would help all developers would be a tool to integrate our data, which includes calories per 100 grams, with a method to track total volume of food consumed. A person can track their net carbs and exact caloric intake. This would be a way to identify the food volume—perhaps by 3-D camera or a scale mechanism," said Jamieson. The Big Picture For Little Food Apps TellSpec's data strategy is to perfect the accuracy of food information by compiling everyone's scans over time—and then improve research by sharing its data with medicine, says the company. The sensor itself, which is a keychain-size laser and Raman spectrometer, works by pointing a light beam at the food, altering the energy states of the food's molecules. The spectrometer inside the TellSpec counts the photons reflected off the food and based on their wavelengths determines the chemical compounds in the food. The campaign roots its mission on changing the way people think about food, and they want to educate those unaware of harmful chemicals. During our interview, Hoffman emphasized why they did not follow the traditional route of venture capitalists and instead turned to crowdfunding. The big-data model that TellSpec expects will solidify their information is only possible through a large number of user scans. "It is an idea by the people and for the people," says Hoffman. Natalia Rodriguez Tue, 12 Nov 2013 17:53 +0000 big data developer IndieGoGo scan spectrometer tellspec Technology This Killer New Service Lets You Connect To Any Popular API--Without Wrappers In modern apps, API integration is crucial; without connecting to the other networks we use, an app is just a silo. By now, developers have largely accepted the headaches of dealing with APIs—the hours lost building and modifying wrappers—as a natural part of the development process. By the time programmers start cranking out the original code for their project, they've often already lost creative momentum just integrating with other services. Temboo is one of those rare developer tools which could quickly become invaluable to app builders. What follows is a simplified explanation of how this little startup is attempting to save the world thousands of hours of busy work—and, if they succeed, what their service means for the future of the Internet of Things. Why APIs Cause Developers Pain The real hassle with APIs is that your knowledge of one doesn't translate to another. Once you get the hang of one kind of integration, it doesn't help you much with the second. It's hard to build up knowledge this way; each API has its own learning curve, its own methods, its own way of returning data in different formats. APIs also have different authentication protocols for login. And that's leaving aside the perpetual updates that API creators release, forcing developers to update their code. Some web services give warnings of changes, some don't. Documentation, which explains how to interact with the data, is also inconsistent in quality between sites. If app developers don't take note of a change happening on an API on their app and don't update their code accordingly, the results can be catastrophic. What Temboo Does Temboo acts like a layer on top of the APIs, providing users with code snippets that trigger complex processes that run on their cloud platform. For every five to six lines of Temboo code inside your program, there are about 200 on the cloud. Take any sample code for specific Choreos in Temboo's library, and you'll see that the code looks very similar when compared to one for a different API. This is because when these code snippets are run, they call up Temboo's cloud platform, which then performs the process, often but not always an API interaction, and returns the data. Without Temboo, programmers have to learn the particular way to "talk" to an API. The goal is for the cloud to compute all the sophisticated steps. When a change occurs on an API, which is often, Temboo updates their code on the cloud side. Before this, programmers would change their code manually, but now it is no longer necessary. Vaughn Shinall, director of product outreach at Temboo, explained some of possibilities this unlocks. "You have less of your own code to maintain and the code that you're actually writing is the most creative part of it," says Shinall. "Now you can just focus on what's groundbreaking and unique about your invention rather than reinventing the wheel for all the other steps. Why should you ever have to program something that someone else has already figured out?" More Than An API Curator At a glance, APIs are the most prominent feature of Temboo's service, but scrolling a little longer has big rewards. Temboo's "Utilities" Tab allows users to do things like generate emails, convert data, and use their authentication plug-ins like OAuth. OAuth is a popular authentication protocol. It works by generating a temporary password with limited privileges to a user's profile, whether it is a twitter handle or Facebook timeline, depending on the app's purpose. Most APIs use OAuth. Understanding it is key when trying to build an app that interacts with a user's outside information. It can get confusing, but Temboo offers a package similar to the ones it offers for APIs. "This is a great tool for both new programmers and experienced ones. We want to make it easy to be a programmer and have the freedom to use whatever language you are most comfortable with. No one is really focused on the user experience for programmers," says Shinall. What This Means For The Internet Of Things Temboo recently partnered with Arduino to answer one question—"Makers are going to want to make projects that interact with APIs, how can we make it easier?" When you are using Temboo's code, you are only putting five or six lines on the small board as opposed to the cloud's equivalent 200 lines of code. Temboo's cloud is doing the complex interactions executing the actual code. In a way, Temboo allows the cloud to exist inside of small boards. This allows hardware that doesn't have much RAM or sophisticated processing power to behave much more intelligently. Precisely enough, Yun in Mandarin translates to cloud. At times, APIs return information the user may not have even requested. "For example, the Foursquare API will just send all of this crazy glut back to you with extra details that you may not need. Say you want to check on the status of a venue on Foursquare, the data sent back will tell you who is the mayor of that region, how many people are checked in, and blah blah blah. But maybe you only want to know its rating," says Shinall. This extra amount of unnecessary information is usually not a problem if it is sent back to a regular computer, but on a small piece of hardware that amount of data can be overwhelming for the RAM. Temboo created output filters so that when you're writing in a Choreo, you can select what data you want the API the cloud to shoot back. Small hardware opens up a whole new world of possibilities for what can be done with Temboo past an API standpoint, making it ideal for programming tiny hardware and running Internet Of Things applications. "The thing about connected devices everywhere is that they are not computers. They have no visual interfaces sometimes," explains Shinall. "It's hard to access a pipe in a warehouse or a device out in the agricultural field reading soil temperature." The fact stands. These devices are not as smart as a computer, making them harder to update the software they run on whenever they are due for an upgrade. With Temboo, the device is hooking up to a cloud-based system, eliminating the need to go dig it out in the fields. Now, makers can just update the code on their computer and keep the device updated this way. "It's really easy to program connected devices. You can create all sorts of interactions. Think of all the different things it makes possible. The menu on a TV never gets updated since you don't plug it in. Now, you can have virtual firmware. That's the interesting story and it's where we see the technology going," says Shinall. As cloud computing technology develops, the ability to hold the cloud power without a huge server on location is powering small devices. "We're excited about embracing a whole new audience. Makers are an awesome group of people, full of great ideas.


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Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota Series: An Alternate History of the Future
coverwilltoThis ten-minute paper introduces a speculative fiction series about a 25th century world in which humanity has succeeded in colonizing the Moon, holding the Olympics in Antarctica, and maintained global peace for three centuries but in which women have still not achieved equality.
This paper argues that Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series, set in a future 25th century, is deeply invested in exploring what it means to write history and learn from its lessons. In showing how 18th century habits of thought, and even earlier texts such as Vergil's Aeneid, continue to shape thinking in her imagined future, she takes a long view of historical change, a decision that seems consonant with contemporary global trends. In this respect, her approach contrasts with that of the historian-narrator of her series, Mycroft Canner, who writes an official history as it happens. This decision enables Palmer to zoom in and zoom out from close and longer views throughout the narrative, moving away from the middle distance perspective of a sixty-year range advocated by Sir Walter Scott. These texts are not alternative histories in the most usual sense. They do not imagine past events turning out otherwise. Instead, they imagine our future as if seen from an even more distant future, looking back—to address interlocutors from the past, both real, such as Thomas Hobbes, and fictional, and to address imagined readers from its own near and far future. This series is alternate history in the most basic sense of positing "'an account of Earth […] as it might have become in consequence of some hypothetical alteration in history' (Stableford, Wolfe, Langford)" (cited in Frost, p.28).
Like all speculative fiction, Palmer's series asks "what if?" What if the late twenty-first century experiences a devastating recurrence of earlier centuries' Church Wars, wars over transhumanist developments called the "Set-Set Wars," and a rearrangement of governance systems that effectively abolishes the nation-state, achieving peace for three centuries, but still failing, in the 25th century, to achieve gender equity? What if certain problems that seem intractable, such as the unforeseen effects of the human impact on the environment are easily solved, while the social problems of humans living together in an even more thoroughly globalized world, continue? For someone like myself, who has worked in team projects addressing "Globalization and Autonomy" and "Building Global Democracy,' this is an intriguing thought experiment.
In writing of the narrator using the plural pronouns "them" and "themself," I will be following the prescribed custom of Palmer's imagined 25th century in which gendered pronouns have been abolished as part of an unsuccessful attempt to achieve gender equity. Mycroft highlights the issue by employing the neutral "they" when reporting the conversations of others but insisting on gendered pronouns for describing actors in this history. But Mycroft's use of gendered pronouns fluctuates according to their estimate of the behavior of the person at the time. It is not determined by the sex of individual bodies. I will use it only when referring to characters in the fiction and not to people outside the text. It is a useful exercise in learning how difficult it is to escape using gendered pronouns for thinking and writing in our times.
The series aims to raise such questions at a time when American society seems increasingly polarized around gendered and racialized identifications, and when a misogynist agenda is being institutionalized, in part at the instigation and with the support of a resurgent fundamentalist form of Christianity and its allies within white supremacist movements. Global warming threatens yet remains officially denied. In Palmer's imagined future, two of these looming problems have been miraculously solved. Technology has dealt with the environmental crisis and race as we understand it no longer functions as a divisive force. In a world where there is much more intermarriage across racialized lines, nation-states have been abolished, and religious discussions banned, racial tensions once dependent on colonial imaginaries, visible bodily difference, and notions of bodily purity now seem to have morphed in this series into controversies around the limits of cyborgian identities, in which human and machine are merged at an early age to create a new type of human, fully integrated with computers, called set sets. This society is still hurting from earlier Set Set Riots, which threaten to break out again on the instigation of Nurturists, as the series begins.
I argue that some of the energies of this series derive from the "political unconscious" of Palmer's nation, the United States, at this contemporary moment in history, while other themes occupy the forefront of her attention. It seems unlikely we can turn so easily from the challenges of environment and race, yet Palmer's focus elsewhere may address these indirectly. I am fascinated by her interest in alternate forms of citizenship and governance structures, and in the continuing disparity between apparent progress in technological development and the lack of progress in women's rights and in attaining a stable peace.
The idea of the pre-emptive strike starts the events of her series in motion. Mycroft has committed horrific crimes in a failed effort to stop the beginning of a new global war. The plot turns on the revelation that the long peace has itself depended on a secret series of targeted assassinations designed to pre-emptively prevent war clouds from gathering. By the end of the third book, The Will to Battle, those efforts have failed. In this way, the series addresses the Global "War on Terror" and its justification of a doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, while also considering the disintegration of democracy into oligarchy and the dangerous cult of the strong leader. The series questions our present and how we got here while imagining alternate futures that try to deviate from the trajectory we seem to be on. Palmer's future has both utopian and dystopian features that raise questions as much as they offer potential solutions. To further complicate matters, one of the new forms of citizenship available in this world is within the collectivity named the Utopians. They stand out from the other self-governance structures, called Hives, for their integrity, perfectionism, and dedication to Progress as well as their Borg-like integration. The first strike of the warmongers is against them.
Significant imagination has gone into the world building of a future that is at least on the surface quite different from our own. At the same time, the series is engaged in a philosophical discussion that is as old as humankind. In the "Author's Note and Acknowledgements" at the end of Too Like the Lightning, Palmer writes of her desire "to add my voice "to the Great Conversation, to reply to Diderot, Voltaire, Osamu Tezuka, and Alfred Bester, so people would read my books and think new things, and make new things from those thoughts, my little contribution to the path which flows from Gilgamesh and Homer to the stars" (431). Palmer's work as a historian of the Renaissance further shapes her fiction.. In her academic article, "On Progress and Historical Change" (2017), Palmer asks several questions that resonate with the themes of the Terra Ignota series. She asks: "Is progress inevitable? Is it natural? Is it fragile? Is it possible? Is it a problematic concept in the first place?" She adds "Many people are reexamining these kinds of questions in the wake of the political events of 2016" (319). By asking similar questions of her 25th c world, she provides her readers with a longer temporal scale in which to situate them, and by bringing in many references to the past, particularly the Enlightenment but also Roman times, she lengthens that scale even further.
Palmer's article continues: "There is a strange doubleness to experiencing a historic moment while being a historian oneself" (319). This is the position in which she places Mycroft Canner. They are living through events as they attempt to record them for posterity, and see them through a triple lens: that of their knowledge of the past; their present experience as a participant and a watcher; and their anticipation of how the future will judge them and their times. As a historian interested in "the how of history's dynamism rather than the what next" (italics in original: 320) as she puts it, Palmer seems to have written her fiction to demonstrate her belief that "history is a lesson in complexity and predictability" (320). These are books you need to read more than once. The first reading immerses one in the complexity. Only with hindsight can one begin to piece together some of what might have been predicted or at least what might seem predictable now. In that way, perhaps, the series makes all its interested readers into a type of historian, trying to make sense of history's dynamism and learning to ask some of the questions that historians ask.
Palmer's article is organized around the challenge of balancing "Great Forces" history against "Human Agency" history to produce what she advances as a "hybrid model of history" (334), a model that well describes the complex balance between what she calls "zooming in" and "zooming out" that Mycroft's narration also achieves, as they move between a perspective shaped by centuries of human history to the intimate struggles of the moment. Palmer's article may also explain why she has Mycroft choose to write in an eighteenth-century style. Palmer argues "We've only been systematically pursuing progress since the seventeenth century, and we didn't really come to understand that it could have negative consequences until the end of the eighteenth….One hundred and fifty years is not a very


