fbpx Independence is a human right | Abilia Skip to main content
Independence is a human right
Taking control of your life and having the freedom to make you own choices is a basic human right where work plays an important part. Being able to make a living is a basic need and creates both personal and economic independence as well as a sense of purpose and a higher quality of life.
The challenges that comes with cognitive disabilities like autism, ADHD or learning disabilities, are unique for every person. Some may excel in some areas while having difficulties in other areas. In common are often difficulties that lead to practical everyday problems and makes it difficult to run a job like everyone else without any form of adjustment of work tasks.
What are the challenges for employees with cognitive disabilities?
- Focusing on the task at hand
- Planning the work day
- Difficulties to handle changes
- Remembering what to do and how to do certain work tasks
- Understanding the responsibility of oneself versus colleagues
Having these challenges leads to stress, anxiety and some times to a mental break-down. There are several ways to facilitate the working environment by work tempo and tasks.
Our assistive tools provide employees with special needs a way to structure and plan the day and also instructions on how to perform specific work tasks. By adjusting work tasks and providing aids the employee can do a much better job will less stress and that goes for the managers and the colleagues as well.


Take the 2-minute tour ×
Hello everyone,
I have been trying (without success) to determine the following. Let $P$ denote the space of monic polynomials of degree $n$ with complex coefficients, which have distinct roots. It is known that the fundamental group of this space is the braid group $B_n$. Let $X \rightarrow P$ denote the universal cover. Then $B_n\subset Aut (X)$ where $Aut (X)$ is the group of holomorphic automorphisms of $X$. For $n\geq 4$, is it true that $Aut (X)=B_n$? I do not see any other automorphisms (but I am a novice in the area).
share|improve this question
The space $X$ is very close to the Teichmuller space $T=T_{0,n+1}$, but they are a bit different: You can still act on $P$ (and, hence, on $X$) by complex affine transformations. Once you mod out $P$ (and $X$) by such action, you get the space $T$. It is Royden's theorem that for $n\ge 4$ the full group of biholomorphic automorphisms of $T_{0,n+1}$ is the mapping class group of the corresponding $n+1$-punctured sphere. The same holds for other finite type Riemann surfaces with few low-complexity exceptions (exclude torus, once punctured torus and 4 times punctured sphere). – Misha Feb 4 '13 at 18:17
Thanks, Misha. This really answers my question. I forgot about the action of affine transformations. – Venkataramana Feb 5 '13 at 0:30
1 Answer 1
Misha has answered my question completely.
share|improve this answer
Your Answer


text:
online internship will be a better choice if convenience and versatility matters more to you. During the internship, students communicate with their employer through a range of resources, including Skype, Microsoft Teams, email, webinars, and Slack. An internship gives a student the opportunity for career exploration and development, and to learn new skills.
- Gain professional experience
- Explore potentially satisfying career path
- Give yourself much-needed edge in the modern job market
- Develop and refine both technical and communication skills
- Development of professional relationships in the field
- Enhanced confidence
- Smooth transitions into a job

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


What is an.xcodeproj file?
Xcode tracks "projects" with a file called SomeProject.xcodeproj.
Actually, like workspaces, it's not a file at all - it's a directory.
The important file in it is project.pbxproj ("Project Builder XCode Project").
The rough syntax looks like:
//!$*UTF8*$!
 foo = {
 isa = blah;
 jtzht = (
 qux /* jyrjhetz */,
 barf /* grhtz */,
 bam = 0;
 bar = blah /* some comment */;
So you have:
It's roughly JSON in its expressiveness.
The first is special and mandatory: it indicates the encoding of the rest of the file.
A project.pbxproj file is pretty big; it contains boatloads of settings about your project. It mainly says:
The overall schema is pretty simple:
//!$*UTF8*$!
 archiveVersion = 1;
 classes = {
 objectVersion = 46;
 objects = {
 FD9C41C61DDE16AB001EC7D1 =...;
 FD9C41D31DDE16AB001EC7D1 =...;
 rootObject = FD9C41C61DDE16AB001EC7D1;
The objects dictionary is the important bit. It defines a GRAPH. The keys of the dictionary are the vertices, and each object definition can reference other objects. Xcode creates odd IDs for objects, e.g. FD9C41C61DDE16AB001EC7D1.
A distinguished object is the rootObject. This defines the project.
There are a few different kinds of "object". Each is a dictionary with an isa property. There are many types: PBXBuildFile, PBXFileReference, PBXFrameworksBuildPhase, PBXGroup, PBXNativeTarget, PBXProject, PBXHeadersBuildPhase, PBXResourcesBuildPhase, PBXSourcesBuildPhase, PBXVariantGroup, XCBuildConfiguration, XCConfigurationList, PBXContainerItemProxy, XCConfigurationList, PBXTargetDependency.
The object dictionary is grouped by this type, with each section delimited by a comment, e.g.:
objects = {
/* Begin PBXBuildFile section */
 FD9C41D41DDE16AB001EC7D1 =...;
 FD9C41DD1DDE1FD0001EC7D1 =...;
/* End PBXBuildFile section */
/* Begin PBXFileReference section */
 FD9C41CF1DDE16AB001EC7D1 =...;
 FD9C41D21DDE16AB001EC7D1 =...;
 FD9C41D31DDE16AB001EC7D1 =...;
 FD9C41DC1DDE1FD0001EC7D1 =...;
/* End PBXFileReference section */
/* Begin XCConfigurationList section */
 FD9C41C91DDE16AB001EC7D1 =...;
 FD9C41D71DDE16AB001EC7D1 =...;
/* End XCConfigurationList section */
Examples of objects:
With Vidrio
With generic competitor
More by Jim
Tagged. All content copyright James Fisher 2016. This post is not associated with my employer. Found an error? Edit this page.


