News Eagle - Hawley, PA
 - WAHS fall play - "The Process"
 - email print
 By Katie Collins
 News Eagle Reporter
 Students at Wallenpaupack Area High School will present a new kind of theater to the public in the upcoming weeks when they present "The Process" November, 29, 30 and December 1 and 2 in the Black Box Theatre.
 The production will be an improvisational play based on theater strategy often practiced in classrooms, says WAHS drama teacher, Allison Hoffmann. Improvisational drama is used to explore character, do problem solving and learn subject matter, Hoffmann explains.
 This type of show, Hoffmann says, is "long and drawn out improvisation" where characters are created and go through "different trials and tribulations" over a period of time. The students, Hoffmann says, are greeted with different obstacles, which may give them new insight into characters as the play goes on.
 Normally, improvisational acting is not performed for an audience, but because WAHS students love it so much, the fall show will be based on it.
 Hoffmann says every improvisational play is unique, because the actors do not use scripts, like they would with traditional plays or musicals. With each performance, things within the show may change as new situations arise or characters say different things.
 Aside from playing the lead roles, seniors Kait Kresse and Luke Bond will also be facilitators, which Hoffmann explains is typically her role in the classroom while doing process drama. The seniors will be mediators within the show, helping the other students and making sure the show runs smoothly.
 To Kresse, she says this kind of show is more complicated than any other show she has been part of because of what the actors have to be aware of with the changing of lines. She adds that she is usually "mentally exhausted" once done with play practice because the actors have to keep thinking on their feet.
 Bond agrees that the acting is more tiring because the actors have to continuously come up with their own lines throughout the production. But, Bond also says he finds the kind of play to be a lot more fun because of the "freedom to do what you want and be who you want." Usually, actors are given lines and have to stay true to them, he says, but now, the students will be able to make their characters into whomever they want, as long as they are realistic to the show.
 The plot of the play is a surprise, but an additional twist is that there will be a point where the audience will have the opportunity to be part of the show, if they want.
 Kresse calls the plot a "little extreme and weird to grasp at first." The students have been given a character, but they are responsible for creating a name and the character's background information.
 Page 2 of 2 - When Bond first heard of the play he says it was "weird and strange." But, as long as the students believe the play to be true, Bond says the audience will believe too. The play is an opportunity for people to expand their imaginations, he says.
 Rehearsals have consisted of more than just practicing scenes, because there was a large emphasis on practicing improvising so the students will be able to think on their "feet, accept ideas and believe" what they were doing Bond says. The students had to play "weird games and stuff" so they will be able to work with each other's ideas on stage, in order for there to be a "beginning, middle and an end of the story" he adds.
 Aside from the provisional acting, Bond is excited about the Black Box, with a new element of being "in the round," where the audience completely surrounds the actors as they perform.
 Kresse says being in the round is much different than being on stage because the actors will have to use tactics of balancing the stage and different ways of facing the audience so no audience member ever misses something.
 Bond says being in the round is "intricate and really different" because the audience will be much closer and so the actors will be able to see peoples' reactions. He says the round is "very different, but very exciting at the same time."
 Performances will be Nov. 29, 30 and Dec. 1 at 7 p.m. and Dec. 2 at 2 p.m. in the Black Box Theatre. Tickets are $5.00, but senior citizens are free. There are no reservations, but it is suggested that people arrive an hour prior to show time because there is limited seating in the Black Box.
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text:
Snow Pit Data from Greenland Summit, 1989 to 1993
Chemistry and isotope information from snow pits dug at the Summit area of Greenland, _PHONE_ includes major ions (Na, K, Mg, Ca, Cl, NO3, SO4), oxygen isotopes (18O) and H2O2. Four snow pits were dug and sampled in 1989, three snow pits in 1990, two in 1991, one in 1992 and one in 1993. All snow pits had a 3 cm sampling interval except the snow pits in 1990, which had either a 3 cm or 5 cm sampling interval. Chemistry and isotope information were obtained from each of the snow pits.
The pits and surface snow samples were collected by the Glacier Research Group (GRG), using established protocols to prevent contamination. The samples collected in 1991 were analyzed at the GISP2 drilling camp. All data except the oxygen isotope data, which is from the University of Washington, were generated by GRG at the University of New Hampshire.
The following example shows how to cite the use of this data set in a publication. For more information, see our Use and Copyright Web page.
Paul A. Mayewski and Sallie Whitlow. 1999. Snow Pit Data from Greenland Summit, 1989 to 1993. [indicate subset used]. Boulder, Colorado USA: National Snow and Ice Data Center.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


How Long Have Humans Been Drinking Alcohol?
Old wine bottles kept in a cave.
For centuries alcohol has been a prime mover of human culture, fueling the development of art, language, and religion. But for how long have humans been drinking? Who came up with the idea of alcohol? These are fundamental questions that have often been asked. Several theories have emerged explaining the genesis of alcohol drinking. While some of the theories have scientific backing, the majority of the theories are linked to the cultural way of life of the early man.
Archaeological Record
Human ancestors may have discovered alcohol over ten million years ago, long before the modern booze brewing began. The chemical analysis of vessels discovered from the Neolithic village of Jiahu in northern China reveal traces of alcohol that may have been absorbed and stored by the jars. The chemical analysis indicated that the fermented substance was made out of grapes, honey, and berries and may have been produced between 7000 and 6650 BC. The Sumerian and Egyptian documents dating back to about 2100 BC mention medicinal uses of alcohol. The Hebrew Bible also recommends giving alcohol to the perishing. In classical Greek, the wine was an important part of breakfast, while Roman citizens included alcohol in their meals beginning in the first century. Documents from the Middle Age indicate that alcohol of low strength was an everyday drink in Europe.
Distilled Alcohol
The first evidence of distillation was obtained from a Greek alchemist in the 1st century AD. The Persian and Arab scientists used distillation in their alchemical experiments. The distillation of alcohol in China began around the 1st century during the Han Dynasty. However, the first certain and dated evidence of alcohol distillation dates back to 12th century, from the School of Salerno. In Medieval Europe, the consumption of alcoholic drinks was linked to poor public sanitation and was considered a way of avoiding water-borne diseases. The concept of distillation of alcohol was considered the cheapest and safest way of killing disease-causing microorganisms.
Scientific Discovery and Modern Consumption
To learn more about the ability of human ancestors to digest alcohol, scientists studied the genes found on a digestive enzyme known as ADH4. The enzymes were obtained from the intestines of primates. The results of the scientific research suggested that the early human beings had the ability to break down alcoholic substances. The first model of the evolution of alcohol drinking indicates that alcoholic substances entered the human body after human beings began storing food leading to the development of the fermentation of food about 10,000 years ago. The early modern church (15th to 19th century) considered alcohol a gift from God to be used moderately and for enjoyment, but not for drunkenness. The production and distribution of spirit spread slowly and only became popular in the 18th century. Sparkling champagne made its debut in the 17th century. The overabundance of corn, especially in America, led to hearty drinking tradition which was characterized by many types of alcohol and heavy drinking.
More in Society


PHP: explode() vs. split()
Even though I have been a PHP programmer for 4 years or so now, I still discover new things every day. While looking at different ways to split strings based on regular expressions I learned an important lesson.
explode() isn't the same as split()!
Since I learned Perl before PHP, I prefer using split() and join() instead of explode() and implode(), respectively. To my surprise, split() is not an alias of explode() while join() is an alias of implode().
The biggest difference is explode() takes a delimiter to split by, while split() takes a regular expression. This means that explode() is going to execute faster. Also, the PHP documentation says that preg_split() is faster than split(), so really there isn't much of a reason to use split() at all.
8 thoughts on "PHP: explode() vs. split()
 1. How will the following PHP code look like in PERL?
 foreach ($arrResults as $result)
 print_r(explode('||', $result));
 This is what I have, but it's not working.
 _USER_ = $result;
 foreach $line ( _USER_ )
 $line2 = split('\|\|', $line);
 print "$line2\n";
 2. _USER_ = ("haha||hoho", "mama||papa", "qwer||asdf");
 foreach ( _USER_ ) {
 print split(/\|\|/, $_), "\n";
 3. split() is a bad practice in PHP, you MUST USE explode()
 even php people know that, split() now is obsolete!
 start your modifying your function today!
 4. Pingback: For free time that I don't have
 5. Pingback: For free time that I don't have » explode() and preg_replace() functions are recommended
Comments are closed.


text: Openness state institution results from the duty to society. This model of a modern democratic state is our main objective in the way of design. Accommodating citizen can not affect the safety of employees and the proper functioning of the object of justice. The proposed system featured in an optimal way opens up to a petitioner – the user and provides maximum safety for employees of the court. The form of the building is an attempt to respond to the symbolic content of the judicial architecture. Building in a contemporary way, refers to the archetypes associated with the judiciary and culture of the ancient mother of democracy. The simplicity and scale of distribution appearing on the facades refers to the orders of architectural aesthetics so that the object in its form becomes a timeless element to identify the city.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


text: The hemoprotein indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) is the first and rate-limiting enzyme in the most significant pathway for mammalian tryptophan metabolism. It has received considerable attention in recent years, particularly due to its dual role in immunity and the pathogenesis of many diseases. Reported here are differences and similarities between biochemical behaviour and structural features of recombinant human IDO and recombinant mouse IDO. Significant differences were observed in the conversion of substrates and pH stability. Differences in inhibitor potency and thermal stability were also noted. Secondary structural features were broadly similar but variation between species was apparent, particularly in the α-helix portion of the enzymes. With mouse models substituting for human diseases, the differences between mouse and human IDO must be recognised before applying experimental findings from one system to the next.


