text:
Fitinaphobia is the name of a disease, actually more of a syndrome or complex, which I completely made up. Originally I called it differentitus, but I think that fitinaphobia is a better name for what it represents. If you're confused it breaks down like this. Fit-in phobia, the fear of fitting in. I use it to describe people who absolutely cannot stand fitting in with the crowd. These are people who have an innate desire and necessity to be different from everyone else around them.
The problem I have with these people is the same problem I have with most people. They are illogical, selfish, stupid and harmful to others. But, unlike some, I completely understand people with fitinaphobia. Instead of following my usual format of examples and reasons I'm going to try to write this as if it was a real disease. It might be awkward to avoid my usual method of spilling my brain into the keyboard, but we'll see.
Summary: Fitinaphobia is the fear of fitting in. Patients experiencing this illness will gripe and moan if any of their interests or hobbies are popularized. They are only capable of expressing interesting in something as long as it is only popular or cool amongst a small select portion of the population in which they live.
- Complaining and moaning when their hobbies and interests are propagated or popularized.
- Frequent changing of hobbies and interests as fads and trends come and go, but said hobbies and interest will never match said fads and trends.
- Inability to express reasons for liking or disliking certain things.
- Citing the fact that "too many people like it" as a reason that something is no longer cool.
- Wearing clothes or displaying objects and accessories which are purposefully out of the ordinary.
- Being a leader with a tap on pop culture.
- Inability to attract the attention and admiration of others by utilizing innate sense of cool factor.
- Strong desire for positive attention coupled with poor personality and communication skills.
- Elitist attitude which implies that if the masses have obtained something it is no longer elite to posses it or knowledge of it.
- Belief that the types and numbers of people who like something, as well as their reasons for liking something effect the quality of said thing.
- Heavy dose of logic beyond threshold of truth-handling abilities.
- Realization that the root causes of lack of positive attention is not related to hobbies and interests, but to poor social skills.
- Severe beatings can sometimes work in extreme cases, but not reccommended.
- Very extreme cases are often incurable due to lack of rational thinking abilities in the brain.
- Anime fanboy/fangirl: These people are often a prime example of Fitinaphobics. They liked anime before it was cool to like anime. They were watching fansubs on betamax from the local comic book store long before anyone in the US knew what dragonball even was. You can often hear them complain about how anime isn't what it used to be. Or that popularization of anime in America has destroyed the culture and art. They feel that all these fake fans, followers or posers are getting in their way. They never realize that they wouldn't have all the shiny anime stuff that exists today if it wasn't so popular.
- Indie music fans: Indie music fans can only listen to music from bands that have fewer than a select number of fans. The moment one of these bands becomes too popular the fan will claim the band sold out, and thus their music is now crap. Occasionally it will still be acceptable to listen to music the band played prior to selling out depending on the circumstances. These particular people will have a music collection with a very high turnover rate.
- Race car drivers: Race car drivers, especially customizers or ricers, will only drive cars that stand out from the crowd. If the buy a new Mustang only to find out there are hundreds of Mustangs on the road they will trade it in for something else. Usually this is due to need for compensation or very strong desire for attention. Any car that doesn't turn heads, make loud noises and go very fast is no good.
So as you can see fitinaphobia is the fear of fitting in. Afflicted peoples cannot stand to be the same as anyone else. They have to stand out from the crowd and turn heads at all possible times. Often they are accidental trend-setters which only curses them since their poor social skills prevent them from taking advantage of the popularization of something they started. I've encountered many people like this over the years and most of these people are huge assholes. I even once talked to someone who was saying that Linux isn't for noobs, and that it would be wrong to make an easy to use version of Linux. They claimed that somehow making free software more popular would dilute its quality. Nothing could be more vapid. So, if you have this disease or know someone who does, do something about it. And for anyone who encounters one of these elitist pricks, slap them upside the head. Maybe then we can move towards a world where people share ideas and do not obsess about what other people think. No matter how many people gaze upon a gem it does not shine less brightly.


Problems You May Face When trying to do your taxes without any Idea
services Sydney accounting
There is no problem when you pay your taxes as long as you understand how it works. However, there are others who end up in a disastrous situation while paying taxes on their own only end-up spending a fortune. For instance; while calculating if you make one mistake, then you are bound to spend more. Another example is forgetting or ignoring tax deductibles which is available to save more. These are additional problems you will face when you try to pay your taxes without understanding about it.
 1. There are a ton of Hassles –Not having all the important documents in one proper file can lead to a ton of hassles. Moreover, this problem is also faced by those who are always on the run due to their hectic lifestyle leading to hassles and then to stress. Your hassles can become lesser if you hire a tax accountant.
 2. The Chance of Losing on Deductibles – Applying on tax deductibles is one of the best ways to save on taxes. But if you're trying to pay taxes on your own without any ideas then you are bound to lose the opportunity to apply for tax deductibles.
 3. The Ability to make more Mistakes – If this your first time and don't understand how tax works then you are bound to make many more mistakes than expected. For example; there are plenty of forms to fill where if you fill the wrong form then you are bound to make mistakes.
In Sydney, accounting services are given only by a professional tax accountant.


text:
The conversion factor from gallons to quarts for both fluid and dry volume measurement is 4 (gallon is 4 times larger than quart). To find out how many quarts in gallons, simply multiply by 4 or use the converter below.
1 Gallon = 4 Quarts [US, UK, fluid or dry]
Gallon and quart are volume measurement units in imperial and US customary systems. There are fluid and dry measurement for both units in US customary but in not imperial system. The abbreviation for gallon is "gal" and for quart "qt".
For quart to gallon converter, please go to gallon to quart
For other volume unit conversions, please go to Volume Conversion

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text:
Special Geometry and Physics Seminar: Vincent Bouchard, University of Alberta
- Date: 02/16/2012
- Time: 15:00
University of British Columbia
Topological recursion on elliptic curves
In recent years, a unifying theme has been found for a surprising number of counting problems. It appears that in many seemingly unrelated contexts, generating functions for enumerative invariants satisfy a particular topological recursion, based on the geometry of a complex curve. As examples, Hurwitz theory, Gromov-Witten theory of the complex line, and open/closed Gromov-Witten theory of the three-dimensional complex plane and other toric Calabi-Yau threefolds are all encoded by the same topological recursion on certain complex curves. In this talk, I will first review applications of the topological recursion on genus zero curves, and then report on work in progress on studying the topological recursion for families of elliptic curves. In this context, the recursion produces an infinite tower of quasi-modular forms. The question is: to what counting problem should these quasi-modular forms be related?
3:00-4:30pm in WMAX 110
For other information, please see the Math Events page.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


text:
The Origins of Racism in America – From Slavery to the Foundation
This site was created for the Great Works Symposium winter 2008-2009 course at Drexel University on Civil Rights.
Since our class was on civil rights, we decided to trace back the origins of racism in America -- and we wanted to delve into the foundations of what created the need for so many movements by those who have had their rights taken away.
We decided that the time period from before slavery to the foundation of the country would be suitable for an explanation of the creation of racism, especially since this time period included the creation of racist laws in America.
Check out our forum!
Please join our forum and post to discuss the topic further!
To navigate the site, you can click on the links at the top of the page. They go through different time periods, covered by each member of the group.
Chuck Longen covers the background of slavery, before it made its way to America.
Stacy Litz describes the transition from indentured servatude to slavery.
Danielle Martin explains the many ways that slaves showed resistance.
Tyler Frazier analyzes the founders' reaction to slavery in regards to the establishment of the country.
Abhishek Sengupta pulls it all together by covering some key laws that promote racist ideas in America.


Meet 'URL': the newest canine police recruit who sniffs out storage devices
A 16-month old black labrador retriever who was rescued from the pound as a puppy is the latest police dog to start a highly specialized new job: sniffing out hidden electronic devices during police searches.
His name: URL.
Given that URL was trained by the same trainer as Bear – another black lab who played a key role in the arrest of Subway pitchman Jared Fogle on charges of child abuse imagery – he's been dubbed Utah's first "porn dog."
Bear, like URL, was rescued from a shelter.
The dogs' trainer, Todd Jordan, spent six months training URL on a food-reward system: URL gets a handful of food when he discovers a hidden device at a command of "Seek!"
URL is now working for the Weber County Sheriff's Office, which said that he's one of only nine certified electronic detection canines (ED K-9s) in the country, and the only one in the western states of the US.
Two years ago, Rhode Island became the second state in the US to take on the services of an ED K-9. That yellow lab's name was Thoreau.
These dogs obviously can't detect what content is on the electronic storage devices, but they're blood hounds when it comes to discerning certain substances.
Of course, in the case of ED K-9s, it's not blood they're searching for: it's the materials used in the storage devices, such as cellphones, SIM cards, SD cards, external hard drives, thumb drives, iPads or other tablets.
"[URL's] highly sensitive nose has been trained to detect the unique chemical compounds found in the certain electronic components," the sheriff's office said. "Whether it's child porn, terrorism intelligence, narcotics or financial crimes information, URL has the ability to find evidence hidden on basically any electronic memory device."
That can include, for example, a thumb drive encased in a tin hidden deep in a metal cabinet, or a hard drive sealed inside a plastic bag on the upper shelf of a desk.
When people don't want their electronic storage devices found, those are the places they'll try to hide them. Police say that people also tuck devices behind ceiling tins or stuff them into radios.
Police might miss those spots, but a dog's sharp nose will uncover such hidden devices.
The sheriff's office said that URL will help out investigators as they search for hidden memory storage devices, as well as in corrections facilities to seek for contraband such as mobile phones.