text:
The PDF documents were made popular by Adobe Acrobat Reader in the early 90s. The popularity of PDF documents soared high due to their ability of retaining the same look and format on all systems irrespective of operating systems or availability of fonts. If you create a PDF document, then it will look the same or print the same no matter on which system you process it. When you create the PDF documents the PDF creator application may embed superfluous elements in it and high quality images, making its size grow larger than desired. But now you can reduce the size of PDF files using a freeware application called Reduce PDF Size.
You can get Reduce PDF Size in form of a setup installer. After the installation, you can launch it from its desktop shortcut. The Reduce PDF Size interface is very simple so you do not need any instructions to use it. You can start by adding the PDF files to the application. To add pdf files, you can select File → Add PDF Files from the menubar. You can also use the shortcut Ctrl + A to the same effect.
After your files have been added, you may want to choose the PDF compression settings. You can choose the quality of the output PDF files from the menubar by clicking on Option and choosing a desired quality. If you select higher quality, then the PDF size grows big. If you select a lower quality, then the size of the PDF gets smaller.
Once you have added the PDF files (the size of which you want to reduce) and you have selected the quality options, then you can select File → Reduce PDF File Size from the menubar to start the PDF compression. It asks you to select a folder where you want to keep the output files. It processes one file at a time, compressing the size of embedded images and removing extraneous elements. You can see the progress of every PDF file being compressed in the status bar of the program.
Conclusion: The Reduce PDF Size is a very simple and easy to use tool to reduce the size of your PDF files. It consumes lots of CPU power during the compression, so if you have a multi-core processor then you are better equipped to use this software.
You can download Reduce PDF Size from _URL_


Claim a deduction for work clothing
Many employees are required to wear a uniform for work. Even where there is no set uniform as such, many employees have clothes that they wear only to work and regard as 'work clothes'.
So, to what extent, if any, are employees able to claim a deduction for work clothes? And, on the other side of the coin, is there a tax liability if the employee is provided with a uniform or protective clothing by their employer?
General rule for deductibility of expenses
As a general rule, a deduction is only available for employment expenses that are wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred in the performance of the duties of the employment.
This is a hard test to meet, and one which, due to duality of purpose, clothing will fail. Even if an employee wears certain clothes for work, the clothes also provide 'warmth and decency'.
Consequently, while an employee may be required to wear a suit and tie to work and only wears it for work, they have to wear something. Their job dictates the nature of what they wear, but as the clothing also provides warmth and decency the cost is not wholly and exclusively incurred, and as such no deduction will be permitted.
Specific industries: deduction for laundry costs, etc.
Although an employee cannot claim a general deduction for 'work clothing', if they work in certain industries for which a uniform of protective clothing is required, they may be able to get a fixed rate deduction for the repair and maintenance of work equipment, which includes special clothing.
The permissible fixed rate deductions are set out in a table which can be found in HMRC's Employment Income Manual at EIM32712. For example, uniformed prison officers are allowed an annual deduction of £80. It should be noted that the same rates have applied since 2008/09.
Employer-provided clothing
Where the employee is required to wear a particular uniform, often featuring the employer's logo, this may be provided by the employer for the employee to wear.
Where an employer provides a uniform or protective clothing to an employee for them to wear at work, generally, there is no tax liability for the employee, and nothing to report to HMRC. In this context, a 'uniform' is a set of clothing of a specialised nature which is recognisable as a uniform and which is intended to identify its wearer as having a particular occupation, for example, a nurse's uniform or fire service uniform.
By contrast, providing employees with ordinary clothes that are the same but have no identifying feature, such as black trousers and a green shirt, does not satisfy the definition of a uniform, and as such would not be exempt from tax. However, permanently fixing a corporate badge or logo to an otherwise ordinary item of clothing may be sufficient to make it a 'uniform'.
Employer-provided protective clothing is also exempt. This is genuinely protective clothing worn as a physical necessity because of the nature of the job. Examples may include overalls, boots and protective gloves.
Where the employer provides 'ordinary' clothes, this will trigger a taxable benefit, even if they are designed to confer a sense of corporate identity. A tax charge will also arise if uniforms or protective clothing are provided under a salary sacrifice arrangement.