text:
Managing inter-object dependencies in object-oriented systems is a complex task. Changes of one object often require dependent objects to change accordingly. Making every object explicitly inform every dependent object about its state changes intertwines object interfaces and implementations, thereby hampering system evolution and maintenance. These problems can be overcome by introducing the notion of Implicit Invocation as a decoupling mechanism between objects to object-oriented systems. This paper presents the Event Notification pattern, a pattern to smoothly integrate implicit invocation mechanisms with object-oriented designs. State changes of objects, dependencies of other objects on them and the maintenance links between these objects are made explicit as first class objects. The resulting structure is highly flexible and can be used to manage inter-object dependencies in object-oriented systems efficiently.
Dirk Riehle. "The Event Notification Pattern--Integrating Implicit Invocation with Object-Orientation." Theory and Practice of Object Systems 2, 1 (1996). Page 43-52.
For the time being, a copy is available as a PDF file.
The C++ sample code from the pattern is available as events.zip. No warranties, use at your own risk.
Copyright (©) 1996 by Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.


text:
Exercise chair, England, _PHONE_
Made from mahogany and leather and measuring just over 2 m high, this exercise chair was said to offer the equivalent of riding a horse. Known in the 1800s as a chamber horse, the user sat on the seat and bounced up and down on the concertina springs as if trotting on a horse. Horse riding was considered a form of healthy exercise. Judging by the materials and its size, the chair was probably owned by someone who was wealthy.
Related Themes and Topics
There are 823 related objects. View all related objects
Glossary: exercise chair
used to simulate the trotting of a horse, also known as a chamber horse


Troubleshooting Tips > Apple Tips >
Change Audio Input for Headphones
If your students headphones are not working or audio is coming out of the computer instead of the headphones, the input and output audio sources might need to be changed. Please follow the steps below to change the source.
1) Find the Volume Control at the top right of the computer screen, near the date and time.
2) Click on it while holding down the Alt key on the keyboard
3) You should now see a menu like the one below
4) Make sure to select Headphones or USB Headphone Set for the Output and Input Device (if using a headset with a microphone). A successfully selected input and output device should have a check mark next to it.


text:
There is a lot of talk these days about thread
count, and there is also a lot of misconception as to the relevance of
high thread count to the quality of the cloth. Thread count is only one
measure of the quality of cloth, there are other factors which affect
the quality and feel of sheets but don't get as much attention.
Many countries in the world grow cotton, however not
all cotton is created equal. Fine linen begins with fine cotton, and
the finest cotton is known as long staple cotton (the staple length is a
measure of the length of the individual cotton fibres). The most common
examples of long staple cotton are Egyptian Cotton and Pima Cotton.
Longer cotton fibres enable the cotton to be spun into finer yarns with
higher tensile strength, which can then be woven into a softer, more
luxurious fabric which will last a long time.
A Good Yarn:
After the raw cotton has been blended and cleaned (a
process known as 'Ginning'), it is carded to remove the shorter, weaker
fibres. Higher quality cotton is then produced by 'combing' the cotton,
which removes more of the short fibres and leaves only the more
refined, stronger fibres which can then be spun into a fine yarn. All
Wallace Cotton sheets are produced from high quality combed cotton.
Defines the number of warp and weft yarns per 10
square centimetres of cloth. In Europe and America most retailers refer
to thread count per square inch, but in New Zealand and Australia it is
more common to refer to threads per 10 square centimetres. The finer the
yarns used, the more threads that can be woven into 10 sq cm of cloth.
Basically the higher the thread count the softer the feel and the better
Thread count for sheeting can range from 140 to 1000 per 10 sq cm,
however most cloth with thread count above 500 utilises what is termed
as a 2 ply weave, where 2 yarns are twisted together before weaving.
This increases the density of the cloth but not the fineness.
Good quality cotton sheets usually have a thread count of 200 plus. Our
range of sheeting starts at a thread count of 250 per 10 square
Sateen or Square Weave:
The type of weave also has an affect on the quality
and feel of the cloth. A Sateen weave has more warp threads on the
surface of the cloth, producing a softer, silkier feel. Sateen weaves
with a thread count of less than 250 often have a tendency to 'pill'. A
square weave is woven in a more common one over, one under style and
usually results in a crisper feel which has a high resistance to
pilling. The choice between Sateen weave and plain weave is usually a
case of personal preference between the softness of Sateen versus the
crispness of plain weave.
Our Heritage Sheets are all made from the highest quality 300 count
cotton, square weave. Our Empire Sheets are the five star option in our
sheeting range and are made from beautifully soft 750 count cotton
When you buy good quality linen you expect it to be
of a certain standard; however when it comes to towels, caring for them
is just as important as the quality of the towel itself.
If you have ever had the problem of buying new towels and using them,
finding that you and the towel end up wet, or you buy brand new good
quality tea towels and they are useless for drying?
However this is not your fault, caring for your cotton is easy but no-one tells you how to do it.
Wallace cotton is dedicated to not only providing great quality cotton
products but we are focused on educating and informing our customers
about caring for your cotton and what cotton types we use.
Soaking towels and tea-towels
Buying good quality linen and caring for it is the key to your linen living a long life.
When you buy your towels, before you use them, soak them in a tub/bucket
of cold water for a minimum of 24 hours, this swells the cotton fibres
and increases absorbency, then throw them in the washing machine with a
tablespoon of detergent (because they are not dirty). Once this is
completed put them in the dryer on warm and a reduced spin to get rid of
any excess lint.
Your towels will come up absolutely beautiful, they will be rich and super absorbent.
Do the same with your tea-towels and really dry those dishes!
Washing and drying linens correctly will help
eliminate creasing and make ironing easier. Natural fibres crease more
when new, but with time the fabric softens and this will reduce. For
best results, iron bed linens and table linens while still slightly
damp, using a steam iron. In the event that linens have become bone-dry,
we advise re-damping with a water spray before ironing. To give a super
crisp finish, use spray starch when ironing. As with a shirt collar,
always iron the corners of pillowcases from the outside inwards to avoid
corner creasing. If the item is embroidered or embellished, iron this
area on the reverse to enhance and protect it. When ironing sheets and
duvet covers, folding them in half lengthways makes them easier to
Always store your linen in a breathable cotton bag; thats why we love our cotton laundry bags; free with purchase!


