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This database of images for the study and teaching of art, design, and visual culture at Illinois State University, is produced as a collaboration between the School of Art and Milner Library. The images come from many sources, including publications, original photography, and the Visual Resources Collection of the School of Art.
The slides of Sverre "Bex" Braathen combine a "Passion for Circus" with the skills and artistry of photography at its finest.
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Damage Detection and System Identification using a Wavelet Energy Based Approach Joo Duk Jin author Columbia University. Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics Betti Raimondo thesis advisor Columbia University. Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics Columbia University. Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics originator text Dissertations 2012 English Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is central to the goal of maintaining civil engineering structures safely and efficiently, and thereby securing people's lives and property. Furthermore, it plays an essential role in infrastructure design at a fraction of the capital cost of construction. In this thesis, we seek to address two of the central concerns of the SHM: parametric system identification and damage detection. The first proposed method seeks to identify the physical parameters of an analytical model. First, the connection coefficients for the scaling function were developed for deriving the responses of the velocity and displacement from the acceleration responses. Next, defining the dominant sets based on the relative energies of the Wavelet Components of the acceleration responses, the equations of motion of the system in the time domain were converted to a reduced representation of the equations of motion in terms of the DWT and of the DWPT. Finally, the least square error minimization was conducted over the dominant sets to estimate the best estimation of the physical parameters. The second proposed method seeks to detect damage in a structure. Motivated by the fact that the Empirical Mode Decomposition is seen to have different features from the Discrete Wavelet Transform when one investigates nonstationary signals, we have combined the Empirical Mode Decomposition with the Discrete Wavelet Transform to enhance the performance of the proposed method for identifying damage in the structure. Ph.D., Columbia University. Civil engineering _URL_ NNC NNC 2012-09-12 15:17:00 -0400 2012-09-12 15:32:56 -0400 8709 eng


the period. It was swung first from one pivot, and the oscillations timed, then turned upside down and swung from the other pivot, and the oscillations timed again. The small weight (c) was adjusted with the adjusting screw, and the process repeated until the pendulum had the same period when swung from each pivot. By putting the measured period T, and the measured distance between the pivot blades L, into the period equation (1), g could be calculated very accurately.
Kater performed 12 trials. He measured the period of his pendulum very accurately using the clock pendulum by the method of coincidences; timing the interval between the coincidences when the two pendulums were swinging in synchronism. He measured the distance between the pivot blades with a microscope comparator, to an accuracy of 10−4 in. (2.5 μm). As with other pendulum gravity measurements, he had to apply small corrections to the result for a number of variable factors:
 - the finite width of the pendulum's swing, which increased the period
 - temperature, which caused the length of the rod to vary due to thermal expansion
 - atmospheric pressure, which reduced the effective mass of the pendulum by the buoyancy of the displaced air, increasing the period
 - altitude, which reduced the gravitational force with distance from the center of the Earth. Gravity measurements are always referenced to sea level.
He gave his result as the length of the seconds pendulum. After corrections, he found that the mean length of the solar seconds pendulum at London, at sea level, at 62°F, swinging in vacuum, was 39.1386 inches. This is equivalent to a gravitational acceleration of 9.81158 m/s2. The largest variation of his results from the mean was 0.00028 inches (7.1 µm). This represented a precision of gravity measurement of 7(10−6) (7 milligals).
In 1824, the British Parliament made Kater's measurement of the seconds pendulum the official standard of length for defining the yard.
The large increase in gravity measurement accuracy made possible by Kater's pendulum established gravimetry as a regular part of geodesy. To be useful, it was necessary to find the exact location (latitude and longitude) of the'station' where a gravity measurement was taken, so pendulum measurements became part of surveying. Kater's pendulums were taken on the great historic geodetic surveys of much of the world that were being done during the 19th century. In particular, Kater's pendulums were used in the Great Trigonometric Survey of India.
Reversible pendulums remained the standard method used for absolute gravity measurements until they were superseded by free-fall gravimeters in the 1950s.[9]
Repsold–Bessel pendulum[edit]
Repsold pendulum.
Repeatedly timing each period of a Kater pendulum, and adjusting the weights until they were equal, was time consuming and error-prone. Friedrich Bessel showed in 1826 that this was unnecessary. As long as the periods measured from each pivot, T1 and T2, are close in value, the period T of the equivalent simple pendulum can be calculated from them:[10]
T^2 = \frac{T_1^2 + T_2^2}{2} + \frac{T_1^2 - T_2^2}{2} \left ( \frac {h_1 + h_2}{h_1-h_2} \right ) \, \qquad \qquad \qquad (2)
Here h_1\, and h_2\, are the distances of the two pivots from the pendulum's center of gravity, so h_1 + h_2 = L\,. h_1\, and h_2\, cannot be measured with great accuracy. They are found by balancing the pendulum on a knife edge to find its center of gravity, and measuring the distances of each of the pivots from the center of gravity. However, because T_1^2 - T_2^2\, is so much smaller than T_1^2 + T_2^2\,, the second term on the right in the above equation is small compared to the first, so h_1 - h_2\, doesn't have to be determined with high accuracy, and the balancing procedure described above is sufficient to give accurate results.
Therefore the pendulum doesn't have to be adjustable at all, it can simply be a rod with two pivots. As long as each pivot is close to the center of oscillation of the other, so the two periods are close, the period T of the equivalent simple pendulum can be calculated with equation (2), and the gravity can be calculated from T and L with (1).
In addition, Bessel showed that if the pendulum was made with a symmetrical shape, but internally weighted on one end, the error caused by effects of air resistance would cancel out. Also, another error caused by the finite diameter of the pivot knife edges could be made to cancel out by interchanging the knife edges.
Bessel didn't construct such a pendulum, but in 1864 Adolf Repsold, under contract to the Swiss Geodetic Commission, developed a symmetric pendulum 56 cm long with interchangeable pivot blades, with a period of about 3/4 second. The Repsold pendulum was used extensively by the Swiss and Russian Geodetic agencies, and in the Survey of India. Other widely used pendulums of this design were made by Charles Peirce and C. Defforges.
 1. ^ Kater, Henry (1818). "An account of experiments for determining the length of the pendulum vibrating seconds in the latitude of London". Phil. Trans. R. Soc. (London) 104 (33): p.109. Retrieved 2008-11-25.
 2. ^ Nave, C. R. (2005). "Simple Pendulum". Hyperphysics. Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Georgia State Univ. Retrieved 2009-02-20.
 3. ^ Poynting, John Henry; Joseph John Thompson (1907). A Textbook of Physics, 4th Ed.. London: Charles Griffin & Co. p. 20.
 5. ^ Zupko, Ronald Edward (1990). Revolution in Measurement: Western European Weights and Measures since the Age of Science. New York: Diane Publishing. pp. 107–110. ISBN 0-87169-186-8.
 6. ^ Lenzen & Multauf 1964, p.315
 7. ^ Poynting & Thompson 1907, p.12
 8. ^ Elias Loomis (1864). Elements of Natural Philosophy, 4th Ed.. New York: Harper & Brothers. p. 109.
 9. ^ Torge, Wolfgang (2001). Geodesy: An Introduction. Walter de Gruyter. p. 177. ISBN 3-11-017072-8.
 10. ^ Poynting & Thompson 1907, p.15
External links[edit]