text:
Gr'mother Terry Eaton Memorial
The panther has long been a symbol of courage, strength, and mystery. Myths and legends of panthers of all kinds are to be found from ancient Egypt to Greece, from Africa into medieval Europe and Asia, and throughout North and South America. These stories have informed, frightened, and entertained people for millenia. In the physical world, the black panther is a rare color variant of the jaguar. Its rarity adds to the mystique of this secretive spirit.
In the metaphysical world, the black panther is associated with the moon, and with the inner dimensions of our spirits. We hear the communcations of other dimensions and life forms. We heal old wounds, release old issues, and shift our consciousness through the feminine power of the night. Both men and women are reborn into our true place in the universe. The panther is our guardian and our partner in this rebirth and transformation.
Here at the home of The Panther
Lodge Medicine Society, in the heart of the Ozarks, a black panther has been
seen by visitors. It is fitting and intriguing that the panther has shown
itself as the archetype for our our organization. Join us on our journey
of discovery, as we create and manifest our future.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text:
EtherGuard protects embedded devices and safety-critical industrial control systems (ICS) against sophisticated attacks from internal and external attacks. Using EtherGuard's government certified encryption, commercial and government customers achieve the network security necessary to safeguard communications against malware infections by trusted computers, deliberate insider attacks within a secure trusted enclave, or connections by unauthorized devices. EtherGuard has been specifically designed to provide the additional inspection and detection capabilities needed to defeat these attacks and keep critical devices safe.
Once an attacker is in the trusted zone a distributed control systems (DCS) and supervisory control and data acquisition systems are defenseless and if compromised an impact an entire facility or operation. EtherGuard extends security to the controller itself, protecting it against an attack wherever it occurs. Utilizing its proprietary DarkNode™ technology, EtherGuard prevents attackers sweeping a DCS or SCADA network to discover what devices and services present, their quantities and type, and hide the controller architecture from view.
- Protects machine-to-machine (M2M) communications
- Affords visibility and control over content
- Deep packet inspection (DPI), can control protocols and inbound commands, as well as their origin.
- DPI provides an independent means for monitoring and managing device input.
- Known device vulnerabilities can be blocked entirely.
- Undesired application-level functionality is blocked.
- Both a local or wide area network (Layer 2) security, and/or public network (Layer 3) security
- VPN and Ethernet trusted encryption algorithms
- Proven secure implementations to ensure our solutions have no weakness or compromise
- Small system size, weight, and power design for optimal functionality
- Maintains high-speed encryption with exceptionally low latency
- Flexible Encryption
- Layer 3 IPsec IKEv2 VPN encryption with NSA Suite B only modes
- Layer 2 AES-128/256 Ethernet encryption
- Separate VLAN encryption to stop security breach propagation
- OCSP, RADIUS authentication
- Traffic inspection & attack prevention
- Network access control
- Industrial firewall
- Protocol filtering
- Application layer command filtering
- User definable rulesets
- Network protections
- DarkNode technology to prevent malicious information gathering attempts
- Port authentication
- Data & management traffic separation
- Out-of-band management option
- FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validated/ Common Criteria certified
- Embedded OEM encryption module available

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


How do I call an.MSI within another.MSI?
Article:HOWTO5524 | Created: 2006-10-20 | Updated: 2009-08-20 | Article URL
Article Type
How To
How do I call an.MSI from within another.MSI?
You can either call _URL_ containing.MSI within the USER Interface or within a finish dialog.
1.) Add an Execute Program from Destination action. You will call msiexec.exe and pass the command line. If you wanted to call the.MSI silently, then you can pass the following command line: /i /q
2.) You would use the Execute Program from Installation custom action to execute the.EXE containing the.MSI.
3.) The better option is to create your own.EXE wrapper and then call the.MSI's in the desired order using Wisescript.
Legacy ID
Article URL
Terms of use for this information are found in Legal Notices


text: An anonymous reader writes "Pandas have long been the face of conservation efforts by environmental activists, but a recent finding may boost even further the need for pandas to evade extinction. Researchers have discovered a powerful antibody in panda blood that could serve as the next frontier in the fight against increasingly prevalent superbugs. The compound is called cathelicin-AM. Discovered when researchers analyzed the creatures' DNA, it has been found to kill fungus and bacteria. It is believed that the antibiotic is released to protect the animal from infections in the wild and, in studies, it has been found to kill both standard and drug-resistant strains of microbes and fungi. The compound also worked extremely quickly, killing off strains of bacteria in just an hour, while conventional antibiotics needed six."


text:
Deriving the Ramsey Numbers
School: ALBUQUERQUE ACADEMY
Area of Science: Mathematics -- Graph Theory
Ramsey numbers are part of a field of mathematics called graph theory. km (where m is any positive integer) is defined as a graph that contains m points, also known as nodes, with all possible line segments in between each point.
Ramsey numbers show the minimum number n of all the different segment coloring schemes using only blue and red for the graph kn that does not contain a graph of kr or kb the entirely red or blue graph, respectively, for that n. This is abbreviated in the notation: K(r, b)=n where K is a Ramsey function, and r and b are independent variables as described above. n is the result of the function.
Our project intends to find n for r and b values that we choose and to improve upon existing limits for these variables. We plan to use Java as our main programming language. We plan to test a possible n by testing all possible colorings of kn and see if there is a coloring that has no red kr and no blue kb. We will use the computer to test these n and solve for certain pairs of r and b.
If we are unable to get a definitive value for n, then we will have instead found an upper bound for the Ramsey number at that point, which is what mathematicians currently have for many points. We also plan to improve the time it takes to run the program by certain techniques designed at limiting the possibilities and that reduce complexity by powers of two as we go on to solve more and more complex Ramsey numbers. In the end, we hope to have a program that will help mathematicians solve for some of the more complex Ramsey Numbers.
Dr. David Metzler
Sponsoring Teacher: Jim Mims
Mail the entire Team