I'm using Auth0 to handle authentication in my web app. I'm using ASP.NET Core v1.0.0 and Angular 2 rc5 and I don't know much about authentication/security in general.
In the Auth0 docs for ASP.NET Core Web Api, there are two choices for the JWT algorithm being RS256 and HS256. This may be a dumb question but:
What's the difference between RS256 and HS256? What are some use cases (if applicable)?
Both choices refer to what algorithm the identity provider uses to sign the JWT. Signing is a cryptographic operation that generates a "signature" (part of the JWT) that the recipient of the token can validate to ensure that the token has not been tampered with.
 - RS256 (RSA Signature with SHA-256) is an asymmetric algorithm, and it uses a public/private key pair: the identity provider has a private (secret) key used to generate the signature, and the consumer of the JWT gets a public key to validate the signature. Since the public key, as opposed to the private key, doesn't need to be kept secured, most identity providers make it easily available for consumers to obtain and use (usually through a metadata URL).
 - HS256 (HMAC with SHA-256), on the other hand, involves a combination of a hashing function and one (secret) key that is shared between the two parties used to generate the hash that will serve as the signature. Since the same key is used both to generate the signature and to validate it, care must be taken to ensure that the key is not compromised.
If you will be developing the application consuming the JWTs, you can safely use HS256, because you will have control on who uses the secret keys. If, on the other hand, you don't have control over the client, or you have no way of securing a secret key, RS256 will be a better fit, since the consumer only needs to know the public (shared) key.
Since the public key is usually made available from metadata endpoints, clients can be programmed to retrieve the public key automatically. If this is the case (as it is with the.Net Core libraries), you will have less work to do on configuration (the libraries will fetch the public key from the server). Symmetric keys, on the other hand, need to be exchanged out of band (ensuring a secure communication channel), and manually updated if there is a signing key rollover.
Auth0 provides metadata endpoints for the OIDC, SAML and WS-Fed protocols, where the public keys can be retrieved. You can see those endpoints under the "Advanced Settings" of a client.
The OIDC metadata endpoint, for example, takes the form of https://{account domain}/.well-known/openid-configuration. If you browse to that URL, you will see a JSON object with a reference to https://{account domain}/.well-known/jwks.json, which contains the public key (or keys) of the account.
If you look at the RS256 samples, you will see that you don't need to configure the public key anywhere: it's retrieved automatically by the framework.
 - 52
 NB when using rs256 - there is (or was) a security risk in many libraries which allowed the token to determine which algorithm to use. Essentially the attacker could use the public rs256 key with a hs256 encoding to pretend it is the secret key. So make sure your library doesn't have this behaviour! – AlexFoxGill Oct 4 '16 at 9:22
 - 7
 One small correction, "HS256 (HMAC with SHA-256), on the other hand, is a symmetric algorithm" - HMAC does not utilize a symmetric-key algorithm (which would allow you to encrypt and decrypt the signature by its definition). It utilizes a cryptographic hash function and a secret cryptographic key underneath HMAC. Which implies calculation of the hash (one way function) over the message with an appended secret key. – Kikoz Jun 19 '19 at 17:31
 - 1
 Example with Google : Go to accounts.google.com/.well-known/openid-configuration and look at jwks_uri ; it forwards you to googleapis.com/oauth2/v3/certs where you can find keys. Then you just have to retrieve the good key by its kid. – Denis TRUFFAUT Sep 16 '19 at 19:05
 - Worth noting that as HS256 shares a key between two parties that makes this algorithm unable to support multiple audiences in the one access_token, whereas RS256 can support many audiences. This matters with Identity clients like Auth0 who only allow a request to the /userinfo endpoint using an access_token if the configuration is RS256, as they need this token to support your api domain as an aud, as well as their auth0 domain. – jezpez Mar 15 '20 at 22:29
 - It is also worth noting that the RSA signature algorithm is vulnerable to quantum cryptography. So an attacker with a sufficiently large quantum computer could forge a signature. – Eponymous Jan 11 at 16:45
In cryptography there are two types of algorithms used:
Symmetric algorithms
A single key is used to encrypt data. When encrypted with the key, the data can be decrypted using the same key. If, for example, Mary encrypts a message using the key "my-secret" and sends it to John, he will be able to decrypt the message correctly with the same key "my-secret".
Asymmetric algorithms
Two keys are used to encrypt and decrypt messages. While one key(public) is used to encrypt the message, the other key(private) can only be used to decrypt it. So, John can generate both public and private keys, then send only the public key to Mary to encrypt her message. The message can only be decrypted using the private key.
HS256 and RS256 Scenario
These algorithms are NOT used to encrypt/decryt data. Rather they are used to verify the origin or the authenticity of the data. When Mary needs to send an open message to Jhon and he needs to verify that the message is surely from Mary, HS256 or RS256 can be used.
HS256 can create a signature for a given sample of data using a single key. When the message is transmitted along with the signature, the receiving party can use the same key to verify that the signature matches the message.
RS256 uses pair of keys to do the same. A signature can only be generated using the private key. And the public key has to be used to verify the signature. In this scenario, even if Jack finds the public key, he cannot create a spoof message with a signature to impersonate Mary.
There is a difference in performance.
Simply put HS256 is about 1 order of magnitude faster than RS256 for verification but about 2 orders of magnitude faster than RS256 for issuing (signing).
 640,251 91,464.3 ops/s
 86,123 12,303.3 ops/s (RS256 verify)
 7,046 1,006.5 ops/s (RS256 sign)
Don't get hung up on the actual numbers, just think of them with respect of each other.
class Program
 static void Main(string[] args)
 foreach (var duration in new[] { 1, 3, 5, 7 })
 var t = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(duration);
 byte[] publicKey, privateKey;
 using (var rsa = new RSACryptoServiceProvider())
 publicKey = rsa.ExportCspBlob(false);
 privateKey = rsa.ExportCspBlob(true);
 byte[] key = new byte[64];
 using (var rng = new RNGCryptoServiceProvider())
 var s1 = new Stopwatch();
 var n1 = 0;
 using (var hs256 = new HMACSHA256(key))
 while (s1.Elapsed < t)
 var hash = hs256.ComputeHash(privateKey);
 byte[] sign;
 using (var rsa = new RSACryptoServiceProvider())
 sign = rsa.SignData(privateKey, "SHA256");
 var s2 = new Stopwatch();
 var n2 = 0;
 using (var rsa = new RSACryptoServiceProvider())
 while (s2.Elapsed < t)
 var success = rsa.VerifyData(privateKey, "SHA256", sign);
 var s3 = new Stopwatch();
 var n3 = 0;
 using (var rsa = new RSACryptoServiceProvider())
 while (s3.Elapsed < t)
 rsa.SignData(privateKey, "SHA256");
 Console.WriteLine($"{s1.Elapsed.TotalSeconds:0} {n1,7:N0} {n1 / s1.Elapsed.TotalSeconds,9:N1} ops/s");
 Console.WriteLine($"{s2.Elapsed.TotalSeconds:0} {n2,7:N0} {n2 / s2.Elapsed.TotalSeconds,9:N1} ops/s");
 Console.WriteLine($"{s3.Elapsed.TotalSeconds:0} {n3,7:N0} {n3 / s3.Elapsed.TotalSeconds,9:N1} ops/s");
 Console.WriteLine($"RS256 is {(n1 / s1.Elapsed.TotalSeconds) / (n2 / s2.Elapsed.TotalSeconds),9:N1}x slower (verify)");
 Console.WriteLine($"RS256 is {(n1 / s1.Elapsed.TotalSeconds) / (n3 / s3.Elapsed.TotalSeconds),9:N1}x slower (issue)");
 // RS256 is about 7.5x slower, but it can still do over 10K ops per sec.
 - These are important numbers. thank


text:
Chinese herb regulates inflammation
U.S. scientists have discovered the molecular secrets behind a Chinese herb's extract made from Chang Shan, a type of hydrangea that grows in Tibet and Nepal.
Senior author Malcolm Whitman, a professor of developmental biology at Harvard School of Dental Medicine, said for roughly 2,000 years, Chinese herbalists have treated malaria using a root extract, commonly known as Chang Shan.
Recent studies suggested that halofuginone, a compound derived from this extract's bioactive ingredient, could be used to treat many autoimmune disorders as well.
"It turns out that halofuginone triggers a stress-response pathway that blocks the development of a harmful class of immune cells, called Th17 cells, which have been implicated in many autoimmune Whitman said in a statement. "Halofuginone prevents the autoimmune response without dampening immunity altogether. This compound could inspire novel therapeutic approaches to a variety of autoimmune disorders."
Scientists have only recently appreciated the role of the nutrient sensing-amino acid response pathway, a pathway in immune regulation and metabolic signaling.
The amino acid response pathway lets cells know when they need to preserve resources. For example, when a cell senses a limited supply of amino acids for building proteins, the amino acid response pathway will block signals that promote inflammation because inflamed tissues require lots of protein, Whitman said.
The findings were published in the Nature Chemical Biology.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text:
WikipediaRead full entry
Greater Blue-eared Starling
The Greater Blue-eared Starling or Greater Blue-eared Glossy-starling (Lamprotornis chalybaeus) is a bird that breeds from Senegal east to Ethiopia and south through eastern Africa to northeastern South Africa and Angola. It is a very common species of open woodland that undertakes some seasonal movements.
The Greater Blue-eared Glossy-starling is a 22-cm long, short tailed bird. This starling is glossy blue-green with a purple-blue belly and blue ear patch. Its iris is bright yellow or orange. The sexes are similar, but the juvenile is duller and has blackish brown underparts.
The populations from southern Kenya southwards are smaller than northern birds and are sometimes considered to be a separate subspecies, L. c. sycobius.
The Lesser Blue-eared Glossy-starling is similar to this species, but the blue of the belly does not extend forward of the legs.
The Greater Blue-eared Glossy-starling has a range of musical or grating calls, but the most familiar is a nasal squee-ar.
The Greater Blue-eared Glossy-starling nests in holes in trees, either natural or excavated by woodpeckers or barbets. It will also nest inside the large stick nests of the Sacred Ibis or Abdim's Stork. The three to five eggs are greenish-blue with some brown or purple spots, and hatch in 13–14 days. The chicks leave the nest in another 23 days.
The Greater Blue-eared Glossy Starling is highly gregarious and will form large flocks, often with other starlings. Its roosts, in reedbed, thorn bushes, or acacia, may also be shared.
Like other starlings, the Greater Blue-eared Glossy-starling is an omnivore, taking a wide range of invertebrates seeds and berries, especially figs, but is diet is mainly insects taken from the ground.
It will perch on livestock, feeding on insects disturbed by the animals and occasionally removing ectoparasites.


