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Quantitative and qualitative aspects of readers' responses to literary text were investigated. College students read a story about the first buffalo hunt of a Sioux youth. The story was presented by a microcomputer to permit monitoring and recording of on-line indices of physiological (i.e., heart rate) and cognitive (i.e., reading time) processes that might be related to imagery and emotional response. After readers had completed reading the story, their imagery and emotional responses were investigated more directly via free reports and ratings of story paragraphs. Although heart rate was not related to imagery or emotional response measures, reading time decreased as emotional response ratings increased. Despite several major procedural variations, imagery and emotional response ratings were highly correlated with those of a previous study using the same story (Sadoski and Goetz, 1985); the relationship between imagery and emotional response ratings remained virtually identical across the two studies. Free reports proved amenable to highly reliable coding procedures and provided a wealth of information regarding qualitative aspects of readers' imagery and emotional responses.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Cultural Studies
- Language and Linguistics
- Sociology and Political Science
- Linguistics and Language
- Literature and Literary Theory


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The Canadian Military History Gateway is an online service providing access to Websites and digitized resources about Canada's military history. The Gateway was developed by the Directorate of History and Heritage at Department of National Defence (DND) as an initiative supported by the National Defence On-Line (NDOL) programme and the Department of Canadian Heritage's Canadian Culture Online Program.
The goal of the Gateway is to "provide the public with free access to the collective military history resources of Canadian museums, libraries, archives and other heritage organizations through a single, dynamic and intuitive gateway". In drawing the sources of Canada's military heritage together, the gateway provides an opportunity for all Canadians to learn about a history that has shaped their country.
To realize this goal, the leading institutions responsible for the collection and digitization of cultural resources related to Canada's military heritage have formed a partnership to work together in building and maintaining this story of Canada. These institutions are:
The Gateway is designed to be the authoritative source for quality-controlled information on Canada's military history. It provides several ways to discover, access and exploit online military history resources, including a graphical interactive timeline, enhanced search and guided navigation.
It also provides a concise military history of Canada from _PHONE_ A.D. through the online presentation of the three volume Canadian Military Heritage series (by Bernier and Chartrand).
Site visitors can access:
More partners will be engaged over time to enrich and expand the story further.
We gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance provided by:

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


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Live Case Study
This session presents a vivid case wherein nuclear energy is provided in a better manner through the modification of current plant to bring light, warmth, and green to the public in China. Human Factors Engineering is involved into the plant modification in the area of main control room, eliminating potential human factors errors by plant operators. Quality methods and innovative tools such as rapid prototype iteration, task cognitive walkthrough and simulator-based activities achieve continuous improvements in design optimization and project management, making the plant modification an industrial benchmark. Other goals include project implementation with high quality, and safe operation for next several decades. The presentation also concentrates on the application of quality management in projects, the strengths of teams, and the importance of organizational support.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


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The vice chancellor of Gloucestershire University has suggested that video games should play a role in the state education of the UK's youth.
Patricia Broadfoot, vice-chancellor of the University of Gloucestershire, said computer games could be used to assess creativity in schools.
According to The Times Higher Education, Broadfoot told the International Association for Educational Assessment conference in Brisbane last month:
"Games are excellent learning tools in that they are interactive and provide rapid feedback, opportunities for extensive practice, engagement with intellectual complexity, emotional involvement and, increasingly, open-ended outcomes that challenge the creativity of the player," she said.
They also offer training in metacognition, strategic thinking, concentration and even social skills, she added.
"Perhaps most important of all for many students is the level of engagement that computers can provide," she said.
"Engagement, as we have seen, is the essential starting point for creative thinking, whether this is at school, at university or in the workplace."
Current tests in the space are limited for assessment needs on a large scale, Professor Broadfoot said, adding that the sector needed to "embrace the full potential of the information age".


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Copyright © 2010 Kui Fu Chen and Yan Feng Li. This is an open access article distributed under the
Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The numerical inverse Laplace transformation (NILM) makes use of numerical integration. Generally, a high-order scheme of numerical integration renders high accuracy. However, surprisingly, this is not true for the NILM to the transfer function. Numerical examples show that the performance of higher-order schemes is no better than that of the trapezoidal scheme. In particular, the solutions from high-order scheme deviate from the exact one markedly over the rear portion of the period of interest. The underlying essence is examined. The deviation can be reduced by decreasing the frequency-sampling interval.


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Methyl mercury dynamics in a tidal wetland quantified using in situ optical measurements
Limnol. Oceanogr., 56(4), 2011, _PHONE_ | DOI: 10.4319/lo.2011.56.4.1355
ABSTRACT: We assessed monomethylmercury (MeHg) dynamics in a tidal wetland over three seasons using a novel method that employs a combination of in situ optical measurements as concentration proxies. MeHg concentrations measured over a single spring tide were extended to a concentration time series using in situ optical measurements. Tidal fluxes were calculated using modeled concentrations and bi-directional velocities obtained acoustically. The magnitude of the flux was the result of complex interactions of tides, geomorphic features, particle sorption, and random episodic events such as wind storms and precipitation. Correlation of dissolved organic matter quality measurements with timing of MeHg release suggests that MeHg is produced in areas of fluctuating redox and not limited by buildup of sulfide. The wetland was a net source of MeHg to the estuary in all seasons, with particulate flux being much higher than dissolved flux, even though dissolved concentrations were commonly higher. Estimated total MeHg yields out of the wetland were approximately 2.5 µg m−2 yr−1—4–40 times previously published yields—representing a potential loading to the estuary of 80 g yr−1, equivalent to 3% of the river loading. Thus, export from tidal wetlands should be included in mass balance estimates for MeHg loading to estuaries. Also, adequate estimation of loads and the interactions between physical and biogeochemical processes in tidal wetlands might not be possible without long-term, high-frequency in situ measurements.


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Grendon is a small village and civil parish in rural Northamptonshire, on the borders of Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire. Many houses are made of the local limestone and various older thatched houses still survive. The name of the village means "green hill" and today the village remains centred on the hill. As with Earls Barton, the village was once owned by Countess Judith, the niece of William the Conqueror.
At the time of the 2001 census, the parish population was 477; the village is a popular place to live with commuters to London or Milton Keynes. It is the site of the 19th century 'Battle of Grendon'. The village is in two parts which are separated by the brook. The smaller part of the village is often incorrectly shown on maps as "Lower End" - implying that it is a separate hamlet, whilst the higher (southern) part of the village is located at the top of the (steep) hill.
The village is mentioned in the Domesday book when Grendon formed part of the hundred of Wymersley.
There is village folklore about drunken revellers leaving the pub in olden days trying to fish the reflection of the moon from the brook; these characters became known as "Moonrakers". This story was reported by Thomas Sternberg in his 1851 book "The dialogue and folk-lore of Northamptonshire", in which he reports that:
- "...the men of Grendon go by the name moonrakers, in consequence, it is said, of a party of them having once seen the moon reflected in a pool and attempted to draw it out by means of rakes, under the impression it was a cheese!"
The village is twinned with Bois-Bernard in northern France.
Trinity College, Cambridge, and the advowson
The advowson of the church, including 12 acres (49,000 m²) of glebe land - including their common rights and village tithes, was granted in 1342, to King's Hall, Cambridge by Edward III. When Trinity College, Cambridge was founded in 1546, the advowson was transferred to the Master and Fellows of the new Trinity College. In 1780, following an enclosure act, the tithes were all reduced to a cash payment. The control of the living was transferred in 1926 to the Bishop of Peterborough.
The lost village
In 1970, excavations produced evidence of an abandoned village, known as Coton (which means cottages) situated behind Grendon Hall.
The Battle of Grendon
On August 29, 1876, a battle took place between local farmers and their men over water rights and was commemorated in a poem by a local poet entitled the Battle of Grendon.
- Grendon Parish Council
- Parochial Church Council
The village is surrounded by land owned by three great land owners: -
- The Queen at Strixton,
- Trinity College, Cambridge, and
- The Castle Ashby Estate (Marquess of Northampton).
Like many villages, Grendon has suffered from the loss of its local shop/post office and its other pub The Crown - both of which have been sold on for development.
The village has a parish church (St Mary's) which dates in part back to Norman times, and a thatched pub, The Half Moon, run by the Charles Wells brewery.
St Mary's Church
The church is built from limestone rubble with ironstone dressings. In the church are the remains, in the form of two rounded arches, of the original 12th century building. The two eastern bays of the nave arcades and the chancel were rebuilt between 1368 and 1380, with the clerestory being added in the 15th century along with the four-storey tower; the tower contains a ring of five bells, dating from 1618. The church houses a wooden framed clock which was made locally in 1690. The tower now uses a replacement made in 1970, but the original is still kept in the church as an exhibit and remains in working order.
Inside the church, on each side of the chancel there are medieval wooden corbel carvings of the grotesque faces of a nagging wife and her leering husband - they are thought to have been a local couple.
The gargoyles on the four corners of the tower represent the four evangelists:
- a man's head for St Matthew
- a lion for St Mark
- a bull for St Luke and
- an eagle for St John
The chancel was re-roofed in around 1848. There are three hatchments relating to the Compton family - one bearing ravens represents the arms of a former Lord Lieutenant of the Tower of London.
Of the church, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner says, "The first three bays on both sides are late Norman. Next in order of time the late 12th-century doorway with one order of shafts carrying simple moulded capitals and an arch with a thick roll moulding. Early 13th-century the simple north doorway close to a pair of lancets. Money was left to the campanile in 1453."
Other features include:
- A book of commemoration for the eight parishioners killed in World War I & World War II.
- A wooden bier
- An oak pulpit dating from 1908
- A Victorian lead-lined font
- A medieval squint cut through the wall to give a view of the altar during mass
- A memorial plaque to Thomas Willoughby of nether Grendon (Lower End)
- A three-seat sedilia set into the stone wall which was used by the priest, the deacon and sub-deacon
- Set into the south wall is a 13th-century piscina used by priests to rinse their hands during mass
- Set into the floor, a 15th century brass of an unknown and unnamed woman set between two husbands dressed in the armour of the type used at the Battle of Bosworth Field
The current priest is Father David Spokes.
Most of the present hall dates from the 17th century when it was rebuilt by General Hatton Compton, although certain earlier parts date to the 1570s. Pevsner describes the east front as being "fine" quality. It is thought to be the work of John Lumley of Northampton.
In the war the hall was used by the SOE as a training camp for the Free French.
Next to the present site of Grendon Hall but on the other side of the brook is the site of a much earlier medieval manor house owned by Richard de Harrington, whose fish ponds remain today as part of the grounds of the present hall.
In 1946, after the death of the then owner Miss Mundy, the hall was sold to the County Council. The hall was re-opened by the then Princess Elizabeth in 1946.
The Old Parsonage
The house was designed by S.S. Teulon and built in 1850. Pevsner describes it as a "...picturesque Tudor with an odd lantern with cupola ; handsome gabled with mullioned windows." It is now a private house.
Amenities and groups
Grendon has the following sports and activities:
- 1st Grendon Beavers & Cubs
- Grendon Bellringers
- Grendon Cricket Club
- Grendon Over 60s - Age Concern
- Grendon Playgroup
- Grendon Sapphires Football Club (with new changing rooms and pavillion)
- Grendon Village Twinning Association (with Bois-Bernard, Nord-Pas de Calais - France)
- Half-Crown Share Club
- Mums & Tots
- Rainbows & Brownies
- Women's Institute
The village has three small charities:
- Charles Markham memorial trust
- Poor's Close (set up with land bequeathed by the Rev Robert Shelbourne)
- Richard Piper Coles will trust


