line integrals, continued fractions, circular functions, and even Euclidean geometry) as well as offering Euler's formula up as a tautology based on a definition. But let's consider where in one's education this question arises: it's usually well before most of these other concepts are encountered. The complex numbers have just been introduced; the Argand diagram is available; $\exp(x)$ is most likely defined as the limiting value of $(1 + x/n)^n$, and $\cos$ and $\sin$ are defined as circular functions (that is, as arclength parameters for coordinates of the unit circle). So the question deserves a response in this context using mathematics accessible to someone at this level.
Accordingly, I propose that we interpret $\exp(i x)$ as the limit of $(1 + i x/n)^n$, because at least one understands how to compute the latter (as iterated multiplication of 1 by $1 + i x/n$), one at least vaguely intuits what the limit of a sequence of points in the complex plane might mean, and one has learned that $\cos(\theta) + i \sin(\theta)$ is quite literally the complex number plotted at $\left( \cos(\theta), \sin(\theta) \right)$ in the plane.
It seems natural to evaluate the limit by looking at its modulus and argument separately. The modulus is relatively easy: because $|1 + i x/n| = \sqrt { 1 + (x/n)^2 }$, the modulus of its $n$th power equals $\left( 1 + (x/n)^2 \right) ^{n/2}$. We can exploit the one limit assumed to be known:
$\left( 1 + (x/n)^2 \right) ^{n/2} = \left( \left( 1 + x^2 / n^2 \right) ^ {n^2} \right) ^ {1/{2n}} \simeq \left( \exp ( x^2 ) \right) ^ {1/{2n}} \to 1$.
(There's some hand-waving in the last two steps. This is characteristic of limiting arguments at this level. Those of you who can see where the rigor is lacking also know exactly how to supply the missing steps.) Whence, whatever $\exp( i x )$ might be, we deduce it should lie on the unit circle.
Now we turn our attention to the argument of the limit. The sequence of arguments
$\left( 1 + (x/n)^2 \right) ^{1/2}, \left( 1 + (x/n)^2 \right) ^{2/2}, \ldots, \left( 1 + (x/n)^2 \right) ^{k/2}, \ldots$
obviously is non-decreasing, because it's a geometric sequence with multiplier of 1 or greater. That is, each successive multiplication by $1 + i x / n$ is expanding an original right triangle with vertices at (0,0), (1,0), and (1, $x/n$), but in the limit the amount of expansion is reduced to unity, as we have seen. In the Argand diagram we're just laying out similar copies of this original right triangle, placing one leg of each new copy along the hypotenuse of the previous one. In the limit, the length of the small leg (originally $x/n$) therefore remains constant. These observations imply that near the limit, we can take all these $n$ little triangles to be essentially congruent, whence the length of the path traced out by the succession of images of the small leg must be extremely close to $n (x/n) = x$. This pins down where on the circle $\exp( i x )$ must lie: it is the point reached by traveling (signed) distance $x$ counterclockwise along the circle beginning at (1,0). To anyone exposed to the definition of $\sin$ and $\cos$ in terms of circular functions, it is immediate that the coordinates of this limiting location are $\left( \cos(x), \sin(x) \right)$ and we are done.
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This to my mind is the most intuitive and explanatory argument. (It was a long time after I knew Euler's identity that I discovered this argument, which was the moment I felt I had truly understood Euler's identity on a visceral level.) The same argument is hinted at in Conway and Guy's The Book of Numbers, with a supporting (static) graphic. – user43208 Sep 1 '13 at 23:38
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Proof: Consider the function $f(t) = e^{-it}(\cos t + i \sin t)$ for $t \in \mathbb{R}$. By the quotient rule \begin{eqnarray} f^{\prime}(t) = e^{-i t}(i \cos t - \sin t) - i e^{-i t}(\cos t + i \sin t) = 0 \end{eqnarray} identically for all $t \in \mathbb{R}$. Hence, $f$ is constant everywhere. Since $f(0) = 1$, it follows that $f(t) = 1$ identically. Therefore, $e^{it} = \cos t + i \sin t$ for all $t \in \mathbb{R}$, as claimed.
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This is definitely the most elegant proof! – Abramo Mar 10 '12 at 23:50
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HINT $\:$ Both $\:\rm e^{ix}\:$ and $\:\rm cos(x) + i \; sin(x) \:$ are solutions of $\;\rm y' = i \; y,\;\; y(0) = 1, \;$ so they are equal by the uniqueness theorem. Alternatively, bisect into even and odd parts the power series for $\:\rm e^{ix} \:,\;$ i.e.
$$\begin{align} \rm f(x) \ \ &=\ \ \rm\frac{f(x)+f(-x)}{2} \;+\; \frac{f(x)-f(-x)}{2} \\ \\ \Rightarrow\quad\quad \rm e^{ix} \ \ &=\ \ \rm\cos(x) \ +\ i \:\sin(x) \end{align}$$
REMARKS 1.$\;$ Uniqueness theorems provide powerful tools for proving equalities for functions that satisfy certain nice differential or difference (recurrence) equations. This includes a large majority of functions encountered in theory and practice. Such ideas lie behind algorithms implemented in computer algebra systems, e.g. search the computational literature using the terms "D-finite" and/or "holonomic" functions. For a less trivial but still easy example of this technique see my recent post which proves the identity
$$\rm \frac{sinh^{-1}(x)}{\sqrt{x^2+1}} \ = \ \ \sum_{k=0}^\infty\ (-1)^k \frac{(2k)!!}{(2k+1)!!} \: x^{2k+1}$$
For a simple discrete example see my post here where I remark that $\rm\; 13 \:|\: 3^{n+1} + 4^{2n-1} =: f_n \;$ follows from $\;\rm f_2 = f_1 = 0 \;$ and the (obvious) fact that $\;\rm f_n \;$ satisfies a monic 2nd order linear recurrence. Namely let $\;\rm S\; f_n := f_{n+1} \;$ be the shift operator. Then $\;\rm S - 3 \;$ kills $\rm\; 3^{n+1} \;$ and $\;\rm S - 16 \;$ kills $\;\rm 4^{2n-1} \;$ therefore $\;\rm (S-3)\:(S-16) = S^2 - 19\: S + 48 \;$ kills their sum $\;\rm f_n \:,\;$ i.e. $\;\rm f_{n+2} = 19\; f_{n+1} - 48\; f_n\;$. Therefore $\:\rm mod\:13:\ f_2 = f_1 = 0 \;\Rightarrow\; f_3 = 19\: f_2 - 48\: f_1 = 0 \;\Rightarrow f_4 = 0 \Rightarrow f_5 = 0 \Rightarrow \cdots\Rightarrow\; f_n = 0\: $. Hence $\:0\:$ is the unique solution of the above recurrence that satisfies the intial conditions $\;\rm f_2 = f_1 = 0. \;$ This is simply an obvious special case of the uniqueness theorem for difference equations (recurrences). Once again, by invoking a uniqueness theorem, we have greatly simplified the deduction of an equality.
Notice that, above, we don't need to know the precise recurrence relation. Rather, we need only know a bound on its degree, so that we know how many initial terms are needed to determine the solution uniquely. In practice, as above, one can often easily derive simple upper bounds on the degree of the recurrence or differential equation - which makes the method even more practical.
2. $\;$ Generalizing the above bisection into


Level: ECE/Toddler
Grades: Pre-K | Age: 2-5 | Written by: Jessica
[Jessica is a teacher at the Quinsigamond Child Study Center, in Worcester, MA]
Preschoolers will create a collaborative painting together using coffee cans, paint and golf balls.
What You Need:
-Empty Large Coffee Can With Lid
-Thin Paint
-One Golf Ball For Each Color of Paint
-Plastic Spoons
-Paper Cut To Fit Inside Of Can
-Two Children
What You Do:
 1. Place golf balls in a small bowl of paint.
 2. Each child uses a spoon to take out a golf ball from their color choice of paint (two colors work best, one for each child) and transfer them into a coffee can lined with art paper.
 3. Place lid on the can.
 4. Have children sit on the floor and roll the can back and forth for as long as they wish.
 5. When they are done, open the lid, pour the balls back into the paint and pull out the painting that they created together.
 6. To label the paper, do so on the back side before children start.
 7. To ensure that each child has a 'copy' to take home, have each pair make two.
 8. This is a wonderful photo opportunity, and if displaying the photos, have each pair make three creations!
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_USER_{Dahlman2007Reciprocity, abstract = {Reciprocal behavior, the rewarding of kind acts and the punishment of unkind acts, is relatively well established among adults. We test if reciprocal behavior exists already among children 3-8 years old. Three simple anonymous allocation games are conducted with 242 children. In a first stage, half of the children decide whether to give a bag of raisin to another anonymous child or not. The three games differ in terms of the cost of giving and the relative difference in payoffs. In a second stage the roles are reversed between the two children to test for reciprocal behavior. We find reciprocal behavior in all three games with highly significant effects for two of the three games. Furthermore, the degree of reciprocity tends to increase with age. The effect of reciprocity is not significant among 3-5 year old children, whereas the effect is highly significant in all three games for 6-8 year olds.}, address = {Stockholm}, author = {Sandra Dahlman and Pontus Ljungqvist and Magnus Johannesson}, copyright = {_URL_ keywords = {C90; D64; J13; 330; Reciprocity; prosociality; children; experiments; Kinder; Soziale Beziehungen; Test; Verhalten; Schweden}, language = {eng}, number = {674}, publisher = {Ekonomiska Forskningsinst.}, title = {Reciprocity in young children}, type = {SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance}, url = {_URL_ year = {2007} }


