text:
I'm often asked if someone can take an income tax deduction for money they gift to their children. Gifts to individuals are not tax deductible. Tax deductions can only be taken for gifts to organizations on the IRS list of approved charities. However, there is a way to get a partial deduction for money that will eventually go to your children. A charitable lead annuity trust (CLAT) gifts money to a charity first, and then passes assets to your beneficiaries.
Assets gifted to a CLAT are used to make annual payments to a charity for a specified term. At the end of the term, money remaining in the trust goes to the beneficiaries free of estate and gift taxes. The concept is to distribute the entire principal plus a minimum rate of return to the charities. The rate of return is defined by the applicable federal rate (AFR) that is published monthly by the IRS. The most recent AFR for long-term contracts was 2.76%. The beneficiaries receive the growth of the trust that exceeds the AFR. Therefore, the trust assets need to be invested in a manner that allows them to generate excess growth for the beneficiaries.
The donor receives a charitable deduction equal to the present value of the charitable payments based on the AFR. For example, a donor gifts $1 million into a CLAT that makes annual charitable payments over 20 years. The donor would receive an immediate deduction of about $250,000 based on the current AFR. The charity would receive more than $1 million in payments during the term of the CLAT, and the beneficiaries would receive the remaining principle. An average return of 7 ½% would allow the trust principle to maintain the $1 million original value for the beneficiaries.
There are drawbacks to using a CLAT. One drawback is that the income earned in the CLAT during the term is taxed to the donor. You should seek the counsel of an experienced financial adviser or estate planner to determine if a CLAT is appropriate for your goals.
You cannot deduct as a charitable donation gifts made to your children or any other individual. In fact, the IRS limits the amount of gifts you can make to any one person before it becomes taxable to the donor. As of 2018, the maximum gift is $15,000 per child, per parent. That means your child could get as much as $30,000 in tax-free gifts from both parents. However, neither you nor your spouse can take a deduction for the gifts you give.


text:
Where Did the Wave Theory Come From?
Ralph Nelson Elliott is the father of the Wave Theory, which is commonly called and more accurately described as the Elliott Wave Principle. Born on July 28, 1871 in Marysville, Kansas, Elliott reached his ultimate achievement late in life by a circuitous route.
After a long career in various accounting and business practices, R.N. Elliott was forced into an unwanted retirement at the age of 58 due to an illness contracted while living in Central America. Needing something to occupy his mind while recuperating, he turned his full attention to studying the behavior of the stock market.
The next day, Thursday, March 14, 1935, was the day of the closing low for the Dow Industrials that year. The 13-month "correction" was over, and the market immediately turned to the upside. Two months later, as the market continued its upward climb, Collins agreed to collaborate on a book on the Wave Theory. The Wave Principle was published on August 31, 1938.
During the early 1940s, the Wave Theory continued to develop. Elliott tied the patterns of collective human behavior to the Fibonacci, or "golden" ratio, a mathematical phenomenon known for millennia as one of nature's ubiquitous laws of form and progress.
Elliott then put together what he considered his definitive work, Nature's Law — The Secret of the Universe. This volume includes almost every thought he had concerning his Wave Theory.
As a result of Elliott's pioneering research, today, thousands of institutional portfolio managers, traders and private investors use the Wave Theory in their investment decision-making.
This article on the history of the Wave Theory was excerpted from a detailed 64-page biography in R.N. Elliott's Masterworks (New Classics Library, 1994). This book contains all of R.N. Elliott's books and articles, plus highlights from his market letters on Wave Theory.
Learn the Why, What, and How of the Elliott Wave Principle
The Elliott Wave Crash Course is a series of three FREE videos that demolishes the widely held notion that news drives the markets. Each video will provide a basis for using the Wave Principle in your own trading and investing decisions.
Simply create a FREE Club EWI profile to view the Elliott Wave Video Crash Course, FREE! It takes just a few minutes.
Club EWI is the world's largest Elliott Wave Community with more than 325,000 members. In addition to downloading your free videos, you will gain permanent access to the valuable club resources featured on your club homepage.
Already a Club EWI member? Access this video series now.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text:
RHTML file extension - Ruby HTML web page file
What is rhtml file? How to open rhtml files?
File type specification:
rhtml file icon:
The RHTML file extension is primarily associated with the Ruby programming language. These *.rhtml files contain HTML web page with Ruby source code or Ruby scripts. It's basically mix of those two.
The default software associated to rhtml file type:
Company or developer:
Ruby is a dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity. It has an elegant syntax that is natural to read and easy to write.
List of software applications associated to the.rhtml file extension
Recommended software programs are sorted by OS platform (Windows, Mac OS X etc.) and possible program actions
that can be done with the file: like open rhtml file, edit rhtml file, convert rhtml file, view rhtml file, play rhtml file etc. (if exist software for corresponding action in File-Extensions.org's database).
Click on the tab below to simply browse between the application actions, to quickly get a list of recommended software, which is able to perform the specified software action, such as opening, editing or converting of the rhtml files.
- Open rhtml file
- Save rhtml file
- Edit rhtml file
- Create rhtml file

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


text: Gene expression differences between divergent lineages caused by modification of cis regulatory elements are thought to be important in evolution. We assayed genome-wide cis and trans regulatory differences between maize and its wild progenitor, teosinte, using deep RNA sequencing in F1 hybrid and parent inbred lines for three tissue types (ear, leaf and stem). Pervasive regulatory variation was observed with approximately 70% of ∼17,000 genes showing evidence of regulatory divergence between maize and teosinte. However, many fewer genes (1,079 genes) show consistent cis differences with all sampled maize and teosinte lines. For ∼70% of these 1,079 genes, the cis differences are specific to a single tissue. The number of genes with cis regulatory differences is greatest for ear tissue, which underwent a drastic transformation in form during domestication. As expected from the domestication bottleneck, maize possesses less cis regulatory variation than teosinte with this deficit greatest for genes showing maize-teosinte cis regulatory divergence, suggesting selection on cis regulatory differences during domestication. Consistent with selection on cis regulatory elements, genes with cis effects correlated strongly with genes under positive selection during maize domestication and improvement, while genes with trans regulatory effects did not. We observed a directional bias such that genes with cis differences showed higher expression of the maize allele more often than the teosinte allele, suggesting domestication favored up-regulation of gene expression. Finally, this work documents the cis and trans regulatory changes between maize and teosinte in over 17,000 genes for three tissues.


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The development of Schramm-Loewner Evolutions, and other related objects, have lead to an explosion in the understanding of various conformally invariant scaling limits of discrete models from statistical physics. Of particular interest for this talk is the development of the conformal loop ensembles (CLE) gaskets which are designed to serve as the scaling limits of the outer cluster boundaries of various spin models. In parallel, there has been much development in the theory of quasi-conformal unifomization, most notably for this talk recent work by Mario Bonk on the quasisymmetric uniformization of carpets, provided that the carpets possess a certain degree of uniform geometric control. In this talk, I will discuss a current work-in-progress with Steffen Rohde investigating such uniformization type results for the CLE carpet. In a suitable sense, I will show that one can still gain some understanding of conformal uniformization of CLE, despite the lack of uniform control in the random setting.
Back to Workshop IV: Quasiconformal Geometry and Elliptic PDEs