text:
March 2002 — Volume 5, Number 4
Cognitive styles and learning strategies: Understanding style differences in learning and behaviour
Richard Riding & Stephen Rayner, (1998)
London: David Fulton Publishers.
ISBN 1-85346-480-5 (paper)
US $ 29.95
Riding and Rayner's purpose in Cognitive styles and learning strategies is to describe individual differences based on two models. One model comprises four basic cognitive modes derived from the intersection of a wholist-analytic dimension and a verbaliser-imager dimension. Riding and Rayner claim that this model synthesizes the research and literature produced in the field of cognitive styles since the forties. They also argue that this model solves the problem researchers have faced when labeling cognitive styles phenomena. The second model also synthesizes a large body of literature on learning styles. As in the categorization of cognitive styles, Riding and Rayner propose a four-level model that groups students' learning preferences into learning processes based on experiential learning, learning processes based on orientation to study, instructional preferences, and development of cognitive skills and learning strategies. These two models are supported by extensive research from diverse traditions in the fields of cognitive and learning styles.
Overall, Riding and Rayner describe the tenets of the theory of cognitive and learning styles in the first three chapters. They utilize the following five chapters to describe and assess diverse theories of individual differences, on the one hand; and to demonstrate the validity of their cognitive and style model, on the other hand.
Cognitive style and learning strategies is structured as an argument in which Riding and Rayner demonstrate the validity of their cognitive model. The book begins with a general description of the cognitive model (Introduction). The following chapter is devoted to providing a state of the art review of cognitive style theory. The authors describe and evaluate previous research work on cognitive style–field dependency/independency, impulsivity/reflectiveness, adaptors/innovators, abstract/concrete thinker, etc–and show how their tenets fit into their two-dimensional model. Chapter three revolves around the concept of learning styles. Overall, this section gives the reader a review of styles models based on learning process. The authors grouped them into three general domains: learning and meaning-oriented processes, instructional preferences, and finally cognitive skill development. Chapter four focuses on the nature and types of learning strategies as well as on the characteristics of a strategic learner.
Chapters five to eight examine the relationship between Riding and Rayner's cognitive styles model and diverse factors of individual differentiation such as intelligence, ability, personality, and achievement. The authors also discuss the relationship between their model of cognitive style and gender, classroom behavior, occupational suitability, and individual roles. These sections serve to validate the authors' model. Riding and his associate conclude their book by highlighting the importance of the theory of cognitive and learning styles for creating adequate instructional settings and by calling for further research that will enrich their two dimensional model. [-1-]
Riding and Rayner present the content of Cognitive styles and learning strategies following a systematic pattern. They begin each chapter with a review of the main points to be discussed. Then, they discuss the points thoroughly and finish by providing an evaluation of the material or by presenting empirical evidence that supports the points in question.
Cognitive styles and learning strategies is addressed for both teachers and educators interested in the field of individual differences. The book is appropriate for readers with or without knowledge on the fields of cognitive and learning styles and learning strategies. Those with some or abundant background in these areas will have access to a state of the art review in the theory of individual differences. Novice readers in the field of styles and learning strategies will benefit from a comprehensive view of most models in the field since 1948.
Finally, Cognitive styles and learning strategies is still a compulsory reading for both educational researchers and practitioners in the field of individual differences today although its publication dates back to 1998. One of the strengths of the book is that its content derives exclusively from research studies. Another important quality is that it provides a comprehensive view of the field as stated above. Thirdly, the book goes beyond the descriptive stance; that is, it is both analytical and interpretative. Fourth, Riding and Rayner's book reads easily because of its organization and use of language. Lastly but not the least, Cognitive styles and learning strategies effectively supports and illustrates the cognitive and learning style models that the authors propose. In this sense, the book is an excellent and practical example of a written persuasive discourse. Because of all these reasons, Riding and Rayner's Cognitive styles and learning strategies is a necessary reading for those interested in the theory of individual differences. In this sense, the book has become a classic in the field of cognitive and learning styles. One should not forget that classic works are timeless and Cognitive styles and learning strategies is one of them without doubt.
University of Cincinnati
© Copyright rests with authors. Please cite TESL-EJ appropriately.
Editor's Note: Dashed numbers in square brackets indicate the end of each page for purposes of citation.


. It uses the default implementation of IScopeProvider.
An IScopeProvider is responsible for providing an IScope for a given EObject and it's EReference, for which all candidates shall be returned.
public interface IScopeProvider extends ILanguageService {
 * Returns a scope for the given context.
 * _USER_ context - the element from which an element shall be referenced
 * _USER_ reference - the reference to be filled.
 * _USER_ {_USER_ IScope} representing the inner most {_USER_ IScope} for the passed context and reference
 public IScope getScope(EObject context, EReference reference);
An IScope represents an element of a linked list of scopes. That means that a scope can be nested within an outer scope. For instance Java has multiple kinds of scopes (object scope, type scope, etc,).
For Java one would create the scope hierarchy as commented in the following example:
// file contents scope
import static my.Constants.STATIC;
public class ScopeExample { // class body scope
 private Object field = STATIC;
 private void method(String param) { // method body scope
 String localVar = "bar";
 innerBlock: { // block scope
 String innerScopeVar = "foo";
 Object field = innerScopeVar;
 // the scope hierarchy at this point would look like so:
 //classScope{field}-> ('field' is overlayed)
 //classpathScope{'all qualified names of accessible static fields'} ->
In fact the class path scope should also reflect the order of class path entries. For instance: classpathScope{stuff from bin/} -> classpathScope{stuff from foo.jar/} ->... -> classpathScope{stuff from JRE System Library} -> NULLSCOPE{}
Default linking semantics
The default implementation for all languages, looks within the current file for an EObject of the respective type ('Entity') which has a name attribute set to 'Entity01'.
Example: Given the grammar :
Model : (stuff+=(Ref|Entity))*;
Ref :'ref' referencedObject=[Entity|ID] ';';
Entity : 'entity' name=ID ';';
In the following model :
ref Entity01;
entity Entity01;
the ref would be linked to the declared entity ('entity Entity01;').
Default Imports
There is a default implementation for inter-resource referencing, which as well uses convention:
Example: Given the grammar :
Model : (imports+=Import)* (stuff+=(Ref|Entity))*;
Import : 'import' importURI=STRING ';';
Entity : 'entity' name=ID ';';
With this grammar in place it would be possible to write three files in the new DSL where the first references the other two, like this:
--file model.dsl
import "model1.dsl";
import "model2.dsl";
ref Foo;
entity Bar;
--file model1.dsl
entity Stuff;
--file model2.dsl
entity Foo;
The resulting default scope list is as follows:
Scope (model.dsl) {
 parent : Scope (model1.dsl) {
 parent : Scope (model2.dsl) {}
So, the outer scope is asked for an Entity named 'Foo', as it does not contain such a declaration itself its parent is asked and so on. The default implementation of IScopeProvider creates this kind of scope chain.
Fragment Provider - Playing nice with EMF URIs
Although inter-Xtext linking is not done by URIs, you may want to be able to reference your EObject from non-Xtext models. In those cases URIs are used, which are made up of a part identifying the resource. Each EObject contained in a Resource can be identified by a so called 'fragment'. A fragment is a part of an EMF URI and needs to be unique per resource. The generic XMI resource shipped with EMF provides a generic path-like computation of fragments. With an XMI or other binary-like serialization it is also common and possible to use UUIDs.
However with a textual concrete syntax we want to be able to compute fragments out of the given information. We don't want to force people to use UUIDs (i.e. synthetic identifiers) or relative generic pathes (very fragile), in order to refer to EObjects. Therefore one can contribute a so called IFragmentProvider per language.
 public interface IFragmentProvider extends ILanguageService {
 * Computes the local ID of the given object.
 * _USER_ obj
 * The EObject to compute the fragment for
 * _USER_ the fragment, which can be an arbitrary string but must be unique
 * within a resource. Return null to use default implementation
 String getFragment(EObject obj);
 * Locates an EObject in a resource by its fragment.
 * _USER_ resource
 * _USER_ fragment
 * _USER_ the EObject
 EObject getEObject(Resource resource, String fragment);
However, the currently available default fragment provider does nothing.
UI Architecture
For the following part we will refer to a concrete example grammar in order to explain certain aspect of the UI more clearly. The used example grammar is as follows:
Model :
 "model" intAttribute = INT ( stringDescription = STRING ) ? "{"
 ( rules += AbstractRule | types += CustomTypeParserRule ) *
 RuleA | RuleB
RuleA :
 "RuleA" "(" name = ID ")" ;
RuleB :
 "RuleB" "(" ruleA = [RuleA] ")" ;
CustomTypeParserRule returns ReferenceModel::CustomType :
 'type' name=ID;
Content Assist
The Xtext generator, amongst other things, generates the following two content assist (CA) related artefacts:
 - a concrete proposal provider class named [Language]GenProposalProvider generated into the src-gen folder within the 'ui' project
 - a service framework configuration for the related CA interfaces (IProposalProvider,IContentAssistant and IContentAssistProcessor)
First we will investigate the generated [Language]GenProposalProvider which contains the following methods (for the example grammar above):
public List completeModelIntAttribute(Assignment assignment, EObject model, String prefix, IDocument doc,int offset) {
 return Collections.singletonList(createCompletionProposal("1", offset));
public List completeModelStringDescription(Assignment assignment, EObject model, String prefix, IDocument doc,int offset) {
 return Collections.singletonList(createCompletionProposal("\"ModelStringDescription\"", offset));
public List completeModelRules(Assignment assignment, EObject model, String prefix, IDocument doc,int offset) {
 return Collections.emptyList();
public List completeModelTypes(Assignment assignment, EObject model, String prefix, IDocument doc,int offset) {
 return Collections.emptyList();
public List completeRuleAName(Assignment assignment, EObject model, String prefix, IDocument doc,int offset) {
 return Collections.singletonList(createCompletionProposal("RuleAName", offset));
public List completeRuleBRuleA(Assignment assignment, EObject model, String prefix, IDocument doc,int offset) {
 return lookupCrossReference(((CrossReference)assignment.getTerminal()), model, offset);
public List completeCustomTypeParserRuleName(Assignment assignment, EObject model, String prefix, IDocument doc,int offset) {
 return Collections.singletonList(createCompletionProposal("CustomTypeParserRuleName", offset));
public List completeReferenceModelCustomType(RuleCall ruleCall, EObject model, String prefix,IDocument doc, int offset) {
 return Collections.emptyList();
protected String getDefaultImageFilePath() {
 return "icons/editor.gif";
protected String getPluginId() {
 return UI_PLUGIN_ID;
As you can see from the snippet above the generated ProposalProvider class contains a 'completion' proposal method for each assignment and rule with a custom return type. In addition to the methods declared in interface IProposalProvider, the framework tries to call these methods for assignments and rules using reflection. The signature of the generated 'completion' proposal methods are named after the following pattern.
for assignments
public List complete[Typename][featureName](Assignment ele, EObject model, String prefix, int offset);
for rules with a custom return type
public List complete[ModelAlias][ReturnType](RuleCall ruleCall, EObject model, String prefix,IDocument doc, int offset);
Note that if you have generated Java classes for your domain model (meta model) you can alternatively declare the second parameter (model) using a specific type.
for assignments with a custom return type
public List completeCustomTypeParserRuleName(Assignment ele, ReferenceModel.CustomType model, String prefix, int offset);
Service Configuration
The configuration of the CA related part goes into the generated [Namespace]Gen[Grammar]UiConfig class and includes the following three interfaces.
 - org.eclipse.xtext.ui.common.editor.codecompletion.IProposalProvider
 - org.eclipse.jface.text.contentassist.IContentAssistant ([[3]])
 - org.eclipse.jface.text.contentassist.IContentAssistProcessor ([[4]])
TODO: describe/link where to configure a manual implementation of IProposalProvider??
Runtime Examples
model 0 >>CA<<
will execute the following call sequence to IProposalProvider implementations
 1. completeRuleCall 'STRING'
 2. completeModelStringDescription feature'stringDescription'
 3. completeKeyword '{'
model 0 "ModelStringDescriptionSTRING" {