text:
A new UC Berkeley course, Data Science and Bayesian Statistics for Physical Sciences (Physics 151) is leading pioneering efforts to incorporate data analysis and computation into physics coursework. Offered for the first time in Spring 2018, the three unit upper-division course is helping to bridge the gap between the physical sciences and the world of computing by exposing students to modern computational methods, data science, and Bayesian statistics.
Physics 151 students have the unique opportunity to explore technology and its applications, as they complete homework assignments using the popular programming language Python and data science tools, such as Jupyter Notebooks. "The problems," states GSI Byeonghee Yu, "are simplified enough for students to take the numerical methods they learn in class and apply them to real data." Most exciting and brag-worthy about the course, according to recent students, is the ability to "work with real data," as they complete projects involving Nobel Prize winning discoveries and research. "Working on actual datasets" is a unique, informative, and engaging experience, one that rarely arises in physical science courses. This data science-based approach to problem solving is extremely valuable for physics students to develop, as computation and data analysis become further ingrained in many fields and majors.
Examples of Spring 2018 Physics 151 Assignments and Projects
Above: Students take a compilation of supernovae data to show that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, and it contains dark energy
Above: Students analyze the first LIGO event and show that it has detected gravitational waves
Delving into topics untraditionally included in physics courses, such as data analysis, data modeling, and machine learning, Physics 151 acquaints students to widely-applicable computational tools and numerical methods. While the course has "a distinct astronomy/physics flavor," it successfully exposes students to the intersection between physics and data science, an important connection in a world so centered around technology.
One of the unique aspects of the course is its emphasis on Bayesian statistics, which is not traditionally offered at the undergraduate level. "Given sufficient computational resources the Bayesian statistics is both easier to understand and produces better results than traditional frequentist statistics" states professor Seljak. "There are no theorems or methods to learn, everything follows from a single equation, and computers take care of the rest."
Professor Uros Seljak
GSI Byeonghee Yu


text:
Robert Panas (13-ERD-009)
In this project, we introduced a new flexure topology, generated a new method for modeling and optimization of actuator performance, and developed a hybrid conventional and additive manufacturing technique for the fabrication of a high fill-factor (99%) micro-mirror array (10,000 1-mm2 mirrors). The micro-mirrors are designed to be driven with three degrees of freedom—tip, tilt, and piston—over large ranges (±10° rotation and greater than ±30-µm translation) at high speeds (~40-kHz small stepping rate), all with continuous closed-loop control. The capabilities of this new mirror array will extend the performance of a variety of high-impact technologies for fusion energy research, additive material manufacturing, and diagnostics. The initial fabrication effort focused on generating an independently controllable seven-mirror prototype, and the designs were vetted against finite-element analysis and a full range of previous capabilities as described in the literature. We successfully produced the critical elements of the system: mirrors, hexapods, and actuation paddles. in addition, we developed a new transfer process to handle the hybrid component assembly and demonstrated this process on elements of increasing complexity.
Background and Research Objectives
This research project focused on creating a new micro-mirror array to simultaneously direct multiple high-powered beams of light in various directions at high speeds. This device, known as a light-field directing array, is an independently controlled and scalable mirror array designed to achieve independent continuous control with speeds, ranges, array sizes, and light fill-factors otherwise unachievable. The array would enable advanced applications for rapid steering of multiple high-powered laser beams for detonating targets for inertial fusion, true auto-stereoscopic images, multiple-material nanometer-scale fabrication using laser beams focused by a high-quality microscope objective (optical tweezers), and ultrarapid multiple-focal-point optical remote sensing or confocal microscopy.
Tip, tilt, and piston micro-mirror arrays have been a topic of significant interest since the 1980s.1 Applications, which drove the development of such arrays, included optical cross-connects, image projection, object tracking, adaptive optics for aberration correction, and laser scanning and steering.1–9 Micro-mirrors offer a faster and potentially more reliable alternative to macroscopic steering optics (galvanometers). Discrete arrays with piston capability also offer the potential to integrate phase control into the beam steering.
Robotics (imaging and sensors) and laser development pushed the need for beam-steering mechanisms with increased power handling as well as speed, range, and precision. No current micro-mirror system has attempted to simultaneously meet all of these requirements. The LLNL light-field directing array was designed specifically to push the performance bounds of micro-mirrors in all these parameters: size, speed, range, and precision. The light-field directing array chip was designed to perform ±10° sweeps, with a bandwidth of 40+ kHz, and tip–tilt–piston closed-loop motion control over large (≈10 x 10 cm) arrays.
The green hexagons shown in Figure 1(a–c) represent the performance capabilities of a "comb discrete" micro-mirror array design used for this project. (Comb drives are capacitive actuators, typically operating at the micrometer or nanometer scale, that utilize electrostatic forces that act between two electrically conductive combs.) All surveyed tip–tilt micro-mirror arrays are shown in Figure 1(a). These points are then scaled by mirror pitch and displayed in Figure 1(b). Mirror pitch is a critical parameter for controllability: if the pitch is too small, the trace density will be too high for individual control. By comparison, the micro-mirror arrays with similar or better dynamic capabilities have much smaller single-mirror size. Figure 1(c) shows the energy density of various designs, providing a metric of comparison for the actuator design quality.
Our research objectives were to (1) fully explore and extend beyond the current state of the art for the micro-mirror field, (2) design mirror topology by developing the correct fundamental layout of the elements in the light-field directing array, (3) design actuators that boosted actuation capability, (4) develop a fabrication method that could produce both the actuators and critical flexures in the system, (5) demonstrate the fabrication method on a single cell, and (6) demonstrate the fabrication method on a seven-mirror array.
Scientific Approach and Accomplishments
Our first objective focused on establishing the state of the art in micro-mirror technology to gauge commercial capability and leverage recent technology advances to drive our design. We developed metrics for comparing mirror technologies including range-versus-resolution charts as well as actuation energy density (Figure 1). Our efforts resulted in the largest known analysis of current micro-mirror technology and provided critical insights into the necessary design and actuation physics required to reach our goal of high speed and large range. Additionally, our analysis has been used for other projects to determine what systems to employ and to explore technology limitations.
After our initial analysis was complete, we moved forward with our second objective to design the mirror topology, focusing on developing the correct fundamental layout of the elements in the light-field directing array. This effort resulted in a new topology with exact constraint (not achieved in most other mirror designs) and decoupled actuators for easy control. The design, which out-performed existing systems by over an order of magnitude, utilized flexural design theory as well as constraint-based actuator optimization. Flexural design theory was used to synthesize the array's flexures such that they (1) only permit the three desired degrees of freedom, (2) are symmetric and exactly constrained, (3) decouple each mirror's actuators, (4) do not permit any under-constrained bodies, and (5) behave as transmission elements.
A single hexagonal mirror within the repeating array is shown with different views in Figures 2(a) and 2(b), and an exploded view of the system is shown in Figure 2(c). The mirror is constrained by three identical axisymmetric serial-flexure limbs (decoupling flexures) in Figure 2(c). The other parallel module consists of six blade flexures shown in Figure 2(d), which join the corresponding paddle to the fixed "via" charged-comb actuation plate.
For the third objective, we redesigned the comb drive actuator to boost performance. Comb drives have been the focus of extensive optimal design efforts. In particular, instability from the actuator pulling inward has been extensively studied.10–14 A range of additional effects have also been considered including bearing stiffness and varying comb cross-section.11,12 These efforts typically focus on deducing a critical stiffness for design and take the comb geometry as given. Our work operated in the opposite direction. The optimizer draws upon given flexure bearings, which have been designed via flexural design theory to find the comb geometry that maximizes actuation within the given design topology and geometric constraints. We developed a new method to analyze the actuator pull-in that extends beyond previous work so as to incorporate both fabrication errors and the stiffness of the full-load path loop, shown in Figure 3, into closed-form analytical expressions for pull-in displacement. This expression is integrated into a new approach to comb-drive design which uses constraint-based optimization. Using this approach enabled us to design actuators with tenfold greater energy density than previous comb designs.
The fourth objective of our work focused on developing the fabrication process required to produce the complex flexure and actuator topology. The mirrors are assembled from a micro-fabricated actuation plate and micro-stereolithographically generated hexapod flexures, which are printed onto the underside of micro-fabricated silicon hexagonal mirrors. The process limitations were characterized for both the micro-fabrication and the additive manufacturing processes. An improved parallel assembly process was developed for handling all seven mirrors to generate the seven-element array. This fabrication process is shown schematically in Figure 4. The micro-fabrication of the actuation plate is shown in the top left corner, highlighting the creation of the combs and guide flexures for the actuator paddles. The micro-fabrication of the mirrors (shown in top right of the image), leads to the additive manufacturing of the flexural hexapod behind each mirror. These elements are then combined in a parallel assembly process, shown in the bottom middle. Each part of this process has been tested and demonstrated.
Impact on Mission
A mirror-array design that can be used for rapid high-power laser target tracking supports the LLNL mission focus area in Inertial Confinement Fusion energy. Furthermore, this mirror array could be used to guide a massive array of optical-tweezer laser beams in an effort to move and sinter in place millions of nanometer-scale particles simultaneously, which would be a fundamental advance in meta-material additive manufacturing, in support of the LLNL core competency in advanced materials and manufacturing.
The light-field directing array can be viewed as an enabling technology for high-performance optics systems. It combines the capabilities of large aperture (10- x 10-cm) mirrors with adaptive-optics phase modulation at high bandwidths on a single chip. The combined capabilities enable the generation of synthetic optical elements in sub-millisecond time scales, including pseudo-lenses, mirrors, phase plates, beam splitters, and combiners. This provides the potential to replace multiple optical components with a small chip running at high bandwidths and low power draw.
We designed a high fill-factor (99%) micro-mirror array (10,000 1-mm2 mirrors) and developed a new fabrication method to create it. The micro-mirrors are designed to be driven with three degrees of freedom (tip,


text:
Copyright © University of Cambridge. All rights reserved.
'Big Fibonacci' printed from _URL_
Let the first two terms of the sequence be $a$ and $b$ respectively.
Then the next three terms are $a+b$, $a+2b$, $2a+3b$. So $2a+3b = 2004$.
For $a$ to be as large as possible, we need $b$ to be as small as possible, consistent with both being positive integers.
If $b=1$ then $2a=2001$, but $a$ is an integer, so $b\not=1$.
However, if $b=2$ then $2a=1998$, so the maximum possible value of $a$ is $999$.
This problem is taken from the UKMT Mathematical Challenges.View the previous week's solutionView the current weekly problem


text:
Making Sense of Sense-Making
In an era of transboundary crises, Europe faces the daunting challenge of coordinating joint responses in an effective and timely way. Recent transboundary crises such as the Icelandic Ash Cloud (2010), food contamination incidents and the financial breakdown revealed a key part of that challenge: sifting through relevant information, building an accurate picture of what is happening, and communicating that analysis to political decision-makers. Academic researchers refer to this process in terms of 'sense-making'. To create joint capacity for sense-making is one of the prominent elements of the EU's ambitions to play a role in the management of transboundary crises. The number of early-warning, rapid-alert, and common communication platforms in the EU has multiplied in recent years but with little central guidance or overall rationale.
This report tries to 'make sense of sense-making' tools in the EU by providing the most comprehensive overview to date. We ask what sense-making tools are available at the EU level, document what they are intended to do, and explore what these tools offer in terms of 'added-value' to European states. Using official documents, secondary literature and interviews with policy officials, this report maps the sense-making landscape of the EU. After drawing out key patterns and offering an inventory of tools relevant to sense-making, we conclude by discussing the problems and prospects of the EU's role.
Format: Mjuk pärm
Serie: Försvarshögskolans acta. B
Serie 2: Swedish National Defence College acta. B