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house are:
- Online Therapy: Online therapy is a form of virtual therapy in which you speak to a licensed therapist via text, live phone conferencing, or live video conferencing. Research supports the effectiveness of online therapy, reporting that it is as effective as live in-person therapy. Keep in mind that such therapeutic services are a bit different than traditional therapy, and may take a few sessions before you feel comfortable with the online mode of communication. Online therapy for agoraphobia will be geared toward cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT aims to identify triggers for the fear of leaving the house and challenges the fear with rational thinking. CBT also incorporates mindfulness and relaxation exercises that reduce anxiety and lessen the fear that the phobia of leaving the house creates.
- There are also 'home visit' services that some therapists will provide. This means your therapist will come to your home for scheduled sessions. Traveling therapists are often trained in issues related to agoraphobia and a fear of leaving the house. They will be able to provide coping skills, techniques, and tools that help reduce the fear of leaving your home. For example, traveling therapists may use virtual reality programs that help reduce the anxiety associated with leaving the house. This exercise is referred to as Exposure therapy, or systematic desensitization. The goal of exposure therapy is to take baby steps in exposing the patient to situations that cause stress. With enough exposure the patient becomes desensitized, meaning the fear response becomes less intense with repeated exposure via virtual reality technology. It has been proven effective in decreasing symptoms associated with agoraphobia.


10cells on expedition
10cells - the Ballast Water (BW) Tester on cruise: bbe took part in a scientific expedition with the German research vessel "Meteor" in June 2015. The trip took 12 days, started in Cape Verde (Africa) and ended in Hamburg (Germany). One of the cruise's goals was to test different rapid testing methods for checking ballast water. The test conditions were very well prepared and 10cells performed well throughout.
The IOcells: for indicative testing of ballast water
Regulations will come into force soon: Once the BWM convention of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) is ratified, ballast water may only contain less than 10 living cells per ml in the size range of 10-50µm. Algae represent the greatest amount of biomass in ballast water in this size range. Therefore, they are an ideal parameter for ballast water quality control. bbe Moldaenke is one of the leading manufacturers of algae measuring devices. With over 20 years' experience in this field, bbe has developed a highly sensitive Ballast Water Testing Device: the 10cells. The measuring principle is based on the natural fluorescence of algal cells, but we have greatly improved the sensitivity using a modified PAM method. The 10cells is able to identify down to one living cell per ml. Thus, it's 10 times more sensitive than the amount of living cells allowed in ballast water by the IMO convention. The sensitivity can be enhanced over a great range by increasing the amount of filtered water. Additionally, the 10cells is light-weight, easy handling and takes less than 1 minute per measurement.
The 10cells has complied with all requirements during the trip. It is sea suitable and a very sensitive measuring device. Using this new device, it is possible to check ballast water very easy, fast, safely, and on-site.


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the diverging windmill, increases capacity by altering the direction of traffic flow of the interchanging highways, making the connecting ramps much more direct. The interchange is named for its similar overhead appearance to the blades of a windmill.
Divided volleyball interchanges create a wide median between the carriageways of the two interchanging highways, using this space for connecting ramps.
Full diamond interchanges are large, multi-level interchanges that use flyover/under ramps to handle both right and left ramps.
Three-way interchanges
Trumpet interchange
Trumpet interchanges have been used where one highway terminates at another highway. These involve at least one loop ramp connecting traffic either entering or leaving the terminating expressway with the far lanes of the continuous highway.
These interchanges are useful for highways as well as toll roads, as they concentrate all entering and exiting traffic into a single stretch of roadway, where toll booths can be installed. A double-trumpet interchange version can be found where a toll road meets another toll road or a free highway.
Trumpet interchanges are named as such due to their resemblance to trumpets. The bell of a trumpet can be seen where the terminating highway begins to interchange with the continuous highway, and the resemblance to the tubing is seen along the connecting loop ramps.
Full Y interchange
A full Y-interchange (also known as a directional T interchange) is typically used when a three-way interchange is required for two or three highways interchanging in semi-parallel/perpendicular directions, but it can also be used in right-angle case as well. Their connecting ramps can spur from either the right or left side of the highway, depending on the direction of travel and the angle.
Full Y-interchanges use flyover/flyunder ramps for both connecting and mainline segments, and they require a moderate amount of land and moderate costs since only two levels or roadway are typically used. They get their name due to their resemblance to the capital letter "Y", depending upon the angle from which the interchange is seen. Two examples of this type of interchange can be found in the Province of Ontario: the Highway 403/Highway 6 interchange in Hamilton, and the Highway 417/Highway 416 interchange in Ottawa. Three other examples can be found in Nashville, TN: Interstate 24 and Interstate 65 (southern and northern interchange); Interstate 24 and Interstate 40 (western interchange); and Interstate 40 and Interstate 65 (southern interchange) along the downtown loop.
Semi-directional T interchange
A semi-directional T interchange uses flyover/under ramps in all directions at a three-way interchange, but some of the splits and merges are switched to avoid ramps to and from the passing lane. Semi-directional T interchanges are very efficient, but are expensive to build compared to other three-way interchanges. They also require three levels, which can be an eyesore for local residents. However, the T-interchange is preferred to a trumpet interchange because a trumpet requires a loop ramp which speeds can be reduced to as little as 25 MPH (US), but flyover ramps can handle much faster speeds.
Other/hybrid interchanges
Hybrid interchanges use a mixture of interchange types and are not uncommon. Their construction can consist of multiple interchange designs such as loop ramps and flyovers. One place to find hybrids are near Santa Clarita, California, all along Interstate 5 and California State Route 14.
A half-clover interchange is essentially half a cloverleaf interchange, constructed to connect in just three directions instead of four. These are rarely used due to the traffic weaving that they cause and the large amount of land that they consume, but they can be built in areas where the connecting ramp along the loop of a trumpet interchange is not feasible due to building developments or physical limitations. Half-clovers are designed to be readily upgraded to full cloverleafs if the terminating highway is ever extended past the through highway. A notable example of a half-clover interchange is with M-47 and U.S. Route 10 near Midland, Michigan, since M-47 was the relic of a scrapped plan to extend a freeway further north. Interstate 75 to its east near Bay City, Michigan, a more important destination, made this highway unnecessary.
A 3/4 volleyball interchange is a divided-volleyball interchange designed to meet at three points instead of four. Like the half-clover, it can easily be upgraded to a fully divided volleyball interchange if the terminating highway is extended beyond the through highway.
A T-bone interchange is essentially a compacted directional T interchange with sharper turns and a lower capacity, built when there is insufficient land or funds to build a directional T. Its two flyover/flyunder ramps contract together after passing over the through highway, but then they split into two segments, resembling the bone in a T-bone steak.
Two-way interchanges
A half trumpet interchange is essentially a trumpet interchange without its loop ramp and one of its directional ramps designed to meet the continuous highway in one direction, usually on a ninety degree or semi-perpendicular angle. Should the need arise, it can easily be constructed into a trumpet interchange, making it a three-way interchange.
A partial y interchange is used where one highway terminates at another highway with the same general directional alignment (usually a maximum of sixty degrees). The trunk of the terminating highway merges with the trunk of the continuous highway; vehicles traveling into the interchange may only exit traveling in the same direction. This type of interchange is often used for bypass routes, and is named for the shape the two highways' confluence makes when drawn on a map, creating a lower-case "y".
Hybrids, variations, and rare types also exist for two-way interchanges.
A basketweave interchange is commonly found on highways using a collector/express system or long collector/distributor lanes. In a basketweave, one highway is able to interchange with itself, allowing traffic traveling in the same direction to switch between carriageways through the use of flyover/under ramps created between two carriageways without causing weaving. These interchanges usually involve left exits and entry for the outer carriageway (right in left-hand drive) but can be configured to meet on the right.
Between a controlledor limited-access highway and a road without access control (service interchange)
Diamond interchange
A diamond interchange is an interchange involving four ramps where they enter and leave the freeway at a small angle and meet the non-freeway at almost right angles. These ramps at the non-freeway can be controlled through stop signs, traffic signals, or turn ramps. Diamond interchanges are inexpensive to build and require little land but are prone to congestion and accidents if there is high traffic.
A dumbbell interchange is similar to the diamond interchange, but uses a pair of roundabouts to join the ramps with the non-highway. This typically increases the efficiency of the interchange when compared to a diamond.
Parclo interchange/folded diamond
A Parclo interchange, also known as a partial cloverleaf, is an interchange usually involving four to six ramps, two of which are loop ramps, which connect to the non-highway.
The parclo is a safer modification of the cloverleaf design. Depending on the number of ramps used, they take up a moderate to large amount of land and are typically inexpensive to build. Parclos with more ramps have a greater capacity and efficiency than parclos with fewer ramps. Parclos are sometimes called a folded diamond when only four ramps, in two quadrants, are used. If the loop ramps are constructed opposite or mirrored along the highway, weaving is avoided. Cloverleaf interchanges that involve a non-highway can be changed to parclos without too much reconstruction. Although the interchange's capacity is reduced, weaving is eliminated, increasing the safety and efficiency of the interchange.
Diverging diamond interchange
A diverging diamond interchange is similar to a traditional diamond interchange, except that it uses directional lanes for the non-highway to cross over each other on either side of the highway, altering the direction of travel on the over/underpass through the use of traffic lights. This allows all turns to and from the highway to be made without crossing the opposite direction of travel, increasing the capacity when compared to a typical diamond interchange.
The idea for the diverging diamond interchange came from a freeway-to-freeway connection north of Baltimore, where I-695 has an interchange with Interstate 95. Whereas this interchange has been replaced with a four-level stack, it was once of a design known as the "synchronized split-phasing interchange".
Single-point urban interchange
- The Single-point urban interchange, often abbreviated to SPUI, is a modification of the diamond interchange and has its ramps meet at one point, usually on the overpass/underpass of the non-highway. This requires only one set of traffic signals, increasing its efficiency and capacity when compared to a diamond.
Freeways in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area are great examples of the utilization of SPUI interchanges. Some examples of SPUI are along Arizona State Route 51 from Downtown Phoenix all the way to Loop 101, another location where SPUI is common.
Other/hybrid interchanges
Highway/non-highway hybrid interchanges consist of diamond and partial cloverleaf elements. Their construction can consist of multiple interchange designs such as loop ramps, flyovers, and roundabouts.
One form of the roundabout interchange can be used to connect a highway with a non-highway. It uses a single roundabout, rotary, or traffic circle which spans the highway as a over/underpass. Such junctions can be improved by adding a flyover for straight-through traffic on the non-freeway, creating the Roundabout interchange.
The three-level diamond/volleyball interchange is three levels high, and