Reinforcement learning Bitcoin trading bot
Posted December 03, 2020 by Rokas Balsys
Create custom crypto trading environment from a scratch - Bitcoin trading bot example
In this tutorial, we will write a step-by-step foundation for our custom Bitcoin trading environment where we could do further development, tests and experiments.
In my previous LunarLander-v2 and BipedalWalker-v3 tutorials, I was gathering experience in writing Proximal Policy Optimization algorithms, to get some background to start developing my own RL environment. The mentioned tutorials were written upon OpenAI's gym package, which allows us to experiment with our own reinforcement learning algorithms upon a ton of free environments to experiment with.
These OpenAI environments are great for learning, but eventually, we will want to set up an agent to solve the custom problem. To do this, we would need to create a custom environment, specific to our problem domain. When we have our custom environment, we can create a custom Reinforcement Learning agent to simulate crypto trades. This is the first part of these tutorials, so this and the rest of the tutorials related to this article will be available on my GitHub page.
Introduction to the environment
First, let's learn about what exactly the environment is. An environment contains all the necessary functionality to run an agent and allow it to learn. Each environment "must-have" implemented the following interface:
class CustomEnv:
 def __init__(self, arg1, arg2,...):
 # Define action space and state size
 # Example when using discrete actions of 0,1,2:
 self.action_space = np.array([0, 1, 2])
 # Example for using image as input for custom environment:
 self.state_size = np.empty((HEIGHT, WIDTH, CHANNELS)), dtype=np.uint8)
 # Execute one time step within the environment
 def step(self, action):
 # Reset the state of the environment to an initial state
 def reset(self):
 # render environment visualization
 def render(self):
In the constructor above, we first define the type and shape of our action_space, which will contain all of the actions possible for an agent to take in the environment. Similarly, we'll define the state_size (above is an example with an image as input), which contains all of the environment's data to be observed by the agent.
Our reset method will be called periodically to reset the environment to an initial state. This is followed by many steps through the environment, in which an action will be provided by the model and must be executed, and the next observation returned. This is also the place where rewards are calculated, but more on this later.
Finally, the render method may be called periodically to print a rendition of the environment. This could be as simple as a print statement, or as complicated as rendering a 3D environment using OpenGL, whatever you want. For this example, we will begin with a print statement, but my plan is later to do everything in Maplotlib at least.
Bitcoin Trading Environment
To demonstrate how this all works, I am going to create a cryptocurrency trading environment. I will then try to train our agent to beat the market and become a profitable trader within the environment. Actually, this shouldn't be Bitcoin, we'll be able to choose any market we want, I chose Bitcoin just as an example. So, let's get started!
The first thing that we need to consider is how we, humans, decide what trade we would like to make. What observations we do before deciding to make a trade?
Usually, a professional trader would most likely look at some charts of price action, perhaps overlaid with a couple of technical indicators. From there, they would combine this visual information with their prior knowledge of similar price actions to make an informed decision in what direction the price is likely to move.
So, we need to translate these human actions into code, that our custom-created agent could understand price action in a similar manner. We want state_size to contain all of the input variables that we need our agent to consider before taking an action. In this tutorial, I want that my agent could "see" the main market data points (open price, high, low, close, and daily volume) for the last 50 days, as well as a couple of other data points like its account balance, current open positions, and current profit.
We want our agent for each timestep to consider the price action leading up to the current price, as well as their own portfolio's status in order to make an informed decision for the next action. Talking about actions, our agent will have action_space that will consist of three possibilities: buy, sell, or hold in the current time step.
But this is not enough to know what amount of Bitcoin to buy or sell each time. So we will need to create an action space that has a discrete number of action types (buy, sell, and hold), as well as a continuous spectrum of amounts to buy/sell (0-100% of the account balance/position size respectively). In this and coming few tutorials I will not take the amount into consideration for simplicity reasons. But after we'll get some kind of working environment with a trained agent I will try to integrate the risk of our agent, by taking the amount into consideration.
The last thing to consider before implementing a custom environment is the reward. We want to promote long-term profit, so for each step, we will calculate the account balance difference between the previous step and the current step. But, because I don't have a working prototype yet, it's hard to say, maybe I will find out that a different rewarding system works better. Anyway, we want that our agent could maintain a higher balance for longer, rather than those who rapidly gain money using unsustainable strategies.
Now that we've covered and defined our state size, action space, and rewards, it's time to implement our environment. First, we need to define the action_space and state_size in the environment's constructor. The environment expects a pandas data frame to be passed passed that contains the market data to be learned from. Adding to this, we must know our dataset length, starting trading balance, and how many steps of market memory we want our agent to "see", we define all of these parameters in our __init__ part. I define them as deque list, this means that our list has a limited size of 50 steps, when we append a new item into the list, the last one is removed. Don't worry, I will upload market history data to my GitHub page together with this tutorial code. But in case you want to download your own data, I downloaded market raw data from the page.
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import random
from collections import deque
class CustomEnv:
 # A custom Bitcoin trading environment
 def __init__(self, df, initial_balance=1000, lookback_window_size=50):
 # Define action space and state size and other custom parameters
 self.df = df.dropna().reset_index()
 self.df_total_steps = len(self.df)-1
 self.initial_balance = initial_balance
 self.lookback_window_size = lookback_window_size
 # Action space from 0 to 3, 0 is hold, 1 is buy, 2 is sell
 self.action_space = np.array([0, 1, 2])
 # Orders history contains the balance, net_worth, crypto_bought, crypto_sold, crypto_held values for the last lookback_window_size steps
 self.orders_history = deque(maxlen=self.lookback_window_size)
 # Market history contains the OHCL values for the last lookback_window_size prices
 self.market_history = deque(maxlen=self.lookback_window_size)
 # State size contains Market+Orders history for the last lookback_window_size steps
 self.state_size = (self.lookback_window_size, 10)
Next, we'll write the reset method, which should be called every time a new environment is created or to reset an existing environment's state to the primary. Here we'll set the starting balance to our initial balance, define our start and finish steps in the dataset (used to separate training and testing data), but more about that later. As you can see, we create our primary state by concatenating our orders and the market history of our 50 history steps.
# Reset the state of the environment to an initial state
def reset(self, env_steps_size = 0):
 self.balance = self.initial_balance
 self.net_worth = self.initial_balance
 self.prev_net_worth = self.initial_balance
 self.crypto_held = 0
 self.crypto_sold = 0
 self.crypto_bought = 0
 if env_steps_size > 0: # used for training dataset
 self.start_step = random.randint(self.lookback_window_size, self.df_total_steps - env_steps_size)
 self.end_step = self.start_step + env_steps_size
 else: # used for testing dataset
 self.start_step = self.lookback_window_size
 self.end_step = self.df_total_steps
 self.current_step = self.start_step
 for i in reversed(range(self.lookback_window_size)):
 current_step = self.current_step - i
 self.orders_history.append([self.balance, self.net_worth, self.crypto_bought, self.crypto_sold, self.crypto_held])
 self.market_history.append([self.df.loc[current_step, 'Open'],
 self.df.loc[current_step, 'High'],
 self.df.loc[current_step, 'Low'],
 self.df.loc[current_step, 'Close'],
 self.df.loc[current_step, 'Volume']


text:
Hyper-tidal Aggregates capitalizes on the unique properties of EPS Geofoam and envisions this polymer as landscape construction material in coastal and estuarine environments. This proposal calls on the combination of agencies between living and artificial material – the halophilic and adaptive nature of mangroves and the buoyant, indestructible properties of Geofoam. It is a reconceptualization of plastics in the modern age that seeks to not only fortify threatened habitats, but also sow the seeds of new landmasses.
Geofoam is deployed as a lightweight, high-compressive strength material in manufacturing, engineering and construction projects. It is used in buildings, bridges and roads – each year becoming more widely applied in landscape construction. Its properties provide specific advantages on soft ground and steep slopes over that of other conventional building materials like concrete. However, Hyper-tidal Aggregates capitalizes on its buoyant force and the potential for this artificial material to create new landscapes in coastal and estuarine environments.
Rhizophora mangle thrive in tropical areas around the world. The grow unique aerial prop roots that establish above the water before sinking deep into the plant's surrounding substrate. Their viviparous seeds grow suspended in the air before dropping and have the ability to travel over tides before rooting – remaining viable for 365 days in the water. Mangrove biomes are aggregations of trees that have grown and merged together, providing marine habitat, stabilizing sediment, and performing as an invaluable carbon sink.
Natural mangrove habitats are quickly disappearing. They are threatened not only by global warming, but also fishing industries that require mangroves to be cut down. The reestablishment of mangrove environments is difficult because of sediment acquisition and deposition; however, Geofoam acts as the bridge between these demands. The biology and growth patterns of these species of trees mirrors that of the Geofoam aggregate assemblages. Geometries of polymer foam can be cut off site be carried in, assembled in parts and applied at the water's edge with mangrove propagules embedded within. Geofoam can be exposed to any range of salinity, temperature and moisture without losing its durable qualities. It behaves as soil and sand, supporting the plants as they grow and floating above the tide as the trees establish. The design of each aggregate can be site specific, molding to existing landscape conditions while providing for the juvenile mangroves. As these habitats grow more robust, the artificial landscape material is taken over by the prop roots. These environments can continue to thrive and support the water's edge as well as be moved to open water. Hyper-tidal Aggregates imagines new landscapes that seed in brackish and coastal waters, but have the potential to create new islands – hybrids of the living and artificial.


text:
The question of why we are attracted to water may be a bit obvious for some. However, we all too often take water for granted. It is, for the most part, easily accessible and abundant. We are connected to water in so many ways. In fact, we are as humans on average 75 percent water. The earths surface is 70 percent water. This investigation of why we are attracted to water is, in part, preparation for an upcoming presentation on water and horticultural therapy.
We ARE attracted to water, that is obvious. Whether it is a lake, ocean or a man made water feature, we feel compelled to interact on some level. All of our senses are heightened and respond in different ways. The smell of ozone when it rains or the melodic sounds of waves crashing on the beach are just a few of the reactions water elicits. Who is not interested in a water pistol fight on a hot summer's day. Watch children (and those still young at heart) who cannot resist playing in a fountain.
A preliminary search of current literature and research findings indicate that there are emotional responses caused when water touches our skin, much like someone holding our hand. When someone holds our hand, the brain releases the hormone Oxytocin, which promotes a feeling of devotion and trust. The Orbital Front Cortex of the brain responds to sweet tastes and pleasant odors. The smell of the air when it begins to rain or the salt spray from the ocean can trigger a positive emotional response.
The next time you pass a water fountain in a park or shopping mall, stop and pay attention. How does it make you feel? What are the reactions experienced by others. Do you or others have a tendency to touch the water. Does the sound of the running water as it splashes onto the hard surface make you slow down and watch? Your blood pressure should be reduced and hopefully a sense of calm may be present, even for a short while. Begin to make a mental note of these reactions.
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text:
Can you UseCodeTags in future? It makes your posts much easier to read, so you're more likely to get a useful reply. I've added them this time.
The question is all about the order constructors get called, and which constructors get called when an object is deserialized. Do you know what the rules are for that? Basically:
- The initial creation of the Dog object prints Animal/Dog, because superclass constructors are called first.
- The constructor of a serializable object is not called when deserializing. But if the superclass is not serializable, its constructor will be called. Change the code to make Animal serializable and you'll notice a change in the output.


