text:
Immigrant Population In Barcelona: Residential Characteristics And Use Of Public Space
The arrival of numerous immigrant populations in the last decade is causing deep changes in the physical and social morphology of the Spanish cities. This population locates in specific areas of our cities and has distinct settlement patterns from those of the native population. Likewise, the characteristics of their housing and the use that they make of the public space are different from those of the rest of the population. In this paper does a characterization of the physical conditions of the dwellings where this population live and of the public space that the immigrants use and the social consequences that these challenges involve. The territorial area of the research is the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona. It has been developed in different neighborhoods of the RMB with different urban and demographic characteristics and with a high concentration of immigrant population. The methodology used has been a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques. First of all, a quantitative approach on the housing and the public space of the zone of studied has been made. Afterwards, different qualitative methods to study the results in depth (participant observation, interviews, analysis of photographies) have been used. Keywords: immigrant population, housing, public space, qualitative
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Latinized Greek: hydrargyrum, meaning watery or liquid silver) and atomic number 80. A heavy, silvery transition metal, mercury is one of five elements that are liquid at or near standard room temperature (the others are the metals caesium, francium, and gallium, and the nonmetal bromine). Mercury is used in thermometers, barometers and other scientific apparatus, although the use of mercury in thermometers has been largely phased out in clinical and scientific environments (in favor of alcohol-filled, digital or thermistor-based replacements) due to concerns about the element's toxicity. Mercury is still used in dental amalgam. Mercury is mostly obtained by reduction from the mineral cinnabar. Mercury, like lead, is a neurotoxin, and elevated blood mercury levels have led to retardation and deformities in children."
Reply:water.
horns costume
Is it ok for a cat to eat rose petals?
This question was asked by others but I would like a definitive answer from someone who knows. Maybe a veternarian or vetinary student? My cat likes the red rose petals (Lincoln Roses) from our garden. Ok for the cat to eat, yes or no? And why?
Is it ok for a cat to eat rose petals?
Your cat can still enjoy the rose petals...and clover, too! Our cats loved our rose garden, but would only eat the botton flowers, so we didnt' mind. We even planted extra for them! I worked as a volunteer to ASPCA for many years. It is okay!
Reply:NO!!! Your cat is going to die a slow, yet horrible death!!! Just Kidding. The cat will be fine.
Reply:Most of us are surrounded by plants, both wild and cultivated, in our homes and gardens and come to no harm. However, a small percentage of these plants have the potential to cause harm to ourselves and our cats.
Who is at risk?
Most cats are fastidious creatures and are careful what they eat. Poisoning in cats is therefore generally rare. It is the young, inquisitive cat or kitten that is most at risk of eating harmful plants, particularly household ones. Boredom also has a part to play. When a cat is confined to a run or lives entirely indoors hazardous plants should be removed from its environment. Cats given free access to the outside world tend to have other things to occupy their minds than sampling unfamiliar vegetation. But even free roaming adult cats may accidentally ingest needles or seeds that have become entangled in their coat during grooming.
Cats don't eat plants!
All plants, even grass, can have an irritating effect on a cat's gastrointestinal system causing them to vomit. But, given the opportunity, cats like to nibble on grass. When not available their attention may turn to often less suitable household plants. Tender plants are generally a favourite. Particularly dangerous is Diffenbachia (dumb cane).
Preventive action
Remove all potentially hazardous household plants to prevent unnecessary exposure. This is especially important for kittens or cats kept indoors. A list of plants that are unsuitable to grow in a house with cats is given below.
Outdoors the story is not so simple. Free roaming cats have access to many gardens so it will be impossible to prevent all possible contact with potentially harmful plants. You can however remove the most toxic plants from your garden and make a note of any in your neighbour's gardens that are potentially dangerous. List common and Latin names. This list may help your vet if poisoning is suspected.
You can also ensure that any new additions to the garden are safe. The Horticultural Trade Association has a code of practice for its members and most garden centres and nurseries label plants that are toxic or cause skin reactions. Plants are grouped into three categories: A Poisonous; B Toxic if eaten; and C Harmful if eaten. You are unlikely to find a category A plant on sale - Poison Ivy being one example. Category B plants should be avoided. After gardening, never leave hedge clippings or uprooted plants near pets. Their novelty value may encourage inquisitive chewing. Sap from damaged stems can cause skin irritation as well as being poisonous. Bulbs, rhizomes and roots can be the most hazardous parts of some plants.
Hazardous plants
The following is a fairly comprehensive list of plants that are potentially poisonous or harmful to your cat when eaten. Contact with some of the plants listed may be sufficient to cause skin irritation (marked *) It is often the fruit or seeds of plants that are potentially harmful. Many of us are already familiar with plants that carry really toxic berries such as Deadly Nightshade. Only a small quantity of these need to be eaten for a fatal result. Other plants in the list may come as a surprise - Daffodils for example. Here, however, it is the bulb that causes harm if ingested.
The fact that the list contains some very common plants should not be cause for concern. Most of these potentially harmful plants taste bad and are unlikely to be eaten in sufficient quantities to cause permanent damage. Woody garden plants are also unlikely to be eaten by your cat - tender household plants pose most risk.
Hazardous plants
House plants
Castor Oil Plant, see Ricinus
Christmas Cherry, see Solanum
Chrysanthemum, see Dendranthema
Croton, see Codiaeum
Dumb cane, see Dieffenbachia
Dieffenbachia *
Devil's Ivy, see Epipremnum aureum
Elephant's Ear, see Alocasia, Caladium
Epipremnum aureum
Holly, see Ilex
Hypoestes phyllostachya
Ivy, see Hedera
Mistletoe, see Viscum
Nerium oleander
Oleander see Nerium
Poinsettia, see Euphorbia
Star of Bethlehem, see Ornithogalum umbellatum
Umbrella Plant, see Schefflera
Zebra Plant, see Aphelandra
Garden plants
Abrus precatorius
Aconitum *
Agrostemma githago
Alstroemeria *
Angel's Trumpets, see Brugmansia
Angel Wings, see Caladium
Apricot, see Prunus armeniaca
Avocado, see Persea americana
Azalea, see Rhododendron
Baneberry, see Actaea
Bird of Paradise, see Strelitzia
Black-eyed Susan, see Thunbergia
Bloodroot, see Sanguinaria
Box, see Buxus
Broom, see Cytisus
Buckthorn, see Rhamnus
Burning Bush, see Dictamnus
Buttercup, see Ranunculus
Cherry Laurel see Prunus laurocerasus
Chincherinchee see Ornithogalum
Caltha *
Centaurea cyanus
Chrysanthemum see Dendranthema
Columbine see Aquilegia
Convallaria majalis
Corncockle, see Agrostemma githago
Cornflower, see Centaurea cyanus
Crocus, see Colchicum
x Cupressocyparis leylandii *
Daffodil, see Narcissus
Daphne *
Datura *
Dendranthema *
Echium *
Euphorbia *
Elder, see Sambucus
False acacia, see Robinia
Flax see Linum
Frangula see Rhamnus
Fremontodendron *
Foxglove see Digitalis
Four o'clock: see Mirabilis jalapa
Giant Hog Weed, see Heracleum mantegazzianum
Gloriosa superba
Glory Lily see Gloriosa
Hedera *
Helleborus *
Hemlock, see Conium
Henbane, see Hyoscyamus
Heracleum mantegazzianum
Holly, see Ilex
Horse-chestnut, see Aesculus
Ivy, see Hedera
Juniperus sabina
Larkspur, see Delphinium
Lily of the Valley, see Convallaria
Lobelia (except bedding Lobelia) *
Lords and Ladies (Cuckoo pint), see Arum
Lycopersicon *
Madagascar periwinkle, see Catharanthus
Marigold, see Tagetes
Mirabilis jalapa
Monkswood, see Aconitum
Morning Glory, see Ipomoea
Nerium oleander
Nightshade, deadly, see Atropa
Nightshade, woody, see Solanum
Oak, see Quercus
Onion, see Allium
Peach, see Prunus persica
Peony, see Paeonia
Persea americana
Phytolacca *
Pokeweed, see Phytolacca
Poppy, see Papaver
Primula obconica *
Privet see Ligustrum
Prunus armeniaca
Prunus laurocerasus
Prunus persica
Rhamus (including R.frangula)
Rhus *
Rosary pea, see Abrus precatorius
Rubber plant, see Ficus
Rue, see Ruta
Schefflera *
Skunk cabbage, see Lysichiton
Snowdrop, see Galanthus
Solomon's seal, see Polygonatum
Spindle Tree, see Euonymus
Spurge, see Euphorbia
Sum


