it is pulled after taking the Verbosity into account.


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eat to galvanize
It is not just the calories that count – it is also the effect the food has on you, your body and your Brain. We're talking about the phytonutrients, antioxidants, fiber and vitamins. You, your life and the experience of it at this moment can be described as the total sum of your Brain capacity through your lifetime.
So basically, what we mean is
Present You = Your Past Brain.
Food has a great impact on your Brain. That's why treating it 'extra' while having a healthy snack makes it twice as useful.
Now, this is what we call functional.
Leave a comment


Heroin Addiction in Kunduz Province
The population in the Kunduz province in Afghanistan is 800,000. According to the province's drug treatment center, there are up to 30,000 people who are addicted to drugs in the province. 40 percent of the addicts are women and children.
Across Afghanistan, the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime estimates that there were 1 million drug addicts in the country in 2010. The most commonly used drug is opium, followed by heroin.
5,800 tons of opium was produced in Afghanistan in 2011.
(More heroin addiction facts and statistics.)
Source: Bethany Matta, "Afghan women, children held in addiction's grip," USA Today, June 4, 2012.


Galactolipid biosurfactant recovery from green agri-waste
Biosurfactants are a sustainable, environmentally friendly alternative to surfactants produced from petrochemical feed stock by synthetic routes. The most common biosurfactants in commercial production are from microbial sources and include gycolipids such as rhamnolipids and sophorolipids amongst others. These have found application, in particular, in the detergent industries. However, their use in other consumer product industries has been held back because they are either not available at large volume, or in the case of rhamnolipids are produced by organisms that are opportunistic pathogens.
Glycolipids are found in all green plants, and in particular as galactolipids in the thylakoid membrane of the choloroplast. If these galactolipids can be recovered from plant green material at sufficient scale they could be an alternative source of biosurfactants. Galactolipids would be of particular interest to the food industry as they are found naturally in flour, and have been shown to have advantageous functionality in improving the quality of baked cakes and bread.
In this project the aim is to take green plant waste (this could, for example, be leaves from agricultural production, or grass clippings) to establish a lab scale separation and purification protocol(s), to determine the potential yield of galactolipids, and if sufficient yields are achieved to determine some physicochemical properties of the biosurfactants. Functional properties of interest include emulsification, foaming, surface/interfacial tension, cmc and surface rheological properties.
Supervisor name:
Stephen Euston
Supervisor and Deputy email addresses:
Project location:
John Muir Building room G24
Deputy name:
Lydia Campbell/Derek Stewart


text:
HealthDay News — Greater electronic device use, particularly television, is linked to more consumption of added sugar and caffeine among adolescents, according to a study published in PLOS ONE.
Kelly M. Bradbury, from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and colleagues used secondary data from the 2013 to 2016 cycles of Monitoring the Future Survey to assess information on energy drink and soda consumption by 32,418 students in grades 8 and 10 from 252 to 263 randomly selected schools in the United States.
The researchers found that soda and energy drink consumption decreased annually from 2013 to 2016, while daily use of electronic devices remained stable. For each hour/day increase of television, there was a 6.92-g increase in sugar intake and a 32% higher risk for surpassing the World Health Organization recommended sugar intakes (odds ratio, 1.32). Similarly, for each hour/day of television, there was an increased risk for exceeding caffeine recommendations (odds ratio, 1.28). There was also an increased risk for exceeding WHO sugar and caffeine intakes for each hour per day spent talking on a cellphone. There was only a weak association between video game use and caffeine intake.
"Addressing these behaviors through counseling or health promotion could potentially help to reduce excess sugar and caffeine intake from sodas and energy drinks among this population," the authors write.


Proper Discharge of Swimming Pool Water
Guidelines for Proper Discharge
Pool owners and operators can help protect local streams and rivers. Please follow these guidelines before draining (discharging) swimming pool water.
dad holding daughter while in the pool
Pools Traditionally Disinfected With Chlorine or Bromine
Pool water may be allowed to enter a stream or storm drain after taking these steps:
 1. Let pool water stand untreated for at least seven days to allow chlorine or bromine to dissipate.
 2. Test the pH of the pool water to ensure it is close to neutral (near pH 7) before draining. Adjust the pH if necessary.
 3. Remove excess sediment and leaves from the water.
 4. Drain pool water over a well-vegetated area on the owner's property to slow it down and aerate it. Pool water should not be drained directly into a storm drain or a stream. As a courtesy, avoid draining pool water across neighboring properties.