text:
In mid-2023, the UK's Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) announced a compulsory directive requiring banks and payment firms to promptly reimburse victims of online bank fraud within a five-day timeframe. This new mandate was established specifically to address situations where individuals conducting transactions on behalf of a business inadvertently send money to a bank account manipulated by fraudsters. The reason for this new regulation is that, in recent years, a substantial number of individuals across the globe have experienced the loss of their bank and investment funds due to an unprecedented surge in deceptive online bank transactions targeting British consumers. This type of fraud is commonly referred to as authorized push payment (APP) fraud.
The PSR's new guidelines were based on findings from investigations into consumer behavior and the subsequent responsiveness of payment service providers (PSPs) in addressing payment fraud issues. These were published in an October 2023 report, Authorised Push Payment (APP) Fraud Performance Report, which summarizes three key takeaways for organizations that enable APP:
The rapid adoption of online banking and the proliferation of peer-to-peer payment platforms have significantly simplified tasks such as bill payments, check deposits, and online account balance checks for UK residents. Consider that in 2022, approximately 93% of the adult population in the UK engaged in some form of online banking. The enhanced convenience is helping to drive increased online transactional volume, but it comes with a substantial drawback in the form of APP fraud.
The prevailing reality of life in 2023 revolves around online transactions, a fact underscored by the latest fraud data released by UK Finance. According to the data, a significant 77% of fraudulent APPs originated in the online realm, while an additional 17% were traced back to telecommunications, specifically SMS or phone calls.
Undoubtedly, APP fraud has emerged as a pressing national issue in the UK. In 2022 alone, losses attributable to APP fraud reached a staggering £583 million. Experiencing a 39% surge from the prior year, APP scams now stand out as a predominant fraud threat to British businesses and consumers.
Because instances of APP fraud are on a significant rise, it is a clear signal that regulators are going to put increasing pressure on banks and other financial institutions to implement better fraud protection measures.
APP fraud occurs when fraudsters deceive individuals into initiating a substantial bank transfer. Unlike unauthorized payments, APP fraud makes the victim a participant by actively authorizing and executing the payment, often under false pretenses created by the fraudster.
Like other types of fraud, APP fraud is not manifested through a single scenario. Rather, it involves the interplay of a variety of factors to create a complex web of activity that is challenging to identify and isolate. Characteristics and components of APP fraud include the following:
Fraudsters employ a range of deceptive techniques to trick individuals. This may include instances where they pose as seemingly legitimate entities, including banks, financial institutions, or even trusted service providers. They create convincing narratives or scenarios to gain the victim's trust and convince them to initiate a payment.
As in so many types of fraud, social engineering plays a crucial role in how APP fraud is perpetrated. Fraudsters exploit psychological and emotional triggers to manipulate individuals. This may involve creating a sense of urgency, fear, or trust to prompt the victim to act quickly without questioning the legitimacy of the transaction.
A common APP tactic is impersonating trusted entities such as banks, credit unions, and other types of financial services enterprises. Fraudsters often use sophisticated methods to mimic official communication channels, including emails, phone calls, or even text messages. This impersonation aims to deceive the victim into believing they are interacting with a legitimate institution.
Unlike some other forms of fraud where transactions occur without the victim's consent, APP fraud involves the victim actively authorizing the payment. This authorization is obtained through manipulation, misinformation, or the creation of a false sense of trust.
The actual act of APP fraud typically happens by convincing victims to make substantial transfers of funds. Once the payment is authorized, it is often processed through real-time payment systems, making it difficult or impossible to reverse. This adds to the urgency and impact of the fraud.
APP fraud can manifest in various scenarios, including romance scams, purchase scams, impersonation scams, and investment scams. Each scenario is tailored to exploit specific vulnerabilities or desires of the victim. We go into these different types of scenarios in the section below.
Fraudsters are cagey and attuned to how their tactics are tracked. As a result, those who engage in APP fraud are continually adapting their tactics, staying ahead of prevention measures. As technology advances, so do the methods employed in APP fraud. This necessitates a dynamic and multifaceted approach to counteract the evolving nature of these schemes.
Understanding that APP fraud is multidimensional is important for fraud teams to understand. They must recognize patterns and behaviors that indicate APP-related criminal schemes so that they can implement effective preventive measures and protect against financial losses. This is precisely why the UK's PSR is now demanding more rigorous measures to help banks prioritize identification verification as a critical component for combatting APP fraud.
Clearly, there is a lot of work that goes into creating the right set of actions to make APP fraud a profitable endeavor. But what does it actually look like to the end user? Well, as we now understand, committing APP fraud involves persuading victims to initiate fund transfers, and unlike fraud that involves unauthorized payments, it incorporates a distinct psychological element. APP fraud is ultimately about some semblance of cajoling, confusing, and manipulating victims over extended periods to deceive them.
In a Prove webinar, Fighting APP Fraud and Scams, Chris Parker (Fraud Analytics Product & Threat Lead at NatWest Group) outlined some common forms of social engineering that are the foundation for APP fraud in the UK. These include:
The allure of APP fraud has increased for criminals in recent years, particularly with the introduction of real-time payment systems. In the UK, the inception of Faster Payments in 2008 marked the beginning of the initial wave of these types of scams.
Faster Payments was a pivotal electronic money transfer method in the UK, specifically designed for fast transactions. As a real-time payment system, it emphasized speed and convenience by ensuring that any transferred funds were received in near real-time. Before the advent of Faster Payments, the process of moving funds between bank accounts typically took three days for the process of transfer, clearance, and deposit.
Since the introduction of Faster Payments, real-time payment systems have become almost ubiquitous, with tools like PIX in Brazil, the New Payments Platform in Australia, and the recent launch of FedNow in the U.S., which is managed by the U.S. Federal Reserve Banks.
As a result of all this innovation, real-time payments are now integrated into the lives of almost every consumer, but, regrettably, real-time payments fraud has also become a pervasive issue. It's easy to see how this is a ready-made environment for fraud. Once an individual is deceived into performing a seemingly normal, regular act, there is a whole underpinning of activities that compel them to make a payment under false pretenses to a bank account controlled by the fraudster. The incorporation of real-time payment schemes intensifies the gravity of the situation, as payments processed through these systems become irrevocable. This irreversibility leaves victims helpless once they become aware that they have fallen victim to deception.
Banks and other financial institutions can take a variety of measures to address this issue. The initial emphasis is on verifying the legitimacy of companies and promptly responding to reports of impersonation. This proactive approach is intended to prevent individuals from unwittingly sharing personal information online.
An illustrative example involves instances on platforms like X (such as Twitter) where an account impersonates a legitimate company in response to customer service complaints, attempting to extract personal information. This information could be exploited for fraud or become part of the burgeoning trove of data traded online about individuals. Another prevalent scenario is observed on platforms like Facebook Marketplace, where individuals are induced to prepay for goods without any intention of delivering them. These situations underscore the imperative for online companies to enhance their efforts. This includes not only an increased reliance on AI for cost-effective monitoring but also a commitment to maintaining human oversight. This dual approach is crucial because fraudsters adeptly adapt to the challenges posed by automated systems.
Given the intricate nature of this fraud vector, there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to completely thwart all APP fraud. Nevertheless, there are several strategies that financial institutions can and should integrate:
First and foremost is education. Highlighted in the "Fighting APP Fraud and Scams in 2022" webinar, Chris Parker underscores the significance of initiatives like the UK's Take 5 campaign. This campaign encourages individuals to pause before parting with their money, considering the risks of fraud. Recognizing that fraudsters excel at creating a sense of urgency, education emphasizes the importance of slowing down before approving any money transfers. However, acknowledging the limitations of education alone, additional technical solutions become imperative.
Financial institutions, both in the UK and globally, can implement a range of technical fixes to combat APP scams. Experts emphasize the need to avoid a generic warning message for every transaction, as users may become desensitized to them. Instead, it is recommended that companies deliver warnings to their users specifically before high-risk transactions occur, ensuring that users pay attention when it matters most.
At Prove, we address the issue through a lens that goes beyond just account access, which we know can be manipulated with relative ease by fraudsters. As a result, we see the problem being about how we bind an identity to the device that a person uses. That presents an actual human-in-the-mix element that cannot be cheated. By establishing a robust identity link, the Prove Auth® passwordless authentication solution facilitates passwordless and OTP-less authentication across mobile apps, web-based platforms

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


text:
Michele Slowik is the Assistant Director of and Behavior Analyst at the Nexus School, a private school in Montgomery County, PA for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Their approach applies B.F. Skinner's research in Applied Behavior Analysis. As a small school, with only 19 students from ages 5-21, the Nexus School can offer highly individualized programming. It is dedicated to quality faculty training. Michele took the time to explain to us how the School is currently using ACCLAIM to offer pointed feedback and instruction to its teachers.
ACCLAIM: Tell us more about the curriculum at the Nexus School?
MS: We utilize highly structured programming and very sophisticated behavioral interventions. In order for our students to achieve their maximum potential in the most efficient ways, our teachers must learn to provide proactive measures for success, to react to students with perfect timing, and to appropriately respond to the unexpected.
"Seconds count in our response to the children and timing is everything."
ACCLAIM: In the past, how have you provided teachers with guidance and mentorship?
MS: Prior to Acclaim, Nexus School teachers filmed themselves working with students during class time. Their individual supervisors would subsequently review videos, and write down their thoughts, noting the time stamps of moments in playback they were addressing. It was time consuming for teachers to fast forward to the places their supervisors had noted.
[PHOTO: Students at the Nexus School]
ACCLAIM: Can you describe how Acclaim has helped to improve this process?
MS: It's a lot smoother. Acclaim allows for faster turn around since the videos are available to both teachers and supervisors. It lets teachers have a more active role in seeking guidance, since with the commenting feature, they may go through and mark where they had questions about their interactions with students. Furthermore, it enables teachers who work with the same students to collaborate, and to share their experiences and interventions with each other. This has made teacher training much easier and more interactive.
"Acclaim lets teachers have a more active role in seeking guidance."
ACCLAIM: Most importantly, how does this benefit students?
MS: Seconds count in our response to the children and timing is everything. By giving teachers a greater sense of self-awareness, they in turn know how and when they can reinforce positive student behaviors as they teach. This amplifies our success with students with autism. Acclaim has been a very useful tool!


