Why is the USS Arizona Underwater?
The USS Arizona is the resting place to hundreds of sailors. The Navy decided to leave them and the ship there after an inspection a few months after the attack. It was determined that there was so much damage taht the ship was a total loss and could not be salvaged. Though, it should be noted that some parts from the Arizona were taken for use on other ships during WWII.
After deciding that the ship could not be salvaged, was not a navigation risk and would be left where she was, the Navy had a decision about what to do with the men who perished on board. It was decided that the men would be considered buried at sea because it would be too difficult to remove them in a respectful manner.
The decision to leave the USS Arizona underwater at the bottom of Pearl Harbor was made after much deliberation. The same decision was made for the USS Utah. The USS Oklahoma was similarly sunk in the attack, but raised and put in drydock in 1943. In 1944, the USS Oklahoma was decommissioned. She eventually sunk to the bottom of the ocean as she was towed to the US mainland. All of the other ships sunk or damaged during the attack were returned to service.
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Undertaking as a profession was virtually unknown in Europe before the 17th century. Some European cities demanded funerals simply in the name of religion, while in others it was the name of sanitation, and many funeral customs were based on pagan rituals.
- Mourning clothes were worn as a disguise so that returning spirits would fail to recognize mourners and thus confused, overlook them.
- Pagan tribes believed that the spirit of the deceased escaped through the mouth. They would often hold the mouth and nose of a sick person shut, hoping to retain the spirits and delay death. This may often have had the opposite effect.
- Wakes originated from the custom of keeping watch over the deceased in the hope that life would return.
- Feasting after a funeral began as offerings of food being made to appease spirits after a death.
- The ringing of bells and lighting of candles is to protect the living from returning spirits.
- The firing of a rifle volley over the deceased mirrors the tribal practice of throwing spears into the air to ward off spirits hovering over the deceased.
- Originally, holy water was sprinkled on the body to protect it from the demons.
- Floral offerings were originally intended to gain favour with the spirit of the deceased.
In the 17th Century, a passing bell was rung for the dead or dying: Nine rings for a man, six rings for a woman and three rings for a child - followed by one ring for each year of the deceased life.
A 'searcher', a person of 'suitable moral standing', was summoned to decide the cause of death. As they were not qualified in medicine, many suspicious deaths must have gone unnoticed. Details, including the cause of death, were recorded in the Bills of Mortality published for public record. Post Mortems were considered taboo. As it was believed little could be determined from them and to cut up a body was merely to satisfy the morbid interests of physicians, who were often equally suspect.
The house where the deceased lay until the funeral was draped with heavy black mourning cloths. All windows, mirrors, even bowls of water, were covered to prevent reflective surfaces from attracting the spirit of the dead and keeping him earthbound. Jewellery was hidden away and non shiny fabrics used for mourning clothes.
In 1660, King Charles II passed a law intending to promote the English wool trade that decreed all persons had to be buried in'shifts, shrouds and winding sheets' made of woollen material, rather than linen, and free from 'Flax, Hemp, Silk, Hair, Gold or Silver or other than what is made of Sheep's Wool'. This Act, strengthened in 1678, remained on the statute books until 1815, although the very wealthy would prefer to pay the £5.00 for default as it was considered ill-bred to 'bury in flannel'. Most people would buy highly taxed Irish linen instead. The shroud or winding sheet had to be made in one piece of material, tied and knotted at the head and feet, but not sewn.
Most coffins were of black painted oak, the interior covered with a thick layer of bran to soak up bodily fluids and to reduce the smell, especially in the summer. The deceased would lay in an open coffin, in a black draped room lit by candles.
Embalming was sometimes carried out, but this wasn't common practice and mostly among the rich. In the case of Queen Mary II, who died of smallpox on Christmas Eve 1694, at the age of 32, this would have been necessary as she wasn't interred in Westminster Abbey until March 6th 1695.
Funeral Cards to inform friends and relatives of the time and place of the funeral were sent out. Made of pasteboard with black edges, they bore illustrations of gravestones, skeletons and other gruesome images. In the 17th Century, this was not intended to be morbid or grotesque, but to remind the living that this is what mankind comes to, and that death was a serious business.
Wealthier families distributed mourning rings among friends and family, bearing the name of the deceased and the date of death engraved on them. Worn for up to a year after the death, these were usually fashioned from black enamel for the men and gold with a black band for the ladies.
On a mourning ring crafted as a memento of the Martyr King, Charles I, the inscription says, 'prepared be to follow me'.
Silk crepe scarves were handed out to the gentlemen to be worn on their hatbands for weeks after the funeral. Depending on the closeness of the deceased, some would tie these to their upper arms after a certain time had passed.
All members of a gentleman's household, including the servants, were expected to wear full mourning for at least three months, bought at the expense of the deceased's family. Wives could change into purple and white after six months, but some liked to wait for a year.
The funeral party walked behind a cart bearing the coffin to the burial site. Even Queen Mary's mourners walked to the Abbey, apparently an uncomfortable journey as there was snow on the ground and Westminster Abbey was unheated.
The ceremony was often carried out at night, supposedly to emphasise the seriousness of death, with the carrying of hundreds of torches. This also became an arena for the display of wealth, the larger the cortege and the more torches they had to line the walk, the richer the family.
Funeral accoutrements were very expensive and usually hired. A pall for the coffin, heavy silver candlesticks, the ornaments on the cart, even the handles on the coffin were rarely bought. Some of the torchbearers were not family at all, but security guards hired to protect these expensive items, there being a roaring trade in stolen palls and candlesticks.
If the family could afford it, the deceased had their own burial plot, even a tomb where other family members lay. In London cemeteries, space was at a premium and multiple burials were not uncommon. When the multiple plot was full, the grave would be covered and a new plot opened. Guards would be employed to ensure no one dug up a newly buried coffin to steal the deceased's jewellery and clothes.
The tradition of returning to the deceased's home for refreshment is an old one, although in the 17th Century this was for 'wine and biscuits'. As with modern wakes, these sometimes deteriorated into drunken brawls when mourners imbibed too much of the free spirits on offer.
Acknowledgements to Maureen Waller and her book, 1700-Scenes of London Life

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


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One ounce of sugar of cornflour converted to grain equals to 15,432,358.35 gr
How many grains of cornflour are in 1 ounce of sugar? The answer is: The change of 1 oz sugars ( ounce of sugar ) unit in a cornflour measure equals = into 15,432,358.35 gr ( grain ) as per the equivalent measure and for the same cornflour type.
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The Breda Ba. 65 was a ground attack arcraft that was used by Italy during WWII. The Ba. 65 had a Fiat A80 RC 41 Engine[N 1]that was capable of propelling it at speeds of up to 430 km/h. It also had a crew of one or two men depending on what role it was to fulfill.
Intended as the progenitor of an aeroplano di combattimento,[N 2] the low wing all metal cantilever monoplane Ba. 65 prototype was first flown in September 1935. The basic structure consisted of steel tubing covered with a skin of Dural, with fabric in some areas. The main units of the tailwheel undercarriage retracted into shallow fairings located towards the rear of the wing.
In 1936 an initial order was placed for 81 single seat examples powered by 700 hp (522 Kw) Gnome Rhone 14K engines. 13 aircraft from this batch were assigned to 65a Squadrilia, Aviazione Legionaria, which served as the Italian air contingent supporting fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War. After operating at Santander in August 1937, 65a Squadrilia fought at Teruel and in battles for the river Ebro. The unit's experiences in Spain led to Italian Ba.65s serving with the Regia Aeronautica's two assault wings. By July 1939, a second series of Ba.65s, each powered by a single Fiat A.80 engine, had been produced, with six of these aircraft joining an additional four Gnome Rhone powered aircraft in Spain in 1938.
Shortly after Italy entered World War II, the Ba.65 became involved in the fighting against British forces in North Africa, where it put up an unimpressive performance due to low serviceability, with the last operational example being lost in February 1941 during the British offensive in Cyrenaica. Many of the Ba.65s in Italian service were two seat biposto aircraft, with an observer/gunner behind the pilot equipped with a single 7.7mm machine gun. A few Ba.65 biposto aircraft were fitted with a Breda L turret in place of the open rear cockpit.
A number of other countries also used the Ba.65. Iraq received 25 Fiat powered biposto examples in 1938 - a pair of dual control trainers, and 23 fitted with Breda L turrets, which saw limited action against British forces during 1940-41. 1938 also saw the delivery of 20 examples with Piaggio P.XI C.40 engines - 17 single seaters and three dual trainers - to Chile. in November 1939, Portugal received 10 Fiat powered two seaters with Breda L turrets. [N 3]
- ↑ Ba. 65/A80 Monoposto (Single Seat) Version.
- ↑ Multi role combat aircraft, intended to be capable of carrying out interceptor, fighter, light bomber, reconnaisance and attack missions.
- ↑ In anticipation of an order from the government of China, which eventually failed to materialise, Breda replaced the Fiat engine on one Ba.65 with a Pratt & Whitney R-1830 in June 1937.
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 World Aircraft Information Files Card 890 Card 78 (A-Z of Aircraft: Breda Ba 64 to Breguet BUM, BUC, BLM and BrM)
- World Aircraft Information Files Aviation Partwork. Midsummer Books Ltd.