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The next time you need to evaluate your search query reports, consider using PPC Campaign Generator.
The concept is pretty simple.
- Download your search query report from Google or Bing for a given time period
- Create a new campaign within PPC Campaign Generator
- Go to the Grouper tab
- Click the "Add" button
- Paste the raw search query list into PPC Campaign Generator
- Hit the "Clean" button to remove unwanted characters (Found in Settings)
- Hit the "Remove Duplicates" button
- Select F1 in the settings
- Hit "Analyze" to analyze the keyword density of one-word phrases
- Scroll through the list looking for keywords that should be negatives
- When you find a one-word phrase, right click, Select "Negative"
All keywords that contain the one-word negative phrase will be deleted from your main keyword list. The negative keyphrase will be added to the filter box within the program.
You can use the CTRL key on your keyboard to select multiple cells at once. With multiple cells selected, you can right-click and select Negative to identify multiple negative keywords in bulk.


Tahoe Tessie
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Tahoe Tessie is a cryptozoological creature which supposedly resides in North America's largest alpine lake, Lake Tahoe, located in Nevada and California. Tales of the lake-dwelling creature can be traced to stories told by members of the Washoe and Paiute tribes in the mid-19th century, stating that the creature resides in an underwater tunnel beneath Cave Rock, and sightings have continued into modern day.
Sightings describe Tessie as being between 10 and 80 feet long, having a large, serpentine body "as wide across as a barrel," and coloration ranging from jet black to turquoise. Its skin is usually described as smooth, despite having reptilian features.
In the 1950s, two off-duty police officers out on the lake reported seeing a large, black hump rise from the water, and keep speed with the boat, going over 60 mph (97 km/h).
According to an anonymous witness on Weird California.com, "Myself, along with 3 others watched a large serpent-like creature feeding/hunting in a school of large trout. It was in the middle of winter of 1979 off the dock at Homewood. It was about as big around as a telephone pole and maybe 30'-60' in length from what we could see of it. It didn't swim like a snake (side to side). It was diving up and splashing down with its head/neck? into the school of fish, which were leaping out of the water ahead of it. We were speechless for several minutes afterwards."
In the 1980s, two fishermen reported seeing a 15-foot-long (4.6 m) serpent pass underneath the surface of the water, near Cave Rock.
Several weeks after, two divers reported finding an underwater cave, and a creature shot out, leaving the silt stirred. Where the creature had been, there were two large fin-prints.
Sometime in the late 1990s, a kayaking instructor reported seeing a glance of what looked like a green two-person kayak flip over and immediately sink. When he approached the area in a speedboat, there were no traces of the kayak, and his students did not report flipping over at any time.
In 2004, an off-duty bartender on the Tahoe Queen took a picture of a black hump in the water, which he claims is the top of the creature's head.
In 2006 a family vacationing near Tahoe sited a large, black, scale lacking creature appearing similar to a sturgeon with an upturned white nose. However the creature moved up-and-down like a mammal instead of side-to-side like a reptile.
There has been rumored Tessie footage, which is reportedly being analyzed before being released to the public.
There have been many theories surrounding Tahoe Tessie, the most popular being that it is either a Plesiosaur, Pliosaur, Ichthyosaur or a Mosasaur, due to fossils of the creatures being found in the Surrounding Nevada Desert, and Sierra Nevada mountains. These theories are quickly dismissed by many Tessie experts, stating that the lake was formed in the last Ice Age, long after the creatures went extinct. Other theories say that it may be anything from a population of Sturgeon, to a new species of Freshwater eel.
In the media[edit]
Tahoe Tessie is a popular logo for many Tahoe-based companies, with a cartoon version being in many children's picture books, and a popular character featured in local newspapers. There even used to be a local museum and hotline, but both recently closed.
Purported sightings continue in modern times.[1][2]
 1. ^ "Tahoe Tessie". americanmonsters.com. Retrieved 2009-05-24. [dead link]
 2. ^ Sheffield, Keith (2005-04-29). "Dark shapes in the lake: Tahoe Tessie legend remains alive for visitors". Tahoe Daily Tribune. Retrieved 2013-07-22.


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The future of work continues to shift – and most of us are not ready for the impact it will have on our work lives. Most individuals, including today's university and college students, will hold multiple jobs across multiple industries; many will pursue different careers over the course of their lifetime. This uncertainty invokes a range of emotions, ranging from anxiety about perpetual change to the excitement of the unknown. What is certain is that all of us will need to embrace learning and cultural agility (i.e., learning to learn to prepare for new work contexts across diverse environments), and the ability to tell stories.
The ability to craft a good narrative is an invaluable skill that also aligns with employers' shift in recruiting from credentials to skills. How can we teach good storytelling and become more effective storytellers and listeners ourselves? One strategy is to examine the influence of a narrative-based career management course. We want to share a snapshot of the outcomes from one such course, offered through the Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (ILead) at the University of Toronto.
A gap in career education
Career planning courses, also referred to as career management courses, exist for undergraduates at some Canadian and US institutions. However, few career planning classes for graduate students exist. The assumption persists that graduate-level students enrolled in professional training programs know exactly what they want to do in their careers and lives. The reality is that many students remain unclear about their next steps in their professional paths. A graduate-level course based in career development theory and narrative approaches allows students to gain valuable information and tools that will guide them as they navigate the uncertainties of the future.
One of the authors (Franklin) identified the need for a course with engineering graduate students at the University of Toronto. With support from the ILead faculty, Franklin developed a credit-bearing career management course that uses a narrative-based framework. Narrative approaches in career development literature are relatively new when compared to other traditional vocational models. Franklin built the course on emerging literature that supports the notion that one's life involves a story with multiple chapters, and that we are always writing and re-writing these chapters.
"The assumption persists that graduate-level students enrolled in professional training programs know exactly what they want to do in their careers and lives."
The course, Engineering Careers: Theories & Strategies to Manage your Career for the Future (scroll to APS1030), is grounded in four main conceptual pillars:
- navigating one's career involves a rigorous and uncertain journey,
- making well-informed career and life choices is best supported by a two-step process of clarification followed by exploration,
- satisfaction derives from making intentional choices after a clarification process based on deliberate reflection on past experiences and stories, and
- tools and strategies drawn from theory exist that students can master and then apply as they move forward with their work lives.
Like many career planning courses, students engage in a variety of projects and exercises such as a group interview project with an industry leader, weekly reflection activities captured in a "logbook" and small group work. What makes this course unique is the application of narrative and gamified approaches to the life-career planning process. The students experience a tool called Who You Are Matters!, a peer-to-peer storytelling activity, and a web application, Online Storyteller, both from OneLifeTools. These tools aim to build upon the competencies articulated by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) that promote "career readiness" in graduates. One of the most valuable competencies identified by employers is career management.
In our study, we interviewed 10 students who completed the course, transcribed the interviews and performed a qualitative study, which led us to identify three key themes. When asked what they gained from the curriculum, the students reported that the outcomes allowed them to: foster career awareness and exploration skills, find affiliation with others who were uncertain about their futures, and develop optimism and confidence – despite future uncertainty. Students generally reported satisfaction with the class. The published article captures student voices in the form of vignettes that illustrate each of the three key themes.
What universities and colleges can do
Based on the outcomes of the study, we advise and encourage career educators to consider embedding narrative-based approaches into their own practices. First, educators employed at post-secondary institutions can design and offer career management courses for their students. These courses should be graded and for-credit and count toward a degree requirement or elective.
Career educators can encourage administrators to invest in curriculum development and hire career professionals who are well-versed in career development theory and practice. A movement exists in career services that calls on the entire academic community to show and document an interest in the career development of both graduate and undergraduate students. No longer is career development the sole responsibility of career services staff. As a way to gain further collaboration, career services professionals can reach out and establish partnerships across campus with other units – as well as form collaborations with organizations and resources off campus in the community. Examples of infusing narrative tools into curriculum and programs include the OPTIONS program at University of Toronto, which supports PhDs to explore non-academic careers, and a suite of career development courses at Conestoga College in Ontario.
Second, career professionals who work in other for-profit or non-profit career organizations can consider infusing career development modules based on narrative approaches into their existing work. These modules can take the form of specific narrative-based activities or readings that encourage clients to consider the role and merit of stories in their lives.
Third, career educators should consider adding narrative-based tools and gamified strategies into existing curricula and practices. These activities serve as opportunities to engage in the reflection and career exploration process that are both fun and educational. Numerous tools, inventories and products exist that promote experimentation and reflection through games, cards, writing and other non-traditional assessments. (Check out success stories of applying such resources on OneLifeTools.)
Finally, we encourage scholars and practitioners to develop further the inquiry around the effectiveness of narrative-based curriculum, with a focus on career management competencies for graduate and professional school students. Advocating for students and clients to become stronger storytellers helps them communicate their worth and contributions to multiple employers throughout their work lives.
Note: The authors acknowledge Lisa Kaler for her helpful feedback on previous drafts of this blog article.