 5. Drain the water at a slow rate so it does not erode stream banks downstream of the pool.
Saltwater Pools
Saltwater from pools should not be drained into a storm drain or stream. Fairfax County recommends using one of the following options:
 1. Drain pool water to the public sanitary sewer system through a household drain such as a bathtub, sink or floor drain. To avoid damage to your property:
 - Ensure the plumbing is adequate to accept the rate of flow from the pool. Check with a licensed plumber before draining pool water into a sanitary drain.
 - Do not drain pool water into a septic system.
 2. Use a licensed sewage handling service to dispose of the saltwater properly.
Residents may not open a manhole cover to drain pool water into the sanitary sewer system.
What are the concerns?
Discharging pool water the wrong way may harm the environment and violate regulations.
 - County regulations. Chapter 124 of Fairfax County Code, also known as the Stormwater Management Ordinance, went into effect on July 1, 2014. Article 9 of this ordinance prohibits the discharge of anything other than naturally occurring surface or subsurface waters to Fairfax County's storm drainage system (also known as municipal separate storm sewer system, MS4) and waters of the state without a permit from the state.
 - Threats to aquatic life. Chlorine, bromine, salt and other pool chemicals that are used to keep pools safe for people can kill fish and other aquatic life in streams. Stagnant pool water contains little oxygen and can also kill aquatic life when it flows into a stream.
 - Stream bank erosion. Draining water from pools too quickly can cause erosion of the stream bed and banks, especially in smaller streams. The erosion can ruin habitat and water quality.
For Additional Information
Owners of residential pools may contact the Stormwater Planning Division, _PHONE_, TTY 711. Commercial swimming pool operators should contact the Health Department at _PHONE_, TTY 711.
Technical Questions: Web Administrator
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Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Bluetooth Recon With BlueZ
Bluetooth devices are all around us and a surprising number of them are left discoverable. In this post I describe techniques for finding discoverable Bluetooth devices and listing the services running on them. I will also cover basic BLE (Bluetooth Smart) reconnaissance.
This tutorial assumes you have a modern Linux system or VM running BlueZ. The commands below should work in BlueZ 4.101 and BlueZ 5.x.
Finding Bluetooth Devices
The most basic way to find local discoverable Bluetooth devices is to use hcitool scan. In the following example, there are two discoverable devices near my laptop: a Nexus 4 and a wireless speaker:
$ hcitool scan
Scanning...
 98:D6:XX:XX:XX:XX Nexus 4
 00:0D:XX:XX:XX:XX Bluetooth Speaker
The left column is the device's BD ADDR (Bluetooth Device ADDRess). This address is unique to the device and is very similar to a WiFi or ethernet MAC address. The right column is the device's human-readable name, which the device sent us in response to our scan requests.
To get a little more information about a device, we can use hcitool inq, another subcommand of hcitool:
$ hcitool inq
Inquiring...
 98:D6:XX:XX:XX:XX clock offset: 0x0000 class: 0x5a020c
 00:0D:XX:XX:XX:XX clock offset: 0x5a75 class: 0x240404
This output again includes the BD ADDR, but this time it also includes the clock offset and class of device. Clock offset is a low-level value that can be ignored. Class of Device (CoD) tells us what type of device we're talking to.
You can decode CoD using a tool I wrote called btclassify. Running it with the above classes tells us these devices identify as a phone and a wearable headset:
$./btclassify.py 0x5a020c 0x240404
0x5a020c: Phone (Smartphone): Telephony, Object Transfer, Capturing, Networking
0x240404: Audio/Video (Wearable Headset Device): Audio, Rendering
Diving Deeper: Services
Now that we know we have a phone and a headset (which is actually a speaker), we'd like to find out what services they run.
In Bluetooth service information is available via the Service Discovery Protocol, or SDP. BlueZ ships with sdptool for querying SDP. The browse subcommand is typically the best tool for listing services. It has fairly verbose output, so it's useful to filter it using grep:
$ sdptool browse 98:D6:XX:XX:XX:XX | grep Service\ Name
Service Name: Headset Gateway
Service Name: Handsfree Gateway
Service Name: AV Remote Control Target
Service Name: Advanced Audio
Service Name: Android Network Access Point
Service Name: Android Network User
Service Name: OBEX Phonebook Access Server
Service Name: OBEX Object Push
Given the presence of "Android Network" services, we can conclude that this device is likely an Android smart phone. The other services are relatively typical for a phone. For instance, Headset and Handsfree are used with headsets and car audio systems, and the OBEX services are used for transferring contacts and sharing files.
