Sucker Bets
Ok. Don't yell at me if some of these are groaners. Blame Skinny:
 1. This one's so simple it's easy to miss: Skinny simply bends the match into a "V" shape.
 2. Skinny folds the paper in half, bisecting the circle. Next, he pulls the two folded corners up and toward each other. This elongates the hole, allowing the quarter to slip through.
 3. The first die is easy. But the second one seems to always pop out. Instead of tossing the second quarter in, Skinny drops the cup down and under it. By beginning with a downward motion, the first die isn't thrown out.
 4. Dissolving salt into water increases its density. Skinny saturates the water with salt until the egg floats.
 5. Don't take this betits much harder than it sounds. After spinning around ten times quickly, your sense of balance will be so off you'll have trouble even standing, let alone walking. Incidentally, this is caused by the motion of fluids in the inner ear.
 6. If Skinny has just a dozen quarters, chances are one of them will land "heads" the next four times its flipped. Skinny takes a roll out of his pocket, opens it and throws all the quarters in the air. Then he gathers all the heads, and tosses them. He repeats this two more times and collects his money.
3.49 stars. Votes are updated daily.
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Copyright © _PHONE_ Wx3, All Rights Reserved.


text:
Richard Rutt (_PHONE_) was the former bishop of Leicester in the U.K. "The Knitting Bishop," as Serenity Knitting called him, was taught to knit by his grandfather, the village blacksmith. Rutt was a missionary in Korea for 20 years, where he lacked yarn for knitting and took up Asian history instead. Once back in England, he started knitting again and even knitted his own miter (the pointy hat bishops wear). His book A History of Hand Knitting was published in 1987.
A History of Hand Knitting has many interesting tidbits of history in it. Did you know there are methods of making fabric structures that are more ancient than knitting: nalbinding and sprang? If your friends think you are geeky for knitting, wait until you tell them you've taken up nalbinding.
Then there's the legend about shipwrecked sailors from the Spanish
Armada teaching the people of Fair Isle (off the coast of Scotland) how
to knit with more than one color at a time. It's unlikely that the
technique was learned from sailors, but still interesting to wonder what
passed between the 17 native families and the 300 sailors of the ship
El Gran Grifon who were, in fact, stuck on Fair Isle for 6 weeks.
I also liked hearing about all the literary references to knitting in literature: Shakespeare's Gentlemen of Verona, Tolstoy's War and Peace, Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Daniel deFoe's The Life and Adventures of Captain Robert Singleton, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford, and Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. Knitting appears in art, as well: check out the Knitting Madonnas set of photos on Flickr, some of which also appear in the book.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


Taken Questions
Office of the Press Secretary
Richard Boucher
Washington, DC
March 26, 2002
Taken Question from March 26, 2002 Daily Press Briefing
Afghanistan: Funding for an Afghan Army
Question: Secretary Rumsfeld mentioned that the State Department would play an important role in coaxing countries to contribute to training the Afghan national army. What are the needs and how are they being met?
Answer: The State Department manages U.S. security assistance programs overseas and will play an important role in marshalling the resources necessary to train and equip an Afghan army and police force. The Department will also lead the diplomatic effort to encourage other countries to contribute resources.
The Administration submitted a request for a supplemental appropriation to the Congress last week that includes $250 million for Afghanistan. Fifty $50 million of that request is for Foreign Military Financing (FMF) and $20 million is for Peacekeeping Operations (PKO), funds which, if appropriated, can be used to help train and equip the Afghan National Army. $20 million is for Peacekeeping Operations (PKO) funds with which we plan to help meet budget shortfalls for Afghan military salaries.
We are meeting next week in Geneva with other potential donors specifically to address the breadth of Afghanistan's security needs, including demobilization and a trained national army and police force. That will be an opportunity to better define the scope of the challenge, to present our plans to address Afghanistan's security needs, to hear the plans of others, and to seek to combine our efforts so that the burden of training and funding for that training is appropriately shared.


text:
Mineral resource potential map of the Vermilion Cliffs-Paria Canyon instant study area, Coconino County, Arizona, and Kane County, Utah
Miscellaneous Field Studies Map 1475-D
- Alfred L. Bush and Michael Lane
In general, the mineral potential of the study area is low; in the past the area has yielded only several hundred tons of uranium ore, and there have been a number of unsuccessful efforts to produce gold.
The generally small uraniferous deposits are in the Chinle Formation, mostly in the basal Shinarump Member, and mostly on the east side of the Paria Plateau. To the south and west, around the plateau, the Shinarump host rock pinches out or is present in only a few places, and the same relationships are likely below the plateau, where the host rocks are deeply buried, from 1,500 to 3,000 ft below the surface. These factors suggest the total uranium-copper-vanadium-silver potential to be very low.
Gold and mercury occur in very low concentrations in the clayey units of the Petrified Forest Member of the Chinle. Gold concentrations are 40 ppb and less, and the gold is present in very fine particles; recovery is very difficult. Overall, the mercury concentrations are so low that no realistic mineral resource potential can be estimated.
Nonmetallic mineral materials of possible value include limestone, flagstone, clay, and gravel, but they are of only local interest. No oil or gas resources are known in the study area. Coal resources within the area are nonexistent, but the Dakota Sandstone does contain coaly beds a few miles to the north.
Water is perhaps the most significant resource needed in the study area. A number of perennial springs support the few local ranchers and tourist facilities. Some ground water would be available below the plateau, but drilling depths would be more than 2,000 ft (600-700 m).
Additional publication details
- Publication type:
- Publication Subtype:
- USGS Numbered Series
- Mineral resource potential map of the Vermilion Cliffs-Paria Canyon instant study area, Coconino County, Arizona, and Kane County, Utah
- Series title:
- Miscellaneous Field Studies Map
- Series number:
- Year Published:
- U.S. Geological Survey
- Report: 11 p.; Plate: 46.25 x 38.48 inches
- United States
- Coconino County, Kane County
- Online Only (Y/N):
- Additional Online Files (Y/N):

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


text:
Casing corrosion mitigation in brine production wells
Challenges with casing corrosion in brine production wells
- Production wells suffer from the hyper-saline working environment, with corrosion causing havoc on ferrous materials.
- Corrosion affects the downhole well completion and life of the producing well.
- Corrosion has an impact on both finances and well as environmental concerns, and is an issue that needs to be taken seriously as a project moves into production.
- Accurate and fast corrosion monitoring systems are needed to effectively manage well maintenance so that overall field production is not affected.
Casing corrosion a wide-spread problem
The natural tendency of ferrous material to corrode, is only accelerated in the brinefield, where salinity levels can reach 250 – 280kppm – as salty as it gets. In hyper saline environments, corrosion is a major factor as tools and equipment are devoured at an accelerated pace. Mitigating this loss of material is essential to well integrity, which affects production and sustaining capex of a mine.
The consequences of corrosion in casing are loss in wall thickness and strength, leading to a reduction in ductility, usually leading to casing deformation or total failure.
Un-monitored corrosion can cause unexpected casing failures, resulting in expensive and complicated repair jobs. If left unattended this can lead to aquifer cross contamination and loss of production.
Casing corrosion is often accelerated where there has been damage to the casing during installation, or wear from repeated running of drilling equipment or pumps inside the casing.
Monitoring of corrosion
The operator must continually monitor and inspect the infrastructure to gauge the integrity of down hole and surface piping equipment. A variety of corrosion monitoring techniques are available. Some corrosion measurement techniques use in line monitoring tools placed directly in the production system. These tools are exposed to the flowing production stream. Other techniques involve laboratory analysis.
The weight loss technique using coupons, a direct visual identification method, is a well-known and simple monitoring method. This technique exposes a specimen of material – the coupon – to the process environment for a given amount of time before a technician removes it from the system and analyses is it for its physical condition and the amount of weight loss. However, the coupon alone cannot be used to accurately pinpoint the time or location of a corrosion event such as a leak.
Apart from this, the coupon technique is useful where easy access is available for placing and extracting the coupon, making it essentially impossible for the well's down-hole tubular and casing strings.
The remaining options are non-destructive measurement techniques that incorporate one or more of the various logging tools that are deployed down hole on wireline.
Advances in down-hole corrosion monitoring
Logging techniques for monitoring downhole corrosion include ultrasonic, electromagnetic and mechanical methods that yield detailed information about the location and extent of a corrosion event.
Ultrasonic monitoring employs an ultrasound source to perform measurements and generate images of the downhole environment.
Most ultrasonic tools work by the principle of pulse echo measurement. Measurements include cement evaluation, open hole imaging and corrosion imaging.
An ABI televiewer, transmits an ultrasonic signal at a frequency of 1.2 MHz is designed for cement evaluation and pipe inspection.
The quality of the cement bond is directly related to the degree of casing resonance: a good cement bond dampens the acoustic signal and causes a low amplitude secondary signal to be returned to the transducer; a poor cement job or free pipe allows the casing to ring and returns a higher amplitude echo.
Additionally, the ABI measurements include 2D internal radius imaging of the casing – derived from the wave line of the main echo from the internal surface – and the 2D casing thickness, derived from the frequency response.
The ABI tool records two echoes: the main echo from the internal surface of the casing and the smaller echo from the external surface. The radius and thickness of the casing are computed from the arrival times of the two echoes. The relative sizes, or amplitudes, of the two echoes are qualitative indicators of the casing condition.
Ultrasonic inspection provides several advantages as a corrosion measurement tool, including its sensitivity to both internal and external defence and instantaneous in-field notification when a defect is encountered.
In addition, the technique requires access to only one side of the material to gauge the condition of the entire object and obtain detailed exterior and interior images of the pipe.
However, inspection is difficult for materials that are irregular in profile, such as filters.
Operators may also employ another corrosion monitoring method: electromagnetic (EM)-based inspection. The basic principle of this technique involves measuring the changes to a magnetic field as it passes through a metal object; the changes are related to the condition of the material such as its thickness and its electromagnetic properties.
There exist two types of EM corrosion monitoring tools. The first, a flux leakage tool, magnetizes the metal object using an electromagnet. When the magnetic flux encounters a damaged section of the metal; coils on the tool's sensors detect this leakage. While this method is useful for measuring abrupt changes in pipe thickness, such as pitting or holes in the inner string, and the location of these changes, it is less effective for monitoring the steady increase of corrosion or corrosion that varies gradually over a large section of pipe or concentric casing configurations.
The second EM-based monitoring technology-the remote field eddy current tool-measures the signal of not only the primary EM field but also the secondary field from the induced eddy currents in the surrounding pipe.
The EM casing inspection tool has been used to detect large holes, casing splits and corrosion-related metal loss from both the internal and the external surfaces of casing.
These measurements can be obtained without the operating company having to pull completion tubing out of the hole, saving rig time, intervention expenses and interruption to production.
An initial reconnaissance run is carried out while the EM casing inspection tool is lowered on wire-line, in order to flag areas of interest for later detailed diagnostic scans to be run when later logging up to the surface. The tool can record a continuous log of both the average inner casing diameter and the total metal thickness, providing corrosion estimates. The tool reads overall metal thickness, enabling detection of corrosion of the outer casing. Radius measurements if the inner casing can be carried out despite the presence of most types of scale.
Identification of horizons with greater corrosion can be identified when the tool is used across several boreholes, allowing for future mitigation measures to be taken at these levels.
In addition to the acoustic and electromagnetic monitoring techniques discussed, mechanical methods are also helpful.
Multifinger mechanical caliper tools rely on direct contact with the pipe wall to measure the deformations arising from the loss of metal due to corrosion or the build-up of scale, however, they do not give any information about the external condition of the pipe wall.
The multifinger caliper tool can be deployed with as many as 60 fingers, depending on internal casing diameters, providing a 3D mechanical image of internal pipe-wall variations.
Repeated measurements can track corrosion over time, allowing Operators to make decisions based on real, and not inferred, data, without the need for removal of the casing until the required time, optimizing down time.
Combining Measurements for Improved Corrosion Monitoring
The combination of various tools greatly improves the operator's understanding of reasons for localized corrosion.
Improved Corrosion Mitigation Through Management
Greater understanding of tubing integrity can be obtained from the use of downhole corrosion monitoring tools allowing the operator to make more-informed and cost-effective mitigation and repair decisions.
As more and more steel pipes are placed in hyper-saline environments, corrosion monitoring will become and increasing problem, and an adequate monitoring system is essential to allow operators to make both profitable and environmentally responsible decisions.
For assistance in monitoring well condition, contact Zelandez, the pioneering brinefield specialists.
Our Insight product PipeSight offers detailed analysis of the well casing condition and completion, using the benefits of the EM, Multi-Finger and Acoustic Televiewer tools.


