What you might not know about readability testing
There's a lot to know about tests that measure the difficulty of reading passages.
First, these tests have something in common: they count syllables, words, and sentences in reading passages to come up with an average word and sentence length. These core factors then are used to develop a score that indicates how difficult (or easy) it may be for a reader to comprehend a piece of reading. I say, "may," because this is not an exact science. But "the application of a useful readability test protocol will give a rough indication of a work's readability."
Second, these tests are widely used ─ by publishers, schools, businesses, word processing applications, and parents. Publishers use the readability scores to aim publications at their target readers; schools use them to identify appropriate texts for students; and businesses use them to calibrate the reading level for forms, guidelines, and training manuals that must be comprehended by their workers. Most word processing applications have readability tests built-in as an option for document editing. And parents use them to select appropriate reading materials for their children.
Third, there are several tests out there though two seem to dominate the readability marketplace.
Flesch–Kincaid. Two types of readability tests have been created to indicate how difficult a passage in English is to understand: Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level. Both use word length and sentence length to develop their scores but they use different weighting factors. The Army first used the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease nearly 40 years ago to assess the difficulty of its technical manuals. The U.S. Department of Defense uses this now as the standard test of readability for its documents and forms. Some states have adopted the test in specific industries such as automobile insurance policies to ensure that the reading "ceiling" be no higher than ninth-grade level. The test is bundled with many word processing programs and services such as IBM Lotus Symphony, Microsoft Office Word, WordPerfect, and WordPro.
In Flesch-Kincaid, a higher score indicates material that is easier to read; lower score, more difficult to read. Here are some examples of the approximate readability score for well-known publications or audiences (highest score/easiest is 120):
 * Reader's Digest magazine = about 65
 * Time magazine = about 52
 * Average student writing assignment grade 6 (age 12) = 60–70; reading grade level of 6-7)
 * Harvard Law Review = low 30s
 * Life insurance policies in Florida = 45 or greater
 * Moby Dick (book) = average 57.9
 * Harry Potter books = average 72.83
 * 2000 articles about people in Wikipedia with most readable about sports people and entertainers, least readable about scientists and philosophers with least readable scientists being economists (41.70), psychologists (42.25), chemists (42.81), mathematicians (43.35)
The Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level Formula is used extensively in the field of education. Scores are presented as a grade level (the number of years of education generally required to understand the text) rather than a readability score. This makes it easier for educators, parents, and others to determine the readability level of reading materials for students.
Lexile. A Lexile is a number score for an individual's reading ability or a text's readability. It is represented as a number followed by L for Lexile. There are two types of measures: a reader and a text measure. The scale runs from below zero L to above 2000L. There is no specific bottom or top score though scores of zero L (0L) or below are reported as Beginning Reader.
The Lexile framework emerged over more than a decade of work that began in 1989 to develop a better measurement system for reading and writing. The framework uses quantitative methods based on individual words and sentence lengths rather than qualitative analysis of content to produce readability scores. In the U.S., Lexile scores are reported from school-based reading programs and student assessments annually. About half of U.S. students in grades 3-12 receive a Lexile measure annually. Lexile measures have been adopted by nearly half of the states, school districts in all 50 states, and used outside the U.S.
Lexile scores are used to match readers with books and other reading resources. Both readers and books/other reading resources are assigned a score on the Lexile scale. Lower scores indicate easier readability for reading materials and lower reading ability for readers. [This is opposite from Flesch–Kincaid scores in which higher scores equal easier readability.]
Lexile measures for individuals are typically obtained from a reading comprehension assessment or program. These range from basic early literacy skills to the adult level. Text measures are obtained by analyzing the word frequency and sentence length within a book or article using a software program, the Lexile Analyzer. To date, over 60,000 websites, 115,000 fiction and nonfiction books, and 80 million articles have Lexile measures. Over 150 publishers (e.g., Capstone Publishers, Discovery Ed, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, Pearson PLC, Riverside Publishing, Scholastic Corporation, Simon & Schuster, Workman Publishing Company, and World Book) offer certified Lexile text measures for their materials.
Although there is widespread use of Lexile measures in schools and in publishing, there is no direct correspondence between a Lexile measure and a specific grade level, and there are cautionary views of their use. For example, an evaluation of the Lexile measures in 2001 by the National Center for Educational Statistics "affirmed the value of both sentence length and word frequency" as measures of readability, but the measures do not include factors such as reader knowledge, motivation and interest which also have a major impact on readability.
The Lexile measures, as well as other products and services for reading, math, and writing are created by MetaMetrics®. The North Carolina company focuses on improving education for learners of all ages, developing scientific measures of academic achievement and complementary technologies that link assessment results with real-world instruction. In addition to licensing metrics tools to state departments of education, testing and instructional companies, and publishers, MetaMetrics offers training, resource measurement and customized consulting services. A short video that explains the Lexile is available here: _URL_


text:
What is Compound? (COMP)
The Beginner's Guide
Compound is a software running on Ethereum that aims to incentivize a distributed network of computers to operate a traditional money market.
One of an emerging number of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, Compound uses multiple crypto assets to provide this service, enabling the lending and borrowing required without a financial intermediary like a bank.
Put simply, Compound allows users to deposit cryptocurrency into lending pools for access by borrowers. Lenders then earn interest on the assets they deposit.
Once a deposit is made, Compound awards a new cryptocurrency called a cToken (which represents the deposit) to the lender. Examples of cTokens include cETH, cBAT and cDAI.
Each cToken can be transferred or traded without restriction, but it is only redeemable for the cryptocurrency initially locked in the protocol. This entire process is automatic and handled by the Compound code, meaning lenders can withdraw deposits at any time.
To incentivize this activity, Compound uses another cryptocurrency native to its service, called COMP. Every time a user interacts with a Compound market (by borrowing, withdrawing or repaying the asset), they are rewarded with additional COMP tokens.
While complex, the model has so far proved adept at attracting users and encouraging other DeFi cryptocurrencies to adopt its model. As of 2020, over $500 million in assets were locked in the Compound protocol, according to the data site DeFi Pulse.
Who created Compound?
Compound was founded by serial entrepreneurs Robert Leshner and Geoffrey Hayes, whose previous firm, Britches, aggregated inventory from local shops to be sold on PostMates.
In 2018 Compound raised $8.2 million in funding from notable venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Bain Capital Ventures, the venture-capital arm of the consulting firm Bain.
Compound raised an additional $25 million in 2019 from many of the same investors, along with new participants like Paradigm Capital, a fund started by a co-founder of Coinbase.
A share of the total supply of COMP cryptocurrency was initially distributed to investors in the company and to employees.
How does Compound work?
Compound connects lenders and borrowers using a combination of smart contracts running on Ethereum and incentives paid in cryptocurrency.
The two main users of the platform include:
- Lenders – Anyone wishing to lend a cryptocurrency on Compound can send their tokens to an Ethereum address controlled by Compound to earn interest.
- Borrowers – Anyone who posts collateral on Compound in the form of a cryptocurrency. They are allowed to borrow cryptocurrencies supported by Compound at a percentage of the posted value.
Compound rewards lenders with COMP tokens based on the amount of cTokens held in their wallet based on a varying interest rate dependent on the available supply of that asset. The more liquidity in a market, the lower the interest rate.
Users who lend assets to the protocol, can take out a loan in any other cryptocurrency that Compound offers, up to the amount of collateral posted.
Importantly, borrowers can get liquidated if the asset they borrow increases in value and becomes more valuable than the posted collateral.
Why does COMP have value?
To distribute its operations, Compound is programmed to reward users with COMP tokens.
Anyone who owns COMP tokens can participate in decisions affecting the software, voting on proposals for the rules that govern the platform's use.
A COMP holder can also assign their voting rights to someone else to vote on their behalf. This means that someone who is not a COMP holder — like a legal expert — could be asked to vote on behalf of COMP holders when a particular issue arises.
Of note for investors is that new COMP tokens are issued by the network each day. As of 2020, some 2,880 COMP tokens are given out daily to lenders and borrowers, meaning anyone who uses Compound can earn COMP tokens, proportional to the amount lent to the protocol.
Kraken's Crypto Guides
- What is Bitcoin? (BTC)
- What is Ethereum? (ETH)
- What is Ripple? (XRP)
- What is Bitcoin Cash? (BCH)
- What is Litecoin? (LTC)
- What is Chainlink? (LINK)
- What is EOSIO? (EOS)
- What is Stellar? (XLM)
- What is Cardano? (ADA)
- What is Monero? (XMR)
- What is Tron? (TRX)
- What is Dash? (DASH)
- What is Ethereum Classic? (ETC)
- What is Zcash? (ZEC)
- What is Basic Attention Token? (BAT)
- What is Algorand? (ALGO)
- What is Icon? (ICX)
- What is Waves? (WAVES)
- What is OmiseGo? (OMG)
- What is Gnosis? (GNO)
- What is Melon? (MLN)
- What is Nano? (NANO)
- What is Dogecoin? (DOGE)
- What is Tether? (USDT)
- What is Dai? (DAI)
- What is Siacoin? (SC)
- What is Lisk? (LSK)
- What is Tezos? (XTZ)
- What is Cosmos? (ATOM)
- What is Augur? (REP)
Why use COMP?
Compound may be of interest to anyone who wants to earn additional income by lending or borrowing cryptocurrency.
Further, users have a built-in incentive to hold the token, as anyone who owns COMP can make decisions on the future platform. This includes being able to vote on Compound's interest rates and other important choices that may impact their revenues or profitability.
Investors may further find COMP of interest should they want to gain exposure to emerging DeFi coins that offer exposure to the protocol's cash flow.
Start buying Compound
Now you're ready to take the next step and buy some COMP!