text:
A sharp mind, like a healthy body, is subject to the same rule of nature: Use it or lose it.
Need a calculator just to work out a 15 percent service charge? Not exactly sure how to get the calculator to give you the figure you need? Turn to this revised and updated edition of All the Math You'll Ever Need, the friendliest, funniest, and easiest workout program around.
In no time, you'll have total command of all the powerful mathematical tools needed to make numbers work for you. In a dollars-and-cents, bottom-line world, where numbers influence everything, none of us can afford to let our math skills atrophy. This step-by-step personal math trainer:


text:
Inscape, in visual art, is a term especially associated with certain works of Chilean artist Roberto Matta, but it is also used in other senses within the visual arts. Though the term inscape has been applied to stylistically diverse artworks, it usually conveys some notion of representing the artist's psyche as a kind of interior landscape. The word inscape can therefore be read as a kind of portmanteau, combining interior (or inward) with landscape.
According to Professor Claude Cernuschi, writing in a catalogue for a Matta exhibition at Boston College (see external link below), Matta's use of the term inscape for a series of landscape-like abstract or surrealist paintings reflects "the psychoanalytic view of the mind as a three-dimensional space: the 'inscape'." The 'inscape' concept is particularly apt for Matta's works of the late 1930s. As Dawn Ades (p. 233) writes, "A series of brilliant oil paintings done during the years of his [Matta's] first association with the Surrealists explore visual metaphors for the mental landscape." And Valerie Fletcher, in Crosscurrents of Modernism (p. 241), writes that during this time Matta "created with startling mastery the paintings he called 'inscapes' or 'psychological morphologies.' " See also Miriam Basilio's essay, "Wifredo Lam's 'The Jungle' and Matta's 'Inscapes' ".
The term inscape was later taken up by the leading Australian surrealist James Gleeson, American abstract artists such as James Brooks, Jane Frank, and Mary Frank (no relation), and even a group of British fantasy artists founded by Brigid Marlin in 1961 and calling themselves the 'Inscape Group.' (The latter group may have had in mind another sense of the word 'inscape', associated with the British poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. See the article titled simply 'inscape' for more information on this.) More recently, in a 1998 review of a Mary Frank exhibition in New York (cited below), Carol Diehl writes, "Titled 'Inscapes', the paintings are landscapes of the soul...."
Also clearly referring to the psychoanalytical meaning of the word as described by Prof. Cernuschi and others above, the leading journal of art therapy was formerly called simply Inscape. The journal is now called International journal of art therapy : Inscape. (This is not to be confused with the Inscape magazine produced by Brigid Marlin's Society for Art of Imagination.)
"Their Small-Toothed Interlock"1: Biomorphism and Mystical Quest in the Visual Art of P.K. Page and John Vanderpant
Jan 01, 2004; Even though Canadian artists John Vanderpant and P.K. Page were working more than three decades apart and in different media,...

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


Five stages of fasting in the body
It's almost Eid and soon we will be saying goodbye to the holy month – and this is the last column in this series.
During the first 20 days of fasting, I felt my body slowly adjusting to the routine and by day 20 I felt lighter, more energetic and productive than before. But what has really been happening to my body function while I was fasting?
Tasneem Johnson, a dietitian, explained that there are five stages to the 30-day fast. Each stage represents a change in body functions for various reasons.
Stage 1 (day 1 and 2)
Here the body adjusts to the drop in the amount of glucose and water in the blood and tissues by drawing sugar from sugar stores in the muscles, liver and kidneys; and lowering the blood pressure. Your body will also begin to make glucose from things like fat and amino acids to ensure that it has enough energy. This is the stage which is usually the most difficult, and where you're more likely to experience dizziness, nausea and hunger pangs.
Stage 2 (day 3 to 7)
At this point the body has become more accustomed to lowered blood glucose levels and switches to ketosis, where it uses fats as the primary source of energy. This ups your body's fat-burning capacity as the body draws on fat stores.
Stage 3 (day 8 to 15)
Since the gut is less active during this time, it's also exposed to less stress – from things like heartburn, indigestion and food toxins. This means that it has time to rest and repair. At this point, the body takes advantage of the fact that your digestive system is "resting" and directs the energy that would have been used by the gut to the immune system. This increases immune functions, meaning that the immune cells of your body can focus on healing the other areas of the body too.
Stage 4 (day 16 to 30)
During this stage the healing and detoxification of the body continues and you can experience ongoing improvements in your health because of the continued healing and cleansing.
Stage 5
This is where you end your fast and begin to eat during the day again. Ms Johnson said that during this stage one should be cautious as the improvements you've made to your health during Ramadaan can be reversed if you begin to eat too much food or a diet that isn't high in nutrients.
She advised not to fall back into bad eating habits and that it's best to eat smaller portions of food or foods that are easier to digest – like broths and steamed vegetables – during the day to ease your digestive system back into non-fasting mode.
Ms Johnson said you can continue to fast beyond Ramadaan, as long as you maintain a balanced diet throughout this time.
Fasting is something that you can continue to do throughout the year, but you need to focus on healthy eating to maintain good health during this period.
To ensure that you are staying healthy make sure that you eat balanced meals at breakfast and supper time and drink enough water.
You can also take regular breaks from fasting to ensure that you are providing your body with everything it needs.
It's not recommended to fast by skipping breakfast or supper because eating breakfast provides your body with important nutrients for daily functions, and sparks your metabolism, allowing your body to function at its best throughout the day and eating supper replenishes the body's stores and provides the body with nutrients for body functions while you sleep.
I hope everyone will continue cultivating a good lifestyle after Ramadaan and may you all celebrate a healthy Eid.


Girolamo Sartorio
Girolamo Sartonio, also known as Hieronimo Sartorio and Geronimo Sartorio (died April 1707 in Venice), was an innovative Italian architect and engineer who worked mainly the German cities of Hanover, Hamburg, Leipzig and Erfurt. His designs were based on Palladian architecture. He was a noted expert in the installation of stage equipment and theatrical machinery and also worked as a builder or consulting architect on the construction of various opera houses, such as the Oper am Gänsemarkt in Hamburg. He is also credited with the beginnings of opera in Leipzig and the construction of the opera house in Prague.[1]
Girolamo Sartonio
1727 Johann Anton de Klyher Kupferstich, der illuminierte Neustädter Markt mit dem Parnaßbrunnen.jpg
Sartorio's design for the Neustädter Markt with the Neustädter Kirche and the fountain Parnaßbrunnen, steel engraving by Johann Anton de Klyher, 1727
Died1707 (1707)
 - Architect
 - Engineer
Born in Venice, Girolamo was the brother of Venetian composers Antonio Sartorio (1630–1680) and Gasparo Sartorio (1625–1680).[2] In 1673 he married Emerantia Gertrud von Wintheim, the daughter of Erich von Wintheim, in Hanover and he became a citizen of the principality in 1674.[2][3]
Life and workEdit
Schlossbrücke across the Leine, designed by Sartorio
Oper am Gänsemarkt, designed by Sartorio, decorated during a festival in honour of George I of Great Britain
Between 1667 and 1685 Sartorio was the Building Administrator German: Bauverwalter in the service of John Frederick, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and then Ernest Augustus, Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg in Hanover. During his time he led significant construction projects that beautified the city, including the expansion of the Herrenhausen Gardens and Leineschloss Palace, where he installed a theater and worked on external decorations, the Kapuzinerflügel wing and the court chapel. He also designed the bridge from the Leineschloss across the Leine River and the Neustädter Kirche, built 1667 to 1670 as an early aisleless church.[2] He presented a model for the Parnaßbrunnen fountain on the Neustädter Markt in 1671. During his time in Hanover he wrote a report for the construction of a library in Wolfenbüttel, on a request of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, then a librarian there.
Sartorio was then called to design the first public opera house in Germany and first opera house in Hamburg, the Oper am Gänsemarkt, and construct the stage.[4] It opened in 1678.[5] In 1692/93 he was in Leipzig, where he established the first opera theatre of the city on the Brühl, opened in 1693.[2] From 1696 he worked in Erfurt as Oberbaumeister, responsible for military buildings from 1704.[2]
 - Wilhelm Rothert, A. Rothert, M. Peters: Hannoversche Biographie, vol. 3: Hannover unter dem Kurhut, 1645–1815, Hannover 1912, p. 514 (in German)
 - Eduard Schuster: Kunst und Künstler in den Fürstentümern Calenberg und Lüneburg in der Zeit von 1636–1727, Hannover 1905, p. 204 (in German)
 - Helmut Zimmermann: Zur Herkunft italienischer Kunsthandwerker im norddeutschen Barock, in: Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte, vol. 34 (1995), p. 150f (in German)
 - Bernd Adam: Neue Funde zum barocken Ausbau der Schlossanlage in Hannover-Herrenhausen, in: Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte, vol. 40 (2001), p. 61–66 (in German)
 1. ^ Melania Bucciarelli, Norbert Dubowy, Reinhard Strohm: Italian Opera in Central Europe. Vol 1. Berlin: Berliner-Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2006. ISBN 3-8305-0381-4 p. 84
 2. ^ a b c d e Knocke, Helmut (2002). Sartorio, (2) Hieronymo (in German). Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon. p. 307. ISBN 9783877067062. Retrieved 8 August 2012. CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
 3. ^ Zimmermann, Helmut (2002). Wintheim (Windheim), von (in German). Hannoversches Biographisches Lexikon. p. 391. ISBN 9783877067062. Retrieved 8 August 2012. CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
 4. ^ Wendt, J.R.M. (2002). Materialien zur Geschichte der frühen Hamburger Oper (in German). pp. 21–22.
 5. ^ "Die kurze Geschichte der Gänsemarkt-Oper" (in German). Hamburger Abendblatt. 1 March 2008. Retrieved 10 August 2012. CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
External linksEdit


Wheat grain is a
Options :
 1. fruit
 2. seed
 3. embryo
 4. glume
Answer and Explanation :-
Answer: Option 2
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You know, Rose said, You're not the first man in history who thinks his cock is the path to wisdom. You're not the first man to make his hard-on into the Holy Grail.
-Tom Spanbauer In the City of Shy Hunters