Small Business Owners Still Fumbling Online
According to research by SMB Digital Scape, the majority of small business owners are still fumbling when it comes to their online presence, and we're not just talking about maintaining social media accounts. Many small business websites are missing the basics. It seems that though many businesses have an online presence, they still aren't investing enough time, money, nor attention to optimizing it, and this is likely costing them a lot of business.
Here is a rundown of the most telling omissions:
 - 78% of small business websites do not provide an email address on their homepage. Even if the business technically has a contact email account, visitors to the site have to search to find it.
 - 90% do not provide either a map or directions on their homepage. Interested customers either have to search for the information elsewhere on the site, or they have to make the effort to access a third party service, such as Google Maps, where they can be exposed to local competing businesses.
 - 94.5% of websites provide no means of conducting a transaction online. There is no way to make and pay for an order. This can turn away people who would otherwise do business online.
 - 76% of websites do not have a privacy policy. Visitors to these sites have no way of knowing what data is being collected from them and how that data is being used.
 - 98% of small commercial websites have no spam protection. There are no captcha fields included in the site's web forms.
 - 92% of websites do not have a blog. This means there is very little new content being uploaded on to the site. This can affect how the site gets ranked in the search engines.
 - 98% of websites are not optimized for the mobile web. This fact alone can be cutting off many potential customers. According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 35% of American adults own a smartphone and 44% of them use their phones to serf the web.
 - 74% have no location in their meta-title. Putting location data into a website's meta-title improves website visibility among potential customers looking for locally based businesses.


text:
Wild horses released in Western Iberia rewilding area
31 July 2012 | News story
A herd of 24 Retuerta horses, coming from the Doñana biological station in southern Spain, were released in the Campanarios de Azaba reserve on July 27. The release was possible thanks to the Rewilding Europe initiative and the collaboration between the Nature and Man Foundation (FNYH) and the Doñana Biological Station.
The Nature and Man Foundation released twenty-four Retuerta horses in the Campanarios de Azaba reserve, in the province of Salamanca, Spain. The creation of this new population of Retuertas will help to guarantee the survival of this rare breed in Doñana and will strengthen the process of natural grazing by large herbivores in the Campanarios de Azaba reserve, part of one of the current five rewilding areas of Rewilding Europe.
Natural grazing by wild herbivores (such as wild horses, wild cattle, bison and many other species) disappeared from large parts of Europe when humans occupied these areas. Wild horses and cattle were domesticated and used for agriculture. With the large scale land abandonment now happening in many parts of Europe, livestock is also disappearing, leading to the simplification of ecosystems and reducing the dehesas that compose the natural Mediterranean mosaic landscapes.
Rewilding Europe contributes to the increase of biodiversity in Western Iberia, by reintroducing natural grazing as a key ecological process. In order to reach its goals in Western Iberia, the initiative has started to work in two pilot areas: Campanarios de Azaba biological reserve (Spain) and Faia Brava reserve (Portugal). The reintroduction of wild living herbivores will not only support the recovery of natural spaces and increase biodiversity; it will also provide new opportunities for local communities, landowners and stakeholders in the area.
After rigorous comparative genetic analysis with other ancient races like Asturcón, Losino or Potoca, a study published in 2006 has discovered that Retuertas are one of the oldest horse breeds in Europe.
The new Retuerta population in Campanarios will be treated as wild living animals, and live in social groups, grazing the reserve which is currently 500 hectares.
"The release of the 24 Retuerta horses is an important step in the rewilding of Western Iberia", says Frans Schepers, Managing Director of Rewilding Europe. "I hope the herds will adapt soon to this new area and will grow in numbers. I also hope the local stakeholders and landowners in the area will see the benefits of the rewilding initiative in the area, and will support or join our work. Together with the planned reintroduction of other species, Western Iberia will become one of the leading examples of rewilding in Europe".
"Rewilding Europe offers a new opportunity to manage Western Iberia," Carlos Sanchez Martinez, director of FNYH and President of the Spanish IUCN National Committee said at the release. "Wild herbivores help prevent forest fires and keep landscapes open, which is a key to greater biodiversity. Retuerta horses are invaluable. It is both a privilege and a huge responsibility for FNYH to be custodians of the second population of this breed of horses."
Rewilding Europe and Campanarios de Azaba
Rewilding Europe is an initiative by WWF Netherlands, ARK Nature, Conservation Capital and Wild Wonders of Europe, with the ambition of making Europe a wilder place, with much more space for wilderness, wildlife and natural processes. Rewilding Europe aims to rewild one million hectares of land by 2020. Rewilding Europe is currently working in five rewilding areas, Western Iberia is one of them.
The key area in Western Iberia is the Campanarios de Azaba biological reserve, located in Espeja's municipality in the region of Ciudad Rodrigo. Pasture lands with different oak habitats (Quercus ilex, Quercus pyrenaica) characterize the area and several distinguished species can be found here, for example the Black Vulture (Aegypius monachus) and the Black Stork (Ciconia nigra).
Carlota Pérez, FNYH Press Officer
Telf: +34 942 559119