Turf Hallmarks
 Genetic Markers
 Search our site
 E-mail us
Portraits Index
Other Images
 English Foundation Mares
 Half-Bred Foundation Mares
 Foundation Sires
 Horses That Jump
 Or Use our Search Engine
Related Links
 Marcel Boussac
Black colt, 1936 - 1957
By Pharos - Carissima by Clarissimus
Darley Arabian Sire line:
Phalaris Branch.
Family #20 - a
Pharos His sire, Pharos
Pharis was a superb racehorse and champion sire in France. His career on the turf and in the breeding shed was seriously affected by World War II: the outbreak of war in 1939 put an end to his planned fall season on the racecourse in both France and England, and he lost almost five seasons as a stallion in France when he was confiscated by the Nazis and taken to Germany.
Pharis' dam, Carissima (1923), bred by Marcel Boussac, was out of an Irish-bred mare, Casquetts (by Captivation), and by Clarissimus, a winner of the Two Thousand Guineas that was sold to France after three years at stud in England. Clarissimus got a good winner in Nino, who took the prix du Cadran and was later a pretty good sire in France, and the Italian Guineas winner Delleana, later a superior brooodmare. But Clarissimus was most known as a broodmare sire whose grandchildren included Pharis and the French stallion Brantôme.
Carissima was a moderately successful winner of three races, the Prix de Sablonville and Prix de Malleret at Longchamp, and the Prix de Minerve at Evry, and was second, by five lengths, to Dorina in the Prix de Diane. She bred eight winners from twelve foals for Boussac, some of which were born in England after the start of the war. In addition to Pharis she bred Carius, a winner of some races, including the Prix Berteux; Caprifolia (winner of eight races and later dam of The Solicitor); Torissima, a winner of seven races and second dam of Tetrarch Stakes and Zetland Gold Cup winner Tale of Two Cities and of Djenne (later dam of the U.S. handicapper and stallion Olden Times); and Libération, that became the dam of Emperor (Prix Robert Papin and Dewhurst Stakes) and the outstanding stayer Elpenor (Prix du Cadran and Ascot Gold Cup).
In 1935 Boussac put Carissima to Pharos, a superior middle-distance horse at age four in England that stood at stud at Haras d'Ouilly in France after several years as a stallion at Woodland Stud in Newmarket. The year Carissima was bred to Pharos, a mare owned by Federico Tesio dropped a handsome bay colt to the cover of Pharos named Nearco, who was, like Pharis, a champion runner, and was to become one of the most influential stallions of the twentieth century. Pharis, while a very successful stallion in France with sons that went to every continent, would, in the long run, not prove as important in thoroughbred breeding.
Pharis eventually reached 16.2 hands in height. Although listed in some sources as "brown or black," a contemporary turf writer who visited described him as black "as a crow." This same writer, who interviewed Boussac's stable manager while gazing at Pharis, was very impressed by his presence and calm temperament, although Pharis had been known to nip a groom when he removed a water bucket too quickly "to his liking." He spent some time in a mild restraint to prevent him from chewing at his flanks, but was calm and professional on the racecourse. Pharis had a good, sloping shoulder and powerful hind end, but was long in the back and slightly back in the knees.
Pharis on the Turf
Pharis was placed in training with Boussac's private trainer, A. Swann. He did not run as a juvenile, a strategy Boussac and Swann seemed to follow for big, growthy colts, including several of Pharis' offspring in later years. He ran only three times in his life, and was unbeaten, at age three. What would have been his fall season was interrupted by the war: the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, slated for October 8th, was cancelled, and the Doncaster St. Leger in England, where Pharis would have met the champion English colt Blue Peter, was also abandoned that year. The interruption by war of the brilliant career of a French racehorse recalled the champion Sardanapale's career a little over twenty years before.
Pharis started his season in late May by easily winning the Prix Noailles at Longchamp (1-1/2 miles), beating the favorite, Foxhound, by three lengths. In early June he ran with thirteen others in the Prix du Jockey Club. The race started in a heavy rain downpour, and Pharis' pacemaker, Horatius, went to the front, while Pharis lay back at the tail of the field. As he moved up he was checked when he ran into interference, and as the horses passed the stands he turned on his amazing speed, successively passing each horse, and running down the leader, Galérian, to win by two and one-half lengths. It was a brilliant, thrilling race that made Pharis a hero and gave Boussac his fifth Prix du Jockey Club win.
Pharis' final performance was his dramatic win of the Grand Prix de Paris at Longchamp on June 15 (15 furlongs) in heavy, holding ground due to rain. There were seventeen colts and two fillies in the field, including Horatius, who set the pace at the start; Pharis was at the end of the pack for the early part of the race, and then four hundred meters from the post, was boxed in behind already beaten horses and nearly went to his knees, but as soon as an opening appeared on the rail, his jockey, C. Elliott, sent him through and Pharis came thundering down the stretch, "liked the winged horse of the Arab legend," putting away his opponents by two and one-half lengths. This was Boussac's first Grand Prix du Paris triumph. Pharis was acclaimed the champion of his year, and many compared him to the great French hero, Gladiateur.
Pharis in the Stud
Pharis was retired to Haras Fresnay-le-Buffard, where he was a successful, versatile stallion. He got four winners of the Prix du Jockey Club (French Derby), champion juveniles and champion three-year-olds of both sexes in France, terrific stayers that won the Doncaster St. Leger (two), the Prix Royal-Oak (French St. Leger), the Prix de l'Arc deTriomphe, the Prix Kergolay, and other distance races, a champion filly in Germany, and more than one winner in England of the Champion and Hardwicke Stakes. He was the leading sire of juveniles in France four times, and topped the general sires list in 1944, was third four times, and fourth once (when one factored in his winners beyond France, he was leading sire in 1944, 1950, 1951, and 1952). He was second on the list of leading broodmare sires twice, in 1955 and 1956.
Boussac bred and raced most of Pharis' successful offspring, and contingents of Pharis youngsters regularly made the channel crossing to run and win in England, where purses were much higher than in post-war France, and the glory certainly more prestigious at the time. Their successes, both in England and France, contributed to Boussac's placing at the top of the breeders lists in France for years, and to his reputation as the most successful of French breeders of the twentieth century. Up until Pharis' death at Haras de Fresnay-le-Buffard in February of 1957, he had bred 47 stakes winners and a total number of 108 individual winners of 285 races valued at £308,000, despite losing 4-1/2 years of breeding in France when he was confiscated by the Nazis and taken to Germany. Pharis was seldom put to outside mares (except for his time in Germany), in fact he was most often bred to daughters of Boussac's stallions Astérus (hugely contributing to his reputation as a broodmare sire) and Tourbillon, and one does wonder what he might have effected had that not been the case.
Pharis sons were extremely popular as stallions, and they spread his genes all over the world. They went to stud in Great Britain, South Africa, South America, Italy, New Zealand and Australia, the United States, and eventually, Japan. Although most were only moderately useful, some became champion sires that established long-lived tail male lines to Pharis. Not one of his sons that remained in France ever made the top ten in the sires list, but Pardal, who went to stud in England, was several times in the top ten there, and second in 1961, and he, along with Ardan,