Unfortunately when we try to run sdptool browse against the speaker, we do not receive any records. Instead we can use the records subcommand to receive these records. This command runs for 20 seconds before terminating, so don't worry if it appears to have hung:
$ sdptool records 00:0D:XX:XX:XX:XX
Service RecHandle: 0x10001
Service Class ID List:
 "Audio Sink" (0x110b)
Protocol Descriptor List:
 "L2CAP" (0x0100)
 PSM: 25
 "AVDTP" (0x0019)
 uint16: 0x102
Profile Descriptor List:
 "Advanced Audio" (0x110d)
 Version: 0x0102
Service RecHandle: 0x10002
Service Class ID List:
 "AV Remote Target" (0x110c)
Protocol Descriptor List:
 "L2CAP" (0x0100)
 PSM: 23
 "AVCTP" (0x0017)
 uint16: 0x103
Profile Descriptor List:
 "AV Remote" (0x110e)
 Version: 0x0103
Service Name: Hands-Free unit
Service RecHandle: 0x10004
Service Class ID List:
 "Handsfree" (0x111e)
 "Generic Audio" (0x1203)
Protocol Descriptor List:
 "L2CAP" (0x0100)
 "RFCOMM" (0x0003)
 Channel: 1
Language Base Attr List:
 code_ISO639: 0x656e
 encoding: 0x6a
 base_offset: 0x100
Profile Descriptor List:
 "Handsfree" (0x111e)
 Version: 0x0105
Pay attention to the values after "Service Class ID List". This tells us the device has "Audio Sink", "AV Remote Target", "Handsfree", and "Generic Audio" services. These services make sense given that we know this is a speaker.
Both of these commands give a complete breakdown of all lower-level protocols used to implement the services. This information is not typically useful during general reconnaissance, but it can be useful when developing fuzzers.
One final thing to note is that sdptool works even if a device is not discoverable. If you know a device's BD ADDR you can try to connect to it using sdptool browse or records to find out if it's nearby but undiscoverable.
Information Hidden by BlueZ
Certain devices return a bit more information that BlueZ does not display in hcitool output. You can get at this information using hcidump or BlueZ 5's btmon. Since hcidump works on all recent versions of BlueZ, I will demonstrate its use.
In one terminal run hcidump and tell it to log to a file:
$ sudo hcidump -w inquriy.cap
In another terminal run hcitool scan:
$ hcitool inq
Inquiring...
 00:26:XX:XX:XX:XX Richard Gill's MacBook Pro
Yowza, we can already see the name of the owner of a nearby laptop. Could be useful for social engineering. This naming convention is fairly common among Mac laptops. Worse, on at least some versions of Mac OS X when you put Bluetooth into discoverable mode it will remain in that mode indefinitely.
Kill hcidump and load the file it created in Wireshark. Filter the output to just inquiry responses using bthci.evt_code == 0x2f. If the device is friendly, you will see information similar to the following screenshot:
Under "Extended Inquiry Response Data" you can see a list of service UUIDs, which will be fairly similar to the output of sdptool. On the right I've highlighted a "manufacturer specific" field. This field helpfully tells us the specific model number of the laptop! This information is also highly useful for social engineering.
BLE Recon
All the of the above applies to classic Bluetooth devices, such as phones, headsets, speakers, and so forth. BLE devices are becoming increasingly common, and they require their own set of tools. Some examples of BLE devices are fitness wristbands, heart rate monitors, smart watches, proximity sensors, and so on.
Listing BLE Devices
The most basic tool to list local BLE devices is hcitool's subcommand lescan:
$ hcitool lescan
LE Scan...
DC:A0:F2:B9:4F:9E (unknown)
DC:A0:F2:B9:4F:9E Flex
00:22:XX:00:XX:XX (unknown)
00:22:XX:00:XX:XX Polar H7 00XXXX
I haven't censored the first device because it is using a random address that can vary over time, a BLE security feature that makes tracking devices more difficult.
Given a bit of a-priori knowledge, we can assume the first device is a FitBit Flex. The second device is a Polar H7 heart rate monitor.