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


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The trees on your property are an important part of your landscape, hence they need protection against pests and diseases. Unfortunately, the warm climate of Alvin, TX provides an ideal habitat for the breeding of disease-causing insects that could damage your trees.
Learning to identify these pathogens is imperative, as it can help you prevent an outbreak that could seriously damage or even kill your greenery. In the spirit of helping you maintain a healthy landscape, we have rounded up some of the most common Alvin tree pests and diseases, the trees they attack, and exactly what to look out for.
3 Deadliest Alvin Tree Pests And Diseases And How To Prevent Them
1. Emerald Ash Borer
The Emerald Ash Borer is a highly vicious pest that attacks the ash, one of the most popular shade trees in Texas. If not spotted and treated early, the affected trees will generally die within 2 to 4 years.
The insect feeds and breeds under the bark of the tree, creating S-shaped marks that can only be seen if you peel off the bark. It is this constant feeding that eventually causes death to the tree. The inner bark is responsible for transporting water and nutrients and when the insects feed on it, they disrupt the transportation process, which slowly starves the tree until it dies.
Regularly inspect your ash trees for the Emerald Ash Borers. If you suspect your trees may be infested, contact a tree service Alvin professional right away. If it is not too late, they can save the tree by safely injecting insecticides. If the tree cannot be saved, they will advise you to cut it down before it becomes a safety hazard.
2. Oak Wilt
Oak wilt makes it to our list of the worst Alvin tree diseases as a killer of oaks. It kills thousands of oaks each year in woodlots, forests, and home landscapes, which makes it one of the most serious tree diseases in Texas.
The disease is caused by a fungus that is spread by boring insects or through root grafts. The fungus thrives in the tissues that transport nutrients to the vital parts of the tree, hindering the transportation of these nutrients.
Black and red oaks are considered highly vulnerable to the disease and may die within just a few weeks of initial infection. White oaks are more resistant and may not show any signs at all if attacked. However, they also eventually succumb to the ailment but may live with it for up to 7 years.
The symptoms of oak wilt are yellowing or browning of the foliage, which is then accompanied by shedding of foliage and branch dieback. If you spot these symptoms, get in touch with a professional tree service Texas company, and fast.
3. Powdery Mildew
As the name implies, the powdery mildew disease appears as white powdery splotches on the surface of the leaves. It affects almost all tree species but the most susceptible are the basswood, maple, lilac, dogwood, oaks, and magnolia. Fortunately, unlike most Alvin tree diseases, this one rarely kills a tree.
Powdery mildew is a popular tree fungus in Texas, and even though it is not a tree killer, it could disfigure specimens especially during the most humid times of the year. You may not need to treat the fungus at all for it to retreat but you could take certain measures to prevent it from becoming prevalent.
For instance, avoid planting trees in areas that are heavily shaded or close to each other. And prune regularly to improve air circulation and light penetration.
The Local Tree Experts Overview
Most Alvin tree pests and diseases can be managed if identified soon enough. That's why it is important to have a maintenance program that allows you to regularly examine your trees for any abnormal changes. If you suspect your trees have any of the diseases we have discussed above, please give us a call.


the contents of the compressed distribution and follow the installation instructions as specified in the INSTALL document.
 3. Compile PHP with the –with-mhash option.
On completion of the installation process, you have the functionality offered by mhash at your disposal. This section introduces mhash(), the most prominent of the five functions made available to PHP when the mhash extension is included.
Hashing Data with mhash
The function mhash() offers support for a number of hashing algorithms, allowing developers to incorporate checksums, message digests, and various other digital signatures into their PHP applications. Its prototype follows:
string mhash(int hash, string data [, string key])
Hashes are also used for storing passwords. mhash() currently supports the hashing algorithms listed here:
 1. ADLER32
 2. CRC32
 3. CRC32B
 4. GOST
 5. HAVAL
 6. MD4
 7. MD5
 8. RIPEMD128
 9. RIPEMD160
 10. SHA1
 11. SNEFRU
 12. TIGER
Consider an example. Suppose you want to immediately encrypt a user's chosen password at the time of registration (which is typically a good idea). You could use mhash() to do so, setting the hash parameter to your chosen hashing algorithm, and data to the password you want to hash:
$userpswd = "mysecretpswd";
$pswdhash = mhash(MHASH_SHA1, $userpswd);
echo "The hashed password is: ".bin2hex($pswdhash);
This returns the following:
The hashed password is: 07c45f62d68d6e63a9cc18a5e1871438ba8485c2
Note that you must use the bin2hex() function to convert the hash from binary mode to hexadecimal so that it can be formatted in a fashion easily viewable within a browser.
Via the optional parameter key, mhash() is also capable of determining message integrity and authenticity. If you pass in the message's secret key, mhash() will validate whether the message has been tampered with by returning the message's Hashed Message Authentication Code (HMAC). You can think of the HMAC as a checksum for encrypted data. If the HMAC matches the one that would be published along with the message, the message has arrived undisturbed.
{mospagebreak title=The MCrypt Package}
MCrypt is a popular data-encryption package available for use with PHP, providing support for two-way encryption (i.e., encryption and decryption). Before you can use it, you need to follow these installation instructions:
 1. Go to and download the package source.
 3. Compile PHP with the –with-mcrypt option.
MCrypt supports a number of encryption algorithms, all of which are listed here:
 4. CAST
 5. CRYPT
 6. DES
 7. ENIGMA
 8. GOST
 9. IDEA
 10. LOKI97
 11. MARS
 12. PANAMA
 13. RC (2, 4)
 14. RC6 (128, 192, 256)
 15. RIJNDAEL (128, 192, 256)
 16. SAFER (64, 128, and PLUS)
 17. SERPENT (128, 192, and 256)
 19. TEAN
 21. 3DES
 22. TWOFISH (128, 192, and 256)
 23. WAKE
 24. XTEA
This section introduces just a sample of the more than 35 functions made available via this PHP extension. For a complete introduction, consult the PHP manual.
Encrypting Data with MCrypt
The mcrypt_encrypt() function encrypts the provided data, returning the encrypted result. The prototype follows:
string mcrypt_encrypt(string cipher, string key, string data,
 string mode [, string iv])
The provided cipher names the particular encryption algorithm, and the parameter key determines the key used to encrypt the data. The mode parameter specifies one of the six available encryption modes: electronic codebook, cipher block chaining, cipher feedback, 8-bit output feedback, N-bit output feedback, and a special stream mode. Each is referenced by an abbreviation: ecb, cbc, cfb, ofb, nofb, and stream, respectively. Finally, the iv parameter initializes cbc, cfb, ofb, and certain algorithms used in stream mode. Consider an example:
$ivs = mcrypt_get_iv_size(MCRYPT_DES, MCRYPT_MODE_CBC);
$iv = mcrypt_create_iv($ivs, MCRYPT_RAND);
$key = "F925T";
$message = "This is the message I want to encrypt.";
$enc = mcrypt_encrypt(MCRYPT_DES, $key, $message, MCRYPT_MODE_CBC, $iv);
echo bin2hex($enc);
This returns the following:
You can then decrypt the text with the mcrypt_decrypt() function, introduced next.
Decrypting Data with MCrypt
The mcrypt_decrypt() function decrypts a previously encrypted cipher, provided that the cipher, key, and mode are the same as those used to encrypt the data. Its prototype follows:
string mcrypt_decrypt(string cipher, string key, string data,
 string mode [, string iv])
Go ahead and insert the following line into the previous example, directly after the last statement:
echo mcrypt_decrypt(MCRYPT_DES, $key, $enc, MCRYPT_MODE_CBC, $iv);
This returns the following:
This is the message I want to encrypt.
The methods in this section are only those that are in some way incorporated into the PHP extension set. However, you are not limited to these encryption/hashing solutions. Keep in mind that you can use functions such as popen() or exec() with any of your favorite third-party encryption technologies, for example, PGP ( ) or GPG ( ).
Hopefully the material presented in this chapter provided you with a few important tips and, more importantly, got you thinking about the many attack vectors that your application and server face. However, it's important to understand that the topics described in this section are but a tiny sliver of the total security pie. If you're new to the subject, take some time to learn more about some of the more prominent security-related Web sites.
Regardless of your prior experience, you need to devise a strategy for staying abreast of breaking security news. Subscribing to the newsletters both from the more prevalent security-focused Web sites and from the product developers may be the best way to do so. However, your strategic preference is somewhat irrelevant; what is important is that you have a strategy and stick to it, lest your castle be conquered.
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The American Law Institute is considering revisions to the sexual assault provisions of the U.S. Model Penal Code. The Model Penal Code provides expert legal guidance for the drafting of state criminal codes. As a memorandum from American Law Institute Members and Advisers indicates, the proposed sexual assault revisions imply massive sex criminalization.
Some additional points to consider:
- Changes the Model Penal Code played a key role in promoting broad, preemptive domestic violence emergency law that has been central to the rise of mass incarceration in the U.S. from 1980.
- Under reasonable parameters for deterrence, a massive expansion in criminalization of sexual assault will have large costs in incarceration and relatively small effect on sexual assault.
- The criminal justice system is highly biased against men. Reporting of sexual assault is highly biased against men. U.S. jails and prisons now hold ten time more men than women. Massively expanding criminalization of sexual assault will increase the already highly disproportionate incarceration of men.
The law profession has failed to bring good reason and objective expertise to criminal law. Grotesque anti-men gender stereotyping pervades discussion of domestic violence in law review articles. Discussion of sexual assault is even more biased. For example, a leading law review published an article proposing criminalizing what it defined as reckless sexual behavior. Despite being deeply flawed and displaying anti-men gender bigotry, this article attracted little critical peer review. The American Law Institute should promote the best thinking of the American legal profession, not the worst.
Most sexual victimization, like most violent victimization generally, isn't punished through the criminal justice system. If evaluated without gender bias, sexual victimization is roughly equally balanced between women and men. Sexual criminalization, in contrast, is highly skewed toward men. Massively increasing sexual assault criminalization could greatly raise the already extraordinarily high incarceration prevalence and make even more unequal the already highly disproportionate incarceration of men.