An unreal photo taken by a 'Doctor Who camera'S
It's a still image that is more about time than space. Remarkably, the picture has not been Photoshopped: it's simply a different way of looking at the world. If Doctor Who had a camera, he might take shots like this. And as it happens, the title sequence for the BBC show in the 1970s was created with a similar "slit-scan" technique.
Slit-scan cameras take many images in vertical slices, and stack them side by side. The result is that anything stationary, in the background, appears blurred, while anything passing by the slit jumps out at you, clear against the smear. This photo shows a field in Siem Reap, Cambodia, taken by photographer Jay Mark Johnson of Venice, California.
It's hard to get your head around. The camera views the world through an unmoving vertical slit, taking successive shots over time. The left side of the image here corresponds to the earlier shots and the last sliver on the far right is the most recent. It's a time-panorama. The background didn't move, so is smeared out, but the farmer and his buffalos passed by. If the farmer had stopped for a while in front of the slit he would appear elongated; had he raced past the camera, he would appear compacted.
"I make photographic time lines," Johnson says on his website. "Because the photographs seamlessly blend visual depictions of space and time into a single hybrid image they provide an altered'spacetime' view of the world."
Fans of science fiction may like to know that in Star Trek: The Next Generation, the stretch effect of the Enterprise going to warp speed was made using the slit-scan technique, which was also used in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
This article was originally published in New Scientist.


text:
Teorie circolari e teorie verticali della dinamica economica strutturale: verso uno schema di carattere generale
AbstractThis essay argues that the analytical representation of economic structure is a fundamental element in understanding the dynamics of economic systems, even more today in the case of modern economies affected by deep transformations of technological knowledge. The analysis of theories and models of structural economic dynamics brings out a clear distinction between the description of the production system in terms of material flows reflecting inter-industry relationships (W. Leontief) and the description of the same system in terms of a set of vertically integrated sectors (L. Pasinetti). The analysis of the circular and vertical theories of structural economic dynamics aims at the identification of the core set of fundamental methodological and analytical principles of what we have called "ideal" theory of structural economic dynamics. The essential features of a method of analysis consistent with this "ideal" model are the use of multisectoral models, the adoption of methods of decomposition, the relevance of technical progress, the central role of learning processes, the consideration of uneven growth and the study of normative conditions of equilibrium. The concluding proposition of the essay is that the analysis of structural economic dynamics needs theoretical pluralism. This entails the acceptance of differentiated analytical frameworks with respect to the problem at issue and suggests that theory selection presupposes both an adequate understanding of economic structure and the description of relevant features of institutions and individual patterns of behaviour.
Download InfoIf you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Bibliographic InfoArticle provided by Società editrice il Mulino in its journal Economia politica.
Volume (Year): (2006)
Issue (Month): 1 ()
Contact details of provider:
You can help add them by filling out this form.
CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
- Schilirò, Daniele, 2009. "Italian industrial districts: a model of success or a weak productive system?," MPRA Paper 40070, University Library of Munich, Germany.
- Schilirò, Daniele, 2011.
"Mutamenti strutturali: modelli, metodi e principi in una nuova prospettiva
[Structural changes: models, methods and principles towards a new perspective]," MPRA Paper 31566, University Library of Munich, Germany.
- Schilirò, Daniele, 2009. "Structural models and structural change: analytical principles and methodological issues," MPRA Paper 24480, University Library of Munich, Germany.
- Daniele SCHILIRO, 2012.
"Structural Change And Models Of Structural Analysis: Theories, Principles And Methods,"
Journal of Advanced Research in Law and Economics,
ASERS Publishing, vol. 0(2), pages 31-49, December.
- Schilirò, Daniele, 2012. "Structural change and models of structural analysis: theories, principles and methods," MPRA Paper 41817, University Library of Munich, Germany.
- Schilirò, Daniele, 2006.
"Crescita economica, conoscenza e capitale umano. Le teorie e i modelli di crescita endogena di Paul Romer e Robert Lucas
[Economic growth, knowledge and human capital. Theories and models of endoge," MPRA Paper 52435, University Library of Munich, Germany.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.