Green Patent Blog: Trademark Board Nixes Powertech's HYBRID GREEN Mark
One of the common hurdles green brand owners have to overcome to protect their brands is U.S. trademark law's proscription against registration of marks that are "merely descriptive" of the goods or services.
The rationale for this rule is that registering a generic or descriptive term would restrict competitors from conveying information about their goods or services.
Many of the terms used to signal environmentally friendly aspects of goods or services - terms such as "green" and "eco-" - are so immediately identified with those characteristics that they have become legally incapable of the distinctiveness required for U.S. trademark registration.
Powertech Industrial Ltd. (Powertech), a Taiwanese company, recently ran into this problem when it sought registration of the mark HYBRID GREEN UPS for "power supplies; mobile phone battery chargers; mobile phone battery charger stations; battery chargers; universal power supplies; power saving adapters; electric storage batteries; uninterruptible power supplies; AC/DC converters; power source stable adapters" in Class 9 (App-No-77176134).
After United Parcel Service (UPS) opposed registration, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (Board) ruled that the mark is unregistrable as merely descriptive of Powertech's electrical components (Powertech-Opinion).
Powertech had disclaimed the "UPS" element of the mark because it is a commonly used acronym for "uninterruptible power supply" (or "system") and is therefore a generic designation for the goods.
As to the remainder of the mark, one key piece of evidence of descriptiveness was a Powertech patent that uses the term "hybrid green uninterruptible power system" as a technical term of art to refer to the battery system:
when AC utility power is interrupted or an irregular voltage occurs, the secondary battery releases power, and the inverter inside the hybrid green uninterruptible power system inverts power from the secondary battery into AC power so that the hybrid green uninterruptible power system can provide the AC power to the external load via the AC power output ports and simultaneously provide one or more sets of additional DC power and the DC power output ports (emphasis added)
The Board also noted that a Powertech web page defined the terms "HYBRID" and "GREEN" with reference to specific features of the power system as providing AC and DC output simultaneously and energy savings, respectively.
Accordingly, the Board held the mark merely descriptive because Powertech is using the well understood terms "HYBRID" and "GREEN" consistently with the common meanings of the terms:
Applicant's adoption and usage of the words "hybrid" and "green" within "Hybrid Green UPS" is totally consistent with the commonly understood meanings of these respective words. The word "hybrid" is often used to describe a system consisting of two components performing similar functions. The word "green" is often used to describe something that is environmentally-friendly... it appears from Applicant's own literature that its involved devices function in both the AC and back-up DC modes - the "hybrid" characteristic - and that the energy efficiencies of these products will tend to preserve environmental quality - or be "green."
Another "GREEN" mark bites the dust.
View more from the Green Patent Blog.
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Our Brain Is Like A Television
Tuning Into Different Channels
Our brain is a receiver of information; it scans the environment to retrieve everything that it detects with the senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch. Some would go as far to say that we also have a sixth sense. This sixth sense is a different channel that we are all capable of tuning into; we just have to learn how to tap into the parallel universe that it belongs to.
Tuning into different channels is not something that we live our lives thinking about. Usually, mystics, those who practice meditation and users of psychedelic drugs are interested in tapping into different states of consciousness. These different states of consciousness are the different channels that our brain can switch on for us to enjoy.
But how do we tap into these channels and why is it so difficult? It's believed that we weren't designed to tap into these channels in the first place; our brain remains on the "normal channel" or what is perceived to be everyday reality. It's also believed that parallel universes may exist and that humans only have access to them through certain tools.
The next question becomes, are we allowed to access these parallel universes? If we are, then why didn't God create us with the ability to do so naturally? We do we have to consume psychedelic drugs or meditate for years to tap into these different channels? Why isn't it as easy as clicking a button on a remote?
If we had the answer, then we wouldn't be sitting here entertaining the idea of altered states of consciousness. We don't know if we're allowed to tap into them; Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the forbidden tree and look what resulted from their actions! We live in a world of suffering.
But the answer to the original question is that we are capable of tapping into different channels for our pleasure. You can either take the long route of practicing meditation for years or the short route of consuming psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin, LSD or DMT. Either method will help you tap into altered states of consciousness.
Your brain is like a television. It's your choice whether you want to upgrade your provider and get more channels or remain with the basics.
Are you Ready? (This is Defeating Stigma Mindfully)
9 Replies to "Our Brain Is Like A Television"
 1. Excellent post. Now you got me to expand this using my own knowledge and experience.
 I believe that some people have this natural ability, as some people very readily hypnotizable from a young age may fall into this category. I have been thinking about this and, in fact many answers may present themselves through meditation. I think exercising the ability to tune into altered conscious states is like exercising a muscle; that is our own permission to practice lies within yourself. I see meditation/altered states of consciousness as falling under the category of self-actualization. In order to allow yourself to reach this stage, all other needs below it must be met or else the mind is in a state of duress in order to meet these needs. If you practice, however and keep yourself in practice, you may notice that these states, at least from my own point of view is like a spectrum; a sort of volume rocker to tune out of one state and into another.
 Next up, I find the connection to Original Sin to be quite fascinating. Though, I find that there is no harm here in the quest for knowledge. Literally, I wouldn't even have needed the snake to tempt me into indulging. The sheer fact that it is called the knowledge of good and evil and that I would've been created with such ellipsis for such new ideas. Though, I would go a step further and align the creation story to something more tangible: our own childhood. We are born in this world knowing nothing, yet is completely sheltered. As the child grows up, the realization that the world is much more expansive and much less nurturing. We gain self-awareness as well as desires beyond simply what is expected of us to survive.
 Our mind is like a simulator. It plays out scenarios as simulated varients of observable reality. That is, it can be anywhere from it being terrifying to blissful. That is just what it is to completely detatch from your own perceived sense of self. You connect with your surroundings as intimately as you would yourself. Each experience is different as it is a direct reflection of that conscious state done in real time.
 Liked by 1 person
 1. Awesome explanation! Really enjoyable to read. One thing regarding the quest for knowledge: there is nothing wrong, but in the bible it says that logic does not get you closer to God (paraphrasing); it's having Him in your heart and mind which does.
 1. Dr. Sinu, the reason knowledge brings us away from God is because we are able to explain the world around us. As a logical person, I suppose I was naturally a repellant. Blind faith will not work on a logical person as that person will naturally point out its fallacies. Before we understood how weather and solar patterns worked, the people prayed to the gods and made sacrifices in order to appease them and grant them an abundance in their harvest. It is also apparent that more educated countries tend to have better quality of life and tend to be peaceful while the most religious tends to have the opposite. This is not to say that religion is inherently harmful, as it most certainly can bring a sense of peace and hope. It is also extremely enjoyable to explore other beliefs that are different than my own. It is always enjoyable to appreciate different perspectives and to learn something new!
 Liked by 1 person
 2. Agree for the most part, but blind faith is those who haven't experienced the holy spirit. Once you experience it (and it cannot be explained in words because it's divine), your life will transform and you will realize that God gave man the ability to use logic in order to think (but not to stray away from Him).
 2. This distracting world filled with consumerism, harmful items whether that be the food we eat or products we use, and yes in ways overconsumption of technology(don't throw your phones at me :D) can inhibit our minds and brains to reach it's full potential as well.
 Bringing life back to its simple and minimalistic form could be another way to help tap into other levels of consciousness. At least a step towards the right direction.
 Liked by 1 person
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bilocating' through 'projections' :)
share|improve this answer
Surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet, but:
dop·pel·gäng·er noun
a ghostly double or counterpart of a living person.
You mention a hologram, which could be considered ghostly in appearance. In common usage, I've heard the word to most commonly mean a duplicate or replication intended to appear identical to the original, even to the point of replacing the original. It can be similar in connotation to a forgery, except when embodied as a person or living thing, the thing itself is also the forger.
But, this doesn't hold up in your added context of a software object. Also, it's quite cumbersome in a programming-variable or repeated-typing context, in my opinion. But if you need to expose the real and fake objects through a user interface, I think it could work well.
The literal translation of the word from German is double-goer or double-walker which works quite well for a software term, reality-reflecting term, or a user-interface term.
share|improve this answer
Good one. I wondering "why didn't I think of that", BTW! – Brett Stottlemyer Jun 26 at 18:51
You could pair simulacra with referent in line with Jean Baudrillard's concept of total simulation and the absence of the Real. See the Wikipedia article on Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation for more about this idea.
share|improve this answer
Already in use in RPC (at least in Java) - 'Stub' - which is the class that gets 'exposed' but it's not the'real' thing.
From software testing (and other things), 'Dummy' as in 'Dummy Objects' which are the ones 'filling in' for the real ones.
'Pseudo', typically used a prefix but it can be used on it's own, meaning false or fake, as in pseudo-science (not'really' science) or an amoeba has a pseudopod (false appendage).
share|improve this answer
One of my favorite words (in the "guilty pleasures" category) is ersatz. dictionary.com defines it as an adjective as "serving as a substitute; synthetic; artificial," or as a noun as "an artificial substance or article used to replace something natural or genuine; a substitute." (So there are two possible counterparts: natural and genuine, and from artificial we get real.) I've always thought of ersatz as an adjective, with a meaning somewhere between pseudo and virtual; again, real works. – Scott Jun 27 at 13:24
You can consider lifelike experience. It is also easy to understand.
Lifelike is an adjective that relates to anything that simulates real life, in accordance with its laws. Its goal is to immerse individuals into what is called a lifelike experience. It gets as close as possible to real life behavior, appearance, senses, etc. therefore enabling its subject to experience what is happening as if it were real. In other words, simulating reality with its physical laws is the objective of lifelike experience.
share|improve this answer
I second Luke G's suggestion of "object"/"representation", but here are a few other word-pairs that might be useable:
 - "Vehicle"/"Tenor". (This comes from the two parts of a metaphor.)
 - "Ideal"/"Object". (In the sense of Platonic ideal.)
 - "Prototype"/"Instance"
Hope these help.
share|improve this answer


text:
Digital Shoe Design Kit by DaveMakesStuff
Regular price $ 0.00
Unit price per
This kit contains all the digital parts you need to design your own basic running shoe.
These files are not meant to be printed directly. First, you will need to import them into your favourite 3D design software to texture, size, and combine according to your creative preferences. Final designs can be printed as you wish.
All parts are for the left shoe, but most programs have an option to "mirror" the object to create the right shoe.
These files are optimized for use with nTopology but can be used with most 3D editing software.
To create a basic, non-textured shoe, simply import, combine, and print your choice of the following files: "Outsole", "Midsole", "Upper", "Toe Cup", "Heel Counter", "Heel Pull", "Tongue" and "Laces". If multicolor printing is an option, you may choose to print some parts in different colours.
This kit provides additional tools to customize three areas of the shoe: upper, the outer face of the midsole, and the outsole (or tread).
For the upper, surface texture can be applied directly to the "Upper" file. There are also two upper surfaces provided in Parasolid format. "Upper Surface" aligns with the outer surface of the upper and can be used to create conformal cell maps for "lightweighting" the upper volume with lattice or TPMS structures. "Upper Surface Mid" conforms to the middle of the 3mm thick upper volume and can be used to reference surface lattices and Voronoi structures.
The "Topline Edge Field" file is provided to facilitate field driven design approaches to thickening or modifying structures along the topline of the upper. The other shoe components can also be used to apply field driven design to other areas and boundaries of the upper.
The outer face of the midsole is the most common are for texturing or modifying, while the inner surfaces of the midsole are usually left smooth. "Inset Midsole" has an inset volume along the outer face of the midsole. It is 2mm deep, with a 2mm border. The midsole inset volume can be textured or modified separately and recombined with the "Inset Midsole" to create the final midsole.
For the midsole inset volume, surface texture can be applied directly to the "Midsole Inset Volume" file. There are also two midsole inset volume surfaces provided in Parasolid format. "Midsole Inset Outer Surface" conforms with the outer surface of the midsole and can be used to create conformal cell maps for "lightweighting" the upper volume with lattice or TPMS structures. "Midsole Inset Mid Surface" conforms with the middle of the 2mm deep midsole inset volume and can be used to create surface lattices and Voronoi structures.
For the outsole, texture can be applied directly to the "Outsole" file. The "Midsole" is also provided in Parasolid format to allow the bottom face to be used to create conformal cell maps or surface lattices.
The "Outsole Edge Field" file is provided to facilitate field driven design approaches to thickening or modifying structures along the edges of the outsole.
There are three sample shoes that demonstrate volume modification using surface texturing, conformal cell maps and surface lattices. To facilitate FDM printing, none of the sample shoes have outsole texturing.
"Shoe Example – Textured" demonstrate two types of surface texturing applied to the upper and midsole inset volume
"Shoe Example - Cell Map" demonstrates application of a conformal cell map define a gyroid TPMS structure in the upper, and a square honeycomb lattice structure in the midsole.
"Shoe Example – Lattice" uses the "mid surfaces" to demonstrate two different types of surface lattice applied to the upper and midsole.
Turn your shoes into playful vases, planters or pencil holders with these socks. To ensure that the socks fit onto the shoes, do not use the "Tongue" object in your shoe design.


