Intestinal Epithelial Dysplasia (IED) or Tufting Enteropathy
This is a rare genetic disease of the intestine that causes severe diarrhea and the inability to absorb nutrients. The condition usually develops shortly after birth and is a part of a group of disorders of congenital diarrheas.
Intestinal epithelial dysplasia occurs when the surface cells lining the intestine do not develop normally resulting in the inability to absorb fluid and nutrients entering the intestine. Signs and symptoms present within the first few weeks of life and diarrhea persists despite bowel rest. Newborns fail to thrive and develop severe protein-energy malnutrition.
Diagnosis is based on biopsy of the small intestine and looking at the sample under a microscope where it shows the characteristic tufting appearance.
Treatment is supportive and involves total parenteral nutrition (TPN) and intravenous (IV) hydration. For patients requiring long term TPN and full dependency, intestinal transplant may be indicated.
For more information please visit this site.


text:
If you drop molten glass into a bucket of cold water, it cools into a weird tadpole shape: a round head with a long, thin tail. It's called a Prince Rupert's Drop, and no matter how hard you hit the head with a hammer, it won't break. But if you nick the tail even slightly, the whole drop explodes into tiny shards of glass.
That's because the cold water cools the outside of the drop very quickly — so quickly that even by the time the outside is solid, the inside is still molten. As the inside cools, it causes the solid outer layer to contract around it. The resulting stresses actually strengthen the glass — except for the tail, which is too thin to have inner and outer layers to balance the stresses, so it's a weak point.
And if you nick the drop's tail, it doesn't just break, it explodes into tiny pieces, so fast that you can't really see it happen in real time. One instant, the glass is there; the next, it's gone. You can watch it happen at 130,000 frames per second in this video.
What's a Prince Rupert's Drop good for? Researchers have used Prince Rupert's Drops since the 17th century to study material failure and elasticity. Geologists are also interested in these funny glass tadpoles, because similar structures often form during volcanic eruptions.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


text:
Policy Title: Post Verifier Training Survey Policy
Number: VPM - 007
Issue Date: December 12, 2018
Authorization: SAC Vice President - Higg Index
Distribution: Internal – All
External – All potential and current Higg Index FEM Verifiers
Table of Contents
1. General Information
The SAC application and training program for Verifiers, and potential Verifiers, is intended to be effective and efficient in finding and preparing Verifier candidates to professionally conduct Higg FEM Verifications that produce credible and comparable results. To ensure that the application and training meets these goals, after each person completes their training and exam, a survey is sent to the Training participant to gather feedback about their training and exam process experience. This information is used by both SAC and Sumerra to continually drive improvements in the training program.
1. The purpose of the survey is to:
1.1. Provide an opportunity for Training Participants to report on their experience with the application, training and exam
1.2. Provide a mechanism for Training Participants to easily report inaccuracies or areas for improvement
1.3. Provide SAC and the VPM with necessary feedback to improve the Higg FEM Verifier application, training and exam programs
1.4. NOTE: The intent of the survey is not to:
1.4.1.Provide an opportunity to challenge application and/or exam results
1.4.2.Provide training, consulting or additional information on a circumstance or situation in an attempt to change results
1. After the exam questions are completed, and prior to the Applicant finalizing the exam, the Applicant is required to complete the survey
2. The VPM reviews each survey received
2.1. If there are any Ethics-related concerns or allegations, the Ethics program and investigations begin
2.2. If there are issues noted in the survey that may impact the applicant, the VPM acts accordingly:
2.2.1.If there are inaccuracies in the training content that are incorrect or misleading, the VPM will adjust the training content as quickly as possible
2.2.2.If there are inaccuracies in the Exam content, the VPM will adjust the exam as quickly as possible. If the adjustment impacts the score for applicants that have previously completed the exam, the VPM will adjust the score as well as the eligibility status (if needed)
2.2.3. NOTE: If there are issues that indicate the Training Participant should be granted an additional opportunity for an exam, the VPM may choose to provide this (costs may apply)
3. On a periodic basis, the VPM analyzes the survey information, attempting to determine:
3.1. If there are gaps in the Application, Training and/or Exam processes that should/could be addressed through improvements to any or all parts of the process
3.2. If there are groups of applicants that have issues or concerns that can be mitigated through process changes and/or improvements
3.2.1.These groups may encompass certain languages, geographies, company background, or other commonalities
3.3. If there are technical challenges such as level of Verifier technical knowledge, IT/Internet related issues, etc. that require training or additional support
4. Survey Questions
1. Survey Questions:
1.1.1. Approximately how many hours did it take for you to complete the Application?
126.96.36.199. Answer: must be a number
1.1.2.Please answer using the choices below whether you agree or disagree with the statements regarding the application (Available answers are Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree or Disagree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree)
188.8.131.52. The application was easy to complete.
184.108.40.206. The application process was fair.
220.127.116.11. The application has the correct criteria to select highly qualified individuals to become FEM Higg Verifiers.
1.1.3.Please note any specific recommended improvements to the application process (optional)
1.2.1.Approximately how many hours did it take for you to complete the Training?
18.104.22.168. Answer: must be a number
1.2.2.Please answer using the choices below whether you agree or disagree with the statements regarding the training (Available answers are Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree or Disagree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree)
22.214.171.124. It was easy was it to use the technology for the training (the platform, or Learning Management System).
126.96.36.199. The training was effective in teaching me what I needed to know to conduct Verifications.
188.8.131.52. The training covers the correct subjects.
184.108.40.206. The training spends the appropriate time on each subject.
220.127.116.11. Interactions with instructors were effective.
18.104.22.168. The activities were effective in helping you learn the subject matter.
22.214.171.124. Enough information was provided to help you conduct effective Higg FEM Verifications.
1.2.3. Please note any specific recommended improvements to the training process. (optional)
1.3.1. Approximately how many hours did it take for you to complete the Exam?
126.96.36.199. Answer: must be a number
1.3.2. Please answer using the choices below whether you agree or disagree with the statements regarding the exam (Available answers are Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree or Disagree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree)
188.8.131.52. It was easy to use the technology of the Exam (proctoring system, etc.).
184.108.40.206. The exam was effective in ensuring you know the subject matter.
220.127.116.11. The length of the exam is appropriate.
1.3.3. Please note any specific recommended improvements to the training process. (optional)
1.4. Overall Process
1.4.1. Please answer using the choices below whether you agree or disagree with the statements regarding the overall process (Available answers are Strongly Agree, Agree, Neither Agree or Disagree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree)
18.104.22.168. The Application, Training and Exam effectively select and train Verifiers for the SAC Higg Index FEM verification program.
22.214.171.124. After going through the Application, Training and Exam process, you feel prepared and ready to conduct Higg FEM Verifications.
1.5. Please provide any other comments about the Higg Index FEM Verifier Application, Training and Exam process that you would like to share with the SAC and/or VPM.


text:
Chemfree® Insectigone Earwig Killer Diatomaceous Earth 200g
INSECTIGONE® EARWIG KILLER is made from a unique patented formula containing amorphous diatomaceous earth known as silicon dioxide, and an attractant. Insects touch the powder or ingest it and literally dry up and die, normally within 48 hours. This odourless and non-staining powder can be used without fear of damage to pets, fish, birds or wildlife. Remains effective in the control of earwigs for as long as INSECTIGONE® EARWIG KILLER is present.
DIRECTIONS: Shake well. Open top cap. Holding bottle at a 45-degree angle, powder should flow freely when squeezed.
INDOOR USE: Lightly coat at a rate of 50 grams per 10 m2 the areas where earwigs are found or may hide such as cracks and crevices, behind and beneath stoves, refrigerators, sinks, cabinets, garbage cans, around pipes and drains, window frames and in attics and basements. Hit insects directly where possible. Repeat treatment as necessary.
OUTDOOR USE: When earwigs are first noticed, apply INSECTIGONE® EARWIG KILLER to infested areas including the soil around the foundation of the home, around window frames, door sills, patios, garages, sheds, in cracks and crevices and under objects or debris where earwigs may hide.
IN THE GARDEN: Apply a thin layer of powder on soil surface around the base of plants, vegetables and along flowerbeds. Can be applied until the day of harvest. Repeat treatment as necessary.
Chemfree® Insectigone Earwig Killer Diatomaceous Earth 200g - Specifications
- Kills a variety of insects—cockroaches, ants, earwigs, silver fish, crickets, millipedes, and centipedes.
- Includes a patented bait formula that kills insects by ingestion/dehydration within 48 hours.
- Works indoors and outdoors when kept dry.
What's In The Box
- 1x 200g diatomaceous earth puffer bottle
- Active Ingredients: Diatomaceous Earth, also known as Silicon Dioxide (77.69%)