text:
Most Active Stories
Fri December 23, 2011
Turns Out, Pigeons Are Just As Good As Monkeys When It Comes To Math
Scientists have found that pigeons are much smarter than we give them credit for and can be taught some complex abstract math. This is stunning because it's trait that has only been shown in primates. But according to a report in the current issue of the journal Science, researchers were able to teach pigeons abstract rules about math.
"Our research not only shows that pigeons are also members of this exclusive club, but, somewhat surprisingly, their performance is on a par with that of monkeys," the study's lead author Dr. Damian Scarf, a researcher at the University of Otago in New Zealand, said in a press release.
So how did the researchers test this? Here's how Discovery News explains the experiment:
"To do this, they presented the pigeons with three images containing one, two, or three objects. All three images appeared at once on a touch screen and the pigeons pecked the screen to make a response. If they correctly accomplished the task — pecking the images in ascending order — they received a wheat snack.
"'We took steps to ensure things like volume could not control responding in training and testing,' he said. 'For example, during training and testing, the higher numerosity did not always have the largest surface area/volume and thus the pigeons could not respond based on this stimulus dimension.'
"The images also came in different colors and shapes, so the pigeons weren't somehow linking those qualities to quantity.
"Next, the researchers upped the ante, to see whether or not pigeons had just learned to order 1, 2, and 3, or if they'd learned a more abstract rule. Scarf and his team presented the pigeons with pairs of images containing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 objects. The pigeons again had to pair the items in ascending order. For example, if a pigeon saw 8 and 5, it had to peck the objects representing 5 first.
Amazingly, the pigeons aced the task and more remarkably they performed as well as the rhesus monkeys that were tested in previous experiments.
"While this is obviously a long way away from how humans can count, it shows that an animal with a brain structured quite differently to ours is still able to perform complex mental tasks of which only humans were once thought capable," said Scarf. "Our findings add to a growing body of evidence that pigeons are among a number of avian species exhibiting impressive mental abilities that really do give the lie to the old 'bird brain' insult."
The New York Times adds that scientists have not tested the pigeons with numbers greater than nine, "so whether a pigeon can count large numbers of bread crumbs or popcorn kernels is a question still open to investigation."


text:
The Dog Daily: Bonding
Where Do Breed Names Come From?
By Liz Palika for The Dog Daily
My breed of choice, Australian Shepherds, didn't actually originate in Australia. Although there is much debate concerning the origins of the breed, the most generally accepted theory is that the ancestors of the first Australian Shepherds came to the United States during the western gold rush of the mid-1800s with Basque sheep herders from their homeland in Europe. Flocks of sheep were imported from Australia to feed the miners. Because the sheep came from Australia, the dogs were assumed to have originated there as well, and the name stuck.
Most dog breed names have more logical origins than do the Aussies. Many really are named for their country of origin, such as German Shepherds, German Shorthaired Pointers, Welsh Corgis, Shetland Sheepdogs, and Afghan Hounds. Rottweilers weren't named after a country; they got their name from a town, Rottweil, in western Germany. It's said that when the breed was in decline, a few surviving Rottweilers were found in this town and they became the foundation of a new era for the breed. Alaskan Malamutes, the strongest sled dog breed, are named for an Innuit tribe, the Malimiuts, in Alaska. The Chukchi people of Siberia first bred Siberian Huskies.
Some breeds get their name from physical characteristics. Papillons are an excellent example: The word papillon
is French for "butterfly," and the breed's large upright ears, fringed with flowing silky hair, resembles the wings of a large butterfly. Basset Hounds got their name from their short legs; bas
in French means, "low slung." German Shorthaired Pointers and German Wirehaired Pointers are differentiated by the differences in their coat types, and this is reflected in their names.
Some breeds were named for the person who originally developed the breed. One story is that the Scottish Duke Alexander IV of Gordon created Gordon Setters in the 1600s. The most famous instance of a breed being named after a man has got to be Doberman Pinschers. In the mid to late 1800s, Ludwig Dobermann created an intelligent working breed from German Shepherds, Great Danes and Pinschers. This breed eventually carried his name.
Breed names have been known to change, too. In most instances records simply show the change in name but don't tell us why it occurred. The Old English Sheepdog was originally known as the English Old-Fashioned Bobtail Sheepdog. One could surmise that the change was to shorten that long mouthful of a name. Maltese were originally known as Maltese Terriers, but became simply Maltese in the early 1900s. In this instance, perhaps the "terrier" was dropped because the Maltese was being shown in the American Kennel Club as a toy dog rather than a terrier.
One of the biggest name changes, and the most controversial, was with German Shepherd Dogs. German Shepherds originated in Germany, as their name suggests, and were developed to be an all-purpose working dog. They rapidly gained popularity with law enforcement and military personnel and were exported to other countries as premier working dogs. During and after World War I, many British dog enthusiasts and working dog handlers owned or were working German Shepherds, but the anti-German sentiment of the time carried through to anything German -- even the dogs. So German Shepherds in Britain were renamed Alsatian after the French region of Alsace Lorraine, which bordered on Germany. Although the name German Shepherd has re-surfaced, many British dog enthusiasts still recognize the breed as Alsatian.
As with so much of human history, much canine history has been lost. Written records have been damaged, and verbal histories have been forgotten. It's a shame, because some of the histories we do know are fascinating. It would be wonderful if we knew how some of our favorite breeds came into being and how they were named. But than again, mysteries are fun, too.


text:
This Demonstration illustrates the formation of time-averaged Moiré fringes. The horizontal axis represents the amplitude of harmonic oscillation ; the vertical axis, the longitudinal coordinate. The stationary Moiré grating is shown at. Time-averaged images of the Moiré grating are shown at increasing amplitudes of oscillation. The parameter controls the number of discrete time nodes in a period of the oscillation used to integrate the dynamical process. Double-exposure fringes are produced at ; time-averaged fringes are produced at. You can choose the type of the Moiré grating—it can be harmonic, stepped, or stochastic. Moreover, you can observe two digital images. The first is the time-averaged Moiré image and the second is the filtered image in which time-averaged fringes are shown in high contrast. Interesting time-averaged patterns can be observed whenever a regular Moiré grating is replaced by a set of random numbers uniformly distributed in the interval. Those patterns can reveal certain properties of the random number generator used to construct the stochastic Moiré grating.
(Research Group for Mathematical and Numerical Analysis of Dynamical Systems)
Theoretical relationships governing the formation of time-averaged Moiré fringes are discussed in the references.
 M. Ragulskis, "Time-Averaged Patterns Produced by Stochastic Moiré Gratings," Computers and Graphics, 2009, 33(2), pp. 147–150.
 M. Ragulskis, L. Saunoriene, and R. Maskeliunas, "The Structure of Moiré Grating Lines and Influence to Time-Averaged Fringes," Experimental Techniques,33(2), 2009 pp. 60–64.
 M. Ragulskis and Z. Navickas, "Time-Average Moiré—Back to the Basics," Experimental Mechanics, 49(8), 2009 pp. 439–450.
 M. Ragulskis, A. Aleksa, and R. Maskeliunas, "Contrast Enhancement of Time-Averaged Fringes Based on Moving Average Mapping Functions," Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 47(7-8), 2009 pp. 768–773.
 M. Ragulskis and A. Aleksa, "Image Hiding Based on Time-Averaging Moiré," Optics Communications, 282, 2009 pp. 2752–2759.
 M. Ragulskis, A. Aleksa, and Z. Navickas, "Image Hiding Based on Time-Averaged Fringes Produced by Non-Harmonic Oscillations," Journal of Optics A: Pure and Applied Optics, 11(12), 2009. doi:10.1088/_PHONE_/11/12/125411.