Рефрактометр PR-23-AC Pharma
K-Patents Process Refractometer PR-23 meets the pharmaceutical industry standards and guidelines. These include PAT, GMP, CIP/SIP, 21 CFR Part 11 and validation. The ability to understand and continuously control Refractive Index nD contributes significantly to the development of effective drugs and efficient manufacturing processes.
K-Patents Pharma Refractometer PR-23-AC fulfills the pharmaceutical drug production regulations for process wetted part materials, sealing, and surface roughness. No animal originated media are used in the machining and polishing processes.
Each sensor is provided with a calibration certificate comparing a set of standard liquids to the actual sensor output. Therefore, the calibration and accuracy can be routinely verified with the traceable standard Refractive Index liquids.
Validation often includes the qualification of systems and equipment. It is a requirement for Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) and other regulatory requirements. K-Patents provides a validation procedure and equipment that help the user to prove the suitability of the refractometer for its designated function. These include an optional laboratory test cuvette for easy off-line testing of drug samples in the laboratory.
С более подробной информацией о фитинге ARI 106 можно ознакомиться на сайте компании производителя «Knick», перейдя по ссылке.


text:
Questions to Discuss with Your Fire Chief
How many response resources is the "right" amount for fire calls? For medical calls? What tells us that this is correct?
Undoubtedly, the speed of fire department services, as well as any emergency services, is rather valuable. When people dial 911, they expect fast response and reaction as the call is of the urgent matter. Some studies demonstrate that even minor delay can cause significant damage. In the case of fire, the damage may be increasing with every minute; the same regards medical response as some injuries require the treatment as fast as possible, otherwise the patient's condition may significantly deteriorate. Even the periods of time that seem to be quite short in the non-emergency situations can be vital in the emergency ones. At the same time, in the case of minor injuries, a slight delay is not of great significance. According to Brendan Kearney, the 5-6 minute delay of ambulance dispatch does not have a negative impact on the patient's state when the latter is not serious ("NAEMSP Dialog: Fire First Response," 2011). Meanwhile, the same period can be vital for a patient with anaphylactic shock or someone who needs defibrillation.
The right amount of resources for a 911 call is the one, which enables to provide adequate help and service, while not wasting any resources. There is no formula of how people in the fire department should provide an adequate response to all 911 situations. According to Gary Ludwig, Deputy Fire Chief of the Memphis Fire Department, there is no principle and no definition of proper number of firefighters/paramedics in the team. Therefore, one should focus not on the amount of people but on the efficiency and adequacy of the whole team, as well as understanding, which calls are primary and which are not. There is no definite amount of people that have to respond to each 911 call as they significantly differ from one another ("NAEMSP Dialog: Fire First Response," 2011). A major uncontrolled fire requires different response than that for the assistance in a car crash with minor injuries. Thus, the system should be rather based on the specification of types of responses than a unified definition of responses for all 911 calls.
Do we need to send a fire apparatus to calls, including all medical requests from 911?
Nowadays, fire department is able to respond not only to fire calls, but also to other 911 requests, including emergency medical services (EMS). As the number of calls in the cases of fire declined significantly, people are acquiring additional qualifications and certifications that give the possibility to assist the population in the cases that do not include 911 calls. It is important to maintain the sustainability of fire departments and keep them running. The role of the fire department in the provision of EMS is truly essential, as it is one of the entities that provide the main amount of EMS responses.
Currently, the members of the New Haven Fire Department are prepared to respond to numerous hazards except fires themselves. The list of 911 emergencies includes "medical emergency, automobile accident, hazardous materials incident or any other emergency" ("Services," 2015). Fide department is able to provide pre-hospital medical care, and the department members are not only trained properly in order to respond to medical calls, but also have such certifications as Emergency First Responders, Emergency Medical Technicians, and Paramedics. The department members are ready to address various rescue situations, which may emerge basing on the topographical complexity of New Haven. Moreover, the department members are able to provide basic services while handling hazardous materials.
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The fire department team is a well-organized structure with a short response time, which means that it is capable of providing high-quality EMS. Therefore, since 1960s the members of fire departments have been undergoing trainings in EMS that provide knowledge and understanding of adequate responses in various medical situations ("Making smart choices…," 2010). The responsibilities of the fire departments while dealing with EMS situations are not limited to providing first medical aid. Their role is more complex, as departments have more resources than medical teams, which might help to clear the way for ambulances; get patients out of cars and other closed spaces; retrieve people from hard-to-reach areas, etc. Therefore, the complex training of the New Haven Fire Department is truly important for providing EMS.
At the same time, it is essential to understand that fire department is not a primary healthcare provider and should not be responsible for all 911 medical requests. One should remember the primary function of the fire department (which is dealing with fire-related situations). Excessive amount of responses to EMS calls may lead to the drainage of the department's resources to other spheres and thus limit the capabilities in responding to fire. Therefore, while EMS are an important element of the fire department functioning, the 911 calls that require its response should only be related to the life-threatening situations. Fire department should have a clear protocol, to which EMS cases it should respond, basing on its capabilities.
Fire-related responses are declining significantly. When are the numbers low enough to consider consolidating or contracting with another community? Are there other alternatives to having our own fire department?
It is true that the number of fire calls is declining. At the same time, according to Making Smart Choices (2010) the number of 911 calls continues increasing. With the primary aim of serving the community, there seem to be the constant growing need for the 911 responses, although not in the case of fire. Therefore, one can assume that instead of dissolving a fire department, the community can reorganize it in order to adjust the department to different situations. The case of the New Haven Fire Department is quite a good example, as it shows how the fire department members can learn and get certified in several spheres. In fact, the department is prepared to encounter a wide variety of emergency situations, which include (but are not limited to) car accidents, dealing with hazardous materials, and emergency medical services. Statistics shows that modern fire department should be able to respond to multiple 911 situations, with the number of EMS calls constantly increasing. Therefore, even without fires, firefighters are required to handle various emergency situations in the community.
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Still, if a community is willing to decrease its' expenses on the fire department, there are several alternatives to closing it. Firstly, there is the "browning out" system, in which the costs are cut by reducing the amount of staff on each company's engine, although studies show that this system is not efficient enough("Making smart choices…," 2010). Another way of reducing costs would be decreasing response to EMS calls and expenditures by limiting the number of transported EMS patients. Anyway, the community should be aware that dissolving a fire department or contracting with other community would cause the increased response times of the department, which might lead to negative consequences. Therefore, a good alternative would be the repurposing of the department by providing additional qualifications to its members. In such a way the community will still benefit from the existence of its own crew that is able to respond to a wide range of calls.