News, Performance Assessment..., STSM's
Environmental and Experimental Factors Affecting Efficacy Testing of Nonporous Plastic Antimicrobial Surfaces
Test methods for efficacy assessment of antimicrobial coatings are not modelled on a hospital environment, and instead use high humidity (>90%) high temperature (37 °C), and no airflow. Therefore, an inoculum will not dry, resulting in an antimicrobial surface exhibiting prolonged antimicrobial activity, as moisture is critical to activity. Liquids will dry quicker in a hospital ward, resulting in a reduced antimicrobial efficacy compared to the existing test, rendering the test results artificially favourable to the antimicrobial claim of the product. This study aimed to assess how hospital room environmental conditions can affect the drying time of an inoculum, and to use this data to inform test parameters for antimicrobial efficacy testing based on the hospital ward.
The drying time of different droplet sizes, in a range of environmental conditions likely found in a hospital ward, were recorded (n = 630), and used to create a model to inform users of the experimental conditions required to provide a drying time similar to what can be expected in the hospital ward. Drying time data demonstrated significant (p < 0.05) variance when humidity, temperature, and airflow were assessed. A mathematical model was created to select environmental conditions for in vitro antimicrobial efficacy testing. Drying time in different environmental conditions demonstrates that experimental set-ups affect the amount of time an inoculum stays wet, which in turn may affect the efficacy of an antimicrobial surface.
This should be an important consideration for hospitals and other potential users, whilst future tests predict efficacy in the intended end-use environment.
Authors: James Redfern 1,,Jake Tucker 2 ,Lisa M. Simmons 2 ,Peter Askew 3 ,Ina Stephan 4 and Joanna Verran 1
School of Healthcare Science, Manchester Metropolitan University, Chester Street, Manchester M1 5GD, UK
School of Engineering, Manchester Metropolitan University, Chester Street, Manchester M1 5GD, UK
IMSL, Pale Lane, Hartley Whitney, Hants RG27 8DH, UK, (AMiCI Project)
BAM, Unter den Eichen 87, 12205 Berlin, Germany
Link to full text on mps-logo Download text in PDF: pdf-dowload
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was appointed hereditary bey
Lazistan ? years (1574–?)
Lorri Lori ? years (1584–?)
Moldavia Boğdan 01 year (1595 only) the rest of the time Moldavia was a separate autonomous province
Nakhichevan Nahçivan 01 year (1603 only) possibly never separate from Yerevan[9]
Poti Faş ? years (1579–?) may have also been another name for Trabzon
Sanaa San'a 02 years (1567–1569) temporary division of Yemen
Shemakha Şamahı 01 year (1583 only) may have also been another name for Shervan
Szigetvár Zigetvar 04 years (1596–1600) later transferred to Kanizsa
Shervan Şirvan 26 years (1578–1604) overseen by a serdar [chief] rather than a beylerbeyi
Tabriz Tebriz 18 years (1585–1603)
Tiflis Tiflis 08 years (1578–1586) probably replaced by Gori after 1586
Wallachia Eflak 01 year (1595 only) the rest of the time Wallachia was a separate autonomous province
Yerevan Erivan 21 years (1583–1604) sometimes also included Van
Zabid Zebit 02 years (1567–1569) temporary division of Yemen
Eyalets in 1609[edit]
Conquests of Selim I and Suleyman I in the 16th century required an increase in administrative units. By the end of the latter half of the century there were as many as 42 eyalets, as the beylerbeyliks came to be known. The chart below shows the administrative situation as of 1609.
Abyssinia Habeş 313 years (1554–1867) Included areas on both sides of the Red Sea. Also called "Mecca and Medina"
Adana Eyalet آضنه Ażana (Adana) 257 years (1608–1865)
Archipelago جزایر بحر سفید Cezayir-i Bahr-i Sefid 329 years (1535–1864) Domain of the Kapudan Pasha (Lord Admiral); Also called Denizi or Denizli, later Vilayet of the Archipelago
Aleppo Eyalet حلب Ḥaleb (Halep) 330 years (1534–1864)
Algiers Eyalet جزایر غرب Cezâyîr-i Ġarb (Cezayir Garp, Cezayir) 313 years (1517–1830)
Anatolia Eyalet Anadolu 462 years (1365–1827) With Rumelia, one of the original two eyalets
Baghdad Eyalet بغداد Baġdâd (Bağdat) 326 years (1535–1861)
Basra Eyalet بصره Baṣra (Basra) 324 years (_PHONE_)
Bosnia Eyalet Bosna 284 years (1580–1864)
Buda Budin 145 years (1541–1686)
Cyprus قبرص Ḳıbrıṣ (Kıbrıs) 092 years (_PHONE_; _PHONE_)
Diyarbekir Eyalet دیار بكر Diyârbekir (Diyarbakır) 145 years (1541–1686)
Eger Eyalet اكر Egir (Eğri) 065 years (1596–1661)
Egypt Eyalet مصر Mıṣır (Mısır) 350 years (1517–1867)
Erzurum Eyalet Erzurum 334 years (1533–1867)
Al-Hasa Eyalet Lahsa 110 years (1560–1670) Seldom directly ruled
Kefe (Theodosia) كفه Kefe 206 years (1568–1774)
Kanizsa Eyalet Kanije 086 years (1600–1686)
Karaman Eyalet Karaman 381 years (1483–1864)
Kars Eyalet Kars 295 years (1580–1875) Bounded to Erzurum Eyalet in 1875.
Maraş Maraş, Dulkadır 342 years (1522–1864)
Mosul Eyalet Musul 329 years (1535–1864)
Ar-Raqqah Rakka 278 years (1586–1864)
Rumelia Rumeli 502 years (1365–1867) With Anatolia, one of the original two eyalets
Samtskhe Çıldır 267 years (1578–1845) Also called Meskheti, later possibly coextensive with Akhaltsikhe (Ahıska) Province. Most of eyalet passed to Russia in 1829. Remained parts of eyalet bounded to Erzurum in 1845.
Sharazor Şehrizor 132 years (1554–1686) Also Shahrizor, Sheherizul, or Kirkuk. In 1830, this eyalet bounded to Mosul province as Kirkuk sanjak.
Silistria Eyalet Silistre 271 years (1593–1864) Later sometimes called Ochakiv (Özi); First beylerbeyi was the Crimean khan
Eyalet of Sivas Sivas 466 years (1398–1864)
Syria شام Şam 348 years (1517–1865)
Temeşvar Eyalet Tımışvar (Temeşvar) 164 years (1552–1716)
Trebizond Eyalet, Lazistan Trabzon 403 years (1461–1864)
Tripoli Eyalet (Tripoli-in-the-East) طرابلس شام Trablus-ı Şam (Trablusşam) 285 years (1579–1864)
Tripolitania Eyalet (Tripoli-in-the-West) طرابلس غرب Trablus-ı Garb (Trablusgarp) 313 years (_PHONE_)
Tunis Eyalet Tunus 340 years (1524–1864)
Van Eyalet وان Van 316 years (1548–1864)
Yemen Eyalet یمن Yemen 142 years (1517–1636; 1849–1872)
 - Colin Imber. The Ottoman Empire, _PHONE_: The structure of Power. (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.)
 - Halil Inalcik. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600. Trans. Norman Itzkowitz and Colin Imber. (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973.)
 - Donald Edgar Pitcher. An Historical Geography of the Ottoman Empire (Leiden, Netherlands: E.J.Brill,1972.)
Established 1609–1683[edit]
Crete Eyalet Girid 198 years (1669–1867)
Morea Mora 181 years (1620–1687) and (1715–1829) originally part of Aegean Archipelago Province
Podolia Podolya 027 years (1672–1699) overseen by several serdars (marshals) rather than by beylerbeyi (governors)
Sidon Sayda 181 years (1660–1841)
Uyvar Eyalet Uyvar 022 years (1663–1685)
Varad Eyalet Varad 031 years (1661–1692)
Established 1683–1864[edit]
Eyalet of Adrianople Edirne 38 years (1826–1864)
Monastir Eyalet Monastir 38 years (_PHONE_)
Salonica Eyalet Selanik 38 years (_PHONE_)
Eyalet of Aidin Aydın 38 years (_PHONE_)
Ankara Eyalet Ankara 37 years (_PHONE_)
Kastamonu Eyalet Kastamonu 37 years (_PHONE_)
Herzegovina Eyalet Hersek 18 years (1833–1851)
Hüdavendigâr Eyalet Hüdavendigâr 26 years (_PHONE_)
Karasi Eyalet Karesi 02 years (_PHONE_)
Niš Eyalet Niş 18 years (1846–1864)
Vidin Eyalet Vidin 18 years (1846–1864)
See also[edit]
 1. ^ a b c d A handbook of Asia Minor Published 1919 by Naval staff, Intelligence dept. in London. Page 203
 2. ^ Raymond Detrez; Barbara Segaert (2008-01-01). Europe and the historical legacies in the Balkans. Peter Lang. p. 167. ISBN 978-90-5201-374-9. Retrieved 2013-06