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When going about your daily routine, have you ever looked around and stopped to wonder who invented some of the products that you use everyday? If you have, you might be surprised to learn that many everyday items have been invented by the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians. What's even more amazing is discovering how these civilizations came up with their ideas. Following are some of the items that help make our lives a lot easier thanks to the genius of the Ancient Greeks and Egyptians:
Condoms were invented in 3000 B.C. in Egypt. Ancient drawings clearly depict men wearing condoms–sometimes made of material that may have been animal hide. It's not clear however, whether condoms were used for sex or ceremonial dress.
High Heel Shoes
Although high heeled shoes are depicted in ancient Egyptian murals on tombs and temples, the earliest recorded instance of men or women wearing an elevated shoe comes from Hellenic times. There is evidence however, that during ancient times, both men and women wore high heeled shoes for ceremonial purposes. And this may totally gross out Carrie Bradshaw, but there is also evidence that Egyptian butchers wore high heels to help them walk above the blood of dead beasts!
In 4000 B.C, Ancient Egyptians invented the first substance-like paper as we know it today. Papyrus was a woven mat of reeds, pounded together into a hard, thin sheet. The word "paper" actually comes from the word "papyrus". Later on in history, the Ancient Greeks used a kind of parchment made from animal skins for the same purpose.
After discovering papryrus, the Egyptians realized that they needed an instrument that would allow them to make character marks on this new parchment. As bones and metal sticks were no longer useful, the Egyptians created a reed-pen that was perfect for use with the papyrus. These were mostly the hollow tubular-stems of marsh grasses, especially from the bamboo plant. And thus, ancient Egyptians converted bamboo stems into a primitive form of a fountain pen. They cut one end into the form of a pen nib or point. A writing fluid or ink filled the stem and the reed forced the fluid to the nib.
While the Egyptians are credited with discovering medicine, they viewed illness and healing in a much different way than we do. The Egyptians conceived health and sickness as an unceasing fight between good and evil. According to historical records, ancient Egyptians involved in the medical and pharmaceutical profession used to recite certain incantations while preparing or administering medications. But while at first glance the Egyptians' approach to healing and medication may seem rather crude, they are actually credited with discovering many diagnostics we still use today:
The earliest known surgery in Egypt was performed around 2750 BC. Imhotep in the 3rd dynasty is sometimes credited with being the first Dr. McDreamy and the founder of ancient Egyptian medicine along with being the original author of the Edwin Smith Papyrus, which details cures, ailments and anatomical observations.
The Edwin Smith Papyrus is regarded as a copy of several earlier works and was written circa 1600 BC. It is an ancient textbook on surgery almost completely devoid of magical thinking and describes in exquisite detail the examination, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of numerous ailments.
The Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus treats women's complaints, including problems with conception. Dating to 1800 BC, it is the oldest surviving medical text of any kind.
Medical institutions, referred to as Houses of Life are known to have been established in ancient Egypt as early as the 1st Dynasty.
By the time of the 19th Dynasty some workers enjoyed such benefits as medical insurance, pensions and sick leave.
Also, the earliest known woman physician, Peseshet, practiced in Ancient Egypt at the time of the 4th dynasty. Her title was "Lady Overseer of the Lady Physicians." In addition to her supervisory role, Peseshet trained midwives at an ancient Egyptian medical school in Sais.
As inconceivable as it may sound, Joan Rivers did not discover makeup. But someone just as ancient did…the Egyptians. Egyptians used cosmetics regardless of sex and social status for both aesthetic and therapeutic reasons. They also believed that makeup had magical and even healing powers. Oils and unguents were rubbed into the skin to protect it from the hot air.
Most frequently used were white make-up, black make-up made with carbon, lead sulphide or manganese oxide and green make-up from malachite and other copper based minerals. Red ochre was ground and mixed with water, and applied to the lips and cheeks, painted on with a brush. Henna was used to dye the fingernails yellow and orange.
Without the Greeks, things may be a lot dirtier in our civilization. Some of the more interesting inventions from the Greeks that we use in our bathrooms include:
Escapement: This is essentially a sink with running water that we use on a daily basis. Created in the 200s BC by Philo of Byzantium, the Greeks used a washstand that was automated so that individuals could wash their hands with each.
Plumbing: In the 400s BC, Athens began to develop highly extensive plumbing systems for baths and fountains, as well as for personal use within individual homes. This would be the first place where plumbing would be in use.
Showers: In the 300s BC, showers were created and have been documented on vases that depict female athletes using a shower. In the 100s BC in Pergamum, an entire complex of showers and baths was created within a gymnasium.
Every time you plop money into a machine for a chocolate bar, you can thank the Ancient Greeks. Created by Hero of Alexandria, the original vending machine dispensed water when a coin was put in. When the coin went in, it fell on a pan that was itself attached to a lever, which opened a valve. The pan would tilt until the coin fell off, thereby turning off the water.
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itThing.com is run by a small group of people who cover things that are considered the "it thing" of the moment. Basically, if it's something that is talked about by others, you'll most likely find it here. From articles that dive into everything there is to learn about a particular subject to funny videos and pictures, you'll find it all here. Oh and did we mention we regularly compile informational infographics that float around on the web. All in all, ithing.com is a platform where fun and information are merged together!


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Programmes – Nouvelles
Faculty of Energy Systems and Nuclear Science:
Offering a new Bachelor of Technology (Honours) in Sustainable Energy Systems
Faculty of Social Science and Humanities:
Offering a new Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Liberal Studies
Faculty of Science:
- Offering a new specialization called Enviornmental Biology within the Biological Science program
- Offering a new specialization called Nanotechnology and Clean Energy within the Physics program
Mises à jour d'admission
Faculty of Health Sciences:
- Along with GPA, you will be assessed on professional practice skills with the completion of a Computer-Based Assessment for Sampling Personal Characteristics (CASPer).
- CASPer is an online screening tool designed to evaluate key personal and professional characteristics for successful students and graduates.


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Peptide solubility guidelines
Smart Bioscience peptides are delivered as lyophilized powder in 2 mL microtubes, that needs to be reconstituted. The solubilization is a critical step for a successful peptide assay. Improper peptide solubilization results in inaccurate peptide concentration, which can introduce experimental errors into data or lead to experimental failure. Finding the ideal solvent to dissolve your peptide is often a challenge. Even if the solubility of Smart Bioscience peptides is tested, the guidelines below may be helpful in preparing peptide solutions.
General solubilization procedure
- Test peptide solubility using a small amount of the product, rather than the entire sample (Consideration to take into account when defining the quantity and the number of aliquots to order. We recommend to dedicate 1 aliquot tube of 1 mg for this purpose).
- Centrifuge to spin down any powder on the tube sidewall before use (10000xg for 5 min).
- Allow peptides to warm to room temperature before reconstituting.
- Use sterile and ideally oxygen-free water or buffer (Tris or phosphate, buffer at pH 7) when preparing peptide solutions.
- Briefly Sonicate the mixture to aid peptide dissolution (3x 10sec, ice between). Chill the tube on ice between sonications. Sonication improves solubility and minimizes peptide aggregation.
- If precipitation occurs, a gentle warming of the peptide solution would be helpful (Avoid excessive warming of the sample!).
- A peptide properly solubilized will result in a transparent, particule-free solution.
|Peptides are well solubilized if the resulting solution is transparent. On the contrary, it looks cloudy|
Peptide properties calculation & associated solubility
The amino acid composition can help predict the solubility of a peptide. Therefore, before choosing a solvent and dissolving the peptide, the sequence should be studied to determine whether the peptide is acid, basic or neutral:
- Assign a value of -1 to each acidic residue (D, E, and C-terminal COOH).
- Assign a value of +1 to each basic residue (K, R and the N-terminal NH2).
- Assign a value of +1 to each H residue at pH<6 and zero at pH >6.
- Count the total number of charges of the peptide at pH 7 (D, E, K, R, C-terminal COOH, and C-terminal NH2).
- Calculate the overall net charge of the peptide.
Charges < 0: Acidic peptide;Try to dissolve it in a basic solution by adding 10% NH4OH or ammonium bicarbonate in your buffer.
Charges > 0 : Basic peptide; Try to dissolve it in an acidic solution by adding 10% acetic acid, 0.1% TFA, 0,1% formic acid in your buffer.
Neutral peptide: if the peptide contains > 25% charged residues (e.g., D, K, R, H and E), it is generally soluble in water or aqueous buffers. Below 25% charged residues, it is recommended to use organic solvents (DMSO, ACN, DMF).
Oxidation sensitive peptides
Cys, Met or Trp-containing peptides are susceptible to oxidation. Therefore, it is recommended to dissolve them in oxygen-free buffers. Moreover, DMSO should be avoided when handling oxidation-sensitive peptides. Cys-containing peptides can form unexpected disulfide bonds (intra or interchain) that can be prevented by using reducing agents, such as DTT (dithiothreitol).
Very short peptides consisting in less than five residues are usually soluble in water or aqueous buffer, except when the entire sequence consists of hydrophobic amino acids (e.g., W, L, I, F, M, V, Y). In this case, the use of organic solvents is necessary.
Highly hydrophobic peptides
Peptides containing 50% or more hydrophobic residues (W, L, I, F, M, V, Y, P, A) are generally poorly soluble in aqueous solutions. We recommend to dissolve hydrophobic peptides in 100% ogranic solvent (DMSO, DMF or acetonitrile) and subsequently dilute with water or buffer to the desired concentration. If peptides precipitate, they need to undergo a freeze-drying step before attempting another solubilization to reach a lower dilution. DMSO is the ideal organic solvent for biological applications because of its low toxicity. If DMSO interferes with your experimental system, use DMF or acetonitrile as an alternative.
Addition of denaturating agents, such as 6M urea, 6M urea with 20% acetic acid, or 6M guanidine, can help in reducing the aggregation of peptides by disrupting hydrogen bonding network. However, these compounds can interfere with most biological systems and therefore their application is rather limited.