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Canada thistle: see thistle.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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Architectural educators use the scientific term "critical mass" to justify the necessity for design students to be present in the studio in order to gain momentum, share ideas, and learn from each other, while enjoying their camaraderie. Further, it is believed that the physical presence may yield an esprit de corps, albeit in a pedagogy which values individualism. Any of these educational objectives, however, such as communication, idea sharing and momentum, are within reach in the virtual environment. Indeed, telecommunication technology oriented design environment actually enhances educator-student and student-student participation in getting to know each others' values and cultures. Such cooperation across time and space, leads future designers to identify and solve problems in a truly global setting The computer savvy profile of today's students suggests that cross-cultural and across-distance design education is an achievable aim and even may weaken the argument for the merits of physical presence in the studio. Even in practice, for example, the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) approach will likely to change how professionals cooperate through networking media in creatively linking, sharing, and integrating their design expertise with their other professional team members.
Recent developments in telecommunication technology virtually have eliminated the necessity for sharing the same physical space by the members of a studio or cooperating professionals on a project. Professionals and students alike can easily work, debate, and share ideas even if they are many time-zones apart. In this paper, we concentrate on the implications of this technology upon design education, particularly on the studio component through a major global studio urban design project case study. It focuses on the pros and cons of global studios based on experiences in architectural education which is coming to focus as a variant in the studio typology both in traditional and in nascent on-line programs.
|Keywords:||Global Studio, Distant Learning, Educational Cooperation, Virtual Design Studio, Architectural Education, Architectural Design|
Associate Professor, Architecture, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA
Associate Professor, College of Architecture, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA
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What is the main idea of the interlopers?
The theme of The interlopers is about hatred and it may lead to tragedy. The story is a example of the feud between the two families. If the two families could have compromised over the ownership of the forest. Ulrich and Georg wouldn't make themselves into crisis or even lost their life in the end.
What is the main lesson of the interlopers?
The moral of the story is to lay aside feuds or arguments because they could lead down the path of destruction.
What is the conclusion of the interlopers?
Conclusion is when you summarize the story you have just read. In the story "The Interlopers" Georg and Ulrich, the two enemies are trapped in the forest caused by a branch. As they screamed for help the decided it would be best to become allies. Wile screaming for survival their death sentence arrived.
What caused the feud in the interlopers?
The feud is caused by an old land dispute between the Gradwitz and Znaeym families. As the other educator pointed out, the feud is inherited by the succeeding generations of both families. The land in dispute is only a "narrow strip of precipitous woodland" on the outskirts of the Gradwitz property.
Who owns the land in the interlopers?
What is the main conflict in the interlopers?
The central conflict in the story is between Ulrich and Georg over a virtually worthless piece of land. It is an example of a man versus man conflict. Their conflict with each other is as a result of a family feud that reaches back through generations over this boundary line between each man's land.
What are two main conflicts?
All conflict falls into two categories: internal and external. Internal conflict is when a character struggles with their own opposing desires or beliefs. It happens within them, and it drives their development as a character.
What is the climax of the story the interlopers?
Man, the climax comes when the two enemies, Ulrich von Gradwitz and Georg Znaeym, reconcile their differences. Then, once they are friends, they are yet engaged in another conflict: Man vs. Nature. The climax of this conflict comes as the two men shout to beckon what they think are their hunters.
What is ironic about the ending of the interlopers?
What is unexpected and ironic about the ending is that the men are fighting each other, but they both end up fighting wolves. This is situational irony. "The Interlopers" is a fable about two men who are battling with each other.
What does the tree symbolize in the interlopers?
The Beech Tree Symbol Analysis. Despite Ulrich and Georg both being armed with the intent to shoot, a huge, falling beech tree is what nearly kills them when they finally come face-to-face. The tree immobilizes the men, and in pinning them, prevents either man from using his rifle to murder the other.
What is the irony in the interlopers?
Topic Sentence: The ending of "The Interlopers" is an example of situational irony because both the reader and the two main characters believe they will be rescued but in the end they are attacked by wolves.
Who are the true interlopers?
The interlopers in the story are two men, Ulrich von Gradwitz and George Znaeym. The two are involved in a feud that has spanned three generations, all resulting from a lawsuit Gradwitz' family placed against Znaeym for the land. The courts granted them the land, however the Gradwitz' family refused to give it up.
Do Ulrich and Georg seem to meet by chance or by design?
Do Ulrich and Georg seem to meet by chance or by design? They meet by design because they were both looking for the other to kill him.
What means interloper?
noun. a person who interferes or meddles in the affairs of others: He was an atheist who felt like an interloper in this religious gathering. an intruder; trespasser. a person who intrudes into some region or field of trade without a proper license.
Where is the word interloper used in the story?
"Wolves." 1. Georg is an "interloper" on Ulrich's land, but Georg feels as though the land is really his family's and Ulrich is the "interloper."
What does the wild weather foreshadow?
Another example of foreshadowing in the story is when the falling beech tree pins both Georg and Ulrich down. Since weather is a natural phenomenon neither man can control, the incident foreshadows Ulrich and Georg's final ambiguous fate at the hands of wolves (another element of the wild that neither man can control).
What is Ulrich's state of mind at the beginning of the story?
How would you describe the mood, or atmosphere, at the beginning of "The Interlopers"? He is angry and hopes to find his enemy. What inference can you make about Ulrich at the beginning of the story? He suspects that Georg is poaching in the forest.
What is the mood of the interlopers?
So, the mood of the story is one of eeriness, darkness, and suspense. Our sensitivity to evil is heightened by Saki's use of details about both nature and man which create a sense of foreboding about some kind of danger to come, and it is an appropriate mood for this story.
What is a metaphor in the interlopers?
However, the greatest metaphor in Saki's story is the title: "The Interlopers," the forces of Nature that interfere with the settlement of the men's feud. For, when the two enemies encounter each other suddenly, vis-a-vis, their civilized natures do not allow them to react immediately.
What literary devices are used in the interlopers?
Literary Devices in The Interlopers by SakiLiterary Devices in The Interlopers by Saki. Ethan Lex.Theme Statement.Foreshadowing.Symbolism.Character Types.Dramatic Irony.Climax.Allusion.

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text:
Research from the Met Office has shed new light on a link between decadal solar variability and winter climate
in the UK, northern Europe and parts of America.
The study, carried out with Imperial College London and the University of Oxford, shows that low UV output from the sun can contribute to cold winters over parts of the northern hemisphere
, such as recently seen in the UK. Years of higher UV have the opposite effect.
Adam Scaife, one of the scientists involved in the research, said that while some studies have observed a link between solar variability and winter climate, our research establishes this as more than just coincidence
He said: "We've been able to reproduce a consistent climate pattern, confirm how it works, and quantify it using a computer model based on the laws of physics. This isn't the sole driver of winter climate over our region, but it is a significant factor
and understanding it is important for seasonal to decadal forecasting."
New data from sensitive satellite equipment shows UV variability over the 11-year solar cycle may be much larger than previously thought
and has been key to the research.


Nutritionally balanced pizza includes a unique ingredient
Developed by University of Glasgow scientist Mike Lean and entrepreneur Donnie Maclean, the pizza contains the proper proportions of calories, proteins, carbohydrates, fats, salts, sugar, fiber, vitamins and minerals that humans require for a balanced meal. They added locally grown seaweed to the dough to cut down the sodium levels and offer vitamin B12 and iodine, and fortified the pizza with magnesium, potassium, folate and vitamin A, and mixed red peppers into the sauce for extra vitamin C.
Maclean said that a long time was spent in refining the recipes to get the proper nutritional and taste balance. "I'm confident that once they try our pizzas and realize that a balanced meal doesn't have to taste bland or like cardboard, people will happily choose them so that we can make a difference to the nations' health," Maclean added.
Varieties include Cheese and Tomato, Ham and Pineapple, and Spicy Chicken. In talks with a major British supermarket retailer for distribution, they will be commercially launched by Eat Balanced, the firm established by Maclean.
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coordinate graph perpendicular to the plane defined by the x and y axes.
The difference between true zero and an indication given by a measuring instrument.
Zero-Overhead Looping
The ability of a high-performance processor to repeat instructions without requiring time to branch to the beginning of the instructions.
Zero-Wait-State Memory
Memory fast enough that the processor does not have to wait during any reads and writes to the memory.
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Dreamweaver CS5 Essential Training
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Link basics
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Video: Link basics
Without links the World Wide Web would be a pretty boring place. Instead of being able to click to jump from page to page, you would have to type in each unique address every time you wanted to view another page. It's no exaggeration to say that without the ability to create links, there would be no Internet. So knowing how to create links in Dreamweaver is pretty important. It's also, you'll be glad to know, pretty easy. Before we get into how to create a link in Dreamweaver, let's take a moment to learn the basics of links and a few of the different types you can create.
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Cost of Power Interruptions to Electricity Consumers in the United States
Kristina Hamachi LaCommare and Joseph H. Eto
The massive electric power blackout in the northeastern U.S. and Canada on August 14-15, 2003 catalyzed discussions about modernizing the U.S. electricity grid. Industry sources suggested that investments of $50 to $100 billion would be needed. This work seeks to better understand an important piece of information that has been missing from these discussions: what do power interruptions and fluctuations in power quality (power-quality events) cost electricity consumers? The authors have developed a bottom-up approach for assessing the cost to U.S. electricity consumers of power interruptions and power-quality events (referred to collectively as "reliability events"). The approach can be used to help assess the potential benefits of investments in improving the reliability of the grid. They have also developed a new estimate based on publicly available information, and assessed how uncertainties in these data affect this estimate using sensitivity analysis.
Document Type:
Technical paper


text: Although it is often acknowledged that social and environmental factors interact to produce racial and ethnic environmental health disparities, it is still unclear how this occurs. Despite continued controversy, the environmental justice movement has provided some insight by suggesting that disadvantaged communities face greater likelihood of exposure to ambient hazards. The exposure–disease paradigm has long suggested that differential "vulnerability" may modify the effects of toxicants on biological systems. However, relatively little work has been done to specify whether racial and ethnic minorities may have greater vulnerability than do majority populations and, further, what these vulnerabilities may be. We suggest that psychosocial stress may be the vulnerability factor that links social conditions with environmental hazards. Psychosocial stress can lead to acute and chronic changes in the functioning of body systems (e.g., immune) and also lead directly to illness. In this article we present a multidisciplinary framework integrating these ideas. We also argue that residential segregation leads to differential experiences of community stress, exposure to pollutants, and access to community resources. When not counterbalanced by resources, stressors may lead to heightened vulnerability to environmental hazards.