The Permanent Representative of Iraq to Geneva Delivers Nuclear Disarmament Statement on Behalf of Group of 21
The Deputy Permanent Representative of Iraq in Geneva Dr. Abbas Khadim Obaid gave the Nuclear Disarmament Statement on behalf of the Group of 21 in the Conference on Disarmament, during which he stressed that the Conference on Disarmament was the sole multilateral negotiating body on disarmament, welcoming the establishment of nuclear-weapon-free zones in Africa and Latin America, and expressed disappointment at the failure of the 2015 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) to reach consensus on the outcome document of the Conference, calling upon the sponsors of the 1995 Middle East resolution.
 In conclusion, the Deputy Permanent Representative stressed the importance of the nuclear-weapon States' commitment to the elimination of their nuclear weapons and the elimination of the role of nuclear weapons in security and military doctrines, stressing the importance of negotiating a universal, unconditional and legally binding instrument to assure non-nuclear-weapon States against the use of nuclear weapons or threat of their use, as well as the negotiation in the Conference on Disarmament of a convention banning the development, production, stockpiling, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons, providing for the destruction of such weapons, leading to the elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide and verifiable within a specified time frame..
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test and experiment with GiNaC's features much like in other Computer Algebra Systems except that it does not provide programming constructs like loops or conditionals. For a concise description of the _USER_{ginsh} syntax we refer to its accompanied man page. Suffice to say that assignments and comparisons in _USER_{ginsh} are written as they are in C, i.e. _USER_{=} assigns and _USER_{==} compares. It can manipulate arbitrary precision integers in a very fast way. Rational numbers are automatically converted to fractions of coprime integers: _USER_ > x=3^150; 369988485035126972924700782451696644186473100389722973815184405301748249 > y=3^149; 123329495011708990974900260817232214728824366796574324605061468433916083 > x/y; 3 > y/x; 1/3 _USER_ example All numbers occuring in GiNaC's expressions can be converted into floating point numbers with the _USER_{evalf} method, to arbitrary accuracy: _USER_ > evalf(1/7); 0.14285714285714285714 > Digits=150; 150 > evalf(1/7); 0.1428571428571428571428571428571428571428571428571428571428571428571428 5714285714285714285714285714285714285 _USER_ example Exact numbers other than rationals that can be manipulated in GiNaC include predefined constants like Archimedes' _USER_{Pi}. They can both be used in symbolic manipulations (as an exact number) as well as in numeric expressions (as an inexact number): _USER_ > a=Pi^2+x; x+Pi^2 > evalf(a); x+9.869604401089358619L0 > x=2; 2 > evalf(a); 11.869604401089358619L0 _USER_ example Built-in functions evaluate immediately to exact numbers if this is possible. Conversions that can be safely performed are done immediately; conversions that are not generally valid are not done: _USER_ > cos(42*Pi); 1 > cos(acos(x)); x > acos(cos(x)); acos(cos(x)) _USER_ example (Note that converting the last input to _USER_{x} would allow one to conclude that _USER_{42*Pi} is equal to _USER_{0}.) Linear equation systems can be solved along with basic linear algebra manipulations over symbolic expressions. In C++ GiNaC offers a matrix class for this purpose but we can see what it can do using _USER_{ginsh}'s notation of double brackets to type them in: _USER_ > lsolve(a+x*y==z,x); y^(-1)*(z-a); lsolve([3*x+5*y == 7, -2*x+10*y == -5], [x, y]); [x==19/8,y==-1/40] > M = [[ [[1, 3]], [[-3, 2]] ]]; [[ [[1,3]], [[-3,2]] ]] > determinant(M); 11 > charpoly(M,lambda); lambda^2-3*lambda+11 _USER_ example Multivariate polynomials and rational functions may be expanded, collected and normalized (i.e. converted to a ratio of two coprime polynomials): _USER_ > a = x^4 + 2*x^2*y^2 + 4*x^3*y + 12*x*y^3 - 3*y^4; -3*y^4+x^4+12*x*y^3+2*x^2*y^2+4*x^3*y > b = x^2 + 4*x*y - y^2; -y^2+x^2+4*x*y > expand(a*b); 3*y^6+x^6-24*x*y^5+43*x^2*y^4+16*x^3*y^3+17*x^4*y^2+8*x^5*y > collect(a*b,x); 3*y^6+48*x*y^4+2*x^2*y^2+x^4*(-y^2+x^2+4*x*y)+4*x^3*y*(-y^2+x^2+4*x*y) > normal(a/b); 3*y^2+x^2 _USER_ example You can differentiate functions and expand them as Taylor or Laurent series (the third argument of series is the evaluation point, the fourth defines the order): _USER_ > diff(tan(x),x); tan(x)^2+1 > series(sin(x),x,0,4); x-1/6*x^3+Order(x^4) > series(1/tan(x),x,0,4); x^(-1)-1/3*x+Order(x^2) _USER_ example If you ever wanted to convert units in C or C++ and found this is cumbersome, here is the solution. Symbolic types can always be used as tags for different types of objects. Converting from wrong units to the metric system is therefore easy: _USER_ > in=.0254*m; 0.0254*m > lb=.45359237*kg; 0.45359237*kg > 200*lb/in^2; 140613.91592783185568*kg*m^(-2) _USER_ example _USER_ Installation, Prerequisites, What it can do for you, Top _USER_ node-name, next, previous, up _USER_ Installation _USER_ CLN GiNaC's installation follows the spirit of most GNU software. It is easily installed on your system by three steps: configuration, build, installation. _USER_ * Prerequisites:: Packages upon which GiNaC depends. * Configuration:: How to configure GiNaC. * Building GiNaC:: How to compile GiNaC. * Installing GiNaC:: How to install GiNaC on your system. _USER_ menu _USER_ Prerequisites, Configuration, Installation, Installation _USER_ node-name, next, previous, up _USER_ Prerequisites In order to install GiNaC on your system, some prerequisites need to be met. First of all, you need to have a C++-compiler adhering to the ANSI-standard _USER_{ISO/IEC 14882:1998(E)}. We used _USER_{GCC} for development so if you have a different compiler you are on your own. For the configuration to succeed you need a Posix compliant shell installed in _USER_{/bin/sh}, GNU _USER_{bash} is fine. Perl is needed by the built process as well, since some of the source files are automatically generated by Perl scripts. Last but not least, Bruno Haible's library _USER_{CLN} is extensively used and needs to be installed on your system. Please get it from _USER_{_URL_ or from _USER_{_URL_ Bruno Haible's FTP site} (it is covered by GPL) and install it prior to trying to install GiNaC. The configure script checks if it can find it and if it cannot it will refuse to continue. _USER_ Configuration, Building GiNaC, Prerequisites, Installation _USER_ node-name, next, previous, up _USER_ Configuration _USER_ configuration _USER_ Autoconf To configure GiNaC means to prepare the source distribution for building. It is done via a shell script called _USER_{configure} that is shipped with the sources and was originally generated by GNU Autoconf. Since a configure script generated by GNU Autoconf never prompts, all customization must be done either via command line parameters or environment variables. It accepts a list of parameters, the complete set of which can be listed by calling it with the _USER_{--help} option. The most important ones will be shortly described in what follows: _USER_ _USER_ _USER_ _USER_{--disable-shared}: When given, this option switches off the build of a shared library, i.e. a _USER_{.so} file. This may be convenient when developing because it considerably speeds up compilation. _USER_ _USER_{--prefix=_USER_{PREFIX}}: The directory where the compiled library and headers are installed. It defaults to _USER_{/usr/local} which means that the library is installed in the directory _USER_{/usr/local/lib}, the header files in _USER_{/usr/local/include/GiNaC} and the documentation (like this one) into _USER_{/usr/local/share/doc/GiNaC}. _USER_ _USER_{--libdir=_USER_{LIBDIR}}: Use this option in case you want to have the library installed in some other directory than _USER_{_USER_{PREFIX}/lib/}. _USER_ _USER_{--includedir=_USER_{INCLUDEDIR}}: Use this option in case you want to have the header files installed in some other directory than _USER_{_USER_{PREFIX}/include/ginac/}. For instance, if you specify _USER_{--includedir=/usr/include} you will end up with the header files sitting in the directory _USER_{/usr/include/ginac/}. Note that the subdirectory _USER_{GiNaC} is enforced by this process in order to keep the header files separated from others. This avoids some clashes and allows for an easier deinstallation of GiNaC. This ought to be considered A Good Thing (tm). _USER_ _USER_{--dat


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Baby Booties Cake
Kenneth Chen
 - 2 (16 ounces each) family size frozen pound cakes, thawed
 - 2 cans (16 ounces each) vanilla frosting
 - Neon pink and neon blue food coloring (McCormick)
 - 15 mini marshmallows
 - 2 tablespoons each pink and blue decorating sugars
 - 6 yellow M&M minis
 - 1 strand each red and black licorice laces
 - Clean scissors
 - 3 freezer weight zip lock bags
Trimming the cakes:
 1. Place the thawed pound cakes on a clean work surface. Cut each cake in half crosswise. Trim a 3/4-inch wedge from either side of trimmed end.
 2. Arrange the cake pieces on a serving platter standing a cake, trimmed end down, against the other trimmed piece to make 2 booties. Secure with some of the vanilla frosting. Spread the top of the standing cake with some of the vanilla frosting and make smooth.
Frosting the cakes:
 1. Spoon 3/4 cup of the vanilla frosting into a zip lock bag. Divide the remaining vanilla frosting between 2 bowls. Tint one bowl pale blue and one pale pink with the food coloring. Spoon each color into a separate zip lock bag. Seal the bags.
 2. Snip a small corner from each of the bags with the frostings. Pipe the pink frosting in small light loops along the base of one of the cakes. Repeat with other rows of tight loops to cover all but 1 inch from the top edge of the cake.
 3. Pipe 2 rows of tight loops with the vanilla frosting along the top edge. Pipe a line of pink frosting along the top inside edge.
 4. Repeat the same method with the light blue frosting.
To complete the decoration:
 1. Place each colored sugar in small bowls. Cut the mini marshmallows in half on the diagonal. Press 15 pieces, cut side down, into each colored sugar to make the flower petals.
 2. Arrange 3 like colored flowers on the side of each bootie. Press a yellow mini M&M in the center of each flower.
 3. Arrange the licorice pieces into a small bow shape. Press the licorice bows on the top edge of each cake.
Serves 24


Imago Dei
Write a 1,000-1,250-word essay covering the two topics below, relying primarily on the reading assignments for the first two topics, your own thinking, and only secondarily on the Topic 2 Overview. Determine the implications of the Imago Dei for how counselors understand counselees and the task of counseling. Discuss the main differences between a Christian and a secular/naturalistic perspective.
Utilize topic materials to support your responses.