Listing BLE Services
Recent versions of BlueZ ship with gatttool for querying BLE services over GATT. The --primary command line switch connects to the device and asks it for a list of services:
$ gatttool --primary -b 00:22:XX:00:XX:XX
attr handle = 0x0001, end grp handle = 0x000b uuid: 00001800-0000-_PHONE_-00805f9b34fb
attr handle = 0x000c, end grp handle = 0x000e uuid: 00001801-0000-_PHONE_-00805f9b34fb
attr handle = 0x000f, end grp handle = 0x0014 uuid: 0000180d-0000-1000


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Kolkata Fatafat is a popular and thrilling lottery game that has gained immense popularity in the vibrant city of Kolkata. This game has captured the attention of thousands of individuals who seek their luck in winning substantial cash prizes. At the heart of this game lies the concept of "lucky numbers," a key element that has become a focal point for players aiming to strike it rich.
Understanding Kolkata Fatafat:
Kolkata Fatafat is a rapid lottery game where players choose a set of numbers, and if those numbers match the winning combination, they stand a chance to win significant sums of money. The game is known for its simplicity and speed, making it an enticing option for those who enjoy the thrill of instant results.
The Draw of Lucky Numbers:
In the realm of Kolkata Fatafat, lucky numbers hold a special significance. Players believe that certain numbers carry a charm or luck that can increase their chances of winning. These lucky numbers are often based on personal beliefs, superstitions, or even past experiences of successful bets.
It is not uncommon to see players relying on a combination of birthdates, anniversaries, or other significant numbers in their lives when selecting their lucky numbers. Others might turn to numerology or consult with astrologers to determine the numbers they should bet on.
The Role of Strategy and Statistics:
While luck undoubtedly plays a crucial role in any lottery game, some players take a more strategic approach to Kolkata Fatafat. They analyze past results, study patterns, and use statistical data to make informed decisions about which numbers to include in their bets. However, it's essential to note that the outcome of the game is ultimately unpredictable, and no strategy guarantees success.
The Thrill of the Unknown:
One of the main appeals of Kolkata Fatafat is the unpredictability of the game. The draw of lucky numbers adds an element of excitement, as players eagerly await the results, hoping that fate is on their side. The anticipation and suspense create a unique atmosphere that keeps participants hooked, making it a popular pastime for those seeking entertainment and the chance to win big.
While the allure of winning substantial sums can be enticing, it's crucial for players to engage in responsible gambling. The outcome of Kolkata Fatafat is based on chance, and participants should approach the game with a sense of enjoyment rather than relying on it as a source of income.
Kolkata Fatafat, with its emphasis on lucky numbers, has become a cultural phenomenon in the city. The game brings together people from diverse backgrounds, all united by the desire to test their luck and potentially change their fortunes. Whether one relies on superstition, strategic analysis, or simply the thrill of the unknown, Kolkata Fatafat continues to be a fascinating and dynamic element of the city's entertainment landscape.


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"Aaaargh! A mouse!" "Aaaaaaargh! A RAT!!!" Whichever scream you hear coming from the bathroom or kitchen, you know you have a big problem. But apart from the fact that the volume of the scream might be louder or softer, do you really know the difference between mice and rats? And do those differences really matter? Let's investigate!
What is the difference between a mouse and a rat?
Whether it's a mouse or a rat or one of the other 1000 rodent species creeping and crawling all over the world, you probably don't want to share your bedroom with them.
Sure, they're all similar: little beady black eyes, whiskers, sharp incisors, a tail, and a tendency to try to live where you live. But all you may have noticed so far is a creepy-crawly sound when you're trying to sleep, damage to your home or property, nasty smells, or tell-tale droppings.
Here's the truth: You probably have mice or rats at your place. But does the difference even matter?
Firstly, YES – the difference does matter. Because no matter what you've got lurking and breeding at your place, they can cause damage, nuisance, and pose a risk to your family's health. But to dig even deeper, we're going to have to explore the difference between rat and mouse characteristics:
Let's get RAT into it:
1. Size
When it comes to the difference between mice and rats' characteristics, size does matter – and a rat can tip the scales at 40cm or more. Mice tend to be between 12 and 20cm, but don't forget that a baby rat and an adult mouse can be harder to tell apart.
2. Diet
In the mouse vs rat battle, it turns out that both eat animals and plants, making them omnivores. But the bigger and heavier rat will eat more, meaning they'll seek out bigger meals like meat, pet food, fish and (yes!) even cheese.