Here's How to Change Company Culture
Meaning and motivation are two common factors that contribute to a diverse and complex company culture. Businesses who focus on these two factors have the ability and platform to excel both socially and financially.
Social Awareness
The definition of corporate culture is the set of values and beliefs that are exhibited by employees of a certain company. In order for those values to be positive they must have a universal root in meaning for the employees. Research shows that Gen Z and millennials are more inclined to work for a firm that meets societal needs.
Meaning in the workplace fills our fundamental need to be satisfied through our work. This satisfaction keeps over one third of Americans working in their current job. Employees who derive meaning from their work and have a feeling of value are more likely to have increased customer sales skills, sales capabilities, and higher margins of productivity.
In the corporate world high productivity means high profitability and an increased emphasis on corporate culture falls within that definition. Research says that workers who value their place of employment will provide higher revenue, net growth, and stock prices for the firms that work at.
Positive Reinforcement
Meaning and value play a large part in motivation for employees. When an employee is feeling appreciated or are treated fairly they will have the motivation to want to contribute to the company. It is extremely important to create a motivational environment because it can directly impact growth.
Unmotivated employees can be the reason that a successful business fails. Businesses need to be conscious of this factor and allow it to help shape their opinions on corporate culture and its effects. By not focusing on company culture, businesses make the active choice to allow dissenting individuals to negatively impact the future success of the company.
Even though employees might be adverse to change in the beginning it is important for companies to push forward with the trajectory. Change can signal to employees job loss and increased stress and responsibility, but an effective change in company policy can assuage those fears even before they begin.
Corporate Culture is what makes and breaks businesses. Employees are the heart of the business but like a heart they can become diseased and sick. It is important that businesses care for their heart so that they can prevent dangerous issues before they arise. Preventive care is always better than postoperative care.
Why Invest in Business Culture Transformation?
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text:
TIMMS CITY, TX
TIMMS CITY, TEXAS. Timms City was four miles southwest of the site of present Darrouzett in northern Lipscomb County. It was begun in 1887 and was one of two towns competing with Lipscomb to become county seat. It was named for George Timms, a Kansas financier who backed the community. Soon, Timms City had a hotel, several saloons, a post office, a newspaper (the Texas Tribune), and various other businesses. However, the election of Lipscomb as the permanent county seat quickly led to the town's demise. One county businessman, H. E. Hoover, described it as "one year growing and four years dying." By the time the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railway pushed through this portion of the county in 1919, Timms City had disappeared.
A History of Lipscomb County, Texas, 1876–1976 (Lipscomb, Texas: Lipscomb County Historical Survey Committee, 1976).
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.H. Allen Anderson, "TIMMS CITY, TX," Handbook of Texas Online (_URL_ accessed June 19, 2013. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.


Butterfly Lighting
Butterfly lighting uses only two lights. The key light is placed directly in front of the subject, often above the camera or slightly to one side, and a bit higher than is common for a three-point lighting plan. The second light is a rim light.
This lighting may be recognized by the strong light falling on the forehead, the bridge of the nose, the upper cheeks, and by the distinct shadow below the nose that often looks rather like a butterfly and thus, provides the name for this lighting technique.


text:
The goal of Companion Resources is to help ordinary people meet the extraordinary challenges of living. We focus especially on lifelong disabilities of all kinds, including chronic mental illness. We are concerned about persons directly affected by disabilities as well as family members who support them. Our work leads us also to concerns about poverty and community.
Companion Resources is built on four key concepts:
- Learning – Understanding the conditions that bring challenges into people's lives.
- Companionship – Turning that understanding into healthy relationships of mutual love and care.
- Community – Building life-giving social structures that encourage and nourish the diversity of persons and their abilities.
- Resources – Mobilizing the gifts we have been given toward this community-building enterprise.


coupling mode is selected, a high pass filter is enabled at the input of the signal path, filtering out most DC content of the signal.
See Also: Basic Information about AC and DC Coupling.
Excitation Characteristics
 Excitation Type
Specifies what type of out is provided when requesting excitation from a module. For SC Express this will typically be listed as "Constant Differential Voltage (Balanced)".
Provides the noise found on the excitation line as well as what bandwidth said noise was measured with. Typically represent in uVrms.
 Values/ Voltage Programmability
Specifies what voltage values are available to be provided by the internal excitation form the module.
 Maximum Fault Current
Is the maximum current that the module can possibly provide in the case of a fault in the external circuitry.
 Minimum Current/ Maximum Current/ Current Drive
Is the smallest max current we guarantee that the module will be able to provide through excitation.
 LVDT Module Specific
 Voltage Programmability
 Frequency Programmability
 Specifies what frequency values can be selected by the device for the provided excitation.
 Current Drive
 Gain Accuracy
 Is the accuracy in the gain of the provided excitation voltage from the module.
 Adjustment Range
A range for the output of the excitation the user is able to select any values inside said range that are compatible with the corresponding adjustment resolution step size.
 Load Regulation
 Current Limit Detection
Is a software readable property of the excitation that will change based on comparing the current excitation current to the specified limit current.
IEPE Open Detection
 Is a software readable property for the module that will tell the user if the circuit is currently open.
IEPE Short Detection
 Is a software readable property for the module that will tell the user if the circuit currently has a short.
Compliance Voltage
Specified as either a value or value min, the compliance voltage is minimum max value that Vcommon-mode + Vbias + Vfull-scale will add up to. Where
Vcommon-mode is the common mode voltage seen by the input channel Vbias is the DC bias voltage of the sensor Vfull-scale is the AC full scale voltage of the sensor.
Balanced Source
A balanced source uses three conductors to carry the signal. Two of the conductors carry negative and positive signals (AC signal), and the third is used for grounding. The high gain and isolated ground make for a cleaner, noise-free signal when using a balanced source.
Unbalanced Source
An unbalanced source, there are only two conductors. One carries positive, the carries negative and is also used for ground. Better for short cables found in low noise environments.
 FIFO Buffer Size
 NI DAQ devices can store data in an onboard FIFO when performing analog input or analog output tasks.
 - For input tasks, this FIFO is used to buffer data prior to the NI-DAQmx driver software transferring the data to a pre-allocated location in RAM known as the PC buffer.
 - For output tasks, the data that a user requests to generate can be buffered in a combination of the FIFO and the PC buffer.
Devices that have input and output channels will have a dedicated FIFO for each subsystem. However, the FIFO is shared across all channels within that FIFO. For analog input, NI-DAQmx implements data transfer mechanisms to ensure that the data stored in the FIFO is transferred to the PC buffer fast enough so that the onboard FIFO is not overrun. For analog output, NI-DAQmx implements data transfer mechanisms to ensure that data in the PC buffer is transferred to the onboard FIFO fast enough such that the FIFO is not underrun. For analog output, there are user-selectable properties to specify whether to use the PC buffer at all, and to regenerate a single waveform from just the onboard FIFO.
The signals within a passband have frequency-dependent gain or attenuation. The small amount of variation in gain with respect to a reference frequency is called the passband flatness.
Frequency Response (Magnitude and Phase)
As a frequency sweep is performed across the analog input of a module the magnitude and phase of the measured signal will change based on filter characteristics of the module. This data is typically represented in either a chart or a table of frequency values.
Gain Amplitude/Accuracy
Gain error inherent to the instrumentation amplifier and is known to exist after a self-calibration.
Input Impedance
Input impedance is a measure of how the input circuitry impedes current from flowing through to analog input ground. For an ideal ADC, this value should be infinite—meaning no current will flow from the input to ground—but in practice this is not possible. The implication of some finite input impedance is that the ADC will have some degree of loading down a circuit, particularly those of high output impedance. It is typical for sensors to have low output impedance.
The NI PXIe-4309 has an input impedance of Zin > 10 G Ω. Taking the worst-case scenario of lowest input impedance, you can view a single-ended measurement as the following simplified circuit, assuming a sensor with output impedance Zout = 150 Ω.
The series combination of the sensor output and DAQ device input means that voltage will be divided between the two impedance values, with the larger impedance bearing most of the voltage. This means that if the sensitivity of this sensor is 20 °C / V and is measuring 100 °C (outputting 5 V), then the voltage measured by the DAQ device will be the output voltage multiplied by the ratio of the input impedance to the sum of the DAQ input and sensor output impedance:
This 75 nV measurement difference corresponds to a near-negligible 1.5u °C measurement error due to impedance.
To illustrate an example when input impedance becomes an important specification, take the hypothetical case where a sensor has an extremely high output impedance, such as 5 GΩ. Connecting the DAQ device to a sensor with this extremely high output impedance causes a 5 V nominal output from the sensor to be read as 3.333 V, or a hypothetical measurement error of 33.34 °C.
Input Noise
 Additional system noise generated by the analog front end, measured by grounding the input channel.
 Isolation is the means of physically and electrically separating two parts of a device. It protects computer circuitry and human operators, breaks ground loops, and improves common-mode voltage and noise rejection.
Each channel is isolated from every other channel and other non-isolated components. The figure below represents channel-to-channel isolation. Va,b, Vc,d, Ve,f, and Vg,h are all on separate buses and are isolated from one another.
Channels of the device and the device's Earth ground are electrically isolated from one another. Channel-to-Earth isolation is represented in the Figure below. Voltages of the isolated front end (Va-c ) are on the same bus; these voltages are not isolated from one another. Ve,d are on a separate bus and are isolated from the front end.
Channel-to-Channel Matching
Interchannel Gain Mismatch
Channel-to-channel gain mismatch defines the difference in gain on any given channel relative to a reference channel. It is specified as a function of the input frequency.
Interchannel Phase Mismatch
Channel-to-channel phase mismatch defines the difference in phase on any given channel relative to a reference channel. It is specified based on the measurement range and the input signal frequency of the measurement
NI 4302 in the 10V range specifies channel-to-channel gain mismatch of fin * 0.035°/kHz maximum. For example, if the input signal frequency is 2 kHz, the maximum difference in phase on one channel relative to any other channel on the module. is 0.07°.
Offset (Residual DC)
Overvoltage Protection
The analog input circuitry has protection diodes in place that will gate a large voltage from damaging the most critical components of the device, such as the PGIA or ADC.
 - When the device is powered on, these diodes are biased at some positive and negative voltage, meaning that a voltage larger than the sum of the bias and reverse voltage must be present before these diodes are overloaded and can be damaged.
 - When the device is off, the bias voltage is removed, so the voltage needed to reverse the diodes is lower, making the device more susceptible to being damaged.
When in an overvoltage state, the maximum amount of current that a device can sink is specified by the input current during overvoltage condition.
The NI PXIe-4480 has protection up to ±30 V for two AI positive pins. If more than two AI pins experience an overvoltage larger than ±30 V, the device can be damaged. While the device is off, there is a lower level of protection at ±15 V.
Phase Linearity
Ideally in a linear phase system, the phase and the frequency of the signal have a linear relationship. This means that input signals of all frequencies have the same time delay through the system. Phase non-linearity is an expression of the extent to which the phase-frequency function deviates from the ideal.
For analog input, this is the maximum positive and negative value that can be measured with guaranteed accuracy. For analog output, this is the maximum positive or negative value that can be generated. Some devices have multiple input or output ranges that can be used to provide a higher resolution at lower level signals.
 The NI PXIe-4300 has four input voltage ranges: ±1 V, ±2 V, ±5 V