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Can someone sketch some ideas of how to use the Poincare-Bendixson Theorem to prove that there must be a fixed point contained inside a periodic orbit?
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I have a feeling that that statement is false. I do not have a counterexample though. – picakhu Apr 6 '11 at 2:43
I cant see the question, the image link isn't showing either. – Kate Apr 6 '11 at 3:22
This certainly doesn't hold for discrete or higher dimensional dynamical systems (ex: billiards in polygons), so I take it we can assume the system is continuous and 2 dimensional? – Alex Becker Apr 6 '11 at 5:13
_USER_: is there even a Poincare-Bendixson theorem in more than 2 dimensions? In anycase, certain topological assumptions must be made about the domain, else just consider the rotations on $\mathbb{S}^1\times \mathbb{R}$. – Willie Wong Apr 6 '11 at 13:21
_USER_: please flesh out your question. Your statement is presumably true under certain assumptions, none of which you stated in the question. Please put more effort into describing what exactly it is that you want to know. – Willie Wong Apr 6 '11 at 13:22
2 Answers 2
What is meant here with inside is inside as in the Jordan-curve-theorem. The proof can be done using it as well as the Schauder-fixed-point theorem - see for example the proof in the book by G. Teschl (to be found on his homepage).
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I interpreted the question as follow:
Let $f : \mathbb{R}^2 \to \mathbb{R}^2$ be a $\mathcal{C}^1$ vector field. Suppose there exists a periodic orbit $\gamma$. According to Jordan-curve-theorem, $\mathbb{R}^2 \backslash \gamma$ admits only one bounded connected component $D_{\gamma}$. Show that $D_{\gamma}$ contains a fixed point.
In fact, you only need a weak version of Poincaré-Bendixson theorem:
Theorem: Let $f : \mathbb{R}^2 \to \mathbb{R}^2$ be a $\mathcal{C}^1$ vector field and $x \in \mathbb{R}^2$. If the $\omega$-limit $\omega(x)$ is nonempty, compact and does not contain any fixed point, then $\omega(x)$ is a periodic orbit.
Notice that it is also true for $\alpha$-limits, since by reversing time an $\alpha$-limit becomes an $\omega$-limit while the phase portrait is unchanged.
By contradiction, suppose $D_{\gamma}$ does not contain any fixed point. Then, by Poincaré-Bendixson theorem, for all $x \in D_{\gamma}$, $\omega(x)$ and $\alpha(x)$ are periodic orbits. In particular, there are infinitely many periodic orbits in $D_{\gamma}$.
For any periodic orbit $\tau$ in $D_{\gamma}$, let $K_{\tau}=\tau \cup D_{\tau}$ (where $D_{\tau}$ is defined like $D_{\gamma}$ but for $\tau$). We get a family of compacts $\{K_i : i \in I \}$ linearly ordered by inclusion, indexed by some unbounded set $I \subset \mathbb{R}_+$. Without loss of generality, we can suppose the family $\{K_i : i \in I\}$ nonincreasing (otherwise, take $\tilde{K}_i= \bigcap\limits_{j \leq i} K_j$).
Because any $x \in \mathbb{R}^2$ is between its $\omega$-limit and its $\alpha$-limit, $\bigcap\limits_{i \in I} K_i=\emptyset$.
Now, take $i_n \in I$ such that $i_n \underset{n\to + \infty}{\longrightarrow} + \infty$; then $\bigcap\limits_{n \geq 0} K_{i_n}=\emptyset$. So we find a nonincreasing sequence of compacts converging to the emptyset, a contradiction (since $\mathbb{R}^2$ is complete).
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June 20, 2010
June 20, 2010
June 23, 2010
15.1322.1 - 15.1322.11
Using Constructivist Teaching Strategies in Probability and Statistics
This paper discusses the early results of an NSF EEC project that focuses on the impact of using constructivist approaches to teaching probability and statistics for engineers. Twelve exercises were developed and used in a modified version of the course to promote student learning. For example, one exercise enables students to build upon previously acquired knowledge related to counting techniques and the concept of statistical independence and, through self-discovery, derive the probability mass function for the binomial distribution. Data were collected from both a control group and a treatment group. Preliminary results regarding the efficacy of such an approach are presented.
The need for a strong engineering workforce in the United States has been affirmed by several national studies including some sponsored by both the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Engineering1-3. Existing research on learning and teaching offers pedagogical approaches that have proven to be effective in teaching mathematics instruction, namely Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) and inquiry-oriented (IO) teaching and learning. However, while these pedagogical approaches have been applied in pure mathematics courses, there is limited evidence that the pedagogies have been employed in a more applied context like the engineering curriculum.
The RME and IO constructivist pedagogies are significantly different from traditional engineering instructional methods. Traditional engineering pedagogy dictates that instructors should present students with a series of known facts or procedures and then demonstrate their use to solve sample problems. Students are then given homework problems that require the repetitive use of the same facts or procedures. It is assumed that such repetition fosters student learning. However, what this method oftentimes creates are students who are capable of successfully solving problems without truly thinking or understanding. When assessment of student outcomes is measured by having students solve similar problems on an exam, it is entirely possible for students to perform well on such assessments without really having an understanding of the underlying concepts. Constructivist learning and teaching pedagogies are a response to this deficiency.
The objectives of this research are to: (1) develop educational materials based on the RME and IO constructivist learning pedagogies to more effectively teach probability and statistics in engineering; (2) evaluate the impact of the RME and IO learning environment on student learning outcomes; and (3) disseminate results on campus, in local K-12 education, and
Reeves, K., & Blank, B., & Hernandez-Gantes, V., & Dickerson, M. (2010, June), Using Constructivist Teaching Strategies In Probability And Statistics Paper presented at 2010 Annual Conference & Exposition, Louisville, Kentucky. 10.18260/1-2--16660
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2010 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015


Depression More Common In People Who Talk About Themselves
depressionAre you a "me, myself, and I" or a "we and us" kind of person? When you tell stories or talk with people, do you tend to say "I went to the store" and "For me, the experience was…" or are you more likely to say "We went to the place" and "We are planning the event"?
It makes a difference. According to new study results, people who talk about themselves in the "me, myself, and I" way are more likely to be depressed and anxious than people who speak more in a sense of "we and us."
Developing A Healthy Relationship
How can pronoun usage determine whether you will be depressed, though? Apparently saying "me" and "I" indicates interpersonal difficulties, meaning that you have a hard time developing healthy relationships with other people, and you do not operate well in a social group. You can be more needy and not set good boundaries with other people. You may feel that external attention and validation add to your self-worth, and you need the approval or others to make decisions for yourself.
It also seems to indicate that you are attention-seeking and unable to spend much time by youself. It makes sense that self-centered people talk about themselves, and may say the words "me, myself, and I" more often than less self-centered people, but can we jump to the conclusion that all people who use a singluar personal pronoun more than "we" or "us" are depressed or anxious?
More Information
girl-depressedWhat if you really did go to the store by yourself? Are you supposed to tell someone that "we went to the store", or "we had such-and-such experience"? Are "we" supposed to lie in a sense, to sound more inclusive as a "we" than a "me" in an effort to be less likely to suffer from depression and anxiety?
"We" need more information.
The study, conducted at the University of Kassel-Germany, asked 15 men and 103 women about how they viewed themselves, specifically based on their past, their relationships, and overall self-perception. Answers showed that the people who spoke about themselves in the first-person singular pronouns (me, myself and I) were more depressed than the people who used first-person plural pronouns (we, us.)
Depression And Anxiety
Side note: almost all of the 15 men and 103 women participants were being treated for depression and anxiety already at the time of the study. How can those people be used as a gauge? Doesn't it seem like choosing a sample that is diagnosed with depression or anxiety is naturally going to skew the results a bit?
What does this really mean for us? Can symptoms of a mental illness, like depression and anxiety, be detected simply by how people tell stories and report information to others? Can we use style of speech as an indicator, and spot a mental illness early on by using it? Will this information prove helpful in each detection and treatment of depression and anxiety?
"We" will not hold our breath, but let's explore.
Depression Characteristics
Depression is characterized by sadness, loss, anger, frustration, and loneliness associated with the past, and anxiety is essentially worrying about feeling all of those things in the future, so a big part of each is how you process and communicate feelings and events in your life.
If you tend to have experiences with other people but you talk about them from a place of "I felt one way" or "For me, it was hard" and you negate the experience of others that were with you, or going through the same thing, is that when you are more likely to be depression and anxious than if you said "We felt one way" or "For us, it was hard"?
Are You An Island?
It is an interesting thought. If you view yourself as an island, unique and separate from everyone else, how can you have healthy relationships with anyone? Maybe pronouns are indicative of how you view yourself and those around you, and based on what you naturally say, you are not interconnected with the larger "us" and can therefore feel isolated, depressed, or anxious.
Marissa Maldonado is a director of outreach for Sovereign Health Group, a treatment center that specializes in helping people suffering from a dual diagnosis.
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Iowa schools are governed by various rules, laws and regulations set by local (community), state and federal policymakers and lawmakers.
Proposed Administrative Rules must follow a strict timeline --including public hearings, approval by the State Board of Education, and approval by the Administrative Rules Review Committee -- before they become effective. More Information
When an appeal is filed with the Department, and a hearing is held, an administrative law judge writes a proposed decision based on testimony and evidence presented during the hearing. A final decision is then issued by either the Director (CACFP, Transportation, and Athletic) or the State Board of Education (all others except Special Education).
When an appeal is filed with the Department about a special education issue, an administrative law judge writes a final decision based on testimony and evidence presented during the hearing.
The term "Iowa Code" refers to any statute that is enacted by the legislature and signed by the Governor. At times, Iowa Code dictates that a state agency should develop additional Iowa Administrative Code (also simply called rules) to further define or operationalize a given piece of Iowa Code. Both have the force of law once put in place.
Administrative Rules are written by state agencies to implement laws passed by the Legislature. Proposed Rules must have a public hearing and be approved by the Administrative Rules Review Committee. Upon approval, they have the force of law.
A series of items of interest of a legal nature included in each issue of the School Leader Update. The topics listed below are ones that are universally true and always relevant. More Information