Mice prefer a healthier diet including fruits, vegetables, and nuts, but they'll also eat what a rat will eat – including dead mice and rats! Ew!
3. Tail
The long tail is a distinguishing feature of both rodents, and while a rat tail is objectively longer, the tail of a mouse is longer compared to the rest of its body.
4. Breeding
Whether mouse or rat, prepare to be horrified.
During a female mouse's approximately 2 year lifespan, she will produce between 200 and 300 offspring – and the little ones will start mating just a month or so into their life.
But that's nothing compared to rats. In just a year, one single rat duo can produce over 2000 descendants.
(Someone just fainted).
5. Droppings
Now those with squeamish stomachs have passed out, closed the article or left the room, we can talk about rat and mouse droppings.
It will be no surprise to learn that in the rat vs mouse droppings battle, both come out as completely filthy – and (also unsurprisingly), rat droppings are bigger, measuring up to 1cm. But you'll also notice that rat poo has more rounded ends, compared to the 4-7mm in length pointier mouse droppings.
Rats vs mice – which one wins?
As we said, both rats and mice are completely gross. As well as running around on your kitchen benches and in the cupboards and drawers and on the clean plates and cutlery, they've also been roaming in bins and sewers, eating decomposing filth and covering themselves with harmful bacteria.
Yep, they're more than unhealthy.
But they can also damage your house and belongings, with mice able to chew through wiring and cause fires. Rats, though, are incredible. Their big, strong teeth can munch through wire, metal, and concrete. In other words, it's a bad idea to not take a rat or mice infestation very seriously.
And you're going to struggle to get rid of either of them with a mere mouse trap or baits, which can be dangerous to your kids and pets.
Luckily, pros like Cannon Pest Management know exactly what to do when it comes to rodent pest control in Melbourne. So to make sure your home, business, and family are all safe from the hazard, nuisance and utter destruction of these little and not-so-little critters, call now for a free quote!
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One of the challenges in applying ML in personality science is the changing relevance of the input variables. Since persistent theories are often the primary goal, future research should focus on improving the robustness of digital behavior models. Several approaches have been proposed to this problem, such as incremental rule-based models that use decision rules to detect drift. This article will look at some of the most promising approaches and how to apply them to personality science.
Can analyze massive datasets
The goal of using deep learning for personality tests is to create an automated system that can analyze people's responses. An extensive database called myPersonality has collected data on more than six million volunteers from the popular Facebook application for over a decade. Deep learning algorithms collect this data from many sources, including eye movement patterns, text from social media profiles, and more. An example of such an application is an artificial intelligence system that analyzes people's eye movements while performing everyday tasks. In addition to analyzing responses, these algorithms can automate finding relevant features about a person's personality.
The benefits of using deep learning algorithms for personality tests are numerous. These algorithms can analyze massive datasets, including mobile sensing studies and digital footprints. They can evaluate complex relationships and recognize patterns in large datasets. Machine learning algorithms are robust, generalizable, and can handle thousands of different attributes. They can also handle a large amount of data and overcome problems like collinearity. Once trained correctly, these machines can create personalized personality assessments for people with various personalities.
AI-enabled personality tests from MyGoodInterview.com will be more detailed and accurate, and these systems can also supplement personality tests with other assessments. The future of AI-powered personality tests is incredibly bright, and deep learning can help us evolve our tests to reflect changing workplaces.
It can be used for more than just recruiting
The use of machine learning to develop predictive models for personality tests is increasingly common, and the benefits of such tools are many. They can be used for more than just recruiting as they become more sophisticated. Many companies use personality assessments to improve their products and services based on individual preferences.
ML approaches can improve the accuracy and interpretability of personality tests, and this can contribute to theory development and make personality psychology more useful in practical settings. Unfortunately, many more flexible models are complex and challenging to understand. Therefore, it is essential to know how these models work and use them properly to avoid algorithmic discrimination, comply with legal requirements, and evaluate fairness. ML tools could become an indispensable part of recruitment processes in the future.
There are two basic approaches to developing predictive models for personality tests. The first is known as inductive. This approach builds on previous findings. Inductive approaches to science are data-driven, which is crucial for assessing the validity of models. Inductive approaches build models based on data from a wide range of sources. While the classical stochastic model is generally the most useful for explanation, non-linear algorithmic models have the advantage of being intuitive and useful.