text:
See what questions
a doctor would ask.
Grapefruit: A plant species of the genus CITRUS, family RUTACEAE that provides the familiar grapefruit. There is evidence that grapefruit juice inhibits CYTOCHROME P-450 isoform 3A4, resulting in delayed metabolism and higher blood levels of a variety of drugs.
Source: Diseases Database
These medical condition or symptom topics may be relevant to medical information for Grapefruit:
Search to find out more about Grapefruit:
Search Specialists by State and City


text:
There is a new cause for concern for teen drug use trending across the United States but it does not involve drugs – it's hand sanitizer. If you are thinking, can my teen get high from drinking hand sanitizer, the answer is yes.
Hand sanitizer, such as your basic bottle of Purell is 60 to 65 percent alcohol, which translates to two shots of 80 proof vodka. Some teens mix Listerine with salt and hand sanitizer for a concoction that is known as a hand sanity fix, Mr. Clean's Tears and hand sanitrippin.
Hand sanitizer contains rubbing alcohol or isopropyl alcohol and is toxic to your central nervous system. The side effects from drinking hand sanitizer can lead to diarrhea, vision problems, memory loss and damage to internal organs. Teens drinking hand sanitizer can experience alcohol poisoning which can lead to coma and death.
Teens that participate in this type of risky behavior are putting not only their current health at risk but also their futures. Between the ages of 12 and 20, individuals go through a number of physiological and psychological changes that help them develop into adults. Teens that drink hand sanitizer, or use alcohol and drugs, put their developmental future in jeopardy.
If your teen is drinking hand sanitizer or using drugs and alcohol, they may need to enroll in a program that focuses on teens. There are many reasons why teens may turn to substance use and other risky behaviors; these reasons can include peer pressure, bullying, academic pressures, problems at home to name a few. It is possible that your teen may need detox before they enroll in a rehab or alternative program. Most doctors recommend IV therapy medical detox.
IV therapy medical detox is supervised by a physician and intravenous therapy is important because it allows the physician to make changes to the medication as the withdrawal symptoms change. This keeps the patient comfortable and makes it possible for them to complete the detox process safely.
St. Jude Retreats offers a cognitive behavioral education program that teaches teens to utilize self assessment to identify problematic thought and behavior patterns so they can implement real lifestyle changes and take control of their lives. Guests learn to build habits and behaviors that are positive and that give purpose to their life. Our guests see an increase in their self confidence and self esteem and they discover that they can have a life that is permanently free from substance use problems
Some teens find that they can benefit from an additional four week program that focuses on the challenges that they will encounter once they return home and to school. The PREP or Personal Review and Enhancement Program at St. Jude Retreats can help your teen with academic progress, as well applying to college and military entrance preparation and planning their future. There is nothing more important for a teen than envisioning a future filled with excitement and success.


text:
Pearson Test of English (PTE-A) is designed to test your English reading, writing, listening and speaking skills. The test takes approximately 3 hours to complete. This includes an un-timed introduction to the test and one optional scheduled break of up to 10 minutes. During the three-hour test session there will be three main parts to the test: speaking and writing (together), listening and reading. There are twenty different question formats, ranging from multiple choice through to essay writing and interpreting information. PTE-A Academic assesses real-life, academic content, so you will hear excerpts from lectures and view graphs and charts. You will hear a range of accents in the test, from British and American to non-native speakers, so you will be exposed to the type of accents you will encounter in everyday life.
PART 1: SPEAKING & WRITING (77 – 93 minutes):
Answer short question
PART 2: READING (32 – 41 minutes):
Multiple choice questions (x2)
Fill in the blanks (x2)
A ten minute break is optional
PART 3: LISTENING (45 – 57 minutes):
Summarize spoken text
Multiple choice x2
Fill the blanks
Highlight the correct summary
Select missing word
Highlight incorrect words
Write from dictation
PTE-A Academic is scored against the Global Scale of English, a thermometer-style scale that gives you an accurate overview of your skills. The Global Scale of English aligns with a variety of popular tests and scales around the world. The PTE-A Academic Score Report includes your overall score, communicative skills scores and enabling skills scores. The overall score reflects your overall English language ability. The score is based on performance on all items in the test. The range for the overall score is 10-90 points.
Scores for communicative skills (listening, reading, speaking and writing) are based on all test items that assess these skills, either as a single skill or together with other skills. The range for each communicative skill score is 10-90 points.
Scores for enabling skills (grammar, oral fluency, pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary and written discourse) are based on all test items assessing one or more of these skills. The range for each enabling skill score is 10-90 points.
Our instructors are highly qualified with year of experiences and are certified.
-University of Cambridge (ESOL)
-NASSCOM (USA) experience_text


Reconsidering the U.S. Patent System: Lessons from Generics
Scholars and pharmaceutical industry representatives consider the United States a worldwide leader in pharmaceutical innovation. However, the recent expansion of the international generics market has threatened the strength of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. The pressure has led to the U.S. market's overreliance on a patentability standard that blocks generics competition without contributing substantially to the state of the art. This Note contrasts the U.S. nonobviousness standard and patent linkage regime with those of generics giants India and Israel and considers the effects of these policies on the relevant national and international generics industries. This Note proposes that the United States revise its current approach to patent protection of pharmaceuticals by adopting a heightened nonobviousness standard and lengthening the available patent-term-restoration period through modifications to the linkage regime. Only by balancing these two legal mechanisms will the United States maintain its status as the international leader in blockbuster pharmaceuticals.
_TAG_ _TAG_ _TAG_ _TAG_


text:
Saturday, April 28, 2012 - 08:30 in Psychology & Sociology
The Mullany family is responsible for producing one of the most famous toys in American history. Find out how they came up with Wiffle Ball and what you can learn from their story.
- How does an outfielder know where to run for a fly ball?Thu, 21 Jan 2010, 16:16:23 EST
- For African beetles, dung balls double as 'air conditioning units'Mon, 22 Oct 2012, 14:33:39 EDT
- Camera inside spiraling football provides ball's-eye view of fieldWed, 27 Feb 2013, 11:12:39 EST
- 'Little brown balls' tie malaria and algae to common ancestor: UBC researchTue, 1 Jun 2010, 16:43:27 EDT
- No crystal ball necessary: New tool IDs predictable economic variablesTue, 21 Jul 2009, 6:50:13 EDT


text:
The Friends of the Rye Public Library and the Rye Historical Society worked cooperatively to secure a New Hampshire Humanities Council grant allowing for the presentation of this fascinating program. Join us as Dr. Robert Goodby, Professor of Anthropology at Franklin Pierce University, recounts his archaeological explorations of New Hampshire in search of the record of Abenaki culture.
Abenaki history has been reduced to near invisibility as the result of conquest, a conquering culture that placed little value on Indian experience, and a strategy of self-preservation that required many Abenaki to go "underground". The true Abenaki identity has been concealed for generations, but archeological evidence shows their deep presence in New Hampshire, inches below the Earth's surface!
Dr. Robert Goodby, Ph.D. Anthropology, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Franklin Pierce University, New Hampshire, is our guide on this historic journey. A veteran of archaeological field research in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, and author of more than 50 technical reports on New England prehistoric archaeology, Goodby is well prepared for this task. Goodby is also director of the Monadnock Archaeological Project, a long-term program of archaeological field research focusing on the prehistory of the upper Contoocook and Connecticut River valleys of southwestern New Hampshire.


The fossil species Insulivitrina ingridae spec. nov. is described from the Canary island of La Gomera. Only a single shell was encountered, which is about 14.5 mm long and has a strophostyl columella. It is compared with shells of Recent vitrinid species from the Macaronesian Islands, and the fossil glass snails from Madeira and Porto Santo. This is the first record of a fossil Insulivitrina species from the Canary Islands.
Nederlandse Malacologische Vereniging
C. (Kees) J.P.J. Margry. (2016). Insulivitrina ingridae spec. nov., a fossil vitrinid from the Canary Island of La Gomera (Gastropoda, Pulmonata). Basteria, 80(1/3), 127–132.