text:
Here we present a method for classifying fMRI independent components (ICs) by using an optimized algorithm for the individuation of noisy signals from sources of interest. The method was applied to estimate brain activations from combined EEG-fMRI data for the exploration of epilepsy. Spatial ICA was performed using the above-mentioned optimized algorithm and other three popular algorithms. ICs were sorted considering the value: of the coefficients of determination R2, obtained from the multiple regression analysis with morphometric maps of cerebral matter; of the kurtosis, which features the signal energy. The validation of the method was performed comparing the brain activations obtained with those resulted using the General Linear Model (GLM). The ICA-derived activations in different datasets comprised subareas of the GLM-revealed activations, even if the volume and the shape of activated areas do not correspond exactly. The method proposed also detects additional negative regions implicated in a default mode of brain activity, and not clearly identified by GLM. Compared with a traditional GLM approach, the ICA one provides a flexible way to analyze fMRI data that reduces the assumptions placed upon the hemodynamic response of the brain and the temporal constrains.
|Number of pages||4|
|Journal||Conference proceedings :... Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Conference|
|Publication status||Published - 2013|
ASJC Scopus subject areas


text:
Evidence of traffic-related pollutant control in soil-based Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS)
Item TypeJournal Article
MetadataShow full item record
SUDS are being increasingly employed to control highway runoff and have the potential to protect groundwater and surface water quality by minimising the risks of both point and diffuse sources of pollution. While these systems are effective at retaining polluted solids by filtration and sedimentation processes, less is known of the detail of pollutant behaviour within SUDS structures. This paper reports on investigations carried out as part of a co-ordinated programme of controlled studies and field measurements at soft-engineered SUDS undertaken in the UK, observing the accumulation and behaviour of traffic-related heavy metals, oil and PAHs. The field data presented were collected from two extended detention basins serving the M74 motorway in the south-west of Scotland. Additional data were supplied from an experimental lysimeter soil core leaching study. Results show that basin design influences pollutant accumulation and behaviour in the basins. Management and/or control strategies are discussed for reducing the impact of traffic-related pollutants on the aqueous environment.
Napier, F., et al. 2009. Evidence of traffic-related pollutant control in soil-based Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS). Water Science and Technology. 60(1): pp.221-230. Available from: DOI: 10.2166/wst.2009.326


text:
Animal Species:Hawaiian Triggerfish, Rhinecanthus aculeatus (Linnaeus, 1758)
Despite its standard name, the Hawaiian Triggerfish has a tropical Indo-Pacific distribution.
Blackbar Triggerfish, Whitebanded Triggerfish, White-barred Triggerfish, Lagoon Triggerfish
The species can be recognised by its distinctive colouration. It is largely whitish with a dark region midlaterally. There are four white-blue stripes descending from the side of the body to that anal fin. Four blue lines cross between the eyes and there are three blue lines between the eyes and the pectoral fin bases. A yellow line enclosing a blue'moustache' runs between the mouth and the pectoral fin base.
The Hawaiian Triggerfish occurs throughout the Indo-Pacific region. In Australia it is known from the central coast of Western Australia to the offshore islands of north-western Western Australia. It also occurs from the northern Great Barrier Reef south to Sydney, New South Wales.
The map below shows the Australian distribution of the species based on public sightings and specimens in Australian Museums. Click on the map for detailed information. Source: Atlas of Living Australia.
Distribution by collection data
Coral reefs, often in lagoon areas. In more temperate waters, the species occurs on rocky reefs.
Feeding and Diet
The species feeds on algae, detritus and invertebrates.
- Hoese, D.F., Bray, D.J., Paxton, J.R. & G.R. Allen. 2006. Fishes. In Beesley, P.L. & A. Wells. (eds) Zoological Catalogue of Australia. Volume 35. ABRS & CSIRO Publishing: Australia. parts 1-3, pages 1-2178.
- Randall, J.E., Allen, G.R. & R.C. Steene. 1997. Fishes of the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea. Crawford House Press. Pp. 557.
Mark McGrouther, Collection Manager, Ichthyology
Tags fishes, ichthyology, Hawaiian Triggerfish, Rhinecanthus aculeatus, Balistidae, white, black, blue, yellow, grey, odd-shaped, 10 cm - 30 cm, stripes or bands, rocky reef, coral reef, marine, adult,


The New Era of Carbon Negative Footprint Cannabis Cultivation
By Bill Shevlin
California grows some of the best cannabis in the world. Unfortunately, cultivation can have not-so-green consequences. From unregulated guerilla grows in the Emerald Triangle, to indoor cultivation in cities like Los Angeles, there are often negative side effects for the environment. High energy consumption, water shortages and the endless wasteful packaging that's required under the regulated market all add up to cannabis having potentially devastating environmental impacts if things continue along the same trajectory.
California is leading the way when it comes to energy efficiency. Former governor Jerry Brown signed the carbon neutral order in September 2018, committing California to 100 percent use of zero-carbon electricity by 2045.
Evan Mills, a Californian scientist specializing in climate change and energy, is a member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. According to him, the cannabis industry could increase the efficiency of almost any stage of production: "California and elsewhere has begun to address the destructive impacts of unregulated outdoor cultivation, but have yet to recognize what may be even greater environmental consequences from the prodigious amounts of energy used by indoor operations."
But there is hope for a cleaner, greener future for cannabis. Innovative cannabis cultivators are lowering their carbon dioxide (CO2) outputs by shifting their grow-ops towards zero carbon footprint cultivation practices, reducing their water consumption, and using biomass to create paper and plastics, which all help reduce the waste and pollutants from the industry.
Let's look at three ways the cannabis industry is working towards a more sustainable, eco-friendly future by creating better cannabis using zero carbon footprint cultivation techniques.
Indoor Grows That Are More Energy efficient
Indoor cannabis cultivation is often the preferred grow method as it allows for greater security, along with pest and disease management. Additionally, by creating an optimal climate for cannabis production techniques, growers have greater process control and are subsequently able to increase their yield per square foot.
Unfortunately, this industrialized method utilizes processes that consume a lot of energy, which ultimately means indoor cannabis production has a large carbon footprint. This variable measures the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced by human activities.
According to one report, the carbon footprint of one kilogram of indoor cannabis produced is 4,600 kg of CO2. One single cannabis cigarette represents 1.5 kg CO2 emissions, equivalent to 25 hours of 100 watt light bulb average emissions. In total, this adds up to $6 billion in energy expenditure.
The majority of CO2 emissions from indoor grows come from the fleet of air conditioners required to keep the plants comfortable. This includes dehumidifiers to manage the inevitable moisture, fans to circulate air and water management systems for plant irrigation.
In SoCal, indoor growers have developed proprietary technology that replicates the photosynthesis process of plants and trees. Direct Air Capture technology pulls in atmospheric air and extracts the carbon dioxide from it while returning the rest of the air to the environment. The carbon dioxide is then delivered in a pure, compressed form that can then be reused, allowing a cannabis biomass increase through an environmentally positive process.
Progessive, vertically integrated cannabis companies are going one step further, and using EV powered delivery vehicles to deliver their product to dispensaries and consumers in the region. The good news is with reduced electricity overheads, indoor cultivators will have a higher profit margin.
Reduced Water Consumption
Minimizing water use in cannabis cultivation not only reduces the impact on the environment, but it could also help growers comply with state and municipal regulations, as well as reduce costly water bills.
California's struggle with droughts in recent years is common knowledge, and the state itself diverts eighty percent of its water resources to agriculture.
In 2019, the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) updated the Cannabis Cultivation Policy – Principles and Guidelines for Cannabis Cultivation. The policy "establishes principles and guidelines (requirements) for the diversion and use of water, land disturbances, and the activities related to cannabis cultivation to protect water quantity and quality."
The regulations around water supply and water quality with cannabis cultivation can make compliance exceedingly difficult for both indoor and outdoor, or sun grown growers.
Forward-thinking indoor growers have implemented proprietary water collection technologies to build irrigation systems for their plants that don't require the use of outside water, helping to create a climate positive water impact.
Innovative outdoor farmers in Northern California have forgone the use of water altogether, opting instead for drought-tolerant genetics and dry farming techniques in a bid to overcome the potential issues of water shortages.
Dry farming has been used for crop management in drought-prone areas of agriculture and winemaking for decades, yet there are relatively few cannabis farms using the practice in California. The technique allows nature to dictate the true sustainability of production, especially when combined with biodynamic techniques like cover crops and cultivating healthy, nutrient-rich soil. This is craft cannabis at its finest, embracing the uniqueness of the terroir and appellation of the region to create award-winning, sustainable cannabis.
Sustainable Packaging As the New Normal
One of the downsides of California's regulated market is the excessive packaging cannabis products are required to use. Layers of plastic and paper are required to ensure products are childproof that inevitably end up in a landfill.
New plant-based paper and plastic packaging opinions are coming onto the market that give conventional packaging options a run for their money. By using the biomass waste from cannabis and hemp extraction processes, sustainable and environmentally friendly products like hemp paper and plastic can be utilized as real, viable alternatives. Additionally, they can be recycled multiple times instead of ending up in landfill, creating a new circular system.
By embracing new technologies that allow resources to be reduced, reused or recycled, along with operating using a zero carbon footprint cultivation model, cannabis companies can lower their production costs, which ultimately means a higher profit margin. This, along with helping to save the planet, can only be a good thing.
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One of RN 3's most desolate stretches is the 350 kilometers between Caleta Olivia and Puerto San Julián, but just north of the halfway point there's an incomparable detour to this 13,700-hectare badlands.
In Jurassic times, before the Andes rose in the west, this was a humid region of coniferous Proaraucaria woodlands. After volcanic eruptions flattened the forests and buried them in ash 130 million years ago, water and wind gradually uncovered the now-petrified trunks.
Measuring up to three meters in diameter and 35 meters in length, Proaraucaria was a forerunner of the Andean araucaria. Until 1954, when the area became a natural monument (meriting Argentina's highest possible level of protection), the best and biggest specimens were regularly looted. Proposed additions would increase the protected area to 60,000 hectares.
Solitary Bosques Petrificados, 50 kilometers west of RN 3 via graveled RP 49, gets only a few thousand visitors per year, mostly in summer. In addition to its petrified forests, it has desert steppe vegetation and wildlife including guanacos and rheas. It has no water, and there is no public transportation, but Puerto Deseado operators will organize excursions to the site.
For camping, try Estancia La Paloma, roughly midway between RN 3 and the forest.
For more information, contact Caleta Olivia's APN office (Hipólito Irigoyen 2044, tel. 0297/_PHONE_, bosquespetrificados [at] apn [dot] gov [dot] ar).