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In order to elucidate the overall relationships between gene expressions and genetic perturbations, we propose a network inference method to infer gene regulatory network where single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) is involved as a regulator of genes. In the most of the network inferences named as SNP-gene regulatory network (SGRN) inference, pairs of SNP-gene are given by separately performing expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) mappings. In this paper, we propose a SGRN inference method without predefined eQTL information assuming a gene is regulated by a single SNP at most. To evaluate the performance, the proposed method was applied to random data generated from synthetic networks and parameters. There are three main contributions. First, the proposed method provides both the gene regulatory inference and the eQTL identification. Second, the experimental results demonstrated that integration of multiple methods can produce competitive performances. Lastly, the proposed method was also applied to psychiatric disorder data in order to explore how the method works with real data.
Kim, D.-C., Wang, J., Liu, C., & Gao, J. (2014). Inference of SNP-Gene Regulatory Networks by Integrating Gene Expressions and Genetic Perturbations. BioMed Research International, 2014, 629697. _URL_
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
BioMed Research International


text:
Transversality of homoclinic orbits to hyperbolic equilibria in a Hamiltonian system, via the Hamilton-Jacobi equation
Document typeExternal research report
Rights accessOpen Access
The key point of our approach is to write the invariant manifolds in terms of generating functions, which are solutions of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. In some examples, we show that it is enough to analyse the phase portrait of the Riccati equation without solving it explicitly. Finally, we consider an analogous problem in a perturbative situation. If the invariant manifolds of the unperturbed loop coincide, we have a problem of splitting of separatrices. In this case, the Riccati equation is replaced by a Mel0nikov potential defined as an integral, providing a condition for the existence of a perturbed loop and its transversality. This is also illustrated with a concrete example.
CitationDelshams, A.; Gutierrez, P.; Pacha, J. "Transversality of homoclinic orbits to hyperbolic equilibria in a Hamiltonian system, via the Hamilton-Jacobi equation". 2012.
Is part of[prepr201202DelGP]


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Modern Game birds are ornamental birds not known for good egg production or meat. They require better shelter in cold weather and room to exercise to avoid losing their usually fit appearance. These aren't the type of chickens once used in cockfighting but more of a poultry fancier version. The breed appeared in England after cockfighting was outlawed, developed from Malay and Old English game fowl.
The birds are easily tamed and friendly to humans so them make good pets. They have long legs and a slender build with the earlobes, comb, and wattles usually dubbed or cut off if they are intended for show purposes.
Rooster will weigh eight to nine pounds, hens about five to six pounds. The eggs are white or slightly tinted.


text: Vallée de Mai Nature Reserve is a nature park and UNESCO World Heritage Site (inscribed in 1983) located on the island of Praslin, Seychelles. It consists of a well-preserved palm forest made up of the endemic Coco de Mer species, as well as five other endemic species of palm. These palms have the largest seeds of any plant in the world. The trees' leaves grow up to 6 metres wide and 14 metres long. Also unique to the park is its wildlife, which includes endemic birds, mammals, crustaceans, snails, and reptiles.


text: The wavefunction for a hypothetical quantum box of size Planck length (L), when inverted through L, models the universe with this lower bound required by quantum gravitational constraints. The initial quantum box solutions are given by: [tex]\phi_n=\sqrt(2/L)\\sin(n \pi x/L)[/tex] However, having inverted the scale (so L-->1/L), the now "inverse quantum box" generates permitted states, all above L, i. e. those which obey this "ultraviolet" limit to quantum gravity: [tex]\phi_n^-^1=\sqrt(L/2)\\sin(L/n \pi x)=\sqrt(1/2P)\\sin(1/Pn \pi x)[/tex]. This new wavefunction represents an envelope that modifies other wavefunctions when considering gravitational effects. It applies the correspondence principle, using the reciprocal Planck limit in terms of probability P=1/L, to find a particle outside the Planck region. The correspondence principle is, in effect, a manifest transformation of such forbidden quantum gravitational states (those


The sharing economy is boosting economic empowerment for women in Jordan
Only 15 percent of women are engaged in the formal economy in Jordan. This is due to many factors including cultural and societal norms, difficulties in finding transportation to job sites, safety concerns on public transit, and the cost and availability of child care. The collaborative sharing economy is making economic participation easier for these women who are now able to engage in economic activities from their own homes.
Gig economy platforms effectively use technology to make these jobs more accessible to women, while apps allow their location to be known to alleviate safety concerns. The time-specific nature of many jobs, such as an hour of babysitting or three hours of tutoring, also clarifies where and when work is taking place, so women's families are more comfortable with their commitments. Lastly, specified rates for tasks and time help ensure women are being paid fair wages for their labor.
These online platforms allow women to build reputable brands and establish effective user interfaces. It helps legitimize their businesses and connect them to customers.
Women from all different occupations are using the sharing economy to their advantage in Jordan. Hairstyling, child care, home maintenance, and tutoring are just some of the industries where women are becoming more empowered with the help of modern technological tools.
In a country where women have a particularly difficult time finding fair wages and safe work, the gig economy is providing a path to labor equality and empowerment for women across Jordan.
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Can you eat a baby pig?
Can you eat a baby pig?
In culinary contexts, a suckling pig is slaughtered between the ages of two and six weeks. It is traditionally cooked whole, often roasted, in various cuisines. The meat from suckling pig is pale and tender and the cooked skin is crisp and can be used for pork rinds.
How can you tell how old a pig is?
Crowing. Shape and behavior are a good way to tell the age of a piglet. Young pigs have large heads and eyes, little fat, and small, thin legs. As they age they will get thicker skin, more wiry hair and more fat on their body.
What can I feed my baby pig?
What is poisonous to pigs?
READ: Which part of the brain controls emotions?
What do pet pigs like to play with?
Many use play pit balls, river rocks, large stones, stuffed animals, an assortment of toys, blankets, newspaper, anything your pig can search through will work fine.
Do pigs like hugs?
Pigs can be extremely affectionate as well. Some pigs are better at showing affection than others, but don't let the poker faces of pigs like our Pumpkin trick you. She isn't fooling anyone by at first laying just out of reach.
Do pigs like to be held?
Generally, pigs do not like to be held or picked up. 1 When a pig feels threatened, they will squeal loudly. 4 Even though you may be trying to pick up a baby pig to cuddle, the baby pig may be scared and squeal. Once your pig is used to being handled and scratched, try to entice them to sit in your lap.
How do you punish a mini pig?
Here is a step-by-step guide of how to confront aggressive behaviour in your pet:
 1. Gently Hold Your Pig's Mouth Closed – By first petting your pig, you can get them comfortable as you hold their mouth closed.
 2. Create the Situation – Pigs will often snap or bite at you in reaction to the same event.
How do you befriend a pig?
Pigs will usually approach you on their own and when they do, make sure you do not surprise them with a sudden touch or loud voice. Just stay calm and they will be calm too. Even so, in case your first meeting went wrong and you ended up scaring them, it is okay to keep trying until you win over their affection.
READ: How do I get an EIN number in CT?
Why do baby pigs nudge you?
They can nip or lunge at them, give them a head swipe or forcefully nudge them for attention. These behaviors are usually dominance games that pigs would be playing with each other. So, if a pig nudges you and you move away, the pig may assume that she has won the dominance game and has become your boss.
Do pet pigs bite?
Pigs sometimes lash out and bite, usually either out of fear or out of lack of discipline. Although wild pigs may show a lot of aggression, domesticated pigs kept as pets are not likely to bite or harm humans unless it has a good reason to do so. That's okay, pigs still make the best pets.
Do baby pigs bite?
How do you discipline a pet pig?
Do Juliana pigs make good pets?
Many people also say they can be smarter than dogs. The intelligence of pigs such as Juliana pigs make them popular as pets. This also makes them unique from other regular pets. Juliana pigs can also really surprise you with their great memory as well as how fast they can learn and pick up hints about certain things.
READ: How do I check my CE?
Do pigs get attached to their owner?
Spending even just a few months together with a pig can be enough for them to recognize their owners. Pigs are capable of remembering other things aside from fellow animals and people. It is in fact, easy to earn a pig's affection. When they do, they can become loyal and deeply attached.
Do pet pigs stink?
Pig owners quickly realize their pigs must learn to go outside like all other animals. 3. Pigs are generally clean animals and odorless because they don't sweat. Their bodies are clean but their snouts are always covered in mud, leaves, or yogurt.
How much do Juliana pigs cost?
Those cute piglets can cost between $1,200 and $6,500 a pop and can weigh a whopping 200 pounds once they mature.
Why pigs are bad pets?
How much is a mini pig pet?