Translations of this page?:
 ostream& ostream::flush();
The flush() function causes the buffer for the current output stream to be actually written out to the attached device. This function is useful for printing out debugging information, because sometimes programs abort before they have a chance to write their output buffers to the screen. Judicious use of flush() can ensure that all of your debugging statements actually get printed.
You should use cerr for debugging, which does not buffer output by default.
Related Topics: put, write
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text:
On this date in 1928, Mary Daly was born in Schenectady, N.Y. She graduated from the College of Saint Rose in Albany in 1950 with a degree in English and Latin. She obtained her M.A. in English from the Catholic University of America in 1952, her Ph.D. in theology from Saint Mary's College in 1953, and Ph.D.s in theology and philosophy from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland in 1963 and 1965. She was one of the first American women to earn a degree in theology from a Catholic college. Daly was a radical feminist and theologian who taught feminist theology and ethics at Boston College from 1966 to 1999. She published eight books, including Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978) and Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (1984).
In 1968, Daly wrote The Church and the Second Sex, a book examining the harm of the Catholic Church on women. "A woman's asking for equality in the church would be comparable to a black person's demanding equality in the Ku Klux Klan," Daly wrote. She later called the book "a celebration/cerebration of my departure from the catholic church in particular and christianity in general" in her introduction to the 1985 edition of The Church and the Second Sex. She was briefly denied tenure from the Jesuit Boston College due to the book's content. "If God is male, then male is God. The divine patriarch castrates women as long as he is allowed to live on in the human imagination," Daly is quoted as saying in Castrates: Webster's Quotations, Facts and Phrases (2009). D. 2010


What Was The First NGO?
What are the biggest NGOs?
The Top 20 BRAC.
The Wikimedia Foundation.
Acumen Fund.
Danish Refugee Council.
Partners in Health.
CARE International.
Médecins Sans Frontières.More items….
Is the UN an NGO?
Many of the largest, most significant non-governmental organizations have relationships or official associative status with intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations or the World Bank. An intergovernmental organization, or IGO, is an institution made up of the governments of member states.
How many members should be in an NGO?
An NGO Board usually has 10 to 15 members, with a President, a Treasurer and other positions designated to specific tasks/issues related to the NGO's programme areas. The member positions could be rotating and/or renewable.
Which is the first NGO in India?
India's First NGO was founded by Tagore's Nephews Sri Gaganendranath Tagore in the year 1917 to help weavers and artists of the Kolkatta handloom. The Bengal Home Industries Association was founded, and registered under the Indian Companies Act VII (Section 26) in 1917.
Is the Red Cross a NGO?
As an independent, neutral organization, the ICRC has a permanent mandate under international law to take impartial action for prisoners, the wounded and sick, and civilians affected by conflict, including: Visiting prisoners of war and civilian detainees to monitor their treatment and conditions.
What is difference trust and NGO?
"NGO" stands for "Non-governmental Organization" while "trust" is the word trust itself. … Trusts have their own policies since they can be public or private trusts. It does not need any aid from the government or any organization. NGOs can receive financial assistance from the government while trusts cannot.
Is Unicef a NGO?
How many NGOs are there?
There are an estimated 10 million (non-governmental organizations) NGOs worldwide. 2. The number of people worldwide donating money to NGOs increased from 1.2 billion in 2011 to 1.4 billion in 2014. By 2030, the number is expected to grow to 2.5 billion.
Which is the largest NGO in India?
Top 10 NGOs In India: Making A DifferenceGive Foundation. … GOONJ – a voice, an effort. … Help Age India. … K. C. Mahindra Education Trust (Nanhi Kali) … LEPRA India. … Pratham Education Foundation. … Sammaan Foundation. … Smile Foundation.More items…•
What is the oldest NGO?
Anti-Slavery InternationalAnti-Slavery International is the world's oldest human rights organisation. Its roots stretch back to 1787 when the first abolitionist society was formed. The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS) was officially created on 17 April 1839 to crusade against slavery and the slave trade throughout the world.
Who is the founder of NGO?
Geeta DharmarajanKatha (NGO)IndustryPublishing, community development, Child welfare, Education.Founded1988FounderGeeta DharmarajanHeadquartersDelhi, IndiaKey peopleGeeta Dharmarajan (President)3 more rows
What is the biggest NGO in the world?
10 Facts About BRAC, the World's Largest NGOBRAC is the largest non-governmental organization (NGO) in the world. … BRAC's mission is to alleviate poverty and encourage economic participation by empowering people through social and economic programs.Founder Fazle Hasan Abed created BRAC after becoming disillusioned with poverty in Bangladesh.More items…•
Do NGO founders get paid?
The founders of a non-profit are not admissible to make a profit or advantage from the net earnings of the organization. They can create money in several additional ways, however, including receiving compensation from the non-profit.
How does an NGO make money?
Alternatively, in many NGOs, staff work in projects and salary goes to the head of the NGO whose designation and roles were elaborated in project budget. For most of the government project, there is fixed share and commission by NGOs which goes to politicians, bureaucrats, and other officials.
How did Ngo start?
The concept of NGO came into usage in 1945 following the establishment of the United Nations Organizations which recognized the need to give a consultative role to organisations which were neither government nor member states (Willett, 2002) NGOs take different forms and play different roles in different continents, …
Do NGOs pay well?
Average Salaries for NGO jobs Guidestar and CNM report pegs the average median salary of CEO's of non-profits in the US as between $50,000 – $90,000. Some larger foundations pay up to to $150,000.
Why do NGOs exist?
Purpose of NGOs NGOs exist for a variety of purposes, usually to further the political or social goals of their members. Examples include improving the state of the natural environment, encouraging the observance of human rights, improving the welfare of the disadvantaged, or representing a corporate agenda.
How can I start an NGO trust?
Registration Process of Public Charitable TrustStep 1 : Choose an appropriate name for your Trust. … Step 2 : Determine the Settler/ Author and Trustees of the intended Trust. … Step 3 : Prepare a Memorandum of Association and Rules & Regulations of your Trust. … Bylaws of the Trust.Step 4: Prepare all the documents that will be required at the time of submission. … A. … B.More items…


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How to Use Field-Programmable Object Arrays (FPOAs) in Image Processing
More and more embedded system designers are turning away from ASICs in favor of programmable logic devices (PLDs) — such as field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and digital signal processors (DSPs) — for faster time-to-market and budgetary requirements. However, although these devices have enjoyed broad market acceptance, they are not always ideal for meeting high-performance system requirements. A new category of PLDs has therefore been developed to address these needs: the field programmable object array (FPOA) represents the next generation of programmable logic, serving high-performance embedded applications such as machine vision, professional video, medical imaging and image processing.
The design methodology of an FPOA leverages the use of building blocks called "objects" rather than "gates" used in an FPGA. This object approach allows an FPOA to operate at 1 GHz and up to four times faster than an FPGA, while still offering all the benefits of a programmable logic device.
This white paper introduces MathStar's Field Programmable Object Array. Its features include field re-programmability, 1 GHz performance, a 400-object array, high-speed I/O, and a streamlined design process.


PA News Feeds
Disabled flyers 'are humiliated'
Disabled people risk "hurt and humiliation" when they travel by air, according to a report.
The group is due to meet airlines, MPs and the Civil Aviation Authority to discuss the treatment of disabled air travellers.
A survey of young disabled air passengers showed that 90% of wheelchair users are unable to use airline toilets and therefore have to avoid drinking before or during flights.
Some 60% of disabled passengers say their wheelchairs have been damaged when travelling with an airline and 60% said they felt unsafe when they transfer from a wheelchair to an airline seat;
Another 50% have problems related to disability when booking airline tickets.


text:
- Minimum Order Quantity :
- Unit of Measure :
- Price :
- _PHONE_ INR
- Color :
Soil Stabilization Plant Features:
- Hassle free performance
- Needs less maintenance
- Environment friendly
- User friendly operations
The Standard configuration of the plants comprise of the following units:
- Cold Aggregates Bin Feeders - Over Size Removal Vibrating Screen - Slinger Conveyor - Pugmill Mixing Unit - Load Out Conveyor with anti Segregation gob hopper - Water Storage Tank - Fully Automatic Control Panel, Weather Proof Control Cabin.
- Optional: Optional attachments like Storage Silos for Mixed material.
- As 2007 more than 100 plants of capacity ranging from 100 to 250 TPH are in operation.
- WMM-100 (Capacity 100 Tons/Hour)
- WMM-160 (Capacity 160 Tons/Hour)
- WMM-200 (Capacity 200 Tons/Hour)
- WMM-250 (Capacity 250 Tons/Hour)
The term Soil stabilization is used for any biological, physical or chemical changes occurring naturally in the soil. A material is used to strengthen the base layers of the soil. This material is produced using Soil Stabilizer Plant. Optimum and desired results can easily be achieved after controlling the process of compaction. The mentioned soil improves several parameters of the soil such as tensile strength and weight bearing capacity are to name a few. With this way, the user can also aim to minimize the wastage of material.
- Performs even in the extreme conditions to ensure excellent productivity
- Designed with ultra-modern technology to ensure acrobat-like flexibility
- Sturdily constructed to render optimum performance
- Minimizes the overall construction costs
81-82, Nirmal industrial Park, G. I. D. C. AtGozaria, Tal: Dist: Mehsana, Mehsana, Gujarat, 382825, India