.
The Indy Grab is another basic trick that will serve you well. This trick will involve using your hands while your feet are strapped to the snowboard. Using the opposite hand of the foot you have strapped to the front section of the board, grab the toe area between the bindings and turn the board to the left or right.
The idea is to maintain your momentum and your balance while changing the direction you are headed. As with the jump, start out on flat land while you master this trick then move on to other types of terrain.
Another popular trick for the beginner to master is the Backside 180. Your expertise in jumping comes into play with this trick. To start out, again employ a level surface, but with a small bump in the terrain.
Just as you approach the bump, enter a jump. Bend your knees up to your chest while in the jump, grabbing the toe area in a similar fashion as you do with the Indy Grab. Move the board to the left or the right while still in your jump.
Immediately let go of your grab and straighten out your legs for the landing. As with any kind of a jump, you want to land flat. If executed properly, you will not lose momentum and will continue to move forward in a different direction than when you entered the jump.
One last basic trick has the colorful name of a Roast Beef. For this trick, you will be aiming at a roller. As you prepare for the jump, spring up as hard as you can, pulling your legs up toward your chest.
Grab the back of your board with the hand that corresponds to the foot you have in the heel position of the board, and lift your opposite arm into the air. Release your hold on the backside of the board and return to a slightly crouching position for your landing.
If performed correctly, you will clear the roller and continue your speed at the same level as when you entered your jump.
As is true with learning any new technique, have someone on hand who has mastered these tricks. This may be a friend, or an instructor of a snowboarding class. Not only is this an essential safety measure, but this also allows another pair of eyes to observe your form and offer suggestions on what you need to do in order to improve your performance during the learning process.
Snowboarding is a lot of fun, and learning new tricks only increases your enjoyment of the sport. Once you have mastered these few basic tricks, you will be ready to move on to more complicated techniques.


module NLP.GenI.Automaton
 ( NFA(..),
 addTrans, lookupTrans,
 automatonPaths, automatonPathSets,
 numStates, numTransitions )
import qualified Data.Map as Map
import Data.Maybe (catMaybes)
import NLP.GenI.General (combinations)
\end{code} This module provides a simple, naive implementation of nondeterministic finite automata (NFA). The transition function consists of a Map, but there are also accessor function which help you query the automaton without worrying about how it's implemented. \begin{enumerate} \item The states are a list of lists, not just a simple flat list as you might expect. This allows you to optionally group your states into ''columns'' (which is something we use in the GenI polarity automaton optimisation). If you don't want columns, you can just make one big group out of all your states. \item We model the empty an empty transition as the transition on Nothing. All other transitions are Just something. \item I'd love to reuse some other library out there, but Leon P. Smith's Automata library requires us to know before-hand the size of our alphabet, which is highly unacceptable for this task. \end{enumerate} \begin{code}
-- | Note: there are two ways to define the final states.
-- 1. you may define them as a list of states in finalStList
-- 2. you may define them via the isFinalSt function
-- The state list is ignored if you define 'isFinalSt'
data NFA st ab = NFA
 { startSt :: st
 , isFinalSt :: Maybe (st -> Bool)
 , finalStList :: [st]
 -- see chapter comments about list of list
 , states :: [[st]]
finalSt :: NFA st ab -> [st]
finalSt aut =
 case isFinalSt aut of
 Nothing -> finalStList aut
\end{code} \fnlabel{lookupTrans} takes an automaton, a state \fnparam{st1} and an element \fnparam{ab} of the alphabet; and returns the state that \fnparam{st1} transitions to via \fnparam{a}, if possible. \begin{code}
 where subT = Map.findWithDefault Map.empty st (transitions aut)
\end{code} \begin{code}
addTrans :: (Ord ab, Ord st) => NFA st ab -> st -> Maybe ab -> st -> NFA st ab
addTrans aut st1 ab st2 =
 aut { transitions = Map.insert st1 newSubT oldT }
 where oldT = transitions aut
 oldSubT = Map.findWithDefault Map.empty st1 oldT
 newSubT = Map.insertWith (++) st2 [ab] oldSubT
\end{code} % ---------------------------------------------------------------------- \section{Exploiting automata} % ---------------------------------------------------------------------- \fnlabel{automatonPaths} returns all possible paths through an automaton. Each path is represented as a list of labels. We assume that the automaton does not have any loops in it. Maybe it would still work if there were loops, with lazy evaluation, but I haven't had time to think this through, so only try it unless you're feeling adventurous. FIXME: we should write some unit tests and quickchecks for this \begin{code}
-- | Not quite the set of all paths, but the sets of all transitions
--- FIXME: explain later
automatonPathSets aut = helper (startSt aut)
 transFor st = Map.lookup st (transitions aut)
 helper st = case transFor st of
 Nothing -> []
 Just subT -> concat [ (next (catMaybes tr) st2) | (st2, tr) <- Map.toList subT ]
 next tr st2 = case helper st2 of
 [] -> [[tr]]
 res -> map (tr :) res
\end{code} \begin{code}
numStates, numTransitions :: NFA st ab -> Int
numStates = sum. (map length). states


text:
ROME -- It's a new Da Vinci code, but this time it could be for real.
An Italian musician and computer technician claims to have uncovered musical notes encoded in Leonardo Da Vinci's "Last Supper," raising the possibility that the Renaissance genius might have left behind a somber composition to accompany the scene depicted in the 15th-century wall painting.
"It sounds like a requiem," Giovanni Maria Pala said. "It's like a soundtrack that emphasizes the passion of Jesus."
Painted from 1494 to 1498 in Milan's Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, the "Last Supper" vividly depicts a key moment in the Gospel narrative: Jesus' last meal with the 12 Apostles before his arrest and crucifixion, and the shock of Christ's followers as they learn that one of them is about to betray him.
Pala, a 45-year-old musician who lives near the southern Italian city of Lecce, began studying Leonardo's painting in 2003, after hearing on a news program that researchers believed the artist and inventor had hidden a musical composition in the work.
"Afterward, I didn't hear anything more about it," he said in an interview with The Associated Press. "As a musician, I wanted to dig deeper."
In a book released Friday in Italy, Pala explains how he took elements of the painting that have symbolic value in Christian theology and interpreted them as musical clues.
Pala first saw that by drawing the five lines of a musical staff across the painting, the loaves of bread on the table as well as the hands of Jesus and the Apostles could each represent a musical note.
This fit the relation in Christian symbolism between the bread, representing the body of Christ, and the hands, which are used to bless the food, he said. But the notes made no sense musically until Pala realized that the score had to be read from right to left, following Leonardo's particular writing style.
In his book "La Musica Celata" ("The Hidden Music") Pala also describes how he found what he says are other clues in the painting that reveal the slow rhythm of the composition and the duration of each note.
The result is a 40-second "hymn to God" that Pala said sounds best on a pipe organ, the instrument most commonly used in Leonardo's time for spiritual music. A short segment taken from a CD of the piece contained a Bach-like passage played on the organ. The tempo was almost painfully slow but musical.
Alessandro Vezzosi, a Leonardo expert and the director of a museum dedicated to the artist in his hometown of Vinci, said he had not seen Pala's research but that the musician's hypothesis "is plausible."
Vezzosi said previous research has indicated the hands of the Apostles in the painting can be substituted with the notes of a Gregorian chant, though so far no one had tried to work in the bread loaves.
"There's always a risk of seeing something that is not there, but it's certain that the spaces (in the painting) are divided harmonically," he told the AP. "Where you have harmonic proportions, you can find music."
Vezzosi also noted that though Leonardo was more noted for his paintings, sculptures and visionary inventions, he was also a musician. Da Vinci played the lyre and designed various instruments. His writings include some musical riddles, which must be read from right to left.
Reinterpretations of the "Last Supper" have popped up ever since "The Da Vinci Code" fascinated readers and movie-goers with suggestions that one of the apostles sitting on Jesus' right is Mary Magdalene, that the two had a child and that their bloodline continues.
Pala stressed that his discovery does not reveal any supposed dark secrets of the Catholic Church or of Leonardo, but instead shows the artist in a light far removed from the conspiratorial descriptions found in fiction.
"A new figure emerges he wasn't a heretic like some believe," Pala said. "What emerges is a man who believes, a man who really believes in God."
On the Net:
Pala's site (in Italian), _URL_
Official site for the "Last Supper," _URL_


text:
Global ﬁsheries receive billions of dollars in subsidies each year. Although some of this money, such as that to improve ﬁsheries management, can promote sustainable ﬁshing practices, other funding can lead to overﬁshing in the world's oceans. Capacity-enhancing subsidies, for example for fuel or boat construction, reduce costs for ﬁshers, enabling them to increase their capacity and catch more ﬁsh. The unintended consequence of this kind of assistance is that encouraging ﬁshers to bring in larger catches
contributes to unsustainable ﬁshing practices over the long-term.
Rashid Sumaila of the University of British Columbia and his co-authors improved upon previous estimates of global subsidies using updated data and methodology and calculated global amounts and types of ﬁsheries subsidies for 2003. They found global subsidies totaled roughly $27 billion, 60 percent of which went toward unsustainable capacity-enhancing subsidies. Instead of continuing to invest billions of dollars into activities that aggravate overﬁshing, the authors suggest directing those funds toward ﬁshery conservation and improved management. This Pew Ocean Science Series report is a summary of the scientists' ﬁndings.