Original Link : _URL_
5 Mental Exercises to Strengthen Your Emotional Fitness
In times of crisis, there are those who become overwhelmed by fear and those who rise to the occasion. They know that they have the mindset to not just endure but to thrive in the middle of chaos. They understand that what they do right now is going to determine what kind of life they will have ten years from now.
What separates these individuals from the vast majority? It's not necessarily money or past success. There are plenty of people who have money but they are living in fear. And there are people who thought they had their business figured out, and now they are forced to reinvent themselves because everything has changed.
People who thrive in chaos have the ability to stay calm under immense pressure and focus on who they need to become to get through a challenge. They have the capacity to change their perception when reality changes. They don't try to argue with reality by wishing that things wouldn't be a certain way.
They possess what I call emotional fitness.
Emotional fitness is not the same as emotional intelligence. Although the two are related, emotional intelligence is the capacity for empathy. Emotional fitness is the capacity to think on your feet when the ground crumbles underneath you.
Related: 5 Ways to Get to the Heart of Emotional Marketing
You already know the benefits of exercise. You can do all the research you want about the perfect interval times or the best yoga pants, but all of that means nothing if you don't get in the gym and do the work until you start sweating. The same thing is true for emotional fitness. You can read all you want about how to stay calm under pressure, but the only way to actually increase your emotional fitness is to do the necessary inner work to increase your capacity.
Here are five ways entrepreneurs can increase their emotional fitness.
1. Check-in with yourself multiple times a day
Your reaction to whatever stimulus is in front of you is to a certain extent involuntary. If you step on a LEGO, you get angry at the same time the pain shoots up your foot. When you watch the craziness on the news, you get anxious. Those thoughts and emotions are going to come to you before your rational brain has a chance to keep up. At least two or three times per day, take a minute to check-in with yourself and figure out what you are focusing on. Follow that focus and see what the emotions are bringing up. Are you stressed out because you're focused on the negative things that are happening, or are you excited about the opportunities that are ahead of you?
Most people don't know, but subconsciously our mind focuses on all the negative things that are going on because of the survival instinct. When you're on autopilot, it's easy for these negative feelings to overwhelm everything else. But by intentionally bringing awareness to your thoughts and emotions, you can make a conscious decision to shift your focus and interrupt the pattern of being on autopilot. By checking in with yourself multiple times a day, you give yourself the data to understand why you feel the way you do and where your focus is during the day.
2. Acknowledge the emotions and thoughts
The moment that you acknowledge your emotions and thoughts is the moment that you can become aware of the trigger that is causing that thought or emotion. Like I said before, our subconscious mind is constantly focused on negative thoughts and emotions, especially early in the day. If you don't acknowledge those feelings, you are going to be fighting an uphill battle the entire day. Your brain is going to release the stress hormone cortisol, because your brain behaves as if you're fighting an enemy, and your body expends energy fighting itself.
Related: The Importance of Emotional Intelligence at Work
Studies show that just acknowledging negative thoughts, and realizing that it's normal for your brain to be in reactive mode, gives you the power to make the conscious decision to shift and focus on the opportunities instead of the problem. Be more aware of them instead of trying to fix them. Your emotions are not something you have to "fix." The trigger that made you feel that way is the thing to fix, not the emotion itself.
3. Don't make your emotions "wrong"
Your emotions are feedback to your perception of your current reality. If you make them wrong, then you believe that your current situation shouldn't be happening to you. That's when you start arguing with reality and look for something or someone to blame. We have this illusion that we shouldn't feel a certain way, or that we are weak by acknowledging what we feel.
By acknowledging you are not your thoughts, feelings and emotions, you become open to receiving the feedback and learning from them instead of reacting to them.
4. Feel your emotions fully
We are constantly judging ourselves and we don't give ourselves permission to feel our emotions fully. Like the feeling of relief that sometimes mixes in with sadness. Our emotions can bring out guilt and shame because we think we shouldn't feel a certain way. The guilt and shame are what prevent us from expanding our capacity. The emotions are there because the triggers are there, and you can't just stop that circuit. Instead, you have to complete the circuit and feel the emotions fully.
The moment we give ourselves permission to feel the emotion, that's the moment you're bringing light into the darkness. The fear and uncertainty that consume our energy will begin to lose power. We are bringing light into the darkness and realizing that we were more afraid of the dark than what it was hiding.
5. Win the battle in your mind before it becomes real
Most of our fears and stressors are caused by what we think could happen. Much of the time, the fear isn't real, and only lives in our mind. The thoughts of the worst-case scenario are all set in the future and are inspired by some pain from the past. That feeling of being caught in the middle of an unalterable past and an undetermined future takes away our certainty. It's that helplessness that amplifies all the other emotions. But the secret weapon is that you can also win those battles in the same place: your mind.
Related: How Emotional Intelligence Can Improve Your Productivity
Recently, my wife became ill. We were sure it was COVID-19, and the two of us took immediate action to protect our two teenage children by quarantining her in the guest room. A day later, she recovered but I got sick myself, and I was sicker than I've ever been for two days. Although fighting the virus was brutal, I had the emotional fitness to not overreact. This was in large part because for years, every morning I imagined myself facing a worst-case scenario, and every morning I felt the pain of my wife or kids getting sick, or of being sick and not being able to provide for my family. But then I would end the mediation, knowing it was all in my mind and the reality was that they were fine. At that point, no challenge or failure I would face that day would be worse than what I put myself through in my imagination.
This time, when the worst-case scenario actually happened in real life, it was painful, but I was comfortable with the pain in a way few people ever get to be. Because I was able to fight the battle in my mind many times over and I had the emotional fitness to stay calm in the middle of chaos.
You have to do the same thing. Fight the monsters where they live, which is in your mind. When you slay the beasts inside your mind, you realize that they are there to make you stronger. So when you face them in real life, you know exactly what to do to overcome them.
Related: 8 Ways to Use Emotional Intelligence and Make Lasting Connections
Every day, I'm having conversations with clients who are CEOs and entrepreneurs, and I remind them that this present moment is the biggest opportunity we have to stand out from the crowd as leaders. If we're willing to increase our emotional fitness on a daily basis, we will rise through the chaos. But this has to be a daily commitment.
If you're a leader in your business, you can't afford to be consumed by the negative energy that we have in this pandemic. Increase your emotional fitness daily, and you will become stronger when the storm clears. One of my favorite mantras that I repeat to myself every day is "the best is yet to come." And if you believe that with every single cell in your body, you will find opportunities, and you will bring certainty to those who are living in fear. Your job as a leader is to get stronger, increase your capacity, and bring hope to your employees, customers, and family. You were made for moments like this.


Human Resources
Alumni Office Specialist
Primary Role
Performs essential office-wide support functions for the office of Alumni Relations.
Typical Duties and Responsibilities
 1. Maintains alumni records; monitors and tracks volunteers; works with database; and performs data entry in Datatel's Benefactor program.
 2. Organizes; creates file folders; monitors event timelines; oversees regional event registration; runs or requests reports and mailing labels.
 3. Provides clerical support to an office including services such as arranging appointments/travel, sorting and distributing mail and departmental email, composing letters, postcards and other mailings, ordering office supplies & promotional items, allocating and approving purchasing card transactions for all cardholders, making bank deposits and handling other accounting functions, typing, filing, etc.
 4. Acts as staff liaison for certain reunion classes at Alumni Weekend and Homecoming; oversees registration process for both events; tracks and helps coordinate Student Alumni Association activities; communicates with Affinity Groups; and occasionally travels to regional events. This position involves overtime (including weekends) in February, June and October each year.
 5. Writes bi-monthly articles for the employee newspaper; proofreads materials; helps with newsletters; and communicates with alumni, friends, students, Student Alumni Association members and the campus community regarding alumni events and volunteer activities.
 6. Greets and directs visitors, answers phone inquiries and provides routine information to callers and visitors. Completes and collects forms, applications, work orders, requisitions, reports, etc. Helps maintain the Alumni Web Page and sends e-communications.
 7. Performs related duties as assigned
Supervision Required/Given
Works independently within established policies and procedures. Must work cooperatively with diverse individuals and customers. Some direct supervision of student workers.
Position Qualifications
 1. Knowledge and capabilities normally acquired through completion of a high school diploma. Additional academic training preferred.
 2. Three years experience in an office setting sufficient to demonstrate proficiency in: customer service skills, volunteer management, project planning and management, PC based office software, budget planning and tracking, staff supervision, advances word processing skills, and effective handling of confidential materials.


text: Nowadays systems can evolve quickly, and to this growth is associated, for example, the production of new features, or even the change of system perspective, required by the stakeholders. These conditions require the development of software testing in order to validate the systems. Run a large battery of tests sequentially can take hours. However, tests can run faster in a distributed environment with rapid availability of pre-configured systems, such as cloud computing. There is increasing demand for automation of the entire process, including integration, build, running tests and management of cloud resources.This paper aims to demonstrate the applicability of the practice continuous integration (CI) in Information Systems, for automating the build and software testing performed in a distributed environment of cloud computing, in order to achieve optimization and elasticity of the resources provided by the cloud.