What color are you?
This quiz is a fun way to past a few min. Find out your color and personality, are you romantic, fun, boring, mean, or awesome! This quiz takes your answers and converts them to colors!
After you are done, you will find your color and a description of your color. You will be able to share your results with friends if you choose to do so as well!
Created by: Someone.
 1. What is your age?
 2. What is your gender?
 1. Do you find it easy to find love?
 2. What type of movies do you like?
 3. What type of books do you read?
 4. What is your favorite color?
 5. What color do you want to get?
 6. Favorite animal?
 7. Do you have a facebook, myspace, twitter, e.c.t
 8. What do you think about this quiz?
 9. How would you describe yourself?
 10. Okay, are you happy this quiz is done?
Remember to rate this quiz on the next page!
Quiz topic: What color am I?


the exact algorithm of REC-xslt-_PHONE_
From: Joachim Ziegler
Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 05:40:26 -0400 (EDT)
To: _EMAIL_
Message-Id: <_EMAIL_>
as a computer scientist i'm used to think in algorithms, and reading this
XSL-specification i've tried to find out what exactly the transformation
does and how it can be parameterized by the various XSL-instructions.
understanding the transformation means understanding this algorithm.
unfortunately you do not give the exact algorithm, you only give a rather
informal description of how it might really work.
the whole description is quite confusing to me. in section 5, you talk about
"the processing model" and a "current node" and a "current node set".
--- cite ----
A list of source nodes is processed to create a result tree fragment. The
result tree is constructed by
 processing a list containing just the root node. A list of source
nodes is processed by appending the
 result tree structure created by processing each of the members of
the list in order. A node is
 processed by finding all the template rules with patterns that match
the node, and choosing the best
 amongst them; the chosen rule's template is then instantiated with
the node as the current node and
 with the list of source nodes (*) as the current node list. A
template typically contains instructions that
 select an additional list of source nodes for processing. The
process of matching, instantiation and
 selection is continued recursively until no new source nodes are
selected for processing.
--- cite ---
what exaclty is the "list of source nodes" in (*)?
what does the instantiated template do with the "current node list"?
what i do not get is how and when these lists are updated and what the
recursion really does and when it happens (only in xsl:apply-template? or
also in xsl:foreach?).
in the description of xsl:apply-template you do not say how it changes what
lists and what recursion exaclty it calls. you only say (quite informally)
"the xsl:apply-templates instruction processes all of the children of the
current node"
can you give me some pseudocode? that would help a lot.
thank you in advance,
Received on Friday, 31 May 2002 11:03:26 GMT


text:
Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the terms used for individual clergy are clergyman, clergywoman, and churchman. Less common terms are churchwoman and clergyperson, while cleric and clerk in holy orders both have a long history but are rarely used.
In Christianity, the specific names and roles of the clergy vary by denomination and there is a wide range of formal and informal clergy positions, including deacons, elders, priests, bishops, preachers, pastors, ministers and the pope.
In Islam, a religious leader is often known formally or informally as an imam, qadi, mufti, mullah, or ayatollah.
In the Jewish tradition, a religious leader is often a rabbi (teacher) or hazzan (cantor).
The word "Cleric" comes from the ecclesiastical Latin Clericus, for those belonging to the priestly class. In turn, the source of the Latin word is from the Ecclesiastical Greek Klerikos (κληρικός), meaning appertaining to an inheritance, in reference to the fact that the Levitical priests of the Old Testament had no inheritance except the Lord."Clergy" is from two Old French words, clergié and clergie, which refer to those with learning and derive from Medieval Latin clericatus, from Late Latin clericus (the same word from which "cleric" is derived). "Clerk", which used to mean one ordained to the ministry, also derives from clericus. In the Middle Ages, reading and writing were almost exclusively the domain of the priestly class, and this is the reason for the close relationship of these words. Within Christianity, especially in Eastern Christianity and formerly in Western Roman Catholicism, the term cleric refers to any individual who has been ordained, including deacons, priests, and bishops. In Latin Roman Catholicism, the tonsure was a prerequisite for receiving any of the minor orders or major orders before the tonsure, minor orders, and the subdiaconate were abolished following the Second Vatican Council. Now, the clerical state is tied to reception of the diaconate. Minor Orders are still given in the Eastern Catholic Churches, and those who receive those orders are'minor clerics.'
The use of the word "Cleric" is also appropriate for Eastern Orthodox minor clergy who are tonsured in order not to trivialize orders such as those of Reader in the Eastern Church, or for those who are tonsured yet have no minor or major orders. It is in this sense that the word entered the Arabic language, most commonly in Lebanon from the French, as kleriki (or, alternatively, cleriki) meaning "seminarian." This is all in keeping with Eastern Orthodox concepts of clergy, which still include those who have not yet received, or do not plan to receive, the diaconate.
A priesthood is a body of priests, shamans, or oracles who have special religious authority or function. The term priest is derived from the Greek presbyter (πρεσβύτερος, presbýteros, elder or senior), but is often used in the sense of sacerdos in particular, i.e., for clergy performing ritual within the sphere of the sacred or numinous communicating with the gods on behalf of the community.
Buddhist clergy are often collectively referred to as the Sangha, and consist of various orders of male and female monks (originally called bhikshus and bhikshunis respectively). This diversity of monastic orders and styles was originally one community founded by Gautama Buddha during the 5th century BC living under a common set of rules (called the Vinaya). According to scriptural records, these celibate monks and nuns in the time of the Buddha lived an austere life of meditation, living as wandering beggars for nine months out of the year and remaining in retreat during the rainy season (although such a unified condition of Pre-sectarian Buddhism is questioned by some scholars). However, as Buddhism spread geographically over time - encountering different cultures, responding to new social, political, and physical environments - this single form of Buddhist monasticism diversified. The interaction between Buddhism and Tibetan Bon led to a uniquely Tibetan Buddhism, within which various sects, based upon certain teacher-student lineages arose. Similarly, the interaction between Indian Buddhist monks (particularly of the Southern Madhyamika School) and Chinese Confucian and Taoist monks from c200-c900AD produced the distinctive Ch'an Buddhism. Ch'an, like the Tibetan style, further diversified into various sects based upon the transmission style of certain teachers (one of the most well known being the 'rapid enlightenment' style of Linji Yixuan), as well as in response to particular political developments such as the An Lushan Rebellion and the Buddhist persecutions of Emperor Wuzong. In these ways, manual labour was introduced to a practice where monks originally survived on alms; layers of garments were added where originally a single thin robe sufficed; etc. This adaptation of form and roles of Buddhist monastic practice continued after the transmission to Japan. For example, monks took on administrative functions for the Emperor in particular secular communities (registering births, marriages, deaths), thereby creating Buddhist 'priests'. Again, in response to various historic attempts to suppress Buddhism (most recently during the Meiji Era), the practice of celibacy was relaxed and Japanese monks allowed to marry. This form was then transmitted to Korea, during later Japanese occupation,where celibate and non-celibate monks today exist in the same sects. (Similar patterns can also be observed in Tibet during various historic periods multiple forms of monasticism have co-existed such as "ngagpa" lamas, and times at which celibacy was relaxed). As these varied styles of Buddhist monasticism are transmitted to Western cultures, still more new forms are being created.
In general, the Mahayana schools of Buddhism tend to be more culturally adaptive and innovative with forms, while Theravada schools (the form generally practised in Thailand, Burma, Cambodia and Sri Lanka) tend to take a much more conservative view of monastic life, and continue to observe precepts that forbid monks from touching women or working in certain secular roles. This broad difference in approach led to a major schism among Buddhist monastics in about the 4th century BCE, creating the Early Buddhist Schools.
While female monastic ( bhikkhuni ) lineages existed in most Buddhist countries at one time, the Theravada lineages of Southeast Asia died out during the 14th-15th Century AD. As there is some debate about whether the bhikkhuni lineage (in the more expansive Vinaya forms) was transmitted to Tibet, the status and future of female Buddhist clergy in this tradition is sometimes disputed by strict adherents to the Theravadan style. Some Mahayana sects, notably in the United States (such as San Francisco Zen Center) are working to reconstruct the female branches of what they consider a common, interwoven lineage.
The diversity of Buddhist traditions makes it difficult to generalize about Buddhist clergy. In the United States, Pure Land priests of the Japanese diaspora serve a role very similar to Protestant ministers of the Christian tradition. Meanwhile, reclusive Theravada forest monks in Thailand live a life devoted to meditation and the practice of austerities in small communities in rural Thailand- a very different life from even their city-dwelling counterparts, who may be involved primarily in teaching, the study of scripture, and the administration of the nationally organized (and government sponsored) Sangha. In the Zen traditions of China, Korea and Japan, manual labor is an important part of religious discipline; meanwhile, in the Theravada tradition, prohibitions against monks working as laborers and farmers continue to be generally observed.
Currently in North America, there are both celibate and non-celibate clergy in a variety of Buddhist traditions from around the world. In some cases they are forest dwelling monks of the Theravada tradition and in other cases they are married clergy of a Japanese Zen lineage and may work a secular job in addition to their role in the Buddhist community. There is also a growing realization that traditional training in ritual and meditation as well as philosophy may not be sufficient to meet the needs and expectations of American lay people. Some communities have begun exploring the need for training in counseling skills as well. Along these lines, at least two fully accredited Master of Divinity programs are currently available: one at Naropa University in Boulder, CO and one at the University of the West in Rosemead, CA.
Titles for Buddhist clergy include:
In general, Christian clergy are ordained; that is, they are set apart for specific ministry in religious rites. Others who have definite roles in worship but who are not ordained (e.g. laypeople acting as acolytes) are generally not considered clergy, even though they may require some sort of official approval to exercise these ministries.
Types of clerics are distinguished from offices, even when the latter are commonly or exclusively occupied by clerics. A Roman Catholic cardinal, for instance, is almost without exception a cleric, but a cardinal is not a type of cleric. An archbishop is not a distinct type of cleric, but is simply a bishop who occupies a particular position with special authority. Conversely, a youth minister at a parish may or may not be a cleric. Different churches have different systems of clergy, though churches with similar polity have similar systems.
In Anglicanism, clergy consist of the orders of deacons, priests (presbyters) and bishops in