Logic Games Practice Test 4
Paragraph for questions 1 to 6
A committee, chosen from two groups, one group of the sales executives D, E, F, G and the other of the sales managers U, V, W is formed whenever required.
Each committee has three, four, or five members.
Both sales executives and sales managers must be represented in any committee, but never by equal numbers of members
Each committee is chaired by a member representing the group whose representatives are in the minority in that committee.
D and U cannot be in any committee unless they are together.
Either E or V or both are in any committee that is formed.
Question 1
Which of the following is a properly constituted committee, with the chairperson listed first?
 1. V; E, F
 2. D; E, U, W
 3. E; F, G, V
 4. W; D, U, V
 5. D; F, G, U,V
Correct Answer: A
Question 2
If, in a given committee, G must serve as a chairperson, the other members of that committee must be which of the following?
 1. F and V
 2. V and W
 3. E, U, and V
 4. E, V, and W
 5. U, V, and W
Correct Answer: B
Question 3
If a new committee, chaired by V, has been formed from an old committee, chaired by F, merely by replacing a single member of the old committee, which of the following must be the person who was thus replaced?
 1. D
 2. E
 3. G
 4. U
 5. W
Correct Answer: E
Question 4
If a committee consists of D, E, U, V and W, then what can be the composition of a new committee which is formed by replacing the maximum possible members of the old committee?
 1. D, E, V
 2. F, G, U
 3. F, D, U
 4. F, G, V
 5. E, F, G
Correct Answer: D
Question 5
Which of the following can be a committee of four chaired be V?
 1. D, E, U, V
 2. E, F, G, U
 3. G, E, V, W
 4. G, E, F, V
 5. D, E, F, W
Correct Answer: D
Question 6
For some unavoidable reasons the committee was made consisting of six members. Which of the following need not be a member of the committee?
 1. D
 2. G
 3. H
 4. V
 5. U
Correct Answer: D
Paragraph for questions 7 to 12
A teacher is making five children stand in a row. Each child is assigned a number tag before being made to stand in the row. The tags are not necessarily according to their positions.
Amy, Tara, Xenia, Yana, Pam are the children and they are given numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
The following conditions apply:
Exactly one number is given to a child.
Pam must be made to stand fourth and assigned number 1.
4 must be assigned to Yana.
Tara and Xenia must each be made to stand in one of the extreme positions.
Xenia cannot be given either number 2 or 3.
Question 7
Each of the following is a possible assignment of children to positions one and two, respectively, except
 1. Tara, Amy
 2. Tara, Yana
 3. Xenia, Amy
 4. Xenia, Yana
 5. Yana, Amy
Correct Answer: E
Question 8
Which of the following could be made to stand in third position?
 1. The child numbered 1
 2. The child numbered 3
 3. Tara
 4. Xenia
 5. Pam
Correct Answer: B
Question 9
If Amy is made to stand second, which of the following must be true?
 1. 2 is assigned to the child standing fifth.
 2. 3 is assigned to the child standing first.
 3. 5 is assigned to the child standing second.
 4. Tara is standing first.
 5. Yana is standing third.
Correct Answer: E
Question 10
If 4 and 3 are assigned to children standing second and third respectively, which of the following must be true?
 1. 2 is assigned to the child standing first
 2. Amy is standing third
 3. Tara is standing fifth.
 4. There is exactly one child standing between the one who is given number 4 and the one who is given number 5.
 5. There are exactly two children standing between Tara and Yana.
Correct Answer: B
Question 11
If 2 is assigned to Amy are she is standing second then, which of the following must be true?
 1. 1 is assigned to Yana.
 2. 3 is assigned to Tara.
 3. 4 is assigned to Yana who is standing fifth.
 4. 4 is assigned to Pam.
 5. 5 is assigned to Tara who is standing third.
Correct Answer: B
Question 12
All of the following is either true or can be true except
 1. Pam is standing fourth.
 2. Xenia can neither be given number 2 nor stand second.
 3. Tara is assigned number 2.
 4. Amy is not standing in an extreme position.
 5. Yana can not stand in any even position.
Correct Answer: E
Paragraph for questions 13 to 15
A construction company is planning the types of buildings to be constructed on a plot. Types of buildings are A, B, C, D, E and F. Buildings of type A and C are the only buildings classified as tall buildings. The company plans to construct two rows of exactly four buildings each, one on the east edge of the property and one on the west edge.
The selection of the buildings is subject to the following constraints:
Each type of building must be built at least once.
Each row of buildings must contain at least one tall building.
A row that includes one or more A type buildings must include at least one D type building.
A C type building cannot be constructed in the same row as an F type building.
Question 13
If three C type buildings are selected for one row, which of the following can be the buildings selected for the other row?
 1. A, B, D, E
 2. A, B, E, F
 3. A, C, D, F
 4. A, D, E, F
 5. B, D, E, F
Correct Answer: D
Question 14
Which of the following can be the selection of buildings for one of the rows?
 1. A, B, D, E
 2. A, B, D, F
 3. A, C, E, E
 4. A, D, D, D
 5. C, C, E, F
Correct Answer: B
Question 15
If a total of two A buildings are selected, which of the following must be true?
 1. Only one B type building is selected.
 2. Only one E type building is selected.
 3. Only one F type building is selected.
 4. Two D type buildings are selected.
 5. The two A type buildings are in the same row.
Correct Answer: C
PRAXIS2 test information
PRAXIS2 Test Format
PRAXIS2 Test Format and structure
PRAXIS2 Test Preparation
PRAXIS2 Test Preparation
PRAXIS2 Scores
PRAXIS2 Scores and scoring


AMOKKA and Fazenda Progresso
We have a strong relationship with Fazenda Progresso and in recent years our master roaster has visited Fazenda Progresso and has been able to choose which lots he preferred before other buyers, enabling us to choose the highest quality beans. We use this coffee a lot and offer it as a single origin coffee and also as a major part of the blends AMOKKA Crema, Gorgona, City Roast and a smaller part of our Rainforest blend.
About Fazenda Progresso
Fazenda Progresso Farm is a family run business which was founded in 1984. The farm has a total of 22,000 hectares, with 687 hectares designated to coffee growing.
The plantation is situated in the province of Bahia close to the Equator, and here the Borré family have cultivated the land for three generations.
 - Altitude
 1150 m
 - Process
 - Havestmethod
 - Havestperiod
 June - September
 - Sort
Social Focus
Fazenda Progresso has around 300 seasonal workers who pick berries during the harvest period (April - August).
The Borré family are focussed on providing good working conditions for their workers and provide accommodation facilities, a school for the children, medical assistance, daily meals in sheltered facilities, membership of a union and guaranteed pay even on days when the harvest is stopped for any reason.
Fazenda Progresso have 687 hectares dedicated to coffee growing. The best Arabica coffee is usually grown at a high altitude and the coffee trees at Fazenda Progresso are grown at an altitude of 1.150m to ensure the highest quality.
At Fazenda Progresso they make most of their fertilisers themselves by mixing coffee berry leftovers with the leftovers from their potato production and other certain micro organisms. The farm also always leaves 20% of the land untouched to ensure a sustainable environment for the future.


text:
Approved Clearing and Grading Plan
A plan that preserves approximately 20% of the Fenton site in buffers and open space was approved by the Town's Development Review Committee in March 2019. The buffer and open space areas will protect streams and trees on the site from development activity, and will support community goals related to water quality, air quality, wildlife habitat, screening of adjacent neighborhoods, and community appearance.
The approved plan allows the Fenton developer to begin development-related activity on the site, with the following key activities:
- Installation of Tree Protection Fencing
- Inspection and Approval of Fencing
- Installation of Soil Erosion and Sedimentation Control Devices
- Inspection of Erosion and Sedimentation Control Devices
- Approval of a Certificate of Compliance
- Tree Removal (will occur in phases)
- Earth-Moving (Grading) activity
The full plan set can be accessed via the Town's online plan review software (IDT).

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


text:
The Sporting Edge UK Altitude Training equipment, ranges from the Cloud 9 personal mask based kit, to Altitude Rooms and 'fully climatic' Environmental Chambers.
- This is the personal/home use equipment of our range which is suitable to be used with a mask (exercise) or an Altitude Tent (sleeping or exercise). The air from the Cloud 9 is ideal for breathing direct once connected to the reservoir/silencer bag, it produces 'altitude' air ideal for altitude training regimes.
- The LT is powered from a standard power socket and is controlled by the same touch screen application which is used in our larger systems. It includes sensors to monitor Oxygen, Temperature, Humidity and Carbon Dioxide. These are ideal for the altitude bedroom, house or a small commercial gym set up. This form of altitude training elicits a greater 'buy in' from the participant due to the removal of the mask element.
Standard Altitude Room
- Our Altitude Rooms can be created from a room using near standard building techniques and comprise an air compressor, an air separation unit and a touch screen controller. As with the LT system all Oxygen, Temperature, Humidity and Carbon Dioxide readings are monitored and displayed. These systems can range up to 1650m.cu size rooms.
Environmental Rooms & Chambers
- The Environmental range of rooms and chambers are fully integrated into a touch screen application, offering one touch 'pre-set' destinations. The pre-sets will comprise of a combination of temperature, humidity and altitude. Depending on the extremes of the conditions required, determines the construction of the room from one comprising near standard building techniques to a fully insulated cold room incorporating a lobby and service hatch.


text:
A romantic and a samurai a comparative look at mortality and society according to Miyamoto Musashi and John Keats
Date of Award
M.A. in English
Department of English
Advisor: Andrew Slade
John Keats, one of the most famous and frequently canonized British poets, has been the focus of enormous research. However, that research has typically focused on explications of his poems or discussion of his modes of thought in other pieces of British or sometimes American literature. Rarely has scholarship used Keats as an opportunity to look cross-culturally. The focus of this work is on creating a new context in for the work of British poet John Keats and the writer and samurai Miyamoto Musashi on the related subjects of death and truth in society. By examining them, both in terms of their writing and biographies, it is clear that neither author is complete without reading them in the context of a pluralistic discussion on death and society. By using both authors, a dialogue emerges on these subjects in which we can see a similarity in the human experience with truth and death as well as specific differences in their approach to what Musashi calls emptiness and Keats calls negative capability. By placing these two authors within each other's context, a new way of viewing their works emerges in that we see their works as individual struggles with human mortality as opposed to seeing them in their traditionally singular contexts and viewing them of universal theorists on the experience of dying. By applying theories which deconstruct society's influence over its members we can begin to understand the debate between Keats and Musashi on how people accept mortality. Furthermore, by examining the writing of these two authors in light of these theoretical perspectives, it is possible to see how these theoretical viewpoints began to play out in the lives of both of these artists. Finally, after looking at the diverging personal experiences of Keats and Musashi, we can again reconcile both authors through the idea of developing a pluralism of authorities and experiences on the subject of mortality.
Keats, John, _PHONE_ Criticism and interpretation, Musashi, Miyamoto, _PHONE_ Criticism and interpretation, Mortality in literature, Death in literature, Comparative literature European and Japanese
Copyright 2011, author
Cerone, Christopher Alan, "A romantic and a samurai a comparative look at mortality and society according to Miyamoto Musashi and John Keats" (2011). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 446.