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Styling practices can lead to serious hair and scalp diseases for African-Americans
Styling practices can lead to serious hair and scalp diseases for some African Americans, says Henry Ford Hospital dermatologist Diane Jackson-Richards, M.D.
"Hair is an extremely important aspect of an African-American woman's appearance," says Dr. Jackson-Richards, director of Henry Ford's Multicultural Dermatology Clinic. "Yet, many women who have a hair or scalp disease do not feel their physician takes them seriously. Physicians should become more familiar with the culturally accepted treatments for these diseases."
Dr. Jackson-Richards says proper hair care can help prevent the onset of such diseases like seborrheic dermatitis and alopecia, and that dermatologists need to become more sensitive to the hair and scalp plights of African Americans.
Dr. Jackson-Richards will discuss these issues Monday during a presentation of "Hair Disease and the African-American Patient" at the annual American Academy of Dermatology conference in San Diego.
Little research has been done about the prevalence and causes of hair and scalp diseases in African Americans. Dr. Jackson-Richards says understanding the unique physiologic characteristics of African textured hair for example, it grows slower and has a lower hair density than other ethnic groups will assist dermatologists in prescribing treatment options.
African-American women are known to shampoo their hair less frequently than other ethnic groups, and an estimated 80 percent of them use chemical relaxers. Frequent use of blow dryers and hot combs, combined with popular hair styles like hair weaves, braids and dreadlocks, add physical stress to the hair and contribute to scalp diseases like alopecia, or hair loss.
"Hair loss is the fifth most common condition cited by patients when they visit their dermatologist," Dr. Jackson-Richards says.
Dr. Jackson-Richards suggests these grooming tips for patients to reduce their risk of developing a hair or scalp disease:
-- Wash hair weekly with a moisturizing shampoo and conditioner.
-- Allow two weeks between relaxing and coloring.
-- Limit use of blow dryers and hot combs and other heated hair styling products to once a week.
-- Wash braids or dreadlocks every two weeks.
-- Avoid wearing braids too tightly; don't wear longer than three months.
-- To detangle hair, use a wide tooth comb while conditioner is still in the hair.
-- Use natural hair oils with jojoba, olive, shea or coconut oils.
Provided by Henry Ford Health System
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Classical and Quantum Mechanics via Lie algebras
Apr 15, 2011 I'd like to open a discussion thread for version 2 of the draft of my book ''Classical and Quantum Mechanics via Lie algebras'', available online at _URL_ and for the...
- More from Physics Forums - Independent Research
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yet2 is supporting NASA in their search for strain sensor technologies and tech providers that can measure large strains and associated load data of parachute canopies during the period of deployment (while the parachute is actively being used during a jump/landing). NASA is seeking a variety of strain sensing and measurement technologies that (1) could be applied to soft/flexible fabric substrates, (2) can measure elongation of 10-40% (ideally more), and (3) do not interfere with the function and performance of the parachute. Only solutions that are commercially available or that could be supplied in the next several months are in-scope for this search.
Strain sensors must have the following characteristics:
- Capable of measuring strains up to 10% – 40% elongation
- Compatible with lightweight flexible / soft / woven / fabric substrates
- A small form factor (< 6×6 inches; smaller is preferred)
Additional Considerations and Future Capabilities include:
- Capable of measuring strain rates from 20%/s to greater than 100%/s.
- Does not induce stiffness or stress in the test substrate
- Accounts for temperature (and remains operational) in range between -90°F to 120°F
- Survive / operate in vacuum (but do not necessarily need to be flight/space rated)
- Minimal hysteresis and drift
- Sample rates up to 1 kHz
- Commercial "Off-the-Shelf" sensors preferred
- Sensors may be single-use or reusable
Know of a Relevant Technology and Company?
If you would like to submit an innovative technology and associated company to be considered by our client, NASA, for partnership, please contact Alex Roberts (_EMAIL_).
Related Tech Needs


text:
ator. Many of the close-up observations focused on studying the strange 20 kilometer high mountain ridge that gives the moon a walnut-shaped appearance.
The new Cassini images show where the bright and dark different regions mix. On the dark side, there appear to be patches of white ice on dark mountainsides. Blobs of dark material appear on the bright side. There are regions where impact craters have punched through the dark material, revealing white material underneath.
The moon's irregular walnut shape, the mountain ridge that lies almost directly on the equator and Iapetus' brightness contrast are among the mysteries scientists are trying to solve. Cassini's multiple observations of Iapetus will help to characterize the chemical composition of the surface; look for evidence of a faint atmosphere or erupting gas plumes; and map the night-time temperature of the surface. These and other results will be analysed in the weeks to come.


text:
On the computer that is hosting the instance of MSDE to which you are connecting, open the command prompt window.
Type the following command, and then press ENTER:
osql -U sa
At the Password: prompt, press ENTER if your password is blank or type the current password. This connects you to the local, default instance of MSDE by using the
sa account. To connect by using Windows authentication, type this command: use osql -E
Note If you are using SQL Server 2005 Express, avoid using the Osql utility, and plan to modify applications that currently use the Osql feature. Use the Sqlcmd utility instead.
For more information about the Sqlcmd utility, visit the following Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Web site:
Type the following commands, on separate lines, and then press ENTER:
1>sp_password _USER_ = null, _USER_ = 'complexpwd', _USER_ ='sa'


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Late Precambrian Period
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Burgess Shale
Teacher Contributed
Connecting The Pieces
Cambrian Fauna
Why It Matters
Soft Bodies Aren't All Bad
The Burgess Shale located in Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canada is considered by many to be the most important fossil bed yet found. This fossil bed is known not only for the complexity and diversity of the organisms preserved but also for the preservation of soft body parts like organs and even whole organ systems. The beds are also over 500 million years old and represent an incredible resource to scientists seeking to understand life during the Cambrian Era and how it compares to life today. Watch the following video to take a look and these incredible fossil beds.
Here you can see someone who has actually worked at the fossil bed talk about the significance of the Burgess Shale and what it was like to work there
Here you can see some of the actual fossils themselves (and a few Japanese models)
Explore More
Use the below resources to answer the following questions
 1. What does Lagerstätten mean?
 2. What physical conditions lead to optimal fossilization?
 3. What latitude was "North America" located at when the Burgess Shale was deposited?
 4. How does the preservation of soft body parts increase scientists knowledge of the organism that made the fossils? Explain your answer as fully as possible.
 5. What kinds of information can scientists get from soft body parts that they cannot get from hard body parts?
 6. Do all animals have hard body parts?
 7. How do the organisms in the Burgess Shale compare to organisms in other fossil beds of the same age? Are they the same organisms? Are they different organisms?
 8. What do we learn when we compare fossil organisms from different fossil beds of the same age to organisms from different areas today?
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text:
the entropy should go down since there is very little uncertainty.
# Here is a modeled p function pcertain(x) = if x == B then 0.9999 else 0.00005 sum(pcertain, data) => 1 H(data, p = pcertain) => 0.00149
Yep! H is very small now because
9,999 out of
10,000 messages will be
B - the world is certain!
Target Heart Rate
The Karvonen Method is a way to calculate your target heart rate given the intensity of a work out. It depends upon your resting and maximum heart rates.
HR = ((Maximum HR - Resting HR) * Intensity) + Resting HR Resting HR = 60bpm Maximum HR = 200bpm HR(Intensity = 80%) => 172bpm
If we know our heart rate already, we can calculate the intensity of the workout:
Intensity(HR = 120bpm) => 0.4286
Here is a classic equation for the motion of an object that is influenced by a uniform acceleration a, an initial velocity v0 and an initial position x0.
x(t) = 1/2 * a * t^2 + v0*t + x0
We're going to define the parameters of this model using units. That way we can make sure we're calculating everything correctly.
a = -9.8m/s/s v0 = 100m/s x0 = 490m x => -4.9m*t^2/s^2 + 100m*t/s + 490m
Let's see what it looks like over a 30 second period:
x(1s) => 585.1m x(10s) => 1000m x(20s) => 530m x(30s) => -920m
We need to make sure to specify the time with the units
s, otherwise we'll get a bad result:
x(1) => -4.9m/s^2 + 100m/s + 490m
Units of Motion and Power
The velocity of an object is measured in meters
m per second
velocity units = m / s
Its acceleration is the change in velocity over time:
accel units = velocity units / s
Isaac Newton tells us that all objects have a constant velocity (
a = 0) unless acted upon by a force. This force is measured by multiplying the mass of the moving object (in kg) by the acceleration caused by the force. It's measured in, appropriately enough, Newtons:
N = kg * accel units => kg*m/s^2
If we apply a force over a distance (imagine pushing your car), then are said to have done work (so long as the object accelerates in the direction we're pushing!). Work is measured in Joules:
J = N*m => kg*m^2/s^2
There is another quantity called energy that is measured in Joules. Energy is the capacity for doing work. In every day speech, we use energy instead of work since work has a lot of real world connotations that are best left ignored.
The change in energy over time is called power and is measured in Watts.
W = J/s => kg*m^2/s^3
Voltage and Current:
V = J/C => kg*m^2/(s^2*C) A = C/s => C/s V*A => kg*m^2/s^3
Let's start with Newton's Law that force is proportional to acceleration:
force = mass * accel
When I'm standing on earth, it is constantly accelerating me so that I stay glued to the ground. That acceleration is called standard gravity.
g = 9.80665 m/s^2
Now some personal info:
weight = 165lbs kg per pound = 0.453592kg/lbs _TAG_ weight in kg = weight * kg per pound => 74.84268kg
With that out of the way, we can measure the force that the earth exerts on me:
earth force = force(weight in kg, g) => 733.955968kg*m/s^2
That was fun! We now know that the earth exerts
734 N of force on me. All the time. But we love her anyway.
Change the values in blue above to find out how much she exerts on you!
Newton's Universal Gravitation
Previously, we used the fact that the earth constantly accelerates us at the rate
g to keep us on the ground.
g => 9.80665m/s^2
But where did this number come from? We can use Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation to calculate it. Here's that law:
force of gravity = G*(mass * other mass)/dist^2
It states that the force due to gravity is proportional to the masses of two objects and inversely proportional to the squared distance between them.
The constant of proportionality is
G - a very different number from the
g we knew before. It is:
G = 6.67384e-11 m^3/kg/s^2 _TAG_ constant
Let's now use the law to calculate that value of
g = 9.8m/s^2 from above. We'll do it by using the mass of the earth and the ma
mass of earth = 5.972e24 kg _TAG_ radius of earth = 6,378,100 m _TAG_ earth gravity = force of gravity( other mass = mass of earth, dist = radius of earth) => 9.79745m*mass/s^2
And there it is! Well it's not quite
9.81m/s but that's just because our input numbers for earth's mass and radius weren't exactly what is used to calculate standard gravity, but it's darn close!
How close is it? Well let's give it our mass and see how close to
734 N it gets:
earth gravity(mass = weight in kg) => 733.267222m*kg/s^2
So close! It calculated
Why not try changing the numbers to see how much gravity would affect you if you lived on mars?
Ohm's law is fundamental to understanding electronics. It states that the current
i through a conductor is proportional to the voltage
v across it.
v = i * r i => v/r
We can use it directly to measure that voltage:
v(i = 2A, r = 100Ohm) => 200A*Ohm
Oops, it would be better if we told Calca about Amperes:
A = V/Ohm v(i = 2A, r = 100Ohm) => 200V
We can use Ohm's Law to solve for any of three variables using any of the other two:
v(i = 2A, r = 100Ohm) => 200V i(v = 200V, r = 100Ohm) => 2V/Ohm r(v = 200V, i = 2A) => 100Ohm
The current through a capacitor is proportional to the rate of change of the voltage across it:
ic(t) = C*der(v(t), t)
We can see the common property that the capacitor causes a 90 degree phase shift in current when its voltage is AC:
ic(t, v=sin(t)) => C*cos(t)
Now you can define logic functions, here is an implementation of exclusive or:
xor(a, b) = if a then!b else b xor(0, 0) => 0 xor(1, 0) => 1 xor(0, 1) => 1 xor(1, 1) => 0 half adder(a, b) = [xor(a,b), a && b] half adder(0, 0) => [0, 0] half adder(0, 1) => [1, 0] half adder(1, 0) => [1, 0] half adder(1, 1) => [0, 1]
Those are pretty cool, huh? We can use them to create a full adder.
adder(a, b, c) = let ab = half adder(a, b) in let abc = half adder(ab, c) in [abc, abc || ab] adder(0, 0, 0) => [0, 0] adder(0, 0, 1) => [1, 0] adder(0, 1, 0) => [1, 0] adder(0, 1, 1) => [0, 1] adder(1, 0, 0) => [1, 0] adder(1, 0, 1) => [0, 1] adder(1, 1, 0) => [0, 1] adder(1, 1, 1) => [1, 1]