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Sunday, 28 February, 2010
An excerpt from CBC News "Old mice run faster with supplements" (with video),
Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton have developed a cocktail of ingredients that forestalls major aspects of the aging process in mice.
Generally, aging diminishes the mind and compromises physical capacity.
David Rollo, a professor of biology at McMaster has found a cocktail of 30 dietary supplements such as B vitamins, vitamin D, ginseng and garlic counteracts symptoms of aging in mice.
The experiment was prompted by research that suggests single vitamin and antioxidant pills don't work. The researchers wondered if mixing the ingredients would.
Rollo said the results were profound, as not only were the mice twice as active, they also seemed to get smarter.
OK, so everything and the kitchen sink works in mice.
1) Will this translate well to human?
2) What things in "everything and the kitchen sink" work? And why?
Ref: David Rollo's research, McMaster University


When Will You Need This?
When there is both and Inbound and outbound inspection of tractor trailers, and to tie into other port simulation model objects.
Truck In and Out Gate model image
Model Object
The following model object can be found in the model objects directory: Flow Control \ Truck In and Out Gate.
Ease of Use: Moderate
Ease of Modification: Moderate
How to Use the Model Object
1. Open Your Model
Open your model or create a new blank model.
2. Insert the Model Object into Your Model
1. Locate the model object Truck In and Out Gate and select the insert button.
3. Connect to Your Model
1. Connect an arrival route or a percentage route from the part of your model where you would like the entities to enter the Stagging.
connect to Truck In and Out Gate
2. Connect exit routes from Inspection Station #, or Enter Facility to the rest of your model.
from Truck In and Out Gate to the rest of your model
3. Connect a percentage route from your model to Outbound Staging.
from yourmodel to Truck In and Out Gate
Change the time defined on exit route(s) from staging to Inspection Queue(s).
4. Define Values
1. Define the values for scenario parameters s_Security_Level, s_Mix, s_Station_Queue_Size, s_Level#_Type#, s_TEU, s_Destination based on the information provided under the heading Scenario Parameters below. The values for these Scenario Parameters must be provided before the simulation start.
define scenarios in Truck In and Out Gate
5. Completion
Attributes, Variables, Scenario Parameters and Scenarios Usage
1. a_Inspection_Time: Do not change. The inspection time each entity (Truck) will take.
2. a_Type: Do not change. Used to carry the descriptive values for Type1, Type2, & Type3.
3. a_Dir_Number: Do not change. Used to tell entities to which inspection lane they will go.
1. v_Sta_Open#: User input required. The number of inbound inspection stations that are at each hour of the day.
2. v_CntSt#: Do not change. WIP in Line #.
3. v_IQS: Do not change. Size of the queue in front of each inspection station. This is set by the scenario parameter s_Station_Queue_Size.
Scenario Parameters:
1. s_Security_Level: User input required. The level of security the Type1, Type2, or Type3 is working in.
2. s_Mix: User input required. Is used create a mix (distribution) of what type of entities (Type3, Type2s, Type1s, etc) arrive at the inspection queue. Type can be used for a variety of reasons. For example: Type1 could be a semi without intermodal container; Type 2 could be a semi with an intermodal and Type 3 could be a bulk load inspection time. The three different levels shown below would be a change in inspection time based on the level of security for all three type of loads.
3. s_Station_Queue_Size: User input required. How large the queue may allowed to be in front of the inspection station.
4. s_Level#_Type#: User input required. Time required by level # Type# to pass the inspection.
5. s_TEU: User input required. Twenty foot equivalent unit. Used to tell how many TEU are in each load.
6. s_Destination: User input required. A numeric destination code. Set up a conversion table in spreadsheet which provides the meaning for each numeric entry.


Letter to the Editor: May 19th
Dear Editors,
If you are a university-age Ontarian, you likely remember the "Yours to Discover" license plates. The Ministry of Transportation first issued the blue-on-white reflective sheet license plates to Ontario drivers in 1996. They began with the format of AAAA-001. The plates are heavily distributed and can be seen affixed among most vehicles on our roads. However, if you have seen license plates which, like our current state of affairs, are blue, this is attributable to a decision made by the Ontario legislature.
In early 2020, Premier Ford's government announced it would redesign the current Ontario license plates to a new white-on-blue (or inverted) design. The new license plates also featured a new trillium logo and typeface, and a change in lettering font. After just two months of distribution, the new license plates were recalled due to visibility issues and funding challenges amid the COVID-19 global pandemic. Nevertheless, the license plates and their distinct features were rendered ineffective for two reasons.
First, these license plates are flat; they are not press-stamped with raised letters, like plates of old. This is a potential security threat, as counterfeiters now require less sophisticated machinery apparatus to produce fake or altered plates.
According to numerous online reviews, the license plates are easily constructed by gluing a thin laminate onto a metal template. The quality is questionable. The laminate used in the production of these license plates, designed by the conglomerate known as 3M, rendered the white lettering unreadable both to the naked eye and on camera. License plates are a matter of public safety, as they identify drivers in criminal situations, like a hit-and-run. Sneaky motorists may have tried to keep the plates to bypass expressway toll cameras. However, in facing a province-wide recall, luck has run out for these license plates.
With the vast majority of non-essential businesses having shut down, funding deficits finally prompted the discontinuation of these failed license plates. The Government of Ontario, routinely criticized for its management of education funding, was foolish to aimlessly spend money on 'rebranding' an already beautiful and thriving province. Such financial losses due to careless spending pose a million-dollar question: is Ontario "Yours to Discover" or "Yours to Recover"?
Ameer Shash
Sci '22


3. When are we likely to finish? {Time Estimate at Completion}
The project is a call to adventure.
It CAN be a hero's journey.
In the following sessions we'll cover Earned Value Management professional practices in much greater detail. I'll give you practical step by step instruction on applying Earned Value Management in any project large or small.
Properly applied, Earned Value Management will improve your ability to control projects... all by having clear visibility of what you're getting for what your spending.
Email this page to a friend
Email to a friend
Earned Value Management
(Alias: EVM, cost/schedule control systems criteria - C/SCSC)
Earned Value Management (EVM) is a project performance measurement technique that provides an accurate comparison of the actual work performed against that planned. It achieves this by placing a baseline value on each deliverable at project commencement and crediting the project with that value when the deliverable is completed. This facilitates early identification of variances from plan allowing management to take corrective action before problems escalate.
The essential elements of the technique are as follows:
 - Establish the baseline plan. In the planning phases of a project a target value is assigned to each scheduled element of work (usually some physical deliverable). This is called the "Planned Value (PV)".
 - Allocate earned value. As the elements of work are completed their original Planned Values are classed as "earned", hence the term "Earned Value (EV)". The cumulative Earned Value across all completed work elements provides an accurate measurement of the value of work performed at any point in time.
 - Measure variances from plan. Project performance can now be measured by comparing Earned Value with what has been spent to perform the work (Actual Cost - AC) and what was scheduled to be accomplished (PV). Refer to Earned Value Variances.
 - Determine the criticality of variances. Earned Value indices provide further insights into the relative magnitude (and criticality) of cost and schedule variances. Refer to Earned Value Indices.
 - Forecast project outcomes. Earned Value metrics can also be used to forecast the outcome of a project. Refer to Earned Value Forecasts.
The EVM technique is used in project management only. EVM metrics assume a project with a fixed set of deliverables conducted over a defined period in time. EVM is therefore not useful in managing continuous business operations.
Earned Value Metrics
Earned Value Variances
Cost Variance (CV)
= Earned Value (EV) - Actual Cost (AC)
> 0 means under budget
< 0 means over budget
Schedule Variance (SV)
= Earned Value (EV) - Planned Value (PV)
> 0 means ahead of schedule
< 0 means behind schedule
Earned Value Indices
Cost Performance Index (CPI)
> 1 means better progress for the money
< 1 means less progress for the money
Schedule Performance Index (SPI)
> 1 means more work performed than scheduled
< 1 means less work performed than scheduled
Project Percent Complete
= (EV/BAC) * 100
Percent of project work complete.
Where BAC = Budget at Completion
To Complete Performance Index (TCPI)
The cost performance index required to complete the project on budget.
Comparing CPI and TCPI at any point in a project gives a unique insight into the likelihood of a project completing on budget. For example if a project is running at a CPI of 0.8 with a TCPI of 1.2 required to complete on budget; such a step change is unlikely without major management intervention.
Earned Value Forecasts
Estimate at completion (EAC)
The estimated total cost at project completion.
Variance at completion (VAC)
The estimated variance between actual total cost and planned total cost at project completion.
Member Comments
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RE Definition: Earned Value Management
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If the instructor is crying about the indiscretion of your adolescent, it should be seen that you didn't pick the correct teacher. One hire this comma corrector online to do work at time. Adolescents can never get exhausted and drained with music rehearses in case they get strong motivation from educators and guardians.
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text:
Plan the design for your article and create it in Apple News Format.
- Apple News Format
- Apple News API
When you create an article in Apple News Format, you start by creating a JSON document file. The file contains code that specifies the layout for your article, provides the content, and customizes the look. The file is processed and rendered as an article in Apple News. The following figure shows the basic tasks associated with creating an article.
articledocument file. All article document files must have the name
articleStart by adding the ArticleDocument object and its required properties, or download this sample file. You can use any text editor to edit the code in your
articlefile. See Choose a Text Editor. Create a unique folder to hold the
articlefile and any other files you'll be publishing with this article, such as image files.
Plan the layout of your article. Decide how many layout columns your design will need. See Planning the Layout for Your Article.
Add components that contain your article's content. The content of your article—the text, photos, and other information—is contained in an array of components in your
articlefile. Each component has a specific function—for example, a title, a caption, body text, or a video. For an overview of the different kinds of components you can have in your article, see Components; to learn how to add components, see Adding Components.
Add the metadata for your article. See Metadata.
Once your article is finished, you can publish it to Apple News. See Create an Article.