Getting to Know gdb
It's worth making friends with a good C debugger.
gdb normally traps most signals sent to it. By trapping signals, gdb gets to decide what to do with the process you are running. For example, pressing CTRL-C sends the interrupt signal to gdb, which would normally terminate it. But you probably don't want to interrupt gdb; you really want to interrupt the program that gdb is running. Therefore, gdb catches the signal and stops the program it is running; this lets you do some debugging.
The command handle controls signal handling. It takes two arguments: a signal name, and what should be done when the signal arrives. For example, let's say that you want to intercept the signal SIGPIPE, preventing the program you're debugging from seeing it. Whenever it arrives, though, you want the program to stop, and you want some notification. To accomplish this, give the command:
(gdb) handle SIGPIPE stop print
Note that signal names are always capital letters! You may use signal numbers instead of signal names.
C++ Programs
If you write in C++ and compile with g++, you'll find gdb to be a wonderful environment. It completely understands the syntax of the language and how classes extend the concept of C structures. Let's look at a trivial program to see how gdb treats classes and constructors. Listing 1 contains a listing produced in gdb.
In order to see the program in action, we'll set a breakpoint at the entry statement on line 24. This declaration invokes a function, of course—the entry constructor.
(gdb) b 24
Breakpoint 1 at 0x23e4: file ref.C, line 24.
(gdb) run
Starting program: /home/los/mikel/crossref/ref
Breakpoint 1, main (argc=1, argv=0xeffffd8c) at
24 entry entry_1(text_1, strlen(text_1),
Now we'll enter the function. We do this through the step command, just as when entering a function in C.
(gdb) step
entry::entry (this=0xeffffcb8, text=0x2390
"Finding errors in C++ programs",
 length=30, ref=0x23b0 "errc++") at ref.C:14
14 e_text = new char(length+1);
gdb has moved to the first line of the entry constructor, showing us the arguments with which the function was invoked. When we return to the main program, we can print the variable entry_1 just like any other data structure.
(gdb) print entry_1
$1 = {e_text = 0x6128 "Finding errors in C++
 e_reference = "errc++",
 '\e000' }
So C++ debugging is just as straightforward as C debugging.
Command Editing
Another useful feature is the ability to edit your commands in order to correct errors in typing. gdb provides a subset of the editing commands available in Emacs, letting you move back and forth along the line you're typing. For example, consider the command below:
(gdb) stop in gen_and_sort
If this doesn't look familiar to you, it shouldn't; it's a dbx command. We really meant to type break gen_and_sort. To fix this, we can type ESC b three times, to move back over the three words in gen_and_sort (spaces, underscores, and other punctuation define what's meant by a "word"). Then we type ESC DEL twice, to delete the erroneous command stop in. Finally, we type the correct command, break, followed by RETURN to execute it:
(gdb) break gen_and_sort
Breakpoint 1 at 0x2544: file qsort2.c, line 79.
Emacs has a special mode that makes it particularly easy to use gdb. To start it, give the command ESC x gdb. Emacs prompts you for a filename in the minibuffer:
Run gdb (like this): gdb
Add the executable's name and press RETURN; Emacs then starts a special window for running gdb, where you can give all regular gdb commands. When you stop at a breakpoint, gdb automatically creates a window displaying your source code, and marking the point where you have stopped, like this:
 struct tms end_time, *e;
 int begin, end;
=> s = &start_time;
 e = &end_time;
The mark => shows the next line to be executed. The position is updated whenever gdb stops execution—that is, after every single-step, after every continue, etc. You may never need to use the built-in list command again!
This article was adapted from the book "Programming with GNU Software", published by O'Reilly & Associates.
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text:
Our statistics majors at St. John Fisher College are required to do a research project as the capstone element of their bachelor's degree. As much as possible we let the research focus be student-driven so that it reflects the student's abilities and interests. Over the last several years the research projects have clustered pretty naturally into two types: statistical research and data scientific research.
Projects of this type involve basic statistical research, and can come in several forms:
- Explore and test properties of a statistic under manipulated conditions
- Compare the performance of a family of statistics that differ in mathematically subtle but theoretically interesting ways
- Develop an adjusted statistic that addresses a theoretical or empirical deficiency and evaluate it in a Monte Carlo study against the original statistic
- Develop and test a new statistic or statistical method to meet an analytic need in some field or in some type of data
Statistical research draws on several content areas of the undergraduate's major studies, including the mathematical underpinnings of statistics, theoretical aspects of statistics, and Monte Carlo methods. Research problems of this type should be grounded in past work, and therefore require substantial literature review. Assessments of statistical research projects generally target outcomes such as: problem statement development, literature review quality, mastery of Monte Carlo or other appropriate simulation methods, general coding skill, and quality of the final paper and/or presentation.
From our experience, students who are a good fit for basic statistical research:
- like the mathematical/theoretical aspects of statistics
- have less well-developed disciplinary interests
- are interested in deductive/confirmatory/experimental work
- are comfortable with the "tidiness" of data created through simulation methods
Data Scientific Research
Projects of this type involve applying statistical methods to disciplinary questions using disciplinary data, and can come in several forms:
- Data wrangling, including scraping websites for data
- Statistical learning or modeling
- Data mining/visualization
Data scientific research draws on several content areas of undergraduate statistics, including database operations, data wrangling, statistics and models for prediction and classification, literacy in disciplinary variables and measures, and graphical data summaries.
Research of this type requires both an interest in disciplinary questions, and the computing skills to find useful data and render it into an analyzable form.
Assessments of data scientific research projects focus on outcomes such as: appropriateness and innovativeness of the data source; quality of the data wrangling, visualization, or modeling work; and literacy of the disciplinary concepts relevant to the project.
From our experience, students who are a good fit for data scientific research:
- have a keen disciplinary interest
- are comfortable with finding, retrieving, formatting, and cleaning messy data
- have an interest in modeling
- are good problem solvers with R
Bruce Blaine, Ph.D., PStat® is an applied statistician and Professor of Statistics and Data Sciences in the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Statistics at St. John Fisher College. He currently serves as Vice-Chair of the MCS Division. Dr. Blaine's research and professional interests include variance heterogeneity, meta-analysis, robust and nonparametric statistical methods, statistical consulting, and statistical computing with R.


text:
While learning to read, write, and perform basic arithmetic are all important educational outcomes, academic success presupposes that a certain baseline for student wellbeing is already met. However, in many of the places where International Rescue Committee educators teach, children do not feel safe, self-confident, and they lack frequent, quality social interactions. In Tanzania, many refugees also suffer from low food rations and over 70% of students are studying outside or in classrooms that cannot shelter them from the elements.
Past exposure to violence and ongoing family separation are also frequent, and despite the difficulty of obtaining representative data, researchers have found that the need for social-emotional support among refugee children is as clear as it is urgent.
One element of IRC's response to this refugee education crisis has been to train refugee teachers in social-emotional learning activities that can provide children with the tools to better focus, build positive relations, and cope with the stress. Over the past two years, the IRC has been gradually demonstrating the positive results of these efforts to promote SEL in resource-constrained settings.
Our current challenge, however, has been to design a cost-effective and scalable alternative to current in-person SEL training workshops. With the aim to design coaching programs that will support more teachers in need, especially those in hard-to-reach areas, Airbel spent several months learning how to best equip teachers in the Mtendeli Refugee Camp in Tanzania with the skills they need to deliver quality SEL to students. Here are five design insights that were instrumental in testing and developing our teacher coaching prototypes.
1. Demo to train, practice to perfect
Meet Felicite, a current teacher and Mtendeli camp resident. While she fully comprehends SEL activities after seeing and experiencing the activities herself, Felicite can only recall a few details about the SEL training session that took place a few years ago and does not remember where she put her PDF packet that summarizes what she learned. Opportunities for teachers like Felicite to see SEL activities "in action" and to practice implementing them in the classroom are non-existent.
After testing several different training models, we settled on video-based coaching and incorporated real classroom examples alongside simplified reenactments of SEL activities from a designated SEL Master Teacher and Coach into the videos. By exposing teachers to both simple demonstrations and realistic classroom depictions, we found that instructive videos made with local teachers and students can be just as instructive as in-person coaching workshops delivered by SEL experts. In fact, after watching these virtual coaching sessions and practicing alongside one another in small groups, the feedback from teachers was largely positive. Through video-based instruction in peer-to-peer settings, we hope to create more exciting and effective learning experiences for educators like Felicite.
2. Build daily habits
We found that although weekly video clubs were helpful, they were not enough to make teachers like Felicite comfortable in bringing SEL into the classroom. Instead, teachers needed weeks of continuous daily practice. Yet when teachers are working long hours and double-shifts, establishing new routines can be challenging. Testing different behavioral nudges and self-practice aids therefore became an important focus in our fieldand design-work.
One way to overcome the implementation challenges is to encourage habit building. By using specific habit building triggers that are relevant to each environment, we can increase the likelihood that SEL becomes an integrated part of Felicite's everyday teaching toolkit. Whether it's through timely in-person support, behavioral nudges using SMS, or incorporating concepts like intention setting into the program design, habit building is essential to improving teachers' confidence, expertise in SEL, and implementation of SEL in the classroom. For this program, we chose to incorporate a school-wide "SEL Bell" every day at the same time, to encourage teachers and students to perform the activities. The school bell not only reminds teachers, but helps hold them accountable to their students and their peers.
To really make these habits stick, however, we are also realizing just how powerful shared accountability and group learning can be. Wherever possible, we are aiming to reduce the burden of individual responsibility by coordinating habit building cues through colleagues and school administration. Peer-to-peer feedback and scheduled allotments in the school timetable are a few such examples.
3. Materials should work for teachers and students
Typically after completing a training, Felicite would be given a packet of information about SEL. But she finds it difficult to navigate these materials, understand the relevance of SEL and — most of all — apply it to her lessons. We observed that many teachers who received booklets of SEL activities with long instructions about how to practice the activity in the classroom did not reference them on a regular basis. Felicite and her peers also need clear reference materials and children need a visual cue to understand and recall new concepts. How might we get a comprehensive and intuitive resource in front of more teachers and have it remain an important part of their lesson planning and reference library?
Mtendeli primary school teachers responded, "Give us something that we can bring home and to class so that we can quickly remember the activities." Culturally adapted, visually appealing SEL cards that summarized each of the 25 activities were winners in this regard. They provide a bite-sized curriculum that can be easily referenced in the classroom, when it matters most. While these cards continue to undergo further refinements, they already provide an innovative adaptation of the robust SEL curriculum materials already in circulation at the IRC.
4. Technology is more than a pathway to scale, it can shape learning experiences
Some of our initial ideas in 2017 involved leveraging mobile phones to directly reach teachers with bite-sized SEL content on their mobile phones. After a few iterations, we quickly moved away from SMS, as teachers like Felicite found phones too constraining and the local networks too unreliable for mobile messaging to be the primary delivery channel for new teaching content. Equally important, mobile messaging also left teachers without visual learning aids. While SMS may help teachers remember to practice the SEL activities, it didn't help them recall how to perform them.
Consequently, we started thinking about technology through a different lens. We're now experimenting with how offline technology can help teachers learn by observing, practicing, and forming collective learning groups. With this in mind, we decided to build an app that would act as a group facilitator, to guide teachers through the SEL content in an intuitive and engaging way. The app is available on a tablet available at each school and shared by all the teachers. They watch SEL videos delivered by a SEL Coach, pause the videos during dedicated practice time, and after watching and practicing, are automatically directed to a short quiz. The quiz helps to prompt reflection and discussion, before closing with a goal-setting activity.
Offline video-based instruction has compensated for some of the limitations we encountered with mobile networks and purely textual instruction using SMS. Without needing connectivity, the video sessions we introduced could provide visual demonstrations of the SEL activities that teachers were highly receptive to. Practicing the activities and completing a quiz together also helps teachers stay better connected to their peers by prompting group discussions about tips and strategies for successfully performing the SEL activities in the classroom.
5. Design modular and adaptive programs for scale
While refugee camps in Tanzania may be similar, we cannot rely on identical school contexts if we're going to scale globally. We believe in designing program components that can effectively work together or separately, and that can be adapted to different contexts depending on the needs of the current school environment.
This is why we're testing these four main building blocks:
- Active Learning: Develop learning opportunities for teachers that are experiential, where they can practice the activities and gain an understanding of how these activities appear when implemented in classrooms like their own.
- Habitual Implementation: Help develop new habits, by reducing the burden on the individual as much as possible. Incorporate daily nudges, encourage intention setting, and find ways to make habit-building a collective process.
- Culturally relevant material support: Incorporate easy-to-use, visual materials that not only remind teachers to practice, but how to practice.
- Digital Coaching: Enable teachers to benefit from high quality, small group coaching by using digital learning aids to overcome the material and political obstacles that prevent teachers from accessing in-person coaching support.
Our next step is testing different building-block combinations and figuring out which have the most potential. In our upcoming pilot study, all teachers will receive the core programming (small group learning with video instruction) and some teachers will receive different habit-building components and implementation strategies. Some teachers will receive timely visits and feedback in their classrooms, while others will receive illustrative curriculum cards. All of this will be piloted for 3 months in 3 schools, with over 100 teachers.
The most promising combinations will be costed to understand their potential to reach teachers across diverse circumstances, from refugees in urban settings and camps, to hard-to-reach underserved rural communities and even regions plagued by civil conflict.