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With brilliant plumage and puffed out chests, the Mandarin ducks at the Wildlife Conservation Society's Prospect Park Zoo are vying for the attention of the brown females swimming about the Discovery Trail marsh. This courtship activity might make you think it is spring, but it's happening right now in the middle of winter.
Although the marsh might be partially frozen over with patches of ice large enough for the ducks to walk across, a series of underwater bubblers keep sections of the water from freezing, so there's plenty room for swimming—and chasing female ducks.
Visitors who spend some time watching the Mandarin ducks will be amused by their courtship behaviors. The males puff up and actually bump their chests together in a show of dominance. Occasionally, one of the male Mallard ducks will try to get into the act, but the little Mandarins are too focused on their courtship to put up with any interference.
A few Mallards make the marsh their home but are not officially part of the zoo's bird collection. These birds are free to fly in and out as they wish, visiting many of the small bodies of water in Prospect Park or the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. A few other visitors like the beautiful North American wood ducks often stop by the marsh in winter. These visitors are native species and rival the Mandarin's with the beauty of their plumage.
Many visitors ask about the large cage-like structure at the back of the marsh. Normally hidden by leaves, this structure is called an excluder and is meant to keep the local mallards from eating all the food meant for the zoo ducks.
Most of the zoo ducks are diving ducks, which refers to species that dive underwater to feed. The zoo's diving ducks easily enter and exit the excluder from below the surface to eat. Mallards are unable to do this and are too big to squeeze through the bars of the excluder.
Other marsh residents include the red eared slider turtles. They are very popular during the spring and summer months when they spend their days basking on logs or swimming through the marsh for food pellets tossed by zoo visitors. In the winter these reptiles do not hibernate, but they do become less active in a process called brumation. Once outdoor temperatures fall, the turtles move to the bottom of the marsh. If the temperature rises, visitors might see turtles come to the surface to catch a few winter rays, but as soon as the temperature drops, so do the turtles.
So even though it's chilly and the trees are bare, there's plenty going on at the Prospect Park Zoo.


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Two Japanese researchers have recently developed a gun that is able to stop someone from speaking mid-sentence, according to the Washington Post.
Kazutaka Kurihara of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and Koji Tsukada of Ochanomizu University who made the gun said that the device can silence someone from talking more than 100 feet away, the Post reports.
"In general, human speech is jammed by giving back to the speakers their own utterances at a delay of a few hundred milliseconds. This effect can disturb people without any physical discomfort, and disappears immediately by stopping speaking," Kurihara and Tsukada wrote in a research paper describing the portable gun, according to The Telegraph.au.
Initially, the researchers intended the device to be used in hushed spaces, like libraries. But also in that paper they wrote that it can be used to silence people who speak during important speeches and hush meaningless noises.
Extremetech.com comments that this gun was made basically "to enforce 'proper' conversations."
Controversial talk bout the invention of this speech-silencing gun concern the rights of free speech.


Terra Nullius – blank spots on the world map
Our history contains lots of conquests, but the Earth is so huge. So does it surprise you if I say that we missed some "spots"? There are unoccupied areas everywhere, they are called Terra Nullius, meaning nobody's land. This term is used in international law to describe a territory which has never been subject to the sovereignty of any state.
Isn't it interesting that our ancestors had to fight serious wars for our homeland but there are places on Earth that no one ever wanted to own?
For example look at this area:
There's Egypt, Sudan…. But wait. What is that quadrilateral shaped land?
It's one of the current terra nullius called Bir Tawil. It's a 2,060 km2 (800 square miles) area along the border between Egypt and Sudan, uninhabited and claimed by neither country.
In 1899 UK held authority in the area, because the AngloEgyptian Condominium Agreement for Sudan set the border between the territories at the 22nd parallel. But 3 years later the UK drew another boundary to reflect the actual use of the land by the people in the region. Bir Tawil was a grazing land placed under Egyptian administration and the Hala'ib triangle to the northeast was placed under the British governor of Sudan because its inhabitants were culturally closer to Khartoum.
The Hala'ib Triangle is more valuable than the Bir Tawil area, which is only a tenth in size and has no permanent settlements or access to the sea, so it is understandable that both Sudan and Egypt wants the more precious lands.
However, Bir Tawil was not forgotten either, multiple individuals and organizations have attempted to claim this territory. The most interesting attempt was made by a farmer from Virginia, USA, called Jeremiah Heaton. One day his daughter asked him if she could be a real princess someday, and as a good father, he's answer was 'yes'. In 2014, he took the 14-hour caravan journey through the desert, in time to plant the flag of the Heaton Kingdom — blue with the seal and stars representing members of the family — in Bir Tawil soil.
Bir Tawil is not the only terra nullius, there are unclaimed areas in Antarctica too, but due to the Antarctic Treaty, only the Soviet Union and the US reserved the right to make a claim.
Have you noticed this place on the map?
Well… somebody must be really tired of drawing a straight line… or is there something interesting?
Yes, it's LiberlandOfficially the Free Republic of Liberland is a micronation claiming an uninhabited parcel of disputed land on the western bank of the Danube, between Croatia and Serbia. A Czech politician Vít Jedlička proclaimed the territory in 2015. He created a website where people can donate and claim for citizenship. Today there are 400,000 applicants. The micronation has national anthem, flag and motto.
The yellow backdrop is symbolizing libertarianism, with a black stripe running horizontally through the centre is symbolizing rebellion and we can see the coat of arms in the middle of the flag. Their motto is "To live and let live" because Liberland prides itself on personal and economic freedom of its people, which is guaranteed by the constitution, which significantly limits the power of politicians so they could not interfere too much in the freedoms of the Liberland nation.
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Versioning Bots
In this tutorial you will learn how to manage deployments of bots between environments in the ServisBOT Platform.
ServisBOT provides all clients with a staging and production organization.
It is recommended to lock down access to the production environment and only allow access to the deployment and debug teams. Changes can be done and tested in staging, and then deployed using our tooling.
General Versioning process
 - Start by developing and building your bot in your staging organization.
 - At regular intervals, download a version of your bot and check it into a code versioning tool like Github.
 - When ready to go live, use our sb-cli command line tool to import/update the move over production.
 - Validate functionality on production.
Development can begin following one of our getting started tutorials.
Secrets are not exported or migrated between orgs, but since they are referenced by alias, all that is needed is to make sure that secrets exist in both orgs with the same alias.
Inside the BaaS that uses secrets, there will be a Credentials field.
It is assumed that your staging and product environments will require entirely different secrets, all that needs to match is the alias.
Downloading the Bot
 1. Create a folder for your bot project
 2. Initiate some sort of version control for that folder
 3. Log into your staging organization using the ServisBOT CLI and download a definition.
sb-cli bot download BOTNAME
This will include all workers, BaaS, intents, slots, and the default endpoint related to the bot.
Uploading Your BOT
 1. Log into your production organization using the CLI.
 2. Re-upload the bot Definitions
sb-cli bot upload.
the. just denotes current directory.
Test your bot!
You should be all set to test your bot in the platform now.


Springe direkt zu Inhalt
We base our conversations, reflections and research on some very general principles:
Definition of ethics: Ethics education can be understood as part of the Human Right to Education. Although the Human Rights are universal rights, business ethics education needs to reflect the cultural and historical developments in our respective countries.
Ethics Education: There is no unique style of business ethics education that can fit all demands due to the diversity of business practices.
Business Practices: Business practice is highly impacted by the development of the market economy, by historical and cultural factors of influence. Business practice is also influenced by the institutional framework of an economy like laws, legal property rights, social norms, routines, or customs. Also, there are institutions which work at a "lower" level of the economy like economic property rights or contracts which are arranged by the actors themselves.
Role of ethics training/ education on society: The actors' mental models, or business philosophies, or ideologies have a long-lasting influence on their business practices. Business education has to take notice of that and to make it a starting point of its program.