text:
Alces Gridware Software Applications¶
This page documents the software which is currently available via the Alces Gridware project. Software applications are listed in the Alces Gridware repository with the structure
repository/type/name/version, which corresponds to:
- repository - packages are listed in the main repository if available for auto-scaling clusters, and the volatile repository otherwise.
- type - packages are listed as apps (applications), libs (shared libraries), compilers or mpi (message-passing interface API software for parallel applications)
- name - the name of the software package
- version - the published version of the software package
For example, a package listed as
main/apps/bowtie2/2.2.6 is version 2.2.6 of the Bowtie2 application, from the stable repository.
The following list is updated periodically as new software is added to the repositories. For clarity, multiple versions of the same application are not shown, unless there are significant functional differences between versions. Software categories are provided as a guide only - many packages are multi-discipline and have a range of appropriate uses.
Tools and Utilities¶
gnuplot A portable command-line driven graphing utility grace Grace is a WYSIWYG 2D plotting tool for the X Window System and M*tif idr Framework to measure the reproducibility of findings mawk mawk is an interpreter for the AWK Programming Language. parallel A shell tool for executing jobs in parallel using one or more computers
HPL A Portable Implementation of the High-Performance Linpack Benchmark for Distributed-Memory Computers memtester A userspace utility for testing the memory subsystem for faults. hpcc The HPC Challenge benchmark imb IMB is a networking benchmark tool. iozone IOzone is a filesystem benchmark tool. gpuburn GPU-Burn is a stress test for multi-GPGPU-setups. Folding@home A distributed computing project studying protein folding and misfolding
amber Set of programs for biomolecular simulation and analysis beast Cross-platform program for Bayesian MCMC analysis of molecular sequences placement An algorithm for prediction of explicit solvent atom distribution
MS Prot Tools Some hopefully useful tools for mass spectrometry applied to proteomics 454 Sequencing 454 Sequencing System Off-Instrument Software Applications suite ABRA Assembly Based ReAligner 'AbySS A de novo, parallel, paired-end sequence assembler that is designed for short reads ANGES Reconstucts ancestral genome maps from homologous markers in extant related genomes ANNOVAR Functional annotation of genetic variants from high-throughput sequencing data ARAGORN Detect tRNA genes and tmRNA genes in nucleotide sequences ArtificialFqG Ouputs artificial FASTQ files derived from a reference genome Atlas-SNP2 Next-generation sequencing suite of variant analysis tools AUGUSTUS Predicts genes in eukaryotic genomic sequences autoadapt Automatically detect and remove adaptors and primers present in a FASTQ file bam-readcount Generate metrics at single nucleotide positions BAMStats Tool to calculate and display various metrics derived from SAM/BAM files BamTools Provides a programmer's API and an end-user's toolkit for handling BAM files bamUtil Several programs that perform operations on SAM/BAM files BamView Interactive display of read alignments in BAM data files BLAST Compares nucleotide or protein sequences to sequence databases and calculates the statistical significance of matches Batalign An incremental method for accurate gapped alignment BCFtools Utilities for variant calling and manipulating VCF and BCF files Bcl2FastQ A tool to handle bcl conversion and demultiplexing Bcl2FastQ A tool to handle bcl conversion and demultiplexing BCL Converter Convert *.bcl files into *_qseq.txt files BEAGLE A general purpose library for evaluating the likelihood of sequence evolution on trees BEAGLE Analysis of large-scale genetic data sets with hundreds of thousands of markers genotyped on thousands of samples BEAGLE A general purpose library for evaluating the likelihood of sequence evolution on trees BEDTools A flexible suite of utilities for comparing genomic features biom-format The Biological Observation Matrix (BIOM) format BIONJ An improved version of the NJ algorithm based on a simple model of sequence data BioPerl A community effort to produce Perl code which is useful in biology Biopython Set of freely available tools for biological computation written in Python bio-rainbow Package for RAD-seq related clustering and de novo assembly. Bismark A bisulfite read mapper and methylation caller BLAST (Legacy) Compares nucleotide or protein sequences to sequence databases and calculates the statistical significance of matches Bowtie 2 Fast and sensitive read alignment Bowtie Ultrafast memory-efficient short read aligner BreakPointer Pinpoint rearrangement breakpoints using paired end reads CAP3 Sequence Assembly Program car Reconstructing contiguous regions of an ancestral genome cdbfasta CDB (Constant DataBase) indexing and retrieval tools for FASTA files CD-HIT A program for clustering DNA/protein sequence database at high identity with tolerance. cdhit A program for clustering and comparing protein or nucleotide sequences. CEGMA Building sets of gene annotations in eukaryotic genomes CGAT The Computational Genomics Analysis Toolkit CHANCE Assess the quality of ChiP-seq experiments CHIAMO Call genotypes from the Affymetrix 500K Mapping chip Chimerascan Detection of chimeric transcripts in high-throughput sequencing data ClonalFrame Inference of bacterial microevolution using multilocus sequence data CLUMPP Deals with label switching and multimodality problems in population-genetic cluster analyses Clustal Omega Multiple alignment of nucleic acid and protein sequences ClustalW Multiple alignment of nucleic acid and protein sequences cnD Copy number variant caller for inbred strains CNVnator CNV discovery and genotyping from depth of read mapping CoNIFER Copy Number Inference From Exome Reads CASAVA Processes sequencing reads provided by RTA or OLB CONTIGuator A bacterial genomes finishing tool for structural insights on draft genomes Control-FREEC Detect copy-number changes and allelic imbalances using deep-sequencing data CNATR Tool for copy number variation (CNV) detection for targeted resequencing data Corset Software for clustering de novo assembled transcripts and counting overlapping reads Cortex "Software for genome assembly and variation analysis CRAMTools Set of Java tools and APIs for efficient compression of sequence read data CREST Algorithm for detecting genomic structural variations at base-pair resolution CRISP Multi-sample variant caller for high-throughput pooled sequence data Curtain Assembler of next generation sequence, developed by Matthias Haimel in the Ensembl Genomes team at the EBI cutadapt A tool that removes adapter sequences from DNA sequencing reads DARWIN Data Analysis and Retrieval With Indexed Nucleotide/peptide sequences DDiMAP Analyses mapped NGS read data to discover rare variants dDocent An interactive bash wrapper to QC, assemble, map, and call SNPs from double digest RAD data Delly Structural variant discovery by integrated paired-end and split-read analysis distruct Graphically display results produced by the genetic clustering program structure DREEP Detecting low-level mutations by utilizing the RE-sequencing Error Profile of the data EAD Error aware demultiplexer is a probabilistic demultiplexer for Illumina BCL files. EIGENSOFT Combines functionality from population genetics methods and EIGENSTRAT stratification method EIGENSOFT Combines functionality from population genetics methods and EIGENSTRAT stratification method Ensembl API Abstraction layer for accessing Ensembl genomic databases Ensembl Variant Effect Predictor Predict the functional consequences of known and unknown variants e-PCR Identifies sequence tagged sites (STSs) within DNA sequences Exonerate Generic tool for pairwise sequence comparison eXpress Streaming tool for quantifying the abundances of a set of target sequences from sampled subsequences FamSeq A computational tool for calculating probability of variants in family-based sequencing data FASTA Search protein or DNA sequence databases comparing a protein sequence to a DNA sequence database FastQC A quality control tool for high throughput sequence data fastq-tools Small utilities for working with fastq sequence files FastTree Inference of approximately-maximum-likelihood phylogenetic trees from alignments of nucleotide or protein sequences. FastUniq an ultrafast de novo duplicates removal tool for paired short DNA sequences Flexbar Flexible barcode and adapter removal for sequencing platforms FreeBayes Bayesian genetic variant detector designed to find small polymorphisms FREGENE Simulates sequence-like data over large genomic regions in large diploid populations FusionFinder Find fusion transcript candidates in RNA-Seq data FusionMap Align reads spanning fusion junctions directly to the genome Galaxy Open, web-based platform for data intensive biomedical research GBrowse The Generic Genome Browser geneid Predicts genes in anonymous genomic sequences designed with a hierarchical structure GeneTorrent Transfer genomic data reliably across a network GATK Software package developed at the Broad Institute to analyse next-generation resequencing data GAT + queue Broad Institute package for analysing next-generation resequencing data; including command-line scripting framework for defining multi-stage genomic analysis pipelines GenomeMapper Short read mapping tool designed for accurate read alignments GENSCAN Analyze genomic DNA sequences from a variety of organisms GERP++ Identifies constrained elements in multiple alignments by quantifying substitution deficits GIMSAN GIbbsMarkov with Significance ANalysis Glimmer System for finding genes in microbial DNA, especially the genomes of bacteria, archaea, and viruses GMAP/GSNAP Genomic mapping and alignment and short-read nucleotide alignment programs GREAT Genomic Regions Enrichment of Annotations Tool Grinder A versatile omics shotgun and amplicon sequencing read simulator GTOOL Transforms sets of genotype data for use with the programs SNPTEST and IMPUTE HAL Hierarchical Alignment Format API and analysis and conversion tools hapflk Haplotype-based test for differentiation in multiple populations HLA*IMP BE Impute HLA type information based on SNP genotypes back-end HLA*


text:
Servedio, M.R. and Sæther, S.A. and Sætre, G.-P. (2009) Reinforcement and learning. Evolutionary Ecology, 23, 109-123. ISSN 0269-7653.
Restricted to KNAW only
Official URL: _URL_
Evidence has been accumulating to support the process of reinforcement as a potential mechanism in speciation. In many species, mate choice decisions are influenced by cultural factors, including learned mating preferences (sexual imprinting) or learned mate attraction signals (e.g., bird song). It has been postulated that learning can have a strong impact on the likelihood of speciation and perhaps on the process of reinforcement, but no models have explicitly considered learning in a reinforcement context. We review the evidence that suggests that learning may be involved in speciation and reinforcement, and present a model of reinforcement via learned preferences. We show that not only can reinforcement occur when preferences are learned by imprinting, but that such preferences can maintain species differences easily in comparison with both autosomal and sex-linked genetically inherited preferences. We highlight the need for more explicit study of the connection between the behavioral process of learning and the evolutionary process of reinforcement in natural systems.
|Institutes:||Nederlands Instituut voor Ecologie (NIOO)|
|Deposited On:||23 Mar 2010 01:00|
|Last Modified:||24 Apr 2012 16:44|
Repository Staff Only: item control page