Artist gives brutalist architecture a singing voice
Brutalist architecture has gotten a bad rap over the years—so much so that Goldfinger, the villain of James Bond fame, was named after Ernő Goldfinger, an architect inspired by brutalism. Mo H. Zareei (aka mHz) is trying to fight back against this societal repulsion with his evocative sound sculptures. He's an Iranian electronic musician, sound artist, and music technology researcher, who is actively finding ways to use his interests in both brutalist architecture and noise to show how nuanced and poetic these two concepts can really be.
In his series machine brut(e), Zareei makes use of three sound sculptures rasper, Mutor and rippler, to make unusual audiovisual combinations. Each piece is a marriage between sound art and sculptural composition, accompanied by a concrete block to visually highlight the 'raw concrete' material and its links to brutalism. Zareei breaks down the different elements of brualist aesthetics which are compelling to him, as he says, "The monolithic appearance, visibility of material, valuation of crude concrete, strict geometries, repetitive modules, lack of nonfunctional ornamentation, these were all fundamental principles by which I have constructed my sound-sculptures."
Each piece is a marriage between sound art and sculptural composition
Zareei describes his childhood in Ekbatan, Tehran to Streaming Museum as growing up among "gray Lego-like giants," and speaks of the town and "the poetry of its parallel lines and right angles, its strict geometries, homogeneous grayness, and the perfection of its zigzag… a gracious haven of order and coherence in an enormous city of haphazardness." This background giving brutalist architecture an almost romantic sense undoubtedly affects Zareei's work, and allows him to express a perspective deeply contrasted to Ian Fleming's villainous portrayal, or the perceived mundanity and ugliness of the style.
Although the sound sculptures of this project may initially seem dull and monotonous, or even ugly and abrasive, if experienced in an open-minded and curious way, they can be incredibly and unexpectedly satisfying and poetic. Listening and watching Composition 0001 reminded me of tile floors and concrete, a turnstile moving with perfect flow. It also reminded me of oddly satisfying industrial processes (try to watch this muted, with Zareei's work below, playing in the background to get a sense of what I mean). As highlighted by The Creators Project, "Zareei's goal with the constant repetition is to create a "temporal monolithism" that matches brutalism's block-like aesthetics. The repetition is also designed to produce an 'instant audible structure'."
Zareei, speaking about the types of works that inspire him says: "it seems clear to me that the works of sound art and music that I am influenced by… can be summed up as the sensory experience of the conventionally non-interesting on a highly ordered and sensually accessible structure." This idea of the conventionally 'non-interesting' being sensually accessible, strongly comes through in his work, which will likely evoke a sensory reaction in all its viewers, in one way or another.
Mo H. Zareei is currently living in New Zealand, where he is pursuing his PhD research on noise music and mechatronics at Victoria University of Wellington. You can keep track of his work through his website and Facebook page


As you may remember, two years ago in Eastern Iowa we experienced a long cold snap with sub-zero temperatures. Fast forward to 2021 and the sub-zero temperatures have returned. As a reminder, follow these steps below for the best heating practices during sub-zero temps.
 1. Please raise the temperature in your home 2 to 4 degrees above your normal setting.
 3. If you have a furnace; replace the filter.
 4. Keep garage doors closed.
 5. Limit opening exterior doors.
 7. Close all curtains and blinds to help hold the heat in and stop drafts. Seal all leaking windows and doors.
 8. If you have a 90%+ furnace and boiler: You must keep the intake and exhaust clear of ice and snow. During these cold temperatures, ice can build up. A 90%+ furnace and boiler have 2 white PVC pipes; (Click the Link to learn more) an exhaust pipe and an intake pipe that are generally on the side or back of your home. In some instances, they are on your roof, do NOT go on your roof to clear the pipe. Make sure to clear the snow off of your Gas Regulator as well.
If you are still experiencing problems with your heating system, "Call the Guys You Can Trust" at Colony Plumbing, Heating and Air Conditioning. We are available 24/7 for Emergency Services. 364-HEAT (4328).


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|man pages section 3: Basic Library Functions Oracle Solaris 11 Information Library|
- get current file position information
_TAG_ int fgetpos(FILE *stream, fpos_t *pos);
The fgetpos() function stores the current value of the file position indicator for the stream pointed to by stream in the object pointed to by pos. The value stored contains unspecified information usable by fsetpos(3C) for repositioning the stream to its position at the time of the call to fgetpos().
Upon successful completion, fgetpos() returns 0. Otherwise, it returns a non-zero value and sets errno to indicate the error.
The fgetpos() function may fail if:
The file descriptor underlying stream is not valid.
The file descriptor underlying stream is associated with a pipe, a FIFO, or a socket.
The current value of the file position cannot be represented correctly in an object of type fpos_t.
The fgetpos() function has a transitional interface for 64-bit file offsets. See lf64(5).
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:


From Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia
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For those obsessed with experts, Uncyclopedia has an article about: Boring.
edit Adjective
Boring (plural Borings)
 1. A term usually reserved for someone aged 25 or over.
 2. It also describes anything requiring effort or commitment from Generation Y.
 3. Another word for Belgium.
edit Example
 - "The date with Shelia was Boring because she was 26, from Belgium and kept droning on about how she 'worked' and'studied' to 'achieve' something in her life. I was like... that's just totally lame and afterwards I went home to go play the video games my Mom and Daddy bought for me."
Personal tools


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There's a rapidly growing list of Windows 8 education apps in the Windows Store – simply too many to keep up with, so what I'm now keeping my eye open for are ones that are completely different, and especially those that take advantage of the touch interface of Windows 8 to create an immersive experience for students and teachers. Here's an app for biology teachers that's great for a touch tablet for an individual student to explore, or for a teacher to project onto a classroom interactive whiteboard (it would be great to use this on a multi-touch whiteboard for zooming and navigation around the 3D models).
It's from Corinth, a new education interactive publisher based in the Czech Republic. It's been built by a team of graphic designers and 3D experts – and it shows within a minute of loading the app, as you whizz around 3D models and zoom in and out of rich graphics.
Link It's an unique interactive education app which takes you into the fascinating microscopic world of plant biology. Starting from an image of a forest, you can use touch to zoom into enormously magnified images, or explore fully 3D interactive models of trees which take you from the overall structure right down to looking at individual viruses. The video below walks you through the app, and gives you a clear idea of what it can do:
The free version of Corinth Micro Plant Windows 8 app offers immersive zooming into micro world and a 3D interactive learning page for trees and their structures. Additional features can be unlocked through a Facebook Like (which unlocks the 3D gyroscope-driven interactive page on viruses), and then interactive learning pages like the ones below are unlocked through an in-app purchase.
You can install Corinth Micro Plant free using the link above
Read a list of other recommended Windows 8 apps for education


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Musical Imagery Repetition (MIR) (Profiling the phenomenon of how and why we get songs stuck in our heads). Masters Thesis.
Horowitz's Performances of Piano Transcriptions Demonstrate That His "Reception as Genius" Was "Work"
Changes in Piano Competitions Alter How Juries Use Their Many "Texts" (A Critique of Piano Competitions)
Van Cliburn's Win Understood in the Context of "Nationalism"


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Field Specific Project
What is it?
The field specific project is a written assignment for the course. In this project, students should demonstrate knowledge of how to interact with patients/clients who are not native English speakers, and a basic understanding of 20 vocabulary words specific to their field of study.
The project consists of interviewing someone in the profession you are studying (for example: respiratory therapy, occupational therapy assistant, dental hygienist, nurse) and asking them about their experience working with non-native speakers Following the interview, students will summarize strategies for interacting with patients who are not native English speakers and develop a list of 20 frequently used vocabulary words for their field of study and the Spanish translation (for example, dental cavity : una caries). (Hint: you will want to ask the person you are interviewing for guidance on frequently used words). For the Spanish terms, use
wordreference.com or an online resource in Spanish from your field (for example, the CDC en español). Do
NOT use Google Translate.
The field specific project is worth 10% of the final grade. The field specific project will be graded based on the quality of content (detailed interview summary, and relevant and accurate list of vocabulary). Papers should have at least 2-3 pages of interview summary/strategies for dealing will non-native speakers, plus one page for vocabulary list. Papers must state name and position title of the person interviewed as well as the date of the interview.
The main text of the essay is in English. The grading rubric can be found on D2L.
must be submitted as a Word Document or Google doc
(Word is available for free for all Del Tech students). Do not submit as a PDF!!
When is it due?
What should I do?
1. Seek someone to interview from your field of study. It could be at a work setting, a family member or friend, or an instructor. Students should plan to spend approximately 15 minutes interviewing the person. The goal is to ask them about their experiences working with non-native speakers. What are the strategies they use to communicate? Are there any cultural factors they keep in mind?
2. Summarize the interview and highlight strategies for interacting with patients/clients who are not native English speakers.
3. Develop a list of 20 frequently used vocabulary words for your field of study and the Spanish translation.
As a reminder, plagiarism of any kind
will not be tolerated. Students are expected to produce their own original content.