text:
Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park, Budapest
Tree of Life. The black granite slab at the center of the sculpture has two holes cut through in the traditional shape of tablets. This represents the absence of the Ten Commandments as a moral code for those who perpetrated the Holocaust.
Photo credit: Florida Center for Instructional Technology
A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust
Produced by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology,
College of Education, University of South Florida © _PHONE_.


text:
By recycling steel fenders for new cars, the world's airliners could fly almost 100 million miles alone with the energy saved, according to a new study by the University of Colorado for the United Recyclers Group.
"The CU study estimates that nearly 11 million vehicles are taken off the road in America each year when they reach their so called 'End of Life' (EOL)," said Michelle Alexander, URG executive director, in the report. "This process of attrition is caused by accidents and also occurs as vehicles age. There are tremendous quantifiable environmental and financial benefits for consumers that are provided by the green American automobile recycling industry as these vehicles are processed both for the reuse of certain parts (known as 'green parts') and recycling of most of the remainder."
Alexander went on to say that already, thanks to the auto recycling industry, auto manufacturers have begun to lower their carbon footprint, reduce energy consumption, and mine and refine less materials.


text:
CLINICAL PROGRAMS EDUCATION
The UAMS Clinical Programs Education Department supports patient-centered, cost-effective care through orientation classes, educational programs, leadership seminars and staff development activities.
Staff Education Online Education allows you to maximize learning while minimizing time and expense. Annual Required Training, Continuing Education, Modules, and Take Times are available for completion.
CLINICAL COMPUTER TRAINING CENTER
The Clinical Computer Training Center provides staff-centered, cost-effective training through the use of technologically advanced tools enriched by trainers committed to education and continued staff development.
- Develop and revise existing training material so that health care providers have the necessary information and tools to perform their duties most efficiently.
- Formulate strategies to secure and provide the necessary training support for the education, research, and service missions of UAMS.
- Create a support infrastructure that is capable of providing the training for health care providers in an organized, timely fashion.
- Maintain an efficient and comfortable training environment that welcomes students and promotes employee morale.
- Provide integrated training for the UAMS Information Systems which will improve care, reduce costs, and enhance timely management and clinical decision-making through better knowledge of the existing clinical systems at UAMS.


Music, Poetry, Literature, Culture
Music, Poetry, Literature, Culture
Sarson Ka Saag
Sarson Da Saag (as it is known in Punjabi) or (Sarson Ka Saag, in Urdu) is a popular vegetarian dish from the Punjab region of South Asia. It is made from mustard greens (sarson) and spices such as ginger and garlic. It is often served with makki di roti.
Origins and history
The dish is regarded as the traditional way to prepare saag and is usually served with makki di roti. It can be topped with either Makkhan (unprocessed white butter or processed yellow butter) or more traditionally with ghee (clarified butter). Some spinach (called palak ) may be added to enhance colour and thicken the dish, though this may alter the flavor. Also added are some bathua, sarson greens, onion, tomato and all ground spice.
Mustard is a winter and spring delicacy, and its relative abundance in Punjab has made it one of the most popular dishes in those regions.


text:
Definitions for sfumatosfuˈmɑ toʊ
Random House Webster's College Dictionary
gradation of tone used to blur the outlines of a form in painting.
Category: Fine Arts
Origin of sfumato:
1840–50; < It, ptp. of sfumare to gradate tone or color
In painting, the application of subtle layers of translucent paint so that there is no visible transition between colors, tones and often objects.
Origin: sfumato,'shaded, toned down' (1909)
having vague outlines, and colors and shades so mingled as to give a misty appearance; -- said of a painting


text:
1. A sphere with radius 2 () has its cylindrical core of radius 1 removed (), what is the volume of the resultant solid?
a) Use cylindrical coordinates to find the volume of the resultant solid.
b) Use spherical coordinates to find the volume of the resultant solid.
For a) I just used cylindrical coordinates to find the volume of the cylinder, then used which is the volume of the sphere then minus the volume of the cylinder from it.
For b) I used spherical coordinates to find the volume of the sphere, then used which is the volume of the cylinder, then used the volume of sphere minus the volume of cylinder.
Now what I am wondering is... is that the right way to interpret the question? Or does the question mean use cylindrical coordinates ONLY to work out the volume? If so... how do I do that? Cause I thought as long as I used cylindrical coordinates to find the volume that's fine.
Same goes for b)
2.. Verify the Divergence Theorem by showing where S is the union of the surfaces and and E is the solid encompassed by those 2 surfaces.
Now I can evaluate the LHS which in spherical coordinates is given by: (btw is this triple integral right? As in did I set it up right, not the answer )
Now how do I evaluate the RHS for the surface integral over the surface (without a calculator)... it's almost impossible to do by hand after you compute where u and v are x and y respectively.
3. Evaluate by making the transformation and
I swear you can NOT do this question without a CAS.
After sketching on the u-v plane (with u as the vertical axis) we get the region to be the region between and (I've checked this many times)
Now the Jacobian is and after making the transformations we can evaluate the integral in the u-v plane with:
Now it's impossible to integrate that without a calculator.
Then we can try reverse the order of the integral so we get a dudv instead of dvdu, it's also unable to be integrated by hand (try it yourself). So is there ANYWAY to do this question by hand?


Colourful Chrysanthemums
First cultivated in China as a flowering herb in the 15th century BC. An ancient Chinese city Xiaolan was named Ju-Xian meaning 'Chrysanthemum city'. It is suggested the flower was introduced to Japan in the 8th century. There is even a 'Festival of Happiness' in Japan celebrating the flower which was brought to Europe in the 17th century. Linnaeus named it using the Greek for 'golden' chrysous due to the colour of its original flowers. They are very easy to cultivate, provide a vibrant amount of colour and can be used in different designs and forms. Flowering in autumn they can have spirals, globes and feather like petals.
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Kirsty Wilson
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text:
|N E W S F E E D S >>>|
|Past Present Future Index|
Dounreay - Past Present Future
As you come up to land from the foreshore you can see the Dounreay Castle. Excavations were completed a few years ago in what is believed to be one of the most innovative archaeological projects undertaken in the UK. During the 1950's areas of the castle grounds became contaminated when sea discharge experiments were carried out there. As part of its programme to clean up contaminated areas of the site, UKAEA embarked on a project to remove all this material in Autumn 1997. However, given the archaeological significance of the site, it was impossible to simply clear the area in the normal way and archaeologists were called in to advise on the best way to carry out the work without damaging the structure of the castle.
A number of historians and organisations have visited the Castle over the last year and continue to do so on a regular basis.
In total some 200 tonnes of soil and rubble were excavated and data collected is being put together in large scale plans and photographic records. The excavation was carried out layer by layer and the sequence of occupation has been revealed.
Oliver Cromwell's army is known to have camped here in the 17th century.