text:
Mortensen, Niels Asher and Jauho, Antti-Pekka and Flensberg, Karsten and Schomerus, Henning (1999) Conductance enhancement in quantum-point-contact semiconductor-superconductor devices. Physical Review B, 60. p. 13762. ISSN 1550-235X
We present numerical calculations of the conductance of an interface between a phase-coherent two-dimensional electron gas and a superconductor with a quantum point contact in the normal region. Using a scattering matrix approach we reconsider the geometry of De Raedt, Michielsen, and Klapwijk [Phys. Rev. B 50, 631 (1994)] which was studied within the time-dependent Bogoliubovâ��de Gennes formalism. We find that the factor-of-2 enhancement of the conductance GNS compared to the normal state conductance GN for ideal interfaces may be suppressed for interfaces with a quantum point contact with only a few propagating modes. The suppression is found to depend strongly on the position of the Fermi level. We also study the suppression due to a barrier at the interface and find an anomalous behavior caused by quasiparticle interference. Finally, we consider the limit of sequential tunneling and find a suppression of the factor-of-2 enhancement which may explain the absence of conductance enhancement in experiments on metal-superconductor structures.
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George Meredith
Here you will find the Poem Hypnos On Ida of poet George Meredith
Hypnos On Ida
[Iliad, B. XIV. V. 283]
They then to fountain-abundant Ida, mother of wild beasts,
Came, and they first left ocean to fare over mainland at Lektos,
Where underneath of their feet waved loftiest growths of the woodland.
There hung Hypnos fast, ere the vision of Zeus was observant,
Mounted upon a tall pine-tree, tallest of pines that on Ida
Lustily spring off soil for the shoot up aloft into aether.
There did he sit well-cloaked by the wide-branched pine for concealment,
That loud bird, in his form like, that perched high up in the mountains,
Chalkis is named by the Gods, but of mortals known as Kymindis.


Accelerating Time to Competence of Customer Service Representatives – Part 2
Part 2 of 2: Continuous Learning and Performance Support
In the first article of this 2-part series, I wrote about the importance of employee engagement as a way of getting the most out of customer service representatives, and getting them up to speed as quickly as possible.
 In part 2 below, I examine what a continuous learning strategy entails, and why empowering your customer service representatives with performance support during their actual daily work is an effective and value-driven strategy.
The Post-Training Gap
improvementSo you're the manager of a customer support team, and you're frequently facing the following challenge:
Your group of new representatives has gone through training, which on the surface passed successfully.
They were attentive and responsive, and seemed to fully absorb the wealth of information they heard from the trainer on how to use your company's software, even demonstrating an ability to operate it successfully.
However, as training ended and you've assigned them to their daily tasks, as they begin the grind of the typical work flow, they are struggling.
They make repeated mistakes in operating the software, or they are asking others for assistance, resulting in frustrated customers who they are tending to, as they process inevitably takes much longer than desired.
Some customers are simply giving up and hanging up, and while others may stick with it, they obviously aren't going to be left with a very positive impression of the level of customer service.
It's the basic truth that in just about any organization, whether you're talking about customer service employees or those in other positions, there is a gap between the end of training and the moment when employees reach full levels of proficiency and independence in performing their work.
That is true even in the case of effective training sessions, conducted by engaging and interesting trainers, with interactive content.
It's just the nature of how people learn, by repetition as opposed to simply hearing new information, grasping it, and mastering it immediately.
For most at least, it simply doesn't work like that. So you're faced with a new challenge.
How can you get your customer service representatives to transfer what they learned in training and apply it to their every-day work?
How can you raise their performance without the need for further training, separated from their required work? In other words, how can you bridge that gap between training and performance proficiency?
How Continuous Learning Helps Boost Performance
While in the past, employee training was seen more as a one-time event, following which employees would work proficiently, increasingly companies are striving to establish a continuous learning strategy, one in which learning development continues long after the initial training sessions have ended.
Not only that, it embraces the realization that MOST learning takes place outside of formal training, but rather within the context of work.
The key idea is that employees need to continue to learn and grow in order to support their work performance.
As the environment in which business operates is constantly evolving, there is a clear need to foster a workplace that is open to adaptation.
customer service rep1Technology used in the workplace is changing at lightning speed, and we live in an age where a flexible and adapting workforce is essential.
Technology is the gateway to new learning opportunities
Continued advancements in technology clearly have made continuous learning more possible and viable.
There is a wide variety of technology options for enhancing knowledge and providing performance support.
These include a range of e-learning software, m-learning, which provides form learning materials to be accessed from any type of mobile device, webinars, YouTube videos, and other social media channels.
These all, to varying degrees, have enabled so-called 'informal learning', outside of the basic framework of office activities, to evolve.
In-work learning software, such as WalkMe, enables managers to provide step-by-step guidance software which continues to train employees within the moment of work. Through a series of tip balloons displayed onscreen, your cusomter service representatives receive clear and simple instructions on how to perform any tasks, not matter how complex.
It helps to reduce the time need for training (as managers can get their customer service professional to their tasks quicker), reduces costs, and lowers the need of the reps to ask for assistance, as the guidance is right there in front of them onscreen.
Some great performance support tools to provide in-work performance support include New Relic, great for facilitating a truly crowdsourced workforce, Librato, good for integration with other learning software to track training or constant learning environment, and PacketTrap RMM, a great way for IT managers to track problems with infrastructure or to spot where customer service representatives are having trouble with their systems or learning proficiency with them.
Improving customer service performance
All of these tools, and others like them, have not only helped shift the discussion in learning circles in recent years away from the training->work formula toward a more long-term strategy.
happy womenThey have also, according to company testimonials and independent industry studies, helped increase overall performance.
In the customer service world, the value is clear.
From the managerial perspective, you can slash training costs and time spent away from daily tasks.
Perhaps as important, you can alleviate the frustration of that post-training period mentioned above, as employee errors are reduced, and proficiency levels are reached much more quickly.
Your employees as well will noticeably perform better in operating enterprise software and websites. These types of performance support technologies also play a significant role in employee engagement, which I discussed in detail in the previous article.
They help directly tie learning to performance, increasing motivation, sense of ownership and empowerment.
They also of course help relieve both customer service representatives' frustration and confusion, and most importantly for your business, they lower customer frustration.
Customer service managers would therefore best take this message to heart. Look at your team's learning and growth as continuous process, one which allows them immediate support when needed, while increasing efficiency and performance levels.
Provide your team with the tools and support to allow them to feel fully engaged and motivated to perform well. And you WILL see the difference.
Jason is the former Lead Author & Editor of TrainingStation Blog