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Let's suppose I'm working with some set of functions $f_k(n)$. $f_1(n)$ is essentially the root of my functions, and could be nearly anything, and then $f_k(n) = (f_1(n) * f_{k-1}(n))$ for some convolution $*$ that won't be described here. $f_k(n)$ takes non-negative integers and yields reals. $f_k(n)$ has as a given the following properties.
1) $f_0(n) = 1$
2) ($f_j(n) * f_k(n)) = f_{j+k}(n)$. This mirrors, of course, the usual rules about raising numbers to powers ($x^j \cdot x^k = x^{j+k}$). More broadly, $a f_j(n) * b f_k(n)) = (ab)f_{j+k}(n)$
3) $f_k(n)$ structurally must be 0 once $ k > \log n$, or thereabouts.
4) * is both associative and commutative.
Suppose I can't guarantee almost anything else useful about $f_k(n)$, because it's such an irritable function. Integration and derivation don't work. $f_k(n) \cdot f_k(m)$ and $f_k(n) + f_k(m)$ are manually computable but in wildly unpredictable ways, and $f_k(n+m)$ has no obvious or easy relationship to $f_k(m) + f_k(n)$. There are no guarantees about values being greater or less than other values in any direction.
(I realize that might be insufficiently precise, so let me know if there needs to be any clarification)
So here's my question. Only given the four properties above, which identities from the world of power series will still be valid, if we replace the usual powers of x with my convolution here? Or, more generally, is there a way to tell which identities will be valid?
I know by hand that many series identities seem to work regardless of the nature of $f_1(n)$ - so, for example, if we define $cosf(n) = 1 - \frac{f_2(n)}{2!}+\frac{f_4(n)}{4!}-\frac{f_6(n)}{6!}+...$, and do something similar for $sinf(n)$, then $cosf(n)*cosf(n) + sinf(n)*sinf(n) = 1$, if $cosf(n)*cosf(n)$ is taken to mean the term-wise convolution of its power series with itself.
An awful lot of other series relationships seem to work from this perspective.
On the other hand, $sinf(n+ \frac{\pi}{2})$ usually isn't $cosf(n)$ (for the various $f_1(n)$ I'm working with). Trig identities dealing with things like half angle formulas I've tried don't generally work, either.
Is there an easy way for me to tell which power series relationships will still be valid? Am I stumbling on an obvious and well-covered area of research here? It would be really handy for me if I were...
share|improve this question
I don't see the relevance of property 4) especially since you haven't described what set $f_k(n)$ takes values in. What seems to be much more relevant is the question of whether * is associative and/or commutative. – Qiaochu Yuan Nov 17 '11 at 22:59
* is both associative and commutative. I updated my question and changed property #4 to say as much... And $f_k(n)$ operates operates on non-negative integers and produces reals. I'll add that to my question too. – Nathan McKenzie Nov 17 '11 at 23:28
It sounds like you are looking for some kind of functional calculus, i.e. a way of calculating $P(f_1)$ for any polynomial $P$ (which is just trival algebra) or, more generally, for $P$ an analytic function on some domain. If your space of functions were, for example, a Banach algebra, then you could use the holomorphic functional calculus for Banach algebras. If your space is not a Banach algebra, then you need to specify further topological properties; e.g. in what sense does the series for $\cos f_1$ converge? You definitely need some kind of extra analysis. – Zen Harper Nov 18 '11 at 3:45
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I would like to share with you some tips on training individual techniques.
In the Filipino arts, we tend to focus too much on combinations, defenses, and complicated drills. As a result of this, we ignore developing individual techniques, and our ability to execute a fight-ending, powerful and accurate single strike never manifests. I'll give you an example; take what we call in my system the "number 2″ strike. This is the back handed strike to the opponent's temple. Can you destroy a man's temple with this strike? Does this strike have enough power to break something? Like a 1" board? I could safely say that most Eskrimadors do not have this kind of power with a back-handed stick strike, and will dismiss this lack of skill by calling the strike a "weak" strike.
Ahem. It's not weak because the strike itself is a poor strike, it's weak because you have no power with this strike. Ditto for the Abaniko strikes. I have heard quite a few Visayan style practitioners say that they either no longer practice the Abaniko or de-emphasize this strike because it is a weak one. Take heed to the saying, that the fighter should have nothing in his arsenal that cannot singly end a fight. At the same time, one should not discard a technique without attempting to fully develop and/or explore it's use. To do so is foolish, because you may be getting rid of a very important weapon. This is like a child who aspires to be a writer deciding at 10 years old that he finds spelling or grammar to be useless… and his teacher agreeing.
As a fighter-in-training, one should spend ample time developing and training everything in his respective system, and once proficiency is achieved in everything–then slap a Black Belt on him, and allow him to decide what to specialize in. At that point, a fighter can begin work on developing his own personal system of combat.
That said, let's look at the basics of developing individual techniques:
- techniques should be execute at least 75% speed and power, regularly. I do not believe in lackadaisical training and practice. Too often, in dojos and gyms, you will see students "practicing" skills so weakly and lazily, they barely break a sweat. In order to improve speed and power, you must challenge the body to do more.
- one should work with enough repetitions that at the end of the set, you require a short rest. If not, the student is not getting stronger.
- only a few techniques should be trained each training session, in order to gain some benefit from its practice. Performing 10 repetitions of 20 different techniques in a single training session may offer some cardiovascular benefit, but for fighting the student has not made any progress. In my own classes, I will often practice a specific set of skills for several weeks, and sometimes they overlap. This way, in a two-week period, the student may have practiced a technique possibly thousands of repetitions.
- a good rule of thumb is to use sets of 100-200 for beginners, 300-500 for intermediate students, and 500+ to a thousand for advanced students and students in competition season. This standard alone will help you develop dominant students. And they will progress quickly using this method.
- use a combination of shadow-boxing (training without a called cadence), group training (called with a cadence) with varying degrees of intensity and speed, target training standing still, target training while chasing the target-holder, target training while the target-holder is striking the puncher/kicker, and bag/striking shield training.
- insert sets of strength training and stretching exercises between technique sets. This fatigues your students and teaches them to attack while exhausted–a very important ability that many martial artists lack.
Further, I would like to offer my school's "Four Factors". These are observed by all students when training individual techniques:
- Delivery and execution–paying close attention to footwork and ease of closing the gap between you and the opponent. Fighters should start further back, as many martial artists tend to stand very close to their target. Opponents move and will not allow you to stand close. By covering a larger distance in training, catching a moving opponent will be easier while fighting.
- Maintaining the guard–very often, fighters will allow this very simple rule to be violated. When the guard has been breached in fighting, the experienced opponent will see and exploit the many opportunities to attack. Maintaining the guard will force the opponent to find a way around the guard.
- Balance–if the student is allowed to lose his balance often during training, he will surely lose his balance while fighting. Due to the chaotic nature of fighting a moving opponent, your techniques will often lack the degree of balance you have in training. If you are losing your balance in training, you have no chance in combat. Balance in practice should take its place of importance next to speed and power. An opponent who knows what he is doing will force you to lose balance while attacking (most likely by lateral movement) and then make you pay for making that mistake.
- Recovery–once a technique has been executed, you must find your way to a superior position of attack/defense as quickly as possible. Your recovery time must be quick and your position must be stable. After an attack is complete you want to be off your opponent's line of fire, and be in a stable stance (with balance) ready to follow up the attack with another. This is also greatly ignored, and is very often the deciding factor in who wins the fight. Recovery can also help a weaker, slower opponent defeat a bigger, faster, stronger man.
If you would like to learn more about my approach to training fighters, please check out my book, Mustafa Gatdula's How to Build a Dominant Fighter in 12 Months, on Amazon!
Thanks for visiting my blog.


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BBC News
watch One-Minute World News
Last Updated: Monday, 29 September, 2003, 21:48 GMT 22:48 UK
King crabs march towards the Pole
By Alex Kirby
BBC News Online environment correspondent
Scientist holds king crab Alex Kirby
Russian fisheries scientist and king crab
A shellfish released in the Arctic waters of the Barents sea in 1961 has taken a huge step to expand its range.
The species is the king crab, a native of the Bering sea and the area round Kamchatka in the Russian far east.
It was brought to western Russia in a bizarre experiment to provide a new catch for the Soviet fishing fleet.
Now, to the dismay of scientists, the crab has reached the Svalbard archipelago, an island group almost half-way to the North Pole.
The species can grow to 1.5 metres across (including its legs) and weigh up to eight kilogrammes, making it the world's biggest edible crab.
Vassily Spiridonov is a marine biologist working for the Russian section of WWF, the global environment campaign.
Lying low
He told BBC News Online: "For some years after their release in the Barents sea it looked as if the crabs had simply disappeared.
"Nobody heard anything about them until the late seventies. But during the nineties we had quite a big growth in the population in Russian waters."
The crabs had already begun migrating westwards from the point where they had been released, off the Kola peninsula, with Norwegian fishermen starting to report catches in the 1980s.
In 2002 the crabs were found 215 kilometres (115 miles) off the mainland of Norway.
But the news that they have reached Norwegian-administered Svalbard suggests their previously steady onwards march has now accelerated into more of a sprint.
The islands lie about half-way between northern Norway and the Pole, and the crab found this summer in a Svalbard fjord was probably carried there on the currents.
Voracious eaters
But they are known to be making progress southwards down Norway's west coast as well. Scientists think they are advancing at about 50 km (31 miles) a year, though that could be an underestimate.
Fishermen with king crabs AP
Money on legs: King crabs are a valuable catch
Although the crabs are a commercially important resource which fetches high prices in Japan, and in parts of Europe, there is concern about their impact on their surroundings.
Dr Spiridonov said: "The population is now really huge, and they're fish predators - they can eat everything.
"They don't compete directly with any other species, as they're generalists, but they do alter the balance of the ecosystem.
"And the total biomass of fish that live near the bottom of the Barents sea is lower than in the sea of Okhotsk, the crabs' original home off Kamchatka."
The crabs can live for up to 25 years, and a single adult has been known to eat 400-700 grammes of scallops in two days.
Ironically, the king crabs' expansive behaviour in their new home is mirrored by a decline in their native far east.
The crabs are one of the most valuable catches in the west Bering sea, which lies between Kamchatka and the US state of Alaska.
Dr Spiridonov told BBC News Online: "About 100,000 crabs a year were caught legally in the far east during the 1990s, and there's a lot of illegal fishing too.
"They're now in severe danger there, and they could become commercially extinct across their entire range."
King crabs march on into Norway
29 Nov 02 | Europe
King crabs conquer new realms
31 Aug 00 | Science/Nature
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text:
Study: Music, Manipulatives Are Fun, But Basics Best for Struggling Math Students
First grade teachers facing a class full of students struggling with math were more likely to turn to music, movement, and manipulative toys to get their frustrated kids engaged, finds a new study in the journal Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Yet researchers found these techniques did not help—and in some cases hindered—learning for the students having the most difficulty.
Pennsylvania State University researchers Paul L. Morgan and Steve Maczuga and George Farkas of the University of California, Irvine analyzed the use of different types of instruction by 1st grade mathematics teachers, including teacher-directed instruction, such as explicit explanations and practice drills; student-centered, such as small-group projects and open problem-solving; and strategies intended to ground math in real life, such as manipulative toys, calculators, music, and movement activities.
The researchers tracked the use of different strategies by 1st-grade teachers with both regular students and those with math difficulties, defined as students who had performed in the bottom 15 percent of their kindergarten math achievement tests. Educators taught an array of math skills, from ordering and sorting objects into groups, writing numbers up to 100, naming shapes, copying patterns, and single-digit addition and subtraction, among others. The researchers found that students of average math ability learned equally well using teacher-directed or student-centered instructional approaches, but struggling students improved only when teachers used directed instruction, and particularly extra practice with basic concepts.
"In general education there's been more focus on approaches that are student-centered: peers and small groups, cooperative learning activities," Morgan said. "What can happen with that for kids with learning difficulties is there are barriers that can interfere with their ability to take advantage of those learning activities. Children with learning disabilities tend to benefit from instruction that is explicit and teacher directed, guided and modeled and also has lots of opportunities for practice."
Moreover, neither struggling nor regularly achieving math students improved when using manipulatives, calculators, music, or movement strategies; these activities actually decreased student learning in some cases. Ironically, a regession analysis of the classes found teachers became more likely to use these strategies in classes with higher concentrations of students with math difficulties.
"If I was going to offer a conjecture, what might be happening, as the teacher gets more students in the classroom that are struggling, they might be using the manipulatives or music to work around the students' difficulties and make the math seem more real... but our results don't indicate that those practices will lead to more student achievement gains," Morgan said.
Older students may still benefit from manipulatives and other math activities, and the findings don't argue for filling students' days with "drill and kill," Morgan said, but early elementary school—when students are learning basic math concepts for the first time and when few students have been officially identified as having math learning disabilities—can create a perfect environment for students to founder in math.
"I don't want kids to be bored, I don't want them to look at math as drudgery, I don't want my kids to go to school and do worksheets all day. I want them to be engaged by what they are being taught," Morgan said, "but I think sometimes we touch on concepts too briefly; we only give kids two or three opportunities to practice it."
Video Source: American Educational Research Association