Technical Note:
How to Estimate Angular Motion of a Tilt or Rotation Stage with Respect to the Linear Translation of the Actuator
One of the most common questions asked of our Opto Mechanical Specialists regarding the kinematic and gimbal optical mounts as well as the rotation and tilt stages is
"What linear travel distance on the micrometer, adjustment screw or motorized drive corresponds to a given angular motion of the stage or optical mount?"
For rotation stages that provide a Vernier scale directly on the stage body – such as the 481-A, RS65 and RS40 – the angle of motion can be read on the scale. In the case of the 605-2 and 605-4 full range gimbal mounts, a scale is provided on the body for the azimuthal angle (but not for the elevation angle). But for all other kinematic, gimbal and tilt mounts that Newport offers, no scale is provided on the mount, so a different method to determine angular motion is needed.
Newport's manual mounts and stages are not calibrated together with their actuators. This is due to the fact that the actuators are often easily removable or interchangeable. Consequently, removing, interchanging, or adjusting the position of the actuator in the mounting block on the stage would render any calibration void. However, it is possible, when needed, to use a simple trigonometric calculation to approximate the answer.
In order to approximate the angular distance traveled when no scale is provided, knowledge of (1) the lever arm(s) of the mount and (2) the distance traveled on the actuator (micrometer, adjustment screw or motorized drive) is required. Distance can be easily read off of a micrometer. Adjustment screws, on the other hand, have no distance indicators. In order to determine the distance traveled per full turn for a linear adjustment screw, divide 1 inch by the number of threads per inch (TPI) of the screw. (A table of the lever arms for many of Newport's products is provided at the end of this technical note.)
Once you have the lever arm and distance traveled, you will have obtained two sides of a right triangle. Using this specification and the calculation for the inverse tangent, you can approximate the angle traveled as follows.
The following are tables containing the lever arm specifications for many of Newport Corporations current rotation, tilt, kinematic and gimbal mounts.
Rotation Stages
Model Number Lever Arm
RS40 0.98 in.
RS65 1.50 in.
481-A 1.27 in.
Goniometric Stages
Model Number Lever Arm
561-GON 1.28 in.
GON40-U 1.07 in.
GON40-L 1.86 in.
GON65-U 2.75 in.
GON65-L 3.93 in.
Tilt Stages
Model Number Lever Arm
TGN80 3.94 in.
TGN120 5.91 in.
TGN160 7.87 in.
562F-Tilt 2.94 in. (Vertical Actuator)
1.45 in. (Horizontal Actuator)
Kinematic Mounts
Model Number Lever Arm
U50-A/P 0.69 in.
U100-A/P 1.50 in.
U200-A/P 2.25 in.
U300-A 3.25 in.
U100-AC 1.50 in.
U200-AC 2.38 in.
U300-AC 3.25 in.
U400-AC 4.25 in.
V100 1.50 in.
P100-A 1.50 in.
P100-P 0.69 in.
MM-050 0.31 in.
MM-075 0.48 in.
SN050 0.68 in.
SN100 1.50 in.
SS050 0.68 in.
SS100 1.50 in.
625-RC6 2.55 in.
Gimbal Mounts
Model Number Lever Arm
605-2 1.25 in.
605-4 2.38 in.
U50-G 0.88 in.
U100-G 1.38 in.
U200-G 2.50 in.
SL8A 2.28 in.
SL15A 4.25 in.
SL20A 4.92 in.


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1. Ms. A works as a sales-coordinator in a food company. A new male colleague reported for duty last week with the job title of "administration officer". Ms. A knows that they are both doing administrative work, but with different job titles. The thing she considers unfair is that the salary of that male colleague is higher than hers by $2,000. Is this unlawful under the Sex Discrimination Ordinance?
If it can be proved that the two persons have similar qualifications and are doing similar work, but Ms. A is paid less and afforded lower status due to her gender/sex, this may amount to unlawful sex discrimination.
The Equal Opportunities Commission has given some guidelines in relation to the terms and conditions of employment for both genders (including remuneration and job title). For details, please refer to clause 12 of the Code of Practice of Employment under the SDO (issued by the Commission).
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Bicol PeninsulaArticle Free Pass
Bicol Peninsula, peninsula, southeastern Luzon, Philippines. It is irregular in form, with several deep coastal bays, large subpeninsulas, and a lengthy coastline. The peninsula has an area of about 4,660 square miles (12,070 square km). It comprises the Bicol Plain, a large lowland area important in the production of rice, and volcanic highlands. A well-watered area, it is densely populated although largely rural and agricultural. The peninsula is the homeland of the Bicol, the fifth largest ethnolinguistic group in the Philippines, whose educational and commercial centre is Naga. The peninsula has been a stronghold of Philippine communists.
What made you want to look up "Bicol Peninsula"? Please share what surprised you most...


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Cows, camels, sheep, goats, etc being ruminants must chew their food repeatedly by regurgitating their food from their first stomach compartment and chewing their 'cud'. This then finer chewed material makes its way to the various stomach compartments to be digested.
These animals are eating plant material, the same plant material animals such as elephants, horses and hippos eat as well. However, these animals only have one stomach compartment.
- Why does one need a multi-compartment stomach and one does not if they are all eating the same/similar food?


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Definition of Bottlefeeding
Bottlefeeding: The practice of feeding an infant a substitute for breast milk. Pediatricians generally advise exclusively breastfeeding (that is, breastfeeding with no supplementary formula) for all full-term, healthy infants for the first 6 months of life. However, many infants are bottlefed today, at least in part. For infants to achieve normal growth and maintain normal health, infant formulas must include proper amounts of water, carbohydrate, protein, fat, vitamins, and minerals.Source: MedTerms™ Medical Dictionary
Last Editorial Review: 3/19/2012
Parenting and Pregnancy
Get tips for baby and you.