Mater et Magistra or politico and ideologue?
Why is the Church taking sides in European politics and not focusing on the rampant secularization and the dilution of Europe's Christian roots?
Pope Francis greets Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg during his general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican April 17, 2019. In a new interview on the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Amazon, Pope Francis praised the increased awareness and efforts among young people to seek action on climate change. (CNS photo/Yara Nardi, Reuters)
How does it feel to go to Church to celebrate the Assumption of Our Lady—or, as Byzantines say, the Dormition of Our Lady—and hear politics?
I am back from a splendid pontifical high Mass in a very special Marian shrine with an overwhelmingly large number of pilgrims overflowing the church, which is unusual in northern Europe (Germany). The local bishop seemed more like a politician preaching in favor of a political party than a bishop teaching the faith. The homily started with a statement in support of the European Union, bashing nationalists and populisms, while praising partnerships and advocating for protecting the environment. Only after this diatribe did all who were gathered, having traveled miles to attend, hear about the Assumption of Our Lady.
Why are our clergy and bishops not teaching what they are supposed to teach, instead becoming entangled in contemporary politics and ideology—and worse, taking sides in current politics and with certain politicians and sharing the same script of their political agenda? Don't we have enough of politics already, as we are bombarded from every direction? Why isn't the Church being the Church, a teacher—a magistra–of faith? Why aren't our bishops teaching?
Obviously, I was disappointed, to say the least. However, the homily for the Feast of the Assumption reminded me of the August 9, 2019, La Stampa interview of Pope Francis. The topics covered seemed almost identical to those included in the homily. In fact, when I first read the Holy Father's interview, I thought it to be probably one of the most political interviews in his pontificate so far. The themes explored in the interview are hot buttons, highly contested in both European politics in general and Italian politics in particular: European Union integration, sovereignty, immigration, globalism, populism, nationalism, and the environment.
Where is Christ and the Church as Mater et Magistra in all this? Why are the priorities shifted to a an ideological-political platform? What has the Church to offer that is different from what the political parties and political contestants are offering to the faithful and to the lapsed Catholics who on Holy Days make an effort to return? In what ways, exactly, is the Church qualified to make judgments on political parties and policies?
The August 9 interview seems to show no boundary between the secular realm and the preaching of the Kingdom of God. The Church's involvement in politics—and worse, taking sides in political debates and highly contested matters—can cause dangerous misunderstandings and exclusion of people, including the faithful who do not abide by what they hear coming from the altar. By involving itself in this way in politics, the Church also misses out on teaching opportunities, as was the case of the homily of the bishop on the Feast of Mary's Assumption.
Pope Francis is the pope of the peripheries, bringing the peripheries and the plight of the peripherals to the center's attention, as he is constantly doing with immigrants, the poor, and the marginalized. Additionally, Pope Francis is the pontiff who greatly values the vitality and the particularities of the periphery. According to his theology of the peripheries, the periphery and the peripherals can both enrich and challenge the center's perceptions. In the 2013 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium Pope Francis made an important distinction between globalism and Europeanism on the one hand, and sovereignties, nationalisms, and populisms on the other by using the model of a sphere versus a polyhedron, explaining: "… the sphere, which is no greater than its parts, where every point is equidistant from the centre, and there are no differences between them. Instead…the polyhedron… reflects the convergence of all its parts, each of which preserves its distinctiveness."
In other words, the pontiff is making a distinction between the global, which in his model is a sphere (which does not value the particularities of different cultures) and the specific, which is a polyhedron (which values the particularity of every culture).
However, the August 9 interview is very different from Evangelii Gaudium and the sphere-polyhedron model—the global versus particular—when the Holy Father talks about the global European Union. In the interview, the pontiff rightly emphasized how important dialogue is between different countries and parties and among people in the European Union. He explained that integration and unity of European identities is important, and the way to accomplish this oneness is through dialogue.
However, immediately after making this statement of global Europeanism (the sphere) which is "the dream of the Founding Fathers [which] had substance because it was an implementation of this unity [of different identities/peoples/countries]," a contradictory argument is laid out condemning the sovereignty of each nation (polyhedron): "Europe first, then each one of us. Each one of us is not secondary, it is important, but Europe counts more." Does this sound like America First or Italy for the Italians? Why the change for the global Europeanism—the sphere? The European Union's "unity has weakened over the years, partly because of administration problems and internal disagreements. But it must be saved," the pontiff remarked, adding unreserved approval of the newly elected Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen as President of the European Commission, saying "because a woman can be the right person to revive the strength of the Founding Fathers. Women know how to bring people together, unite."
Why is the Church or the Pope taking sides and supporting politicians who still have not proven their worth in their new political positions? Why alienate the men here, who make up half of the population? Are not men capable of establishing unity? There is much more to say about the difficult transition of countries to the European Union and the yet unresolved and highly contested issues between member countries. Much remains to be seen in the relations between the powerful-axis countries Germany and France and the second-class European Union citizens, or the newcomers to the European Union, and how these countries are treated—or how the countries leaving the union or those aspiring to enter the union are treated.
Again, why is the Church taking sides in European politics and not focusing on the rampant secularization and the dilution of Europe's Christian roots? Teaching the faith is urgent, and this is what the Church, Mater et Magistra, is called and expected to do.
As for the homily of the bishop in the Marian shrine on the Feast of the Assumption, I am not sure if the faithful in the congregation brought any uplifting Christian message to home; they all probably, like me, left thinking of politics as usual.
About Ines Angeli Murzaku 21 Articles
Ines Angeli Murzaku ( is Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, Director of Catholic Studies Program and the Founding Chair of the Department of Catholic Studies at Seton Hall University. She earned a doctorate of research from the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome part of the Pontifical Gregorian University Consortium and has held visiting positions at the Universities of Bologna and Calabria in Italy and University of Münster in Germany. She is a regular commentator to media outlets on religious matters. She has worked for or collaborated with the Associated Press, CNN, Catholic World Report, National Catholic Register, Voice of America, Relevant Radio, The Catholic Thing, Crux, The Record, The Stream, Vatican Radio (Vatican City), and EWTN (Rome). Dr. Murzaku is currently writing a book on St. Mother Teresa entitled Mother Teresa: The Saint of the Peripheries who Became Catholicism's Center Piece to be published by Paulist Press in 2020.
 1. I had a similar experience in 1966. Went to Mass on Sunday only to be treated to.a sermon that essentially extolled the virtues of socialism–ironically, on the Feast of Christ the King. Didn't have to leave the country for the experience, though. It was in Lincoln, Nebraska.
 2. "Again, why is the Church taking sides in European politics and not focusing on the rampant secularization and the dilution of Europe's Christian roots?"
 Because so many in the hierarchy are not simply "progressive" but apostates, not heretics, apostates. They have decided on "the Church" as an NGO…and as old and close to death as they are…they love money and want broader funding (and therein lies the connection to Judas).
 3. The Church is "taking sides" because, in His every word and deed, Jesus Christ "took sides." Rather than the hard words of the Gospel, there are too many who would prefer to hear theological niceties. A discourse on the Hypostatic Union is much easier to ignore than "love your neighbor more than you love yourself." A discussion of the European Union, or "Make America Great Again," is not appropriate content for a homily, but neither are preachers who somehow find a way to include abortion and homosexuals in every homily they deliver.
 Too many priests and bishops have forgotten the triune office to which they are called and ordained


text:
Updated 4 March 2010
"Spirograph" is a registered trademark of Hasbro, Inc. It refers to a child's toy that uses toothed wheels to draw patterns, you can see some examples here.
This page approaches those patterns from a more mathematical point of view, which isn't constrained by the physical properties of the wheels used in the real toy. This allows us to explore a larger set of patterns, including those generated my more than 2 wheels.
Interactive spirograph drawing
The parametric equation for a circle is
x = R.cos (θ) y = R.sin (θ)
As 'θ' varies from 0 to 2π this will trace one lap around the circle ('R' is the radius). This is our basic wheel. If we multiply θ by a positive integer this will be equivalent to making the wheel rotate faster. A negative integer will make the wheel rotate in the opposite direction. To create the spirograph patterns we combine two wheels rotating at different speeds, say n1 and n2.
x = R1.cos (n1θ) + R2.cos (n2θ) y = R1.sin (n1θ) + R2.sin (n2θ)
Here the second wheel of radius R2 makes n2 full turns as it travels n1 times around the inner wheel of radius R1.
These are idealised wheels, when using the toy, the radius of the inner wheel would be R1-R2. The other way we differ from the toy is that in the physical version the rates n1 and n2 are determined by the number of teeth on the wheels, which are constrained by the wheels' radii. We aren't limited in this way.
The starting positions of the wheels can be changed by adding in a phase component: ψ;
x = R1.cos (n1(θ+ψ1)) + R2.cos (n2(θ+ψ2)) y = R1.sin (n1(θ+ψ1)) + R2.sin (n2(θ+ψ2))
Although it would be difficult with the plastic toy, mathematically it's quite simple to add additional wheels, for instance, having a third wheel rotating around the other two can be represented as
x = R1.cos (n1θ) + R2.cos (n2θ) + R3.cos (n3θ) y = R1.sin (n1θ) + R2.sin (n2θ) + R3.sin (n3θ)
For two wheels the symmetry is |n1-n2| (assuming n1 and n2 have no common factors). If they do have a common factor, say 'k', then the symmetry would be |n1-n2| / k and the algorithm will draw over the same pattern k times.
For more wheels the symmetry is the highest common factor of the set of differences. With three wheels it will be
hcf (n1-n2, n1-n3, n2-n3) / k = hcf (n1-n2, n2-n3) / k
Where 'k' is the largest common factor of n1, n2, n3.
This four wheel animation. The speeds are [3, -13, 11, 19] and the sizes [3,3,2,1]. The differences in the rates are all multiples of 8, so the pattern has 8-fold symetry. The animation is created by changing the relative phases of the wheels.
If you would like to generate your own Spirographs using python you can download the following scripts.
(c) John Whitehouse 2012