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Non-Negative Principal Component Analysis for Face Recognition
Principle component analysis is often combined with the state-of-art classification algorithms to recognize human faces. However, principle component analysis can only capture these features contributing to the global characteristics of data because it is a global feature selection algorithm. It misses those features contributing to the local characteristics of data because each principal component only contains some levels of global characteristics of data. In this paper, the authors present a novel face recognition approach using non-negative principal component analysis which is added with the constraint of non-negative to improve data locality and contribute to elucidating latent data structures. Experiments are performed on the Cambridge ORL face database. They demonstrate the strong performances of the algorithm in recognizing human faces in comparison with PCA and NREMF approaches.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


The research has sparked the coverage that is named as "Decoding Anagrammed Texts Written in an Unknown Language and Script", which is published in 2016. It is presented at the conference last year, as picked by the journalists. Greg Kondrak, a computer science professor and Bradley Hauer, a graduate student has together found a method for finding the source language of the ciphered texts turning this method on the manuscript itself. Some of them have come to the conclusion that it is written in Hebrew before encoded in the current form. If what they have claimed is true, this manuscript would be a glacier breaking the ice. The 240-page script has been a mystery for years now. It has some unidentifiable and scattered illustrations of plants, doodles, diagrams, dragons and castles which are listed out in an odd section showing naked women bathing in pools which are connected through tubes. It makes a map of ancient water parks as scholars suggest that it is either a medical or an alchemical intent.
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Physical Security
Physical security protects the people and properties of an organization, but also information. Besides technical security, information also needs physical security. The most important threats against which physical security protects an organization, are intentional threats from people. Examples are theft and accidental access. In this training you will learn which measures an organization can take to ensure physical security and what your role is in this.
Learning Objectives:
After the training you will be able to answer the following questions:
 - What is physical security?
 - Why is physical security important?
 - How do you contribute to physical security yourself?


A general system of nature, through the three grand kingdoms of animals, vegetables, and minerals, systematically divided into their several classes, orders, genera, species, and varieties, with their Linné's system of nature by Turton. Linné's system of nature. Linné, Carl von, _PHONE_ creator Gmelin, Johann Friedrich, _PHONE_ contributor Turton, William, _PHONE_ contributor text series London : Printed for Lackington, Allen & Co., 1806. 1806
English Each volume has a half-title: A general system of nature. Vols. 1-4 are a re-issue of Soulsby no. 137 with new title-pages. According to the colophons, Vol. 1 is "Printed by Voss and Morris, Castle-S Soulsby no. 138 Duplicate Soulsby no. 34h Duplicate Soulsby no. 2643a Explanation of terms used in the various departments of natural history Some account of the life and writings of Sir Charles Linné Systema naturae _URL_


- PD 2020
 Professional development in Sherman ISD focuses on adult learning that results in student learning. The mission of professional development is to inspire, empower, and develop all professionals who impact learning.
 Professional development is results-driven, standards-based, and job-embedded. Results-driven means that, during planning, implementation and evaluation of staff development, we ask:
 What do students need to know and be able to do?
 What do educators need to know and be able to do to ensure student success?
 What staff development will ensure educators acquire the necessary skills and knowledge for implementation?
 How will we know the impact on student learning?
Sherman ISD Staff Development
 1. August In-service:


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ABSTRACT: A randomized controlled trial of two different types of web-based instructional methods [Med Teach. 2012] – PubMed – NCBI
Computer-based learning (CBL) is an effective form of medical education. Educators have developed recommendations for instructional design but there is only minimal research that evaluates these recommendations.
To evaluate the effect of case-based questions contained in computer modules on learning efficacy.
The authors conducted a randomized controlled trial in 124 medical students of two CBL PowerPoint modules-based on Medicare. The modules were identical except one contained 11 case-based scenarios followed by multiple choice questions. The primary outcome measurement was a previously validated, 11-item knowledge test taken at the end of the module and at the end of the academic year to test retention.
The students who studied the module with case-based questions answered one more item correctly in the first test (8.9 vs. 10.00 correct answers, p = 0.001). This difference had disappeared by the time of the second test (4.2 vs. 4.7, p = 0.095).
This study shows that computer modules with case-based questions enhance learning in the short-term but at the expense of increased time and so decreased learning efficiency. This learning benefit was not maintained.


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出版社：Bayard Presse Asia
Created in 1979, chickaDEE satisfies the 6- to 9-year-old's insatiable thirst for knowledge and appetite for humour. chickaDEE acknowledges the growing independence of primary-aged children and fosters their curiosity about the world around them. In every monthly issue, chickaDEE includes interactive stories, puzzles, animal features, and science experiments to educate and entertain readers.
The cover story is to give an idea to children about how is food lost or wasted, and teach readers about how the different kinds of foods can last for, and explore the methods to reduce the food waste.


The Elegance of the Hedgehog Quiz | Eight Week Quiz A
Muriel Barbery
Buy The Elegance of the Hedgehog Lesson Plans
Name: _________________________ Period: ___________________
This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Part 1, Camellias: Chapters 1-4, Journal of the Movement No. 1 and Profound Thought No. 2.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. What is the significance of building number 7 at rue de Grenelle?
(a) Where Renee works.
(b) Where all the intelligentsia gather.
(c) Where Renee lives.
(d) Where Renee once witnessed a murder.
2. How does Renee see Manuela in Manuela's current station in life?
(a) As thinking Manuela is better than she is.
(b) As too refined.
(c) As a perfect fit.
(d) As thinking Manuela is less refined than Manuela pretends.
3. What is Manuela always scheming to do?
(a) Go back to her country.
(b) Marry a rich man.
(c) Move to Canada.
(d) Move to the United States.
4. How does Renee characterize that dog?
(a) Beautiful but helpless.
(b) Ugly but necessary.
(c) Friendly but bites.
(d) Ugly and useless.
5. For how long has Renee worked in one place?
(a) 10 years.
(b) 11 years.
(c) 2 years.
(d) 20 years.
Short Answer Questions
1. What was Renee's husband like?
2. What does Paloma notice about one of the players?
3. How does Renee perceive that Arthens speaks to her?
4. What surprised Renee about her husband?
5. What does Pierre do?
(see the answer key)
This section contains 236 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page)
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Christianity most likely arrived in Ethiopia in the first century. The conversion of King Ezana in 330 c.e. led to its official acceptance and the minting of coins bearing one of the earliest uses of the cross as a Christian symbol. Although the silver pendant crosses in the Museum's collection are from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, their forms have a considerably longer history, as the much older copper, wood, and iron crosses here demonstrate.
Hand crosses, which are used by priests, are either hand-held or suspended from a cord around the neck. They are kissed by the faithful to receive a blessing. Processional crosses are carried on long poles in religious processions. Prayer staffs are used to mark rhythms during sacred dances and as supports to lean on while standing for long hours during Orthodox church services. Together, all of these crosses are emblems of the Ethiopian Orthodox church's ongoing authority.
This text refers to these objects:'1997.168.1; 2000.123.1; 79.72.3; 79.72.6; 79.72.30; 79.72.24; 79.72.20; 79.72.12; 79.72.27; 1998.126.4; 1998.126.3; 2000.95.1; 79.72.14; 79.72.11; 79.72.17; 79.72.13; 79.72.31; 88.192.4; 79.72.21; 79.72.18
- Culture: Amhara
- Medium: Copper alloy
- Place Made: Ethiopia
- Dates: 13th or 14th century
- Dimensions: 10 x 4 3/4 x 1 in. (25.4 x 12.1 x 2.5 cm) (show scale)
- Collections:Arts of Africa
- Museum Location: This item is on view in South Gallery, 1st Floor
- Accession Number: 2000.95.1
- Credit Line: Gift of Eric Goode
- Rights Statement: Creative Commons-BY
- Caption: Amhara. Processional Cross, 13th or 14th century. Copper alloy, 10 x 4 3/4 x 1 in. (25.4 x 12.1 x 2.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Eric Goode, 2000.95.1. Creative Commons-BY
- Catalogue Description: Cast bronze processional cross with rectangular openwork superstructure and socket with decagonal cross section. The superstructure has a central motif of five small cutout Greek crosses arranged in a larger Greek cross design. Two sets of three crosses form the vertical edges of the composition. Condition: Good overall
- Record Completeness: Best (83%)


Atlas Obscura featured Lit@MIT alumnae, Casey Crownhart!
Behold Brine Shrimp, the Livestock of Utah's Great Salt Lake
The otherworldly stars of a thriving industry and endless curiosity could be at risk if the lake continues receding.
WHEN KYLE STONE TRIES TO explain his work, he sometimes compares it to keeping track of cows in a field. His job is to make sure there are enough cows in the pasture to keep it from getting overgrown, but not too many, so there's enough grass to go around.
Except his cows are tiny aquatic creatures called brine shrimp, they eat algae instead of grass, and there are about 17 trillion of them.
The brine shrimp are grazing crustaceans, surviving on a diet of algae that grows in Utah's Great Salt Lake. They reproduce by laying hardy eggs called cysts, which survive over the winter and hatch each spring to restart the population. Brine shrimp cysts have been harvested there for decades—it's a $67 million-a-year industry that supplies food for fish farms around the world—and since 1992, the brine shrimp population in the lake has been closely monitored and managed by Utah's Division of Wildlife Resources. Scientists are watching closely, as the future of the brine shrimp, and the lake overall, is uncertain, with climate change and water use threatening the lake's very existence.
Read more here…