text:
A moat is a body of
water around a
town to keep people out. At first, moats were simple and used only for protection. Later on, moats became more complicated and were used for show.
Moats are deep, wide
ditches filled with water. They were usually built near sources of water that flowed into the moats, filling them with water. The moats were filled with water for a few reasons. It made enemies swimming across the moat easy targets. It also made it impossible for enemies to dig underneath the castle walls, which was a common method of attack. It also prevented
fires from destroying the castle.


and 'intransitive' verb:
The verbs in a lexicon can then be assigned to a lexical class by invoking the appropriate template, as illustrated below for the transitive verb devour and the intransitive verb sleep:
devour V XLE @(TRANS devour ).
sleep V XLE @(INTRANS sleep).
Some verbs can be either transitive or intransitive ('ambitransitive') and therefore would therefore be assigned to both of these lexical classes, as follows:
stop V XLE { @(TRANS stop) | @(INTRANS stop) }.
If there are many verbs that can be either transitive or intransitive, it may make sense to define a template for a class of ambitransitive verbs, as follows:
The definition of the lexical entry for stop would thus look as follows:
stop V XLE @(AMBITRANS stop).
This illustrates the fact that template invocations may appear in the position of any proposition in the f-description language, so that the formulas they stand for can be combined by the usual Boolean operators. Note that the template calls can be made even more concise using %stem in lieu of a hard-codeD predicate names.
Lexical rules
Since the definition of a template can be any Boolean combination of schemata containing formal-parameter symbols in positions where schemata or symbols might otherwise appear, a template definition can also include other template invocations. Thus, the fact that most transitive and ditransitive verbs can also be passivized can be encoded in the definitions
TRANS (P) = @(PASS (^ PRED)='P<(^ SUBJ) (^ OBJ)>').
DITRANS (P) = @(PASS (^ PRED)='P<(^ SUBJ) (^ OBJ) (^ OBJ2)>').
The passive template can then be defined to specify the systematic rewriting of designators, in accordance with the original lexical redundancy rule described above. This might have the following form:
(^ OBJ)-->(^ SUBJ)
|(^ SUBJ)-->NULL}}.
The single parameter for this template can be a Boolean combination of schemata; in the case of TRANS and DITRANS, it is instantiated as a single PRED schema. The result after substituting this schema and expanding the template will be a disjunction with three branches. One disjunct will contain an isolated copy of the original schema, one will contain the agentive passive alternative, and the third will contain the agent-deletion passive. The passive alternations are created by rewriting designators according to the --> specifications.
A designator rewrite is an expression of the form
match --> result
where match and result are arbitrary designators. A designator rewrite can only appear in a position appropriate for a proposition and only in a template definition. A template definition containing such a specification is interpreted in the following way. First, the parameters of the template invocation are substituted for the formal parameters to give a parameter-free Boolean formula. The resulting formula is then converted to disjunctive normal form, a formula consisting of a top-level disjunction each of whose disjuncts is a conjunction of propositions and designator rewrites. Finally, the designator rewrites are removed from each disjunct and applied to the schemata remaining in the disjunct to systematically change any designators matching the match of a rewrite into the corresponding result. If the match for one rewrite is a subexpression of the match for another, the result corresponding to the larger match will be installed.
These three steps can be illustrated by the expansion of the template invocation @(TRANS kick). The symbol kick is first substituted for P in the TRANS definition to give the formula
@(PASS (^ PRED)='kick<(^ SUBJ) (^ OBJ)>')
Next, the PRED schema is substituted for SCHEMATA in the definition of PASS, producing
(^ OBJ)-->(^ SUBJ)
|(^ SUBJ)-->NULL}}.
The inner disjunction is promoted to the top level to give the disjunctive normal form
(^ OBJ)-->(^ SUBJ)
(^ OBJ)-->(^ SUBJ)
(^ SUBJ)-->NULL}.
The designator rewrites are then executed within their disjunct scopes to produce the final result:
|(^ PRED)='kick


What is a face? AI will teach us. Maybe. Is there anything like a set of templates, of "building blocks", that any human face is composed of? Is it all about metamor-phoses of an archetypical face?
Dimensionality reduction techniques like PCA (Principal Component Analysis) find structure within data. The application of PCA to facial recognition datasets produces well-known (in the Computer Vision literature) sets of facial archetypes, "eigenfaces".
* Alessandro de Palma
Who are we??
We randomly combine these archetypes to get variations on the theme of a face. Creepy smiles. Androgynous gazes. Moustaches. The future of humanity?
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Shiny blue brain
AI can detect human emotions with wireless signals
Image credit: Dreamstime
An AI has been developed that can reportedly use wireless signals to reveal peoples' inner emotions.
According to researchers from Queen Mary University of London, the use of radio waves to measure heartrate and breathing signals can be used to predict how someone is feeling even in the absence of any other visual cues, such as facial expressions.
Participants were initially asked to watch a video selected by researchers for its ability to evoke one of four basic emotion types: anger, sadness, joy and pleasure.
Whilst the individual was watching the video, the researchers sent radio signals like those transmitted by wireless systems, such as radar or Wi-Fi, towards the individual and measured the signals that bounced back off them. By analysing changes to these signals caused by slight body movements, the researchers were able to reveal 'hidden' information about an individual's heart and breathing rates.
Previous research has used similar non-invasive or wireless methods of emotion detection. However, in these studies data analysis has depended on the use of classical machine learning approaches, whereby an algorithm is used to identify and classify emotional states within the data.
For this study, the scientists employed deep learning techniques, where an artificial neural network learns its own features from time-dependent raw data, and showed that this approach could detect emotions more accurately than traditional machine learning methods.
Achintha Avin Ihalage, a PhD student at Queen Mary, said: "Deep learning allows us to assess data in a similar way to how a human brain would work, looking at different layers of information and making connections between them.
"Most of the published literature that uses machine learning measures emotions in a subject-dependent way, recording a signal from a specific individual and using this to predict their emotion at a later stage.
"With deep learning, we've shown we can accurately measure emotions in a subject-independent way, where we can look at a whole collection of signals from different individuals and learn from this data and use it to predict the emotion of people outside of our training database."
Methods to detect human emotions are often used by researchers involved in psychological or neuroscientific studies, but these approaches could also have wider implications for the management of health and wellbeing.
Ahsan Noor Khan, a PhD student at Queen Mary and first author of the study, said: "Being able to detect emotions using wireless systems is a topic of increasing interest for researchers as it offers an alternative to bulky sensors and could be directly applicable in future 'smart' home and building environments.
"In this study, we've built on existing work using radio waves to detect emotions and show that the use of deep learning techniques can improve the accuracy of our results.
"We're now looking to investigate how we could use low-cost existing systems, such as Wi-Fi routers, to detect emotions of a large number of people gathered, for instance in an office or work environment."
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Activity 4: Calming Beads
Activity time: 15 minutes
Materials for Activity
- Waxed linen, or elastic cord and large needles for all participants
- Assorted beads, at least 16 for each participant, and shallow trays
- One large wooden or metal bead for each participant
Preparation for Activity
- Cut 14-inch lengths of cord, one for each participant. Waxed linen cord is best, because children can string beads without using a needle.
- Place smaller beads in trays and set them at work tables.
- Place the special, larger beads in another tray.
- Make a sample set of Calming Beads using the directions below.
Description of Activity
The children create a strand of beads they can use to calm themselves when they feel angry and learn a tactile counting practice to use with it.
Affirm that is okay to get angry sometimes. However, when we stay angry we hurt ourselves. This activity is about making something we can hold onto instead of holding onto our anger.
Invite each child to choose a large bead. Distribute the lengths of cord. Point out the smaller beads on the work tables.
Explain, demonstrating as needed::
1. String one end of the cord through the starter bead.
2. Then string at least ten smaller beads on the cord, while keeping hold of the end.
3. Pull the cord through the starter bead again. Keep the cord loose enough so the beads can move back and forth, then knot the cord.
4. If the starter bead has a hole too large for the knot, tie another small bead on the end: String both ends of the cord through the smaller bead and tie a knot. You can add even more beads to this "tail."
When everyone is done, call children into a circle and invite them to admire one another's work. Show participants how to take the Calming Beads into their hands, looped over their fingers, and can finger along, bead-to-bead. Ask the children to sit quietly, closing their eyes if they wish, while you repeat these centering words:
As you breathe in, feel your body opening up with air. As you breathe out, feel yourself relaxing.
Breathe in and out as each bead passes through your finger.
Repeat the centering words a few times. Then say, in your own words:
Just like you can put yourself to sleep at night, you can also calm yourself when you are angry. These beads are a great way to help you. Keep them in your pocket or around your wrist to use whenever you need.
Invite participants to continue holding the beads and using them to count quietly. Ask the group:
- Do you think your Calming Beads might be helpful to you?
- Who can try in the coming week to use your Calming Beads when you get angry?
- What other ways do you use to help you remain calm?
Have children make extra sets of Calming Beads to include in the Fidget Objects basket.
Including All Participants
This activity requires manual dexterity and in some cases, patience. Large beads are much easier to string.