Constellation Cygnus
Title Badge
Together with the constellations Lyra and Aquila, the Swan (lat. Cygnus) forms the famous summer triangle, a combination of the brightest stars (Wega, Altair and Deneb) of the three most striking constellations of the summer and autumn skies. With an area of 804 square degrees, Cygnus extends in the northern hemisphere. Because of its appearance, it is often referred to as the "Northern Cross", a counterpart to Crux. It is one of the 48 constellations of antiquity.
How to spot Cygnus
The constellation represents a flying swan with outstretched wings. The brightest star, Deneb, symbolizes the tail feathers. The constellation is located south of Cepheus and Draco, west of Lacerta, north of Vulpecula and east of Lyra. In Cygnus you may spot the bright band of the Milky Way, which is why many special stars and foggy objects can be seen here.
The mystical bird in the night sky caused many different versions of the origin of the constellation.
In the best-known story, the swan is Zeus, who philandered young women in the form of the beautiful and gentle animal. That way he seduced the unsuspecting Nemesis, who received and cared for the supposedly hunted swan. When she gave birth to a white egg nine months after the incident, she hid it ashamed in the woods. There a shepherd found it and brought it to Leda, Queen of Sparta. She made it hatch and after some time Helena was brought to life, which became the epitome of beauty in ancient times and the trigger of the Trojan War.
Also Zeus seduced the Queen of Sparta herself in the wedding night with the King Tyndareos, so that the brothers Castor and Pullox were conceived.
Another version is about Cygnus, a friend of the son of the Sun God Helios. As Eridanus fell burning into the river Cygnus swam to help him and searched tirelessly for his friend. Zeus was so touched that he turned him into a swan and set him into the sky as an example for loyalty and friendship.


text: A glass dome constructed on top of the rebuilt Reichstag building (1894) in Berlin, built to symbolize the reunification of Germany. It has a 360 degree view of the surrounding Berlin cityscape. The debating chamber of the Bundestag, the German parliament, can be seen down below. A mirrored cone in the center of the dome directs sunlight into the building, and so that visitors can see the working of the chamber--symbolizing that the people are above the government. The dome is open to the public and can be reached by climbing two steel, spiraling ramps that are reminiscent of a double-helix. The glass dome was also designed by Foster to be environmentally friendly. Energy efficient features involving the use of the daylight shining through the mirrored cone were applied, effectively decreasing the carbon emissions of the building. Foster was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1999 for his work on the building, which has become one of the top tourist destinations in Berlin.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text:
"cardinality", and we can't build a definition of such a purely set-theoretical concept out of what properties it does discuss. The answer to the question is "無!" ("mu"). The Bourbaki definition doesn't define the natural numbers, but merely shows that within the confines of set theory one can construct a model satisfying the given abstract axioms.
This is how mathematics works at its core. We define a system, including basic pieces and relations between them. We can use those pieces to build more complicated relations, but we can only make sense of those properties inside the system itself. We can build models of systems inside of other systems, but we should never confuse the model with the structure — the map is not the territory.
This point of view seems to fetishize abstraction at first, but it's really very freeing. I don't need to know — or even care — what particular set and functions define a given model of the natural numbers. Anything I can say about one model works for any other model. As long as I use the properties as I've defined them everything will work out fine, and whether I use Bourbaki's model or not.
Sooner or later I'll have to use relations, so I may as well get the basics nailed down now.
A relation between two sets and is just a subset of their Cartesian product. That is, it's a collection of pairs. Often we'll write when is in the relation.
A function is a special kind of relation where each element of shows up on the left of exactly one pair in. In this case if is in the relation we write. Remember from our discussion of functions that I was saying every element of has to show up both at least once and at most once (that is, exactly once). A surjection is when every element of shows up on the right side of a pair in at least once, and an injection is when each element in shows up at most once.
Also interesting are the following properties a relation between a set and itself might have:
- A relation is "reflexive" if for every in.
- A relation is "irreflexive" if is never true.
- A relation is "symmetric" if whenever then also.
- A relation is "antisymmetric" if whenever and then and are the same.
- A relation is "asymmetric" if whenever then is not true.
- A relation is "transitive" if whenever and then also.
A very important kind of relation is an "equivalence relation", which is reflexive, symmetric, and transitive. We've already used these a bunch of times, actually. When a group acts on a set, we can define a relation by saying whenever there is a group element so that. Since the identity of sends every element of to itself, this is reflexive. If there is a so that, then, so this is symmetric. Finally, if we have and so that and, then, so the relation is transitive.
When we have an equivalence relation on a set, we can break up into its "equivalence classes". Any two elements and of are in the same equivalence class if and only if. We write the set of equivalence classes as. For group actions, these are the orbits of.
Show for yourself that in our discussion of cosets that there's an equivalence relation going on, and that the cosets of in are the equivalence classes of elements of under this relation.
I'm soon going to need to really use the notion of a function, and I want to make sure that I lay the groundwork properly. This is also a good place to mention a few things about sets.
For most of my purposes, a naïve concept of sets will suffice. A set is a collection of objects, called the elements of the set. In formal treatments of set theory, the elements are themselves sets. In fact, everything in sight is "really" a set. This sort of foundationalist approach, though, tends to obscure the real structure of mathematical theories, so I'll avoid talking about formal set theory unless it's absolutely necessary. What we'll need from set theory are a few operations on sets.
- Specification: If we have a set and some statement that can be unambiguously determined true or false for each element of, there is a set containing exactly those elements of so that is true. We write this set as, read "the set of those elements of such that is true of ".
- Intersection: This is actually a special case of specification. For our statement we use " is an element of the set ". This gives us the set of all elements in both and, and we write this set. In practice, we will allow intersections not just of two sets, but of any number of sets — even infinitely many.
- Union: For any two sets and there is a set containing any element in either or. We write this set as. As for intersection, we will allow unions of any collection of sets.
- Cartesian product: For any two sets and there is the set of ordered pairs, where is an element of and is an element of. We write this set. Again, we allow Cartesian products of any number of sets, though only a finite number at a time here.
- Empty set: While not a "construction", per se, the empty set is something important to pay attention to. This is, predictably enough, the set containing no elements at all. We write it.
- Subset: If every element of is also an element of we say is a subset of — written. Note that specification gives us a subset of.
- Power set: For any set we have the set of all subsets of. We write this set.
I may have forgotten some, but I will mention those (and add them here) if I realize it later.
Anyhow, a function is basically a rule that assigns to each element of one set an element of another. Formally, we need to specify a "domain" set and a "codomain" set (the codomain is often called the "range"). For every element of the domain, there is a uniquely specified element in the codomain. Often there is some sort of calculational method to determine the value of the function, but a simple lookup table will suffice. We write to specify a function with domain and codomain.
There are a few properties a function may have that are worth mentioning here. Every function assigns a value in its codomain to every element in its domain. If every element in the codomain is the value of the function at some element of the domain we say that the function is "onto" or a "surjection". Every function assigns only one value to every element in the domain. If no element in the codomain is the value of the function at more than one element of the domain, we say that the function is "one-to-one" or an "injection". If both of these properties hold, we say the function is a "bijection".
Let's consider four sets:,,,. We use these to define a number of examples of functions.
-, with,, and. This function is surjective, but not injective.
-, with,,. This function is injective, but not surjective.
-, with,,. This function is neither injective nor surjective.
-, with,,. This function is bijective.


text:
Procedural genererated polygonal planets. Procedural generated pologonal region terrain maps. Triangulated distances between primary objects, primary and secondary objects, tertersy and secondary objects, and so on. Distance from a ship around a planet is calculated by getting the distance to the planet, distance from the planet to the sun, distance from the sun to the next sun, the next sun to the next planet.
Novel backfill. Use a series of functions and objects to fill out an endpoint objective then after that work backwards in steps to reach that objective. Work backwards at each step while building the novel backbone.
Pandas for data points?
Start making scapy and beautifulsoup bots to get text novels and book descriptors, types of novels, character development traits, all sorts of things.
Pick a database backend.
Pick a web frontend.
Get a logo, just for the hell of it.
Establish the line between cowriter and author?


Question: Is Coffee Good For Your Colon?
Does coffee inflame the colon?
Because of the acidity of caffeine, the amount of gastric secretions increases from caffeine exposure and use.
This can cause irritation of the intestinal lining of the stomach causing stomach upset in some people..
What foods are bad for colon?
Limit: Processed Meats These are meats that are smoked, cured, or salted, or preserved with added chemicals. Think hot dogs, bacon, ham, bologna, and packaged lunchmeat. Eating those kinds of meats often can up your chances of both colon and stomach cancer.
Is cheese bad for the colon?
Other studies have shown evidence that a diet high in dairy products may actually increase colorectal cancer, Feldman says. "Non-dairy consuming regions of the world, like Asia and the Mediterranean, have the lowest incidence of colorectal cancer."
Does coffee affect gut bacteria?
How do I empty my bowels?
Is chicken good for your colon?
Whatever the reason, people who ate a lot of chicken had an associated 21% lower risk of all adenomas — growths that can be precursors of colon cancer — than those who ate little chicken.
Is coffee bad for your colon?
Coffee stimulates the bowels. Research shows that coffee promotes the release of the hormone gastrin, which increases motor activity in the colon, and can also speed colon emptying by affecting the epithelial lining of the stomach and small intestine. A cup of decaf might not be any better.
What can I drink instead of coffee?
What foods cleanse the colon?
5 colon-cleansing foodsBroccoli. There are so many different ways to add broccoli to your diet. … Dark, leafy greens. Eating dark, leafy greens like spinach, kale, and chard is a great way to cleanse your colon. … Milk. You can use milk for more than just your morning cereal. … Raspberries. … Oatmeal.
What happens if you eat eggs everyday?
What kills the good bacteria in your gut?
Without further ado, here are 8 surprising things that can cause harm to your gut bacteria.Not Eating a Diverse Range of Foods. … Lack of Prebiotics in the Diet. … Drinking Too Much Alcohol. … Antibiotic Use. … Lack of Regular Physical Activity. … Cigarette Smoking. … Not Getting Enough Sleep. … Too Much Stress.Jun 19, 2017
How can I clean my bowels everyday?
How can I restore my colon health?
How can I make my colon strong?
Six Nutrition Tips for Colon HealthEat a Variety of Fruits and Vegetables. Consume an assortment of vividly colored fruits and vegetables. … Choose Whole Grains. … Drink Plenty of Water. … Avoid Saturated Fats, Especially from Animals. … Look For Low-fat or Fat-free Dairy. … Avoid Alcohol and Added Sugar.Mar 9, 2021
Is tea or coffee better for digestion?
Coffee can relax the band of muscle between your esophagus and stomach. When that space opens, stomach acid could splash back up and cause acid reflux. "You may be better off having tea, even if it has a little caffeine," says Angelone.
What is a natural laxative?
Prunes are probably one of the most well-known natural laxatives out there. They provide lots of fiber, with 2 grams in each 1-ounce (28-gram) serving. They also contain a type of sugar alcohol known as sorbitol (45, 46 ).
How do you stimulate a bowel movement?
What does coffee do to your intestines?
Can coffee help with constipation?
It's true that the caffeine can stimulate the muscles in your digestive system to contract, causing a bowel movement. But because caffeine (epecially escessive caffeine) is dehydrating, it's not recommended. So if you're constipated, avoid it or choose decaf.
Are eggs bad for your colon?
Eating eggs has also been connected to developing certain types of cancer such as colon, rectal, and prostate.
What kind of coffee makes you poop?
Research has shown that caffeine makes the colon 60% more active than water and 23% more active than decaf coffee ( 6 ). However, studies have shown that decaf coffee can also stimulate the urge to poop.