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Septic shock resuscitation: what goals and how to achieve them?
The need to achieve adequate tissue oxygen delivery early in patients with septic shock is well established. However, it is less well recognized that tissue hypoperfusion can exist despite normalization of systemic hemodynamics. Efforts to resuscitate septic patients until adequate tissue perfusion has been achieved can potentially improve outcome. In a multicenter study, 130 patients with septic shock were resuscitated within 12 hours of diagnosis using a protocol including goals for mean arterial and pulmonary artery occluded pressures, urinary output, arterial pH, and hemoglobin goals. They were then randomly assigned to further resuscitation with either a cardiac index (≥ 3 l/minute per m2) or a gastric mucosal pH (≥ 7.32) target. The intensive care unit length of stay and 28-day mortality did not differ between groups, but more patients in the cardiac index group were in the target range, both at baseline and after resuscitation, as compared with the gastric mucosal pH group. In contrast to cardiac index, gastric mucosal pH at baseline and at 24 and 48 hours predicted mortality. Whether other targets for the chosen variables, or different and – in particular – earlier resuscitation efforts would have favored one group cannot be concluded from the data provided.
The previous issue of Critical Care includes a report of a multicenter study in which cardiac index and gastric mucosal pH targets were compared during resuscitation of patients with septic shock [1]. Similar to all other hemodynamic variables with the exception of central venous oxygen saturation, the value of a cardiac index target in the resuscitation of patients in septic shock has not been established. In contrast, achievement of other goals in the treatment of septic patients (for instance, early and adequate antibiotic treatment) has been associated with improved outcomes. Because 'normal' systemic hemodynamics do not necessarily guarantee adequate tissue oxygen supply, monitoring organ perfusion or function may be more relevant. It has been shown that persistent microcirculatory alterations are associated with organ failure and mortality in patients with septic shock [2]. Gastric mucosal pH (pHi) is an interesting parameter that has been shown to predict outcome in many patient groups [3, 4]. However, pHi-guided resuscitation has not improved survival rates. pHi is a composite variable that reflects not just adequacy of local perfusion but also systemic metabolic acid-base homeostasis and ventilation. The interaction of the components of pHi and their response to treatment may confound the interpretation and prognostic relevance of gastric mucosal acidosis.
In the study conducted by Palizas and coworkers [1], resuscitation to a pHi goal was not associated with better survival than resuscitation to a cardiac index target. Conceptually, there are four interpretations of these findings: the tested variables (cardiac index and pHi) are not relevant to survival; the defined targets were not adequate; the targets were relevant but only in combination with the achievement of other goals; and finally, the efforts to achieve the goals were not adequate, and the goal therefore was not achieved.
Were the tested parameters relevant for survival?
Cardiac output determines tissue oxygen delivery and is certainly an important variable with respect to the resolution of septic shock. However, other variables contribute to tissue oxygen transport, and the demands may also vary. In that sense, as the authors state themselves [1], a goal representing a presumed adequate relationship between oxygen delivery and consumption (for example, mixed venous oxygen saturation) would have been preferable. Its strong association with mortality makes pHi an ideal target variable for improving outcomes.
Were the defined targets adequate?
In the study reported by Palizas and coworkers [1], the target cardiac index was achieved at baseline in nearly 90% of patients. Because the mortality was 30%, it is clear that the target should have been higher, if increasing cardiac index is believed to be beneficial. In contrast, the incidence of low pHi was high. However, the variable is influenced by arterial carbon dioxide tension (PCO2). It is a relatively common practice to increase minute ventilation in order to normalize arterial pH when bicarbonate is low. This will also increase pHi without improving mucosal perfusion [5]. Thus, the mucosalarterial PCO2 gradient would have been a better choice. Whether a (normal) pHi of 7.32 can be achieved at all during the early phase of septic shock is questionable. The use of vasoconstrictors can decrease mesenteric perfusion, and metabolic effects of adrenaline (epinephrine) may increase PCO2 further.
Were other important targets achieved?
There is no information on how other aspects of septic shock treatment were addressed (antibiotics, source control, ventilator settings, and so on). This information would have enhanced ability to interpret the study findings.
Were the measures to achieve the goals adequate and the goals achieved?
Again, too few data are presented to answer this question. The authors indicate that crystalloids and colloids were given, but in their protocol only saline is listed. Although colloids can be harmful in sepsis [6], normal saline (or colloids in saline) can cause hyperchloremic metabolic acidosis and thereby decrease mucosal pHi. Adrenaline (epinephrine), noradrena-line (norepinephrine), dopamine, and dobutamine were used to improve blood pressure and flow. Although adrenaline can impair splanchnic perfusion in septic shock [7, 8], dobutamine appears to be able to reverse these changes, at least in part [9]. Dopamine can decrease splanchnic metabolic activity in patients with sepsis [10, 11]. pHi was measured every 6 hours, and no data are given on the frequency of cardiac index assessments. Four daily assessments of the treatment's influence on the target variable may be too few, especially in view of the fact that splanchnic blood flow is highly variable in septic patients [12]. There was no increase in cardiac output or pHi over the 48-hour observation period.
It would have been interesting to see how the individual therapeutic interventions influenced the target variables. Without this information, the adequacy of the treatment cannot be determined. Nevertheless, the work by Palizas and coworkers [1] reminds us that mucosal acidosis persists in the majority of patients who ultimately will die after resuscitation from septic shock. Monitoring and treating tissue hypoperfusion therefore remains an option to improve outcome.
carbon dioxide tension
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 Levy