Matthew and Luke
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Discussion of the extensive similarities between the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. It's possible that Mark was already written and they used that as a source. It's aslo likely that they had in common other oral and written sources of what Jesus did and taught.
Synoptic Gospels
Part 3
III. The Relationship between Matthew and Luke
A. The Relationship of Matthew and Luke
B. Location of Q Material
1. Sayings of Jesus in Matthew
2. Q Material in Luke
3. Development of Sayings in Matthew and Luke
Biblical Training


text:
Context and objectives
In the past, land use change assessments have mainly focussed on mapping conversion, dominantly from natural ecosystems to agriculture, and their associated environmental impacts. Objective measurements of the extent and severity of degradation are lacking for most parts of the world. This constitutes a major obstacle for assessing the connections between land use change and ecosystem functioning, including feedbacks between changes in vegetation composition and density, water use, and soil resources using processed-based models. The ReForCha project integrated multi-source remotely sensed data, field observations and land surface models to enhance the insights in ecosystem degradation in dryland forests.
Societal (including environmental) relevance
The regional assessment of soil salinity over the Dry Chaco provided unprecedented insights into the spatial pattern of primary and secondary salinity. By integrating soil salinity data with LSM output, satellite derived vegetation indices, and environmental data, we revealed how the sensitivity for soil salinization depends on climate, geomorphology, and land cover. Although our analysis of salinity focused on the central part of the Argentinean Dry Chaco, our approach and findings can be useful for other parts of the region or areas prone to soil salinization.
The maps of forest disturbance timing and agents in the Dry Chaco based on Landsat time series provides a robust assessment of forest degradation trajectories. The results show that 8% of the remaining forest has been affected by forest disturbances between 1990 and 2018, a process that is often overlooked in global deforestation hotspots. Forest-dependent people are widespread across the Chaco forests, and increasingly come into conflict with expanding commodity agriculture with about 18% of the homesteads disappearing between 1985 and 2015.
Products and services
- Map of forest disturbances timing in the Dry Chaco, based on multitemporal image analyses
- Map of forest disturbances agents in the Dry Chaco, based on multitemporal image analyses
- Map of salinity patterns in the Dry Chaco, based on field observations and spatial modelling
- Map of deforestation and postdeforestation land uses (pasture, cropland) _PHONE_
- Map of major archetypical frontier types
- Map of fractional tree and shrub cover
Extension of the Land Information System (LIS) modeling framework (source code)
NGOs involved in conservation of Dry Chaco ecosystems: quantitative data on deforestation and forest degradation based on Landsat archives (_PHONE_)
Governmental organisms: map of frontier types, maps of post-deforestation land uses
Governmental organisms, agricultural sector and agribusiness: map of salinity patterns
Scientific community: source code for dynamic LSM simulations taking land cover change into account
World Environment Day - REFORCHA project raising awareness of forest ecosystem degradation in drylands
Wereldmilieudag - REFORCHA wil mensen bewust maken van de achteruitgang van bosecosystemen in droge gebieden
Journée mondiale de l'environnement - REFORCHA met en lumière la dégradation des écosystèmes forestiers en zones arides
Preserving life with spatial data
Des données spatiales pour préserver la vie
|Project leader(s):||UCL - Georges Lemaître Centre for Earth and Climate Research|


text:
Objective: This study determined the form of cellular donor MHC alloantigen necessary for the induction of intrathymic tolerance.
Background: The authors have achieved indefinite donor-specific tolerance, to a fully MHC-disparate rat heterotopic cardiac allograft, after the pretransplant intrathymic injection of unfractionated donor splenocytes and a single injection of rabbit anti-rat lymphocyte serum (ALS), without subsequent immunosuppression.
Methods: Male 4-12-week-old Buffalo (RT1b) rats underwent an intrathymic injection of either fractionated Lewis (RT1(1)) red blood cells (purified by Ficoll gradient) or T lymphocytes (purified by nylon wool column and plastic adherence), both of which express only MHC class I alloantigens, or B lymphocytes, macrophages, and dendritic cells (purified by plastic adherence) which express both MHC class I and class II alloantigens. At the completion of alloantigen injection the Buffalo recipient rats were given 1 ml of ALS intraperitoneally. Twenty-one days later a heterotopic Lewis heart was transplanted.
Results: The intrathymic injection of the fractions of Lewis MHC class I and class II expressing B lymphocytes, macrophages, and dendritic cells induced a donor-specific tolerance that resulted in indefinite Lewis cardiac allograft survival (MST > 125 days) in all recipients without further immunosuppression, whereas groups receiving MHC class I expressing red blood cell or T lymphocyte injections plus ALS rejected Lewis cardiac allografts with a MST of 7.3 and 16.5 days, respectively, thus indicating that the MHC class II expressing cell is necessary for the induction of intrathymic tolerance. Buffalo recipients with a long-term surviving Lewis cardiac allograft, after Lewis MHC class II expressing cells were still able to reject a third-party heterotopic ACI (RT1a) cardiac allograft in normal time (MST = 7.0 days), but did not reject a second Lewis cardiac allograft (MST > 100 days). Additionally, the intrathymic injection of MHC class II expressing cells resulted in decreased interleukin-2 (IL-2) production and an 80% decrease in in vitro donor-specific cell mediated cytotoxicity, whereas the cytolytic response to a third party was unaltered.
Conclusion: Donor MHC class II, and not class I, expressing cells are the cells in donor splenocytes, injected intrathymically, responsible for the development of donor-specific allograft tolerance.


Learn how in the US, WordDive's CPA dropped from nearly 500€ to under 30€ in only 14 months
Secteur :
Sièges sociaux :
Tampere, Finland
Appli la plus populaire :
En savoir plus sur App Annie Intelligence
WordDive is a language learning app that uses AI to teach spoken English, detecting pronunciation mistakes and providing personalized feedback. With its HQ in Finland, WordDive supports users in the US, Germany and Sweden. Its mission is to create an outstanding app for learning real-life English language. The app offers material from beginner to advanced levels in English, including content and exercises for writing, reading, listening and speaking.
The Challenge
WordDive's ultimate goals are to offer a service that allows users to speak real-life English, even in complex situations. With that at the forefront of the company's purpose, WordDive is also concentrated on achieving profitable growth while scaling.
The three key targets guiding the business strategy were:
 - Decreasing CPA (cost per acquisition*)
 - Increasing of CLV (customer lifetime value)
 - Identifying the correct markets for growth
The app is a fundamental channel to reach these goals and is, therefore, the primary focus and vehicle for growth.
In order to achieve these goals, WordDive harnessed App Annie Intelligence to better understand the competitive landscape and the wider market, specifically in regards to customer acquisition and product feature comparisons.
Using App Annie Intelligence to guide its strategy, WordDive's goal was to create a unique customer value for its users by taking its speaking technology from beta to production.
The Solution
Using App Annie's Intelligence platform, WordDive was able to analyze their biggest competitors, the wider language learning industry, along with the behavioral trends of the WordDive app's users. The team also analyzed other industries. For example, understanding trends in the mobile games sector helped them to understand how users stay engaged in a game, motivated to pursue the next level. Alongside this analysis, the team also experimented with testing advertising and product features.
"Implementing sentence and conversation modes and free trial model contributed enormously to reaching our CPA target."
WordDive's marketing, product development and visual design teams regularly rely on App Annie Intelligence data.
"While six people on the team use App Annie Intelligence weekly, other team members often delve into the insights ad hoc to support strategic decisions with real-time insights. For example, team members might want to know what CRM is getting the best traction in the market."
The data was exported to excel and compared with analyses of the app's own insights. Almost all of the metrics available with App Annie intelligence - in particular, revenue and retention estimates, advertising and market sizes - were used by WordDive's marketing team and shared with wider teams to guide product development decisions.
The Results
By understanding both industry-specific and wider more holistic trends, WordDive has built a strategic roadmap for the next few years, from 2019 to 2022. Another key finding includes understanding that current market size is not a limit for future growth and evolution.
"The true winners in the app economy can achieve similar revenue per month that their app's entire category made in one month the previous year."
Free trials have proven to be a really successful entry for new users, specifically in the utility app market in the last 2 years.
Since analyzing the customer acquisition and retention strategies of direct competitors and multiple apps from other categories, WordDive subsequently decreased its CPA in the US from 485€ to 28€ in only 14 months (August 2018 - October 2019). Payment conversion in the US also increased from 0.1% to 6.6 % within the same timeframe.
*To note: Decreasing CPA refers to the decrease in the cost per acquisition of a paying customer
Plus de cas clients
App Annie Intelligence helps MoPub serve as a trusted advisor and partner to mobile publishers worldwide
Découvrez comment Pinterest améliore la notoriété et développe l'usage de son app auprès de sa base utilisateurs
NerdWallet fait confiance à App Annie pour réussir dans les app stores