text:
Initiated by English architect Richard Norman Shaw in 1868, the style began with late medieval overtones but eventually acquired more classical detailing reflecting the reign of Queen Anne and the immense popularity of Classical architecture in 18th century England. The American version of the style, sometimes referred to as Free Classic, came to popularity after the Centennial Exposition of 1876 where two impressive English buildings in the style were admired.
- Irregular plan and massing.
- Steeply pitched roofs with an open gable end often prominent.
- Bay windows or towers.
- Small, classical details often overshadowed by the large mass of house.
- Wide variety of exterior material patterns used.
- Tall, thin chimneys.
- Windows with small panes over or around the primary pane.


text:
Perennial Ryegrass (Lolium perenne)
Ryegrass (Lolium) is a genus of nine species of tufted grasses, family Poaceae. Plants are living Organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. The flowering plants or angiosperms ( Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta) are the most widespread group Liliopsida is a Botanical name for the class containing the family Liliaceae (or Lily Family Poales is an order of Flowering plants in the Monocotyledons and includes families of plants such as the grasses, Bromeliads, Poaceae or Gramineae is a family in the Class Liliopsida of the flowering plants. Carl Linnaeus (Latinized as Carolus Linnaeus, also known after his ennoblement as, May 23 new style (13 May old style 1707 who laid the foundations for Grass is the common word that generally describes Monocotyledonous green Plants The family Gramineae ( Poaceae) are the "true grasses" and include Poaceae or Gramineae is a family in the Class Liliopsida of the flowering plants. Also called tares (even though there is no firm evidence that this is the same as the plant given that name in English language translations of the Bible - vetches are another candidate), these plants are native to Europe, Asia and northern Africa, but are widely cultivated and naturalised elsewhere. Etymology According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word bible is from Latin biblia, traced from the same word through Medieval Latin and Late Latin Common Vetch ( Vicia sativa L also known as Tare or Vetch, is a Nitrogen fixing leguminous plant Ryegrasses are naturally diploid, with 2n = 14, and are closely related to the fescues Festuca. "Haplo" redirects here For the fictional character see The Death Gate Cycle. Fescue ( Festuca) is a Genus of about 300 Species of perennial tufted Grasses belonging to the grass family Poaceae
Ryegrass should not be confused with Rye, which is a grain crop. Rye ( Secale cereale) is a grass grown extensively as a grain and forage crop
The following are accepted as distinct species:
Ryegrasses contain some species which are important grasses for both lawns, and as pasture and for grazing and hay for livestock, being a highly nutritious stock feed. A lawn is an area of recreational or amenity land planted with grass, and sometimes Clover and other plants which are maintained at a low even height Pasture is land with Herbaceous vegetation cover used for grazing of Ungulate Livestock as part of a Farm or Ranch. Hay is a generic term for grass or Legumes that have been cut dried and stored for use as animal feed, particularly for grazing animals like Livestock is the term used to refer (singularly or plurally to a Domesticated Animal intentionally reared in an agricultural setting to produce such as Food Ryegrasses are also used in soil erosion control programs. Soil, often typeset as SOiL, is a four piece rock band from Chicago Illinois United States founded by Shaun Glass Tom Schofield Tim King and Adam Zadel Erosion is the carrying away or displacement of solids ( Sediment, Soil, rock and other particles usually by the agents of currents such as wind It is the principal grazing grass in New Zealand where some 10 million kilograms of certified seed are produced every year. New Zealand is an Island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses (the North Island and the South Island There is a large range of cultivars. A cultivar is a cultivated Plant that has been selected and given a unique name because of its decorative or useful characteristics it is usually distinct from similar The primary species found worldwide and used for both lawns and as a forage crop is perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne). Perennial Ryegrass ( Lolium perenne) is a Grass from the family Poaceae. Like many cool-season grasses, it is often infected by a clandestine, fungal endophyte which lives symbiotically within its leaves.
Some species, particularly L. temulentum, are weeds which can have a severe impact on the production of wheat and other crops. WEED (1390 AM) is a Radio station broadcasting a Spanish format Ryegrass pollen is also one of the major causes of hay fever. Pollen is a fine to coarse powder consisting of microgametophytes ( pollen grains) which produce the male Gametes (sperm cells of Hay Fever is a comic play written by Noel Coward in 1924 and first produced in 1925 with Marie Tempest as the first Judith Bliss