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


Maximum Number of DLLs
Some packages contain native code, which is linked to R dynamically in the form of dynamically loaded libraries (DLLs). Recently, R users started loading increasing numbers of packages; "workflow documents" are one source of this pattern. This has eventually lead to hitting the DLL limit in R, which materializes as runtime error "maximal number of DLLs reached".
Limit on the number of open files
The DLL limit in R is good for one important reason. Each loaded DLL will consume at least one open file descriptor in the implementation of the dynamic loader (on Unix inside dlopen). It can consume more due to loading of dependent libraries. Operating systems limit the number of open files per process and on some systems the limit is very low. It has been reported in the past to be as low as 256 by default on some systems and todays OS/X platforms still have it at 256 by default. The limit is usually higher on Linux (e.g. 1024) and is very high (essentially non-existent) on Windows. It can be increased on both OS/X and Linux, but it is not easy for regular users. If the limit on the number of open files is reached, R will start behaving unpredictably as opening files will start failing – diagnosing that the file limit is the problem may be very difficult (the failures may show up in any code of R runtime but also in packages; error messages may not be properly propagated to the user in full detail). At the same time, diagnosing that the DLL limit has been reached is easy, one gets a standard R error message saying exactly this when trying to load a DLL, usually via loading a package.
On POSIX systems (applies to Unix and OS/X of R platforms), the limit on the number of open files is referred to as RLIMIT_NOFILE, it can be detected by getrlimit() and changed, following certain restrictions, by setrlimit(). There is a hard limit and a soft limit. The hard limit can be irreversibly lowered by a user process. The soft limit can be set (reversibly) to any value as permitted by the hard limit. One can change these limits from a shell using utility ulimit. The utility is not required by POSIX to support the file limit, but it typically does in shells on Linux and OS/X. An example from an OS/X 10.13.3 system:
$ ulimit -n
$ ulimit -Sn
$ ulimit -Hn
In the example, the soft limit on the system is 256, but there is no (small) hard limit. In fact, there is a limit to the hard limit, it is just not shown by the call. One can thus, with user privileges, simply increase the soft limit to be able to open more files in processes executed further by the shell, so one can just do this before running R:
$ ulimit -Sn 2048
ulimit -n 2048 would do as well, but it would modify both the soft and the hard limits, and so one would not be able to increase it further, e.g. for experimentation purposes.
There is also a limit on the number of open files set in the OS kernel. On OS/X, these are parameters kern.maxfiles and kern.maxfilesperproc and can be changed via sysctl (they are 98304 and 49152 on my system). It is very unlikely one would have to change these.
DLL registry representation in R
Meta-data about loaded DLLs in R is kept in a fixed-size array allocated at R startup, so setting the size high incurs a memory overhead. In principle, the data structure could be changed to a linked list (and we received a rather extensive patch suggesting to do that). However, one entry of the array takes only 96 bytes (on my 64-bit Linux), so having the limit very high, say a thousand or more, by default would not be a real issue on todays systems with large amounts of memory and perhaps not worth increasing the complexity of this code. One could instead consider re-allocating the array on demand, but it seems there may be pointers inside these entries (I could not persuade myself based on reading the code that moving the entries in memory would be safe). The memory overhead is still small, the real issue that prevents people from loading the DLLs is the number of open files.
Overheads of loading many packages
Apart from that it might not be a good idea conceptually, loading excessive number of packages may not be advisable also for performance reasons. Even though packages use so called lazy loading, there are some operations performed eagerly when packages are loaded, particularly by S4/methods implementation. Some Bioconductor packages have been seen to take 12 seconds to load on a modern computer (including dependent packages), I've experimented with yriMulti which took that long (including dependent packages) and it seems most time has been spent in updating method tables. It would be good to reduce these overhead in the future, but for now they should be taken into consideration.
DLL limit in recent versions of R
In R 3.3.x, the maximum number of DLLs has been fixed to 100. The known minimum default limit on the number of open files was (only) 256, so there was a 156-files buffer to cater for that DLLs may take more than one file and for other files to be open by R runtime and packages.
In R 3.4.x, the maximum number of DLLs can be modified via environment variable R_MAX_NUM_DLLS. The variable is checked on R startup and the fixed array (the registry) is pre-allocated. Setting the variable already inside running R has no effect on that instance of R. The minimum permissible value is 100 and the maximum is 1000 (yet permitting the limit on the number of open files). The limit on the number of open files is detected via getrlimit() on POSIX systems, and is hardcoded (very high) on Windows. If such limit is known, the maximum number of DLLs can be up to 60% of the file limit (so the buffer can be a bit smaller than in R 3.3.x). If no such limit is known, the maximum number of DLLs remains 100. If the limit on the number of open files is so small that we could not even set the limit on DLLs to 100, R fails to start with an informative error message.
This allowed users requiring to load many DLLs to increase the DLL limit, but on systems with a small limit on the number of open files (typically OS/X), this also required increasing that limit as well.
To make this behavior more user-friendly, R 3.5.0 automatically aims at a higher DLL limit (currently 614) when R_MAX_NUM_DLLS is not set. When the OS limit on the number of open files is too small for this, R attempts to increase the limit via setrlimit() on POSIX systems (on Windows, no increase is necessary). One thus now gets typically the limit of 614 even on OS/X systems without setting any variables. When R_MAX_NUM_DLLS is set, but the limit on the number of open files is too low, R again attempts to increase the limit. So now, even on OS/X, this succeeds (provided there is no strict hard limit):
env R_MAX_NUM_DLLS=1000 R
One can also see that the file limit is increased automatically:
$ ulimit -n
$ R
> system("ulimit -n")
Listing loaded DLLs
One can list the DLLs registry from R, this could be useful when diagnosing the origins of loaded DLLs:
> getLoadedDLLs()
 Filename Dynamic.Lookup
base base FALSE
methods /Users/tomas/trunk/library/methods/libs/ FALSE
utils /Users/tomas/trunk/library/utils/libs/ FALSE
grDevices /Users/tomas/trunk/library/grDevices/libs/ FALSE
graphics /Users/tomas/trunk/library/graphics/libs/ FALSE
stats /Users/tomas/trunk/library/stats/libs/ FALSE


text:
Mon February 4, 2013
African Americans Fly High With Math And Science
Originally published on Mon February 4, 2013 12:48 pm
This Black History Month, Tell Me More is taking a look at African Americans in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and math) who are inspiring future generations.
Today, Barrington Irving shares how his sky high dreams became a reality. A chance encounter in his parents' bookstore put him on a path that would make him the youngest person and first African American to fly solo around the world.
Barrington Irving remembers a man walking into the store dressed in a pilot's uniform. The man asked whether Irving might consider a future in aviation. "I immediately just said to him, I don't think I'm smart enough to do it," Irving remembers/ "Then I asked him how much money he made and after he answered that question, I took an interest in aviation."
Irving's success was far from a sure thing. His family immigrated to the United States from Jamaica when Irving was six. Private flight private lessons were out of the question - so Barrington Irving did what he thought was the next best thing.
He saved his money to buy a flight simulator game that allowed him to fly anywhere and in any kind of weather conditions from the safety of his PC. It was a start, and made him passionate enough to save more of his money so that he could afford flight lessons.
By the time he turned 21, Irving had lost friends to violence and prison, so he was already thinking about his own legacy. "I'll never forget asking myself the question, 'what's one thing I can do whether I live or die that would be worth something?'" he tells NPR's Michel Martin. Irving says an idea hit him - fly around the world.
It was one of those ideas, Irving recalls, that was great in principle, but a struggle in reality. Barrington Irving hit roadblock after roadblock for nearly two and a half years. Funding was difficult to come by. Yet that didn't stop Irving from pursuing his dream.
So at the age of 23, Barrington Irving finally had his plane ready for his flight around the world. But he had no radar, no de-icing system and thirty dollars in his pocket when he left Miami.
Some 97 days later, when Irving returned he was greeted by thousands of people with congratulatory banners and signs, and what really stuck out was the number of young people who had followed his journey.
Building on that inspiration has turned into Barrington Irving's mission in life. He started by challenging kids from some of Miami's failing high schools to build a plane from scratch, which he would then pilot. In late 2014, Irving will also be taking to the skies again with a flying classroom.
He says that children from across the nation and around the world will be able to interact with him as he conducts experiments that they choose and help monitor. He's hoping he will be able to get more students excited about the STEM fields.
"We want to be the best, but we're afraid to challenge our kids to the be the best." That's something that Irving is hoping to change one flight at a time.


Thursday, February 23, 2017
Etymology "Red Neck"
Etymology: The study of the origins of words.
On the hunt
From Wikipedia
The term redneck is a derogatory term chiefly used for a rural poor white person of the Southern United States. Its usage is similar in meaning to cracker, hillbilly (especially regarding Appalachia and the Ozarks), and white trash
"Hold my beer?" What kind of idijiot do you think I am? Nobody holds MY beer but me.
Well, that is their story.
But consider that English has many words of Germanic origin via its Saxon roots.
Have you every heard of "Reineke"? Sounds a bit like Red Neck, doesn't it? the main character in a literary cycle of allegorical Dutch, English, French and German fables. Those stories are largely concerned with (Reineke), an anthropomorphic red fox and trickster figure. His adventures usually involve him deceiving other anthropomorphic animals for his own advantage or trying to avoid retaliations from them. His main enemy and victim across the cycle is his uncle, the wolf Isengrim (or Ysengrim). While the character of (Reineke) appears in later works, the core stories were written during the Middle Ages by multiple authors and are often seen as parodies of medieval literature such as courtly love stories and chansons de geste, as well as a satire of political and religious institutions.
So what we have here predates the Br'er Rabbit stories. The humor is rich....White man's Rednecky is a fox. Black Man's Br'er is a rabbit. The same character and many of the same stories.
The etymology of the word "Rednecky" itself, as I like to think of him, is old German for "made hard by the gods" or "denoting someone who is wise, clever, or resourceful" depending on the authority you prefer. Both work for me. Both describe most of the "Red Necks" I know.
Those who would reject it on the basis that "there is no evidence" cannot present evidence that it is not true. In fact, there IS evidence that my etymology is the true origin. If you doubt it, reread the last paragraph and consider that some of the Br'er Rabbit stories sound much like the Red Necky stories told by slave owners. As the fox is to the wolf, the rabbit is to the fox.
 1. Actually the first use of the term redneck was after the mining strikes in West Virginia where the rebel miners wore red scarves around their necks so the other fight would know who was on their side.
 2. And here I thought it was all about (Very) white Scot Irish immigrants getting sunburned necks working outside every day.
 Actually still think it's that.
 1. That is the version that was shared with me.
 My reaction, at the time, was that everybody who works outside in the sun on a regular basis wears hats. Even those swarthy, migrant laborers in not-so-sunny Michigan wear hats out in the onion fields.
 You would have to be very, very stupid, or very, very poor to not wear a hat when everybody else was wearing one.


text:
About the Annamites Ecoregion
Annamites - Covering over 23 million hectares
This area encompasses an incredibly broad, diverse and special range of habitats, animals and plants, accounting for a remarkably rich biodiversity.
Includes the Da Lat range
The term Annamite Mountains normally refers to the blocks of mountains lying between Lao P.D.R and Vietnam, only. However, as the entire mountain range south of the Da Lat plateau is ecologically similar to the Annamite mountains, it has been included in the ecoregion (maps).
Reaching over 2500 m
The Greater Annamites ecoregion straddles the Laos-Vietnam border for over 1100 km, includes small parts of Cambodia, covers over 23 million hectares and rises to over 2500 m at its highest point.
Also known as...
Although the term Annamite is used
here, the mountain range is more commonly known as Truong Son in Viet Nam, and as Sai Phou Louang in Laos.
Many species found no-where else
Many species are exclusive to the ecoregion. Indeed, one of the greatest concentrations of endemic species in a continental setting are found here, including the beautiful and threatened douc langur (Pygathrix nemaeus). Other species include the Asian tiger and elephant, and the Javan rhinoceros.
More than 30 ethnic groups live in the Annamites, each with their distinctive and traditional music, language, dress and customs. The natural resources of the Greater Annamites are vital to all of the people.
- Size: 23 million ha
- Protected: 3 million ha
- Habitat: Tropical and Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
- Geographic Location: Indochina: Laos, Vietnam and a small part of Cambodia
- Endangered species: 8