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About the Refuge
Surrounded by development and industry, the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge supports the last known populations of the endangered Antioch Dunes evening primrose, the Contra Costa wallflower, and the Lange's metalmark butterfly.
Last Dunes Standing
Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge is the only national wildlife refuge in the country established to protect endangered plants and insects – the Antioch Dunes evening primrose, the Contra Costa wallfl ower, and the Lange's metalmark butterfly.
Created in 1980, the 55-acre refuge was once part of a larger sand dune system that stretched two miles along the southern bank of the San Joaquin River east of the City of Antioch. The sand dunes were formed by ancient deposits of glacial sands carried downriver from the Sierra Nevada. Over thousands of years, ocean winds and bay tides slowly shaped these aeolian (wind-blown) sands into dunes that approached 120 feet in height. Isolation of these dunes resulted in the development of species of plants and insects that were found nowhere else in the world.
Large-scale sand mining and industrial development fragmented the sand dune habitat until only a small portion of the original ecosystem remained. What is left today are two disjunct parcels (the Stamm and Sardis Units) containing sand dunes varying from 0-50 feet high, making up refuge.
Due to the
sensitivity of the habitats and the endangered species, the refuge is not open to unsupervised use by the public. However, refuge staff and local educators conduct on-site
environmental education efforts through monthly guided tours and special events. Volunteers also regularly assist refuge staff with habitat restoration
projects and endangered species surveys.


text:
Within Corporate Finance, there is a focus area where management optimize their cost structure. There are several key measurement to identify business risk under the name of leverage. They use the term elasticity of one percent change in one variable with regard to unit percentage change in another variable. The most commonly used degree of operating leverage and degree of financial leverage.
Attached is a screenshot of how I derived the equation based on the definition.
In the end, the term degree of total leverage is defined as %change in net income over %change in units sold. Once should reach to the conclusion easily that DTL = DOL * DFL


text:
|part of speech:
||transitive verb & intransitive verb
||distended, distending, distends
||to swell or cause to swell from, or as if from, internal pressure; balloon.
The child's abdomen was distended, which is a sure sign of severe malnutrition.
- balloon, bloat, puff, swell, tumefy
- constrict, deflate
- similar words:
- bag, blow up, bulge, dilate, enlarge, expand, inflate, protrude
||bag, belly, billow, bulge, enlarge, fill, inflate, magnify, stretch


TMCnet News
ThreatQuotient Launches Data-Driven Approach to SOAR and XDR, Accelerating Detection & Response
[May 04, 2021]
ThreatQuotient, a leading security operations platform innovator, today announced ThreatQ TDR Orchestrator, a new data-driven automation capability for more efficient and effective threat detection and response. This capability enables users to control what actions are to be taken, when, and why through the use of data.
"The security industry's approach to automation has overlooked the vastly different needs of detection and response use cases," said Leon Ward, VP of Product Management, ThreatQuotient. "The focus of ThreatQ TDR Orchestrator is data, not process. In detection and response, what is learned when performing an action is far more important than the action itself. ThreatQuotient has seized an opportunity to define and provide automation in a way that reduces complexity for security teams."
With the shortage of security personnel, automation has become a key strategy to offload repetitive tasks and empower humans to conduct advanced security operations tasks more efficiently. To date, automation has been looked at as defining a process and the steps needed to complete that process. This approach ignores the fact that automation is much more than just running the process. In reality, there are three important stages of automation to define and address:
 1. Initiate - Define what should have actions taken upon it and when those actions should occur
 2. Run - Perform the course of action or defined process through to completion
 3. Learn - Record what is learned for analytics and to improve future response
ThreatQ TDR Orchestrator puts the "smarts" in the platform and not the individual playbooks by using Smart Collections™ and data-driven playbooks. The application of Smart Collections and data-driven playbooks provides or simpler configuration and maintenance, and provides a more efficient automation outcome. This approach further addresses all three stages of automation - Initiate, Run and Learn - easily and efficiently by enabling users to curate and prioritize data upfront, automate only when relevant, and simplify actions taken. It can be used to complement other playbook capabilities through ThreatQuotient's ecosystem partners or users can define data-driven playbooks within the ThreatQ platform. To improve the platform "smarts", it will also capture what has been learned to improve data analytics, which in turn improves the initiation stage of automation.
Use cases for ThreatQ TDR Orchestrator include but are not limited to automating the following:
 - Hunting key threats as new intelligence is learned and recording the results
 - Deploying blocking and detection content to EDR and network devices
 - Enriching threat intelligence that meets complex criteria including relationships
 - Tasking a user to patch a high priority vulnerability that is being used in relevant campaigns
"Having high confidence in the data being used to trigger alerts is critical. ThreatQuotient's approach to security operations ensures that teams remain focused on high-priority threats through automation and optimization, achieving results such as freeing up multiple analysts for more important tasks," Ed Amoroso, CEO and Founder, TAG Cyber. "ThreatQuotient's data-driven approach to automation through ThreatQ TDR Orchestrator enables security teams to reduce the number of playbook runs and have confidence that the output is relevant and high priority."
ThreatQ TDR Orchestrator will be available in Summer 2021. To learn more about the benefits of data-driven automation, visit the ThreatQ TDR Orchestrator webpage.
For more information about ThreatQuotient, please visit
About ThreatQuotient
ThreatQuotient's mission is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of security operations with a platform that accelerates and simplifies investigations and collaboration within and across teams and tools. Integrating an organization's existing processes and technologies into a unified workspace, ThreatQuotient's solutions reduce noise, highlight top priority threats and automate processes to provide greater focus and decision support while maximizing limited resources. ThreatQuotient's threat-centric approach supports multiple use cases including incident response, threat hunting, spear phishing, alert triage and vulnerability management, and also serves as a threat intelligence platform. ThreatQuotient is headquartered in Northern Virginia with international operations based out of Europe and APAC. For more information, visit
[ Back To's Homepage ]


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Verbal autopsy of 80,000 adult deaths in Tamilnadu, South India.
Gajalakshmi V., Peto R.
BACKGROUND: Registration of the fact of death is almost complete in the city of Chennai and not so in the rural Villupuram district in Tamilnadu, India. The cause of death is often inadequately recorded on the death certificate in developing countries like India. A special verbal autopsy (VA) study of 48,000 adult (aged >or= 25 yrs) deaths in the city of Chennai (urban) during 1995-97 and 32,000 in rural Villupuram during 1997-98 was conducted to arrive at the probable underlying cause of death to estimate cause specific mortality. METHODS: A ten day training on writing verbal autopsy (VA) report for adult deaths was given to non-medical graduates with at least 15 years of formal education. They interviewed surviving spouse/close associates of the deceased to write a verbal autopsy report in local language (Tamil) on the complaints, symptoms, signs, duration and treatment details of illness prior to death. Each report was reviewed centrally by two physicians independently. Random re-interviewing of 5% of the VA reports was done to check the reliability and reproducibility of the VA report. The validity of VA diagnosis was assessed only for cancer deaths. RESULTS: Verbal autopsy reduced the proportion of deaths attributed to unspecified and unknown causes from 54% to 23% (p < 0.0001) in urban and from 41% to 26% (p < 0.0001) in rural areas in Tamilnadu for adult deaths (>or= 25). The sensitivity of VA to identify cancer was 95% in the age group 25-69. CONCLUSION: A ten day training programme to write verbal autopsy report with adequate feed back sessions and random sampling of 5% of the verbal autopsy reports for re-interview worked very well in Tamilnadu, to arrive at the probable underlying cause of death reliably for deaths in early adult life or middle age (25-69 years) and less reliably for older ages (70+). Thus VA is practicable for deaths in early adult life or middle age and is of more limited value in old age.


text:
Thumbmaster Drinking GameSpread all cards over face down in the middle of the table. Mix them up. First person draws a card. Each card stands for as follows.
Ace: Waterfall(Drawer starts drinking person to their left can't stop until they stop. Person to the left of the person to the left can't stop until that person stops and goes around circle.
1: Take one drink.
2: Take two drinks.
3: Give three drinks.
4: Whores(Girls drink.)
5: Thumbmaster(Person who drew card is now thumbmaster. They can put there thumb on the table at any time through the rest of the game or until another person draws a 5 and becomes thumbmaster. Everyone else has to then put there thumb on the table; the last one to do so drinks.)
6: Dicks(Guys drink.)
7: Ahead(Person to left of drawer drinks)
8: Straight(Person across from drawer drinks)
9: Rhyme(Say a sentence person to the left of you has to rhyme with the last word of that sentence. Goes around till someone doesn't rhyme. They have to drink)
10: Social(Everyone takes a drink)
Jack: Category(Say a category and everyone has to name something out of that category including person who starts it. Goes around cirlce until someone is stumped, they have to drink)
Queen: Question(Ask someone a question. They have to turn to someone else and ask a question. The first to answer isntead of asking another question drinks)
King: Rule(They get to make a rule that lasts for the remainder of game; example everytime so and so drinks an item of clothing has to be taken off)
More Drinking Games


text:
POLICY: Clean Up
PURPOSE: To ensure a safe working environment for all persons employed and/or visiting a Carter & Carter Construction jobsite and to improve efficiency through discipline and organization.
RESPONSIBILITY: The Superintendent
PROCEDURE: Carter & Carter Construction will not tolerate a failure by its subcontractors or employees related to daily clean up. To ensure total compliance, the following shall be followed:
1. The clean up strategy devised while the estimate is being assembled will specifically address the following:
Removal of debris:
- Trash chutes
- Dumpsters (location and number)
- Temporary roads required
- Hoist requirements and uses
- Trash buggy needs/purchases
- Temporary labor
2. During the buyout phase, the following shall be specifically addressed regarding each subcontractor's responsibility:
- Sweeping floors – daily in work areas
- Daily removal of debris
- Providing of dumpsters
- Coordinated use of elevators, cranes or hoists
3. During construction, the Superintendent shall monitor clean up daily to ensure total compliance.
4. In the event the Subcontractor or its employees fail to clean the site area, a 24-hour notice will be issued. If the site is still not in compliance after the issuance of the notice, the Subcontractor will be back charged.