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Ayahuasca Addiction and Abuse
Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic tea made from Amazonian vines and leaves containing DMT, the chemical responsible for its powerful perception-altering effects on the brain.
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What Is Ayahuasca?
Ayahuasca Addiction May Develop As A Result Of Consuming The TeaAyahuasca is a hallucinogenic tea made from brewing certain vines and leaves together that are native to the Amazon. While sometimes referred to as an illicit drug, ayahuasca is a combination of the ayahuasca vine (Banisteriopsis caapi) and leaves from the chacruna shrub (Psychotria viridis). Neither plants are illegal in the U.S. However, the leaves contain the compound dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a psychotropic responsible for reports of intense hallucinations. DMT, unlike the plant that contains it, is classified as a Schedule I drug with high addiction potential and no medical use. Emerging studies, however, show there may be some benefit in using ayahuasca to treat opioid addictions and alcoholism.
For centuries, ayahuasca was used as a medicine and in religious ceremonies, despite the negative and fatal reactions that have occurred.
Ayahuasca is also known as Huasca, Yagé, brew, Daime, the tea, and La Purga. The plant was named by the Quechua and means "vine of the dead" or "vine of the soul." It takes hours to brew the red-brown tea. The result has an unpleasant, bitter taste. The vine and shrub are brewed together to lengthen its effects. Without the vine's alkaloids, drinking the leaves' DMT would cause effects lasting approximately 20 minutes. Combined, the effects of ayahuasca tea can last between 4 and 8 hours.
Effects of Ayahuasca
Because the tea's plant material is legal in the U.S., many people believe that drinking the hallucinogenic tea is safe. However, all drug use carries risk and some people have died immediately after using the substance. The tea is especially dangerous because its intensity is difficult to measure–most batches vary from one to another. In addition to intense nausea and vomiting, the most notable effects of the tea involve out-of-body hallucinations and altered perception that can make people see, hear, and feel things that are not real.
Typically, ayahuasca's effects begin within 30 minutes to an hour, peak between 1 and 2 hours, and last for a total of 4 to 6 hours.
The immediate physical effects are largely negative–vomiting and diarrhea(or "purging") is a routine characteristic of drinking the tea. They are so commonly experienced, in fact, that many believe that they help to "purify" the body. Vomiting and diarrhea can be potentially fatal because they are extremely dehydrating. Subsequently, cardiac arrest and seizures are a possibility. Additionally, ayahuasca's interaction with serotonin in the brain can be lethal for people taking antidepressants. Regardless, most who try the drink report experiencing either good or bad "trips" as well as hallucinations that mimic near-death experiences.
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The short-term physical effects of ayahuasca include:
 - Anxiety
 - Diarrhea
 - Hallucinations
 - Feelings of euphoria
 - Increased blood pressure
 - Increased heart rate
 - Increased body temperature
 - Paranoia
 - Nausea
 - Vomiting
The long-term effects of ayahuasca are still being studied. Some research suggests its use is unlikely to noticeably impair a normal-functioning brain. However, common hallucinogens have been known to cause persistent psychosis and Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD)–a disorder characterized by random hallucinations or visual stimulation, such as seeing halos around moving objects. Additionally, some studies have found that psychedelic drugs, including ayahuasca, can cause changes in brain structure and personality.
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Ayahuasca Addiction and Dependence
The risk of developing a dependence or addiction to ayahuasca are relatively low. To date, no peer-reviewed evidence demonstrates that use of the tea (or DMT) leads to a tolerance. Yet, these effects do not preclude a behavioral addiction to the experience of using the drug. Though drinking the tea has been described as "miserable," some individuals frequently use the substance as a form of self-therapy.
Because the possibility of hallucinogen-caused brain damage can be so severe, those who frequently abuse ayahuasca, take increasing amounts of it, or spend more and more time trying to secure stashes of it, should seek addiction treatment or therapy.
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ANNEX 5: formulae for calculating optimal allocation of survey effort among strata.
Optimal allocation formulae
Buckland et al. (1993; chapter 7.2.3) provide formulae for optimal sample allocation for line transect surveys. They assume
 1. the squared coefficient of variation of total count in a stratum, is inversely proportional to expected total count, E(n), and that this relationship is the same in all strata. Put another way, var(n) is proportional to E(n).
 2. the squared coefficient of variation of effective strip width, is also inversely proportional to E(n), and that this relationship is the same in all strata.
 3. effective strip width,is the same over strata, but is estimated separately in each stratum (so that the estimates,
, are independent).
Given that
where is the estimate of density in stratum v, is the total count in stratum v and is the estimate of effective strip width for stratum v. Under the above assumptions,
where L is total line length, and Av is the area of stratum v.K is a constant, given by
where and.
For fixed L, is minimized when
where is the ratio of sample effort in stratum v divided by total sample effort.
Since we will be systematically placing sample locations on a grid, a useful quantity is the optimal relative density of sample locations in a stratum. This is given by
where is the density in the reference stratum (usually the one with the highest density).
We originally considered stratifying both by density and by ease of access (i.e., by cost of sampling). In this case, Lagrange multipliers can be used to show that, under the same assumptions as outlined for (3), the optimal allocation is
where Cv is the cost of visiting a sample unit in stratum v. (Since the formula is scale-invariant, it does not matter how Cv is measured.)
Assumption 1, above, implies the relationship - i.e. that total count forms an overdispersed Poisson distribution. This has been found to apply to a wide variety of wildlife abundance studies (Buckland et al. 1993). However, other relationships are possible. For example, one may suspect that counts follow negative binomial distribution, leading to. In an analysis of elephant dung recce-transect data from the Gamba, Walsh et al (2001) tested three related models. They did not work directly with n or e, so the results are not exactly comparable with those presented here. However, they found that a "Taylor's power law" relationship of the form was the best fit to their data, with for their data.
The optimal allocation equation (5) can be further generalized to allow for any of the above forms for var(n). Assume. Assumptions 2 and 3 are as before. Again using Lagrange multipliers, it can be shown that
where l is the survey effort per unit length of line at a sample location and is the Lagrange multiplier. In general, (3) and (4) no longer hold; however when b4 is in the plausible range of 1 - 2, the optima should not be too far from these. (This statement needs to be confirmed, using simulation!) Specifically, when b4 = 2 (as in, for example, the negative binomial distribution), the first term of (6) disappears, leaving the optima of (3) and (4). (Trivially, (3) and (4) also hold when b4 = 0 or 1.)
Assumption 2 is a mild one, given that is likely to make up only a small proportion of the total variance of the final density estimate, for any feasible extensive program. At the three pilot sites, made up between 5% and 14% of (Thomas and Buckland, unpublished). Assumption 3 is unrealistic, but again violation of it is unlikely to have much affect on the optimal allocation. Buckland et al. (1993) show that if this assumption is moderated, to assume that a commonis estimated across strata, then the optimal allocation falls somewhere between (3) and
Given that will make up a small proportion of the total CV, whether pooled by stratum or not, we expect the optimal allocation to be much closer to (3) than (7).
Trend sensitivity formulae
Walsh and White (1999) provide a simple method for assessing the sensitivity of a survey program to detect a chance in abundance between two time points. Their method assumes that the difference between density estimates is normally distributed, that the coefficient of variation of density is the same in the two years, and that the test for trend is being performed at =0.05. Under these circumstances, the percent change in abundance detectable is given by
Optimal allocation
Here, we use the pilot data to estimate b1 and b2, from (2), and therefore the optimal allocations, from pilot survey data.
We first examine the assumption that ("Model 1"). Unfortunately, with only 3 pilot sites, it is difficult to adequately judge the fit of the data. Table 1 gives the data, and Figure 1 shows a scatterplot of against n for the pilot sites, with a fitted linear regression line constrained to go through the origin. A plausible alternative distribution for var(n) is negative binomal, which implies the relationship ("Model 2", the dashed line in Figure 1). With so few data, it is not possible to distinguish between the alternatives: Figure 2a), using nt appears to favour Model 1, while Figure 2b), using nc, appears to favour the Model 2.
It would be informative to combine this pilot data with those of Walsh et al (2001) to form a combined analysis. Meanwhile, as both Model 1 and Model 2 produce the same optima (see above), we will proceed as if Model 1 is the correct model. Choosing the incorrect model will, however, affect the predicted variances.
Buckland et al. (1993; section 6.3.2) give two methods for estimating b1 under Model 1:
where kv is the number of sample locations at site v (v = 1, 2, 3), and, and
From the pilot data, the two estimates are 7.34 and 9.21 for transect data, and 25.6 and 29.4 for the combined data.
Estimates of b2v are given in Table 2 - they are not at all similar between sites, but as stated earlier this is unlikely to affect the optimization. These site estimates can be combined to form a common estimate in a similar way to the b1vs in equation 9. The combined estimates are b2t = 0.54 and b2t = 2.06.
An estimate of, pooled in a similar way, is 2.25m. (One could argue that this estimate should be weighted by n rather than k). The estimates of K, using the estimate of b1 from equation 5, are therefore Kt = 8.87 and Kc = 31.11.
The optimal allocation, calculated according to (3) and (4), is shown in Table 3. The expected variance at differing sampling intensities, and predicted trend sensitivity is presented in the text.
Table 1. Total count and estimated count variances from the pilot sites. Total count for transect data alone, nt, (after truncation at 4m) and total combined adjusted count, nc are shown. k is the number of sample locations at each site; line lengths per site are 1km for transect data alone and 4km for the combined adjusted count. For more information about how these were calculated, see Thomas and Buckland (unpublished).
Table 2. Estimates of the constant for each site, using either nt or nc.
Table 3. Optimal allocation of effort to each stratum, using equations (3) and (4). is the proportion of effort to allocate to each stratum, and is the relative density of sample locations in the two strata, relative to the Medium/High stratum.
Area (km2)
D (ele/km2)
879 544
MIKE sites
127 855
44 749
2 405 352
ANNEX 6: accessibility of survey sites in central africa
An initial map showing accessibility is given in the following figure (figure 1). The survey region has been divided into three strata – accessible, difficult to access and not accessible. Areas that are not accessible are excluded from the survey programme altogether. Here, we will assume that accessible sites take on average 1 week to reach (total travel time, not including the 1 week surveying at the site), and difficult to access sites take 3 weeks travel time. This means that total survey time including the 1 week surveying at each site is 2 weeks for accessible sites and 4 for inaccessible.
When the whole study area cannot be surveyed in a given year, we propose that survey blocks be assembled. These would be large contiguous areas (at least 50,000 km 2) where accessibility is not precluded from any area of the survey block. These areas would also contain a wide range of conditions within the range of elephant occurrence, including projected high and low-density zones, and both protected and unprotected areas. The survey blocks would then constitute the study area. Figure 2 gives an example of three selected survey blocks in the Central African Forest region and figure 3 gives