Can improve job-relevant personality assessments
There are several job-relevant characteristics of personality tests that Artificial Intelligence can determine. Some human resources managers already use such tests to hire clients based on their predicted personality traits. These tests are based on the Big Five personality dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness. Some of these dimensions have subscales based on socialization, need for recognition, and cooperation.
However, the broader use of these assessments is not limited to job-related criteria. A few examples of these tests include facial analysis and body movements, and machine learning can determine your personality traits from posts on social networks. It becomes more challenging to fake answers during an online personality test with such technological advances, and accurate self-representation is crucial to career success. This article addresses this concern and explores how artificial intelligence can improve job-relevant personality assessments.
It can help predict and explain career outcomes
In the real world, both personality and intelligence have proven helpful in predicting and explaining career outcomes, and they are essential indicators of personal effectiveness and interpersonal management. In addition, research shows that personality is one of the most consistent predictors of subjective career success. For example, a conscientious and stable person is more likely to evaluate their job performance positively.
However, these assessments are also prone to bias, which means they are not neutral when used for job recruitment.


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In the above picture, a TL bolt appears to take a specific geometric shape. The front of the bolt has the appearance of a cone. It quickly grows larger in diameter, until it reaches its maximum. The diameter of the bolt then gradually decreases along the length of the bolt, until it reaches a point close to the end of the bolt. At this point, the bolt has its minimum diameter. Then, the diameter of the bolt quickly increases again.
A possibility exists that the variations in diameter of the bolt may represent variations in the actual intensity of the bolt. The bolt itself may be only microscopic in diameter, and the several-meters-wide areas only glare. The reason for such variations in intensity is unclear. Perhaps these variations in some way assists the bolt in penetrating enemy shields?
Another possibility is that the bolt has varying frequencies throughout its length. This may explain the variations in observed "shape" of the bolt. It may also explain the "damage before contact" of some bolts (as seen in my TL nature page). The three different bolt sizes may actually be the result of varying frequencies. For example: a middle-sized bolt may be the same as a large sized bolt, but the beginning of the bolt is in the nonvisible spectrum. This part of the bolt may already be in contact with the target before the visible portion is.
The shape of the bolt is symmetrical. It can be rotated any number of degrees around its longitudinal axis, and its appearance to the viewer will remain unchanged.
Interestingly, the description of the TL bolt's shape also applies to that of a particular brand of modern shotgun sabot slug, which is typically used by hunters because of the superior aerodynamic qualities of the shape (called "Ballistic Coefficient" by firearm experts). This projectile is encased in a plastic sleeve which separates after exiting the barrel, and allows the bullet to continue to the target. This sabot slug effectively doubles the range of a modern shotgun.
Blaster bolts have a similar shape, minus the enlargement on the end. The front of the bolt is shaped like a cone, then the observed diameter decreases along the entire length. This is true for vehicle blasters and hand blasters.
Another possibility is that turbolaser bolts have "pulses" similar to those in a superlaser bolt. These pulses could possibly explain the enlargements on the ends of the TL bolt.
Hand blaster bolts have similar "pulses", but a less-defined pattern. Pulses are seen in various points in the bolt, or sometimes not at all.
There are at least three different sizes of TL bolts witnessed in the films. The size of each of these bolts can be judged against the size of the Millenium Falcon. This is because at some time, each type of bolt has been fired at the Falcon.
It is probably safe to assume that the larger bolts result from more powerful cannons, or otherwise are the result of different power settings of the same weapons.
The following image represents one of the largest type:
It is difficult to perform precise measurements of the length of the TL bolts because the size of the Falcon is unclear. Based on visual observation, the size of this vessel is between 25 and 40 meters long (see Robert Brown's Millennium Falcon page for more information). The TL bolt is roughly 5 times the length of the Falcon, so its length is approximately 125-200 meters.
The only time these bolts have been seen is the scene referenced above, the asteroid scene, and possibly when the Falcon "attacked" the ISD, as it was passing over the dorsal surface.
The medium size TL bolts appear to be the most common. These are seen in almost every scene in which ISDs are in combat. They are roughly 50 meters long, and are seen in the following image:
These bolts are usually seen fired at a rate of once every two seconds, but sometimes the rate increases to about once per second or more.
The smallest bolts are only a few meters long. They were witnessed in only two scenes: defeating the Falcon's shields in ESB, and firing on the Falcon as it was departing Tatooine.