Alvarez lenses and other strangely shaped optical elements
In typical microscopes, lenses or mirrors are moved forth and back to change the position of their focus. Tunable lenses like the electro-tunable lens or the TAG lens, on the other hand, are deformed by an external force and thereby change their focal length. One interesting concept that I had not noticed until recently is the idea of the Alvarez lens, named after its inventor (described in this 1964 patent). I came across it in a 2017 paper from the lab of Monika Ritsch-Marte from Innsbruck/Austria. The following picture adapted from their paper very nicely illustrates the effect:
By lateral displacement of the two lens elements against each other one can focus or de-focus the beam. In two papers from this lab (paper 1, paper 2), the authors used a method that sort of replaces this lateral (slow) movement with a (fast) rotation of a galvo mirror by using a creative optical configuration (check out the paper for the details, it is a pleasure to read).
There a couple of things to notice: The Alvarez lens is a bit more complex in 2D (the above schematic illustrates a (de-)focusing system for 1D only). The authors use diffractive instead of refractive Alvarez lenses. They use only visible light (no near-infrared light, which I would prefer). And they mention some other shortcomings of their approach.
Still, I find the principle very interesting and inspiring, and I hope that somebody will invest his or her time to put a system together that is not only a proof-of-principle, but an optimized system that reaches the best possible performance. This would probably also be a nice playground for a study of optical modeling and optimization: to find out which shape of the lens could perform much better than the Alvarez lens (like this study, but a bit more systematic with respect to possible lens surfaces).
Overall, this is a fascinating piece of optics, and I got interested also because I had always been intrigued by optical scanning methods where a simple movement of the beam is translated to a complex scanning scheme by an optical element (see for example this blog post on entirely passive scanning at MHz rates). For a long time, I hoped that a method similar to an Alvarez lens and based on a strangely shaped mirror (or lens) surface could be used to transform a linearly scanned pattern into something more complex (like a spiral scan, or a 2D raster scan). In theory, this is possible, but in practice the finite beam diameter would create a lot of problems. In addition, constructing an arbitrarily shaped mirror with good surface flatness and broadband reflective coatings would be quite costly.
One field where I long thought that such an approach could be applied, because it would be applicable for many microscopes, is the un-distortion of the non-linear angular scanning trajectory of resonant scanners (described in detail in a previous blog post). The idea would be that an optical element (the 'black box lens' in the schematic below) placed after the resonant scanner would somehow convert the angular dependency \sim \sin(\omega t) into a relationship that is rather linear in time, \sim t. Such that at time points close to the turnaround of the sine (blue time point below), the 'black box lens' would increase the angular deflection angle, eventually inversing the sine function:
I have the suspicion that this problem is practically not solvable due to the finite beam diameter, but it would be interesting to know whether there is a solution for this problem at least for the assumption of infinitely small scanning beams using geometric optics. This could be done by a lens whose diffractive power increases with distance x from the center of the lens.
Let's assume a scan angle \alpha = \sin( \omega t). The scanned beam hits the black box lens at a position x(t) = \tan(\alpha) \cdot d with the distance d between the resonant scanner and the lens. The refractive power f(x) of the lens must therefore change with x such that the outgoing beam is linear in time. In approximative ABCD optics:
\left( \begin{array}{cc} 1 & 0 \\ -\frac{1}{f(x(t))} & 1 \end{array} \right) \cdot \left( \begin{array}{cc} x(t) \\ \alpha (t) \end{array} \right) \stackrel{!}{=} \left( \begin{array}{cc} x(t) \\ t \end{array} \right)
This results in the following expression for the local radius of the lens depending on the location x:
f(x) = \frac{x}{\arctan(x/d) - \arcsin(\arctan(x/d))}
You can find the equations and some plots also in a Jupyter notebook on Github. For small absolute values of x, f(x) diverges, indicating an infinite curvature, i.e., a lens that simply transmits light without deflection. With increasing/decreasing x, f(x) tends to zero, indicating increasing refractory power and a stronger local curvature of the lens surface.
Such a lens would only work optimally at one single zoom setting, which is probably one of the many reasons why nobody ever has tried this out. But it's still interesting to think about it.
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Air-conditioned ants: The secret behind their vast underground cities... ventilation
They are known for their industrious nature. But the humble ant's sophisticated home-making skills has left some of the brightest scientific minds in awe of the tiny creatures.
Researchers have discovered the vast underground colonies where up to seven million of the insects live have their very own in-built ventilation shafts.
It is thought the 'air-conditioning' helps ants tend to a delicately-balanced fungal garden that feeds their young.
Scroll down for video
Hard workers: Underground ant colonies are so complex, they even have ventilation shafts
For years scientists have been at a loss as to how the industrious ants were able to keep their nests at just the right temperature to allow the fungus to grow... until now.
New research has shown that the insects make specially-constructed turrets which ventilate the nests for optimum growth.
According to a study published in the
Journal of Insect Behaviour, the ants carefully create the turrets with
highly porous walls which allows air to flow through the chambers.
It was already known that ant constructed the turrets, but this study is the first to reveal how they do it, it has been reported.
Sophisticated: Scientists could not work out how the ants built nests that stayed at the right temperature... until now
A team of researchers took a colony of grass-cutting ants into the lab to test their nest-building techniques with a range of different materials.
The ants were given clay, coarse sand and fine sand, with scientists regularly changing the quantity of the material and pouring water over them to simulate rain, according to the BBC.
Leading the study, Dr Marcela Cosarinksy, from Buenos Aires' Agentinian Museum of Natural Science told the BBC: 'When [the ants] finished a turret, we analysed the arrangement of the building materials [under] the microscope.
'The ants construct the turrets by stacking sand grains and little balls of clay that they mould with their [jaws].'
When pores collapsed under water, the walls would compact - and immediately the worker ants removed the materials and re-worked the turret wall.
The scientists said the research confirmed that ventilation turrets were 'built structures' as opposed to passive deposition of excavated soil, a technique used by other ant species.


ecuador Print this page
Cuy in the realm of cuisine is both its most obvious and common usage in the Andes. Foreign visitors to Ecuadorian and Peruvian cities are often struck by the sights, sounds, and smells of roast cuy being sold on the streets just as hot dogs are sold in the United States. Live cuys are sold at markets, and restaurants often feature an assortment of cuy dishes. Methods of preparation include but are certainly not limited to: broiling, usually with an oil or lard glaze; roasting; frying, known as chactado or frito which involves hammering the meat first; in soups or broths, called locro de cuy; boiled or chanka de conejo; and barbequed, prepared by and for the community and locally called pachamanca. Upper class dining establishments have begun to sophisticate traditional methods of preparation by incorporating the meat into foreign dishes such as cuy fricassee or cuy casseroles, but roasted cuy is almost universally accepted to be the best way to eat it. Supposedly roast cuy best showcases the best qualities of the cuy: sweet, smoky, aesthetically pleasing, a homogeneous temperature, and served whole. Roast cuy is also the most labor intensive means of preparation, limiting its consumption to special occasions and celebrations. To be served roasted cuy in an Andean household is to be honored with particular distinction, equivalent to killing the "fatted calf" in English idiom. [A lyric in a popular Quechuan folk song is "Hey old lady, if you want me to be your son-in-law, open your door and serve me a whole cuy."]
Just as there are a variety of ways to cook cuy, the best method of slaughter is disagreed upon and varies by region. A quick neck breaking is considered by many to be the most humane and leave the best tasting meat. In Ecuador, the butcher presses the head forward, resulting in a quick death and conservation of most of the blood. Other methods include cutting the throat, used primarily in Bolivia and parts of Peru, and asphyxia, common in Colombia. However, cutting the throat is condemned for allowing too much blood to escape the meat leaving it dry and flavorless, and asphyxia supposedly pains the cuy an excessive amount. Regardless of the means of death, the cuy is then submerged in boiling water for a few seconds, skinned, and eviscerated.
No matter how the cuy is killed or prepared, it is always eaten with the hands and fingers – never a fork and knife. This practice leaves a tell-tale sweet smell on the fingers of the eater called tufo, making it difficult to explain a night of cuy eating and beer drinking with the boys to a waiting wife. Cuy is almost always accompanied by beer and potatoes, but of course each restaurant and region prides itself on its own special means of cooking the cuy itself: La Namorina in Peru is famous for fried cuy; Chola Flora in Bolivia serves boiled cuy; and in Ecuador many restaurants astound guests with broiled cuy turned on a spit. Ceremonially, cuy is treated as a food marking special occasions or transitions from one stage of life to the next. Examples of household or community cuy feasts include marriages, christenings, a boy's first haircut, to request a favor, and to negotiate courtships and marriages between two families. Of late, gatherings centered around cuy have been extended to incorporation into street fairs or fundraising for non-profit organizations.
Recipe for Roasted Cuy
For 2-3 large animals; serves 4-6
2 red onions, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp white pepper
2 tsp of salt
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons oil
annatto [for coloring]
Mix ingredients well and spread over the inside and outside of the animal. Allow to marinate for up to one day to allow flavors to meld. Before roasting, remove excess marinade to avoid scalding. The spit should be inserted into the back part of the animal and exit from the jaw. Once on the stick, tie the front and back feet, stretching out the legs. Put on grill, turning manually. Continue to apply lard to the skin to avoid drying out the meat. The cuy is ready when the skin is close to bursting. Serve with boiled potatoes sprinkled with coriander, chilies, and the following peanut sauce. If your community is especially progressive, rice may be substituted for the potatoes.
Peanut Dipping Sauce
2 tablespoons lard
annatto coloring
2 white onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic
pinch of cumin
1 large cup of roasted and ground coffee with peanuts
3 ½ cups milk
Fry onions until golden brown, then add other ingredients. Cook at low heat for at least half an hour.
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Recognition accuracy of current operating room alarms
R. G. Loeb, B. R. Jones, Rebecca J Leonard, K. Behrman
Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review
24 Scopus citations
This prospective study was performed to determine whether anesthesia clinicians (i.e., both anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists) can identify operating room alarms by their distinctive sounds and to identify factors related to alarm recognition accuracy. Nineteen alarms from 15 commonly used devices were recorded. These sounds were played, in a quiet room, to 44 anesthesia clinicians. The clinicians were asked to choose from a list the device that produced the alarm. After this recognition test, the clinicians rated the importance of each alarm and the frequency with which they heard it in the clinical situation. Clinicians correctly identified the alarm source 34% of the time. The recognition rate was higher for alarms rated as heard more frequently; however, alarms that were rated as more important were less likely to be correctly identified. Complexity of the sound did not influence accuracy of recognition. Most errors were attributed to similarities in sound or function, or both, among alarms. We conclude that anesthetists cannot reliably identify current operating room alarms by their distinctive sounds.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)499-505
Number of pages7
JournalAnesthesia and Analgesia
Issue number4
StatePublished - 1992
ASJC Scopus subject areas
 - Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine
Fingerprint Dive into the research topics of 'Recognition accuracy of current operating room alarms'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
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text:
International Association of Engineering and Management Education (IAEME)
Dealing with a huge amount of data puts the requirement for efficient data access more critical in data grids. Improving data access time is a one way of reducing the job execution time i.e. improving performance. To speed up the data access and reduce bandwidth consumption, data grids replicate data in multiple locations. This paper studies a new data replication strategy in data grid, which takes into account two important issues concerning replication: storage capability of different nodes and bandwidth consumption between nodes. It also considers the popularity of the file for replacement. Lesser popular files get less priority then the higher popular file. The authors also need to consider the limitation on storage.