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by John Keston
Voice Lessons is an electronic, audio device that interrogates the popular myth that every musical instrument imitates the human voice. Touching the screen allows the participant to manipulate the visuals and vocalizations of the "voice teacher" as he recites vocal warm up exercises.
The piece resides in the space between a musical instrument and voice lesson. Move the touch point left, right, up, and down to explore the visual and auditory possibilities. Rapid high pitched loops occur while touching near the top of the screen while lower pitched longer loops are heard near the bottom.
The actor, also named John Keston, is the artist's retired father who became a voice teacher after a long career on stage in plays, operas, and musicals with the Royal Shakespeare Company in his native country England and abroad.
32" Interactive Touch Screen Installation (2011)
By John Keston while a graduate student at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design
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text: In this four-day workshop, students will learn how to use the silkscreen process to create hand-printed multiples of an original image. Silkscreen is an exciting art-making technique with a rich history and a diversity of applications: from fine art prints to t-shirt designs, protest posters, and beyond. Students in this course will be exposed to a variety of historical and contemporary examples of silkscreen printing and will use these examples as inspiration as they design and print their own original artworks. Students are encouraged to investigate their own interests and ideas when developing their subject matter for the project. Technical skills learned will include both digital and hand-cut film stencil making, the photo-exposure process for transferring images onto screens, color theory when mixing inks, proper printing techniques, and correct registration of multiple color layers within a single print.


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Briefly, the CSA breaks up the input ciphertext into a list of words, and recursively tries to fit as much of the list as possible to the words in a fairly long list of English words, longest word first. It tries to find the trial solution with the maximum number of words fitted with the same key, among all the recursive tree walks made.
The CSA is very strongly dependent on the input having the word boundaries and lengths correct, so that, for example, a ciphergram redivided into five letter groups will not work. It is a little less dependent on having no wrong letters in the text, but it thinks words of three letters or less are all exact and in its word list, so a mistake in a short word will almost surely cause it to fail. Two newspaper cryptoquotes in 1997 had the word "oh" in them, and because that word was not in the known word list, they failed, so now the list contains "oh". The "Los" of Los Angeles tripped the CSA once. Nearly all cases that take a long time are caused by input having a letter left out of a word, or a wrong letter in a short word.
The CSA knows no grammar or word meanings. It is merely a brute-force pattern matching algorithm. The upside is that you could replace the word list with, for example, a fairly complete and very accurate German list, and the CSA would solve German ciphergrams.
The CSA usually does not get stumped on the Cryptoquotes in the newspapers; that's probably because those have to be relatively easy.
Last updated 2002 September 17


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Hospital Ownership and Financial Performance: A Quantitative Research Review
Yu-Chu Shen, Karen Eggleston, Joseph Lau, Christopher Schmid
NBER Working Paper No. 11662
We apply meta-analytic methods to conduct a quantitative review of the empirical literature since 1990 comparing financial performance of US for-profit, not-for-profit, and government-owned general acute hospitals. We find that the diverse results in the hospital ownership literature can be explained largely by differences in authors' underlying theoretical frameworks, assumptions about the functional form of the dependent variables, and model specifications. Weaker methods and functional forms tend to predict larger differences in financial performance between not-for-profits and for-profits. The combined estimates across studies suggest little difference in cost among all three types of hospital ownership, and that for-profit hospitals generate more revenue and greater profits than not-for-profit hospitals, although the difference is only of modest economic significance. There is little difference in revenue or profits between government and not-for-profit hospitals.
This paper was revised on June 29, 2006
Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w11662
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You Think Sexism Doesn't Hurt?
This entry was posted in News on by.
Recent research shows that a woman's lifelong earnings and how much she works are influenced by the levels of sexism in the state where she was born. This means that a woman born in the Deep South is likely to face a much wider economic gender gap than a woman born on the Pacific Coast, even if both women move to New York as adults. This suggests that when women are exposed to sexist attitudes early in life, it affects them forever.
To learn more about how and why sexism harms even the best and brightest, click the link below.
How Sexism Follows Women From the Cradle to the Workplace


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Comment: The visiting artist researcher experiment
AbstractThe visiting artist researcher experiment discussed here brought together visual artists and climate scientists, amongst them my research group which studies storms. The artists' stay led to a dialogue between our diverging perspectives and an open exchange of ideas. The exchange in my research group was more interactive than I had expected. Many conversations provided insights into ideas and work flows of the artists and, eventually, a new view on our storm studies.


The Science of Success
How we can all achieve our goals
How You Are Sabotaging Your Self-Control
Why thought suppression is a bad way to deal with temptation.
Have you ever tried to lose weight by just not thinking about food? How about trying to play it cool and stop yourself from calling (or emailing, or texting) your love interest by blocking out all thoughts about that person? Ever try to quit smoking by trying not to think about smoking? Did it work? I'll bet it didn't. And it's really not your fault that it didn't.
Thought suppression is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is a very commonly used strategy - people often try to block out or put the lid on unwanted thoughts and feelings, in order to control their influence. Dieters try to suppress thoughts of tempting snacks, alcoholics suppress their desire to drink, stressed-out workers suppress their feelings of anxiety, and smokers suppress the thought of cigarettes when trying to quit.
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While they were at it, the researchers who conducted this study looked at students' stress levels across all three weeks. Not surprisingly, suppressors reported a dramatic rise in stress during the week they were suppressing (while non-suppressors stress levels remained unchanged). So not only does the thought-suppression strategy backfire, it feels terrible while you are doing it.
So how can we deal with unwanted thoughts more successfully, in ways that don't end up actually diminishing our willpower? I've written about this in previous posts, but here are two suggestions:
1. Don't suppress, replace. Decide in advance what you will think about when a thought about smoking, snacking, or hitting "redial" pops into your mind. When you find yourself thinking about how yummy a candy bar would be right now, try replacing that thought with one that focuses on your health and weight-loss goals (e.g., "It feels better to fit into my skinny jeans than it does to wolf down chocolate-covered nougat.")
2. Don't suppress, plan. Creating an if-then plan is an easy and effective way to deal with temptations. You don't need to block out the thoughts - what you really need is to learn how not to act on them. By planning on exactly what you will do, in advance, when the tempting thought occurs, it becomes far easier to stick to your goals. For instance, when thoughts about smoking occur, plan to chew gum, or step outside for several long deep breaths of fresh air. Whatever you plan to do, it will disrupt the connection between the thought and giving in to the temptation, and over time, the thoughts will fade all on their own.
It's almost never a good idea to put a lid on your thoughts and feelings. It may feel like it's working in the short term, but soon you'll find yourself right back where you started - surrounded by candy wrappers, and wondering why he hasn't returned your three dozen phone calls.
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Artificial Intelligence
Sep 7, 2021
6 AI Projects To Make Your Portfolio Stand Out
Make your AI portfolio standout with these projects.
Shanif Dhanani
Data science is becoming hyper-competitive. One way to stand out is with a portfolio of valuable projects —not just analyzing the Titanic and Iris species.
Here, we'll cover six projects to boost your portfolio:
1. Churn Analysis
Churn is when a customer quits a service. In other words: It's when companies lose money.
When Blockbuster's customers left for competitors like Netflix, they churned. Churn analysis could have uncovered the why and potentially saved the once-dominant media giant.
The goal of churn analysis is to effectively pinpoint the causes of churn and fight it. By directly improving the bottom-line, churn analysis is a powerful AI use-case.
The first step to churn analysis is creating a dataset (or simply finding the relevant data). Kaggle offers many churn datasets — a popular one is the Telco Customer Churn dataset, though this is synthetic and not as unique.
Less-explored datasets include predicting churn for bank customers, newspaper churn, insurance churn, AudioBook app churn, and tech company churn.
For any of these datasets, you can easily download them as a CSV file, and upload them to Apteo to find insights (after making an account).
2. Customer Segmentation
Customer segmentation lets you uncover the characteristics of different customers, enabling better targeting.
It's a way to "organize" your customers, and understand the habits of these groups.
Photo by Craig Whitehead on Unsplash
Less-explored Kaggle datasets include wine customer segmentation and US supermarket segmentation.
3. Driving E-Commerce Sales
E-Commerce analysis is a great AI use-case, given the wealth of data available. You can identify browsing behavior that leads to increased sales, segment profitable users, identify pages likely to convert, and more.
Relevant Kaggle datasets include outdoor apparel data, cosmetics store data, Retailrocket data, Flipkart data, and more.
Companies from Clorox to PepsiCo use AI for data-driven e-commerce — it's that powerful!
4. People Analytics
People analytics is used to analyze and reduce employee turnover, spot opportunities for improvement, and more.
As LinkedIn reports, "for each employee lost, the cost to the company could be 50%–250% of his/her annual salary." While that's a big range, there's no doubt that employee attrition is extremely expensive.
Intuitively, we can guess that things like overtime, low salary, poor performance, and living far from the office might impact attrition.
With people analytics, we can plug-in the data to quantify the true impact of these attributes, and more, on attrition. With the insights we get, we can take steps to reduce attrition, whether it's reducing over-time, increasing salaries, changing department structures, or altering company policy.
Relevant Kaggle datasets include the IBM attrition dataset, a recent HackerEarth attrition dataset, and an Oakland PD attrition dataset.
5. Lead Scoring
Lead scoring helps teams close deals and build relationships by prioritizing customers likely to convert.
Whether you have 130 or 130,000 leads, you need to put your efforts where they matter.
Relevant Kaggle datasets include the marketing funnel by Olist dataset and an education leads dataset.
6. Fraud Detection
Fraud detection is becoming increasingly important, as fraudulent transactions are only increasing, costing companies billions.
Combating fraud is an age-old problem. Back in 1992, Sprint was using real-time fraud detection built by Symbolics, an AI company. Today, companies like Visa, PayPal, and FirstAm deploy data-driven fraud detection.
Relevant Kaggle datasets include credit card fraud detection and synthetic financial datasets for fraud detection.
Photo by Sebastian Herrmann on Unsplash
About the author
Shanif Dhanani
Co-Founder and CEO, Apteo