They seem to have a rapid firing rate, possibly 2-3 times per second. Their use against the Falcon, and not against the Tantive IV, would indicate that these weapons are normally used against starfighters, freighters, and other small vessels. This makes sense because smaller rapid firing weapons would be more efficient against a nimble target, and would not be a large waste of power.
The small bolts are represented in the following image:
The ISD in pursuit of the Falcon in ANH fired short bolts at a high rate of fire.
It is also interesting to note that an early concept drawing of an Imperator Class Star Destroyer by Geoffrey Mandel describes three different sizes of laser cannons. Also note that there are a total of 200 TL cannons mounted on the vessel.
It is interesting to note that the size of the vessel changed, as well as the number of some types of weapons, which calls the validity of the blueprints into question.
It is also interesting to note that TLs only appear in two colors: red and green (lightsabres sometimes appear in white or blue however). Imperial weapons usually appear in green, and Rebel weapons in red. It is not known what the difference in these two bolts may be. They may be firing at different frequencies (if they are beam weapons), or (if they are formed from plasma) formed from different gases.
The Millennium Falcon is the only non-military ship seen firing in the films. The beams the Falcon fired were red, like the Rebels' beams. Perhaps the green bolts are more powerful or efficient, and are only available to the Empire (with its vast resources). Of course, the Falcon's weapons have probably been modified to military specs. Hand blaster bolts are always red in the classic trilogy. Only one example of green blaster fire has been seen.


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Presentation on theme: "Figure 2. Signal level (left) degrades with slice offset and slice thickness when Z2 SEM is used in GradLoc imaging (ROI = FOV/2). To recover the full."— Presentation transcript:
Figure 2. Signal level (left) degrades with slice offset and slice thickness when Z2 SEM is used in GradLoc imaging (ROI = FOV/2). To recover the full signal, a quadratic phase is applied to the slice during RF excitation in a modified GradLoc gradient echo sequence (right). The GradLoc FOV is shifted using extra lobes on the X and Y SEMs. For off-center slices, the extra phase applied by the Z2 SEM is compensated with an adjustment to the Z slice select SEM pulse. Correspondence: _EMAIL_ Poster is available at: _URL_ Gradient localized (GradLoc) parallel imaging using a 3-D magnetic encoding field with a quadratic-phase RF pulse to precompensate for through-slice dephasing PHASE SCRAMBLING PULSES Spatial encoding magnetic fields (SEMs) with quadratic or hyperbolic shapes have been proposed for spatial encoding schemes [1-5], spectral localization, and RF excitation of curvilinear regions [7-9]. Quadratic SEMs have also been used in Cartesian sequences to "phase scramble" the signal, permitting unaliased reconstructions with variable fields-of-view (FOVs) using the Fresnel transform [10-11]. More recently, second-order phase scrambling pulses have been used to localize signals from a target region of interest (ROI), offering an alternative to selective RF pulses. Signals are dephased when the nonlinear SEM applies an extra k-space shift vector to spins lying outside the ROI, shifting their echo peak outside the readout window. Gradient localization (GradLoc) has been experimentally shown using xy and x 2 -y 2 SEMs. In the present work we extend GradLoc to the case of the "Z2" spherical harmonic produced by an insert coil originally developed for O-Space imaging experiments. To achieve this, a quadratic phase slice-select RF pulse is used to pre-compensate the through-slice phase applied by the 3-D SEM while retaining the desired in-plane phase scrambling. THROUGH-SLICE DEPHASING Jason P. Stockmann 1, Gigi Galiana 2, and R. Todd Constable 1,2 Yale University, Department of Biomedical Engineering 1, Department of Diagnostic Radiology 2, New Haven, Conn., USA Z2 GRADLOC WITH QUADRATIC PHASE RF SLICE-SELECT PULSES A quadratic-phase RF "chirp" pulse is designed using the low flip angle approximation. The target slice profile is a rectangular slab with quadratic phase equivalent to that applied by the phasescrambling SEM, but with opposite sign. The Fourier transform is used to calculate an RF pulse that produces approximately this desired slice profile. The profiles are measured by playing a dephase-rephase gradient in the throughslice (z) direction following RF excitation and then Fourier transforming the resulting signal. Acquired GradLoc images show the expected dephasing of spins outside the target ROI. K-space data are filtered prior to Fourier transformation to reduce artifacts caused by the imperfect scrambling of spins outside the ROI. GradLoc images show unusual contrast, since different parts of the image are refocused at different TEs. PARALLEL IMAGING WITH GRADLOC GradLoc k-space data can be undersampled just as they are in Cartesian SENSE. Images are reconstructed with coil profiles obtained using the adaptive method in from fully-sampled GradLoc images of the same target ROI in the lower-right quarter of the object. SENSE GradLoc acquisition time is 1/(2R) as compared to a fullysampled full-FOV image with equivalent voxel size, where R is the k-space undersampling factor. CONCLUSIONS Second, we show the feasibility of the method using a high-strength quadratic gradient insert on a 3T MRI scanner. In previous work using low-power quadratic shims, achieving a large quadratic gradient moment has required using long TE times,. Fig. 1. Phase-scrambled gradient echo sequence Poster #2291 Figure 4. GradLoc images of a kiwi with a 4 mm slice thickness and (a.) 7 cm FOV, (b.) 3.5 cm FOV with the same resolution acquired in half the time, and (c.) an offset FOV. Figure 6. Reference image of (a.) an orange (256×256, 10 cm FOV) and (b.) fully sampled GradLoc image (128×128, 5 cm FOV). SENSE parallel reconstructions of under-sampled GradLoc image are shown with (c.) R=2 and (d.) R=4 images, for net acceleration factors of 4 and 8, respectively. Insufficient coil encoding exists within the ROI in the R=4 case. REFERENCES Hennig J, MAGMA 2008. Pipe J, MRM 1995. Gallichan D, MRM 2011. Stockmann, MRM 2010. Assländer J, ISMRM 2011. Pohmann R, JMR 1999. De Graaf R, ISMRM 2007. Weber H, ISMRM 2011. Schneider J, MRM 2011. Ito S, MRM 2008. Zaitsev M, ISMRM 2010. Witschey WR, ISMRM 2011. Stockmann J, ISMRM 2011. Galiana G, MRM 2011. Pruessmann K, MRM 1999. Walsh D, MRM 2000. Griswold, MRM 2001. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors wish to thank W Witschey, D Gallichan, A Welz, G Schultz, S Littin, H Weber, C Cocosco, M Zaitsev, and J Hennig at Freiburg University for their insights on nonlinear SEM encoding. Grant support comes from NIH BRP R01 EB012289-02. Figure 1. (a.) 12 cm dia. gradient insert coil used to generate Z2 field, (b.) transverse slice of quadratic field at 1% of maximum strength, and (c.) a hyperboloidal isocontour corresponding to γG Z2 (x,y,z) = 0. An 8- channel transmit-receive RF array nests inside the gradient coil. ab c d Figure 5. RF coil profiles are obtained from fully-sampled GradLoc images in the 5 cm target ROI of an orange phantom. Quandratic phase RF pulses can be used to precompensate for through-slice dephasing applied by a 3-D SEM phase scrambling pulse. GradLoc and SENSE parallel imaging are combined for an accelerated acquisition of a target ROI. Performance is limited by the number of spatiallyvarying RF receive coils in the ROI. Future work: Try using GRAPPA to perform parallel image reconstruction to avoid acquiring fully-sampled coil profile images. Test method on sagittal and coronal slices. Refine RF pulse design For transverse slices, the Z2 SEM varies twice as strongly through-slice than in-slice, causing severe signal loss, particularly for thick and offset slices. Slice phase can be pre-compensated by a quadratic phase slice select RF pulse. Figure 3. Comparison of slice profiles for a conventional windowed sinc (left) and quadratic phase RF pulse (center). The phase of the excitation pulse precompensates the phase applied by the Z2 SEM. Example shown is a 3 mm slice at z = 0.


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Executives are aware of the benefits asset management offers, but many organizations lack a defined IT asset management (ITAM) program. Efforts to implement ITAM are stalled because organizations feel overwhelmed navigating the process. A staged implementation will increase success, but make sure to treat ITAM like a process, not a project. This blueprint will walk you through the following phases:
- Design IT Asset Procurement Processes.
- Design IT Asset Intake and Maintenance Processes.
- Design Asset Security and Disposal Processes.
- Design IT Contract and Audit Management Processes.
IT asset management is a transformative process that will create lasting value within your organization. It can feel overwhelming, so be sure to parse the implementation into manageable phases.