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October 13, 2010
SCOPE OF LAW BARRING CELLS PHONE USE WHILE DRIVING
By: Kevin E. McCarthy, Principal Analyst
You asked whether CGS § 14-296aa as amended by PA 10-109, which generally prohibits use of cell phones and related equipment while driving (1) applies to the equipment used for Family Radio Service (FRS) and General Mobile Radio Service (GMRS) or (2) permits a driver to drive while using the speaker function of a cell phone. FRS is a type of Citizen's Band radio service while GMRS uses a type of walkie-talkie equipment.
The Office of Legislative Research is not authorized to provide legal opinions and this report should not be considered one.
It appears that CGS § 14-296aa (1) does not prohibit using FRS or GMRS equipment to make a call but does apply to using this equipment for other purposes, such as texting or sending data and (2) permits a driver to dial a number on his or her cell phone and then use the speakerphone function to hold a conversation, so long as the driver is not holding the cell phone during the conversation.
APPLICABILITY OF LAW TO FRS AND GMRS
CGS § 14-296aa generally bars the use of two types of equipment while driving. These are (1) a hand-held mobile telephone, if used to engage in a call and (2) a mobile electronic device. A hand-held mobile telephone is a cellular, analog, wireless, or digital telephone a person uses to engage in a call while using at least one hand. "Engage in a call" means talking into or listening on a hand-held mobile telephone, but does not include holding the telephone to turn it on or off or to initiate a function of the telephone. A mobile electronic device is any hand-held or other portable electronic equipment that can provide data communication between two or more persons. These include a text messaging device, a paging device, a personal digital assistant, a laptop computer, equipment that is capable of playing a video game or a digital video disk, or equipment on which digital photographs are taken or transmitted. They do not include any audio equipment or any equipment installed in a vehicle to provide navigation, emergency assistance to the driver, or video entertainment to the passengers in the rear seats of a vehicle. The legislative history of CGS 14-296aa does not address the issue of whether it applies to FRS and GMRS equipment.
According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), FRS is a type of Citizens Band radio service. Family, friends, and associates can use it to communicate within a neighborhood and while on group outings. FRS has a communications range of less than one mile and the radio has a maximum power of no more than one-half watt. It cannot be used to make a telephone call but can be used for business-related communications. GMRS is a land-mobile radio service available for short-distance two-way communications to facilitate the activities of an adult and his or her immediate family members. In most cases it has a power capacity of no more than 50 watts. Family members typically use the equipment to communicate among themselves near their residence or during recreational outings. Some equipment can be used for both FRS and GMRS. The FCC rules consistently refer to the equipment used by both services as "radios" rather than "telephones."
Since FRS cannot be connected to the public switched telephone network under 47 CFR 95.193(e), it appears that such devices do not fall within the definition of mobile telephones. However, they may fall within the definition of mobile electronic devices. FCC rules permit transmissions of data regarding the location of the FRS station. The rules also permit the transmission of brief text messages. The maximum transmission time may not exceed one second, and the minimum time before the next data transmission must be not less than 30 seconds. Only those FRS radios that the FCC has specifically certified for such data operation may actually transmit data. So it appears that using FRS equipment can be used to make calls while driving, but using it to transmit text messages or data would violate CGS § 14-296aa.
GMRS equipment can only be connected with the public switched telephone network under very limited circumstances under 47 CFR 95.141. It generally can only be used for voice communications, but 47 CFR 95.181 also permits a GMRS station operator to communicate a one-way voice page to a paging receiver. It appears that GMRS equipment can be used to make calls while driving, but using it to send pages would violate CGS § 14-296aa.
USING A SPEAKERPHONE
It appears that CGS § 14-296aa does not prohibit a driver from dialing a number and then using the speakerphone function to hold a conversation, so long as the driver is not holding the cell phone during the conversation. As noted above, the law does not prohibit a driver from holding a cell phone in his or her hand to turn it on or to initiate a function, which presumably would include dialing a number.
The issue was addressed at several points in the 2005 debate on the initial bill that was codified as CGS § 14-296aa (sHB 6722). In the House, then-Representative Witkos asked whether it would be a violation under the bill to drive while using a cell phone that has a built-in or attached speakerphone with the phone resting on his lap. Representative Roy, the bill's primary sponsor, responded that it would not be a violation because that would be hands-free operation.
Similarly, Representative DelGobbo asked for a clarification of the bill's scope. Representative Roy stated that the phrase "engage in a call" "means talking into or listening on a hand-held mobile telephone, but does not include holding a hand-held mobile telephone to activate, deactivate, or initiate a function of such telephone." Rep. DelGobbo then asked whether the bill permitted a driver to dial a number from a phone that had an ear bud and then place the phone on the passenger seat. Representative Roy stated that this would be permissible, although if this caused the driver to have an accident, other provisions of the bill would apply.
Similar points were made in the Senate debate. Senator Ciotto, Senate chair of the Transportation Committee, agreed with Senator Freedman's characterization of the bill as "just saying that you cannot hold the cell phone in your hand." Senator Nickerson stated that "using a cell phone means holding it to the user's ear."


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By A. S. MICHAEL
BEEKEEPING IN THE UNITED STATES
AGRICULTURE HANDBOOK NUMBER 335
Revised October 1980
Pages 161 – 167
The Federal Government has no laws or regulations on bee diseases within the United States. However, on August 31, 1922, Congress passed a law, popularly known as the Honeybee Act, restricting importing living adult honey bees into the United States. This act was amended in 1947, 1962, and 1976. The 1976 amendment, Pub. L. 94-319, includes the following:
(a) In order to prevent the introduction and spread of diseases and parasites harmful to honeybees, and the introduction of genetically undesirable germ plasm of honeybees, the importation into the United States of all honeybees is prohibited, except that honeybees may be imported into the United States-
(1) by the United States Department of Agriculture for experimental or scientific purposes, or
(2) from countries determined by the Secretary of Agriculture-
(A) to be free of diseases or parasites harmful to honeybees, and undesirable species or subspecies of honeybees; and
(B) to have in operation precautions adequate to prevent the importation of honeybees from other countries where harmful diseases or parasites, or undesirable species or subspecies, of honeybees exist.
(b) Honeybee semen may be imported into the United States only from countries determined by the Secretary of Agriculture to be free of undesirable species or subspecies of honeybees, and which have in operation precautions adequate to prevent the importation of such undesirable honeybees and their semen.
(c) Honeybees and honeybee semen imported pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of this section shall be imported under such rules and regulations as the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Treasury shall prescribe.
(d) Except with respect to honeybees and honeybee semen imported pursuant to subsections (a) and (b) of this section, all honeybees or honeybee semen offered for import or intercepted entering the United States shall be destroyed or immediately exported.
(e) As used in this Act, the term "honeybee" means all life stages and the germ plasm of honeybees of the genus Apis, except honeybee semen.
Any person who violates any provision of section 1 of this Act or any regulation issued under it is guilty of an offense against the United States and shall, upon conviction, be fined not more than $1,000, or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.
The Secretary of Agriculture either independently or in cooperation with States or political subdivisions thereof, farmers' associations, and similar organizations and individuals, is authorized to carry out operations or measures in the United States to eradicate, suppress, control, and to prevent or retard the spread of undesirable species and subspecies of honeybees.
The Secretary of Agriculture is authorized to cooperate with the Governments of Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia, or the local authorities thereof, in carrying out necessary research, surveys, and control operations in those countries in connection with the eradication, suppression, control, and prevention or retardation of the spread of undesirable species and subspecies of honeybees, including but not limited to Apis mellifera adansonii, commonly known as the African or Brazilian honeybee. The measure and character of cooperation carried out under this subsection on the part of such countries, including the the expenditure or use of funds appropriated pursuant to this Act, shall be such as may be prescribed by the Secretary of Agriculture. Arrangements for the cooperation authorized by this subsection shall be made through and in consultation with the Secretary of State.
In performing the operations or measures authorized in this Act, the cooperating foreign county, State or local agency shall be responsible for the authority to carry out such operations or measures on all lands and properties within the foreign country or State, other than those owned or controlled by the Federal Government of the United States, and for such other facilities and means as in the discretion of the Secretary of Agriculture as necessary.
The first apiary inspection law in the United States was established in San Bernardino County, Calif., in 1877. By 1883, a statewide law was passed by the California legislature, and by 1906, 12 States had laws relating to foulbrood. At present, almost all States have laws regulating honey bees and beekeeping.
State laws and regulations relating to honey bees and beekeeping are designed primarily to control bee diseases. Therefore, they usually attempt to regulate movement and entry of bees, issuances of permits and certificates, apiary location control and quarantine, inspection, and methods of treating diseased colonies. These laws and regulations are summarized in tables 1, 2, 3, and 4. Tables 1 and 2 are compilations of the bee laws for intrastate regulation; tables 3 and 4 are compilations of bee laws regulating interstate movement of bees and used bee equipment in the United States.
Alaska has no intrastate or interstate laws, and Missouri has no intrastate laws (tables 1-4). Also, there is a lack of uniformity in State bee laws and regulations, but considerable agreement on specific points of law. Most States require registration of apiaries, permits for movement of bees and equipment interstate, certificates of inspection, right of entry of the inspector, movable-frame hives, quarantine of diseased apiaries, notification of the owner upon finding disease, prohibition of sale or transfer of diseased material, and use of penalties in the form of fines or jail or both. Although the destruction of American foul brood-diseased colonies is included in most State laws, table 2 shows that most States also allow the use of drugs for control or preventive treatment of this disease.
The key figure in the enforcement of bee laws and regulations is the apiary inspector. He may have the entire State, a county, or a community under his jurisdiction. His efforts are directed toward locating American foulbrood and eliminating sources of it whenever found.
The effectiveness of bee laws and regulations is based on the compliance of the beekeeper. In addition, responsibility for disease control remains with the beekeeper, who should routinely examine colonies for disease as a regular part of his management program and do what is necessary when disease is found.
State laws regulating interstate movement of bees and used beekeeping equipment vary considerably from State to State. More uniformity in interstate laws would be highly desirable and lead to a more efficient inspection service and more effective beekeeping.