Copyright 2021 I. Skouzos & Partners.
All Rights Reserved.
Gross negligence under Greek law
Iason Skouzos & Partners > Practice Areas > Civil Law > Gross negligence under Greek law
Gross negligence under Greek law
Gross negligence in Greek law is not explicitly defined in the Civil Code. It is derived from the combined application of articles 330, 332 and 334 of the Civil code. In the lack of an express definition and specific criteria for it, gross negligence is deemed to exist when the deviation from the behavior of an ordinary person is important, unusual and especially great, indicating a total disregard of the acting person for the illegal consequences incurred by his act to a third party by. Gross negligence is an abstract legal notion, and hence a court's ruling as to whether the facts of a case constitute gross negligence is subject to the annulment of the Areios Pagos (Supreme Court).
Gross negligence does not comprise cases of willful misconduct. The latter is equal to deceit (either direct, indirect or necessary deceit). In cases of gross or simple negligence, the person at fault either does not foresee the upcoming result of his actions or he foresees it but acts in the hope that he will avoid it.


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You can use your computer to calculate data for your business reports, expenses and other needs. The Windows operating system includes a native Calculator app that offers more than just basic functionality. You can use the app to track history and copy that information into a text document in Notepad. You'll have to manually copy and paste the history to the text file, but it provides a handy way to keep track of long calculations for later reference.
1. Turn on your computer and wait for Windows to fully boot.
2. Click the "Start" menu. Type "Calculator" in the search box and click the application when it appears in the search results.
3. Click "View" and select "History." Alternatively, press the "Ctrl" + "H" keys simultaneously to enable history tracking.
4. Use the calculator in the customary manner, typing in numbers and expressions on your computer's numeric keypad. The history tracking for your calculations appears near the top of the calculator window.
5. Click "Edit" on the Calculator toolbar. Select "History" and then click "Copy History."
6. Click the Windows "Start" menu and type "notepad" in the search box. Click "Notepad" when it appears in the search results.
7. Press "Ctrl" + "V" to paste the calculation history into the text file. Click "File" and "Save As." Specify a name for the file and click the "Save" button. Your calculations are saved.
8. Click "File" and select "Print." On the pop-up dialogue box, choose a printer and click the "Print" button. The calculations print onto paper, similar to the way a receipt prints on a business calculator.
- Thinkstock/Comstock/Getty Images


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When I design classes and have to choose between inheritance and composition, I usually use the rule of thumb: if the relationship is "is-a" - use inheritance, and if the relationship is "has-a" - use composition.
Is it always right?
Thank you.
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9 Answers
up vote 23 down vote accepted
No - "is a" does not always lead to inheritence. A well cited example is the relationship between a square and a rectangle. A square is a rectangle, but it will be bad to design code that inherits a Square class off a Rectangle class.
My suggestion is to enhance your "is a / has a" heuristic with the Liskov Substitution Principle. To check whether an inheritence relationship complies with the Liskov Substitution Principle, ask whether clients of a base class can operate on the sub class without knowing that it is operating on a sub class. Of course, all the properties of the sub class must be preserved.
In the square / rectangle example, we must ask whether a client of rectangle can operate on a square without knowing that it is a square. All that the client must know is that it is operating on a rectangle. The following function demonstrates a client that assumes that setting the width of a rectangle leaves the height unchanged.
void g(Rectangle& r)
This assumption is true for a rectangle, but not for a square. So the function cannot operate on a square and therefore the inheritence relationship violates the Liskov Substitution principle. (By the way - the example came from the linked article.)
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Ok, it illustrates the point. But still, why would a square be mutable? – John Nilsson Jan 17 '09 at 21:18
_USER_ - Example: TCP socket uses a file descriptor, so you might say it is-a file. However, most file APIs assume random access is possible (e.g. fseek). A TCP socket is also an IP socket, but no clients should be accessing the IP layer directly (let the TCP stack handle it). – Tom Jan 18 '09 at 6:27
_USER_ - your question highlights the fact that inheritence (as it relates to the Liskov Substitution Principle) is all about behaviour. If the square was not mutable, then there would be no problem because no client can change the width or the height. – Trumpi Jan 19 '09 at 11:40
I agree with Tumpi; the square/rectangle example cited is implying a problem with mutability more so than with inheritance. The is-a relationship would be well expressed by inheritance if the shape was not mutable. – Lawrence Dol Feb 5 '09 at 4:48
This is a furphy. A square might be a rectangle in mathematics, but if you define rectangle to be a quad that can height and width set independently, then square doesn't fit. In this case, rectangle actually extends square by having the additional property of two different side lengths, instead of just one. – Kirk Broadhurst Feb 24 '11 at 5:31
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Yes and no.
The line can be blurred. This hasn't been helped by some pretty terrible examples of OO programming from the early days of OO like: Manager is an Employee is a Person.
The thing you have to remember about inheritance is: inheritance breaks encapsulation. Inheritance is an implementation detail. There's all sorts written on this subject.
The pithiest way to sum it up is:
Prefer composition.
That doesn't mean use it to the complete exclusion of inheritance. It just means inheritance is a fallback position.
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Well a Manager is an Employee and an Employee is a Person. What's your point? – Iraimbilanja Jan 17 '09 at 19:03
_USER_: Yes, a people Manager usually is-a Employee, but this is something completely different from the Manager pattern. Unfortunately, I've seen some explanations which conflated these two meanings. – Piskvor Jan 17 '09 at 20:40
That is a perfect example for an explanation on WHY you should prefer composition. – Epaga Jan 17 '09 at 20:41
A Manager is an Employee but a Person has (zero or more) Employee roles is a MUCH better abstraction. If your objects change type (class) that's a warning sign you're doing something wrong and that's what happens if an Employee becomes a Manager. You can argue Manager is a property of Employee too – cletus Jan 17 '09 at 22:09
Note that the question originally said both "is a" and "has a" were inheritance - see comments to my answer. It is now corrected to match your assumed version, but 'other way round' was officially inaccurate. – Jonathan Leffler Jan 17 '09 at 23:14
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If the relationship is "is-a" - use inheritance, and if the relationship is "has-a" - use composition. Is it always right?
In a sense, yes. But you must be careful not to introduce unnecessary, artificial "is-a" relationships.
For example, one may think that a ThickBorderedRectangle is-a Rectangle, which seems reasonable at first sight, and decide to use inheritance. But this situation is better described saying that a Rectangle has-a Border, which may or may not be a ThickBorder. In this case he would better prefer composition.
In the same fashion, one may think that a ThickBorder is-a special Border and use inheritance; but it's better to say that a Border has-a width, hence preferring composition.
In all these ambiguous cases, my rules of thumb are think twice and, as others advised, prefer composition over inheritance.
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One might also think that a Rectangle doesn't have anything, but rather that some RenderableThing has a Shape or something along those lines – John Nilsson Jan 17 '09 at 21:23
Nice examples! I wouldn't have thought of them myself, shamefully (unless I thought hard about it). – strager Jan 18 '09 at 0:45
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I don't think it's as simple as "is-a" vs "has-a" - as cletus said, the line can get very blurry. It's not like two people would always come to the same conclusion given just that as a guideline.
Also as cletus said, prefer composition over inheritance. To my mind, there have to be really good reasons to derive from a base class - and in particular, the base class really needs to have been designed for inheritance, and indeed for the kind of specialization you want to apply.
Beyond that - and this will probably be an unpopular idea - it comes down to taste and gut feeling. Over time I think good developers get a better sense of when inheritance will work and when it won't, but they may well find it hard to express clearly. I know I find it hard, as this answer demonstrates. Maybe I'm just projecting the difficulty onto other people though :)
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Jon, where do you get this "designed for inheritance" mantra? This is the 3rd or 4th time I've heard you say this, and I just don't understand it. Do I have to buy and read your book to get this explained? Or should I just ask a question for you to answer so you get more rep for it? ;-) I'll do that – Steven A. Lowe Jan 17 '09 at 19:29
done - see stackoverflow.com/questions/453879/… – Steven A. Lowe Jan 17 '09 at 19:33
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Inheritance doesn't always mean there is an "is-a" relationship and the lack of one doesn't always mean there isn't.
 - If you use protected or private inheritance then you lose external substitutability, that is, as far as anyone outside of your hierarchy is concerned a Derived is not a type of Base.
 - If you override a base virtual member and change behaviour observable from someone referencing the Base, from the original Base implementation, then you have effectively broken substitutability. Even though you have a public inheritance heirarchy Derived is-not-a Base.
 - Your class can sometimes be substituitable for another without any inheritance relationship at work. For example, if you were to use templates and identical interfaces for the appropriate const member functions then an "Ellipse const&" where the Ellipse happens to be perfectly circular could be substituitable for a "Circle const&".
What i'm trying to say here is it takes a lot of thought and work to maintain an "is-a" substitutable relationship between two types whether you use inheritance or not.
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add comment
NoYes. If the relationship is "has-a", use composition. (Added: the original version of question said "use inheritance" for both - a simple typo, but the correction alters the first word of my answer from "No" to "Yes".)
And use composition by default; only use inheritance when necessary (but then don't hesitate to use it).
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Corrected s/inheritance/composition in the question (of course it was a typo). – Federico A. Ramponi Jan 17 '09 at 18:15
OK - I debated whether to fix it :) – Jonathan Leffler Jan 17 '09 at 18