text:
Stochastic optimization lies at the heart of machine learning, and its cornerstone is stochastic gradient descent (SGD), a staple introduced over 60 years ago! Recent years have, however, brought an exciting new development: variance reduction (VR) for stochastic methods. These VR methods excel in settings where more than one pass through the training data is allowed, achieving convergence faster than SGD, in theory as well as practice. These speedups underline the huge surge of interest in VR methods; by now a large body of work has emerged, while new results appear regularly! This tutorial brings to the wider machine learning audience the key principles behind VR methods, by positioning them vis-à-vis SGD. Moreover, the tutorial takes a step beyond convexity and covers research-edge results for non-convex problems too, while outlining key points and as yet open challenges.
– Introduce fast stochastic methods to the wider ML audience to go beyond a 60-year-old algorithm (SGD) – Provide a guiding light through this fast moving area, to unify, and simplify its presentation, outline common pitfalls, and to demystify its capabilities – Raise awareness about open challenges in the area, and thereby spur future research
– Graduate students (masters as well as PhD stream)
– ML researchers in academia and industry who are not experts in stochastic optimization
– Practitioners who want to widen their repertoire of tools


text:
Skip to Main Content
Machine learning methods are known to be inefficient when faced with many features that are unnecessary for rule discovery. In coping with this issue, many methods have been proposed for selecting important features. Among them is feature selection that selects a subset of discriminative features or attribute for model building due to its ability to avoid overfitting issue, improve model performance, provide faster and producing reliable model. This paper proposes a new method based on rough set algorithms, which is a rule-based data mining method to select the important features in bioinformatics datasets. Amino acid compositions are used as conditional features for the classification task. However, our results indicate that all amino acid composition features are equally important thus selecting the features are unnecessary. We do confirm the need of having a balance classes in classifying the protein function by demonstrating an increase of more than 15% in accuracy.
Electrical Engineering and Informatics, 2009. ICEEI '09. International Conference on (Volume:01 )
Date of Conference: 5-7 Aug. 2009


text:
Cameron et al., 2006: Reflecting about friendships between refugees and ingroup members improved sense of connection and positive attitudes towards refugees among White English children
White 5-11 year-old children in England were read three stories over two sessions, which represented close friendships between ingroup members and refugees. The stories emphasized the individual characteristics of refugees (decategorization intervention), the common ingroup identity of refugees as a member of the school community (common ingroup identity intervention) or both the common ingroup identity and the unique subgroup identity of refugees (dual identity intervention). One to two weeks later, children in all three intervention conditions, as compared to a no-treatment control condition, reported a greater sense of connection to refugees and more positive attitudes toward refugees, with the dual identity intervention the most effective. However, there was no effect on children's interest in interacting with refugees.


text: 'End plate spike' (EPS) is a spontaneous action potential of a normal striated muscle. EPSs are found in local 'active spots' of the muscle. The prevailing hypothesis about the origin of EPSs states that when a needle electrode affects a motor nerve branch near the neuromuscular junction at the end plate zone, an increased leakage of acetylcholine to the synaptic cleft ensues. This elicits postsynaptic action potentials of the muscle fibre which can be recorded as EPSs with the same needle electrode. Thus EPSs are thought to be caused by needle injury or irritation of the motor axon. We suggest that EPSs are action potentials of intrafusal muscle fibres and that 'active spots' are in fact muscle spindles. Waveform analysis reveals three types of EPSs: small EPSs, not propagated outside the active spot either: i) with negative onset; or ii) with short positive initial deflection; and iii) large EPSs resembling propagated motor unit potentials (MUPs) but with a typical EPS firing pattern, distinctly different from that of the MUPs.. Study of EPS activation in different manoeuvres associates small EPSs with intrafusal gamma motor units and large MUP-like EPSs with beta motor units.