text:
New sentencing guidelines that will see the courts take full account of the harm caused by offences such as arson attacks on historic buildings or criminal damage leading to severe disruption of public services were published today by the Sentencing Council.
For the first time, all courts in England and Wales will have formal guidance to ensure that they take account of:
- The full impact of arson or criminal damage such as vandalism on national heritage assets including listed buildings, historic objects or unique parts of national heritage and history.
- The economic or social impact of damaging public amenities and services such as a fire at a school or community centre, or criminal damage at a train station, which can adversely affect local communities or cause economic hardship to neighbouring houses or businesses.
- The effect on communities when an area's emergency services or resources are diverted to deal with an incident of criminal activity.
The guidelines acknowledge that harm can involve not only physical injury but long-term psychological effects, and that damage to property can be about more than just its financial value.
Judges and magistrates will also consider requesting reports to ascertain both whether the offence is linked to a mental disorder or learning disability in order to assess culpability, and whether any mental health disposal should be considered.
The guidelines, which come into effect on 1 October 2019, will help to ensure that sentencing by judges and magistrates will be consistent across the whole range of these offences. Limited guidance exists in magistrates' courts, but the new guidelines apply to all courts.
The new guidelines cover the following offences:
- Arson – criminal damage by fire
- Criminal damage / arson with intent to endanger life or being reckless as to whether life endangered
- Criminal damage where the damage has a value of more than £5000
- Criminal damage where the damage has a value of less than £5000
- Racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage
- Threats to destroy or damage property
Sentencing Council member Her Honour Judge Sarah Munro QC said:
"The Council's guidelines ensure that courts can consider all the consequences of arson and criminal damage offences, from a treasured family photo being destroyed to someone nearly losing their life and home in a calculated and vengeful arson attack."
Welcoming the new guidelines Mark Harrison, Head of Heritage Crime Strategy for Historic England, said:
"England's heritage can't be valued purely in economic terms. The impact of criminal damage and arson to our historic buildings and archaeological sites has far-reaching consequences over and above what has been damaged or lost.
"Damage to our heritage comes in many forms. Whether it be graffiti painted on the walls of a historic church, vandalism to the stonework of an ancient castle or causing a fire that devastates a Medieval barn or Victorian pier; these offences have a detrimental impact on both the historic property or site and the local community in which it is located.
"The new guidelines will help the courts identify all the relevant factors to include in their sentencing decisions as they will now be able to consider 'threats to cause criminal damage', 'the act of damage' and 'damage by fire'. It will also aid Historic England's work with the Police and Crown Prosecution Service when cases involve damage caused to heritage or cultural assets."
Neil Odin, Chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council Prevention Coordination Committee, commented:
"I fully support these new guidelines for dealing with arson attacks through the courts. Deliberate acts of arson are a blight on our local communities and have an economic impact on businesses.
"In addition, damage and the loss of historical buildings is disruptive and impacts on our vitally important heritage. Arson also increases demands on the already stretched resources of fire services across the country, which can result in diverting resources away from other incidents.
" It is worrying to see that there has been an upward trend of arson since 2014/15 and while we will continue with prevention work to reduce these figures, it is important the courts can deal with criminal damage appropriately, sending a clear message to other people."
Justice Minister Robert Buckland said:
"Beyond the financial cost to victims, arson and criminal damage are serious offences which can risk lives and leave lasting psychological harm.
"So it is right that courts have clear and consistent guidance when sentencing offenders to ensure punishments properly fit the crime."


text:
Long before companies invented something called global supply chain management, most of the products you bought in America were made in America. It was just too expensive to manage production in far-flung global factories and ship the goods back home.
Today, an "American" car sold in Chicago may have rolled off an assembly line in Tennessee with parts made in a dozen different countries. Last year, some 60 percent of the value of goods sold in the U.S. was imported. That's up from 14 percent in 1980 and 8 percent in 1960, based on the government's gross domestic product data.
So what does it mean to be "Made in America"?
A product has to be "all or virtually all" produced in the United States (or one of its territories or protectorates) to stamp "Made in America" on its packaging or advertising, according to Federal Trade Commission regulations. Among its various mandates, the FTC is charged with policing false or misleading claims about products sold in the U.S.
It sounds simple enough. But it takes roughly 40 pages to spell out the FTC's rules of the road for companies that want to make the Made in America claim. And those are just one of a half dozen separate sets of rules that apply to "country of origin" labeling.
Here are some more questions and answers about the "Made in America" label.
When can a company say a product is "Made in America"?
The rules governing "Made in America" claims were overhauled in the late 1990s, as globalization blurred the lines of exactly where products were made. As manufacturing jobs moved overseas, many consumers who wanted to support American workers demanded assurances they were buying American-made products.
The basic premise is fairly simple: A product that is "Made in America" has to be assembled, and most of the cost of making the product incurred, in the United States. But that's where things start to get a little tricky. (And that's why it takes 40 pages to explain the rules.)
For example (and the FTC uses lots of examples), a California radio manufacturer can claim its product was made in America even though it has a plastic case made from imported oil. So can a computer maker in Texas that is building a PC from American-made parts which include a disk drive with a case made from steel imported from overseas. But if you make a wrench in Ohio with steel imported from Korea, you can't say that wrench was made in America because the steel represents a significant cost of production.
What if a product was made in several different countries?
If one of those countries is the United States, and you want to let potential customers know that, you can only make what the FTC calls a "qualified claim." There are lots of ways to do this.
For example, you can spell out clearly just how much of your product was made in the U.S. or what percentage of the content is American made. The phrase "Made in USA from imported parts" is OK with the FTC, for example.
But other phrases can be tricky. "Assembled in the USA" is allowed only if you "substantially transformed" the product or if most of the work involved in making it was done in America. If all you're doing is what the FTC calls a "screwdriver assembly" of parts from around the world, you can't claim your product was "Assembled in the USA."
Are those the only rules governing labels showing where a product was made?
No. The Federal Trade Commission regulates claims that companies choose to make in their packaging or advertising, but other federal laws require labels for imported products. For example, there are rules for labeling products made from textiles, wool and fur. The Buy American Act of 1933 created yet another set of rules for government procurement; to be "considered American-made" for those purposes, more than half of the parts have to be made in the U.S.
Then there's the American Automobile Labeling Act, which requires that every car sold domestically have a label showing where it was manufactured, what percentage of the content was made in the U.S. and Canada, and where the engine and transmission were made. Those rules are enforced by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. (If you want to make an advertising claim about where the car was made, you have to deal with the FTC again.)
If something is not made in America, do companies have to say so on the label?
Yes, unless your product is on a long list of exemptions.
The folks at Customs and Border Protection require foreign companies that export to the U.S. to clearly label that product's "country of origin." If a product started out in one country and was "substantially transformed" somewhere else, the second country has to be listed as the "country of origin." That transformation, the law says, happens when a "new article with a different name, character and use is created."
There are even detailed rules about the markings themselves — down to the size of the letters or the adhesive used for a stick-on label. Some products, like watches and clocks, manhole covers and "hinged hand tools for holding and splicing wire" get their own special marking rules.
Not all products have to be marked, including raw materials, goods that will be used to make other products or those that would be very difficult or costly to mark (like an egg).
Then there's something called the "J-list," named for the section of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 that grandfathered exemptions for about 100 products. Feathers are on the list, so you may have a hard time figuring out where they came from. Same goes for playing cards and hairnets. The list is a just one more example of the complexity of global trade negotiations.
What happens if you don't follow these "country of origin" marking rules?
If you get caught, Customs will give you three options. You can "re-export" the product, which means you just send it somewhere else. You can have the products marked properly (at your expense, of course.) Or you can have the products destroyed. Your call.
What happens if you break the rules and make a false "Made in America" claim?
Companies have tried all sorts of ways to skirt the law with indirect claims, like proudly displaying an American flag or the Statue of Liberty on the product.
Not allowed, says the FTC. Unless the product meets the "all or virtually all" standard, you can't try to trick consumers by wrapping your product in the flag.
If you get caught, and the FTC decides you've crossed the line, you'll get an order to stop making the claim. Most companies who get nabbed agree to stop making false Made in America claims without admitting or denying they did anything wrong. If you break the rules again, you'll probably get hit with a heavy fine for each infraction.
But the FTC doesn't have a Made in America Police browsing store shelves for violations. The agency relies on consumers to tip them to infractions. If you think a company is falsely making a "Made in America" claim, you can notify the FTC's Complaint Assistant Web site.
© 2013 msnbc.com Reprints