This question pertains to iCLIP, but it could just as easily be ChIP-seq or ATAC-seq or mutation frequencies.
I have iCLIP read counts across the transcriptome and I wish to know if the signals are correlated - that is, where one of them is high, is the other likely to be high.
Often when dealing with such data (e.g. iCLIP data) we know that the data is generally sparse - that is at most positions both signals are zero and this is correct, and also zero-inflated - that is many bases that "should" have a signal are missing that data. So just calculating the Spearman's correlation is likely to give an artificially low value.
What might be a way to asses the association? I should add that the aim is the assess association of binding patterns within genes, rather than (or as well as) between genes.
Things I have thought of:
 - Apply some sort of smoothing to the data (eg a rolling mean). Remove any bases with 0 in both samples. Compute the spearmans.
 - Calculate the average pairwise distance between every read in sample one and every read in sample two. Compare this to data where the reads have been randomised within genes.
In the first case removing all bases with 0 in both samples seems wrong. But if 99.99% of all bases have zero in both samples, then this seems like its necessary for Spearman.
In the second case, the result seems like it would be non-intuitive to interpret. And also calculating this would be massively computationally intensive.
Honestly I'd just use multiBigwigSummary and then plotCorrelation from deepTools for this, but I'm a bit biased. There, the idea would be to consider each gene as a unit (you could instead use bins, but I don't think that would as nicely do what you want), namely by giving the tools a BED or GTF file input. It would then calculate the average signal in each gene/transcript and you could do your spearman's correlation. Features with 0 in all samples could optionally be removed (plotCorrelation --skipZeros).
While you certainly could go the whole 9 yards and use per-base comparisons, that seems a bit overkill and I suspect that it won't really yield appreciably more information (especially when one considers the additional time overhead).
 - $\begingroup$ See my clarification. - I want to look at the spatial patterns within genes, not between them. $\endgroup$ – Ian Sudbery May 18 '17 at 8:44
 - $\begingroup$ _USER_ Ah, good to know, my answer isn't applicable then. $\endgroup$ – Devon Ryan May 18 '17 at 9:02
It depends whether you want to treat the peak intensities as binary (comparing presence/absence of peaks in the sets) or continuous (comparing the relative magnitudes of the peaks).
For starting out, a simple binary comparison may be appropriate. You can use a peak caller of your choosing to identify peaks in each sample according to your desired criteria. Then you can use a similarity metric such as the Jaccard index to quantify the level of agreement among the peaks in the two samples.
One potential obstacle is that defining the boundaries of your peaks won't be totally straightforward. For example, a peak in one sample might have 2 overlapping peaks in the other sample, one on each end. A rough solution for this is to divide the genome into bins (maybe around _PHONE_ bp, depending on your desired resolution). You can treat a peak as present in a bin if more than half of the peak lies in the bin. That way, bins in one sample can be directly compared to the corresponding bins in the other sample. Obviously, this isn't the only way to do this; other appropriate methods exist too.
If you want to treat the peak intensities as continuous, you could apply a similar binning method, taking the "score" of a bin to be the average peak intensity at positions within that bin. You could then throw away all bins with no peaks or only low-intensity peaks throughout the genome. Then you could compute the Spearman's correlation for the remaining bins. I'm guessing it will be harder to find a strong correlation for continuous intensities, because of the amount of experimental variability that is inherently present.
If, after following these steps, the Spearman's correlation is still "artificially low" as you suggested, then this is likely a problem with the underlying data, not the overall analysis; maybe your two datasets actually don't agree that well.
 - $\begingroup$ I was worried about artificially low values when most observations were 0. Excluding cases where observations are 0 in both signals just didn't "feel" right. $\endgroup$ – Ian Sudbery May 18 '17 at 8:47
 - $\begingroup$ _USER_ I see. So you're also interested in the extent to which the "non-peaks" agree with one another. One possibility then is not to throw away the bins where both values are zero, and to report the Spearman correlation. However, since you said the peaks are quite sparse, your zero values will make it hard to see the extent of correlation between the true positives. I agree that it's not "right" to exclude the zero values in Spearman correlation scores, but if you instead use a metric for set intersections (like the Jaccard index) excluding zeroes would be okay. $\endgroup$ – CloudyGloudy May 18 '17 at 16:16
 - $\begingroup$ Looking at the intersection solves the sparsity problem, but not the zero-inflated one: signals from similar looking tracks tend to be close to each other, but not right on top of each other. Honestly i'm starting to think your second suggest is the best there is. $\endgroup$ – Ian Sudbery May 22 '17 at 12:25
 - $\begingroup$ That's true, but if you use the binning approach to define intersections instead of looking for strict overlap, this could help. (i.e. it counts as an intersection if the same bin contains peaks in both tracks, even if the peaks themselves don't directly overlap) $\endgroup$ – CloudyGloudy May 22 '17 at 15:37
Rather than working on the base level, you could probably work on say gene level counts. Kendall's tau, an ordinal association metric, can then be used as an appropriate correlation measure.
If $X$ and $Y$ are your iCLIP replicates, $i$ represents gene index and $(x_i, y_i)$ represents the number of RBP binding sites in $X$ and $Y$ respectively for the $i^{th}$ gene, Kendall's tau is defined as :
$$ \frac{\text{#(concordant pairs)} - \text{#(discordant pairs)}}{n(n-1)/2} $$
Where any two pairs $(x_i, y_i)$ and $(x_j, y_j)$ are concordant if:
 - $x_i > x_j$ AND $y_i > y_j$
 - $x_i < x_j$ AND $y_i < y_j$
Correspondingly they are discordant if:
 - $x_i < x_j$ AND $y_i > y_j$
 - $x_i > x_j$ AND $y_i < y_j$
 - $\begingroup$ Not sure why tex rendering is off. $\endgroup$ – rightskewed May 17 '17 at 18:13
 - $\begingroup$ See my clarification: I'm interested in the patterns within genes, rather than between them. Is tau better at dealing with data where many observations are zero? $\endgroup$ – Ian Sudbery May 18 '17 at 8:46
 - $\begingroup$ If your interest is to study the pattern within genes, does your second sample act as a replicate? I am not sure I completely understand what "within genes" would mean here. $\endgroup$ – rightskewed May 19 '17 at 10:34
 - $\begingroup$ No, I'm trying to determine if two proteins show similar within gene binding patterns. $\endgroup$ – Ian Sudbery May 19 '17 at 11:57
 - $\begingroup$ Mathjax support hadn't been activated. It now has been so your answer renders correctly. $\endgroup$ – terdon Jul 26 '17 at 16:05
It is one of my favorite stories.
Drop a glance to StereoGene software, it for genomic track correlation, it described in a preprint.
You also can run MACS or another peak caller and estimate the correlation of two interval sets using the GenomtriCorr package.
Your Answer


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The Sovereign Money Initiative Massively Rejected in Switzerland
June 10th 2018
Today, Swiss citizens were invited to head to the polls and vote on the "Sovereign Money" initiative (a.k.a. "Vollgeld" or "Monnaie pleine"), a fundamental reform of the Swiss monetary system. The initiative was massively rejected today with 75.7% of negative votes across the country.
The origin of that initiative came from the 2008 financial crisis, which brought the global economy to its knees and pushed the world to rethink its financial system. Populations began to take a greater interest in their personal finances, how they were managed by banks, and the mechanisms of the global financial system. People started to question the banks' creation of money "out of thin air", how their deposits were actually protected (or not) and what was being done to address the shortcomings that led to the crisis.
As a solution, the "Sovereign Money" initiative was proposing to do away with the fractional banking system and hence barring commercial banks from creating deposits through lending. It wanted to establish the Swiss National Bank (SNB) as the sole organization authorized to create money (read our article on money creation in Switzerland). This restriction was not only concerning coins and banknotes, but also the electronic money in everyone's bank accounts. Sovereign money would be issued by the SNB through allocations of central bank money to the Swiss Confederation and Cantons, or directly to the public. Any loans would have to be financed through savings deposits, debt certificates or equity.
At Mt Pelerin, we believe that this initiative would have compromised the independence of the SNB and reduce competitiveness of the Swiss banking industry for many reasons. The main arguments worth mentioning were:
First, in the current system the SNB acts as the "bank of banks" and commercial banks supply households and companies with credit and liquidity. With the initiative, the SNB would have centralized both money and credit on its balance sheet as it would be dedicated to a lending role. This would have resulted in a concentration of tasks for the SNB that would jeopardize monetary policy independence as well as the fulfillment of the SNB's mandate to ensure price stability. Also, this would have hampered the competitiveness of the Swiss banking industry.
Secondly, sovereign money limits liquidity and maturity transformation as banks would no longer have been able to create deposits through lending. This would have restricted the liquidity and credit to households and companies. The financing cost of investment would likely have increased.
Furthermore, the SNB's mandate is to ensure price stability. It has three main tools to act:
 - Conduct open market operations.
 - Adjust the interest rate on sight deposits held by banks or other financial market participants at the SNB.
 - Intervene in the foreign exchange market.
Under a sovereign money system, the SNB would not have been allowed to intervene on foreign exchange market anymore as the creation of money in the context of foreign exchange interventions is not "debt-free".
Although today's financial system seems to work well, we do not deny the fact that it needs to undergo continual (but not necessarily radical) change and improve. With technological disruption, evolution in consumption behaviors and investment beliefs, financial market supervisory authorities as well as commercial banks are already facing the need to respond with serious actions.
Finally, we do believe that one of the initiative's main proposal, the "full reserve" idea, is in fact a fundamental progress required to guarantee liquidity and safety at all times for clients. However, we believe that money creation is a crucial aspect in economic growth and should not be concentrated in the hand of a single entity. In response to the initiative and as a private sector market participant, Mt Pelerin is building a bank in Switzerland based on the very same "full-reserve" principle.
With a business model leveraging a whole new banking ecosystem connecting financial service providers, enterprises, the crowd and the crypto world instead of leveraging deposits to drive profit, the demonstration that an alternative banking is both possible and viable is on its way.