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Research & Publication
Abstract:Internet is one of the imperative explosion in communication and information retrieval. This massive development of web prompts host millions of web pages in heterogeneous platform. Due to the lack of a standard mechanism to guarantee the nonexistence of a web page before hosting them in the server leads to increases the near duplicate pages in the internet. These near duplicate contents can exist either by intentional or accidental. The issue of finding near-duplicate web pages has been a subject of research in the database and web-scan groups for a few years. Since most winning content mining strategies received term-based methodologies, they all experience an issues of word synonym and substantial number of comparison. In this paper we propose a method, which deal with the detection of near and duplicate web pages detection by using an extended term document weighting scheme, sentence level features and simHash technique. The existence of these near and duplicate web pages causes the problems that range from network band width utilization, storage cost, reduce the performance of search engines by duplicated content indexing and increase load on a remote host.


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- the combination of straps, bands, and other parts forming the working gear of a draft animal.Compare yoke1(def 1).
- (on a loom) the frame containing heddles through which the warp is drawn and which, in combination with another such frame or other frames, forms the shed and determines the woven pattern.
- the equipment, as straps, bolts, or gears, by which a large bell is mounted and rung.
- Electricity. wiring harness.
- armor for persons or horses.
- to put a harness on (a horse, donkey, dog, etc.); attach by a harness, as to a vehicle.
- to bring under conditions for effective use; gain control over for a particular end: to harness water power; to harness the energy of the sun.
- Archaic. to array in armor or equipments of war.
- in double harness. double harness(def 2).
- in harness,
- engaged in one's usual routine of work: After his illness he longed to get back in harness.
- together as cooperating partners or equals: Joe and I worked in harness on our last job.
Origin of harness
Synonyms for harnessSee more synonyms for on Thesaurus.com
Related Words for in harnessoccupied, engaged, busy, selected, operating, signed, laboring, active, retained, working
- an arrangement of leather straps buckled or looped together, fitted to a draught animal in order that the animal can be attached to and pull a cart
- something resembling this, esp for attaching something to the bodya parachute harness
- mountaineering an arrangement of webbing straps that enables a climber to attach himself to the rope so that the impact of a fall is minimized
- the total system of electrical leads for a vehicle or aircraft
- weaving the part of a loom that raises and lowers the warp threads, creating the shed
- archaic armour collectively
- in harness at one's routine work
- to put harness on (a horse)
- (usually foll by to) to attach (a draught animal) by means of harness to (a cart, etc)
- to control so as to employ the energy or potential power ofto harness the atom
- to equip or clothe with armour
Word Origin for harness
"to put a harness on a draught animal," c.1300, from Old French harneschier, from harnois (see harness (n.)); figurative sense is from 1690s. Related: Harnessed; harnessing.
c.1300, "personal fighting equipment, body armor," also "armor or trappings of a war-horse," from Old French harnois "arms, equipment; harness; male genitalia; tackle; household equipment," of uncertain origin, perhaps from Old Norse *hernest "provisions for an army," from herr "army" (see harry) + nest "provisions" (see nostalgia). Non-military sense of "fittings for a beast of burden" is from early 14c. German Harnisch "harness, armor" is the French word, borrowed into Middle High German. The Celtic words also are believed to be from French, as are Spanish arnes, Portuguese arnez, Italian arnese. Prive harness (late 14c.) was a Middle English term for "sex organs."
On duty or at work. For example, Despite his illness he's determined to continue in harness. It also is put as be back in harness, meaning "to return to duty or work," as in After a long vacation she's finally back in harness. This expression alludes to horses harnessed to perform work. [First half of 1800s] Also see die with one's boots on (in harness).
see die with one's boots on (in harness) in harness.


Home Unity Tutorials
How to Tell a Joke With Unity Timeline
Writing jokes is easy. Telling jokes is hard. In this tutorial, you'll learn about Unity's Timeline and how to create and deliver your very own punchlines!
5/5 4 Ratings
 - C# 7.3, Unity 2020.1, Unity
Games are full of dialog, and how that dialog is delivered is often more important than the writing. After all, writing jokes is easy, telling jokes is hard. That's why stand-up comedians spend night after night trying the same material in different ways to get the biggest laugh.
In this tutorial, you'll learn how to use Unity's Timeline to create and deliver your very own punchlines with perfect comedic timing. Timeline will take your dialog system to the next level, helping you retain user attention and get even bigger laughs.
In this tutorial, you'll learn:
 1. What Timeline is.
 2. How to trigger custom events with Timeline.
 3. How to implement a custom dialog system from scratch.
Comedian telling a joke
Note: This tutorial assumes you know the basics of development in Unity. If you're new to the subject, check out our Unity for Beginners series first. Also, read our Intro to Unity Timeline.
For this tutorial, you'll need Unity 2020.1.6f1 or later.
Getting Started
Download the project by clicking the Download Materials button at the top or bottom of the tutorial.
Open the starter project, which was created using the 2D template, and look at the folder structure in the Project window.
Folder setup in the Project window
In Assets ▸ RW, you'll find everything you need for the project:
 1. Scenes: Contains the JokeMachine scene.
 2. Scripts: An empty folder for the scripts you'll create.
 3. Sprites: Contains sample art for you to use.
 4. Timeline: Anmpty folder for the Timeline Asset you'll create.
Now, you're ready to start cracking… jokes! :]
Setting the Scene
For your first step, you'll set up a simple scene containing a comedian telling a joke. Later, you'll use Timeline to make the joke appear with perfect comedic timing.
Adding the Text Bubble
Open the JokeMachine scene inside the Scenes folder. Inside, you'll find a very basic scene with a camera.
Start by creating a bubble for the dialog. Add a UI ▸ Image GameObject and call it JokeWindow. This automatically adds some other components, including a Canvas and an EventSystem.
For the Source Image, select ChatBubble from the Sprites folder. Set the Color to something funny, like purple. Next, set the Width to 1000 and the Height to 600. Finally, set Pos X to 90 and Pos Y to 160. This should make the bubble fill the top right of the screen.
Add a UI ▸ Text – TextMeshPro GameObject as a child of the JokeWindow and call it JokeText.
You might see a pop-up to install the TextMeshPro package; if so, do it. Open Package Manager to confirm that you've installed TextMeshPro.
Package Manager showing that you have TextMeshPro instealled
Next, set the JokeText's Width to 600 and the Height to 200, with the default centered anchor. In the Scene View, the outline of the box should fit nicely within the bubble.
Set Font Size in the TextMeshPro component to 50, then center the text vertically and make sure the Vertex Color is different from the bubble color you selected. The default white color is fine.
In the text field, insert the following joke across three lines:
 - There's 10 types of people in the world.
 - Those who know binary,
 - and those who don't.
Funny, right?
Adding the Comedian
Now that you've set up your text bubble, you need someone to tell the joke.
Add another UI ▸ Image GameObject as a child of Canvas for the main character. Call it Comedian.
A suitable character is waiting for you in the downloaded materials. Make it appear by going to the Source Image and selecting Comedian from the Sprites folder.
To position the Comedian, set the Width to 400 and the Height to 400. Then, adjust the RectTransform to place the character to the lower left of the bubble by setting Pos X to -390 and Pos Y to -160.
In the Canvas GameObject, change the default Canvas Scalar component to Scale with Screen Size and the Reference Resolution to 1280 x 720. Finally, set Screen Match Mode to Expand. This will ensure that your friendly comedian makes full use of the stage — regardless of screen size or aspect ratio — without being clipped.
Canvas Scalar with the values listed above entered in it
The UI is now complete. Click Play and you'll see a joke onscreen… but you're probably not laughing. Seeing the text all at once is a great way to ruin the punchline. Instead, it would be better for the text to appear gradually.
Comedian with a purple text bubble saying the joke all at once
Revealing Text Over Time
Ever since the invention of the typewriter, words have appeared one letter at a time. To do that in Unity, you need a script to modify the TextMeshPro component.
Inside Scripts, create a new C# script named Typewriter. Attach that script to the JokeText GameObject.
Now, you're ready to set your bubble text to gradually reveal itself.
To start, open the Typewriter script in your favorite code editor and add this declaration to the script, above the class declaration:
using TMPro; //for TextMeshPro
This will let you access TextMeshPro features.
Next, just inside the class declaration, add these variables:
private TMP_Text textBox;
private float timePerCharacter = 0.05f;
Here's what this code does:
 1. Creates a private reference to TMP_Text that you can use throughout the script.
 2. Declares the variable, timePerCharacter, and set it to 0.05f.
Next, you'll use Awake to set up the TMP_Text component:
void Awake()
 textBox = GetComponent();
 textBox.enableWordWrapping = true;
 textBox.maxVisibleCharacters = 0;
In this code, you:
 1. Cache the reference to the attached GameObject.
 2. Configure enableWordWrapping to true to have multiple lines in the text box.
 3. Initialize the variable maxVisibleCharacters to 0 so the bubble looks empty to start.
To reveal one character at a time, add the following code:
public IEnumerator Reveal(int startLetterIndex)
 int totalVisibleCharacters = textBox.textInfo.characterCount;
 for (int i = startLetterIndex; i < totalVisibleCharacters; i++)
 textBox.maxVisibleCharacters = i + 1;
 yield return new WaitForSeconds(timePerCharacter);
 textBox.maxVisibleCharacters = totalVisibleCharacters;
 yield break;
And here's what this does:
 1. Forces an update of the mesh to get up-to-date information about the text component.
 2. Gets the number of visible characters in the text object.
 3. Reveals one letter at a time with a pause after each letter.
 4. For insurance, shows all the possible characters at the end of the coroutine.
Now, you need something that will start the Typewriter. So, for testing purposes, add the following code:
private void OnEnable()
OnEnable is called when the GameObject becomes enabled in the scene. So, when the text box appears on screen, it will start the coroutine Reveal.
Save the script and return to the editor. Click Play and watch the joke reveal one character at a time.
But... well, it's still not very funny. Before implementing an even better way to deliver the joke, take a moment to consider why jokes are funny.
The text revealing one character at a time, in linear time.
Understanding Comic Timing
The world is full of jokes in many forms. But ask yourself this: Do you laugh more reading a joke, or when you hear a professional tell it?
Try this at home with your favorite comedian on a streaming service. Watch with subtitles on and the sound off, and then watch with the sound on and the subtitles off. Which is funnier?
Spoken jokes are more popular than written jokes because timing is critical to getting a laugh. Rush it and you ruin it. Wait too long, and the audience fills in the gap. Even cartoon strips use the three-box format to control the delivery of the joke.
Those three parts are: the Setup, the Turn, and the Punchline. The length of each is important, the pace of each is important and the pause between each is important.
Professional stand-up comedians rehearse those timings over and over until they get it just right. But how do you control all that timing in Unity? The answer is: Timeline!
Understanding Timeline
Unity's Timeline infrastructure is powerful and flexible. It allows you to create cutscenes, cinematics and gameplay sequences by visually arranging tracks and clips linked to GameObjects in your scene.
In this tutorial, you'll use it to make a dialog system. The infrastructure is made of several parts that all need to work in harmony:
 1. Timeline Asset: An arrangement of tracks you manage in the Timeline Window.
 2. Timeline Track: A sequence of animation clips of a similar type.
 3. Playable Director GameObject: Associates a Timeline Asset with a GameObject in the scene.
 4. Signal Emitter: Contains a reference to a