text:
By Terry Kovel
Permanent-press fabrics have relieved most households of the need to iron clothing. In past centuries, ironing was an almost daily duty of a woman in the home.
Before about the 10th century, cloth was ironed with smooth wooden or glass pieces and a pounding stick. Heat was not used until the 16th century in Europe. By then, pressing irons were metal pans with long handles. A piece of charcoal was put in the pan to heat the bottom and the heated pan was rubbed over the cloth.
This crude iron was gradually improved. Charcoal was replaced by a heated iron rod to avoid the charcoal ashes that sometimes fell on the cloth. Next came special box irons with handles and pointed fronts. They were shaped like the electric and steam irons used today. Soon a solid piece of iron, also in today's familiar shape, was made to put on the stove to heat, then quickly used to heat and smooth cloth.
By the turn of the 20th century, irons were heated by liquid gas, alcohol, gasoline or electricity. Unfortunately, some of the liquid-fueled irons blew up.
The electric iron was patented in 1882, but few homes had electricity back then. So the electric iron was not in general use until about 1915. Since then, irons have been improved with the addition of thermostats that control heat and steam. Some even became cordless and could fold up to go with travelers.
All types of old ironing sticks, mangling boards and irons are collected today. Nineteenthand unusual 20th-century examples sell for hundreds of dollars. In the 1950s, an early Chinese iron that looks like a small, ornate cooking pot with a handle was copied and used as a portable ashtray. These mid-20th-century copies sell for about $30 today. A genuine antique Chinese iron is worth hundreds of dollars.
Q: Recently I purchased five matching maple side chairs with "Mottville, N.Y." stamped on the back of the top slat of each chair. Two of the chairs are stamped "F. Sinclair" under "Mottville," while the other three are stamped "Union Chair Works." I've cleaned up the chairs and given them new woven seats. Please tell me the approximate age and value of the chairs, and explain the different marks.
A: The Union Chair Works factory was built in Mottville, near Skaneateles, N.Y., in 1866, although some records say the founding of the company dates back to 1859. The company's owners, Joseph Hubbard and Francis A. Sinclair, advertised their furniture under the brand name "Common Sense" and eventually made chairs, rockers, tables and settees. The company operated at least into the 1880s, and perhaps into the early 1900s. If all you had to do to get the chairs into tiptop shape was clean them and replace the woven seats, the set could sell for more than $500.
Q: I want to leave my collection of Hummel figurines to my 14-year-old great-granddaughter. What should I wrap them in and how should I store them?
A: Hummel figurines are based on the drawings of the nun M.I. "Berta" Hummel. They were first made in 1935 by the W. Goebel Porcelain Co. of Oeslau (now part of Rodental), Germany. The figurines are made of earthenware. Parts that aren't glazed will absorb moisture, so they need to be stored in a dry place. Don't store them in the basement, which often is damp, or in the attic, where they would be subject to extreme temperature changes, which could cause crazing. You can wrap the figurines in plain archival paper, white tissue paper or pieces of white bedsheets and pack them carefully in a box with bunches of tissue paper between them to prevent them from bumping each other when the box is moved. Don't wrap them in newspaper. Newsprint comes off and may stain the figurines. Don't wrap them in colored paper or plastic, either. The best way to store them is in their original boxes, if you still have them.
Q: My mother left me an oval brooch made of blue milk glass. I think it originally belonged to her grandmother, who died in 1924. It's a series of little blue balls and tiny silver balls. The gold-tone border is impressed "Czechoslovakia" in capital letters on the back. What do you think it's worth?
A: The country of Czechoslovakia was formed in 1918, when World War I ended. So your brooch was not made before 1918. The country split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. Costume jewelry made of Czechoslovakian glass sells for a wide range of prices, depending on design and condition. Your brooch could sell for $20 to $50.
Q: I was pleased to see your recent column about furniture designs by Charles Rohlfs. But being from Buffalo, N.Y., I was disheartened that you said Rohlfs was a New York City furniture maker. He actually lived and worked in Buffalo.
A: Thanks for speaking up for Buffalo. Rohlfs (_PHONE_) was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and studied design at the Cooper Union in Manhattan. But he moved his family to Buffalo in 1887, when he took a job with a stove manufacturer there. In 1897 he opened his own workshop in Buffalo and created his unique furniture designs for a decade.
Tip: If you get gum on your Oriental rug or carpet, freeze it with an ice cube in a plastic bag, then scrape it off with a plastic credit card.
Sign up for our weekly email, "Kovels Komments." It includes the latest news, tips and collector's questions and is free if you register on our website. Kovels.com provides lists of publications, clubs, appraisers, auction houses, people who sell parts or repair antiques and more. Kovels.com adds to the information in this column and helps you find useful sources needed by collectors.
Terry Kovel answers as many questions as possible through the column. By sending a letter with a question, you give full permission for use in the column or any other Kovel forum. Names, addresses or email addresses will not be published. We cannot guarantee the return of any photograph, but if a stamped envelope is included, we will try. The volume of mail makes personal answers or appraisals impossible. Write to Kovels, (Name of this newspaper), King Features Syndicate, 300 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019.
Current prices are recorded from antiques shows, flea markets, sales and auctions throughout the United States. Prices vary in different locations because of local economic conditions.
Madame Alexander doll, Chatterbox, hard plastic and vinyl, pigtails, sleep eyes, head turns, talk button in front, battery-operated, 1961, 24 inches, $55.
Bermuda Triangle board game, made in Ireland, Milton Bradley, 1976, 20 x 12 inches, $60.
Cookie pail, Sunshine Biscuits of New York, red, white and blue cardboard, pictures little cookies in toy shapes, tin cover, handle, 1950s, 11 ounces, $70.
Cambridge Glass cake stand, Virginia pattern, rum well in center, 1940s, 8 x 11 inches, $200.
Cameo pin, diamond accent around woman's neck, carved flowers at left shoulder, dress draped across front, silver filigree and scrollwork, 1920s, 1 5/8 x 1 1/2 inches, $275.
Bellows, turtleback, painted long-tailed bird, black ground, brass nozzle, American, 19th century, 17 3/4 inches, $555.
Show towel, silk and wool on linen, potted flowers, peacocks and trees, 2 verses, 3 rows of fringe, "Catherine Derr," 1854, 60 x 17 3/4 inches, $705.
Hepplewhite card table, mahogany, poplar and chestnut, shaped top over banded inlay panels, tapered legs with string inlay, _PHONE_, 30 x 35 x 18 inches, $1,765.
Newcomb College pottery jar, lid, blue matte glaze, raised flowers, vines and leaves, marked, Anna Francis Simpson, 1919, 7 inches, $4,720.
Chippendale tall case clock, mahogany and pine, broken-arch pediment, floral rosettes, glass door, 8-day movement, signed John Fissler, Frederick Town (Md.), c. 1790, 102 1/2 inches, $4,995.
Keep up with changes in the collectibles world. Send for a free sample issue of our 12-page, full-color newsletter, "Kovels on Antiques and Collectibles," filled with prices, news, information and photos, plus major news about the world of collecting. To subscribe at a bargain $27 for 12 issues, write Kovels, P.O. Box 8534, Big Sandy, TX 75755; call _PHONE_; or subscribe online at Kovelsonlinestore.com.