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Advanced Micro Devices introduced the 3DNow! instruction set back in the K6-2 days to perform single instruction multiple data (SIMD) instructions, otherwise known as vectorized instructions. The 3DNow! was meant to greatly improve performance of floating point operations, but not a lot of programs actually took advantage of the instruction sets. As a result, over a decade later AMD decided to pull the plug and its future chips will not support 3DNow!
"[Since the introduction of 3DNow!], we have added many SIMD instruction sets to our processors, such as the widely used Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) instruction set and its successive versions. 3DNow! instructions are being deprecated and will not be supported in certain upcoming AMD processors. In those processors, the 3DNow! Instructions feature flag bit will not be set," wrote Sharon Troia, senior developer relations engineer.
Around the same time as 3DNow! instructions were developed, programmers were accustomed to using a model of 'try and catch' to check if a processor supported an instruction or instruction set. This is when the application 'tries' to execute an instruction to see if it's available. If the application receives an Undefined Exception (_TAG_) from the processor, it believes the instruction set isn't available. These types of applications may not do well under newer virtual machines. That's subject for another blog though.
The 3DNow! versions of the PREFETCH and PREFETCHW instructions are now in a class of their own and AMD plans to continue to support them.
It is most likely that mainstream applications have non-3DNow! code path to take, such as an SSE path.
Tags: AMD, 3DNow!, Athlon, Phenom, Bulldozer,
Comments currently: 3
Discussion started: 08/21/10 02:05:49 AM
Latest comment: 08/22/10 10:32:32 AM
Why programmers were accustomed to using a model of 'try and catch' if instructions feature flag bits exists?
What are benefits of not having the certain instruction sets in CPU?
If some programs were using the 'try and catch' model, that is problematic under newer virtual machines, they will not change its behaviour automagically only because new CPU does not support the certain instruction set.
0 0 [Posted by: KonradK | Date: 08/21/10 02:05:49 AM]
Smaller and less complex cpu.
Its a pity 3Dnow never got popular as it seems to have been better than the almost clone that became SSE, but considering how few apps support it, i can certainly understand the decision.
0 0 [Posted by: DIREWOLF75 | Date: 08/21/10 04:59:33 AM]
Yep.. too bad 90% of programmers are generally living half a century ago in the x86 / binary world. Actually every special instruction set such as MMX and 3DNow! and SSE was a desperate call from the hardware makers telling the programmers how to optimize for their architecture. Look at PS2! Look what a tight optimizing scheme can get out of an older architecture. But do today's programmers know how to optimize? Nope! It's a wonder if they manage to use some SIMD instruction from SSE2 or 3... but not more.3D Now! never got used because most of programmers are.. let's say "limited and far behind".Belive me, I know this for a fact and I was amazed to see that none of my colleagues in the university knew what a x86 translate unit was.
0 0 [Posted by: East17 | Date: 08/22/10 10:32:32 AM]
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text:
To identify predictors of developing a stress fracture among adolescent girls during a 7-year period.
Prospective cohort study.
Adolescent girls living throughout the United States.
A total of 6831 girls aged 9 to 15 years at baseline in the Growing Up Today Study, an ongoing prospective cohort study.
Exposures were assessed by self-report questionnaires completed by adolescent girls in 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2003. The adolescent girls' history of stress fracture, including age when fracture occurred and site, were reported by their mothers, who are registered nurses, in 2004. Cox proportional hazards models were used in the analysis.
Main Outcome Measure
Incident stress fracture that occurred between 1997 and 2004.
During 7 years of follow-up, 267 girls (3.9%) developed a stress fracture. Independent of age, age at menarche, family history of fracture, and hours per week of lowand moderate-impact activity, hours per week of running (hazard ratio = 1.13; 95% confidence interval, 1.04-1.23), basketball (hazard ratio = 1.12; 95% confidence interval, 1.03-1.23), and cheerleading/gymnastics (hazard ratio = 1.12; 95% confidence interval, 1.02-1.22) were significant predictors of developing a stress fracture. No other type of high-impact activity was associated with an increased risk.
Girls who engage in running, basketball, cheerleading, or gymnastics should be encouraged to include varied training in lower-impact activities to decrease the cumulative amount of impact in order to minimize their risk of stress fractures.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text:
Why is the isolation of hazardous energies associated with plant important?
A range of hazardous energies exists in mobile and fixed plant in mining operations, such as stored, electrical, and mechanical energies. During normal operating conditions, workers are generally protected from these energies by controls such as the plant's design and guarding.
However, when normal operating conditions are interrupted during work such as:
- clearing an obstruction
the consequences can be significant if isolation controls are deficient, removed, bypassed or deactivated and people are exposed to hazardous energies. It is important to ensure potential exposures to hazardous energies during such work are identified and controlled. The consequences of unwanted events can be serious or even fatal.
In the past, isolation processes in the mining industry were not given adequate emphasis. It was common practice to use tags only to identify that a circuit or item of plant was deactivated or de-energised and that personnel may be working on or around it. In many instances, the potential sources of hazardous energies were not recognised and isolation was not understood or properly applied.
A guideline on isolation of hazardous energies associated with plant in Western Australian mining operations is available for industry use.
The guideline provides information on the development of safe systems of work associated with the isolation of hazardous energies, where protection is required from:
- the movement or operation of plant
- the movement of materials handled by plant
- contact with energy
- used to operate plant
- used to carry out processes associated with plant
- produced or carried by plant
- stored within plant.
For an introduction to the damage that can be done by stored energy, see the toolbox presentation below on improving hazard awareness.


ly or black bear"
 case Animal(_, "Banff") => "this might be a bear"
 case Animal(its_kind,its_location) => s"this is a/an $its_kind living in $its_location"
 //binds its_kind, its_location to the constructor values
val animal_1 = Animal("bear", "north pole")
val animal_2 = Animal("Marmot", "Banff")
val animal_3 = Animal("cat", "my house")
inspectAnimal.inspect(animal_1) // result: this is a polar bear
inspectAnimal.inspect(animal_2) // result: this might be a bear
inspectAnimal.inspect(animal_3) // result: this is a/an cat living in my house
To mach against the type. Example:
5- Abstract class
3- Tips with objects and classes
1- Overloading the methods (overloaded methods)
Instead of creating several methods with different names and doing the same task but receiving different number of arguments and/or different types of parameters, we can create methods with the same name but different parameter and let Scala decide on the proper version of the method. Overloading methods is applicable to classes and singleton objects. Example:
object doSomething{
 def sumNumbers(a:Int, b:Int): Unit = println(a + b)
 def sumNumbers(a:Double, b:Double): Unit = println(a + b)
 def sumNumbers(a:Int, b:Int, c:Int): Unit = println(a + b + c)
doSomething.sumNumbers(2,3) // 5
doSomething.sumNumbers(12.345,34.567) // 46.912
doSomething.sumNumbers(1,2,7) // 10
2- Auxiliary constructor
Other than the primary constructors of a class, auxiliary constructors can also be utilized. Auxiliary constructors overload the constructors. To do this, the following should be considered:
 - Auxiliary constructors are defined by def keyword.
 - Like Method Overloading, all auxiliary constructors should use the same name this.
 - each auxiliary constructor must have a different different parameters list.
 - each auxiliary constructor must first call a previously defined primary constructor(s) or/and an auxiliary constructor(s). This is performed by name this.
Nevertheless, constructor overloading can be implemented by setting default values for the primary constructors.
4- Traits (Subtyping)
Classes are abstraction over objects while traits are abstraction over classes; in other words, traits are template for classes. Traits allow us to define a super type for several classes which are the subtypes. This super type is is outside of the Any super type that all classes share. Classes under a trait can share the implementation of the same operation. A trait creates interface that any subtype, i.e. classes, must implement (comply with).
Compared with a class, a trait does not/cannot logically have a constructor. Classes (having constructors) can be created from a trait and objects from the classes. A trait can define abstract fields and methods that have names and type signature but no (concrete) implementation. An implementation is possible when defining an extending class under the trait. Implementing methods based on abstract methods in a trait is possible. Whatever abstract methods and fields are defined in a trait have to be then implemented in the extending class(es). Concrete (default) implementation of any method (or a field) in a trait is possible as well, however, it must be make sure that the method is valid in all the extending classes (subtypes). Otherwise, the method (or field) should be overridden in a subtype.
Abstract fields in a trait can be defined either using val or def. However, it is recommended to use def because def is a generalization of val in Scala. If an abstract field is defined by def, then val will be used for its implementation in the extending class.
Abstract methods (or fields) can have completely different implementations in different subtypes.
Example: Animals can be wild or pet. Instead of creating two separate non-connected (in terms of sharing fields and methods) classes, we create two extending classes under a trait.
trait Animal {
 def kind: String // can also be val kind: String
 def location: String
 def inspect: Unit = println(s"$kind lives in $location")
 def id: Unit
case class Wild (kind: String, location: String, idNumber: Int) extends Animal {
 def id: Unit = print(s"The wild animal id is: $idNumber")
case class Pet (kind: String, location: String, idNumber: Int) extends Animal{
 def id: Unit = print(s"The pet id is: $idNumber")
val bear_1 = Wild("bear", "north pole", _PHONE_)
val cat_1 = Pet ("Cat", "my house", 123456)
defined trait Animal
defined class Wild
defined class Pet
bear_1: Wild = Wild(bear,north pole,_PHONE_)
cat_1: Pet = Pet(Cat,my house,123456)
bear lives in north pole
The wild animal id is: _PHONE_
Cat lives in my house
The pet id is: 123456
Scala with IntelliJ IDEA
1- Defining a package object
 1. On the project side bar right click on Scala folder –> new –> package.
 2. name the package custom.methods.
 3. Right click on custom.methods –>new –> package object
The package object is now ready.
package custom
package object methods {
// define your custom classes, case classes, objects, methods here