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Old 02-28-2013, 04:09 PM #49
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As for other differences between typical pistols (including the.22) and more powerful rounds like the.223 you have to understand an important fact about high powered weapons:
What kills you isn't necessarily the hole in your body or the shredding of your insides, it's that parts of your cardiovascular system explode, particularly in the brain. Basically as the round enters your body, it creates a pulse of pressure in your bloodstream, which causes hemorrhaging. You die from massive brain bleeding before the damage from the primary would kills you.
It's called hydrostatic shock.
Hunters know this very well, it's what results in "blood shot" meat near the wound that you have to avoid when harvesting the meat. Bloodshot meat is a more localized effect, but it's the same thing (hemorrhaging caused by induced static hydraulic pressure in the cardiovascular system).
A.22 doesn't produce anywhere near enough energy to cause hydrostatic shock. Typically the minimum is considered to be the energy from a.45ACP, which is about half the energy of a.223/NATO
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Sometimes when you are dissatisfied with services rendered or received faulty goods, you have the option to put a stop payment on the check that you used to pay the company or service provider. The stop payment is a perk of this negotiable instrument. For this week's discussion board, read the article(Longo, T. (1995). The risks of paying by check. Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, 49(7), 94.) and answer the following questions:
- Should stop payments be allowed? Why or why not?
- Discuss the length of time that one is allowed to have a verbal stop payment in effect? Is it too long, too short, should it be in writing sooner?
- The article discussed that even with a written request the check can be cashed after six months unless the stop-payment order is renewed. Share your thoughts about the ability to still have your check cashed after six months.
- If a firm offers both preferred stock and common stock, which would you rather own? Explain your reasoning


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What does it take to keep a nation alive? In a world of rapid change and increasing globalization, Rebirth Armenia explores the survival and renewal of one of the world's most ancient societies. For millennia Armenia has stood at the crossroads of empires, subject to invasion, colonization, genocide, and forced diaspora, but it has maintained a continuous and coherent national identity. This project examines the integral role of culture and creativity in allowing a nation and its people to survive and thrive in the face of tremendous adversity.
We started the Rebirth Armenia project in 2015, inspired by our family's stories of surviving the Armenian Genocide, and the unique culture and history we found in Armenia. Since then, we have traveled around the country, interviewing and photographing people who are upholding tradition and creating change in all walks of life. We encourage you to discover the beauty and wonder of Armenia, experience its warm hospitality and unique spirit, and consider how you can support preservation and rebirth, both in this society, and in communities around the world.
Copyright 2019 Rebirth Armenia, all rights reserved