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CIOs are throwing out unreliable in-house bot management solutions – time to follow suit?
(Image credit: Image Credit: Alex KNight / Unsplash)
Studies show that most security execs now have first-hand experience of dealing with "bad" bots. In fact, we know that executives aren't just dealing with them they are now a topic for discussion in board management meetings such is the impact to business - 53 per cent say they've encountered reduced website revenue due to inventory hold-ups by bots, 51 per cent report bots skewing marketing analytics, and 36 per cent have talked about abuse of user accounts of payment information.
Talking to execs I've found that most start by deploying an in-house solution as their first response. However, the majority admit it wasn't good enough and failed to make a scratch on the attack surface and have since replaced it with a dedicated solution.
So why are in-house bot management solutions failing and why don't businesses deploy a dedicated bot management solution as soon as they determine the threat?
To uncover why, you need to look at the various options for in-house bot management solutions and their pitfalls.
Types of in-house bot management
There are four types of in-house bot management solutions that organisations deploy.
1. Manual Log Analysis
Used to manually prepare a list of suspected IP addresses. Suspected IPs are then blocked through access control list of WAFs or SIEM tools to prevent them from accessing web applications.
2. Rate Limiting
Organisations limit the number of visits from one IP address. Rate-limiting based solutions work based on predefined rules.
3. Basic Fingerprinting
Basic fingerprinting-based solution that collects IPand header-centric information to identify and block malicious bots.
4. Advanced In-house Bot Management
Advanced in-house bot management solutions are built using in-house data while leveraging basic machine-learning models.
Security researchers from ShieldSquare studied the traffic of organisations that had deployed and found that these solutions do more harm that good. In that they they fail to detect the bots on at least a 2:1 rate. Against 22.39 per cent of actual bad bot traffic, advanced in-house bot management solutions were able to detect only 11.54 per cent of bad bots, and that half of those detected were false positives.
So what's going on? Why are in-house approaches not working when AI is becoming so accessible?
There are two factors firstly the design inhibits sound decision making and you end up with a poor user experience, and secondly there's no way to feed in any global intelligence.
1. Poor User Experience
In-house bot management solutions struggle to understand distinctive user behaviour and result in high false positives and negatives, resulting in poor user experience. To explain this we need to look under the bonnet of how in-house systems are designed.
Higher false negatives
In-house bot management solutions are not optimised to consider various factors when analysing the traffic on a website, such as stopping sudden surges in traffic, low and slow hits, and mutating bots. It's largely due to the way attacks are constructed. Firstly they are sophisticated and complex, and secondly they are often large-scale. Credential stuffing is now a norm, whereby a combination of different techniques are used to bypass security measures while masquerading as genuine users.
The attackers can create tens of thousands of IPs distributed across tens of domains and geographical locations, using numerous ISPs. It's then deliberately designed to be hidden from detection. With these attack methods, attackers can carry out thousands of unique URL hits on the login pages to perform a credential stuffing attack. It's this scale and pervasion that makes it so hard to detect a problem.
Then there are the low and slow attacks. These use sophisticated bots, using thousands of IP addresses in one attack instance played over a long period of time. Using this low and slow technique, attackers can scrape product information and pricing details of millions of products from e-commerce portals.
In effect they are not unusual in comparison to day-today genuine traffic and stay under the rules of advanced in-house bot management.
There's also the inability to get the intent analysis right ie determining the risk score of a visitor, traffic categorisation (between good bots, bad bots, and humans), and then mitigating bad bots. This is becoming more and more crucial as the bot attacks grow in sophistication.
In-house bot management solutions can't analyse intent, and therefore cause massive false positives. As a result, companies that have failed to stop bad bots and been the victim of scraping, fraud or theft, recognise they need Intent-based Deep Behaviour Analysis (IDBA) to fight the crime.
Higher false positives
The biggest contributor to this is in an inability to determine domain specific user behaviour. For example, on portals with live content, such as news portals and social media sites, some users tend to spend more time scrolling through their feed or browsing the website, and they have comparatively higher session times than the users of websites with relatively static content. In-house systems identify them as bots regardless which makes the decision on how to deal with them precarious.
2. Lack of Global Threat Intelligence
In-house bot management solutions lack global threat intelligence and rely on in-house data. This hampers any ability to identify sophisticated human-like bad bots. On the other side, dedicated bot management vendors serve thousands of global customers. The firms collect data from end users' devices to build a comprehensive database of bots (both good bots and bad bots) and human fingerprints. Bot management firms leverage this database to improve their bad bot detection and mitigation capabilities dynamically. It's easy to see why CIOs are now investing rather than try to replicate it themselves.
So why not go for a specialist solution straight off?
Companies that deploy in-house bot management solutions often encounter a clash of commitments –pressure to reduce risk, prevent an impact to customer experience and profit, yet deliver solutions on a shoe string with little to no dedicated skill. Their hands are tied.
Let's face it with so many threats emerging, it's unlikely that a company will have an expert in each field at their disposal, especially bots. Bot management is a very niche space and requires comprehensive understanding and continuous research to keep up with cybercriminals. I'm sure CIOs will be telling their boardroom counterparts this. Still the pressures of cost pervade.
However, the evidence is now abundant. Companies can not afford to get this wrong. It will effect brand perception and revenue. CIOs embarking on the strategy, or thinking of turning back, are now in a stronger position to learn from their forerunners and persuade the board to make a different investment. One which will deliver an ROI, and free them up for a more strategic use of their budget and skill. Competitive advantage depends on it.
Pavan Theda, Head of Bot Management Solutions, Radware


text:
from Social Issues
Dreger's previous book was Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex. She is a leader in the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA), a group dedicated to the view that children born with genital malformations should not be assigned a sex as infants. These children should be free to choose what sex they wish to be when they are older.
Dreger's "10 Myths About Intersex" was published in the ISNA booklet, Introduction to Intersex Activism: A Guide for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Allies.
In dealing with the issue of conjoined twins, Dr. Dreger told a reporter with Knight-Ridder that she favors waiting to obtain informed consent from the conjoined twins themselves, rather than separating them when they are young. Dreger claimed, "It sounds strange, but I came to appreciate that it's [being conjoined] not all that different from being married, having a roommate or a child."
In another article written by Kristina Latham, Dreger observed: "The transgender and intersexual movements are similar because they both attempt to make people understand gender and sex as fluid. People need to think more carefully about their bodies and their na've and convenient myths about gender."


text:
Aspects of Mind contains previously unpublished manuscript material by Gilbert Ryle along with notes taken by the editor, Rene Meyer, at lectures given by Ryle on the philosophy of mind in 1964.
Gilbert Ryle, Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford from 1945 until 1967, had a decisive influence on contemporary philosophy. His Concept of Mind (1949) not only put a methodological edge in a most readable way to what has become known as Analytical Philosophy, but it also stimulated interest in the philosophy of mind as a pivotal part of philosophy as a whole. A second important influence derives from his reorganization of philosophical studies at Oxford after the war which made it, for several years, one of the liveliest philosophical centres in the world. Ryle's interest covered almost the entire field of philosophy. He also made substantial contributions to the history of philosophy, notably on Plato, Locke, Hume, Husserl and Heidegger. Gilbert Ryle died in October 1976.
The book also includes two tributes to Ryle; one from John Mabbott, a close friend, on Ryle the man, and one from David Gallop, an ex-student, on Ryle the Philosopher. A chapter entitled "Philosophy, Logical Geography and Dilemmas" by Rene Meyer provides a perspective on Ryle's philosophy. [via]


text:
How difficult is it for historians to publish work in digital form?
This was the question posed by Rachel Ensign in her Chronicle article today. While an American survey of 4000 historians found most wanted to include interactive maps or databases in their work the publishers of journal were far less enthusiastic.
According to Ensign the system of peer review and printed journals has not embraced digital-born work and instead much of this work makes it way into blogs or Wikipedia. In my experience a lot of the work appearing in this form also appears with poor footnoting and references, often not helped by the technical limitations of the software used to create this work. About 20 percent of scholars in the survey, conducted by Robert Townsend, assistant director of research and publications at the American Historical Association, said they had published work in a native digital form.
One of the projects mentioned in the article by Doug Seefeldt, pointed to new digital scholarship which works in ways paper cannot. I had a quick look at one of these the Stanford University's Spatial History Project, where interactive maps, searchable primary sources, video, and audio are given the same importance as the text, and thought the 'Colorado Railroad Accidents 1894 -1895′ project was an interesting example of how this kind of scholarship could work.
I would be interested to know what others thought about this – and what success they have had developing, and publishing, digital-born content.


text:
THE MERMAID'S ROCK.
To the westward of the beautiful Cove of Lemorna is a rock which has through all time borne the above name. I have never been enabled to learn any special story in connection with this rock. There exists the popular fancy of a lady showing herself here previous to a storm--with, of course, the invariable comb and glass. She is said to have been heard singing most plaintively before a wreck, and that, all along the shore, the spirits have echoed her in low moaning voices. [a] Young men are said to have swam off to the rock, lured by the songs which they heard, but they have never returned. Have we not in this a dim shadow of the story of the Sirens?
[a] The undulations of the air, travelling with more rapidity than the currents, reach our shores long before the tempest by which they have been established in the centre of the Atlantic, and by producing a low moaning sound, "the soughing of the wind," predicates the storms. The "moans of Tregeagle" is another expression indicating the same phenomenon.