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The Disputed History of the Tarzan Yell
Johnny Weissmuller made it famous. Carol Burnett made it funny. But the origin of Hollywood's iconic jungle cry is shrouded in mystery.
Back in 1932, in movie theaters across the country, the actor Johnny Weissmuller stood high on a cliff and let fly with a savage cry, roughly translated as "Aah-eeh-ah-eeh-aaaaaah-eeh-ah-eeh-aaaaah!"
The Tarzan yell has long been one of Hollywood's most recognizable and iconic sound bites, right up there with Rhett Butler's "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" and Captain Kirk's "Khaaaaaaannnnnn!"
But exactly how that jungle cry was produced remains a mystery. Was it really Weissmuller's voice? Or was it something more complex?
The yell was first introduced in the pages of Tarzan of the Apes, the 1912 novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, where he described it as sounding like "the victory cry of the bull ape." Over the next fifteen years, Tarzan swung unto the silver screen several times. But those silent films left audiences to imagine the majestic sound of the yell.
Then in 1929, an early talkie called Tarzan the Tiger featured actor Frank Merrill making the first recorded attempt at the yell. Sadly, it sounded like the wailing of a drunken sports fan:
Three years later, Johnny Weissmuller, an Olympic swimmer with no acting experience, stepped into the loincloth and defined the role – and the yell - for decades to come. Weismuller later said his famous version of the Tarzan yell was inspired by the yodeling of his German neighbors, along with his own success in a yodeling contest he'd won as a boy.
But MGM, the studio that made the first Tarzan movies with Weissmuller, claimed to have enhanced the yell in post-production. Reportedly, they added and mixed the following:
1. A second track of Weismuller's voice, amplified
2. A track of a hyena howl, played backwards
3. A note sung by a female opera soprano, with the speed varied to produce a fluttery sound
4. The growl of a dog
5. The bleat of a camel
6. The raspy note of a violin's G-string being bowed
Another story claims that a famous operatic tenor was hired to record the yell, and the tape was then manipulated and run backwards, so that the second half of the yell was the first half in reverse.
Weissmuller denied that there was ever any sonic trickery, and in the many public appearances he did until his death in 1984, he always honored requests to perform the signature yell. If it lacked cinematic reverberation and hi-fidelity, it still sounded pretty much like what you heard on screen.
However the Tarzan yell was achieved, it was so pitch perfect in those early Weissmuller movies that the sound bite was re-used for decades. No matter which actor was playing Tarzan, when it came to the yell, they cued up Weissmuller's original "Ah-eeh-ah..." As an example, here's a scene from the 1981 Tarzan remake with Bo Derek:
Later, of course, comedienne Carol Burnett revived the yell for comic effect on her TV variety show (fast forward to 4:46).
Today, there are many YouTubers who've taken a crack at the yell. Here are three of the more entertaining Tarzan wannabes:


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Stargate: SG-1: Ancient Egyptian Deities to the Modern Eye
Gabriel, Angiola L.
MetadataShow full item record
This paper seeks to understand the appropriation of ancient Egyptian deities into Stargate: SG-1. It seeks to understand why those particular deities were chosen, how they were manipulated and for what reasons the deities were altered as they were. This paper will compare the original deity to the Stargate: SG-1 version in order to see what was changed and to figure out what purpose these alterations serve. In no way is this paper going to be able to address every set, piece of cloth, or movement of the actor. However, it will address major alterations and similarities of the ancient Egyptian deities into Stargate: SG-1.


I've a table (locations) which contains records as given below:
id | lat | lng | radius_in_km
1 | -18.17943 | 83.968051 | 5
2 | 44.5796 | 7.069637 | 10
Now, I've got a point (lat, lng) from Google and I need to fetch the records from locations table if the given lat, lng falls into radius of those rows. Please notice, the radius is dynamic/different for each row so I need to match the records according to their radius with the given point.
I've searched the stackoverflow network but couldn't find anything that works for me, any hints would be fine even not the code.
Keeping lat long like that isn't spatial. You need to make a point
I would store the result of the above on the row, rather than individual lat/long cords. Regardless of what you store on the row, that's what you have to work with. Not storing that on the row will just be slower, as you'll have to calculate it every time.
Next what you want is the Bounding Box test. In MySQL they're designated with an MBR prefix.
FROM table
WHERE ST_Contains(
 ST_Buffer( Point(lng,lat), DISTANCE_IN_DEGREES ),
 Point(google.long, google.lat)
You'll have to calculate DISTANCE_IN_DEGREES yourself. MySQL doesn't have a geography type, so you can't just use a fixed distance like meters, miles, or feet. You have to do the math yourself. This is a lot of work in itself.
ST_Contains doesn't use an index. For that you'll need MBRContains. Or you could just use PostgreSQL, for that it'll look like this,
FROM table
 ST_Buffer( ST_MakePoint(lng,lat)::geography, DISTANCE_IN_METERS ),
 ST_MakePoint(google.long, google.lat)::geography
Not just is that shorter, but from the docs
This function call will automatically include a bounding box comparison that will make use of any indexes that are available on the geometries.
So you don't have to use two functions like you would in MySQL MBRcontains (bounding box w/ index), and ST_Contains.
 - Thanks for your answer but I'm still confused. If I change the lat, lng to point and instead of storing radius as km, if I store the distance in degrees then which query should I use? – The Alpha Aug 20 '17 at 19:03
 - _USER_ both, however if you take it one step further and (1) store them as a point, (2) store the ST_Buffer(pt, radius) as a geom, and index the geom then the operation on MBRContains will use the index, potentially saving costly calculations with ST_Contains – Evan Carroll Aug 20 '17 at 20:37
Your Answer


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The Founding Fathers envisioned what is now called Citizen Science: when everyday people volunteer to record and share local observations or analyze data to help scientists answer questions they can't answer alone. As a citizen scientist, Thomas Jefferson (and later, his recruits including Lewis and Clark) documented biodiversity and changes in seasons. Benjamin Franklin recorded and shared daily weather patterns which aided martime transits. Today, millions of citizen scientists (people just like you!), are turning their curiosity into impact by sharing observations and analyzing data in collaboration with scientists around the world.
Here's your chance to continue the legacy of the Founding Fathers by becoming a Citizen Scientist!
This page features a self-guided, online "Introduction to Citizen Science" module and select thematic projects to help you get started. Find thousands of additional projects using the SciStarter Project Finder.
Click on a project below to find step-by-step instructions.


bay leaf
What is up with this leaf. Why even is there bay leaf? It sits in stews and sauces and it's as easy to eat as a polymer five-dollar bill (this is a Canadian reference; Americans who don't travel won't get it, but most other people will understand). Bay leaf is like the quiet, dignified, hard-to-get-your-teeth-into guest at a party. No one seems sure why that person is there. And eventually you discover that the guest has secrets, and also secrets behind those secrets, and is nobility, and kind of famous under another name, actually more than one other name, and played a bigger part than you thought in the enjoyment of the party.
The bay leaf gets its name from its tree, the bay tree, which in turn gets its name from its berries; bay comes from an Old English word meaning 'berry' and is not related to the bay that means a convexity of water and concavity of land, or the bay that is a sound hunting dogs make, or the bay that means 'reddish-brown', and those aren't related to each other either. Bay (the tree) originally meaning 'berry' is sort of like how deer originally meant any animal (especially any wild animal). If a deer eats a bay leaf, you have a nexus of semantic reduction and shift. (Makes note to self: cook venison in a bay leaf sauce and make a reduction. Uh, while wearing a shift, I guess.)
But most other languages do not call it anything like bay. Many of their names for it trace back to the Latin, which I have been holding back from you. The Linnaean name for the tree that makes this seasoning is Laurus nobilis. Which means 'noble laurel'. As in the thing you make wreaths of, such as Julius Caesar wore. Which is how I discovered bay leaves and laurel leaves were the same thing.
I grew up reading Asterix comic books, you see. One of them was Asterix and the Laurel Wreath. In it, the chief of their Gaulish tribe makes a boast that he will serve a stew "caesoned with Caesar's laurel wreath!" (props to Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge for the witty English renditions). This helped me to notice that the container of bay leaves that sat perennially unperturbed in my mother's spice drawer (an herbal pharmacopeia of dozens of Empress metal tins and McCormick glass jars plus a few Spice Islands glass jars and some flat plastic sachets) bore the French legend (we're in Canada, remember) "feuilles de laurier."
Laurier is, as seems guessable, French for laurel; it is also French for bay tree because they're the same thing. You can see that the Latin Laurus over time cooked into French laurier, and English – because people don't like having to say two r's in a row – changed the second into an l. You may know of the English surname Laurel, as in Stan Laurel (who performed with Oliver Hardy). French people also get named after trees, and any Canadian ought to know that one of the great nobility of Canadian history is one such: Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the seventh prime minister. He's featured on the five-dollar bill. I would like to say that French Canadians refer to five-dollar bills as feuilles de Laurier, but I have no evidence that anyone does. It doesn't help that the fivers are blue; they might stand a greater chance of it if they were green (but that's the twenties; in Canada the money is colour-coded).
Sir Wilf is not depicted wearing a laurel wreath, but I have to say, it would suit him. What is it about laurel wreaths? Is it that they indicate a well-seasoned person? In fact, the Romans didn't start it. They stole it, like nearly damn everything in their mythology (but somehow not their politics or cuisine), from Greece. Laurel wreaths were a symbol of victory starting with the Pythian Games, which were held at Delphi in honour of Apollo.
I'm tempted to say Apollo got his name because his behaviour was appalling, but not really. In this case, however, the association between him and the laurel is that he lusted after a young woman who wanted to be chaste and didn't want to be chased. When he wouldn't leave her alone, she pleaded to the river god (Ovid says he was named Peneus, and no, don't go there), who turned her into a tree. A laurel tree, in specific. And so Apollo, feeling either contrite or perdurably concupiscent, formed a special fondness for the tree and saw to it that the victors at the games would be adorned with leaves from the tree named after the object of his infatuation, whose name was…
Yes. Greek for laurel (or laurus) is Δάφνη, usually rendered as Daphne – or, well, for the tree (not the person), δάφνη dafne. Various dictionaries assure me that laurus and δάφνη are etymologically related, but not one of them has the decency to say how. I can see that /l/and /d/ have the same place of articulation (tip of the tongue), and so do /n/ and /r/ (though that's a weird flex), and it's well known that /u/ and /w/ can turn into /f/ over time in the right context. But I'd still like some kind of string of evidence. It is not forthcoming. (Although, OK, if it were fourth-coming it would get no laurels.)
There are no great English poems dedicated to Daphne; as the Oxford Dictionary of First Names explains, "The name was not used in England until the end of the 19th century, when it seems to have been adopted as part of the vogue for flower names at that time" – so it showed up just in time for Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989). Before that you'll more likely find references to Daphnis, as in Daphnis and Chloe, which is a masculine version of the same; since Daphnis is supposedly the inventor of pastoral poetry, he probably lounged under the branches of his namesake playing his pan pipe and singing to his sheep. The name Laurel also came into vogue at the same time as Daphne, as did the name Laura, which also means "bay tree" but comes by way of Italian (in particular it was the name of the girlfriend of Petrarch). Laurence was around already, but may or may not be related (yeah, it probably is, but you know how weird names can be; if Laurel can be from the same source as Daphne, then Laurence can also not be from the same source as Laurel).
None of this answers why people put laurel leaves – bay leaves – in stews and sauces. To know that, go get a bay leaf. If you can find a fresh one, so much the better, but at the very least, don't do what I did and store them in the same jar as another bit of desiccated cortex: cinnamon bark. I now have cinnamon-flavoured bay leaves. Which is great, but I've bought some new ones for all those times I might need bay leaves that don't taste like cinnamon.
Have you inferred that I don't use bay leaves too often? It's true. They're a nuisance. But they do have a nice flavour! You won't know what it is by smelling them. You won't know what it is by licking them. You need to bite one with your incisors, repeatedly. Then you will get a flavour that is in the range between oregano and basil, with hints of mint and strong notes of "oh, that's what that is!" You can also buy powdered bay leaf. You will get a stronger taste sensation from it, but then your mouth will want to know exactly why you put that dry powder into it, sir or ma'am, and will become a little bitter about it too.
Bay leaves have long been used in cooking. They are a key ingredient of the bouquet garni, the compulsory French seasoning. They are also found in various pickling recipes, as well as recipes for assorted other savouries that involve simmering a liquid for long enough to get the flavour out of the damn things. Here is a recipe from the sixteenth-century court cookbook of the Prince of Transylvania, yes actually, in translation by Bence Kovacs, edited by Glenn Gorsuch:
Italian sardine.
Cook the sardine like this. Wash it and add salt to the fish like I told you among the other fish. Prepare its sauce like this. Wash the salt from fish, put it in a pot, pour vinegar and wine onto it and add some bay laurel.
Laurel doesn't grow in Transylvania, so have someone bring it from Turkey or Italy. When you're about to cook the fish, add laurel. This is not for one day. Cook it, and once cooked, put it into a pot where you can take it out with a spoon. Once you're ready to slice it and serve it, don't take out the water, leave it there, and don't cook it like you cook beef or pork, this doesn't need that much time. It should be