text:
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ACADEMY: A MOTT HALL SCHOOL
DR. PATRICK AWOSOGBA, PRINCIPAL
250 EAST 164 STREET, BRONX, NY 10456Phone: _PHONE_
School Name, Number, or Address
Ms. Bae (6th Grade)
Students will engage in hands-on learning using FOSS kits, to practice problem-solving skills, develop positive scientific attitudes, learn new science content, and increase their scientific literacy. Mott Hall Science & Technology Academy utilizes Glencoe Science products that helps teachers differentiate and accommodate all learners! A range of labs, content area reading, discussion strategies, note-taking tools, and activities provides students with multiple experiences of each Science Standard. In sixth grade, our units of study include simple and complex machines, weather, diversity of life, and interdependence.Students are expected to work in pairs and groups, conduct experiments, gather data, and draw conclusions about the world around them. As a department wen work towards helping students become experienced scientists. We also encourage the exploration of social & ethical questions relating to science.
THE IMPORTANCE OF SCIENCE"The study of science fires pupils' curiosity about phenomena in the world around them and offers opportunities to find explanations. It engages learners at many levels, linking direct practical experience with scientific ideas. Experimentation and modelling are used to develop and evaluate explanations, encouraging critical and creative thought. Pupils learn how knowledge and understanding in science are rooted in evidence. They learn to question and discuss issues that may affect their own lives, the directions of societies and the future of the world. "
Science programme of study for Key Stage 3, © Qualifications and Curriculum Authority 2007


text:
The poverty impact of climate change in Mexico
This paper examines the effects of climate change on poverty through the relationship between indicators of climate change (temperature and rainfall change) and municipal level gross domestic product, and subsequently between gross domestic product and poverty. The evidence suggests that climate change could have a negative impact on poverty by 2030. The paper proposes a two-stage least squares regression where it first regresses temperature and rainfall (along with geographic controls and state and year fixed effects) on municipal gross domestic product per capita for 2000 and 2005 The resulting gross domestic product per capita is used in a second equation to estimate municipal poverty on the same years.
The authors then incorporate projections of temperature and rainfall changes by 2030 into the estimated climate-gross domestic product coefficients to assess the effects of climate change in economic activity and how this in turn will influence poverty. At the same time, they account for the potential adaptive capacity of municipalities through higher population densities and economic growth. Both would reduce poverty by 31.72 percentage points between 2005 and 2030 with changing climate. However, poverty could have been reduced up to 34.15 percentage points over the same period had there been no climate change. This suggests that climate change slows down the pace of poverty reduction. An alternative reading is that poverty is expected to increase from 15.25 percent (without climate change) to 17.68 percent (with climate change) by 2030. Given the existing population projections for 2030, this represents 2,902,868 people remaining in poverty as a result of climate change.


text:
Aspirin dose and thromboxane metabolism in African American stroke patients
Purpose:To evaluate thromboxane metabolism in African American stroke patients on different doses of aspirin. Methods:Consecutive African American patients within 3 month of non-cardioembolic stroke and not being treated with anticoagulation were recruited. Antithrombotic therapy at the time of sample collection was not prespecified and varied according to the practice patterns of the different attending physicians who treated the patients during their acute stroke. The thromboxane metabolite 11-dehydrothroboxane B2 (11-DTB2) was measured by enzyme immunoassay in random urine samples collected at the time of enrollment. Results:99 patients were enrolled but 15 could not give a urine sample at the time of enrollment. Data on the remaining 84 patients were evaluable. There were 49 men and 35 women aged 36–87 (mean 62) years. Based on antithrombotic treatment during sample collections, we divided patients into four groups: no aspirin N=16 (no antithrombotic drugs N=4 or ticlopidine N=12), aspirin 81–325 mg/d N=19 (81 mg/day N=1, 325 mg/day N=18), aspirin 650 mg/d N=19, aspirin 975–1300 mg/d N=30 (975 mg/d N=2 and 1300 mg/d N=28). After log transformation of the 11-DTB2 values the geometric means in the no aspirin, 81–325 mg/d, 650 mg/d, and 975–1300 mg/d groups were 1355, 912, 758, and 731 pg/mg creatinine, respectively. Based on one way ANOVA, the mean 11-DTB2 concentration was significantly different between the 4 groups (p=0.03). There was a significant negative relationship between aspirin dose and 11-DTB2 concentration (Pearson Correlation, r = -0.26, P=0.02). Conclusion:In African American stroke patients thromboxane production appears to be progressively inhibited by aspirin doses up to 650 mg/d. The clinical significance of this effect by aspirin doses ≤650 mg/d remains to be determined.


text:
About the book
There is a strong commitment to equality between women and men in international human rights law. The various actors within the treaty system who are tasked with elaborating on the meaning of human rights in international law have given close attention to gender equality. This work evaluates these elaborations against a conception of equality that is substantive. The achievement of substantive equality is understood here as having four dimensions: redressing disadvantage; countering stigma, prejudice, humiliation and violence; transforming social and institutional structures; and facilitating political participation and social
inclusion. The publication suggests that there is a growing consensus at the international level on an understanding of substantive equality that reflects the four dimensions set out here. Making this understanding explicit will assist in addressing, through a range of means, the challenges of gendered inequality.


W&H AIMS – safe infection prevention
W&H AIMS (Advanced Infection prevention Management Solutions) is the workflow for every dental practice. W&H AIMS provides step-by-step support for professional hygiene management to effectively break the chain of infection.
AIMS workflow
W&H AIMS workflow – infection prevention one step at a time
Individual hygiene management
With AIMS, W&H highlights options for efficiently and effectively designing the entire reprocessing process according to your individual needs. W&H AIMS also provides information for infection prevention, breaking the chain of infection, on hygiene and maintenance as well as the general safety of patients and users. This way, you can overcome new and future challenges professionally and safely.
The W&H AIMS workflow
W&H guides you through every individual step of the reprocessing process in order to minimise the risk of infection for users and patients alike. Both of whom often have lots of questions on this subject in particular and not having all the information can quickly lead to uncertainty. This is where the AIMS workflow comes in, providing scientific knowledge and concrete solutions, a combination that helps your practice team to make their professional life safer and less complicated at the same time!
Step-by-step to breaking the chain of infection
How and where do infection risks occur? Why is every step of the reprocessing process crucial? What role does personal protective equipment play? W&H AIMS provides answers to these and many other questions, guiding you step by step along the way to customising your hygiene management process. W&H's reliable product portfolio also offers the perfect complement for implementation into everyday working routines.
Access the AIMS workflow
W&H AIMS devices
W&H AIMS workflow on different devices.
AIMS definition
AIMS definition: A result that your plans or actions are intended to achieve; principles.


Jargon-busting mobile industry's buzzwords
Story highlights
 - Mobile phone industry has created a confusing lexicon of acronyms and buzzwords
 - CNN's jargon buster unlocks some the language used at Mobile World Congress
 - Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, Padphones, Symbian among words explored
Mobile devices may have placed an amazing array of technology in the palms of our hands, but they've also given us a bamboozling array of buzzwords and acronyms.
To help avoid confusion as the cell phone industry meets for its annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, CNN has compiled a handy jargon buster.
Android: An operating system created for mobile devices by a consortium of tech firms led by Google. Different versions of Android are typically named after sugary treats, namely Gingerbread, Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich.
AMOLED: Active-matrix organic light-emitting diode. This is the technology behind ultra-thin display screens used on many smartphones. These use on-off switching to consume less power than previous "passive matrix OLED" displays.
Cloud computing: The offloading of data storage or processing to the internet or a shared network. Cloud technology allows phones to outsource their functions, provided there's a good Wi-Fi connection.
4G: Fourth generation. A loose term covering the wireless network technology that will power the next generation of mobile phones. Already deployed in parts of Europe it promises data speeds of 300Mbps -- 20 times faster than existing 3G networks.
Haptics: Tactile feedback, in the form of tiny vibrations, that helps users interact with their touch screens.
Ice Cream Sandwich: Not as tasty as it sounds. This is the latest version of Android operating system.
iOS: A mobile operating system created by Apple to run devices including the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
Mbps: Megabits per second. The rate at which data flows to-and-from devices. The bigger the number, the faster the flow.
MVAS: Mobile value-added service (see VAS).
NFC: Near field communication: Technology that allows smartphones to communicate with other nearby devices. It allows simple data transfer between mobiles. It can also be used in contactless payment systems, allowing mobiles to behave like debit cards.
OLED: Display screen technology (see AMOLED).
Padphones: Is it a pad? Is it a phone? It's both! These tablet devices feature a phone docking station, allowing a phone's functions to be upgraded into a tablet environment.
Quad core: Refers to the phone's capacity for crunching data. The higher the number of processing cores, the faster the phone. The quadcores unveiled in Barcelona should, in theory, be the fastest to date, capable of simultaneously running several complex apps. This will, however, depend on whether they work well with phone operating systems.
SMS: Short message service -- or text messaging. The original and, some say, the best mobile phone app. This cheap, widely-available, stripped-down communication system refuses to die despite technology advances.
Stylus: Once thought extinct, the stylus seems to be making a comeback this year. This detachable pointer allows users to prod and write on their touch screens with greater accuracy -- until it gets left in the back of a taxi.
Symbian: Mobile phone operating system maintained by technology firm Accenture. Symbian was favored almost exclusively by Nokia, but Nokia is now switching to a mobile version of Microsoft's Windows 7.
3G: Third generation. The technology currently being used by many mobile systems. These support data transfer rates that allow users to surf the internet and watch videos.
VAS: Value-added service. Usually refers to any device function beyond its core purpose. Once upon a time, this meant any functionality above phone calls and text messages, but user-expectations are somewhat higher these days.