uars to the region is essential to species conservation and restoration of the ecosystem. In July 2018, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a jaguar recovery plan as required by the Endangered Species Act of 1973. While the recovery plan does not call for the reintroduction of jaguars into the Southwest region of the U.S., federal officials have been increasingly focused on sustaining habitat, eliminating poaching, and improving public acceptance for jaguars that naturally make their way across the U.S.-Mexico border. The southwest region of the U.S. makes up 1% of the jaguar's historic range but is suitable for sustaining the big cat. Jaguar sightings have been reported in the area, although very rarely. Jaguar advocates hope that potential opposition to the reintroduction of jaguars, specifically from ranchers and rural residents, can be eased by implementing compensation programs focused on things like increased livestock deaths.
By: Jeffrey K. Lewis, Friday, May 14th, 2021
Happy Friday! It's time for another Ag Law Harvest and in this week's edition we explore landmark court rulings, pending lawsuits, and newly enacted laws that affect agriculture and the environment from around the country.
USDA announces $92.2 million in grants under the Local Agriculture Market Program. The USDA announced last week that it will be funding Local Agriculture Market Program (LAMP) grants through the Farmers Market program as part of the USDA's Pandemic Assistance for Producers Initiative. Through these grants, the USDA hopes to support the development and growth of direct producer-to-consumer marketing and boost local and regional food markets. $76.9 million will be focused on projects that support direct-to-consumer markets like farmers markets and community supported agriculture. $15.3 million will fund public-private partnerships that will build and strengthen local and regional food markets. All applications must be submitted electronically through _URL_. More information can be found on the following webpages: Farmers Market Promotion ProgramLocal Food Promotion Program, or Regional Food System Partnerships
Mexico Supreme Court Rules in favor of U.S. Potato Growers. On April 28, 2021, Mexico's highest court overturned a lower court's decision preventing the Mexican government from implementing regulations to allow for the importation of U.S. potatoes. The ruling comes after nearly a decade of legal battles between Mexican potato growers and their government. Beginning in 2003, Mexico restricted U.S. potato imports but then lifted the restrictions in 2014, allowing U.S. potatoes full access to the Mexican market. Shortly after lifting the restrictions, the National Confederation of Potato Growers of Mexico (CONPAPA) sued its government claiming that Mexican regulators have no authority to determine if agricultural imports can enter the country. Since the filing of the lawsuit, the U.S. has been bound by the 2003 restrictions on U.S. potatoes entering the Mexican market. Mexico's Supreme Court ultimately rejected CONPAPA's argument and ruled that the Mexican government does have the authority to issue regulations about the importation of agricultural and food products, including U.S. potatoes. Mexico represents the third largest export market for U.S. potatoes, making this a landmark decision for U.S. potato farmers.
Indiana enacts new wetlands law. Indiana governor, Eric Holcomb, has approved a new controversial wetlands law. The new law amends the requirements for permits and restoration costs for "wetland activity" in a state regulated wetland (federally protected wetlands are excluded). Under Senate Bill 389, permits are no longer required to conduct activity in Class I wetlands, some Class II wetlands, and certain farmland. In Indiana, Class I wetlands are either: (a) at least 50% disturbed or affected by human activity; or (b) support only minimal wildlife or hydrological function. Class III wetlands are minimally disturbed by human activity and can support more than minimal wildlife or hydrologic function. Class II wetlands fall somewhere in the middle. Supporters of the law argue that the changes will reduce the cost to landowners and farmers for conducting activity in wetlands that only provide nominal environmental benefits. Opponents of the law argue otherwise. Some environmental groups believe that wetlands, whether they can support more than minimal wildlife or not, provide profound economic benefit by reducing the cost to citizens for water storage and water purification. Additionally, environmental groups argue that the subsequent loss of wetlands from this law will greatly increase flooding and erosion and reduce Indiana's diverse wildlife. Some even suggest that this law is nothing more than a subsidy for the building and housing development industry. Senate Bill 389 became law on April 29, 2021, and has a retroactive effective date of January 1, 2021.
USDA being sued for promotion of meat and dairy industry. Three physicians have filed a lawsuit against the USDA in a federal court in California. The doctors, part of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), argue that some of the USDA's new 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, issued last December, contradict current scientific and medical knowledge. PCRM believes that the USDA is acting out of its interests in the dairy and meat industry rather than the health interests of U.S. residents. For example, PCRM argues that the USDA's statement suggesting that more individuals would benefit by increasing their intake of dairy contradicts scientific evidence that increased dairy intake can increase the chances of prostate cancer and that 1 in 4 Americans is lactose intolerant. PCRM seeks a court order requiring the USDA to delete dairy promotions, avoid equating protein with meat, and eliminate deceptive language hiding the ill effects of consuming meat and dairy products. In an email to the Washington Post, a spokesperson for the USDA, claims that the dietary guidelines are just that – guidelines. The USDA argues that the dietary guidelines are meant to help provide guidance based on the best available science and research and provide many alternatives for people based on an individual's preferences and needs.
Sesame added to the list of major allergens. On April 23, 2021, President Biden signed into law the Food Allergy Safety, Treatment, Education and Research (FASTER) Act. The law requires that sesame be added to the list of major allergens and be disclosed on food labels. Up until this law was enacted, sesame was allowed to be labeled as a "natural flavor" or a "natural spice." With the new law, sesame, in any form, must be labeled as an allergen on packaged foods. Food manufacturers have until 2023 to add sesame allergen statements to their labels. This is the first time since 2006 that a new allergen has been added to the Food Allergen and Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA). Sesame joins peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, dairy, eggs, and wheat as the FDA's list of allergens that require specific labeling.
Florida passes updated Right to Farm Law. Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, signed into law Florida's new and improved Right to Farm Act. The new law adds agritourism to the definition of "farm operations" so that agritourism is also protected under Florida's Right to Farm Law. Additionally, Florida lawmakers have expanded the protection given to farmers under the new law by defining the term nuisance. Under Florida's Right to Farm Law, nuisance is defined as "any interference with the reasonable use and enjoyment of land, including, but not limited to, noise, smoke, odors, dust, fumes, particle emissions, or vibrations." Florida's definition of nuisance also includes all claims brought in negligence, trespass, personal injury, strict liability, or other tort, so long as the claim could meet the definition of nuisance. This protects farmers from individuals disguising their nuisance claim as a trespass claim. The importance of defining nuisance to include claims such as trespass can best be demonstrated by an ongoing federal lawsuit in North Carolina. In that case, Murphy-Brown, LLC and Smithfield Foods, Inc. are being sued for having ownership in a hog farm that caused odors, dust, feces, urine, and flies to "trespass" onto neighboring properties. North Carolina's Right to Farm Law only protects farmers from nuisance claims, not trespass claims. Although Murphy-Brown and Smithfield argue that the neighbors are disguising their nuisance claim as a trespass claim, the federal judge is allowing the case to move forward. The judge found that farmers are protected from nuisance claims, not trespass claims and even if the trespass could also be considered a nuisance, the neighbors to the hog farm are entitled to seek compensation for the alleged trespass.
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Our Real Latin America Expert
1968 seems light years ago: a year of massive social and political upheavals all over the world, political assassinations, jungle print kaftans and the Beatles' White album. But some things never change, and the official visit of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip to Chile, as reported in a commentary rich in deferential clichés on Pathé News, seems in some ways timeless.
This visit, which took place exactly fifty years ago in November 1968, had an extraordinary impact on the Chilean people. Chile has long been a friend of the UK, which is fondly remembered for the participation of renegade former admiral Lord Cochrane in the country's war of independence. (Subsequent to the Queen's visit, Chile was accommodating to British troops during the Falklands/Malvinas war and Britain also offered asylum to a significant number of dissidents during the Pinochet era). The royal visit took place during a relatively stable period under the stewardship of Christian Democrat President Eduardo Frei, a couple of years before Salvador Allende was swept to power in a democratic election, subsequently to be toppled in a military coup by Augusto Pinochet.
queen at hotel antumalal pucon 1968
Photo: Archivo Casa Museo EFM
Hosted by President Frei, Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh were welcomed by huge crowds wherever they went, driving through the capital in an open-topped car. They also visited the port of Valparaiso. Following this the royal couple travelled by air (in what really does look like a museum piece) to Pucón in the lake district. At the time, this now dynamic resort on the shores of Lake Villarrica was a small, unassuming town crouching in the shadow of the imperious snow-draped cone of the volcano also named Villarrica. Tourism was originally given a boost with the establishment of the first hotels in the 1920s and completion of regional roads, but only took off in a modest way in the 1930s. Nowadays, with a huge range of summertime adventure activities to choose from - hiking, river rafting, horse riding, bird watching, fishing and canyoning, it is a popular destination for visitors on all budgets. In winter and spring you can ski or snowboard on the slopes of the volcano or visit one of the thermal baths situated a stone throw's away in the Valdivian temperate rain forest.