text:
Familiarity Breeds Desire: Seriality and the Televisual Title Sequence
Lisa Coulthard / University of British Columbia
Opening title sequences seduce, invite, prepare and inform their audiences. Frequently foregrounded and formally complex, the opening sequence can attain a level of import far beyond its introductory capacity. Forming a kind of audiovisual contract with the viewer, television opening credits represent a privileged space of narrational suspension, cognitive mapping, libinidal activation and spectatorial engagement: in short, they can be both a space of pure pleasure in image and sound and one that sets the stage, tone and atmosphere for the ensuing action. Especially when accompanied by a voice-over, they frequently also offer essential narrative points and information. For all of this significance, import and visibility, the opening credit is a much under-theorized and under-analyzed audiovisual space. Despite numerous websites, blogs and internet top ten lists, there is very little scholarly research into the space of the opening sequence in either film or television.
Indeed, because of the television series's fundamental repetitive seriality, the opening sequence is a particularly integral and intriguing field for analysis, a fact that networks such as Showtime and HBO have recently recognized if we look at recent innovations in their series' title designs. The willing viewing of, and listening to, the opening sequence of a TV series on a weekly, daily or hourly basis (depending on your viewing situation) is a unique spectatorial experience suggestive of the potential import of the space of the credits. It is crucial to remember here that this audiovisual experience is absolutely optional in televisual viewing – there are no implicit norms, coercive forms or social prohibitions in the viewing or non-viewing of opening televisual sequences. Whether viewed streaming on-air, on video or downloaded online, the attention paid to the opening sequence is a non-compulsory and discretionary activity.
It is also an audiovisual experience imbued with intense pleasure, concentration and engagement. A quick look at a few key websites considering opening sequences as well as a glance at youtube remakes of openings indicates the level of audience engagement in these seemingly secondary, formally non-diegetic, paratextual televisual moments that frequently have little to do directly with series content. Producers, designers and composers have clearly noticed this power of the opening sequence. For instance, the work of Los Angeles based a52 and Seattle's Digital Kitchen have garnered awards, attention and a wide popularity verging on cult fandom with sequences characterized by atmospheric, tonal and audiovisual sophistication and ambiguity. Together, these two design companies are responsible for a large number of the television title sequences shortlisted by different internet and fan sites: Dexter, Six Feet Under, True Blood, Nip/ Tuck (Digital Kitchen) and Carnivale, Deadwood and Rome (a52). Sharing stylistic experimentation, all of these opening sequences suggest the powerful emotive and tonal paratextuality of the title sequence.
Although stemming from a literary framework, Gerard Genette's concept of the paratext has been an influential one in media studies. In a media context, it indicates not only the space of the opening and closing credits, but also advertising, fandom and trailers and other elements that work alongside a text (in this case a film, television show or series), but that are not strictly a part of the main diegesis of that text. With opening title sequences, we see the way this concept both productively expands and problematically restricts the critical engagement with main title design: as the afterlives, fandom and aesthetic appreciation of main titles indicates, many sequences acquire a textual status that operates in conjunction with the main text but not in a secondary parasitical relationship. In this way, opening credits can be (and sometimes are) seen as short films, works of art in their own right and not simply a medium for advertising the main text. This can be tied to the willingness of audiences to engage in repeat viewings: there is an appreciation and pleasure in the sequence itself that cannot be accounted for by the textual analogue of the book jacket cover.
In order to explore this in a little depth I want to look at the affective engagement, abstraction and experimentation in the paratextual space of the opening credits for True Blood [view] and Deadwood [view]. Both of these opening sequences are marked by central ambiguities, as the openings give impressions and tone but relatively little information. This ambiguity is key as the sequences work on an abstract rather than narrational level: neither of these sequences is particularly informative about the series, neither clearly indicates narrative focus, genre or story and neither features a central character. In these sequences, we have no real sense of characters or storylines, yet each is strong in conveying atmosphere, a sense of the historical past and a tonal gothic.
In both Deadwood and True Blood, the emphases are emotional and abstractly conceptual: suggestive of the series and poignant to those familiar with the show, the sequences on their own contain little that is informative or preparatory for the viewer. For example, the opening of True Blood trades in a kind southern gothic through a blending of archival footage of religious ritual, clansmen, animal decay and violence and erotic spectacle. Other than the billboard decrying fangs, there is no indication of the series' concentration on vampires and the supernatural; instead, natural decay and degradation pair with images suggestive of a strong desire for human interaction, sexual and spiritual. As the producer for True Blood Alan Ball has noted, the opening for the series works toward abstract conceptualism, rather than narrational detail: "I wanted a sense of the twin polarities of the need for transcendence as it plays out in the rural south – of church and sort of whipping yourself up into an evangelical frenzy and the honkytonk on Saturday night where you basically do the same thing only through drugs and hooking up and getting into brawls." 1
Similarly trading in abstracted and aesthetically beautiful imagery, Deadwood's opening sequence gives a sense of period and place, but only in very non-specific terms. Fractured images of a butcher, the radiance of blood running down a white screen and a horse running in the wild coalesce to emphasize a vague sense of the dialectic of freedom and restraint, life and death. The brownness of the series' cinematography is given this privileged moment of quiet respite as the isolated images invite a concentration that the cacophony and muddiness of the actual series does not allow. These effects are intensified in the musical opening that offers the plaintive strains of a fiddle that is tonal and pleasurable, but also indicative of melancholy and loss.
Deadwood Theme: Courtesy of David Schwartz Music
I emphasize the auditory aspect, because it is crucial to recognize the place of music in the opening credits. Title songs or themes set tone, mood and play a significant role in both the appeal (or lack of appeal) of the title sequence and the pleasures that can be found in its repeated viewing. Studies on music and cognition have shown that familiarity breeds enjoyment: we are more apt to like a piece of music the more often we hear it, a fact known by mainstream radio, music and culture industries. Together with the experimental, fractured and imagistically oriented visual track of both of these openings, the title music works to mark the opening sequence as a distinct and singular space: David Schwartz's innovative opening theme "featuring Fiddle, Cavaquinho, Weissenborn, Guitar, Harmonium, Duduk, and Kitchen Pots," and Jace Everett's country song "Bad Things" have both taken on lives outside their series-based paratextuality, a status reflected in the opening sequences themselves.
Not merely ancillary, informational, functional, commercially based advertisements for the series, the opening sequence is both an integral part of both Deadwood and True Blood (and many others) and a textually cohesive, if not totally independent, cultural and aesthetic object. Engaging in a contract with the repeat viewer, luring in the neophyte and seducing all, the well designed opening sequence surpasses the boundaries of paratextuality to become a ritualistic event, enacted before every viewing and appreciated as a unique televisual moment, one that becomes more exceptional in its serial repetition.
Please feel free to comment.NOTES


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P3 Toolkit
Analytical Tools
P3-VALUE: Public Sector Comparator Tool User Manual
December 27, 2013
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Chapter 3. PSC Development Overview
Agencies considering P3 procurement options for a highway project may find it useful to conduct a VfM analysis to compare the potential of different project delivery structures to provide value for money. As part of a VfM analysis, the PSC represents a baseline projection of the costs for public sector delivery that serves as a benchmark against which an agency may consider the costs of P3 procurement. The specific steps for completing a VfM analysis are:
 1. Conduct a risk assessment to identify, quantify, and allocate risks between the public and private partners.
 2. Develop a PSC estimate that indicates the potential cost of public delivery.
 3. Develop a P3 estimate (or "shadow bid") that indicates the potential cost of P3 delivery.
 4. Conduct a VfM analysis that compares the public and P3 delivery costs to assess which option provides greater VfM for the public.
The PSC Tool and User Manual utilize a hypothetical highway project as an example to demonstrate how certain assumptions affect the PSC's results and how those outputs inform the VfM analysis. As outlined in Figure 2, the PSC Tool contains four major classes of worksheets that are color-coded by purpose.
Timing & Prerequisites
Once a public agency has made the decision to move forward with a project, it may consider the options available for the project's delivery structure. If an agency is considering P3 procurement, it may conduct a VfM analysis to inform the selection of the preferred delivery structure. In developing a VfM analysis, public agencies rely on the outcomes of several other tasks conducted in a project's development (e.g., traffic and revenue forecasts and risk assessment) to inform the assumptions made in the analysis.
Agencies typically conduct a VfM analysis after completing the above tasks. An agency may consider qualitative factors earlier in the project development process to assess the potential procurement options that will be evaluated quantitatively in the VfM analysis.
Figure 2: Key Components of the PSC Tool
Function The worksheets found within the green tabs allow users to accept the PSC Tool's disclaimers, review key terms and definitions, and navigate through the tool via an 'Index' tab. It is important to note that users must accept the disclaimer on the 'Introduction' tab before accessing the remaining content of the PSC Tool.
Assumptions & Examples The worksheets found within the blue tabs provide users with an editable template of key project assumptions regarding project costs, funding, and revenue. Users enter all the PSC inputs into blue-shaded cells or select the appropriate options from available drop-down menus.
Cash Flows The worksheets found within the gray tabs present the hypothetical project's cash flows based on the assumptions input by the user in the blue tabs. Users cannot alter data in the gray sheets.
Outputs The worksheets found within the yellow tabs calculate the hypothetical project's net present cost (NPC). Users can conduct a sensitivity analysis and a scenario analysis on the NPC. There is another disclaimer users must accept prior to viewing the outputs.
Structuring the PSC
The PSC considered should be the most likely project delivery alternative to a P3. The PSC may be structured as a traditional design-bid-build alternative or it may be structured as design-build or even design-build-finance procurement if these are reasonable alternative delivery structures for the project's public sponsor.
There are a number of qualitative factors, such as those listed below, that agencies should consider when developing the PSC. Agencies should consider qualitative factors first to decide on the project delivery structure and requirements of the PSC and ultimately to decide which project delivery structure best achieves the project objectives.
 1. What would be the most efficient and realistic project delivery structure if the project is not delivered as a P3?
 2. What are the agency's objectives for the project? How do different project delivery structures help to achieve those objectives?
 3. Are there statutory, regulatory, or legal restrictions that limit the project delivery structures available to the public sponsor?
 4. Is the project affordable to the public sector under different project delivery structures?
 5. Does the agency have sufficient staff resources and capabilities to manage the procurement process and to deliver the project to the service standards and operational requirements contemplated under the PSC?
 6. Is there sufficient information of reasonable quality on public sector project delivery costs to develop a representative PSC?
 7. How will different project delivery options accelerate or delay project delivery?
 8. Will the project delivery options considered allow for more or less transparency and accountability?
 9. Will the project delivery options considered have inequitable impacts on certain populations?
 10. Are there other advantages or disadvantages associated with the project delivery options considered that are difficult to quantify, such as vulnerability costs or deferral costs?
Chapter 8 of the Primer provides additional guidance on qualitative VfM assessments.
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text:
Setting the sun on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Botswana
2 September 2020
We have great news! Botswana is on track to end its HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2026. This would make it the first country in Africa to reach this milestone, thanks mainly to the work of the Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership (BHP). When BHP's work began in 1996, Botswana had one of the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in the world, so this project has demonstrated that it is possible to control HIV/AIDS, even in the most severely affected countries. The BHP is a collaborative research and training initiative between the Government of Botswana and the Harvard AIDS Institute. In 2012, Oak gave BHP a USD 3.5 million grant to find a cost-effective way of preventing and controlling HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa.
BHP did a research study of about 100,000 HIV-infected adults across 30 villages in Botswana. This study showed that rates of new HIV infections could be dramatically reduced in adults by treating HIV-infected adults who are most likely to infect others with two antiviral drugs (i.e. truvada/efavirenz and truvada/dolutegravir). The study helped reduce new HIV infections by at least 30 per cent in under three years. Based on these results, BHP believes new infections could be reduced in Botswana by 90 per cent by 2026, which would, according to UNAIDS criteria, represent the end of the epidemic.
BHP also researched the effects of drugs used to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Findings showed that the standard treatment increased the risks of adverse birth outcomes, so BHP worked with UNAIDS to revise public health recommendations to include an alternative treatment.
In addition, BHP carried out genetic analyses and found two genetic markers/regions in the DNA which are associated with the HIV epidemic in southern Africa and which may explain why the AIDS epidemic in southern Africa is more severe than in other parts of the world.