Overcoming Challenges as an Entrepreneur with Disabilities
Life isn't easy when it comes to being a Person with Disabilities (PWDs). Whether its access to public transport, doing sports, going to school, or many other things we take for granted, PWDs often face challenges due to their physical disabilities.
With the social stigma PWDs face everyday, securing a job is especially hard for them as society often views them as a burden or unable to contribute to the community. This has greatly impacted not just their livelihood, but their self-esteem as well, despite their individual talent and skills.
At PSC, we often work very closely with the PWD community as we believe they have the ability to create opportunities for themselves. Through our partnership with Maybank Foundation, the Reach Independence & Sustainable Entrepreneurship (R.I.S.E) program is an Entrepreneurship program that aims to empower the marginalised community, particularly the PWDs, to increase their own income by running their own businesses.
Since 2014, we're constantly inspired by their determination and achievement in becoming successful business owners. Here's how we've seen them overcome their challenges as an entrepreneur.
1. Becoming Mentally Positive
Everyone has their own insecurities, and this is especially true for PWDs. Imagine being told you cannot do certain things because of your physical challenge for so many years and bearing negative remarks by so many people. Its a demotivating thought which often prevents most people in that mental state to even believe they can succeed.
At PSC, we first aim to change that thought through our Awareness and Change module. Participants are taught to change their mindset and FLIP their negative thoughts into positive ones. Through this exercise alone, we've seen many PWDs become motivated in their cause and often they would be able to find ways to work through their challenges.
2. Finding Ways to Work WITH Your Disability
Everybody has their own strengths and weaknesses. And that's why even PWDs need to find ways that could complement their current skills and talent. With a positive attitude, anyone could find something they can do, and use it to their full potential.
We've seen a blind participant become an expert at body massages, a woman with Osteoporosis become a makeup guru, a wheelchair-bound person running a restaurant AND a tailoring business, and even a spinal cord injury victim becoming a specialist at modifying cars for others with disabilities.
Through their determination and strengths, we're inspired by their will to overcome their disabilities and use it to their advantage!
3. Hire People to Help
Running a business doesn't have to be a one-man show. For entrepreneurs with disabilities, teamwork is essential to a business' success.
As a thriving business owner, we've seen participants' confidence in themselves grow, often forgetting about their physical lack which helps them to hire others and eventually lead a team.
With the success of their growing business, we've seen participants create jobs for their community where fellow PWDs are given jobs and even able bodies individuals are also employed by them. This in turn has helped increase efficiency in the business operations as well as expanding the business.
4. Learn Proper Techniques as an Entrepreneur
Like any other business owner, knowledge is power and that's what we equip our participants with. Through our entrepreneurship program, participants are taught essential topics that can be easily implemented into their businesses such as the Blue Ocean theory, Sales Strategies, Customer Analysis, Customer Value Proposition, Financial Management and more.
With the proper training and mentoring, we've seen participants with disabilities soar through the success of their businesses. As a PWD, this is especially encouraging when they are given the right opportunity.
As an entrepreneur with disabilities, being physically challenged is not an issue in becoming a successful business owner. At PSC, we strongly believe that anyone with the right mindset and proper training has the chance of creating their own opportunities.
To learn more about our programs and how YOU can make a significant change in the world, email us at _EMAIL_
Recent Posts
You can contact us by using our form below
 Unit 502, Block A,
 Phileo Damansara II,
 No.15, Jalan 16/11,
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 Pusat Perdagangan Phileo Damansara,
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 Fax: +603 79581888


text:
"CIP
2010"). The CIP has also been adopted by Statistics Canada as its standard disciplinary
For the purposes of the Humanities Indicators the CIP has several advantages over
the NSF classification system. For example, because the NSF system groups degrees
in the nonsectarian study of religion with those awarded in programs designed to
prepare students for religious vocations and because the latter type of degree is
much more common, the HI cannot include what the NSF considers to be degrees in
religion in the humanities degree counts for years prior to 1987. With CIP-coded
data, however, academic disciplines such as comparative religion can be separated
from vocational programs such as theology and thus can be included in the humanities
degree tally. Additionally, when using CIP-coded data, the HI can include degrees
in all the excluded disciplines mentioned above, from art history to Holocaust studies,
in its counts of humanities degrees from 1987 onward. For an inventory of the NSF
and CIP disciplinary categories included by the HI under the broad academic field
headings ("humanities," "natural sciences," etc.) used throughout Part II of the
HI, see the
NSF and CIP Discipline Code Catalog. This catalog also indicates which degree
programs the HI includes within specific humanities disciplines (e.g., for the purposes
of the HI, English degrees include those classified under CIP as being in "English
Language and Literature," "American Literature," and "Creative Writing," among others).
In constructing indicators that use IPEDS data to track historical trends in the
academic humanities, the HI has employed completion data that were classified using
both the NSF and CIP systems. In these cases, either a note accompanying the chart
or a break in the trend line indicates where estimates based on the NSF classification
system leave off and those based on CIP begin. For those indicators reporting degree
data gathered in 1987 or more recently (1995 or more recently for the charts and
tables describing the proportions of all degrees received by members of racial/ethnic
minority groups), CIP-coded data are used.
In the case of several of the degree-related indicators, the humanities are compared
to certain other fields such as the sciences and engineering. The nature of these
fields is specified in the
Statement on the Scope of the "Humanities" for Purposes of the Humanities Indicators.
These broad fields do not encompass all postsecondary programs. Therefore, where
fields are being compared in terms of their respective shares of all degrees, the
percentages will not add up to 100%. Also, none of the graphs showing change over
time in the share of degrees awarded to members of traditionally underrepresented
ethnic/minority groups includes a data point for the academic year 1999, because
the NCES did not release data for that year.
The degree counts presented as part of the HI do not include "second majors" because
NCES began collecting data about these degrees only in 2001. The HI deals separately
with the issue of second majors in
Figure II-1c ("Humanities
Bachelor's Degrees Earned as 'Second Majors,' 2001–2010").
Data on the number of students completing minors are not collected as part of IPEDS,
but such information was compiled for selected humanities disciplines as part of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences–sponsored Humanities Departmental Survey
(HDS; see the HDS final report, page 8, Table 12).
Back to Content


text:
At some point you may have been asked to sign a contract that has a signature block similar to the one below:
XYZ Subcontractor, LLC:
John Doe, President
Print Name and Title
It's such a small detail that most likely no one asked why it says "(Seal)" next to the signature. However, the addition of that single word can significantly affect the contract.
First, a bit of history. In the 19th Century, companies signing a contract would press their seal into wax on the contract document. The purpose was to prove the handwritten signature wasn't forged. If later there was a dispute, the court only had to compare the seal in the wax to the company's seal to see if they matched. The practice of using a wax seal was so formal that contracts signed in that manner were considered more solemn than the average unsealed contract, and therefore could be enforced for longer periods of time. Over the years, at least in Maryland, the purpose of placing a company's seal on contracts changed from forgery protection to proof that the person signing the contract had authority to bind the company.
Jump forward to modern day, the remnants of contracts under seal still linger. In Maryland, the general statute of limitations to enforce a contract is 3 years. This means that from the time a person knows or should know that the contract has been breached, he has three years to sue. But the statute of limitations extends to a vast 12 years if the contract is "under seal."
So does placing "(Seal)" next to the signature blocks on a contract actually make a contract enforceable for a longer period of time? The answer depends on which state's laws govern the contract. In Maryland and Virginia, adding that single word does not itself extend the enforcement period. If "(Seal)" appears next to the signatures, the court will look to whether the parties knowingly intended for the contract to be subject to the longer limitations period. See, Rouse-Teachers Properties, Inc. v. Maryland Cas. Co., 358 Md. 575 (2000); School Board of Fairfax County v. M.L. Whitlow, Inc., 223 Va. 157 (1982).
The trap is that modern contracts frequently have choice of law provisions. Many contracts choose Delaware as the law governing the contract. Unlike Maryland and Virginia, under Delaware law, merely placing the word "(Seal)" next to the signature blocks may convert the contract into a contract under seal and extend the limitations period from 3 years to 20 years. Whittington v. Dragon Group, LLC, 991 A.2d 1 (2009). A contract signed and performed in Maryland, but with a Delaware choice of law, could become enforceable for 20 years by the addition of that one word.
Although the likelihood of litigation 20 years later is minor, between 3-6 years later is not and that one word may have destroyed an otherwise successful statute of limitations defense. Additionally, litigation after extended periods of time also presents the practical problem that knowledgeable employees and documents may be long gone.
Next time you sign a contract, look for "(Seal)" in the signature block. You may want to strike it before signing.


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ABA 310 - Assessment in Behavior Analysis
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to issues related to: the use of objective measurement procedures, data analysis, single-subject experimental design, and functional assessment/analysis. The primary focus of this course will be that of Functional Assessment and Analysis, of which we will cover the three general approaches currently in use: Indirect or anecdotal methods (checklists, rating scales, and questionnaires); Descriptive analysis (scatter plot, ABC analysis, interval and time sampling methods); Functional analysis (experimental methods, brief functional analyses).
Prerequisites & Notes
ABA 280 or permission of instructor.