text:
A fresh look at freshwaters: Researchers release a 50,000 lake database
A new "geography of lake water quality," known as LAGOS, allows scientists to understand entire populations of lakes to better inform water policy and management.
October 19, 2017
EAST LANSING, Mich. – Countless numbers of people across the country spent time this past summer enjoying lakes for swimming, fishing, boating and pleasure. However, the water quality of our nation's lakes is threatened by not only the things that people do in and around them but also by less obvious factors such as agriculture and climate change. In addition, because lakes differ from each other naturally, they may be affected by these factors and people's actions differently.
To better understand the complex factors that threaten lake water quality, scientists need data on many lakes in various types of environmental settings. Unfortunately, much of the lake and geographic data needed for such studies is not easily accessible because the datasets exist in multiple formats scattered across government, university, and private databases – sometimes only in file drawers. Until now.
A new "geography of lake water quality," known as LAGOS, allows scientists to understand entire populations of lakes to better inform water policy and management. LAGOS, which stands for LAke multi-scaled GeOSpatial and temporal database, includes information on 50,000 inland U.S. lakes in 17 northeastern and upper Midwestern states.
A team of researchers in ecological, computer, geographic, and information sciences built LAGOS, led by Patricia Soranno, professor of ecology at Michigan State University (MSU). The team's recent article published in the journal GigaScience makes this information available to researchers, policymakers and the public.
"We are at an exciting time in environmental science, when people are recognizing that the big problems we face require us to work together across disciplinary boundaries and to openly share data, methods, and tools," said Kendra Cheruvelil, co-author and professor of ecology at Michigan State University.
With funding from the US National Science Foundation's (NSF) Macrosystems Biology Program, the researchers collected water quality information from scientists, government and tribal environmental agency personnel, and citizens. In fact, this database is a result of over 70 individuals who took time to share water quality data with the team, thousands of individuals who originally collected and processed the water quality data from 1980 to 2012, and more than 15 researchers at several institutions who worked together for 6 years to combine the information.
"Access to clean drinking water and the services lakes provide, such as fishing and recreation, are among the greatest environmental challenges we face today," said Liz Blood, program director for NSF's MacroSystems Biology program. "Now a comprehensive database has been created that will provide easy access to information on water quality and the physical and ecological factors that affect it across scales from individual lakes to entire regions. It will be a valuable resource for researchers, managers, landowners and citizens to evaluate the many factors affecting lakes."
The LAGOS team also gathered information for all 50,000 lakes in the 17 states from digital maps, including land use, geology, and climate, and combined it with the water quality information. The result? A geography of lake water quality.
"We cannot sample every lake. This effort is a great example of how environmental research needs to leverage a wide range of different types of information such as the increasingly available map-based data like Google Earth, with lake water samples that water resource biologists and citizens collect," said Corinna Gries, co-author and information scientist at the University of Wisconsin.
The LAGOS-team has published many ecology and computer science articles to better understand why water quality differs across the 50,000 lakes in the 70,000 square mile region. However, the team also wanted the database to be used as a springboard for other researchers and research questions. For example, scientists are using LAGOS to understand how freshwaters affect mosquito-borne human disease, as well as how water quality influences people visiting lakes. The hope is that this valuable database encourages more research on lakes, which are an important part of so many people's lives.
"These examples show how efforts like LAGOS can build the capacity for broad-scale research of the environment. Our experience has also shown us the importance of changing the scientific culture to be open, to use big-data approaches, and to be collaborative so that our science can better inform policy and management to preserve water quality for future generations," said Patricia Soranno.


DeWitt: Johan DeWitt was a key figure in Dutch politics during the 1600s. As his primary duty, he managed (along with uncle, Cornelis de Graeff) the political system in the Netherlands. DeWitt's most important accomplishments include aiding in the drafting of the Treaty of Westminster (ending the First Anglo-Dutch War), as well as being a primary educator of the future monarch William III as a child. Politically, DeWitt was considered somewhat radical because he supported republicanism, a political stance which asserted that monarchs should be selected by means other than heredity, such as elections.
For Carlyle's purposes, DeWitt serves as a figure of noble beliefs and political bravery. Carlyle bemoans the loss of "the noble People that make the noble Government," mentioning DeWitt as one of the many whose ideas have been stricken down despite their supremely useful and just ideas.
"Jonah De Witt." Encyclop&eolig;dia Britannica Online.. 23 Mar. 2010. 24 Mar. 2010>
Last modified 24 March 2010


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Shape in Picture: Mathematical Description of Shape in Grey-Level Images
Final rept., 7-11 Sep 1992
NATO C3 AGENCY THE HAGUE (NETHERLANDS)
Pagination or Media Count:
The fields of image analysis, computer vision, and artificial intelligence all make use of descriptions of shape in grey-level images. Most existing algorithms for the automatic recognition and classification of particular shapes have been developed for specific purposes, with the result that these methods are often restricted in their application. The use of advanced and theoretically well-founded mathematical methods should lead to the construction of robust shape descriptors having more general application. Shape description can be regarded as a meeting point of vision research, mathematics, computing science, and the application fields of image analysis, computer vision, and artificial intelligence. The NATO Advanced Research Workshop Shape in Picture was organized with a twofold objective first, it should provide all participants with an overview of relevant developments in these different disciplines second, it should stimulate researchers to exchange original results and ideas across the boundaries of these disciplines. This book comprises a widely drawn selection of papers presented at the workshop, and many contributions have been revised to reflect further progress in the field. The focus of this collection is on mathematical approaches to the construction of shape descriptions from grey-level images.
- Operations Research


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Food production on right path, but misperceptions remain
CHESTERFIELD, Mo., Nov. 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance (USFRA) released findings of a new survey about Americans' perceptions on food production. The survey, released in conjunction with The Food Dialogues: New York, revealed Americans increasingly believe food production is heading in the right direction. However, the survey also found Americans still have widespread misperceptions about how food is grown and raised.
According to the survey, 53 percent of Americans believe food production is heading in the right direction — an increase from the 48 percent who believed the same in a benchmark 2011 USFRA survey. Yet the survey reveals a gap between how Americans feel about their food and what they really know about their food. More than one in four Americans (27 percent) admit they often are confused about the food they are purchasing. Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) do not believe that 95 percent of all U.S. farms are in fact family-owned1. While two-thirds of Americans (66 percent) correctly believe that pesticide use decreased from 956 million pounds in 1999 to 877 million pounds in 20072.
"I am encouraged to see that Americans are becoming more confident in our food supply and that they believe farmers and ranchers are improving," said Bob Stallman, chairman of USFRA and president of the American Farm Bureau Federation. "We are doing something right, but we still have a long way to go in talking with American families and consumers, and answering their questions about food. That's why America's farmers and ranchers are continuing a dialogue with consumers."
Factors When Making Decisions About Food
In addition to perceptions on food production, the survey also revealed what and who influences American consumers purchasing decisions, whether at the grocery store or while dining out:
Americans Admit Confusion about Food Purchases
- More than one in four Americans admit they are often confused about the food they are purchasing (27 percent).
- Three in five Americans would like to know more about how food is grown and raised, but don't feel they have the time or money to prioritize (59 percent).
- Young adults (18-29 years old) are more likely than any other age group to say they are often confused about food purchases (38 percent).
Cost and Quality Top Factors for Purchase Decisions at the Grocery Store and While Dining Out
- Americans are more likely to report that how food is grown and raised will impact their purchase decision in the grocery store than impact their decisions when dining out (86 percent versus 76 percent).
- When it comes to purchasing groceries, Americans prioritize cost (47 percent), quality (43 percent) and healthiness/nutrition (21 percent).
- Dads are 16 points more likely than moms to prioritize quality (53 percent versus 37 percent), while moms are more likely than dads to prioritize healthiness/nutrition (31 percent versus 20 percent).
- When it comes to dining out, Americans prioritize quality (48 percent), cost (42 percent) and taste (38 percent).


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The Space IL organization has set an ambitious goal for itself – to send an Israeli spaceprobe to the moon in 2015. The project received significant backing on Monday when the Bezeq telecommunications company announced it had signed on.
Bezeq will provide the advanced communications infrastructure needed for the spaceflight and also support Space IL's educational activities.
The vessel will weigh less than 140 kilograms (308 pounds), making it the smallest spacecraft ever to land on the moon.
Space IL hopes the project will demonstrate ground-breaking technological capabilities in the field of building miniature smart spacecraft, which cost about a tenth of typical spacecraft.
Bezeq will be responsible for the probe's transmissions from the moon to a control center in the city of Yehud, in central Israel.
"This remarkable cooperation will enable us to meet the tremendous technological challenge and inspire the young generation," Space IL chairman Yanki Margalit said of Bezeq's support.
Space IL is a non-profit group set up by Israeli space enthusiasts to take part in the international Google Lunar X PRIZE competition. According to the Google Lunar X PRIZE website, a $30 million prize will be given to the first privately funded team that lands a robot on the moon, has the robot travel 500 meters on the lunar surface and sends back video, images and other data to Earth.
"We are motivated by a mission: to reinvigorate the Israeli start-up nation by undertaking a challenging task that will ignite the imagination of the country's young generation," Space IL's website says. "Driven by a national mission to advance Israel's scientific and technological fields, Space IL is determined to push ingenuity further than ever before."