Spline surfaces
We have already learned how to use cubic splines to make curves. We can also use bicubic splines to make surfaces. In this case, rather than defining x,y,z in terms of a single parameter t describing parametric movement along a path, we define x,y,z in terms of two parameters u,v which describe parametric position upon a surface.
This gives us a piece of spline surface that looks like a warped square tile in space. To make more complex spline surfaces, we can piece together multiple tiles, matching their positions and surface normals along the edges between them where they join. This is, for example, how the teapot that I showed in class was made.
The general formulation for a single bicubic surface tile is:
x(u, v) = au3v3 + bu3v2 +... p
with similar equations defining y(u,v) and z(u,v). For each of these equations we need sixteen coefficients [a, b,... p], for all of the sixteen possible products of u and v u3v3 to u3v2 through 1.
Conveniently, we can describe all 16 possible coefficients by the following matrix/vector product:
[u3 u2 u 1]
[v ]
[1 ]
If we refer to the above matrix of coeffients as C, then the above equation looks like this:
U • C • VT
If you have three such 4×4 coeffient matrices, Cx, Cy and Cz, one for each dimension, then you can then evaluate (x,y,z) locations on the bicubic spline surface by iterating over values of u and v:
for (int u = 0.0 ; u <= 1.0 ; u += ε)
for (int v = 0.0 ; v <= 1.0 ; v += ε)
 drawPoint(eval(Cx,u,v), eval(Cy,u,v), eval(Cz,u,v));
Through variations on the above code, you can also draw curved lines along the u,v surface, as well as small polygons which can be shaded and z-buffered. Each of these polygons has four vertices:
{eval(Cx,u+ε,v), eval(Cy,u+ε,v), eval(Cz,u+ε,v)
{eval(Cx,u+ε,v+ε), eval(Cy,u+ε,v+ε), eval(Cz,u+ε,v+ε)
{eval(Cx,u,v+ε), eval(Cy,u,v+ε), eval(Cz,u,v+ε)
Just as with spline curves, we generally want to find coeffients to define the geometry of a spline surface in a way that is convenient to the user, such as a Hermite or Bezier or B-Spline surface description. Then behind the scenes we convert to the polynomial formulation above.
The general trick for doing this conversion is to use the same Hermite, Bezier etc. conversion matrix that we used for spline curves, but to apply it twice: once for u and once for v.
For example, lets say we have a Bezier description of the surface, in which we describe, each of x, y, and z on the surface by sampling u and v every 1/3 unit. This gives a matrix of 16 knot locations in (u,v):
P =
(0/3,0/3) (1/3,0/3) (2/3,0/3) (3/3,0/3)
(0/3,1/3) (1/3,1/3) (2/3,1/3) (3/3,1/3)
(0/3,2/3) (1/3,2/3) (2/3,2/3) (3/3,2/3)
(0/3,3/3) (1/3,3/3) (2/3,3/3) (3/3,3/3)
At each of those locations the x coordinate has a value, as do y and z. Our goal is to convert this matrix into a matrix C of coefficients. Fortunately, this is easy to do, since we can just use our Bezier matrix B on both sides to convert coordinates in both u and v:
[u3 u2 u 1] B P BT
[v ]
[1 ]
When evaluating U • C • VT, we can use use the coefficent matrix given by C = B • P • BT.


Has someone blocked my phone number on their iPhone? I keep ringing and texting but I can't get through. Is there any way to tell who has blocked me?
Has your phone number been blocked by an iPhone using the call-blocking feature introduced in iOS 7 and retained in iOS 8? In this article we explain the telltale signs that you've been blocked by an iPhone: the way your phone behaves as you (unsuccessfully) try to get through, what response you'll get as you call, text and attempt to leave a message, the giveaway number of rings before you're diverted to voicemail and so on. We'll help you work out if someone has (for whatever reason) blocked your number on their iPhone.
We've also got links to articles that explain how to bypass the iOS call block if you feel compelled to do so (although there are serious ethical and potentially even legal implications that we would ask you to consider - this is for emergency situations only), and how to block nuisance numbers on your own iPhone.
Read next: How to block and report iMessage spam
Who blocked my number? How can I tell if I've been blocked by an iPhone?
What is iOS call blocking? It's a brilliant feature, and exactly what it sounds like.
One of the simplest but most convenient new features added in iOS 7 - 2013's updated version of Apple's operating system software for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch - was the ability to easily block the phone numbers of nuisance callers. (We explain how this works in 'How to block a number on any iPhone'.) You can also block numbers in iOS 8, 2014's follow-up to iOS 7 - and in iOS 9 too for that matter.
This is great news for those who are plagued by calls from persistent telephone sales reps. But what if you're the one getting blocked? How can you tell if someone has blocked you on their iOS 7, iOS 8 or iOS 9 iPhone?
The simple answer is that you can't easily find out for certain; but if you check for the telltale signs you can get a good idea of what's going on. We blocked one of our spare phones to find out exactly what it's like to be blocked - the number of times a call will ring before being declined or sent to voicemail, the response when sending a text - to help us work out when we've been blocked in the future.
If you'd rather watch our experiment than read about it, by the way, have a look at the video of the top of the article. We first show how to block someone in iOS 8/iOS 7, and then demonstrate what effect that has on the blocked phone, so you can learn the telltale signs.
Have I been blocked? How to tell if an iPhone has blocked you
Read next: iPhone 6s review | iPhone 6s Plus review | All iPhone reviews
Have I been blocked: What happens when you ring someone who's blocked your number on their iPhone?
We rang the iPhone that had blocked us. The phone rang exactly once, and then we were told that the number called wasn't available, diverted to voicemail and invited to leave a message. Note that the iPhone never received any notification that this message had been left.
(As an aside, even though the recipient gets no notification that a message has been received, they do get the message and can listen to it if they choose. If a blocked caller has left a voicemail, you can access it by going into your voicemail and scrolling down to find the 'blocked messages' folder, which will sit below the 'deleted messages' folder. Note that if you've not had any blocked messages the folder itself won't be visible. And there will be a delay between the person leaving the message and it appearing in the folder. Thanks to reader Kat for bringing this to our attention.)
How to tell if your number has been blocked
A single ring and then being diverted to voicemail is the giveaway behaviour you're looking for - but bear in mind that this can also result from the phone being switched off or set to auto divert.
To rule these out, you can immediately ring again from a different number, or disguise your number using the relevant code for your country (141 from a UK landline, for instance), or by switching off call ID in the settings if you're using an iPhone (Settings > Phone > Show My Caller ID, then switch it off).
Have I been blocked? How to hide your caller ID
This time your number won't be visible and any block on that number will be bypassed. If the phone really is switched off or set to divert, it will once again ring once and then go to voicemail. But if you were blocked, either the person will pick up, or it will ring a few times until you ring off or they turn down the call because there isn't a caller ID they recognise.
Have I been blocked? How to hide your caller ID
Thanks to our reader, posting below under the name 'This is true', for coming up with this trick.
Read more: We've rounded up links to all our iPhone tips and tutorials here: iPhone tips and tutorials, everything you need to know
Have I been blocked: And what happens if you text someone who's blocked you?
What about if you send a text to the 'blocker'?
We tried to send a text message to the phone that had blocked us. Everything proceeded as usual: the text sent, and we got no error message. But the'receiver' didn't get any message, or any notification.
When sent as an iMessage, the text gave us a 'Delivered' notification and remained blue - our blocked iPhone didn't attempt to send it as an SMS.
How to tell if someone has blocked your phone number on an iOS 7 iPhone
Have I been blocked: How to tell if someone has blocked your phone number
So. Other than the obvious clues - you never seem to be able to get through to someone, despite ringing at various times and checking that you've got the right number - the main giveaway is the way you get diverted to voicemail after exactly one ring. If your call is manually declined, or if they're just not available, then you'd expect the phone to ring several times before you're diverted.
If you're getting a single ring before being diverted to voicemail, and then when you try again with caller ID hidden you get a different response (multiple rings and then declined or diverted, or they pick up) then something is probably up.
Remember that just because you are allowed to leave a message - or because your text seemed to go through without any problems - that doesn't put you in the clear. The blocking process is quite sneaky about letting you (the caller) know what's happened.
As we said, though, there's no way to be certain this is what's happened, so be careful before you start throwing around accusations! And if any amateur sleuths out there work out a foolproof method of finding out if you've been blocked, let us know in the comments or via Twitter. Our thanks to the clever readers who've already contributed techniques for cracking the mystery.
How to tell if someone blocks your number on iOS 7
How to call someone anyway, even though they've blocked you
As discussed briefly above, it's possible to hide your caller ID (or use a code to stop it from being revealed) and thereby call someone who's blocked you. Software-level call blocks can only block numbers if they know what number is incoming - this is true across all smartphone software, and the only way to block someone who hides their caller ID is to contact your phone company.
If you are in an emergency, if you fell out with your parents but need to tell them that someone is gravely ill, or if there is some other exceptional circumstance that you feel justifies doing so, you can bypass a call block in this way, but please bear in mind that the recipient of the call may consider this behaviour to be harassment or stalking, and there could even be legal ramifications. This is not something that you should do lightly.
If you have taken all of these warnings on board, take a look at our tutorial showing How to call someone who has blocked you.
Get your own back: How to block a number using an iOS 7 or iOS 8 iPhone
This is all very upsetting, of course, but call-blocking is actually a very useful feature of iOS 7 and iOS 8. If you're getting calls from a persistent nuisance caller, then it's easy for you to make use of the feature yourself. And now you know what they'll be experiencing.
You can easily block a number from the Recent Calls menu. Check out the process in our tutorial 'How to block a number on any iPhone'.