text:
If you would like to receive continuing education credits such as PDH or CM, please make sure to complete this evaluation form once you've watched the entire video so that we have a record of your attendance.
What are the job, residential development and market rent outcomes of Light Rail Transit (LRT), Streetcar Transit (SCT) and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)?
LRT, SCR and BRT investments are spreading rapidly across the country but there is scant evidence of their effect on where people work and live, and effects on market rents as an indicator of value. This webinar will summarize several years of NITC-sponsored research into development outcomes associated with these transit investments.
The webinar will be led by NITC researcher Arthur C. Nelson who was the principal investigator of two projects: Do TODs Make a Difference? and National Study of Bus Rapid Transit Development Outcomes. Using a common database and analytic methods applied to 11 LRT systems, 8 BRT systems, and 3 SCT systems, Nelson will summarize key findings relating to:
- The extent to which these transit systems shifted job and population patterns,
- How these systems are shaping the real estate rental market for office, retail and apartment developments,
- Their influence on job attractiveness by wage categories, and,
- The spatial interactions between transit and land use patterns.
This webinar will also raise questions for future research.
Arthur C. Nelson is Professor of Planning and Real Estate Development at the University of Arizona where he is also Professor of Geography and Regional Development. His research interests include the economic development and demographic outcomes associated with transit, metropolitan-scale urban form, how changing economics and demographics will reshape metropolitan America, and comparative metropolitan governance structures. He is the author of Reshaping Metropolitan America and Foundations of Real Estate Development Finance: A Guide for Public-Private Partnerships.


text:
Stainless steel pipe is the desired material for process piping systems due to ease of maintaining sanitary conditions and corrosion resistant properties. It is the material of choice for food conveying applications which require conformance to FDA requirements. A standard benefit of the stainless steel family of materials is that it covers materials of much different chemistry, permitting economical alternatives to higher end materials and providing greater corrosion resistance to a wide variety of chemical services and environments, as well as providing increased strength.
The internal pressure capabilities make stainless steel pipe suitable for use in many heavy duty applications.
Process piping fluids cover a wide range of applications from water to chemical services. For high pressure applications or highly corrosive environments, it may be necessary to utilize a duplex or super duplex stainless steel because of its high physical properties and greater corrosion resistance.
Duplex stainless steel differs from austenitic stainless steel in chemical make-up; it has higher quantities of chromium and molybdenum and lower quantities of nickel. Duplex stainless steel can be referred to as 2205, and super duplex 2507 because of the percentages of chromium and nickel in their composition. All stainless steels contain a varying percentage of chromium, molybdenum and nickel.
The most common stainless steel is austenitic, which includes the stainless steel pipes made to the specifications of ASTM A312 in Types 304/304L and 316/316L. Types 304/304L are for general corrosion applications such as process cooling water. Types 316/316L have a higher corrosion resistance to chlorides and may be desired based upon the chemical composition of the process fluid. The "L" designation means that the stainless steel contains less than 0.03% carbon. This is beneficial if the pipe needs to be welded.
Stainless steel pipe is generally available in diameters up to 36 inches with dimensions ranging from Schedule 5S to 160S with Schedule 10S being the most readily available.
The system working pressure and pipe joining method will determine the required pipe wall thickness for each application.
Stainless steel pipe may be installed using a variety of joining methods including grooved, welded, flanged, and threaded.


text:
(Fodor assumes) nomologically co-extensive. According to Fodor, we cannot distinguish between selection for adaptive responses in the presence of one versus the other of two such properties. We can represent each distinctly but, according to Fodor, selection histories are not sufficiently fine-grained to distinguish such contents.
Consider the two options: either the causal powers of two co-extensional properties F and G are distinct or they are not distinct. Suppose first that they are not distinct. On some plausible and medium-grained theories of property individuation, properties are individuated by their causal powers, so if there is no difference in the causal powers of F and G, they are the same property on such a theory. On this way of individuating properties, a representation that refers to the one must refer to the other too and so there is no problem here for a theory of referential content. On this way of thinking, if there is no distinction between the causal powers of triangularity and trilaterality, any difference in the mental representations TRIANGULAR and TRILATERAL must be a difference of a different sort. It might be a difference in representational vehicle, or in other words, the two might be different predicates denoting the same property. They might, consistent with this, differ in their cognitive roles. Alternatively, modest theories can maintain that these two representations are semantically complex, in which case there might be a difference (even a referential difference) in the constituent concepts out of which TRIANGULAR and TRILATERAL are composed (e.g., one mentions angles and one does not).
Suppose, on the other hand, that F and G do have distinct causal powers. Most would agree that this is in fact the case if X is the property of being a creature with a kidney and Y is the property of being a creature with a heart. In that case, this version of the objection does not get off the ground. If the causal powers of the properties differ, they can play different roles in selection histories. Consider, for example, the proposal that the contents of sensory-perceptual representations are (so to speak) their Normal causes. A system can have a disposition to be caused by Fs to do M, without having a disposition to be caused by Gs to do M, if F and G have distinct causal powers even (if they are co-extensive). The system can be selected for the one disposition that it has but it cannot be selected for the disposition that it does not have.
Fodor's objection has evolved into a general objection to any adaptational explanation and to the very notion of selection for. It would take too much space to follow the trail further here. (See Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini 2010 and see esp. Block and Kitcher 2010 and Sober 2011 (Other Internet Resources) for effective critical discussion).
We turn now to the second functional indeterminacy problem. It stems from the fact that organic systems are selected for complex causal roles, as indicated earlier. For example, a gene in an antelope might have been selected because it (i) altered the shape of hemoglobin, (ii) which increased oxygen uptake, (iii) which allowed the antelope to move to higher ground, (iv) which gave them access to richer pasture in summer, (v) and so improved their nutritional status, their immunity to disease, their vigor in avoiding predation, their attraction to mates and (vi) their chances of survival and reproduction (Neander, 1995). To determine the function of a trait, such as the altered shape of the hemoglobin, the etiological theory of functions tells us to ask, "what did past instances do that was adaptive and that caused traits of that type to be selected?". In this case, the answer is (ii) through (vi). The altered shape of the hemoglobin did all of this, and all of this was adaptive, and all of this contributed to the selection of the trait (i.e., it was selected for all of this). So all of this would seem to be the trait's function. Its function is the complex causal role for which it was selected.
The problem for content can be seen when we consider mechanisms that produce or consume representations. For instance, the frog's detection device was selected because it (a) responded to small, dark, moving things and (b) that helped the frog catch these things, and (c) that provided the frog with nutrients and (d) that contributed to the frog's chances of survival and reproduction in various ways. Thus ancestral detection devices contributed to the selection of that type of device by way of a complex causal route in which the visible configuration of the stimulus and the nutritional properties of the stimulus both play a role. Note that this does not depend on these features of the environment being co-extensional. Even if not all small, dark and moving things were nutritious and not all nutritious things were small, dark and moving in the frog's natural habitat, this problem of complex causal roles would still remain. The problem is that the systems responsible for the production and the consumption of representations were selected for complex causal roles in which a number of environmental features were involved.
Agar (1993) supports the idea that the frog's representation represents small, dark, moving food, a content intended to incorporate all of the properties causally responsible for the selection. Price (1998, 2001) claims that, contrary to what has just been said, there is a unique, correct function ascription for each trait and she elaborates a number of principles to isolate the unique, correct function ascription. Enc (2002) endorses Price's claim that function ascriptions must be determinate if any teleological theory of content is to succeed but raises problems for her attempt to show that function ascriptions are suitably determinate.
However, teleological theories of content do not merely gesture toward functions and leave it at that. Consider again the causal theory discussed in the preceding section. The content of the frog's sensory-perceptual representation is not indeterminate between the configuration of visible features and something nutritious on that theory, since the frog's visual system was not selected for producing the relevant sensory-perceptual representation in response to the nutritional value of the stimulus. A frog's visual system is not causally sensitive to the presence or absence of nutrients and could not have been selected for a causal sensitivity it did not have. The general point here is that teleological theories of content appeal to functions in certain ways and one must examine the particular theory to see if the theory isolates a sufficiently determinate content.
In responding to the indeterminacy problem, Millikan (1991) might be thought to rely on the fact that, on her theory, it is the proper function of the consumer and not that of the producer of the representation that determines its content. For instance, in discussing Dretske's magnetesome example she says that, "[t]he mechanisms THAT USE the magnetesome's offerings don't care at all whether the magnet points to magnetic north, geomagnetic north or, say, to the North Star. The only one of the conditions Dretske mentioned that is necessary FOR THE USER'S PROPER FUNCTIONING is that the magnet point in the direction of lesser oxygen" (Millikan (1991, 163) original emphasis). However, it seems (to this author) that Millikan's emphasis here does not put the emphasis in the right place for her theory. Recall that one consumer of the frog's perceptual representation is the motor control system which controls the frog's orienting toward the stimulus. We can describe its function as controlling the frog's orienting toward frog food, but we could also describe it as controlling the frog's orienting toward small, dark, moving things. A mere appeal to consumers would seem to shift the problem without solving it. However, it does not follow that Millikan's theory leaves content indeterminate. It is Millikan's appeal to Normal conditions that does more work in disambiguating the content for her.
Finally, some proponents of teleological theories do not think that content is determinate in the cases used to illustrate the alleged problem. Dennett (1995) maintains that such content indeterminacy is unproblematic. Papineau (1997) maintains that content is indeterminate in the case of a creatures that lacks a belief-desire psychological structure. Whether a creature lacks a belief-desire structure will in part depend on how we construe this requirement. It is not straightforward whether frogs lack a belief-desire psychological structure given that they have both informational and motivational states. Nonetheless, Papineau is probably right that the informational and motivational states are not so distinct as ours and he might also be right that content indeterminacy at this level is unproblematic. We will, however, need to resolve related content indeterminacy problems for human mental states.
Another objection that has been influential is the Swampman objection. Swampman-style examples have been around for some time. Boorse (1976) imagines a population of rabbits accidentally coalescing into existence as a counter-example to Wright's etiological theory of functions. Boorse's claim was that we could ascribe functions to the rabbits' parts even if the rabbits lacked any selection-history. Swampman in particular was raised by Davidson (1987) as a potential objection to his own historical (but not teleological) theory of content. When Swampman comes into existence he is a synchronic (at a time, but not extended over time) physical replica of Davidson at a certain point in time (t). Swampman's history differs radically from Davidson's because he comes into existence as a result of a purely accidental collision of elementary particles. Crucially, he does not