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|This article may need to be rewritten entirely to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards. (May 2013)|
||This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. (December 2011)|
||It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles. (Discuss) Proposed since December 2012.|
The largest organisms found on Earth can be determined according to various aspects of organism size, such as: mass, volume, area, length, height, or even genome size. Some organisms group together to form a superorganism, but such are not classed as single large organisms. The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest structure composed of living entities, stretching 2,000 km, but contains many organisms of many species. The organism sizes listed are frequently considered "outsized" and are not in the normal size range for the respective species.
- The conifer division of plants include the tallest organism, and the largest single-stemmed plants by wood volume, wood mass, and main stem circumference. The largest by wood volume and mass is the giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum), native to Sierra Nevada and California; it grows to an average height of 70–85 m (230–280 ft) and 5–7 m (16–23 ft) in diameter. Specimens have been recorded up to 94.9 m (307 ft) in height and (not the same individual) 8.98 m (29 ft) in diameter; the largest individual still standing is the General Sherman tree, with a volume of 1,489 m3 (52,600 ft3). Although typically not so large in volume, the closely related coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) of the Pacific coast in North America is taller, reaching a maximum height of 115.55 m (379.1 ft) – the Hyperion Tree, which ranks it as the world's tallest known living tree and organism (not including its roots under ground). The largest historical specimen (and largest known single-stem organism) was the Lindsey Creek tree, a coast redwood with a minimum trunk volume of over 2,500 m3 (88,000 cu ft) and a mass of over 3,300 tons. It fell over during a storm in 1905. The conifers also include the largest tree by circumference in the world, the Montezuma Cypress (Taxodium mucronatum). The thickest recorded tree, found in Mexico, is called Árbol del Tule, with a circumference of 57.9 m (190 ft) at its base and a diameter of 14.5 m (48 ft) at 1.5 m (5 ft) above ground level; its height is over 39.4 m (129 ft). These trees dwarf any other non-communal organism, as even the largest blue whales are likely to weigh one-sixteenth as much as a large giant sequoia or coast redwood. See list of superlative trees for other tree records.
Flowering plants (angiosperms)
- This is the most diverse and numerous division of plants, with upwards of 400,000 species.
- Clonal colonies
- For two dimensional area, the largest known clonal flowering plant, and indeed largest plant and organism, is a grove of male Aspen in Utah, nicknamed Pando (Populus tremuloides). The grove is connected by a single root system, and each stem above the ground is genetically identical. It is estimated to weigh approximately 6,000,000 kg, and covers 0.43 km² (106 acres).
- Another form of flowering plant that rivals Pando as the largest organism on earth in breadth, if not mass, is the giant marine plant, Posidonia oceanica, discovered in the Mediterranean near the Balearic Islands, Spain. Its length is about 8 km (5 mi). Although this plant has not been proven to be a single connected organism, all the samples do have the same DNA. It may also be the oldest living organism in the world, with an estimated age of 100,000 years.
- "Individual" plants
- By a stricter definition of individuality, and using contending measures of size, Ficus benghalensis, the giant banyan trees of India are the largest trees in the world. In these trees, a network of interconnected stems and branches has grown entirely by vegetative, "branching" propagation. One individual, Thimmamma Marrimanu, in Andhra Pradesh, covers 19,107 square metres, making it the largest single tree by two-dimensional canopy coverage area. This tree is also the world's largest known tree by a related measure, perimeter length, with a distance of 846 metres required to walk around the edge of the canopy. Thimmama Marrimanu is likely also the world's largest tree by three dimensional canopy volume.
- The tallest flowering plant is thought to be Eucalyptus regnans, which can reach heights of 99.6 m (327 ft).
- Other records among flowering plants include, the title of largest flower, which belongs to the species Rafflesia arnoldii. One of these flowers can reach a diameter of 1 m (3.3 ft) and weigh up to 11 kg (24 lb). The largest unbranched inflorescence, resembling (but not qualifying as) a giant flower, belongs to the titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum), reaching almost 3 m (10 ft) in height. The absolute largest inflorescence, at up to 8 m (26.5 ft) long, is borne by the talipot palm (Corypha umbraculifera) of India.
- The largest species of cycad is Hope's Cycad (Lepidozamia hopei), endemic to the Australian state of Queensland. The largest examples of this species have been over 15 m (49 ft) tall and have had a circumference of 1.5 m (4.9 ft).
- Horsetails (Equisetopsida)
- The largest of horsetail is the species Equisetum myriochaetum, of central Mexico. The biggest specimen known was 8 m (26.4 ft) tall and had a diameter of 2.5 cm (1 in).
- Ferns (Pteridopsida)
- The largest species of fern is probably Cyathea brownii of Norfolk Island, which may be 20 m (66 ft) or more in height.
- The largest species of liverwort is a New Zealand species, Schistochila appendiculata. The top size of this species is 1.1 m (3.6 ft) long, a diameter of 2.5 cm (1 in) and a stem length of 10 cm (4 in).
- The world's tallest moss is Dawsonia superba, of New Zealand. This species can be 50 cm (20 in) tall.
A member of the order Cetacea, the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is believed to be the largest animal ever to have lived. The maximum recorded weight was 190 tonnes for a specimen measuring 30 m (98 ft), while longer ones, up to 33.4 m (110 ft), have been recorded but not weighed.
The African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana), of the order Proboscidea, is the largest living land animal. A native of various open habitats in sub-Saharan Africa, this elephant is born commonly weighing about 100 kg (220 lb). The largest elephant ever recorded was shot in Angola in 1974. It was a male measuring 10.7 m (35 ft) from trunk to tail and 4.2 m (13.7 ft) lying on its side in a projected line from the highest point of the shoulder to the base of the forefoot, indicating a standing shoulder height of 4.0 m (13 ft).
- Table of heaviest living animals
The following is a list of the heaviest living animals, which are all cetaceans. These whales also qualify as the largest living mammals. Since no scale can accommodate the body of a large whale, most whales have been weighed by parts.
|Average total length
|1||Blue whale||110||190||25.5 (84)|
|2||North Pacific right whale||60||120||15.5 (51)|
|3||Southern right whale||58||110||15.25 (50)|
|4||Fin whale||57||120||19.5 (64.3)|
|5||North Atlantic right whale||55||100||15 (49)|
|6||Bowhead whale||54.5||120||15 (49)|
|7||Sperm whale||31.25||57||13.25 (43.5)|
|8||Humpback whale||29||48||13.5 (44)|
|9||Sei whale||22.5||45||14.8 (49)|
|10||Gray whale||19.5||45||13.5 (44)|
- Table of heaviest terrestrial animals
The following is a list of the heaviest wild land animals, which are all mammals. The African elephant is now listed as two species, the African bush elephant and the African forest elephant, as they are generally considered to be two separate species now.
|Average total length
|1||African bush elephant||4.9||12.7


%%%%% Change the four parameters in the line below: % First is lecture #. % Second is lecture title. % Third is lecturer (either Anupam Gupta or Ryan O'Donnell). % Fourth is your name. \lecture{42}{LPs and SDPs are great}{Anupam O'Donnell}{Harry Bovik} This is some warmup discussion before the first section. \section{Here's a section header} Here's some more text. % Here's a citation~\cite{Kar84a}. \subsection{Here's a subsection} You might like to put use subsectioning these too. An alternate way to put in a small subheading for a paragraph is to use the \begin{verbatim} \paragraph \end{verbatim} command. For example: \paragraph{A remembrance by Dantzig.} The early days were full of intense excitement. Scientists, free at last from war-time pressures, entered the post-war period hungry for new areas of research. The computer came on the scene at just the right time. Economists and mathematicians were intrigued with the possibility that the fundamental problem of optimal allocation of scarce resources could be numerically solved. Not too long after my first meeting with Tucker there was a meeting of the Econometric Society in Wisconsin attended by well-known statisticians and mathematicians like Hotelling and von Neumann, and economists like Koopmans. I was a young unknown and I remember how frightened I was at the idea of presenting for the first time to such a distinguished audience, the concept of linear programming. \section{Math stuff} Please make an effort to typeset things nicely. There are quite a few macros in the lpsdp.sty file. Below are illustrated how to do some basic things; please study the \LaTeX\ carefully. Here's a typical LP in standard/equational form, with an equation number on one of the constraints. \begin{gather} \min \quad c^\top x \nonumber\\ \begin{align} \text{s.t.} \quad Ax &= b \nonumber\\ x &\geq 0 \label{eqn:nonnegative} \end{align} \end{gather} \noindent Here's a reference to the~\eqref{eqn:nonnegative} nonnegativity constraint. Some more LPs: \begin{gather*} \min \quad 3x_1 - 5x_2 \\ \begin{aligned} \text{s.t.} \quad x_1 + 2x_2 &\leq 6\\ 2x_1 + x_2 &\leq 6\\ 2x_1 + 2x_2 &\geq 7\\ x_1,x_2 &\geq 0 \end{aligned} \end{gather*} \begin{alignat*}{3} \text{minimize}& \quad & 3x_1 - 5x_2 + 2x_3 - x_4& & &\\ \text{subject to}& \quad & x_1 + 2x_2 - 4x_3 + x_4 &\leq 6 & &\\ & & -x_1 + 3x_2 - x_3 - x_4 &\geq 7 & &\\ & & x_i &\geq 0 & &\quad \forall i = 1\dots 4 \end{alignat*} Let's do some matrices: \[ \begin{pmatrix} 1 & \rho & \rho\\ \rho & 1 & \rho\\ \rho & \rho & 1\\ \end{pmatrix}, \quad \text{or alternately,} \quad \begin{bmatrix} 1 & 2 \\ 3 & 4 \\ \end{bmatrix}. \] More generically: \[ A = \begin{bmatrix} \vrule & \vrule & & \vrule\\ A_{1} & A_{2} & \cdots & A_{n} \\ \vrule & \vrule & & \vrule \end{bmatrix} = \begin{bmatrix} \text{---} & a_1 & \text{---} \\ \text{---} & a_1 & \text{---} \\ & \vdots & \\ \text{---} & a_n & \text{---} \end{bmatrix} \] Here's some more random typesetting: \begin{itemize} \item ''$\PTIME$~vs.~$\NP$, where the former means time $\poly(n)$''; \item $\wt{O}(f(x)) \text{ is } f(x) \cdot \polylog(f(x))$; \item $\displaystyle g(x) = \begin{cases} \sin(2\theta) & \text{if $\theta \leq \pi$,}\\ \max\{\cos^2\theta, \tfrac13\} & \text{if $\theta > \pi$.} \end{cases} $ \end{itemize} Please don't write $max(A)$ when you mean $\max(A)$, or $log(n)$ when you mean $\log(n)$, or "quotes" when you mean ''quotes''.\\ A theorem and a proof: \begin{theorem} $(a+b)^2 = a^2 + 2ab + b^2$. \end{theorem} \begin{proof} Let for the reader. \end{proof} \bigskip Here's what to do if your proof ends on an equation: \begin{proof} It's easy: \[ (a+b)^2 = (a+b)(a+b) = (a+b)a + (a+b)b = a^2 + ba + ab + b^2 = a^2 + 2ab + b^2 \qedhere \] \end{proof} Please insert figures liberally. It's probably best if ''vector graphics'' are in pdf or png format, and ''bitmap graphics'' are in jpg format, but lots formats are supported. There's a macro defined to make things easy. Inkscape is a pretty reasonable, free program in which to draw figures.\footnote{Ryan: I admit, I sometimes draw figures in Powerpoint.} %%%%%%%% FIGURES % first parameter is a real number which is the scale factor; % second is the file name; % third is caption; % fourth gives the LaTeX label for future \ref \myfig{.375}{example-figure.pdf}{The region $g_1 > 0, g_2 > -\tfrac{\rho}{\sqrt{1-\rho^2}}g_1$.}{fig:my-example} Once you've inserted it, you can refer to it as Figure~\ref{fig:my-example}.\\ Finally, if you have citations, see the commented-out stuff in the \LaTeX~here. %%%%%%%%%%% If you have citations then uncomment the line below: % %\insertbibliography{lpsdp}


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