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Students in Finland used virtual reality to walk inside the double helix of a DNA molecule. Pasi Vilpas, a biology teacher at the The Sotunki Distance Learning Centre in Vantaa, invited his pupils to enter the three-dimensional online virtual world of Second Life and walk and fly inside the crucial molecule.
In real life, DNA is threaded so finely that it can only be seen with an electron microscope. By using avatars, the digital players or characters of Second Life, students can explore the human genome by 'flying' into an apparently vast DNA molecule and 'walking' along a human gene. Pasi's latest online virtual biological world will be showcased at ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN 2011.
Noting that the study of genetics gets too abstract for many secondary school students, Pasi Vilpas deployed his own quirky sense of humour to create an astonishing learning environment for his students, offering them flying avatars, magic carpets, songs, dances and sound effects.
The concept of the avatar is already well-known to the 20 million worldwide users of Second Life, a notably collaborative virtual world that was developed in 2001 by Philip Rosedale's Linden Lab, as a place where users, known as 'residents', interact with each other through their avatars.
At the heart of the game is a vast DNA double helix, apparently 200 meters high and 500 meters in diameter. The students make their own avatars sit, walk and fly around the spiral structure to learn how the gene makes proteins, step by step.
They learn how the transfer RNAs, depicted in Second Life as cartoon character chauffeurs, deliver amino acids to the ribosome to make proteins that will be joined in the correct sequence. Information boxes offer explanatory text and sound files.
"These boxes form a learning pathway through the basics of genetics," says Pasi Vilpas.
"My test students have been very enthusiastic. The environment delivers information in an attractive manner without any need for the teacher to be present."
There is even a dance floor in Pasi's virtual universe. The students make their avatars dance as they themselves sing along with a quirky tune that helps remind them of the different phases of the genetic process.
To encourage participation, engagement and pure fun, the students use virtual iPads to share what they have learned with each other and with "the world outside".
Pasi's innovative model activates numerous 'learning channels' to teach genetics by 'touching', watching, listening, dancing, singing and reading.
When Pasi tested the virtual environment with a number of groups of ten students he was delighted to discover that "they even gather in this virtual environment in their leisure time."
He will reveal more details in his presentation "Teaching Genetics in The Second Life with a Large-Scale 3D-Model of DNA" at ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN 2011.


change with depth. But no one can say for certain whether this is the case.
New water-bearing minerals are still being found. Earlier this year, Smyth's group published their discovery of wadsleyite II, another hydrous phase that may be stable even deeper into the mantle than the first wadsleyite.
But as Smyth notes, just because all these phases can hold water doesn't mean that they actually do. For that, you need to check what is really going on in the mantle. The main tool for probing rocks in the mantle is seismology. When an earthquake sends out seismic waves, geophysicists measure how fast the waves pass through mantle rocks. Given the speed of the seismic waves, and some information about how different minerals transmit them, geologists can work out what minerals are present.
And since water often slows seismic waves down, they may even be able to tell whether the minerals are wet or dry. The problem is that nobody knows the seismic properties of the hydrated version of the new minerals.
"So we have no way of looking for seismic evidence of whether the phase is saturated or not," says Smyth. Many different groups are currently trying to pin down the seismic properties of the new hydrous minerals.
Buoyed up
Meanwhile, water locked deep inside the Earth may be having significant effects on the surface through spectacular events such as the creation of island chains and massive outpourings of volcanic lava. Both features are examples of "hot spot" volcanism, which researchers believe is caused when a massive plume of hot material wells up from the mantle, melting rock which erupts through the crust.
For island chains like those around Hawaii, the hot spot is thought to be stationary while the tectonic plate slowly moves over it, producing one volcanic island after another. But some researchers believe that such plumes of material may not be primarily temperature driven.
As Mark Richards at the University of California at Berkeley says, "hot spot volcanism could be triggered not by blobs of material that are anomalously hot rising through the mantle, but blobs of material that are anomalously wet".
Richards points out that the presence of volatiles such as water in a mass of rock would make it buoyant, causing it to rise. "The presence of volatiles also lowers their melting point, so that when they rise to the surface, you get massive melting," he says.
Water could also explain puzzles about some of the occasional vast outpourings of lava that have taken place from time to time in Earth's history, and covered hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of land. The problem is with the lithosphere--the cold, solid outer shell of the Earth that includes the crust as well as the very uppermost mantle, and usually extends to about 70 kilometres below the surface.
According to Chris Hawkesworth at the Open University in Milton Keynes, flood basalts erupted in some regions--for instance the famous Deccan Traps in India--have a composition that shows they formed from the asthenosphere, the mantle region below the lithosphere where the material is already thought to be partially molten.
In these cases, the continent was already rifting apart when the plume arrived, and the magma had a fairly easy time passing up through the lithosphere. But some continental flood basalts, in Brazil for instance, and in Namibia, are chemically different--richer in silica, and with different ratios of trace elements and isotopes. This suggests that they came from melting not of the asthenosphere but the lithosphere itself--an astonishing feat since the cold root of these continents extends down to around 170 kilometres.
In 1992, Hawkesworth and Kerry Gallagher at University College in London proposed that water could explain the mystery. Hawkesworth and Gallagher calculated that if a plume of hot material were to reach the bottom of the continental lithosphere, the heat could cause the lithosphere to dehydrate and to melt at lower temperatures. "If you want to melt the lithosphere, all models will agree that you have to have some volatiles present. And the experimental data will say that you need on the order of 0.3 or 0.4 per cent," says Hawkesworth. That works out to between 3000 and 4000 parts per million.
The Earth's inner oceans could also explain how earthquakes happen deep in the mantle--a long-standing puzzle ("Shaken to the core", New Scientist, 9 December 1995, p 42). Charles Prewitt, of the Geophysical Laboratory in Washington DC, thinks that water being squeezed out of minerals in the transi-tion zone could cause the unexplained earthquakes that occur there.
"Minerals could dehydrate and release a fluid, and that could essentially lubricate a fault. The fault could slip and the earthquake could occur," he says.
Don Weidner at the State University of New York in Stonybrook is also interested in transition-zone earthquakes, but sees a possible catch in the dehydration theory. He points out that generating an earthquake requires a build-up of stress followed by a sudden release, and suspects that this would be difficult if there is free water available. "If we're looking at a zone where water is being released, maybe the material's too weak to store the energy to have an earthquake," he says.
Another aspect of deep water that is hotly debated is the question of how much the water content of the mantle varies with time. Volcanoes are constantly spewing out water that they have ferried up from below, and water could also be sent back down into the Earth via subducting slabs. But how efficient are the slabs at carrying water into the mantle?
Much of the water-saturated sediment that accumulates on the seafloor as it moves along under the ocean is scraped off the descending slab by the tectonic plate that overrides it in the subduction zone. How much of the sediments actually slip into the mantle is hard to say. A more formidable barrier is the heat inside the mantle.
Many scientists used to believe that as a tectonic plate descends, no matter how much water is in it, all that water will be driven off by the heat of the mantle and disappear into magma which heads back up to the surface.
But gradually evidence has accumulated that some water is making it down. Guust Nolet, at Princeton University, has found what he believes are traces of an ancient subducted plate under Central Europe, 300 kilometres below the surface.
Though the slab itself has sunk from view--since subduction stopped 400 million years ago, Nolet says that seismic velocities are markedly slow. This is surprising under an old continent, where the relatively cold rock should produce fast seismic speeds. Nolet's interpretation is that the region is still enriched with water from the passing slab.
Although it is not easy to estimate how much water goes into the mantle through subduction compared with how much comes back out via volcanoes it seems that the whole system is roughly in balance. But what if the balance were to shift, and more water come out than goes in? Obviously the oceans would rise, but the more important effects would be in the atmosphere.
"Water is the primary greenhouse gas," notes Jeanloz. If there were a massive build-up of greenhouse gases, he says, it could have a devastating effect on every living creature on Earth. But a sudden outpouring of water, Noah-style, is not likely even if the balance does tilt to a greater outflow. Rather it would be a gradual change on geological timescales, which would affect only our most distant descendants. Perhaps by then they will have evolved gills.
Lou Bergeron is a science writer based in Santa Cruz, California


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Medieval & Renaissance Studies Center
The "Bull of Quivira" (one of the Plains "cities of gold"), woodcut of a bison by Christoffel Jegher [_PHONE_]
Texas Tech University, although established in 1923, is rooted in the middle ages and the Renaissance. This is true of the abstract ideals of the university and of its arts curricula. It is also true of the campus architecture, a Spanish Renaissance theme based ultimately upon the Administration Building's recapitulation of the plateresque style of the Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, built in 1553. It is literally true of the earliest European presence here on the High Plains, where the expedition of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado left behind chain mail, crossbow bolts, and vellones minted during the reign of Enrique IV of Castille (1454-75), perhaps the oldest circulating coins ever discovered in U.S. territory.
The Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center (MRSC) is dedicated to the advancement of Medieval and Renaissance studies at Texas Tech, in the State of Texas, and in the lands beyond. It currently supervises a graduate certificate program in medieval and Renaissance studies, provides some conference participation support for students working in these areas, and sponsors guest lectures and other activities related to medieval and Renaissance studies. Whereas traditional academic programs are organized to support their own specific perspectives and programs, the Center seeks to unite faculty and students interested in medieval and Renaissance area studies that transcend disciplinary boundaries. It seeks is to enhance campus, state, and national knowledge about Texas Tech programs already in place. The Center, approved in 2011, is located administratively within the College of Arts and Sciences but is also funded in part by the College of Visual and Performing Arts.