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rate for cases with job transfer or restriction was 0.8.
|Characteristic||Incidence rate||Significant change(1)|
Cases with days away from work, job transfer, or restriction
Cases with days away from work(2)
Cases with job transfer or restriction
Other recordable cases
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
There were 6,910 cases involving days away from work reported in the mining industry during 2010. The median number of days away from work in these cases was 24, which was three times as long as the days-away-from-work cases in private industry. In the mining industry, 42.8 percent of days-away-from-work injuries required 31 or more days to recuperate, compared with 27.5 percent for all private industry.
Among the days-away-from-work cases in the mining industry, 43.4 percent resulted from contact with an object or equipment, and another 26.3 percent were the result of overexertion. In contrast, 25.8 percent of day-away-from-work cases in all private industry were the result of contact with an object or equipment. In the mining industry, the most common sources of injury or illness were floors and ground surfaces (17.8 percent), parts and materials (16.9 percent), and machinery (11.0 percent).
In the mining industry, sprains, strains, and tears accounted for 37.5 percent of the nonfatal injuries and illnesses. Fractures (17.5 percent) and bruises and contusions (8.8 percent) also were among the leading natures of injury or illness. In contrast, the share for fractures for all private industry was 7.4 percent. In 32.9 percent of the mining industry cases, the trunk (which includes the back) was the affected body part. Another 25.6 percent of the cases involved lower extremities, such as knees, ankles, and feet, and 21.1 percent involved upper extremities, such as the arm, hand, and finger. (See table 4.)
Nature of injury or illness
Cuts, lacerations, punctures
Part of body affected
Source of injury or illness
Chemicals, chemical products
Parts and materials
Person, injured or ill worker
Worker motion or position
Floor, ground surfaces
Event or exposure
Contact with object, equipment
Struck by object
Struck against object
Caught in object, equipment, material
Fall to lower level
Fall on same level
Overexertion in lifting
(1) Days-away-from-work cases include those that result in days away from work with or without job transfer or restriction.
Note: Because of rounding and data exclusion of nonclassifiable responses, data may not sum to the totals. The scientifically selected probability sample used was one of many possible samples, each of which could have produced different estimates. A measure of sampling variability for each estimate is available upon request.
The majority of mining workers who experienced an injury or illness that required days away from work were employed in construction and extraction occupations (54.7 percent), with jobs such as operators of drills and other mining machinery. Transportation and material moving occupations accounted for 19.4 percent of the mining industry's nonfatal day-away-from-work cases, followed by installation, maintenance, and repair occupations with 10.3 percent, and production occupations with 9.3 percent. (See table 1.)
Because the mining industry consists of varied sectors, safety and health incidents vary from one sector to the next. Among the different components of the mining industry, several data highlights on nonfatal injuries and illnesses in 2010 stand out:
- Support activities for mining. Fractures accounted for 19.2 percent of the days-away-from-work cases. In 22.6 percent of the cases, the worker had been employed for less than 3 months. Of the cases where the number of hours worked before the injury were reported, 27.5 percent of the injured or ill workers had worked more than 8 hours. For all of private industry, 12.4 percent of the injured or ill workers had worked more than 8 hours.
- Oil and gas extraction. The total recordable case rate for oil and gas extraction was 1.2 per 100 full-time workers, while the rate for the mining industry as a whole was 2.3. The rate for days-away-from-work cases per 100 full-time workers was 0.5. Of the injured or ill workers, 49.3 percent were employed in construction and extraction occupations.
- Coal mining. Coal mining had 3.9 recordable injuries and illnesses per 100 full-time workers, and a rate of 2.3 cases with days away from work. More than 50 percent of days-away-from-work cases in coal mining required 31 or more days to recuperate.
- Metal ore mining. The injuries and illnesses in this industry sector required a median of 27 days away from work. The percentage of days-away-from-work injuries experienced by female workers was 8.8 percent. For all mining industries, female workers experienced 1.7 percent of the days-away-from-work injuries.
- Nonmetallic mineral mining and quarrying. Among the injured employees with days-away-from-work cases in this industry, 43.7 percent had been on the job for at least 5 years. For the mining industry overall, this rate was 23.3 percent. Days-away-from-work injuries and illnesses required a median of 15 days to recover. In this sector, 33.3 percent of the injuries involved overexertion. In all mining industries, 26.3 percent involved overexertion.
Workers in the mining industry continue to face a higher risk of fatal injury than average American workers. Although the rate of nonfatal injuries and illnesses in mining is less than the average reported for private industry, these injuries are often of a severe nature, as evidenced by the higher median days away from work. Fires and explosions were the leading causes of workplace fatal injuries. Contact with objects and equipment was the leading cause of nonfatal injuries and illnesses.
This Beyond the Numbers report was prepared by Sean Smith, economist in the Office of Compensation and Working Conditions. Email: _EMAIL_. Telephone: _PHONE_.
Information in this article will be made available to sensory-impaired individuals upon request. Voice phone: _PHONE_. Federal Relay Service: _PHONE_. This article is in the public domain and may be reproduced without permission.
Sean Smith, Office of Compensation and Working Conditions, "Injuries, illnesses, and fatal injuries in mining in 2010," Beyond the Numbers: Workplace Injuries, vol. 2, no. 1 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 2013), _URL_
1 The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration lists year-by-year fatality totals for the coal mining industry for the years 1900 to 2010. For more information the table is available here: _URL_
2 The U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration provides a page with information related to the Upper Big Branch mine explosion of April 2010: _URL_
3 "U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration: 25 Years of Success," (U.S. Department of Labor, 2003), _URL_
4 "U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration: 25 Years of Success," (U.S. Department of Labor, 2003), _URL_
5 Data on fatal injuries are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI). Fatal injuries in this study are based on revised counts for 2010. Data on nonfatal injuries and illnesses are from the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (SOII) program, which collects data from a sample of business establishments in the United States. For more information on both the CFOI and SOII programs, see "Chapter 9, Occupational safety and health statistics," in BLS Handbook of Methods. The Injuries, Illnesses, and Fatalities (IIF) program uses the Occupational Injury and Illness Classification System (OIICS) to define event or exposure, nature, part of body, and source. Occupation is defined using the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system, and industry is defined using the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS).
7 Refer to endnote 5 for more information.
8 For a comparison of employment based fatal injury rates to hours based rates, see Joyce Northwood, "Change to Hours-Based Fatality Rates in the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries," (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, January 2010), _URL_
Publish Date: Tuesday, January 22, 2013


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WP3 Structural changes
WP3 aims to identify meaningful and effective structural changes in the partner institutions leading to an improvement of gender equality and to develop recommendations to guide the implementation of Gender Equality Plans.
Task 3.1: Review and improvement of policies and practices (Task leader: Kiel CAU)
Structural changes in an institution mean that improved systematic and sustainable approaches are applied to key processes and procedures within and throughout the institution. Structural changes in order to improve gender equality include the removal of often-unconscious barriers and the reduction of the influence of implicit stereotypes on decisions and developments.
This task aims to review and assess structures and processes (including recruitment procedures, decision-making processes and allocation of resources) in the partner institutions regarding their gender balance, fairness and transparency. In this regard, the top-level personnel, units and committees responsible for gender equality policies at the partner institutions play an important role.
Tasks 3.2 & 3.3. Setting targets and monitoring progress via gender-sensitive indicators on structural changes (Task leader: Kiel CAU)
Aggregated gender segregated data on structural changes could comprise, e.g., horizontal/ vertical segregation (gender pay-gap), allocation of lab space, gender balance in decision-making boards and committees. This task aims to develop indicators from such data and analyse the resultant trends, enabling the consortium to recommend possible targets and innovative strategies toward Gender Equality Plans of the partner institutions.