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Direct3D 12 opens up a lot of potential by making it possible to write GPU programs that make use of multiple GPUs. For example, it's possible to write programs that distribute work among multiple GPUs from linked GPUs (eg: NVIDIA SLI or AMD Crossfire), or even between GPUs from different hardware vendors.
There are many ways to make use of these multi-adapter features, but it's not obvious yet (at least to me) how to best make use of it. In theory, we should try to make full use of all available hardware on a given computer, but there are difficult problems to solve along the way. For example:
- How can we schedule GPU tasks to minimize communication overhead between different GPUs?
- How can we distribute tasks among hardware that vary in performance?
- How can we use special hardware features? eg: "free" CPU-GPU memory sharing on integrated GPUs.
To better support multiple GPUs, Direct3D 12 brings two main features:
- Cross-adapter memory, which allows one GPU to access memory of other another GPU.
- Cross-adapter fences, which allows one GPU to synchronize its execution with another GPU.
Working with multiple GPUs in D3D12 is done explicitly, meaning that sharing memory and synchronizing GPUs must be taken into consideration by the rendering engine, as opposed to being "automagically" done inside GPU drivers. This should lead to more efficient use of multiple GPUs. Furthermore, integrating shared memory and fences into the API allows you to avoid making round-trips to the CPU to interface between GPUs.
For a nice quick illustrated guide to the features described above, I recommend the following article by Nicolas Langley: Multi-Adapter Support in DirectX 12.
D3D12 supports two classes of multi-adapter setups:
- Linked Display Adapters (LDA) refers to linked GPUs (eg: NVIDIA SLI/AMD Crossfire). They are exposed as a single
ID3D12Devicewith multiple "nodes". D3D12 APIs allow you to specify a bitset of nodes when the time comes to specify which node to use, or which nodes should share a resource.
- Multiple Display Adapters (MDA) refers to multiple different GPUs installed on the same system. For example, you might have both an integrated GPU and a discrete GPU in the same computer, or you might have two discrete GPUs from different vendors. In this scenario, you have a different
ID3D12Devicefor each adapter.
Another neat detail of D3D12's multi-adapter features is Standard Swizzle, which allows GPU and CPU to share swizzled textures using a convention on the swizzled format.
Central to multi-adapter code is the fact that each GPU node has its own set of command queues. From the perspective of D3D12, each GPU has a rendering engine, a compute engine, and a copy engine, and these engines are fed through command queues. Using multiple command queues can help the GPU schedule independent work, especially in the case of copy or compute queues. It's also possible to tweak the priority of each command queue, which makes it possible to implement background tasks.
One has to wonder who can afford the luxury of owning multiple GPUs in one computer. Considering that multi-adapter wasn't properly supported before D3D12, it was probably barely worth thinking about, other than scenarios explicitly supported by SLI/Crossfire. In this section, I'll try to enumerate some scenarios where the user might have multiple GPUs.
"Enthusiast" users with multiple GPUs:
- Linked SLI/Crossfire adapters.
- Heterogeneous discrete GPUs.
- Integrated + discrete GPU.
- Tools for 3D artists with fancy computers.
- High-powered real-time computer vision equipment.
- GPU-accelerated machine-learning.
- Engineering/physics simulations (fluids, particles, erosion…)
Another potentially interesting idea is to integrate CPU compute work in DirectX by using the WARP (software renderer) adapter. It seems a bit unfortunate to tie everyday CPU work into a graphics API. I guess it might lead to better CPU-GPU interop, or it might open opportunities to experiment with moving work between CPU and GPU and see performance differences. This is similar to using OpenCL to implement compute languages on CPU.
There are different ways to integrate multi-adapter into a DirectX program. Let's consider some options.
Pipelining with multiple GPUs comes in different flavors. For example, Alternate Frame Rendering (AFR) consists of alternating between GPUs with each frame of rendering, which allows multiple frames to be processed on-the-fly simultaneously. This kind of approach generally requires the scene you're rendering to be duplicated on all GPUs, and requires outputs of one frame's GPU to be copied to the inputs to the next frame's GPU.
AFR can unfortunately limit your design. For example, dependencies between frames can be difficult to implement efficiently. To solve this problem, instead of pipelining at the granularity of frames with AFR, one might pipeline within a frame. For example, half of the frame can be processed on one GPU, then finished on another GPU. In theory, these pipelining approaches should increase throughput, while possibly increasing latency due to the extra overhead of copying data between GPUs (between stages of the pipeline.) For this reason, we have to be careful about the overhead of copies
A great overview of multi-adapter, AFR, and frame pipelining was given in Juha Sjöholm's GDC 2016 talk: Explicit Multi GPU Programming with DirectX 12
With a good data-parallel division of our work, we can theoretically easily split our work into tasks, then distribute them among GPUs. However, there's fundamentally a big difference in the ideal level of granularity of parallelism between low-latency (real-time) users and high-throughput (offline) users. For example, work that can be done in parallel within one frame is not always worth running on multiple GPUs, since the overhead of communication might nullify the gains. In general:
- Real-time programs don't have much choice outside of parallelism within one frame (or a few frames), since they want to minimize latency, and they can't predict future user controller inputs anyways.
- Offline programs might know the entire domain of inputs ahead of time, so they can arbitrarily parallelize without needing to use parallelism within one frame.
If our goal is to render 100 frames of video for a 3D movie, we could split those 100 frames among the available GPUs and process them in parallel. Similarly, if we want to run a machine learning classification algorithm on 1000 images, we can also probably split that arbitrarily between GPUs. We can even deal with varying performance of available GPUs relatively easily: Put the 1000 tasks in a queue, and let GPUs pop them and process them as fast as they allow, perhaps using a work-stealing scheduler if you want to get fancy with load-balancing.
In the case of a real-time application, we're motivated to use parallelism within each frame to bring content to the user's face as fast as possible. To avoid the overhead of communication, we might be motivated to split work into coarse chunks. Allow me to elaborate.
To minimize the overhead of communication between GPUs, we should try to run large independent portions of the task graph on the same GPU. Parts of the task graph that run serially are an obvious candidate for running on only one GPU, although you may be able to pipeline those parts.
One way to separate an engine into coarse tasks is to split them based on their purpose. For example, you might separate your project into a GUI rendering component, a fluid simulation component, a skinning component, a shadow mapping component, and a scene rendering component. From there, you can roughly allocate each component to a GPU. Splitting code among high-level components seems like an obvious solution, but I'm worried that we'll get similar problems as the "system-on-a-thread" design for multi-threading.
With such a coarse separation of components, we have to be careful to allocate work among GPUs in a balanced way. If we split work uniformly among GPUs with varying capabilities, then we can easily be bottlenecked by the weakest GPU. Therefore, we might want to again put our tasks in a queue and distribute them among GPUs as they become available. In theory, we can further mitigate this problem with a fork/join approach. For example, if a GPU splits one of its tasks in half, then a more powerful GPU can pick up the second half of the problem while the first half is still being processed by the first GPU. This approach might work best on linked adapters, since they can theoretically share memory more efficiently.
An interesting approach to load-balancing can be found in GPU Pro 7 chapter 5.4: "Semi-static Load Balancing for Low-Latency Ray Tracing on Heterogeneous Multiple GPUs". It works by roughly splitting the framebuffer among GPUs to ray trace a scene, and alters the distribution of the split dynamically based on results of previous frames.
One complication of distributing tasks among GPUs is that we might want to run a task on the same GPU at each frame, to avoid having to copy the input state of the task to run it on a different GPU. I'm not sure if there's an obvious solution to this problem, maybe it's just something to integrate into a heuristic cost model for the scheduler.
One quite difficult problem with multi-adapter has to do with power. If a GPU is not used for a relatively short period of time, it'll start clocking itself down to save power. In other words, if you have a GPU that runs a task each frame then waits for another GPU to finish, it's possible for that first GPU to start shutting itself down. This becomes a


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Hey, this is a combination of the GSON parser as well as the json specification.
If you leave the 'Strings' absent from the JSON payload, then they will resolve to 'null' on the Client, however this will not work with 'Integers', with will default to 0. It looks like GSON treats all numbers as 'int's, which cannot be null.
As a workaround, if you need null values for numbers, you can either add a boolean flag to indicate if a value has been set 'doorsSet: false', or you can treat all numbers as Strings and then do a 'Integer.valueOf(...)' to get the numerical value.
over 8 years ago
Hello Edward, thank you for your explanation.
My solution is ugly : if(myBean.getField() == 0) myBean.setField(null);
I'm using the Kinvey console to update values in the data store and I want to represent "null" values.
For instance, if I have a "Car" collection with 2 columns : "doors" (integer) and "name" (string).
The json could be :
In the Java bean, we have :
> private Integer doors;
> private String name;
After loading data :
> "doors" is an Integer equal to 0
> "name" is a String equal to null
Could you tell me what is the best way to manage null values using the Kinvey console?