antumalal trekking
The monarch was not tempted at the time to indulge in adrenaline-pumping activities but did stay at what is still one of Chile's most iconic hotels, Antumalal. It started life as a Czech-owned tea room on a rocky promontory on the lakeshore 2km from town, but eventually a visionary architect was commissioned to build a hotel on the site designed in the stark Bauhaus style of the 1940s and 50s. Its modernist construction stands in contrast to the Patagonian features of many other properties in the region, but it does have a regional focus: embracing artwork and furnishings which defer to the culture of the Mapuche Indians, indigenous to the lake district. The Queen's impending visit caused a bit of a stir; there are main anecdotes related locally: one being that the hotel management felt that Her Majesty could not be expected to sleep on a used mattress so a new one was shipped in – unfortunately on an open-backed truck, which resulted in its being soaked in the rain and had to be dried out over an open fire. It all went well however in the end and the Queen is on record for having commented that she found the property delightful.
With the panoramic views from the luxury guest rooms, the superb natural and ornamental gardens and now a spa, this property has attracted not only Queen Elizabeth but no end of dignitaries and celebrities including Neil Armstrong, James Stewart, Barry Goldwater and Emma Thompson. Why not add your name to the list of illustrious visitors?
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Write like mad with WriteMonkey
Quit aping around and eliminate distractions that keep you from writing with WriteMonkey, which brings the focus of the typewriter without losing some of the best tools from computers.
This lightweight and portable program is similar to other focus-driven programs like Dark Room or Q10. Still in beta, WriteMonkey can be run in a window, but the intent of these one-hit writing tools is to be used at full screen, eliminating distractions.
WriteMonkey can be minimized to a window, maximized to full screen, and comes with a handy jumplist for paragraphs and in-document bookmarks. (Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)
There are a couple of things that WriteMonkey does very well. First off, all the major program commands are accessible from the right-click context menu. When the program loads in full-screen mode, you can easily minimize it into a window by right-clicking and choosing the first option, "Toggle fullscreen/window." Once in window mode, WriteMonkey's menubar appears, and in the menubar options are listed with their respective hot keys. So, with little effort, it's possible to acclimate to WriteMonkey's environment and learn how to manipulate it without always going to the menus.
WriteMonkey offers some useful tools for writers, too. You can automatically import text from your clipboard, and a Markup Export option makes it a slick Notepad replacement, if that's where you do your coding. Wiki-style tools are used to bold, italicize, and underline and text. *Asterisks* are for bolding, _single underscores_ are for italics, and __double underscores__ activate underlining. Using the standard hot keys for those tasks will work, too.
Unfortunately, once you've exported the text, you'll need to use your Replace tool to convert the marks to proper bold, italics, and underline, but at least there's a familiar implementation of these basic features. WriteMonkey supports symbols, too, so you don't have to worry about going back to put in your accent aigus or accent circonflexes after you've finished your document.
A jump feature makes for quick and multicolored access to your paragraphs, without having to mouse or arrow-key your way through. You can also bookmark various points in your document for faster jumping. Left-click in the top or bottom margins to jump a page up, or click and hold down the mouse button in the left or right margins to quickly scroll through your document.
You can customize the color of the document as well, or set WriteMonkey to choose colors at random when you start the program. Occasionally fun, randomizing the colors is also a fast way to induce a migraine.
There's also a "repository" feature that functions as an alternative document. Conceptually, you could argue that it kind of breaks the idea of a uniform workspace, but at the same time it's nice to have a hot-key accessible, long-form clipboard to handle notes and other text without having to open a new window. Essentially, it works like a tab without being a tab.
A customizable progress bar can be activated, showing word or character counts, and comes with an optional timer if you want to write without stopping. These features only serve to reiterate the writing focus of the program, and are easily toggled via F12.
Besides the obvious limitations in a program that's designed to encourage a laser-like focus in your writing, WriteMonkey could strongly benefit from having a basic installer. The program is portable, taking up about 3MB total, but comes in a ZIP and needs to be extracted into its own folder. A self-extracting EXE would give WriteMonkey a much easier installation process. A lock feature that would prevent you from switching out of it would truly eliminate distractions.
These are quibbles, though. WriteMonkey won't make an ape of your desire to focus on writing, as long as you bring the drive and the talent.
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System Administrator Interview Questions
Find your next A-list System Administrator with these sample interview questions. Add any questions that test specific software development skills useful to your team.
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System Administrator qualifications to look for
System Administrators are the bread and butter of operations when it comes to your IT systems. They typically head up your hardware, software and network to make sure it's running without any issues.
Your top SysAdmins deal with tech-related issues like backing up and recovering data, so it's important your next hire has broad experience with technical issues.
Keep an eye out for candidates who have:
 - Excellent troubleshooting-skills
 - The ability to explain technical issues to non-tech people
 - Strong knowledge of IT systems best practices
 - A desire to continuously learn
Problem-solving interview questions
 - What instructions would you add to a quick guide to help employees understand how to use the internal server?
 - How do you help an employee who is working from home and has issues joining a video call?
 - What steps would you take to identify an issue if employees complain of slow internet speed?
 - If we had a virus in our system, how would you handle it?
Role-specific interview questions
 - What's your role during network infrastructure implementations?
 - What are the steps to a data backup and recovery process on a Mac? How is the process different from a PC?
 - What determines a server capacity? Why and how often do you need to upgrade a server?
 - Explain Forests, Trees, and Domains. What are their biggest differences?
 - Walk me through the install and configuration of a printer in Windows 10?
Behavioral interview questions
 - When have you used your knowledge of operating systems to optimize a network? How did it help your department or organization?
 - How do you prioritize your time when you have to juggle different tasks to meet a deadline?
 - How do you stay motivated with repetitive tasks?
 - If you run into an issue you can't resolve, how do you manage it?
 - During your last challenging project, did you work with a team or on your own? How did the project turn out? What would you do differently?
What resources do you use to stay current with IT developments?
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text:
This depends very much on the type of application you run. If you've got applications which are very trigger-happy WRT syscalls you can expect to see high amounts of context switching. If most of your applications idle around and only wake up when there's stuff happening on a socket, you can expect to see low context switch rates.
System calls cause context switches by their very own nature. When a process does a system call, it basically tells the kernel to take over from it's current point in time and memory to do stuff the process isn't privileged to do, and return to the same spot when it's done.
When we look at the definition of the write(2) syscall from Linux, this becomes very clear:
write - write to a file descriptor
ssize_t write(int fd, const void *buf, size_t count);
write() writes up to count bytes from the buffer pointed buf to the file
referred to by the file descriptor fd. [..]
On success, the number of bytes written is returned (zero indicates
nothing was written). On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set
This basically tells the kernel to take over operation from the process, move up to
count bytes, starting from the memory address pointed at by
*buf to file descriptor
fd of the current process and then return back to the process and tell him how it went.
A nice example to show this is the dedicated game server for Valve Source based games, hlds. _URL_ shows one second worth of syscalls done by a single instance of a game server which had no players on it. This process takes about 3% CPU time on a Xeon X3220 (2.4Ghz), just to give you a feeling for how expensive this is.
Another source of context switching might be processes which don't do syscalls, but need to get moved off a given CPU to make room for other processes.
A nice way to visualize this is cpuburn. cpuburn doesn't do any syscalls itself, it just iterates over it's own memory, so it shouldn't cause any context switching.
Take an idle machine, start vmstat and then run a burnMMX (or any different test from the cpuburn package) for every CPU core the system has. You should have full system utilization by then but hardly any increased context switching. Then try to start a few more processes. You'll see that the context switching rate increases as the processes begin to compete over CPU cores. The amount of switching depends on the processes/core ratio and the multitasking resolution of your kernel.
linfo.org has a nice writeup on what context switches and system calls are. Wikipedia has generic information and a nice link collection on System calls.