Physical Design «Prev Next»
Lesson 8International issues
Objective Describe mistakes associated with international issues.
International Database Mistakes
While English is the common language of global business, you cannot always be sure that every piece of data you need to store will be in English. Other countries have their own ways of writing dates, unique currency symbols, and addresses. There are a number of international issues to watch for to ensure your data can be stored and processed correctly:
 1. Using an RDBMS that can't handle all necessary languages
 2. Working with data stored in different formats
Language and character sets
Most data generated in the United States will be in English, though there are literally millions of citizens whose first language is not English. If Stories on CD wants to expand its client base beyond native English speakers, they can offer CDs with stories presented in Spanish (with the letter ñ), French (with accented letters like é), or any number of Asian languages which do not use the Roman alphabet. Most recent versions of popular RDBMSs should work with any of these character sets, but you should check the system's documentation to be sure.
Business data
One simple yet significant difference between the U.S. and Europe is a difference in how we write dates. Americans put the month first, so 7/12/2000 means July 12, 2000. Europeans write the day first, however, so the same entry would be read as December 7, 2000. Other examples of data incompatibilities are phone numbers (the U.S. and Canadian system of a three-digit area code, three-digit exchange, and four-digit extension isn't replicated throughout the world), addresses (Canada uses a different form of postal code, e.g. T2G 3Y5), and currency symbols.
The next lesson addresses the process of evaluating a database.
Insufficient Testing
This problem is closely related to Thinking too Small and Too Much Normalization. Some developers perform little or no testing before releasing a database into the wild. They run through a few tests to check correctness (the better ones go through all of the use cases) and assume that everything will work in the field. Then when customers try to use it under realistic conditions, the whole thing falls apart. They discover bugs that the testers missed and the performance is unacceptable.
Be sure to test the database and any attached applications thoroughly. Fully testing every nook and cranny of a system takes a lot of work, but it's necessary. You need to be sure you exercise every piece of code, every table, and every constraint. You also need to perform load testing to see if the database can handle the expected load.
If you do not find all of the bugs and bottlenecks, sooner or later the user will, guaranteed!
It is also pretty safe to assume that every non-trivial application contains at least some bugs no matter how much testing you perform. In that case, you cannot find every bug so you may be temped not to even try. The goal is not really to catch every bug, but to find enough of them and to find the most likely to occur so the probability of the users finding a bug is very small. The bugs will still be hiding in there, but if you only get one or two user complaints per year, you're doing pretty well.
International Issues-Exercise
Before moving on to the next lesson, click the Exercise link below to reinforce your knowledge of international issues.
International Issues-Exercise


due to abuse or lack of nutrtiton, brings a set back for the exhibitor that is overlooked. As explained in The Welfare of Livestock Today I The Peterson Farm Blog "Abuse leads to suffering, and in livestock, suffering can lead to death. When livestock producers lose animals to death, it can be extremely costly (an animal is typically worth thousands of dollars) and can put an operation out of business." This set back financially is what many exhibitors realize can happen if abuse to their animal occurs. This realization is what many who don't fully understand the livestock industry tend to be confused on. With many exhibitors knowing this could be a consequence, unethical treatment is not so common. It is those who don't understand the consequences that participate in such unethical treatment and cause the public to only focus on that.
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 Why is Understanding This Topic Important?
 While many different assumptions in numerous types of industries occur, the livestock industry is no different. People that work with finances often face cases dealing with fraud. If someone in this industry were to commit fraud and the public started to assume that everyone in this industry was untrustworthy with money, then it would cause people working in this industry, who do not participate in such activity, to be outraged. This same concept goes for those who are apart of the livestock industry. When the public begins pointing fingers and says that livestock are abused and treated unethically, it makes the entire industry look as though they are indulging in such actions, which is not the case. While yes unethical practices do occur, they are less common than what the public believes. It is important that this controversial topic is understood because just as other industries don't appreciate assumptions towards them based on a small percentage of those who engage in negative actions, the livestock industry is no different. Therefore, before one creates an opinion on a certain topic, one should gather accurate information to support their claim.
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What are cone and rod cells?
Asked by Philosopher Speusippus, 04 Sep '12 08:19 pm
Earn 10 points for answering
The retina contains two types of photoreceptors, rods and cones. The rods are more numerous, some 120 million, and are more sensitive than the cones. However, they are not sensitive to color. The 6 to 7 million cones provide the eye's color sensitivity and they are much more concentrated in the central yellow spot known as the macula. In the center of that region is the " fovea centralis ", a 0.3 mm diameter rod-free area with very thin, densely packed cones.Answered by jakir hussain, 04 Sep '12 08:26 pm
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Adverbs of Frequency activity book. Inclueds explanation, placement of adverbs of frequency in a sentence, question formation, common errors and various activities. Activities include; meaning, understanding, reading and writing.
Georgina1 is from/lives in United Kingdom and has been a member of iSLCollective since 2016-12-02 11:28:16. Georgina1 last logged in on 2021-03-26 09:19:55, and has shared 2 resources on iSLCollective so far.


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Garamba National Park
Garamba National Park is a 1900 square mile national park located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Consisting of a large, undulating plateau of long-grass and bush savannah, it slopes southwest from the watershed between the River Nile and Congo River, dotted with granitic inselbergs, small gallery forests, and large marshland depressions.
Flora and fauna
The location of the park covers covers three biomes:
- gallery forest with forest clumps and marshland
- aquatic and semi-aquatic sections
- savannah, ranging from dense savannah woodland to almost treeless grassland
The park contains the last viable natural population of Northern White rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) in the world. The rhino population has fallen from approximately 1,000 animals in 1960 to 490 in 1976, to 20 in 1983, and 15 in 1984. The decrease was all as a result of poaching. In 1996 there were 30 left. The elephant (Loxodonta africana) population was reduced from over 20,000 in the late 1970s to 11,175 in 1995, again due to intensive poaching. Other mammals inhabiting the park include the Northern Savanna giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis congoensis), hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), buffalo, hartebeest, waterbuck, chimpanzee, baboon, antelope, leopard, and lion.
As it contains "superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance" and is an "important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity, containing threatened species of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation" the site was inscribed onto the list of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO in 1980.
- Biodiversity Conservation in Regions of Armed Conflict: Protecting World Heritage in the Democratic Republic of the Congo UNESCO. Accessed 19 January 2008.
- UNESCO Site entry. Accessed 19 January 2008