Daily Archives: August 24, 2011
Unicist Functionalist Approach
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Unicist Functionalist Approach
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Time for business multiplication has come
The research in the field of human adaptive behavior allowed having a complete set of ontologies and business objects to develop business growth.
This triggers now the multiplication activities of the academic arm and the business arm taking advantage of the knowledge of the nature of cultural, institutional and individual behavior.
There are four types of businesses based on the objective characteristics of the activity or the subjective attitude of their leaders:
1) Difference making businesses
2) Dividing businesses
3) Adding businesses
4) Multiplying businesses
Difference making businesses are those where the revenue is made by sales and profit is produced by the buying of what is sold (e.g. small retail businesses). Threat: lack of growth.
Dividing businesses imply prevailing in the confrontation between something that exists and what is being proposed to buy (e.g. consultants). Threat: lack of credibility.
Adding businesses are those where something is being built based on objective value (e.g. industrial businesses). Threat: commoditization.
Multiplying businesses are those driven towards massive contagious expansion of the businesses (e.g. market driven businesses). Threat: inaction (nill).
The Unicist Research Institute is the pioneering research organization in the field of human adaptive systems, which allows building a multiplying business based on the expansion of our partners' network providing business expansion to the markets.
Our business it to build businesses for our partners and their business is to build growth for companies.
Time for multiplication has come.
We invite you to be our guest at the Unicist Library to access the book "Unicist Business Architecture":
Peter Belohlavek


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Great Lakes Restoration Initiative gets help from NOAA
NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science enhanced its monitoring effort in the Great Lakes this year and proposed further enhancement for FY2011 to assist EPA in their restoration efforts. Eleven new sites were established in "Areas of Concern" along Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and the St Lawrence River. The contaminant monitoring in shellfish tissue and sediment will include chemicals of emerging concern, such as flame retardants (PBDEs) and perfluorinated compounds (common in stain-resistant products) in order to identify potential new threats to the ecosystem. The contaminant information will be assessed relative to less impacted areas of the Great Lakes, and the nation, to assess the effectiveness of remediation efforts. In addition, Mussel Watch is collaborating with others to assess animal diversity (GLERL) and the effects of these contaminants on the resident aquatic life (NOAA partners in Charleston and USGS). The ultimate outcomes of this effort include improved water quality and increased ecosystem health for the protection of aquatic resources. For more information visit the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative web site and NOAA's Enhanced Mussel Watch effort.


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What the effects of the privatisation of agriculture in Russia and China in the 1980s and 1990s?
The privatisation of agriculture in Russia started on 1989 – 1990 when Gorbachev changed the Soviet legislation about the non-government enterprises. So the agricultural program reform allowed the creation of non-government corporations of agricultural products. This, has helped the movement from corporate farms to individual farms. The number of peasant farms has been increased quickly to 270.000 in 1994 and became steady, about 280.000 or less in 1995. The number of the peasant farms was not the expected one by the government. Also, when the reform began the productivity and the efficiency have declined. As far as the privatisation of agriculture in China, this issue was part of the general Chinese economic reform which was implemented from Deng Xiaoping. Deng Xiaoping, decentralised the agriculture and gave strong attention to the household – responsibility system (HRS) which separated the common lands to private. This action gave a strong push up to China's economy increasing the agricultural production and performance. The prices of agricultural products had increased and as a result of this, the quality of living standards in China has enhanced and afterwards the rural industry had improved.
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As far as the search strategy I followed for this particular topic, I have to mention some deductions. As the topic is not familiar to my knowledge, I did not know in which sources I had to search. So, I typed the whole question on the University's library search machine with the purpose to find several references and get an idea for what I was looking for. The next step was to identify the key words of the question and try to continue my search using them. The key words I used are "Agriculture in Russia", "Agriculture in China", "Land reform in Russia", "Land reform in China", "China's agricultural privatisation programme", "Russia's agricultural privatisation programme", "impact of agriculture privatisation in China", "impact of agriculture privatisation in Russia". Unfortunately, I was not able to find a proper database which includes agricultural topics, as the particular question is social – economic topic. To accomplish my search I used one of the biggest search machines, the Google. Moreover, I used the Google Scholar, which provides very useful information about everything. Thus I searched in journals, articles, PhDs thesis (but I could not find a suitable one) and educational reports from universities.
The use of carbenes to make catalysts
The use of carbenes to make catalysts is quite new in chemistry sector. Because of Carbenes are consisted of non-common carbon atoms which are usually unbalanced in nature, attaching metals to create metal complexes and finally work as very important catalysts. The majority of scientists did not believe that it would ever be possible the construction of a particular kind of Carbenes. This certain kind of carbenes is called "abnormal N-Heterocyclic carbenes", they developed in laboratory and they are used to make catalysts. Obviously they have given great opportunities for further development in many sectors of industry, especially in pharmaceutical industry. The chemist from the University of California, Riverside, Professor Guy Bertrand accomplished to separate and create aNCHs which are metal-free and chemists can use them to make every desired complex. The synthesis of a completely different class of metal-free aNHCs can drive to new roads the area of expertise of catalysis. It can give also great prospect of innovation in drug research and manufacture as catalytic procedures can facilitate to keep costs under control. This discovery can be really helpful and contribute to solve a great variety of drawbacks as the interest about this is continuously increased as it is very friendly to environment. Another advantage of abnormal N-Heterocyclic carbenes is that they function as organometallic catalysts which enhance their eco-friendly ability.
As far as the strategy I followed for this topic, I came into conclusion about some things. Again this particular topic was completely out of my knowledge, so I had first to identify what exactly are carbenes and what is catalyst. After a general search in the library and google, I tried to focus on key words, like "carbenes", "catalyst". As long as I knew that the topic is about chemistry, my direction on the research led me to find journals and resources about chemistry. After finding some references from journals, I tried to search on PhD Thesis but I was not able to discover an appropriate PhD thesis which declares the carbenes and their usage on making catalysts. A very interesting thing is that during my research I recognized that catalysts are made of a particular type of carbenes which is artificial. The strengths of my research strategy are that it was feasible to find an acceptable variety of references to support my answer, as well as to make clear the definition of carbenes and their implementation. On the other hand the weaknesses of my research strategy were that obviously I could not discover a proper PhD Thesis in order to go deeper on my investigation. The reference which supports and describe in the best way my answer is "Nicolas Marion, S.D.-G.D., Stevenâ€…P. Nolan Prof.â€…Dr. (2007) 'N-Heterocyclic Carbenes as Organocatalysts'. Angewandte Chemie."
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Constructing flexible antenna by injecting liquid metal into elastomeric microchannels
The use of antennas is widespread with many implementations. The traditional antennas are made up from metal, especially copper. This means that antennas are too strong, even though they can break down easily. Because of the wide application antennas have, from medical to technical and military sector, users encountered a lot of problems, most significant problem was the antenna's limitation on how far they could get curved. Thus, scientists made it possible to construct flexible antennas from liquid metal in order to overcome this limitation. They accomplished their goal injecting liquid metal into elastomeric microchannels. The liquid metal they used is EGaIn which is consisted of 75% eutectic gallium and 25% indium. So, inserting liquid metal into a layer of microchannels in an elastomeric surface it is a very simple way to construct radiating frameworks. In contrast to traditional antennas, made up from stiff metal which is not flexible, the new type of them, uses the mechanical attributes of the enclosed material and also can be flexible and strong. This flexible antenna can be used in many existing applications such as cell phones or other electronic devices but also can be used in other type of applications such as textiles. Flexible antennas can be stretched without losing of their efficiency or attributes as they have the ability to tolerate any kind of effort upon them. Moreover, the ability of liquid metal to mix up with other metals, could help the straight electrical connection and integration of antennas into surfaces with electronic parts.
As far as the search strategy I followed, I have to mention some inferences. The topic was completely unknown for me, although I understood that it is an engineering topic, so I had to focus my research on engineering sources. The key words I used are "flexible", "antenna", "liquid", "metal", "elastomeric" and "microchannel". At first, I used them altogether as I wanted to understand what exactly is the topic. Afterwards, I used them separately or in combination. One interesting thing is that some references from google patent, which were too useful to understand the concept of flexible antenna invention. Furthermore, I found a lot of mechanical and engineering journals which depict very clearly the implementation and the construction of flexible antenna. An important problem I faced on the beginning it was that I found the same paper in many different sources and I had to dig more in the internet. The most appropriate reference I used for answering this particular topic is " Gerard J. Hayes, J.-H.S., Amit Qusba, Michael D. Dickey, Gianluca Lazzi (2012) 'Flexible Liquid Metal Alloy (EGlan) Microstrip Patch Antenna'. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation."


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The Eight Hour Day _PHONE_
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On 21 April 1856, following negotiations between building tradesmen and contractors, and with the approval of the colonial government, an eight hour day was introduced into the building trades in Melbourne. The movement was led by the stonemasons who argued that eight hours a day was appropriate in the Australian heat. It would also give them time to improve their'social and moral condition'.
Two employers, with substantial contracts for public buildings at the Western Market and Parliament House, resisted the new working hours agreement. In response to their intransigency, the stonemasons lead a protest march from University of Melbourne to Parliament House, calling out workers at building sites on the way. Within a fortnight the contractors had given way.
Trade Union banner
Melbourne's building workers, generally without loss of pay or other conditions, had gained an unprecedented widespread and sustainable victory.
Their achievement established a national and international standard to which working people everywhere could aspire. It was widely celebrated as a world first and formed the basis of Australia's reputation as a 'workingman's paradise'.
However, only a minority of workers initially won the Eight Hour Day. Most workers, including women and children, generally worked longer hours for less pay. It was common to work twelve to sixteen hours a day.


text: Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) are one of the most common mesenchymal tumor types and usually contain KIT or PDGFRA mutations. GISTs with concomitant lowand high-grade components are seen in clinical practice. Herein, we retrospectively analyzed the histological characteristics and immunohistochemical results of 22 GIST cases with concomitant lowand high-grade tumors. Whole-exome sequencing (WES) was performed on ten pairs of high-grade GIST specimens and matched low-grade samples. Differential oncogenes mutated only in high-grade GISTs were identified, which were confirmed by Sanger sequencing. Fluorescence in situ hybridization was employed to detect MYC copy number variation. High-grade GISTs were more likely to have lower CD34 expression and a higher Ki-67 proliferation index compared to the matched low-grade tumors. WES identified 30 differential cancer-associated genes mutated only in high-grade GISTs; Sanger sequencing confirmed ten relevant differential oncogenic mutations in nine genes (MGA, ARID1A, LATS2, MAX, PIK3CA, RB1, RPS6KB2, SDHA, and SETD2). Two patients had MGA mutations, whereas other gene mutations occurred in only one patient. Most of the differential cancer-associated genes are mainly involved in cell cycle control. MYC copy number gain was a common genetic variation. High-grade GISTs revealed more MYC copy number gains than matched low-grade tumors, and low-grade GISTs with coexisting high-grade components showed more MYC copy number gains than pure low-grade GISTs. Moreover, MYC copy number gain was positively correlated with the mitotic index and Ki-67 proliferation index. Alterations in cell cycle regulation-associated genes, such as genetic mutations and MYC copy number gain, may promote primary progression from low-grade GISTs to high-grade tumors by regulating tumor cell proliferation.