Mixtures of Linear Models
With example code in R.
So, somehow you managed to find a lot of data for which you want to fit a linear model. The problem is that there are several different categories in the data and you forgot to record which \(x\) falls into which category. Oops. This is especially bad because the relationship between your dependent and independent variables changes across categories. How do we solve this?
Finite Mixture of Linear Models
For example, let's look at the mad popular Iris dataset. We've got three different kinds of iris: setosa, versicolor, and virginica. For all 150 irises in the dataset, we have their sepal length and petal length. Clearly, there three different clusters of iris and we can run a single linear regression for each cluster to pull out the true relationships between petal length and sepal length. But, if we didn't know which iris was which, we wouldn't be able to do this with basic linear regression. That's where a mixture of linear models comes in.
The model described here uses the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm to estimate three linear models and infer the species of iris without any category information. The model comes from a 2010 paper by Faria and Soromenho. The basic outline is this:
 1. Initialization Step - We more or less randomly assign values to all of the parameters described below.
 2. Expectation Step - We use a normal PDF to calculate the probability that each iris is a member of each species. Then we standardize these values so that the probability that iris #1 is a setosa, versicolor, or virginica is equal to 1. It has to be one of those and only one of those.
 3. Maximization Step - We calculate three weighted linear regressions, one per species. We use all of the irises to calculate each regression, but they are weighted by how likely they are to be a member of that species (from step 2). So irises that are unlikely to be versicolor are weighted very low in the versicolor regression compared to irises that are likely to be versicolor.
 4. Then, we repeat steps 2 and 3 until the algorithm converges.
mixlm <- function(formula, data, k, sims=100)
 data <- model.frame(formula,data)
 y <- model.response(data)
 x <- model.matrix(formula,data)
 n <- length(y)
 beta <- matrix(rnorm(k*ncol(x), 0, 1), ncol=k, nrow=ncol(x), byrow=T)
 sigma <- matrix(1, ncol=k, nrow=ncol(x))
 pi <- rep(1/k, k)
 phi <- matrix(1/k, ncol=k, nrow=n)
 w <- matrix(1/k, ncol=k, nrow=n)
 beta_list <- array(NA, dim=c(ncol(x),k,sims+1))
 beta_list[,,1] <- beta
 for(j in 1:sims)
 for(i in 1:k)
 phi[,i] <- dnorm(y, x%*%beta[,i], sqrt(sigma[,i]))
 for(i in 1:n)
 w[i,] <- (phi[i,] * pi) / sum(phi[i,] * pi)
 pi <- colSums(w)/n
 for(i in 1:k)
 w_mat <- diag(w[,i], nrow=n, ncol=n)
 beta[,i] <- (solve(t(x) %*% w_mat %*% x)) %*% t(x) %*% w_mat %*% y
 sigma[i] <- ( w[,i] %*% (y - x %*% beta[,i])^2 ) / sum(w[,i])
 if(sum(is.nan(beta))>0) break
 beta_list[,,j+1] <- beta
 return(list(beta, sigma, beta_list, w))


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Demystifying the Quota Share Treaty: Meaning, Mechanics, and Illustrations
Explore what a quota share treaty is, how it functions, and find illustrative examples to understand its application in reinsurance.
A quota share treaty is a type of reinsurance arrangement where the ceding insurance company transfers a specified percentage of each policy it underwrites to the reinsurer. This percentage, also known as the quota share percentage, is predetermined in the reinsurance agreement. Let's demystify the quota share treaty by explaining its meaning, mechanics, and providing some illustrations:
1. Meaning:A quota share treaty, often referred to as a quota share reinsurance or simply a quota share, is a reinsurance agreement where the ceding insurance company agrees to cede a fixed percentage of its risk and premiums from each policy it writes to the reinsurer. This type of reinsurance helps the ceding company reduce its risk exposure and manage its capacity by spreading the risk across the reinsurer.
2. Mechanics:The mechanics of a quota share treaty involve several key elements:
Quota Share Percentage: The agreement specifies the percentage of each policy that the ceding insurer will transfer to the reinsurer. For example, if the quota share percentage is 20%, the reinsurer will assume 20% of the risk and premiums for each policy.
Coverage Types: Quota shares can be applied to specific lines of business or to the entire book of business. For example, an insurer might have a separate quota share for property, liability, and other types of insurance.
Premium and Claims Sharing: The premiums and claims associated with the ceded portion are shared according to the specified percentage. If a policy generates $1,000 in premium, and the quota share percentage is 30%, the reinsurer would receive $300 in premium income. In the event of a claim, the reinsurer would pay 30% of the claim amount.
Consistency: Quota share treaties are typically ongoing, long-term agreements with a consistent percentage applied to all eligible policies under the treaty.
3. Illustrations:Here are some illustrations of how a quota share treaty works:
Insurance Company A: Insurance Company A writes a policy with a premium of $2,000 and a quota share percentage of 25%. Under the quota share treaty, they cede 25% of the policy to Reinsurer B.
Premium Sharing: Insurance Company A retains 75% of the premium ($1,500), while Reinsurer B receives 25% of the premium ($500).
Claims Sharing: If a covered loss occurs, Insurance Company A pays 75% of the claim, and Reinsurer B pays 25% of the claim amount.
Risk Reduction: Insurance Company A reduces its exposure to any single policy by spreading the risk with Reinsurer B, helping it manage its capacity and financial stability.
Profit and Loss Sharing: Under a quota share, both the insurer and reinsurer share in the profits and losses in proportion to the quota share percentage. If claims are lower than expected, both parties benefit. If claims are higher, both parties share the burden.
Consistency: Quota share treaties provide consistency in terms of the percentage ceded and are often used for a stable, long-term reinsurance relationship.
Quota share treaties are a fundamental component of the reinsurance industry, helping insurers manage risk, maintain financial stability, and access additional capacity to underwrite more policies. They are particularly suitable for insurers who want to reduce their exposure to large individual risks and achieve a consistent level of risk distribution.
Quota Share Treaty: Definition, How It Works, Examples.
A quota share treaty is a type of proportional reinsurance contract in which the insurer (ceding company) and the reinsurer agree to share premiums and losses according to a fixed percentage. This means that the reinsurer assumes a proportionate share of the risk associated with the insurer's policies, effectively spreading the risk and stabilizing the insurer's underwriting results.
How Quota Share Treaty Works:
Establishing the Quota Share Percentage: The insurer and reinsurer agree on a fixed percentage, typically ranging from 20% to 90%, representing the reinsurer's share of the premiums and losses.
Ceding Premiums and Risks: The insurer cedes a portion of the premiums and risks associated with its policies to the reinsurer based on the agreed-upon quota share percentage.
Reinsurer's Participation: The reinsurer receives its share of the premiums and is obligated to pay its share of the losses for the reinsured policies.
Claims Handling: The insurer typically handles claims administration for reinsured policies, but the reinsurer is involved in the process and ultimately responsible for its share of the claims payments.
Benefits of Quota Share Treaty:
Risk Diversification: The insurer can diversify its risk portfolio by transferring a portion of its underwriting risk to the reinsurer.
Capital Relief: The insurer can free up capital by ceding a portion of its liabilities to the reinsurer, allowing for increased underwriting capacity.
Stabilized Underwriting Results: The insurer's underwriting results become more predictable and less volatile due to the shared risk with the reinsurer.
Examples of Quota Share Treaty:
Property Insurance: An insurer cedes 50% of its property insurance portfolio to a reinsurer under a quota share treaty. The reinsurer receives 50% of the premiums and is responsible for 50% of the losses from covered property claims.
Casualty Insurance: An insurer cedes 30% of its casualty insurance portfolio to a reinsurer under a quota share treaty. The reinsurer receives 30% of the premiums and is responsible for 30% of the losses from covered casualty claims.
Health Insurance: An insurer cedes 40% of its health insurance portfolio to a reinsurer under a quota share treaty. The reinsurer receives 40% of the premiums and is responsible for 40% of the losses from covered health claims.
Quota share treaties are a common and effective form of reinsurance, particularly for insurers seeking to manage their risk exposure, stabilize underwriting results, and expand their underwriting capacity. By sharing premiums and losses with a reinsurer, insurers can achieve greater financial stability and enhance their ability to provide insurance coverage to their policyholders.