Calculate composition and microstructure, Mechanical Engineering
It is desired to produce an iron-carbon alloy that has a minimum hardness of 200 HB and a minimum ductility of 35%RA. Is such an alloy possible? If so, what will be its composition and microstructure (coarse and fine pearlites and spheroidite are alternatives)? If this is not possible, explain why.
Posted Date: 3/1/2013 7:28:21 AM | Location : United States
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The Wednesday is traditionally the fourth day of the week, seen in a modern way by certain calendars like the third Jour. The word Wednesday is resulting from the Latin Mercurii dies, meaning "day of Mercure". The other days of the week are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The ISO standard codes Wednesday by figure 3.
- For certain Christians, the Ash Wednesday (shortly after the Fatty Tuesday) mark the beginning of the Lent.
- the holy Wednesday is that which precedes Sunday by Easter.
- radiant Wednesday that which follows Easter for the orthodoxe ones.
- Wednesday of Semi-Pentecost is a small orthodoxe Christian festival located twenty-five days after Easter. It commemorates Jesus child teaching with the doctors in the Temple of Jerusalem.
- Of many children provided education for in France does not go to school Wednesday (before, it was Thursday).
- In France and Belgium, Wednesday is the day out of new the Film S.
- the diffusion of feature-length films Wednesday evening is prohibited on the free television channels distributed in France in order to privilege the consumption of Cinéma in rooms.
- It should be noted that in France, each first Wednesday of the month, the national signal of alarm is tested with 12:00 precise.
Beats-smg: Trečiadėinis Be-X-old: Серада Cbk-zam: Miercoles Fiu-vro: Kolmapäiv Nds-nl: Woonsdag Simple: Wednesday Zh-yue: 星期三
|Random links:||Napf | Richard Mique | Tacrolimus | Castle of Comper | Zidane: With 21st Century Portrait | Lambda|


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Research reveals dyslexic men make great artists
09 November 2010
Psychologists have discovered a link between dyslexia and improved ability to judge space, which could explain the artistic ability of greats such as Leonardo da Vinci, Pablo Picasso and Auguste Rodin – all thought to be dyslexic.
New research at Middlesex University suggests dyslexic men are better than the general population at processing 3D visual information. This so-called visuospatial ability is key to success in the fields of art, architecture, and design. Surprisingly, the research did not establish this link in dyslexic women.
"It could be that spatial awareness develops in dyslexic readers because of their reduced language skill," said Dr Nicola Brunswick, a Senior Lecturer in psychology at Middlesex University.
"There is a body of evidence showing that men in general have better spatial awareness than women on some tasks. So greater attention paid to spatial awareness by dyslexic readers is likely to be more pronounced in men than in women."
"Also, many dyslexic people prefer to work out problems by thinking and doing rather than by speaking, this could help dyslexic men develop the kind of visual skills they need to succeed in the artistic and creative worlds," she added.
The British Dyslexia Association (BDA) welcomed the research. "Anecdotal evidence has long since suggested that some dyslexic individuals may have strengths in visuospatial processing and activities," said Dr Kate Saunders, Education Director at the BDA.
"The British Dyslexia Association welcomes empirical research into possible cognitive strengths and abilities for dyslexic individuals."
Dr Brunswick and her team from Middlesex University's Psychology department set a series of tasks for participants in their study, which involved real world situations. In one, they had to navigate their way around a virtual 3D town for one minute on a computer then reconstruct it from memory using models of the buildings and a to-scale floor plan.
"A lot of tests in this area in the past have been 'paper and pencil' tests but this isn't a good test of real world ability. Now we have real evidence to indicate that dyslexic men are better in this area," added Dr Brunswick.


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Students build their own cubes & 3-D shapes with these unique linking manipulatives!
Omnifix Cubes can be used with any math curriculum that specifies linking cubes.
Omnifix Cubes come in four brilliant colors and measure 2 cm square. Students snap flat shapes together to form a permanent cube which can then be joined to other cubes to build shapes and teach key geometry concepts!
Excellent hands-on manipulative to reach your for visual, spatial, and tactile learners! Fun to build and play with, as an engaging learning tool!


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Exchange Meal Plan
(Plan de intercambio de alimentos)
Many people with diabetes use a food-balancing program called the exchange meal plan to guide what they eat each day. For this meal plan, foods are divided into six groups: starch, fruit, milk, fat, vegetable, and meat. The plan sets a serving size (amount) for each food, and, within each group, each serving has a similar amount of calories, protein, carbohydrate, and fat.
This allows the person flexibility in planning meals by "exchanging" or substituting choices from lists of foods with similar nutritional content. Using the plan to balance the amount of carbohydrates eaten is particularly important for people with diabetes because these are the foods that are mainly responsible for the rise in blood sugar that occurs after eating.


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We model in detail a flare observed on Proxima Centauri with the EPIC-PN on board XMM-Newton at high statistics and high time resolution and coverage. Time-dependent hydrodynamic loop modeling is used to describe the rise and peak of the light curve, and a large fraction of the decay, including its change of slope and a secondary maximum, over more than 2 h. The light curve, the emission measure and the temperature derived from the data allow us to constrain the loop morphology and the heating function and to show that this flare can be described with two components: a major one triggered by an intense heat pulse injected in a single flaring loop with half-length ≈1.0 × 1010 cm, the other one by less intense heat pulses released about 1/2 h after the first one in related loop systems, probably arcades, with the same half-length. The heat functions of the two loop systems appear very similar: an intense pulse located at the loop footpoints followed by a low gradual decay distributed in the coronal part of the loop. The latter result and the similarity to at least one solar event (the Bastille Day flare in 2000) indicate that this pattern may be common to solar and stellar flares.Based on observations obtained with XMM-Newton, an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member states and the USA (NASA).
|Number of pages||15|
|Journal||ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSICS|
|Publication status||Published - 2004|
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Space and Planetary Science


Pardon me, but the concentrated sulphuric acid does not give off any fumes - you've probably mistaken it for nitric or hydrochloric acid. In chemistry labs, the large dessication jars are filled with H2SO4 in their lower part, so it takes water from, say, filters being dried.
Quote Originally Posted by Struan Gray
On the other hand, Sulphuric acid is usually sold in concentrated form, and then you have the fumes and the hydrophilia to cope with. Not a big deal if you treat it with respect, but I wouldn't have it anywhere that young kids can get at.


For those in healthcare. By those in healthcare.
Elevating discharge: A critical factor in preventing readmissions while improving the patient experience
Wayne Sensor, Chief Executive Officer, Ensocare
With risk migrating from payers to providers, hospitals can no longer afford to cut ties with patients at discharge. Instead, they should actively transition individuals to appropriate post-acute care settings and continually track and assess risk to ensure patients do not return to the hospital unnecessarily.
By enhancing discharge, hospitals not only can prevent avoidable readmissions and impact outcomes, they can also improve the patient's experience and satisfaction. Additionally, well-honed discharge processes can mitigate penalties while boosting workflow efficiency and overall care quality – ultimately protecting an organization's bottom line.
Though making the discharge effort more robust and interactive typically hasn't been a priority for organizations, it is becoming increasingly important given today's healthcare environment.
Hospitals that employ the following best practices can enable a reliable and consistent discharge and post-discharge experience for patients, their families and staff.
Deliver regular and targeted patient and family education
To lay the groundwork for an effective discharge, hospitals should develop a strong education program that engages patients and their families early and often to ensure they truly grasp the patient's condition. Being a well-informed care participant can increase a patient's chance of positive clinical outcomes post-discharge, while also enhancing satisfaction.
Before leaving the acute setting, patients and their families should understand the diagnosis, the patient's expected condition at the time of discharge and the prognosis, in addition to the medications, treatments or therapies included in the care plan. They also need to appreciate their roles in keeping the patient on the path to recovery.
By improving not just what information is provided but how it is delivered, hospitals can take their education programs to the next level, making post-discharge care more successful. For example, it is not uncommon for patients to receive paper packets about their condition or care plan prior to departure. Although these packets contain a great deal of information, delivering it in this fashion can be overwhelming to the patient, particularly if he or she has been prescribed new medications or has comorbidities which further complicate the condition. Additionally, it's difficult to know whether the patient understands or even reads the information conveyed in this manner.
By providing education in different and more meaningful ways, such as during in-person teaching sessions, through videos, or via other communication modes like mobile devices, portals or over the phone, hospitals can be confident patients fully comprehend the message. Furthermore, enlisting best practices such as the "teach-back" method helps hospital staff reliably assess understanding.
Seek optimal post-acute placement
Placing patients in the most appropriate post-acute location can ensure they receive optimal care when they need it. By leveraging care coordination and discharge technology, organizations are better equipped to efficiently and accurately match patients' needs with receiving facilities' capabilities and services.
For example, if a patient requires physical, speech and occupational therapy following a stroke, discharge technology can be used to identify potential post-acute providers capable of meeting the patient's needs. Because these can be extensive and include not just clinical requirements but also psychosocial preferences, using technology makes the matching process much more streamlined and precise. This technology also allows hospitals to provide a targeted list of possibilities to families, informing and aiding decision-making in moments rather than hours or days.
To optimize care coordination and discharge planning technology, hospitals should start discharge planning early – at the time of admission, if possible – ensuring enough time for adequate communication and decision-making amongst the family, hospital and receiving facility.
Smoothly transition clinical data
Supplying meaningful information related to the patient's condition is key for providing proper care. Whether paper-based or in an electronic format, there's no doubt health records contain a wealth of information about the patient's condition and health history; however, comprehensive records can be unwieldy and may even contain irrelevant or out-dated information.
For many hospitals, supplying the most relevant information in a timely fashion to a receiving facility can be challenging. But not doing so can delay the administration of necessary medications, treatments or therapies – potentially impacting patient outcomes.
Using discharge technology, hospitals can extract pertinent information directly from the patient's electronic health record (EHR) and automatically deliver it to a receiving facility before a patient is transferred, preventing the receiving organization from having to review dense patient records while also allowing the organization to ready prescriptions, treatments and therapies per the care plan.
Continue to stratify risk throughout the care continuum
Risk stratification involves assessing and responding to a patient's risk for returning to the hospital after discharge. Because risk can increase or decrease as patients reach or miss health milestones, hospitals should stratify risk throughout the care continuum – rather than solely upon discharge – and address the changing dynamics of the patient's condition.
Certain conditions, such as hip surgery, congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are more likely to result in readmission, and it is especially important to monitor these patients' recovery so the hospital can detect when a patient misses milestones and proactively deploy interventions before the patient returns to the acute setting.
To begin stratifying risk and tracking patients, hospitals can leverage an EHR or other technology with risk stratification capabilities. They should then identify each patient's preferred communication method and use it to stay connected with the individual, family and/or post-acute facility. Hospitals can also use automated reminders or other outreach strategies to obtain updates as needed.
Refining discharge yields better results
As healthcare continues to evolve, hospitals need to embrace targeted processes that facilitate patient discharge. Moreover, they must employ methods for monitoring patients after they leave the hospital, allowing organizations to intervene when readmission risk increases.
By elevating and automating the discharge effort, hospitals not only can prevent unnecessary readmissions and ensure patients are transferred to settings capable of meeting their clinical and psychosocial needs, they can also vastly improve the patient's experience, satisfaction and outcomes while securing the organization's financial health.
discharge, Ensocare, family education, patient education, patient engagement, reducing readmissions
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What is IPTV? Complete Divination Guide
What is IPTV
What is IPTV What is IPTV? The abbreviation of IPTV is Internet Protocol television. what is iptv mean PTV refers to Internet-based Protocol Television where the internet is used to deliver TV programs & Videos that are either live or on-demand. IPTV is a system where digital television service is delivered to the subscriber through … Read more