Belarusian Flag of Belarus
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text:
Clustering 기법과 Fuzzy 기법을 이용한 영상 분할과 라벨링
Image Segmentation and Labeling Using Clustering and Fuzzy Algorithm
- 이성규, 김동기, 강이석
- 제어ㆍ로봇ㆍ시스템학회 in 2000
- Cited Count
In this Paper, we present a new efficient algorithm that can segment an object in the image. There are many algorithms for segmentation and many studies for criteria or threshold value. But, if the environment or brightness is changed, their would not be suitable. Accordingly, we apply a clustering algorithm for adopting and compensating environmental factors. And applying labeling method, we try arranging segment by the similarity that calculated with the fuzzy algorithm. we also present simulations for searching an object and show that the algorithm is somewhat more efficient than the other algorithm.
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text:
1. (chemistry) a substance that initiates or accelerates a chemical reaction without itself being affected
Similar word(s): accelerator
2. something that causes an important event to happen
- the invasion acted as a catalyst to unite the country
Sentences with catalyst as a noun:
- Economic development and integration are working as a catalyst for peace.


Mon, 12 Apr 2021
 - Only hospitals that are Covid compliant, have computers or tablets with internet access, back-up for power failures and enough fridges and freezers to store jabs at the correct temperatures, can be vaccination sites
 - Some Sisonke sites will be used as vaccination centres for South Africa's national vaccine roll-out that's scheduled to start in late April or early May
 - Johnson & Johnson jabs arrive in frozen vials at vaccination sites where they thaw after which they can't be refrozen
In early March, about two weeks after South Africa's Sisonke Covid vaccine trial started, Bhekisisa published an interactive map with the 18 sites where health workers could get their jabs from.
The implementation study will give half a million health workers access to Johnson & Johnson's (J&J) Covid jab (just over half of them have been vaccinated so far).
As the sites expanded, we updated the map - but we soon ran out of steam. Sites, ranging from large city hospitals to rural areas such as Namakwa in the Northern Cape, opened and closed all the time and four lists were being circulated simultaneously, all with a different selection of venues.
So we started phoning sites directly to find out if they were operating and we also contacted the researchers directly - but this didn't help much either; everyone gave us a different answer.
This prompted us to investigate who decides on the sites, how they do it and how the jabs are stored and administered. Here's what we found.
1. Things get, well, complicated with so many partners
The first set of venues we had doubts about were in KwaZulu-Natal, so that's where our search for answers began.
The reasons for this are complicated.
In addition to this, provincial health departments and several researchers - each of them responsible for a province or provinces - are involved.
That's a lot of partners.
If a new site is due to open on a particular day, the hospital's CEO first needs to be consulted, and the provincial team needs to ask the national health department to activate the site on the government's online registration platform, the electronic vaccination data system (EVDS).
If all these things don't happen, the vouchers that the EVDS issues to health workers who register on the system, won't correspond with the actual venues (so no one would be referred to a new venue if the site hadn't been processed by the EVDS).
"The provincial team needs to submit a form with the site name and the names of catchment sites to the national team... [and] that can [only] be implemented within a day or two," explains Garrett.
And because there are frequent vaccine deliveries, and all districts need to be served, new requests are submitted regularly - the requests can therefore be at different approval stages on the EVDS, which can then result in site lists being in different stages of being updated.
But there's even more to it, explains the SAMRC's president and co-lead investigator of the Sisonke study.
"A successful vaccine roll-out has to be nimble and flexible," Gray says. "The same model simply doesn't work everywhere. That means plans change all the time."
"It's always better to keep sites open and move people there to get vaccinated, because everytime we open a new site, we lose a day and a half with setting it up. But this doesn't work for all situations. In the case of the military, it might work for some categories of health staff, but not for others.
"So things change all the time, as vaccinations move forward. I can give you our plan, but when new issues arrive, we'll suddenly change it, so that we can vaccinate people as fast as possible. And that essentially means that any list we give you will only be 80% correct at any given time."
Bhekisisa has consulted with all the different roleplayers for the latest update (the latest available data is for the week of March 29) of the sites where health workers can access COVID vaccines. We'll continue to update the map as new site data becomes available.
2. How does a health facility become a site?
The Sisonke study builds on the Ensemble trial and started in mid-February - once the Ensemble study's results had been announced.
In order to get access to the study vaccine, at this stage still termed an investigational product, the Sisonke searchers were bound to use the Ensemble study's research sites to vaccinate health workers.
"Everything happened at rapid speed. Therefore, the national health department team and Sisonke researchers decided to start with big hospitals with large numbers of healthcare workers," says Garrett.
But any hospital can't just become a vaccination site - a facility needs to be Covid compliant and have enough fridges to store jabs at the correct temperature during the day.
That's why the Netcare St Augustine's Hospital in Durban (the hospital that saw South Africa's first large Covid-19 outbreak among healthcare workers in May) set up a vaccination centre in its parking lot where 800 people are getting vaccinated per day.
Venues must also have waste disposal systems so that the syringes and needles that were used to inject vaccines into people's arms, can be done away with safely. Moreover, the health department's guidelines require sites to have a "computer or other device" with "appropriate connectivity [wifi] to submit data" to the EVDS system.
Vaccination sites must have WHO approved temperature monitoring devices so that staff know the temperature of the vials at all times. The J&J vaccines can be stored in fridges at between 2 and 8? at facilities for up to three months.
Lastly, venues must have alternative power sources such as generators, so that they are able to maintain cold storage requirements in the case of power failures or scheduled load shedding. They're also expected to have back-up plans for alternative storage "if the cold storage unit fails".
3. How are rural sites selected?
"In addition to adhering to the health department's vaccination site readiness guidelines, rural sites have to be accessible to the team", Garrett says.
Vaccination venues that are more than two hours away from an Ensemble research site can be harder to manage and more costly to run, because the vaccination team has to sleep over. Garrett says it can also be more difficult to "achieve high volumes of vaccinations" at such sites.
But the research team has found ways around this.
"We've done that in Ixopo [in the southern KwaZulu-Natal Midlands], and booked people into hotels for a week and managed to complete all vaccinations within that week," says Garrett.
4. For how long can jabs be used after they've been opened?
The vials for a day's use are thawed overnight at fridge temperatures of between 2C to 8C - unpunctured vials can be stored at this temperature for up to three months.
But once the vials have been thawed, they cannot be refrozen again, according to J&J's storage guidelines.
And "if you then draw them into syringes... you have to administer it within about six hours", says Brumskine.
The J&J guidelines stipulate that a punctured vial will only last for six hours if it's kept in a fridge at between 2C to 8C.
If it's kept at room temperature, the vial's contents can be used for up to two hours. So if there are doses in punctured vials left by the end of the day, they cannot be used the next day, and have to be thrown away.
To ensure that prepared jabs aren't wasted, some sites only allocate part of a day's vaccinations to appointments scheduled via the EVDS.
For example, at Brumskine's site, only 70% of the doses for a particular day are allocated to vaccinations that have been booked on the EVDS.
If there are punctured vials left after all scheduled and walk-in vaccinations have been done, health workers working at a site who haven't yet been vaccinated, are called in for unscheduled appointments and get vaccinated with the left-over stock.
Yes, according to Garrett, Brumskine and the Western Cape health department, the Sisonke sites may also be used for South Africa's wider, national roll-out.
The roll-out is scheduled to start soon after the country's first batch of commercial jabs arrive in the second half of April.
Source: News24
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text:
Tri States Public Radio Staff
Shots - Health Blog
Tue October 9, 2012
A Lively Mind: Your Brain On Jane Austen
Originally published on Tue October 16, 2012 9:35 am
At a recent academic conference, Michigan State University professor Natalie Phillips stole a glance around the room. A speaker was talking but the audience was fidgety. Some people were conferring among themselves, or reading notes. One person had dozed off.
Phillips, who studies 18thand 19th-century literature, says the distracted audience made something pop in her head. Distractability is a theme that runs through many novels of Jane Austen, whom Phillips admires. It occurred to Phillips that there was a paradox in her own life when it came to distractability.
"I love reading, and I am someone who can actually become so absorbed in a novel that I really think the house could possibly burn down around me and I wouldn't notice," she said. "And I'm simultaneously someone who loses their keys at least three times a day, and I often can't remember where in the world I parked my car."
For Phillips, Jane Austen became both a literary and a neuroscientific puzzle.
Could modern cognitive theories explain character development in one of Austen's most famous heroines — Pride and Prejudice's Elizabeth Bennett? Phillips thinks Bennett's distractability was key to Austen's characterization of her lively mind — and that Austen herself was drawing on the contemporary theories of cognition in her time.
If neuroscience could inform literature, Phillips asked, could literature inform neuroscience?
She decided to conduct a study, looking at how reading affects the brain. She had volunteers lie still in a brain scanner and read Austen. Phillips sometimes instructed her volunteers to browse, as they might do at a bookstore. Other times, she asked them to delve deep, as a scholar might read a text while conducting a literary analysis.
Phillips said the experiment produced some surreal moments: "If you asked me on a top 10 list of things that I did not expect to find myself doing as an 18th-centuryist when I first started this study on the history of distraction, I would say lying on my back in an MRI scanner trying to figure out how to position paragraphs by Jane Austen so that you wouldn't have to turn your head while reading with a mirror."
Phillips and her collaborators scanned the brains of the volunteers using a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine. The scanner paints a rough picture of brain activity. A computer program simultaneously tracked readers' eye movements across the page, and researchers kept tabs on the volunteers' breathing and heart rate. At the end of the experiment, Phillips asked each volunteer to write a short essay based on the passages he or she read.
Neuroscientists warned Phillips she wouldn't see many brain differences between the casual reading and intense reading.
"Everyone told me to expect these really, really minute and subtle effects," she said, "because everyone was going to be doing the same thing, right? Reading Jane Austen. And they were just going to be doing it in two different ways."
Phillips said she mainly expected to see differences in parts of the brain that regulate attention because that was the main difference between casual and focused reading.
But in a neuroscientific plot twist, Phillips said preliminary results showed otherwise: "What's been taking us by surprise in our early data analysis is how much the whole brain — global activations across a number of different regions — seems to be transforming and shifting between the pleasure and the close reading."
Phillips found that close reading activated unexpected areas: parts of the brain that are involved in movement and touch. It was as though readers were physically placing themselves within the story as they analyzed it.
Phillips' research fits into an interdisciplinary new field sometimes dubbed "literary neuroscience." Other researchers are examining poetry and rhythm in the brain, how metaphors excite sensory regions of the brain, and the neurological shifts between reading a complex text like Marcel Proust compared with reading a newspaper — all in hopes of giving a more complete picture of human cognition.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
And I'm Steve Inskeep. Good morning.
You know, if I say the name Jane Austen you may think of a number of things. You might think of novels like "Pride and Prejudice" or "Mansfield Park." You might think of "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," a novel that was inspired by Jane Austen. You may not think about neuroscience. But you will after you hear NPR's Shankar Vedantam, who joins us regularly to talk about social science research.
SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Hi, Steve.
INSKEEP: What is the connection here?
VEDANTAM: Well, the story begins a few years ago. There's this literature professor who studies 19th century British novels, specifically Jane Austen. Her name is Natalie Phillips. She works at Michigan State University.
And she's been interesting in the theme that runs through many Austen novels, which is the theme of distractibility and getting distracted. And as she was thinking about this theme, it made her think about a paradox in her own life that has to do with the issue of distractibility. Here's how she put it to me.
NATALIE PHILLIPS: I love reading. And I am someone who can actually become so absorbed in a novel that I really think the house could possibly burn down around me and I wouldn't notice. And simultaneously, I'm someone who also loses my keys at least three times a day and I often can't remember where in the world I parked my car. And I often feel like I'm thinking so many things at once, that I lose track of what I was saying mid-sentence.
INSKEEP: OK. So distraction and distractibility, which sounds like the title of a little known Jane Austen novel, come to think of it.
VEDANTAM: The one that you should write, Steve.
INSKEEP: OK. So she's deeply reading, reading in a different way, a more intense way. And that makes the book feel more real than reality to her.
VEDANTAM: So this is the question, right. Why do these fictional events that took place more than 100 years ago feel more real than the real events that are happening in your own life? And what's the role of the attention that she is brining to the novel in changing her experience of what the novel has.
Now, Phillips is someone who's interested in interdisciplinary work. And so she teamed up with a bunch of neuroscientists at Stanford University to conduct this experiment where she had volunteers read a chapter of "Mansfield Park." But she had the volunteers read the novel in two different ways. She had them first read the novel in this very casual way that you might to at a bookstore while you're browsing - skipping paragraphs, skipping sections.
INSKEEP: Checking Twitter on your phone.
VEDANTAM: Checking Twitter, making sure you're updated. And then she had them read it in a very sustained and close manner, in a very focused way. And when she talked to a neuroscientist, a neuroscientist said, look, you're probably not going to see very much difference in the brain between these two types of reading.
PHILLIPS: Everyone told me to expect these really, really minute and subtle effects, because everyone was going to be doing the same thing. And they were just going to be doing it in two different ways.
INSKEEP: That's what people expected, but what?
VEDANTAM: So she started to find some really interesting things about the brain imaging. And, you know, I should say that we're fairly early in the study. The study hasn't been completed. But what she expected was if the difference between casual reading and closed reading is attention - in one case, you're paying attention, in one case, you're not - then the difference in the brain - areas of the brain that control attention should be heightened in one situation.
PHILLIPS: What we found was actually something else entirely. What's been taking us by surprise in our early data analysis is how much the whole brain - global activations across a number of different regions - seems to be transforming and shifting between the pleasure and the close reading.
INSKEEP: So wait a minute. She is saying that when you are really absorbed in a book for a sustained period of time in a sustained way it engages your entire brain, which is what allows you to think that you could keep reading even as the house burned down.
VEDANTAM: It looks like that. I mean, so if we step back for a second and think about brain imaging, a lot of brain imaging results are intuitively obvious. But in this situation, I think what's striking is that it wasn't just the part of the brain that focuses on attention that was different in the close reading.
What Phillips is finding is that there are heightened emotional responses. There's heightened activation in the motor cortex, parts of the brain that are involved in movement, in perceiving where you stand in space. And all of these come to life when the reading is done in this close manner with close attention.
INSKEEP: OK. So what are the implications for us in this world where there are constant distractions, from television to e-mail to everything else?
VEDANTAM: Well, I think what the study is showing, Steve, is that reading with you're your mind is not half as good as reading with your full focused mind. And the implications for kids is, you