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; worked in their own business, profession, or on their own farm, or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in an enterprise operated by a member of the family; and (b) all those who were not working but who had jobs or businesses from which they were temporarily absent because of vacation, illness, bad weather, childcare problems, maternity or paternity leave, labor-management dispute, job training, or other family or personal reasons, whether or not they were paid for the time off or were seeking other jobs."
Note: if you worked just one hour for pay during the survey week, you were "employed."
[Teacher Note: Ask your students: Is one hour of paid work in a week meaningful employment? Should someone who works for, say, just five hours in a week be counted as fully "employed"?]
Discussion Question: What about a person who has given-up looking for a job? Is that person "unemployed." The BLS definition says no. What do you think?
What is payroll employment?
"Employment is the total number of persons on establishment payrolls employed full or part time who received pay for any part of the pay period which includes the 12th day of the month. Temporary and intermittent employees are included, as are any workers who are on paid sick leave, on paid holiday, or who work during only part of the specified pay period. A striking worker who only works a small portion of the survey period, and is paid, would be included as employed under the CES definitions. Persons on the payroll of more than one establishment are counted in each establishment. Data exclude proprietors, self-employed, unpaid family or volunteer workers, farm workers, and domestic workers. Persons on layoff the entire pay period, on leave without pay, on strike for the entire period or who have not yet reported for work are not counted as employed. Government employment covers only civilian workers."
Counting the number of jobs, workers, or employment is sometimes difficult. Some people have multiple jobs. Some people are not legally working. Some people are not paid, but do contribute to the nation's output of goods and services. Why aren't the owners of small businesses counted in the number of employed?
Discussion Question: What do you think is a good definition of "employment."
Types of Unemployment BLS Definitions)
There are generally three types of unemployment typically identified by economists, each of which describes the particular circumstances of the individual and their employment situation.
Frictional unemployment is temporary unemployment arising from the normal job search process. Frictional unemployment helps the economy function more efficiently as it simply refers to those people who are seeking better or more convenient jobs and those who are graduating and just entering the job market. Some frictional unemployment will always exist in any economy.
Structural unemployment is the result of changes in the economy caused by technological progress and changes in the demand for goods and services. Structural changes eliminate some jobs in certain sectors of the economy and create new jobs in faster growing areas. Persons who are structurally unemployed do not have appropriate job skills and may face prolonged periods of unemployment, as they must often be retrained or relocate in order to find employment.
- Cyclical unemployment is unemployment caused by a drop in economic activity. This type of unemployment can hit many different industries and is caused by a general downturn in the business cycle. Lower demand for goods and services reduces the demand for workers. Much of the increase in unemployment in 2008 was cyclical as a result of the economic downturn and recession.
The BLS publishes monthly data on "Unemployed Persons by Reason for Unemployment" as part of the Employment Situation report (Table A-11). This data does not distinguish between the "types" of unemployment listed above. Take a look: _URL_
At the levels of unemployment that economists consider to be the lowest possible sustainable levels (discussed below), the only unemployment that exists is due to friction in labor markets and structural changes in the economy.
Economists define the approximate unemployment rate that is 'full employment'. If unemployment falls to a very low rate, there will be upward pressure on prices. If unemployment rises to a very high rate, there will downward pressure on prices or prices will remain steady. In the middle is a level, or more likely a range, where there is not pressure on wages to rise or fall. That is the full employment rate of unemployment.
Economists do not agree or know for certain what that rate is and it does change over time. A consensus estimate is that the full employment rate of unemployment is currently between 4.5 and 5.0 percent of the labor force being unemployed.
Discussion Question: Between 2008 and 2010 federal laws extended eligibility for unemployment compensation for up to 99 weeks in states with persistently high unemployment rates. Some argue that longer eligibility for unemployment compensation may, in fact, discourage people from seriously seeking employment. Do you agree or disagree?
[TEACHER NOTE: There is no "correct" answer for the underlying question. Students should be able to reason that receiving compensation while unemployed may be a disincentive to work. Others may argue that since the compensation is usually much smaller than typical rates of pay, people will seek employment.]
What About Part-time Workers?
According to the BLS, part-time "refers to those who worked 1 to 34 hours during the survey reference week and excludes employed persons who were absent from their jobs for the entire week." These people are counted in the labor market as employed.
Some people work part-time for economic reasons, "those who worked 1 to 34 hours during the reference week for an economic reason such as slack work or unfavorable business conditions, inability to find full-time work, or seasonal declines in demand."
Some people worked part-time for noneconomic reasons, "such as "persons who usually work part time for noneconomic reasons such as childcare problems, family or personal obligations, school or training, retirement or Social Security limits on earnings, and other reasons."
Persons Not in the Labor Force
In August, 2011, about 86 million people in the United States were "not in the labor force," not employed or unemployed. Who were they?
The BLS explains: "Labor force measures are based on the civilian noninstitutional population 16 years old and over. Excluded are persons under 16 years of age, all persons confined to institutions such as nursing homes and prisons, and persons on active duty in the Armed Forces. As mentioned previously, the labor force is made up of the employed and the unemployed. The remainder—those who have no job and are not looking for one—are counted as "not in the labor force." Many who are not in the labor force are going to school or are retired. Family responsibilities keep others out of the labor force."
- Those under age 16 are not in the labor force.
- Those who are retired and not working are not in the labor force.
- Those in the military are not in the labor force.
- Those who are institutionalized (incarceration or hospitalized) are not in the labor force.
- Those who have not sought work in 4 weeks are not in the labor force.
- Those who simply do not have to or want to work are not in the labor force.
For answers to some common questions about labor market data, such as "Who is not in the labor force?" go to the BLS FAQs, _URL_
Alternative Measurements of Unemployment
The BLS explains, "there is only one official definition of unemployment, and that was discussed above (in the lesson). However, some have argued that this measure is too restricted, and that it does not adequately capture the breadth of labor market problems. For this reason, economists at BLS developed a set of alternative measures of labor underutilization. These measures are published every month in the Employment Situation news release. They range from a very limited measure that includes only those who have been unemployed (as officially defined) for 15 weeks or more to a very broad one that includes total unemployed (as officially defined), all persons marginally attached to the labor force, and all individuals employed part time for economic reasons."
U-1 Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer as a percent of the civilian labor force
- U-2 Job losers as a percent of the civilian labor force
- U-3 Unemployed persons 25 years and over as a percent of the civilian labor force 5.6 for persons 25
- years and over
- U-4 Unemployed full-time job seekers as a percent of the full-time civilian labor force
- U-5 Total unemployed as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)
- U-6 Total full-time job seekers plus 1/2 part-time job seekers plus 1/2 total on part-time for economic reasons as a percent of the civilian labor force less 1/2 of the part-time labor force
- U-7 Total full-time job seekers plus 1/2 part-time job seekers plus 1/2 total on part-time for economic reasons plus discouraged workers as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers less ½ of the part-time labor force
Discussion Question? Which of these do you think is the most meaningful measurement of unemployment in the economy?
BLS "Employment Situation" Announcement Tables, August 2011
- Employment Situation Summary Table A. Household data, seasonally adjusted
- Employment Situation Summary Table B. Establishment data, seasonally adjusted
- Employment Situation Frequently Asked Questions
- Employment Situation Technical Note
- Table A-1. Employment status of the civilian population by sex and age
- Table A-2. Employment status of


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Internship Programs – Development, Design, & Training
OperationsInc and its team of Human Resources Consultants offer a complete range of services to help your organization establish a successful and legally compliant Internship Program, from program development and design, to training your team on how to best select and manage an intern resource.
HOW WE DO IT:
INTERNSHIP PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT & DESIGN
The following outlines a typical client engagement, whereby OperationsInc will work with the client to:
- Establish program goals and objectives.
- Determine the program's educational goals as it relates to each intern.
- Identify and recommend departments / areas where interns will be a fit.
- Define intern roles and corresponding job descriptions.
- Craft ideal intern candidate profiles and required / desired skillsets.
- Establish recommended compensation structure(s), including options for paid and unpaid interns.
- Act as client liaison with select colleges and universities tied to securing appropriate course credit credentials in lieu of compensation.
- Strategically profile and select schools that are most likely to possess desired intern candidate pools.
- Outline sourcing strategies, including best means for reach out to educational institutions (e.g. career centers, Deans, and Professors).
- Assist client in the management and administration of intern candidate selection (see Training section below for additional information).
- Structure Internship Program schedule, including "buddy systems" and the proper mix of productive work vs. experiential learning.
- Navigate transitional planning tied to the conclusion of internship assignments.
- Explore career path options for select intern roles, including the development of a timeline from intern engagement through offer of full-time employment.
- Build (as needed) a systematic and formal Campus Recruiting Program for future internship openings and intern needs.
INTERN SELECTION & TEAM MANAGEMENT TRAINING
We can teach your team the best practices and methodologies for intern candidate sourcing and selection, and successful Internship Program management.
This training program will educate leadership and those in intern management roles on how to:
- Effectively interview and select intern candidates.
- Develop and structure a balanced intern learning experience.
- Establish an effective means of intern performance assessment.
- Transition intern roles and candidates toward future full-time employment.
- Manage full and part-time intern resources.
To learn more about OperationsInc's Internship Program Development, Design, and Training Consulting Services, contact us at _EMAIL_ or _PHONE_.