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Brief SummaryRead full entry
DescriptionThe Magellanic penguin is named in honour of the maritime explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who first recorded it during an expedition in 1519 (3). A medium-sized penguin, this species can be identified by the distinctive white bands which loop over the eye, down the side of the neck and meet at the throat (4). A thick, black band also runs adjacent to the border of the breast and belly, extending down the flanks to the thighs (2) (4) Aside from these markings, the colouration of the Magellanic penguin is almost entirely uniform black on the upperparts and white on the breast and belly. However, during the breeding season, the adults lose feathers from around the eye and bill, leaving a distinctive patch of pink skin, with an area of dark pigment in the centre. The Magellanic penguin produces a loud call, similar to that of a donkey bray, which is used most commonly by the males when seeking a mate, but also during other activities such as territorial disputes (4).


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The Bassoon is a woodwind instrument that was developed in the 16th century to add a stronger bass to the wind band ensemble. From the double reed family, the bassoon plays in the tenor range and below. It is known for its distinctive tone, wide range and agility.
Six main pieces make up the bassoon, including the reed. The bell, extends upward; the long joint, connects the bell and the boot; the boot (or butt) is at the bottom of the instrument and folds over on itself; the wing (or tenor) joint, extends from boot to bocal; and the bocal (or crook), attaches the wing joint to a reed.
Bassoon players must learn three different clefs: Bass (first and foremost), Tenor, and Treble. The range of the bassoon begins at B-flat and extends upward over three octaves (comparable to the E on the treble staff).


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Christmas Compare and Contrast
Lesson 5 of 9
Objective: SWABT: choose a country to compare and contrast American Christmas with. Note: if you have students who don't celebrate Christmas, there are passages included.
It is almost winter break and it is nearly impossible to keep my students focused on reading. So I created this lesson...
For students who have a really tough time with comprehension, I have them choose one of the articles and we read it as a small group. As I'm reading, I'm also thinking aloud about how what we know about Christmas and its traditions are alike or different than the text we are reading:
When we are finished, we fill out the Compare and Contrast Chart, or I may have the students do a simple Venn Diagram. Regardless of the format, it's important that students realize that we have some of the same traditions, yet we have different traditions--sometimes out of necessity.


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E. Cobham Brewer _PHONE_. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
amongst the ancient Romans, was similar to the Irish howl over the dead; and, as in Ireland, women led the funeral cortège, weeping ostentatiously and gesticulating. One not howled over (c&ocedil;rpus nondum conclamatum) meant one at the point of death; and one howled for was one given up for dead or really deceased. Virgil tells us that the ululation was a Phnician custom; and therefore he makes the palace ring with howls when Dido burnt herself to death.


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How We Know What We Know 2: Occam's Razor
(Continues from part one)
So far we've examined how we form a scientific theory. What we need to know now is what makes a *good* theory – how do we choose between two theories which make the same predictions?
The answer is a principle which has been known since the fourteenth century, but which is still widely misunderstood – Occam's Razor.
What Occam's Razor says is that when given two competing explanations, all things being equal, we should prefer the simpler one.
Intuitively, this makes sense – if we have two explanations of why telephones ring, one of which is "electrical pulses are sent down a wire" and the other is "electrical pulses are sent down a wire, except for my phone, which has magic invisible pixies which make a ringing noise and talk to me in the voices of my friends", we can be pretty confident in dismissing the second explanation and thinking no more about it – it introduces additional unnecessary complexities into things.
It is important, however, to note that this only applies if the two competing hypotheses make the same predictions. If the magic pixie hypothesis also predicted, for example, that none of my friends would remember any of the phone calls I remembered having with them (because they were really with the pixies) then if that were correct we would have a good reason for preferring the more complex hypothesis over the less complex one – it would explain the additional datum. (In reality, we would need slightly more evidence than just my friends' forgetfulness before we accepted the pixie hypothesis, but it would be a way to distinguish between the two hypotheses).
Another example – "There is a force that acts on all bodies, such that they are attracted to other bodies in proportion to the product of their masses and in inverse proportion to the distance in between them". Compare to "Angels push all bodies, in such a way that they move in the same way that they would if there was a force that acted upon them, such that they were attracted to other bodies in proportion to the product of their masses and in inverse proportion to the distance in between them". The two hypotheses make the same predictions, so we go with Newton's theory of universal gravitation rather than the angel theory. If we discovered that if we asked the angels very nicely by name to stop pushing they would, we would have a good reason to accept the angel hypothesis.
A third, real-life example – "life-forms evolve by competing for resources, with those best able to gain resources surviving to reproduce. Over many millions of years, this competition gives rise to the vast diversity of life-forms we see around us." versus "God made every life form distinctly, just over six thousand years ago, and planted fake evidence to make it look like life forms evolve by competing for resources, with those best able to gain resources surviving to reproduce and giving rise to the vast diversity of life-forms we see around us, in order to test our faith."
Any possible piece of evidence for the first hypothesis is a piece of evidence for the second, and vice versa. Under those circumstances, we need to discard the second hypothesis. (Note that in doing so we are not discarding the God hypothesis altogether – this comparison says nothing about the God or gods believed in by intelligent religious people such as, say, Andrew Rilstone or Fred Clark, though of course there may well be equally good arguments against those deities. But it does give us more-than-ample reason to dismiss without further thought the vicious, evil deities worshipped by Tim LaHaye or Fred Phelps.
But hang on, doesn't it work the other way, too? Can't we say "that big long explanation about masses and distances is far more complicated than just saying 'angels did it', so we should just say that"?
Well, no… remember what we're trying to do is find the simplest explanation for a phenomenon. if you accept gravity as an explanation, that's a single explanation for everything. If you use the angel explanation, you have to ask about every apparent act of gravity "Why did that happen?" and get the answer "angel number forty-nine trillion decided to push that molecule in that direction" – you're just shifting all the complexity into the word 'angel', not getting rid of it.
So the question now is what do we mean by 'explanation'? After all, nothing is ever ultimately explained. We ask why things fall to the ground, we get 'because gravity'. We ask why does gravity exist, and after a few centuries we discover it's because mass warps space-time. We ask why that happens… and so far answer came there none. Ultimately with *any* question you can keep asking 'why?' and at some point we hit the boundaries of what is explicable. Does this mean that there's no such thing as an explanation?
Clearly it doesn't – we have an intuitive understanding of what the word 'explanation' means – but how can we formalise that understanding in a way that allows us to discuss it properly?
I would suggest this as a rough definition – something counts as an explanation if it is the answer to two separate questions.
By which I mean, if the force of gravity were *only* the answer to the question "why do things fall down?" then it would be no answer at all, really – it's just shifting the problem across. "Things fall because there is a force of things-fallingness" sounds like an explanation to many people, but it doesn't actually tell you anything new.
However, gravity is *also* the answer to the question "why do planets go in elliptical orbits around the sun?" – two apparently unrelated facts, things falling and planets going in orbit, can be explained by the same principle.
This kind of explanation can happen in all the sciences – and explanations can even cross sciences. Take cancer as an example. There are several diseases that we call cancer (lung cancer is not the same disease as leukaemia is not the same disease as a brain tumour), and they all have the same explanation – a cell starts replicating too much, and the replicated cells themselves also reproduce too fast. They compete for resources with the normal cells, and eventually starve them out, because they can reproduce faster. That explanation works for all the different diseases we call cancer, whatever their outcomes, and whatever their original cause.
But that explanation can then even be taken off into other fields. I once worked for a company that wasn't making very many sales, and had the sales people on a salary, not just commission. They took on more sales staff, because they weren't making very many sales – but the new sales staff didn't make enough more sales to justify their salaries. So they took on more sales staff, because they weren't making very many sales…
I realised, just looking at the organisation, that the sales department had literally become a cancer in the business. It was draining the business' resources and using them to grow itself at a frightening rate while the rest of the business was being starved. I quit that job, and within six months the company had been wound up.
That's the power of a really good explanation – it will be applicable to multiple situations, and tell you what is happening in all of them. The explanation "parts of a system that take resources from the rest of the system to grow at a rapid rate without providing resources back to the rest of the system will eventually cause the system to collapse" works equally well for biological systems and for companies. That principle is a powerful explanation, and it's the simplest one that will make those predictions.
So now we have the two most important tools of empiricism, the basis of science – we have the concept of the simplest explanation that fits the facts, and we have the idea of feedback. Those two are all you *need* for you to be doing science – and we'll come back to both of them later, when we talk about Bayes' Theorem, Solomonoff Induction and Kolmogrov Complexity – but if those are your only tools it'll take you a while to get anywhere. We also need to be able to think rigorously about our results, and the best tool we have for that is mathematics. Next, we'll look at proof by contradiction, the oldest tool for rigorous mathematical thinking that we know of.


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Researchers from University of California Riverside have rediscovered one of the rarest species of bumblebee in the United States; the Cockerell's Bumblebee. This is exciting news as this species has not been seen in over 50 years. It was found in the White Mountains of south-central New Mexico last summer.
It was a rare find since most bumblebees in the US are known from dozens to even thousands of specimens, but that's not the case with this species. Another factor is that the area is not visited by entomologists very often and the species has also had a history of being ignored because they thought it was not actually a genuine species, but rather a regional color variant of another well-known species. So it's part rarity and part mistaken identity. You might say they were stung by a false assumption.
This might seem like a rare occurrence, finding a new species in this day and age, but it actually happens more often than you might think. Entomologists from UCR actually rediscover many "lost" insect species as well as discover entirely new species at the rate of several dozen every year.
Now that it has been identified, they can find out if it is facing a serious threat of habitat loss or not.