text: Functional connectivity (FC) and graph measures provide powerful means to analyze complex networks. The current study determines the inter-subject-variability using the coefficient of variation (CoV) and long-term test-retest-reliability (TRT) using the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) in 44 healthy subjects with 35 having a follow-up at years 1 and 2. FC was estimated from 256-channel-EEG by the phase-lag-index (PLI) and weighted PLI (wPLI) during an eyes-closed resting state condition. PLI quantifies the asymmetry of the distribution of instantaneous phase differences of two time-series and signifies, whether a consistent non-zero phase lag exists. WPLI extends the PLI by additionally accounting for the magnitude of the phase difference. Signal-space global and regional PLI/wPLI and weighted first-order graph measures, i.e. normalized clustering coefficient (gamma), normalized average path length (lambda), and the small-world-index (SWI) were calculated for theta-, alpha1-, alpha2- and beta-frequency bands. Inter-subject variability of global PLI was low to moderate over frequency bands (0.12


text:
Highlighting the history of French radio astronomy. 3: the Wurzburg antennas at Marcoussis, Meudon and Nancay
Orchiston, Wayne, Lequeux, James, Steinberg, Jean-Louis, and Delannoy, Jean (2007) Highlighting the history of French radio astronomy. 3: the Wurzburg antennas at Marcoussis, Meudon and Nancay. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 10 (3). pp. 221-245.
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During the 1940s and 1950s ex-World War II 7.5m WOrzburg radar antennas played a crucial role in the early development of radio astronomy in a number of European nations. One of these was France, where three different antennas began to be used during the late 1940s. Two of these were associated with the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, and were in itially sited at Marcoussis, near Paris, before being transferred to the Nan9ay field station in 1957. The third WOrzburg antenna was used by staff from the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, and was installed at Meudon Observatory on the outskirts of Paris. This paper describes the three antennas, lists the personnel involved. discusses the observations made, evaluates the significance of this research in a national and international context, and comments on their current whereabouts.
|Item Type:||Article (Refereed Research - C1)|
Reproduced with permission from Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage
|Keywords:||astronomical history; radio astronomy|
|FoR Codes:||02 PHYSICAL SCIENCES > 0299 Other Physical Sciences > 029999 Physical Sciences not elsewhere classified @ 100%|
|SEO Codes:||97 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 970102 Expanding Knowledge in the Physical Sciences @ 100%|
|Deposited On:||07 May 2009 15:59|
|Last Modified:||10 Nov 2011 18:02|
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text:
case they stay in custody until the National Parole Board determines custody to be no longer necessary for the protection of the public. Over 90% of indeterminate-sentenced prisoners in Canada are there for homicide or related offences Life sentenced prisoners are usually there for homicide (74.3% of all homicide cases), though sometimes for sexual offences (7.6%) or drugs (6.5%), while other prisoners with indeterminate sentences (such as Dangerous Offenders) are usually there for sexual offences (9% of all sexual offenders in custody, compared to 0.4% of all people imprisoned for homicide; Motiuk and Nafekh 2000). Determinant-sentenced prisoners serving ten years or more are more often there for sex offences (12.5% of sex offenders in custody), robbery (14%), or drugs (10.7%; ibid.). Those serving ten years or more (including life) have generally committed most serious violent offences: 54% homicide, as well as robbery, sexual assault, and assault (Johnson and Grant 2000). This group makes up a third of federally sentenced prisoners.
2.22 Johnson and Grant followed these groups for four to seven years after release. At the end of the seven years, they found a rate of 40% recidivism for determinate-sentenced prisoners and 27% for those with indeterminate sentences. The authors note that even this smaller rate for people who had served indeterminate sentences may be inflated by comparison since they remain under supervision for longer periods. The shorter-term determinate group (serving less than ten years) reoffended more quickly - 20% within the first year and 30% within two years. Just over a tenth of longer-term determinate prisoners reoffended in their first years, compared to about 5% of indeterminate prisoners. However, the study found that recidivism of people who served longer-term determinate sentences began to catch up with the shorter-term group after about five years.
2.23 Also after the seven years, 11% of the indeterminate group committed a new violent offence, compared to 20% of both the longand short-term sentenced prisoners. Only 1% of people who had served indeterminate sentences had more than five new convictions, compared to 5% of the longer-sentenced group and 10% of the shorter-sentenced offenders. The most serious offence for over half of the indeterminate-sentenced group was non-violent, and none of this group were convicted of new homicide-related offences. Important to note, however, is that people released from indeterminate sentences in Canada are older, are more likely to have been convicted of homicide, and are more likely to be released on day parole.
2.24 In contrast to these findings, Bonta and Hanson (1995) compared recidivism for violent offences between detainees 4 in Canada and general federally sentenced prisoners. A sample of over 3,000 federal offenders showed a recidivism rate for violence of 48.6% over a period of 11 years. For detained prisoners, the rate of violent reoffending was 40.4%, but over a time frame of one year or more after release. The authors concluded that violent reoffending amongst the two groups was roughly similar, but that reoffending amongst the detained group happened much more quickly. Prisoners in their study who had been designated as Dangerous Offenders had not yet been released, but they shared significant similarities with the detained offenders in terms of index offence, criminal history, objective measures of risk, and incidence of antisocial personality.
2.25 In Florida, 59 young people sentenced to serve time in an adult prison for murder, attempted murder, and in a few cases, manslaughter, were followed for 15 - 17 years (Heide et al. 2001). More than two-thirds were released prior to November 1999; of these, 60% were returned to prison, usually within the first three years after their release. In Wisconsin, a small-scale study of 44 subjects diagnosed as extremely dangerous during psychological treatment in an institution for adjudicated juvenile delinquents were followed for 2 - 10 years after release (Hagan and King 1998). The results showed that the vast majority had reoffended, and of the recidivists only one had not been involved in a further violent offence. In contrast, another small study of 20 adolescent perpetrators of homicide and attempted homicide released from custody in Wisconsin (Hagan 1997) found that these young people did not commit further homicides up to 15 years following release. The majority were however involved in crime, primarily violent crime. Despite this, a significant number did not become reinvolved in crime, and almost half were not reincarcerated. No significant differences in likelihood of recidivism were evident between this group and other young offenders. The numbers of subjects in all of these studies are, however, likely to be too small to draw wider conclusions.
2.26 A longitudinal study of 322 people arrested for violent offences in Ohio found that, while recidivists were not high-rate offenders, they still tended to engage in above-average levels of index and other violent activity, and many seriously persisted in violent activities (Martinez 1997). In Canada, Serin, Mailloux, and Hucker (2000) tracked 260 violent federal offenders for seven to eight years after release. They found that 55% of the sample committed a further offence, of which 18% committed a violent offence as their first recorded offence after release. Over a third of the sample (37%) committed a violent offence at some point after their release. The authors found that people released on statutory release were more likely to commit a further offence of any kind and to commit a further violent offence at some time than were those released on parole, and that this group reoffended more quickly.
2.27 Research in the United States suggests that only 5 - 7% of young people who offend go on to serious violent careers (Jeffery 1998). An analysis of self-report interview data from 1,412 adolescents in the United States showed that involvement in violent offending was generally less than one year, but also that individual rates of offending increased with time (Elliot, Huizinga, and Morse 1986).
Violent and sexual offenders
2.28 In Scotland, Connelly and Williamson (2001) argued that the preventive detention of violent and sexual offenders is likely to have a limited impact on recidivism since offending declines with age. They based their assessment on a review of the literature elsewhere; very little work on preventive detention has been conducted in Scotland. Research in other countries has examined the effect of preventive detention on further offending, though the numbers are generally very small. In Germany, less than thirty offenders per year are sentenced to preventive detention. They serve an average of four years on preventive detention and have an average age of 40 (Albrecht 1997).
2.29 Some of the most extensive work in this area has been conducted in Canada. There, a follow-up of 424 detainees for at least a year after their eventual release (range up to 7.8 years, with an average follow-up of just over four years; Motiuk, Belcourt, and Bonta 1996) showed that a fifth (83 people) were readmitted into federal custody within a year of release. Fifty were returned for technical violations, but 33 (8% of the total) were readmitted for new offences. This compares to a readmission rate of 46.6% for prisoners released automatically (those not detained under preventive legislation; Nouwens, Motiuk, and Boe 1993). The sample was then divided into three groups, namely those who were initially detained, then released prior to the end of their sentence (Group 1: 148 prisoners/35%); those who were detained for their entire sentence (Group 2: 114 prisoners/27%); and those who were detained until the end of their sentence after a "one-chance" release was revoked (Group 3: 162/38%). Of these groups, only 6.2% of Group 2 and 7.4% of Group 3 returned to custody for any reason in the first year, compared to 43.9% of Group 1.
2.30 The extended follow-up showed that about 60% of detainees were convicted of a new criminal offence, including 40% for a violent offence (also Bonta and Motiuk 1996) and 15% for a sexual offence. No significant difference between the groups was evident for this or for the average number of times they were convicted after release. Of the new convictions, about a third of the most serious convictions were for assault, while about a fifth of the most serious reconvictions were sexual offences. Three offenders, all from Group 3, were convicted of second degree murder after their release, while the remainder of reconvictions were property-related. The authors conclude that:
Perhaps the most striking finding was the relatively low rate of post-detention serious reoffending (such as murder, sexual assault, robbery). Considering this population was seen as one of the highest risk groups of offenders within the system, a much higher percentage was expected. (Motiuk, Belcourt, and Bonta 1996:3, emphasis in original)
Mental disorder and recidivism
|Main findings: |
Rates of recidivism for people labeled as sexual psychopaths, treated, and released into the community were comparable to those for sexual offenders who had not been committed for treatment.
High