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I/O Virtualization: When, Not If
August 05, 2010
I/O Virtualization (IOV) is an I/O card-sharing technology that lets multiple servers share multiple cards across a single, high-speed cable segment. The general purpose of IOV is to make it easier to share bandwidth among servers in a rack. The cards to be shared are placed in a gateway, and the servers connect to that gateway. Cards are typically shareable on a per-port basis. For example, a quad-port Ethernet card could be assigned to four different servers. The ports or cards can be quickly assigned and re-assigned to the connecting servers, providing some hot-swap like functionality to PCIe. IOV is still in its infancy, but it is destined to become a standard component of a data center architecture.
There will be cost savings associated with IOV. For example, a single pair of cards in a server can perform multiple I/O functions and can replace several single-function cards per server. It also eliminates the need for a redundant card of each type in each server. Instead, a single card can act as a "hot spare" held within the I/O gateway and be assigned to the hosts if another card inside the gateway fails. Things get interesting when a single port on a card can be shared across multiple hosts. To accomplish this, it may mean adopting Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV), a specification from the PCI-SIG, the industry group that manages the PCI standard. Vendors may also create their own cards that can be shared. The result is that a 10GB Ethernet card or 16GB Fibre Channel card will be shareable across multiple servers, with each getting chunks of that bandwidth. The challenge for SR-IOV is the time it will take to come to market. Vendors that develop their own cards may have these capabilities sooner.
I believe IOV becomes a "when not if" technology because of the value it brings to the virtualized environment. Today, an I/O card in a virtual host is managed by the hypervisor. Unless you limit your VMs per physical host to the number of physical NIC ports available on the host, the hypervisor has to create virtual NICs. As a result, the hypervisor has to be involved in each I/O to understand what VM the I/O is intended for. This consumes host resources and limits the potential of getting full bandwidth from the NIC. With IOV, the inspection process can be offloaded from the hypervisor. It allows the cards to be virtualized and present themselves to the hypervisor as individual NICs that can be hard-assigned to specific VMs, minimizing hypervisor interaction and maximizing resources.
IOV will also give the IT administrator the ability to add and remove I/O resources to servers as needed, a term we call Infrastructure Bursting. With per-host virtual machine densities reaching the twenties and thirties, planning the I/O needs for those systems becomes more challenging. Predicting peak load times may be impossible. IOV lets you dynamically add I/O resources to physical hosts and VMs within them when peak times occur, and then re-assign them elsewhere when the need passes, basically bursting the infrastructure for a short time. All it takes is a spare card in the gateway to be assigned when I/O becomes an issue in a particular server.
The ability to offload the virtualization task from the host and to dynamically add temporary bandwidth to a host makes IOV a compelling technology, and something that will likely become prevalent in larger data centers. The inhibitors to IOV are the connection styles and the amount of disruption, like any other infrastructure, that it may cause. We'll cover those inhibitors in a future entry. For more on IOV, see this entry.


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15 February 2013. Men with schizotypal personality disorder (SPD) show reductions in brain volume in several, disparate regions, reports a study published online February 6 in JAMA Psychiatry. Led by Robert McCarley of Harvard Medical School, the brain imaging study found widespread cortical reductions in men with SPD compared to healthy controls, and these correlated with negative symptom severity. The findings highlight brain regions that might be core areas of dysfunction in schizophrenia itself.
"With SPD you have a chance to look at what may be an attenuated form of schizophrenia in a brain that hasn't been contaminated with previous medication," McCarley told SRF. None of the participants in the study had taken antipsychotic medication.
As defined by the current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR), SPD shares features of schizophrenia, like social awkwardness or perceptual abnormalities, but people with the disorder do not lose touch with reality. The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) has a similar diagnostic category—schizotypal disorder—but rather than lumping it with personality disorders, explicitly considers it a form of schizophrenia.
People with SPD may hear in the wind something like a voice, but they do not hear voices; they may engage in magical thinking like a preoccupation with UFOs, but they don't actually believe they've been visited or abducted by UFOs; they may have few or no friends, but they are comfortable with that. These peculiarities do not worsen into schizophrenia, but they can interfere with a person's ability to work or live independently. In a recent study in Schizophrenia Research, Larry Siever and colleagues of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City found that people with SPD scored worse on cognitive and skills tests, and were less likely to be employed or live independently than were healthy controls or people with avoidant personality disorder (McClure et al., 2013).
Some researchers have seized upon SPD as a valuable inroad into the fundamental mechanisms behind schizophrenia, without having to deal with confounds such as medication or untreated psychosis. For example, antipsychotic medications themselves may spur brain volume loss (Ho et al., 2011), and this and some lifestyle factors have complicated efforts to discern brain changes that drive symptoms of schizophrenia from those that are consequences of living with the disorder (see SRF related news story). Because people with SPD do not tip into psychotic illness, studies of SPD can skirt these issues and potentially pinpoint brain regions at the root of schizophrenia. Despite these advantages, the study of SPD has been somewhat eclipsed recently by prodrome research, which is geared toward deciphering the subtle signs of oncoming psychotic illness (see SRF related news story).
Abnormalities in selected brain regions have been found before in SPD (Fervaha et al., 2012), but the new study is the first comprehensive look at the entire cortex. Using voxel-based morphometry and a method to accurately align brain scans for comparisons across participants, the researchers detected differences between SPD and controls not seen before.
"The surprising part was how widespread the volume reductions were," McCarley said, noting that they found evidence for both top-down deficits in executive function and bottom-up abnormalities in sensory processing. "Our interpretation is that people with SPD have deficits not only in conceptualizing and focusing, but also in sensory perception," he said.
Sixth sense/very shy
The trick in studying SPD is to actually find people with it. The SPD category originally arose from early genetic studies of schizophrenia, in which family pedigrees not only contained people with schizophrenia, but also people who were odd enough to make researchers hesitate in marking them as "unaffected." This led to development of the SPD category, which is listed in the DSM-IV, and slated for the DSM-5. Despite this recognition, and an estimated prevalence of 3.9 percent, people with SPD do not usually see a physician for their odd behaviors. This means that they need to be found out in the community.
First author Takeshi Asami and colleagues did this with an advertisement in the Boston, Massachusetts, area that began, "Sixth sense/very shy," and went on to describe recruitment for a study of people who think they have special powers, like extrasensory perception, and who are socially isolated. This garnered replies from 3,001 people, and these were whittled down through telephone and in-person interviews to 118 males with SPD. Of these, 65 underwent brain scanning, and 54 were ultimately used in the study. These were compared to a group of 54 healthy controls who, as a group, matched the age, years of education, intelligence quotient, and socioeconomic factors found in the SPD group.
The brain scans revealed a widespread pattern of small but significant cortical reductions in SPD compared to the healthy control group. These were located in many frontal, temporal, and parietal-occipital regions, and implicated centers involved in the default-mode network (see SRF related news story), sensory processing, facial recognition, and higher cognitive function. Globally, the researchers also picked up a slight difference in total gray matter volume, which constituted 42 percent of total intracranial volume in SPD compared to 43.5 percent in controls.
Unlike the brain volume losses that seem to worsen over time in schizophrenia (van Haren et al., 2011; see SRF related news story), the researchers did not find evidence for such progressive reductions in SPD. Plotting the volume of different brain regions by age of their subjects (which spanned 18-55 years), the researchers found smaller volumes in older men, but this downward trend with age was not any steeper than that found in controls.
Accentuate the negative
The cortical reductions correlated with the negative symptoms of people with SPD, as quantified using the Structured Interview for Schizotypy (SIS): those with greater reductions had more severe negative symptoms, as quantified by combining scores from items measuring social isolation, introversion, and restricted emotion and sensitivity. These correlations arose for 22 out of 26 regions with reductions—more than expected by chance. Though considered an exploratory analysis, the consistent correlations suggest these reductions are specific to negative symptoms. In contrast, no significant correlations were found for positive symptom scores.
Though future studies will have to work out how the reductions arise in the first place, the authors speculate that problems with inhibitory interneurons allow excitatory signaling to get out of hand, which creates toxic conditions that chip away at gray matter. This would occur to a lesser extent in SPD compared to schizophrenia, they suggest. If true, the difference between SPD and schizophrenia may be a matter of degree rather than kind, and something that will require ever more sensitive techniques to discern.—Michele Solis.
Asami T, Whitford TJ, Bouix S, Dickey CC, Niznikiewicz M, Shenton ME, Voglmaier MM, McCarley RW. Globally and Locally Reduced MRI Gray Matter Volumes in Neuroleptic-Naive Men With Schizotypal Personality Disorder: Association with Negative Symptoms. JAMA Psychiatry. 2013 Feb 6. Abstract