Provigil and weight loss or gain
Does Provigil affect your weight? Will you gain or lose weight on Provigil?
We don't mean to cop out, but it is very difficult to say. Difficult to say for a lot of drugs. The body's weight control system, like the sleep cycle, is a complex mechanism, consisting of several (sometimes competing) forces. Some drugs make some people lose weight and other gain.
Provigil is a stimulant, so you might think it would make you lose weight. Provigil can substitute for amphetamine compounds in some clinical applications, and amphetamines often cause weight loss. However, modafinil (the medicine in Provigil) is completely different and one of the salient points of Provigil is that it does not make people "wired". Just on that evidence, it seems less likely that Provigil would cause weight loss.
But is Provigil better than nothing when it comes to losing weight? Maybe. It effectively has antidepressant properties, so that could help some people eat less.
A 2003 clinical trial study concluded that "like amphetamine, modafinil reduced the amount of food consumed and decreased energy intake, without altering the proportion of macronutrients consumed" and further that the amount of Provigil needed to affect appetite did not raise the heart rate as amphetamines did.
A study at the Weight and Eating Disorders Program at the University of Pennsylvania said "Modafinil may be well suited for the treatment of obesity, although further studies with repeated dosing in overweight populations are warranted." Abstract here.
A study on Provigil for depression found that the drug was associated with weight loss.
A Columbia University study found that for people doing shift work (which upsets the regular circadian cycle and eating patterns), Provigil "produced clear reductions in food intake".


text:
Understanding your vehicles' "health" enables you to make crucial performance decisions, such as when to perform preventive maintenance, what actions to postpone until the next maintenance cycle, and whether a driver is causing any vehicle damage through poor driving habits. The answers to these questions can keep a fleet's health in check and help maximize business uptime. The required actions can improve efficiency and prevent damage due to severe wear and tear.
Modern vehicles contain many microcontrollers that connect into a Controller Area Network (CANBUS), the biggest being the Engine Control Unit (ECU). CANBUS is a message-based protocol, used in the On-Board Diagnostics OBD-II vehicle diagnostics standard. After turning the vehicle switch and subsequently throughout a vehicle's trip, the microcontrollers send status messages that are read, filtered, and analyzed. In the event an exception to certain thresholds or a sequence of contingencies is detected, a report or an alert is sent for intervention.


written by
Vicky Smith
7 Signs That Your Team Needs a Corporate Away Day
Training 6 min read
It can often be difficult for businesses to make the decision to book a corporate away day for their team. You might think that your team isn't perfect, but they're still working to an acceptable standard. To help you identify whether an away day is right for your team, we've put together a list of 8 signs that your team could benefit from a corporate away day.
1. Team members have trouble with communication
One of the first signs that your team needs a corporate away day is that they are either struggling to communicate, or communicating poorly.
signs that your team needs a corporate away day communication
Improve team communication with a corporate away day
Lack of communication often means that wires get crossed and things are frequently misunderstood. Or perhaps due to poor communication, people do not feel comfortable enough to share ideas and contribute to the team.
One way to assess whether the communication in your team needs to improve is to analyse the language used. One sure sign of poor communication is the frequent use of 'no,' or 'but.' If people become defensive about their ideas, they are more likely to shut down the ideas of others with a 'no' or a 'but', causing a breakdown in collaboration and perpetuating a negative environment.
Research shows that negative communication not only creates an uncomfortable office atmosphere, but also leads to lowered employee productivity, increased employee turnover and a less profitable company.
2. Your team struggles with negativity
Another sign that your team needs a corporate away day will come from a persistent negative atmosphere or negative use of language in the workplace.
Perhaps your team are acting selfishly, they are pessimistic, or they are letting negative events outside of the workplace effect their performance and attitude at work. Negativity is particularly damaging as it can be infectious in the workplace. If one employee has a poor attitude, it can quickly spread to the rest of the team.
Negativity in the workplace often leads to absenteeism, poor performance and low morale, all of which impacts on your company's ability to deliver excellent service.
3. There is a persistent lack of clarity
Lack of clarity about the direction of the team, business goals or overall purpose can all contribute to a dysfunctional team.
Do your team meetings frequently take 2 hours rather than 10 minutes? This is a clear sign of lack of clarity within the team. If your team enters a meeting without proper planning, or without clear direction, then meetings are likely to frequently overrun. Lack of clarity also means that team members work in silos. Lack of clarity on common goals can often result in individuals focusing on their own role and responsibilities, with little idea about the roles and importance of others.
All of this not only harms communication and productivity, but also effects employee buy-in. When employees have clarity about the goals, aims and plans of the company, and even better, when they are allowed to become a part of shaping these, they are more likely to engage with work in a long-term, meaningful way.
4. There are frequent frictions between team members
Another one of the signs that your team needs a corporate away day is that there is always 'workplace drama.'
workplace drama signs that your team needs a corporate away day
Workplace drama is one of the clear signs that your team needs a corporate away day
American Society of Employers research into workplace drama shows that workplace drama can affect the company's bottom line. Employee turnover is likely to be high, productivity is likely to be low, and morale is often poor in a volatile, negative office environment.
Of course, you can never expect that all members of your team are going to get on with each other 100% of the time. However, if workplace frictions are a frequent occurrence in your office, you need to take action to resolve this issue.
5. Your team suffers from lack of accountability
Lack of accountability can be one of the clear signs that your team needs a corporate away day.
Lack of accountability can often mean that employees are unable or unwilling to admit to faults. This often makes it difficult to pinpoint why projects are delayed or completed incorrectly. But why does this mean that your team is dysfunctional?
Lack of accountability often comes from a negative team atmosphere in which employees are afraid of the consequences of admitting to a mistake. This can be a sign that your office does not have a structure in place for respectful, constructive criticism and there is a fear of a backlash occurring.
Lack of accountability often leads to delays or failures of projects, low morale, unclear priorities and diminished trust between team members.
6. Your team members aren't engaged
A lack of engagement or lack of motivation among team members can be one of the more difficult issues to notice, but once recognised is one of the most obvious signs that your team needs a corporate away day.
Employees may still be completing work on time and to a satisfactory standard. However, it is important to work out whether your team members are really engaged in the work they're doing, willing to go the extra mile, or whether they are simply completing the bare minimum.
This is detrimental to business as quite simply, disengagement costs you money. Engaged employees are more likely to work harder, complete work to a higher standard, keener to use their initiative and are more likely to remain long-term employees.
7. Team productivity is low
You should definitely consider a corporate away day if the productivity of your team is low or unsatisfactory.
Perhaps employees are struggling to hit their goals and targets, or you find that there is a lot of idle, unproductive time among your teams. Often it can be difficult to pinpoint the exact reason for this, as lack of productivity is usually a long-term, deep-rooted issue.
lack of productivity signs that your team needs a corporate away day
Lack of productivity and engagement means that your team will benefit from an away day
It goes without saying that low productivity affects the bottom line of the business, however it can also lead to low morale and high staff turnover.
Do these signs that your team needs a corporate away day resonate with you?
Cambray's training department have decades of experience in running corporate away days. Our trainers meet with team and business leaders in advance to discuss specific challenges and goals. Then they tailor the corporate away day to address the problems specific to your team.
Our away days are run in a beautiful hotel, situated in the countryside in the heart of the Cotswolds. This relaxed atmosphere provides the perfect backdrop for your team to team-build, problem solve and grow.
For more information, or to discuss how we can help with your specific requirements in more detail book a free 30-minute consultation with one of our trainers today. Alternatively, fill out the contact details below to receive a call from one of our experts.
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text:
A new computer-aided detection system could help identify breast cancer earlier. The system uses pattern-recognition algorithms to analyze images collected through digital mammography. It highlights suspicious spots that radiologists may have missed on first examination, prompting them to review the mammograms and determine whether further tests are necessary. According to its manufacturer, iCAD, the system detects up to 72 percent of treatable cancers an average of 15 months earlier than mammography alone.
Courtesy of iCAD
Product: SecondLook Digital computer-aided detection system
Cost: About $70,000


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How can I script a screen resolution change, for example to 1024*768?
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4 Answers 4
up vote 2 down vote accepted
There isn't a native powershell way to set the resolution. You could write in-line C# code in a powershell script to do it. Otherwise you would need to find a third party commandline application that does it and just call that from your script.
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How do I change the resolution from C#? Is there a class? – Andrew J. Brehm Aug 26 '09 at 8:52
Did you follow the links that Splash provided? – EBGreen Aug 26 '09 at 11:50
As EBGreen has said, Powershell cannot do it in its vanilla state. However being a.NET-based shell, you could either use.NET within a powershell script, use a traditional CLI application or write a Cmdlet to do it.
These links may help you out if you decide to explore those paths further:
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See the freeware QRes :
Description: Command line utility to change screen resolution, color depth and refresh rate...
For the case of multiple monitors, you can see Display Changer (free for personal and educational use):
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You can't do this using a native Windows command, but you can use an application invoked from the command line like _URL_
I've used it before - it is a little cumbersome but does what it says on the tin.
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