_i of bounded diameter which are on the boundaries of the o-handles, and A_j which are on the boundaries of the 1-handles. They appear in a particular order \cdots T_{-1}, T_0, T_1 \cdots. Adding further round 1-handles splits X into components, some of which might be bounded. We would like to add new annuli, to split X up into components of uniformly bounded (combinatorial) size; to do this, we need to find pairs of T_i,T_j which are a uniformly big combinatorial distance apart, but which can be joined by and embedded annuli of uniformly bounded diameter. It is intuitively clear that this can be done: if X is noncompact, the two "ends" of X can't get too far away from each other, or else there would be an arbitrarily big embedded ball contained in the complement, which is incompatible with the fact that we chose a separated net's worth of translates of our original 0-handle. A similar argument works when X is compact but sufficiently big (alternately one can suppose not and take pointed limits, since this is a purely geometric argument). Thus we can attach round 1-handles of uniformly bounded diameter so that at the end, every component X itself has bounded diameter, and can be filled in with a round 2-handle. The construction of J with this handle decomposition as the end result is routine.
This brings us to section 3 of Mess' paper (page 11), entitled, On groups which are coarse quasi-isometric to planes. The group in question is G, i.e. \pi_1(M)/\pi_1(\hat{M}). This is the group that we hope will turn out to be the orbifold fundamental group of O, if the Seifert Conjecture is true. Since it is infinite, we want to show that G is a lattice in the group of isometries of the Euclidean or hyperbolic plane; in fact, a cocompact lattice, since M is closed. In particular, this should imply at least that G is quasi-isometric either to the Euclidean or the hyperbolic plane. By the Schwarz lemma, we know that G is quasi-isometric to \hat{M}, and we have constructed a product structure on \hat{M} whose fibers have uniformly bounded length. It is therefore straightforward (e.g. by averaging over fibers) to construct a complete Riemannian metric on the plane (which we denote P) so that G is quasi-isometric to P. The next main result is Theorem 7 (page 13) which says:
Theorem: Suppose a finitely generated group G is quasi-isometric to a plane P with a complete Riemannian metric. If P is conformally equivalent to the hyperbolic plane, then G is quasi-isometric to the hyperbolic plane.
Note that P has bounded geometry (i.e. 2-sided curvature bounds, and injectivity radius bounded below). One subtlety, observed by Mess, is that the plane admits complete Riemannian metrics with bounded geometry, and in the conformal class of the hyperbolic plane, but for which 0 is the bottom of the spectrum of the Laplacian; a group quasi-isometric to such a space would be amenable, by a famous theorem of Brooks, whereas no group quasi-isometric to the hyperbolic plane can be amenable. Nevertheless, there is a short-cut to proving this theorem, by invoking Candel's theorem, alluded to above. Candel proves that if L is a compact Riemann surface lamination all of whose leaves are conformally hyperbolic, then the leafwise uniformization map is continuous; in particular, since L is compact, the uniformization map is bilipschitz (and in particular is a quasi-isometry). Now, a Riemannian manifold with bounded geometry can be realized as a dense leaf in a lamination by taking its closure in pointed Gromov-Hausdorff space; if we do this to P, we obtain a lamination L. A priori a lamination can have leaves of different conformal type; see e.g. this post; but in this case P is uniformly quasi-isometric to G, and therefore (since G acts cocompactly on itself) the same must be true for every leaf of L. Now apply Candel's theorem; qed. Mess' argument is not especially hard to follow, but I believe that invoking Candel makes the situation clearer.
Finally we must deal with the case that P is quasi-isometric to the Euclidean plane. In this case, Theorem 10 (page 20) says (paraphrasing):
Theorem: Suppose G=\pi_1(M)/\pi_1(\hat{M}) is quasi-isometric to a plane P with a complete Riemannian metric, which is conformally equivalent to the Euclidean plane. Then G is virtually rank 2 abelian, and M is Seifert fibered; thus, the Seifert Fiber Conjecture holds in this case.
The argument is a beautiful application of ideas from the theory of random walks, combined with a theorem of Varopoulos. It is a well-known fact that a simple random walk is recurrent (i.e. returns to a bounded region infinitely often) in Euclidean space of dimension 1 and 2, and transient otherwise. This is not hard to show: under random walk on Euclidean space, after n steps each coordinate function is distributed like a Gaussian with variance of order n; thus the probability that a given coordinate function will be bounded by a constant C after n steps is of order O(\sqrt{n}). By independence, in m-dimensional space, the probability that all coordinate functions will be bounded by the same constant C at the same time after n steps is O(n^{-m/n}); thus, when m is at least 3, the total number of times this should happen in an infinite walk is bounded, by the Borel-Cantelli Lemma. Now, in the continuum limit, a simple random walk rescales to Brownian motion, and Brownian motion is conformally invariant in dimension 2; this means that if you have a complete Riemannian metric on a plane P, you can tell whether it is conformally hyperbolic or conformally Euclidean by whether Brownian motion is transient or recurrent. Using the quasi-isometry between P and G, one concludes that if P is conformally Euclidean, random walk on G is recurrent. But this is an extremely confining possibility for finitely presented groups; Varopoulos showed (when combined with Gromov's famous theorem that groups of polynomial growth are virtually nilpotent) that it implies that G is virtually abelian of rank at most 2; this is enough to complete the proof, using the (known) classification of nilpotent 3-manifold groups.
Mess' paper thus reduces the Seifert Fibered Conjecture to the question of whether groups quasi-isometric to the hyperbolic plane are virtually isomorphic to Fuchsian groups — i.e. to (cocompact) lattices in the group of isometries of the hyperbolic plane. Much progress on this question had already been made by Tukia, and while Mess' paper was still under consideration at JAMS (maybe in a sense it is still under consideration there?) this question was solved in the affirmative independently (and in quite different ways) by Casson-Jungreis, and Gabai (see the comments by Darryl linked to above).
Tastes change; fashions come and go even in mathematics. After Perelman proved the Geometrization Theorem, this story and the mathematical content of these papers faded somewhat into the background, to be quoted if necessary, but rarely read. Mess' paper in particular — and especially its beautiful and original tone, style and ideas — is in danger of disappearing from our collective consciousness. Today when borrowing some books from the Crerar Library I noticed a Latin inscription: Non est mortuus qui scientiam vivificavit (translation: "He has not died who has given life to knowledge"). But knowledge can die too, and culture, and ideas. My life has been enriched by Geoff's beautiful ideas, and I'm happy to do my bit to see that they, and maybe some of him, live on a little longer, enriching us all.
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3 Responses to Groups quasi-isometric to planes
 1. ianagol says:
 I found these notes of Geoff Mess on Varopoulos' theorem, so I thought I'd scan them and make them available:
 2. Anonymous says:
 Hi Danny, Thanks for the wonderful note.
 By the way, the link doesn't work.
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GraphLabhttp://mloss.orgUpdates and additions to GraphLabenTue, 22 Nov 2011 12:50:00 -0000GraphLab v1-1908GraphLab is an open source project to produce free implementations of scalable machine learning algorithms on multicore machine and clusters. The project was initiated in 2009 by Prof. Carlos Guestrin from Carnegie Mellon University and Prof. Joseph Hellerstein from University of California, Berkeley. GraphLab is a rapidly growing project with a large user base. As for October 2011, approximately 2000 institutions around the world installed Graphlab, including academia, research labs and industry. As the amounts of collected data and computing power grows (multicore, GPUs, clusters, clouds), modern datasets no longer fit into one computing node. Efficient distributed/parallel algorithms for handling large scale data are required. The GraphLab framework is a parallel programming abstraction targeted for sparse iterative graph algorithms. GraphLab provides a high level programming interface, allowing a rapid deployment of distributed machine learning algorithms. The main design considerations behind GraphLab are: * Sparse data with local dependencies Iterative algorithms Potentially asynchronous execution On top of GraphLab, several implemented libraries of algorithms: Collaborative filtering library - includes implementation of various matrix factorization techniques, including alternating least squares (ALS), weighted alternating least squares (wALS), non-negative matrix factorization (NMF), Bayesian probabilistic tensor factorization (BPTF), Probabilistic matrix factorization (PMF), Lanczos method, Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), Matrix decomposition with sparse factor matrices. Clustering library - includes implementation of K-means, K-means++, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), K-Core decomposition, Item-KNN and user-KNN. Linear solvers library - includes implementation of Jacobi method, Gaussian Belief Propagation, Shotgun LASSO, and Shotgun sparse logistic regression. Joseph Gonzalez, Yucheng Low, Aapo Kyrola, Danny Bickson, Carlos GuestrinTue, 22 Nov 2011 12:50:00 -0000 learningcollaborative filteringmatrix factorizationlinear models


George Hetherington
Born of musical parents, George spent five years of his years of his boyhood in Durham Cathedral Choir. After grammar school came National Service, spent in Singapore, where he played piano for a while in the famous Raffles Hotel. On leaving college he taught music, including Ferryhill Grammar School, where he began a long partnership with Fred Wharton.
George first joined DMTC (then DAOS) in 1955 and is the third successive Musical Director with Durham Cathedral connections, following Cyril Maude and G Chandos Cradock. He has conducted most of the operatic societies in the North East, but spends most of his time these days arranging music for various musical organisations and soloists. George also has a flourishing concert programme, which he performs throughout the region.


Indispensable Reefs
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Coordinates: 12°40′S 160°25′E / 12.667°S 160.417°E / -12.667; 160.417
Map of Rennell Islands
NASA picture of the three atolls forming the Indispensable Reef
North Reef is right
The Indispensable Reefs are a chain of three large coral atolls in the Coral Sea. They are located about 50 km south of Rennell Island, separated from it by Rennel Trough. The chain stretches over a length of 114 km and its average width is 18 km.
Administratively the Indispensable Reef belongs to the Rennell and Bellona Province of the Solomon Islands.
The three atolls are steep-to and each encloses a large deep lagoon. They are separated by deep passages two to three km wide. of the Indispensable Reef are aligned in a NW-SE direction:[1]
 - North Reef is 18 km long, and up to 7 km wide. The rim of the atoll has two narrow openings in the north and northwest. The reef has a total area of 100 km², including lagoon and reef flat. There are no islets.
 - Middle Reef is 51 km long. Little Nottingham Islet is a small islet located near the center of the reef. Besides its main lagoon, Middle Reef has a separate smaller northern lagoon. The total area is about 300 km².
 - South Reef is 21 km long and up to 8 km wide. It encloses a lagoon 18 to 35 meters deep. The total area exceeds 100 km².
The ship Neptune struck Indispensable Reef on August 3, 1868 and was lost. The crew was rescued by the SS Boomerang.
During the Battle of the Coral Sea on May 7, 1942 a two Japanese carrier attack planes B5N2 (EI-306 and probably EI-302) flying reconnaissance mission from the carrier Shokaku ditched on Indispensable Reef due to lack of fuel.[2]
In the 1980s the Solomon Islands Government apprehended a vessel from Taiwan that had been poaching the giant clam stocks of Indispensable Reef. Corals and endangered fish species are also being plundered for the aquarium trade.
 1. ^ "Sector 7. The Solomon Islands—East Part" (PDF). Publication 126. n.d. pp. 183–201. Retrieved 6 June 2014.
 2. ^ LUNDSTROM, John B. The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway. Annapolis, Maryland : Naval Institute Press, 2005. ISBN 1-59114-471-X. page 205
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