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Class: LinearModel
Add terms to linear regression model
mdl1 = addTerms(mdl,terms)
mdl1 = addTerms(mdl,terms) returns a linear model the same as mdl but with additional terms.
Input Arguments
Linear model, as constructed by fitlm or stepwiselm.
Terms to add to the mdl regression model. Specify as either a:
 - Text string representing one or more terms to add. For details, see Wilkinson Notation.
 - Row or rows in the terms matrix (see modelspec in fitlm). For example, if there are three variables A, B, and C:
 [0 0 0] represents a constant term or intercept
 [0 1 0] represents B; equivalently, A^0 * B^1 * C^0
 [1 0 1] represents A*C
 [2 0 0] represents A^2
 [0 1 2] represents B*(C^2)
Output Arguments
Linear model, the same as mdl but with additional terms given in terms. You can set mdl1 equal to mdl to overwrite mdl.
Wilkinson Notation
Wilkinson notation describes the factors present in models. The notation relates to factors present in models, not to the multipliers (coefficients) of those factors.
Wilkinson NotationFactors in Standard Notation
1Constant (intercept) term
A^k, where k is a positive integerA, A2,..., Ak
A + BA, B
A*BA, B, A*B
A:BA*B only
-BDo not include B
A*B + CA, B, C, A*B
A + B + C + A:BA, B, C, A*B
A*B*C - A:B:CA, B, C, A*B, A*C, B*C
A*(B + C)A, B, C, A*B, A*C
Statistics Toolbox™ notation always includes a constant term unless you explicitly remove the term using -1.
For details, see Wilkinson and Rogers [1].
expand all
Add a Term to a Model
Create a model of the carsmall data without any interactions, then add an interaction term.
Load the carsmall data and make a model of the MPG as a function of weight and model year.
load carsmall
ds = dataset(MPG,Weight);
ds.Year = ordinal(Model_Year);
mdl = fitlm(ds,'MPG ~ Year + Weight^2');
Add an interaction term to mdl.
terms = 'Year*Weight';
mdl1 = addTerms(mdl,terms)
mdl1 =
Linear regression model:
 MPG ~ 1 + Weight*Year + Weight^2
Estimated Coefficients:
 Estimate SE tStat pValue
 (Intercept) 48.045 6.779 7.0874 3.3967e-10
 Weight -0.012624 0._PHONE_ -3.0454 0._PHONE_
 Year_76 2.7768 3.0538 0.90931 0.3657
 Year_82 16.416 4.9802 3.2962 0._PHONE_
 Weight:Year_76 -0.00020693 0.00092403 -0.22394 0.82333
 Weight:Year_82 -0._PHONE_ 0._PHONE_ -1.7217 0.088673
 Weight^2 1.0121e-06 6.12e-07 1.6538 0.10177
Number of observations: 94, Error degrees of freedom: 87
Root Mean Squared Error: 2.76
R-squared: 0.89, Adjusted R-Squared 0.882
F-statistic vs. constant model: 117, p-value = 1.88e-39
[1] Wilkinson, G. N., and C. E. Rogers. Symbolic description of factorial models for analysis of variance. J. Royal Statistics Society 22, pp. 392–399, 1973.
Use stepwiselm to select a model from a starting model, continuing until no single step is beneficial.
Use removeTerms to remove particular terms.
Use step to optimally improve the model by adding or removing terms.
See Also
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How To
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Turning the camera off in your video chats can actually help save the environment....now there is a regal idea.
According to an article on Studyfinds.org, researchers from MIT, Yale, and Purdue University say videoconferencing and streaming high-definition content greatly increases a person's carbon footprint.
With the coronavirus pandemic shifting all sorts of activities to online-only, it's no surprise internet usage skyrocketed in 2020.
Despite a record drop in global carbon emissions during the year, study authors say the way the internet stores and transfers data still poses a serious concern for the environment.
The study finds just one hour in a video conference or streaming HD shows emits between 150 and 1,000 grams of carbon dioxide.
For comparison, a car burning one gallon of gasoline emits nearly 9,000 grams of carbon dioxide.
That hour in a video call also requires two to 12 liters of water and demands a land area the size of an iPad Mini.
Researchers say this is the first study to examine the internet's impact on water and land footprints, in addition to its carbon emissions.
The study estimated the carbon, water, and land footprints of each gigabyte of data used on several websites including YouTube, Zoom, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok.
The team also calculated the impact of online gaming and general web surfing. Ah ha...just as researchers expected, the more video playing in an app, the greater the environmental impact.
It's a work in progress. Do what you can.
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Tax Planning for Small Contractors Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the "Act") was passed by the House and Senate and signed by the President in December of 2017 with many provisions effective January 1, 2018. One provision is a huge win for construction contractors, particularly those with average revenues between $10,000,000 and $25,000,000. Tax planning just got a lot more interesting and complex for those in that window. The Act changed the definition of a small contractor exempt from the requirement to use the percentage-of-completion method (PCM) for long-term contracts from the pre-Act law, which provided an exception for construction companies with average annual gross receipts of $10 million or less in the preceding three years.
For contracts entered into after Dec. 31, 2017, the exception for small construction contracts from the requirement to use the PCM is expanded to apply to contracts for the construction or improvement of real property if the contract:
- is expected (at the time such contract is entered into) to be completed within two years of commencement of the contract and
- is performed by a taxpayer that (for the tax year in which the contract was entered into) meets the $25 million gross receipts test.
This is a benefit for those contractors that exceeded the $10,000,000 threshold previously and lost the ability to utilize a more beneficial method of recognizing revenues. Some of the available options for small contractors, include:
- Cash Method – The cash method of accounting can be used as an overall method of accounting and to account for long-term contracts. Income is recognized when cash is actually or constructively received, and expenses are generally deductible when paid.
- Accrual Method – The accrual method can be used for both an overall method of accounting and for long-term contracts. Income under the accrual method is generally recognized when the payment is received, payment is due, or payment is earned, whichever occurs first.
- Retentions under the Accrual Method – As a variation to the accrual method of accounting, a contractor can elect to exclude this retention from income until received or billable under the contract.
- Completed Contract Method – The completed contract method of accounting suspends both revenue and job costs until the completion of the job. The effect is to defer the contracts gross profit from inception until the contract is completed.
- Percentage of Completion Method (PCM) – Although not required, the small contractor has the option, like a large contractor, to use the percentage-of-completion method (PCM) of accounting for long-term contracts under §460(b).
For contractors between $10,000,000 and $25,000,000, the first step is to communicate with the tax preparer to determine the best available accounting method for long term contracts. The change in the threshold provides a unique opportunity for construction contractors to revert to a method utilized prior to becoming a large contractor, as previously defined. It also provides an opportunity to elect to utilize a different method of accounting if that is more beneficial currently.
Once the best method is determined, contractors should review prior tax filings to determine if any Form 3115 ("Application for Change in Accounting Method") was previously filed. Specifically, contractors should review the tax year in which their average revenues first exceeded $10,000,000 and they were no longer a small contractor. While Form 3115 was not required to change to the percentage of completion method in that year, many construction contractors filed one. If this was the case, Form 3115 will be required again in 2018 in order to change the method of accounting for exempt long-term contracts. If Form 3115 was not filed previously to change the method of accounting for long-term contracts, then the method of exempt long-term contracts will revert to the method in place before becoming a large contractor, and Form 3115 will not be required. It is important to note the use of this PCM exception for small construction contracts is applied on a cutoff basis for all similarly classified contracts. This means the change in method of accounting applies only to contracts entered into after the effective date of the change.
The third step would be to review each of the contracts, both short term and long term, before year end to effectively utilize the accounting methods in place. With the additional flexibility that the Act provides to an increased pool of small contractors, profitable contractors will have the ability to defer significant taxable income to future years. Proper planning can help cash flow by avoiding a large tax burden currently. The 2018 tax year is the year to take advantage of the opportunity!
It is highly recommended that each construction contractor review their financial situation to determine the best accounting method suitable for the specific needs of the company. Each contractor will also need to review prior filings to determine if a change in accounting method was filed in the year $10,000,000 of gross receipts was exceeded. This will be an indicator of whether additional filings will be required for 2018.
* * *
Nicholas L. Shires, CPA is a tax partner with Dannible & McKee, LLP. You may contact him at _PHONE_ or online at _URL_.