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Improving Euclidean division and modular reduction for some classes of divisors
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Bajard, J. ; Univ. Montpellier II, France ; Imbert, L. ; Plantard, T.
Modular arithmetic is becoming an area of major importance for many modern applications; RNS is widely used in digital signal processing, and most public-key cryptographic algorithms require very fast modular multiplication, and exponentiation. When such an arithmetic is required, specific values such as Fermat or Mersenne numbers are often chosen since they allow for very efficient implementations. However, there are cases where only very few of those numbers are available. We present an algorithm for the Euclidean division with remainder and we give the classes of divisors for which our algorithm is particularly efficient compared to commonly used method.
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Date of Conference:
9-12 Nov. 2003


text:
|Carl Purpus, Plant Collector in Western America||C. A. Purpus: His Collecting Trips in the Sierra Nevada and Owens Valley, California, 1896 - 1898|
Topics in this Article:
| REPRINTED FROM
Plant Biology of Eastern
University of California
Carl Albert Purpus was a pioneer plant collector in southeastern California whose chronicles and collections are of historical interest. His collecting trips in this area began in 1895 near Mt. Whitney. The following year he left his winter home near Springville and travelled up the Middle Tule River to the headwaters of the Little Kern River and down Cottonwood Creek into Owens Valley, returning by much the same route. In 1897 he collected first in the Piute Range of Kern County before crossing Walker Pass enroute to the Argus Range, after which he collected at the headwaters of the Kaweah River. In 1898, a drought year, he crossed Walker Pass again and proceeded north through the Argus Range and Owens Valley to Westgard Pass. He spent the rest of the summer in Nevada and Utah before returning through Fish Lake Valley and Sonora Pass. During these trips he collected the types of over 30 new taxa from southeastern California.
| One of the most significant but
least known of the early collectors in the
southern Sierra Nevada and desert ranges to the east was Carl Albert Purpus, a
German born botanist who first came to the United States as a collector of
winter-hardy plants for the Darmstadt Botanical Garden, where his brother Joseph
Anton Purpus was head gardener. During the years _PHONE_, he collected nearly
2000 numbers, including the types of over 30 taxa, from the southern Sierra
Nevada, adjacent mountain ranges, and the Owens Valley. He became a "freelance"
collector, depending for income on sales of seeds, cacti, pinecones, and anything
else the German market would pay for. Sets of his herbarium collections were
also available for sale, resulting in the wide distribution of his specimens.
In addition, he wrote numerous articles on natural history that were published
in popular and technical German magazines, covering topics as diverse as
rattlesnakes [Purpus, 1896c] and redwoods [Purpus, 1896a].
|| Although Purpus's later years in
Mexico and that itinerary have been studied
and published elsewhere [Sousa, 1969], his United States travels have been
relatively unknown. This is the first in a series of presentations to fill the
gap. Most of the following information is derived from my translations of a
series of articles describing his journeys from _PHONE_ [Anonymous, 1896;
Purpus, 1896b, 1897, 1898, 1899], mostly published by the German Dendrological
Society, and from his field notes and letters to Katharine Brandegee (archives
of the University Herbarium, University of California, Berkeley).
South entrance to Potter Valley, California, May 1988.
Purpus apparently first moved to California in 1894, where he probably
stayed initially with his cousin Nettie in Potter Valley, Mendocino County. He
soon acquired a winter residence in Daunt, on the outskirts of Springville,
Tulare County. During this period he made contact with Katharine and Townshend
Brandegee, with whom he maintained a close interaction. He sent them the first
set of his collections, refusing to accept payment even though he depended on the
sale of specimens for his livelihood. Townshend described most of the new
species he collected, including the genus Purpusia in the Rosaceae, while
Katharine was apparently a partner in his cactus-selling venture.
Foxtail pine on Tawny Point, Bighorn Plateau, California.
Locations: Mount Whitney.
| Purpus's first summer
in the Sierra Nevada was 1895, spent in the area
around Mt. Whitney. The article [Anonymous, 1896] describing the area to his
German audience is full of the superlatives that characterize Purpus's writing:
Other Articles: Purpus' Introductions: 0130
One feels overwhelmed, as if placed in another world, when viewing these gray-white giants.... All these toothlike peaks drop precipitously to the east in every sense of the word, the easternmost more than 3400 meters straight down into the Owens River Valley. The view from this precipice is truly terrifying.
Carl A. Purpus, with a Sequoia and a dog.
Other Articles: Purpus' Introductions: 0160
The sight of the giant trees of Sequoia gigantea is truly awesome. One feels completely overwhelmed, in another world, when seeing these monuments to ages long past for the first time.
Abronia alpina. |
Other Articles: Purpus' Introductions: 0280
In granitic gravel below the volcano, I encountered a low mat-forming Allionia unknown to me, which was completely covered with rose-red flowers, providing a lovely sight beyond all description.
| This last was in
reference to a new species he collected on this trip, Abronia alpina Brandeg.
[Next Page] |
[Published Biographies] [Travelogues and Articles] [Letters]
[Plant Lists and Bibliography] [Site Administration]
Date and time this article was prepared: 6/7/2002 7:32:32 PM


text:
SimSET is Monte Carlo simulation software for emission tomography. SimSET can use NetSolve, a client-server
system for distributed computation, as a simple but effective scheme for parallel execution.
NetSolve is "grid middleware" which enables a user (the client) to
run specific computations remotely and simultaneously on a grid of networked computers (the servers).
Since the servers do not have to be identical machines, computation may take place in a hetergeneous
SimSET is a public domain package of routines written in C. SimSET is summarized as follows:
The SimSET package uses Monte Carlo techniques to simulate the physical processes and in-strumentation
in emission imaging.
The Photon History Generator, performs Monte Carlo simulations of photon creation and
transport through heterogeneous attenuators for both SPECT and PET, i.e., it generates photons
and transports them through the "object" to the face of the collimator or detector.
The Collimator Module, receives and tracks photons through the collimator being modelled.
The Detector Module, tracks photons through the specified detector, recording the interactions
within the detector for each photon. The interactions are used to compute a detected location
and total energy deposited.
The Binning Module, is used to process photon and detection records. Histograms and images,
together with photon history files, make up the final output from a simulation.
A realistic simulation may require millions of emission decay events. This may result in an extremely long
execution time when a simulation is run as conventional sequential computation on a single processor. But
the individual decay events are stochastically independent; therefore, if multiple processors are available, the
heavy computational load can be partitioned into subcomputations that run in parallel on different processors,
the outputs of which are combined upon completion.
One way to access multiple processors is to use a parallel computer. Another way is to implement
distributed computation on a network of computers, a mode of computation in which the individual
machines do not have to be identical. We implemented distributed computation of SimSET by using
NetSolve, a public domain package of routines in C (plus some environment-specific interfaces)
which enables a user to run application-specific code remotely on networked computers.


text:
Subject: Snakebite Flats
From: Jobst Brandt
Date: May 23, 2001
"Snakebites," otherwise known as pinch flats, are so called because they usually cause adjacent punctures about 10 mm apart (for tires with about a 25 mm diameter cross section). They occur when the tire casing bottoms on the rim, causing a compression failure in the tube for both clinchers and tubulars, much like pinching the cheek with thumb and forefinger. The fingertips simulate the tire casing and the cheek the tube.
Reasonably inflated tires can bottom when crossing RR tracks, riding up a driveway with a raised lip at street level, or riding on rough roads with ruts and rocks. Although higher inflation pressure helps, it does not guarantee protection. Watching how, and how fast, such obstacles are encountered helps more.
Because latex rubber of tubes commonly used in better tubular tires is several times more stretchable than common butyl rubber, such tubulars are less susceptible to snakebites. When sheet rubber is compressed, it stretches laterally like a drum skin, and the farther it can stretch the less likely it is to tear. In contrast, when ridden over such obstacles, tubular rims are often dented without the tire going flat. However, because thin latex tubes hold air so poorly that they must be inflated daily, snakebites from under-inflation were more common in the days when most riders rode tubulars.
Snakebites can be identified by inspecting the tube under grazing light that will reveal diagonal tire cord impressions at the perforation. This is especially important when only one hole occurs, the other not penetrating. Riders have claimed that the hole occurred spontaneously on the underside of the tube and demand reimbursement.
Underside snakebites, the least common, occur mostly on fat MTB tires that are often ridden with low pressure on soft terrain. At low pressure, such a tire can roll to one side and pop back, without disengaging the rim. A snakebite caused by this mechanism appears on the underside of the tube similar to laying your head to one side while pinching the skin at the Adam's apple. Such flats are erroneously attributed to rim tape failure and other obscure causes, when in fact it was under-inflation that can no longer be assessed. Here cord impressions also give evidence of a snakebite.
A tire can compress until it lies almost flat against the rim without any damage to the casing, inner tube or rim. A larger tire cross-section provides more protection against snakebite flats and rim damage than overinflation of tiresdoes. -- John Allen
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