Parking
Home _TAG_
Profiting from Parking
Local borough councils in London have been using their ability to raise money from parking charges to subsidise their budgets - particularly transport programmes including using it to cover the cost of the Freedom Pass. In some cases, they are setting on-street parking charges at a level that is illegal (legally it is very clear that parking charges should not be a "revenue raising" measure).
A very extensive report entitled "Profiting from Parking" was published by the ABD in October 2010. It gives the revenues and costs from parking operations, and from "decriminalised moving traffic offences" for a number of London boroughs. It is contained in this pdf document: Profiting-from-Parking.
Obtaining Financial Information on Parking from Your Council
You can use this template letter if you wish to obtain the figures on income and expenditure, and the profits that are made, on parking and decriminalised moving traffic offences from your local Council: Parking-Information-Template
Controlled Parking Zones and Permit Parking Schemes
Many London Boroughs suffer from the inadequate provision of off-street parking facilities. This results in heavy usage of "on-street" parking, which can be an eyesore, can also create safety problems and leads to complaints from local residents that they cannot park outside their own houses, particularly where there are terraced houses with no off-street parking. With typically 2 adults in many households, just local residents can overfill the on-street parking and if the street is anywhere near a transport interchange (such as a railway station), or near shopping facilities, the demand on the parking spaces can exceed the supply.
In recent years several schemes have been devised to tackle these problems, particularly the demand by local residents for "reserved" spaces, which are known generically as Controlled Parking Zones (CPZs). There are three common approaches:
a - The introduction of parking meters or "pay and display" systems that limit the maximum number of hours or minutes that you can park, thus deterring long term commuter parking.
b - Simple time limits on how long you can park, or the "blocking out" of certain hours (eg. 11.00 to 12.00 am) to deter all day parking. Sometimes these are combined with a "permit parking" scheme so that only permit holders can park in the "blocked" hours.
c - A Permit Parking scheme where most of the space is reserved for local residents who have appropriate "permits" which they display. These permits typically have to be paid for (at least so that the administrative costs are recovered but the amount of the fee can also be varied so as to reduce "excessive" demand for permits from local residents). It is also usually possible for residents to buy "tickets" for their visitors which can be used by tradesmen or other people who need to visit them during the day.
Sometimes these schemes allow anyone to park for free at certain times, but require non-permit holders to "pay and display" at other times as in the example above. They can get very complex to understand!
Do these schemes solve all the problems? Typically no - all they do is reserve the limited spaces available for a certain section of the population, instead of it being taken on a first come, first served basis. The FFDR objects to these schemes, particularly Permit Parking Schemes, on the following grounds:
1. Controlled Parking Zones and Permit Parking Schemes are often an attempt to reserve local parking spaces for residents, when they have no particular rights to such space. There is no moral or legal reason why residents should have priority for parking in roads which are public property. Typically the general public have paid via taxes for the provision of these roads, and they certainly pay for all their maintenance costs, and therefore it seems unreasonable and unfair that a small section of the public should be able to reserve particular road space for their exclusive use.
2. Although, we recognize that residents may have particular difficulty in these areas when they do not have any off street parking (for example because there are terraced houses), most of the residents were fully aware of this situation before they moved into the properties (these problems have been present in London for very many years, while the average residence time for a house in the UK is less than 10 years).
3. These schemes are promoted on the fact that they will resolve parking problems for residents when often they do not (there is no guarantee of sufficient spaces for residents, particularly now that households often own multiple cars). They also mean that residents end up paying for use of spaces which were free before, at considerable cost.
4. They certainly inconvenience non-residents who now may find it impossible to find a parking space within a reasonable distance. This does not just cause a problem for commuters parking near stations. It can also cause difficulties for people making short visits to local facilities such as shops, or simply visiting friends or making business visits (although some schemes only have certain hours blocked out these vary from location to location so unless one knows the area very well it can be difficult to avoid). Unfortunately the spread of such schemes is often motivated by the same "anti-car" mentality that is exhibited in government and Greater London Authority transport policies in recent years, namely that any measures that make use of private cars more difficult are seen as meritorious.
5. In many cases, Permit Parking Schemes result in the under utilisation of available parking spaces. The picture above shows this effect in Upper Park Road, Bromley where the permit controlled spaces are not occupied by permit holders during the day, but nobody else is allowed to use this space.
6. These schemes have a considerable administrative overhead. In fact the only real financial beneficiaries of the schemes are council staff who are employed to administer them. Typically the employment of people to design, implement, operate and enforce these schemes is a totally unproductive task which simply ends up being a general tax on residents.
7. In the case of areas where commuter parking is a problem, these schemes do not solve the problem - they simply move it a few streets away or to another station area altogether. In the extreme case, they deter people from using rail transport with the end result that people drive all the way, which is surely not a sensible thing to encourage.
8. Permit parking schemes are often sold to residents on the premise that only administrative costs are covered and no profit generated from them, but this is not true.
In summary, it would in our view be much better if the time, effort and expense put into these schemes be used to develop appropriate off-street parking to meet the reasonable demands of all existing parking users.
Back to Resources


text:
9 Terms For Weed From Around The World You Need To Know
How many of these slang terms from around the world are you familiar with?
Many of us have developed code words for cannabis, discrete ways to conversate about the herb without drawing unnecessary attention. Whether it's an attempt to quietly invite others to partake in a smoke session or a way of obtaining more flowers without being noticed, cannabis consumers have been creating slang terms for decades in reference to the magical plant.
Across the world, cannabis enthusiasts have developed their own terms to identify the most sought after medicinal herb on the planet. Mota, plan, and bareta are terms any traveler should add to their vocabulary if trying to score cannabis in another country is a goal. There are a few more important terms, too. Commit to memory these nine strange terms for cannabis from around the world.
1. Turkey: "Ot"
Translated into English, "ot" literally means "weed". When pronounced properly, the term sounds more like "oat," and is the most common phrase used among the cannabis cultures of Turkey.
2. South Africa: "Zol"
In South Africa, always be sure to ask for "zol." This term refers to a higher-potency strain of cannabis; the good-good, stinky buds. Cheaper, less-potent cannabis is called "jut."
3. Colombia: "Bareta"
Pronounced like the gun model, Beretta, Colombian's commonly use this term to replace the Western World's use of the word "weed". Because Beretta's are a strong type of firearm, perhaps the slang "bareta" was selected to represent their potent strains of cannabis.
4. Egypt: "Bango"
In Egypt, leaves and stems of the cannabis plant are dried, just like buds, and later rolled into joints, called "bango." This less-potent product is common among the Egyptian youth and working class, a majority of the population, adding to the terms popularity.
5. Russia: "Plan"
Used in place of "weed", Russians refer to their herb as "plan." The word is so common, it makes sense that unsuspecting persons would remain unaware of any discussion involving cannabis. It takes the secrecy to an entirely new level.
6. Mexico: "Churro"
Yes, yes, the sugary-sweet cinnamon sticks are also called churros, but lately, the term has been coined in reference to joints. Perhaps, enjoying a churro, then enjoying churros would be the proper solution. It seems to be the most logical conclusion.
7. France: L'Herbe
Ah, nothing like L'Herbe on a Monday morning. L'Herbe simply means "the grass," but everything sounds so much fancier in French. Atop the Eiffel Tower, it would be nice to enjoy L'Herbe, remember that for future visits.
8. India: "Bhang"
This specific type of cannabis found in India is more like what many of us would call an edible. Cannabis is crushed and rolled into a paste or powder and mixed with yogurt or other fruit-based concoctions, then eaten to deliver a powerfully potent mind and body high.
9. Puerto Rico: "Mota"
Puerto Rico is home to some fantastic cannabis, so be sure to know "mota" is a common term used when trying to score in the islands. The slang word is a good fallback to use while traveling through any Spanish speaking area, as it is widely understood to mean marijuana.
What are your slang terms for cannabis? Let us know on social media or in the comments below.


text:
I know there are not so many of us but I was just asked about Ink on my blog and what you do with it. This arises from someone want more space to take notes in ink without opening the Topic Notes pane and getting all notes in the foreground rather than hidden in a note.
Please can I suggest this as an improvement.
In Topic Notes - Ink can be lassoed and converted to text or an image and appended to the text notes.
In a Topic:
- Topic Ink can be converted to text but not an image.
- A Topic Sketch cannot be converted to an image or text. It can't be copied to the Topic Note for processing there.
Please provide the functions to:
- Topic Ink to an image
- Topic Sketches to an image or text
- Ability to drag sketches between topics like images and into notes


text:
|Year 8 Curriculum Outlines|
|Art and Design|
Introduction and Aims
In Year 8 students build on the skills acquired in Year 7 and will be expected to start producing some high quality projects using a variety of different applications. Not only will students start to learn how to improve their graphic design skills, they will apply this knowledge and start to enter the exciting world of web design
ICT offers opportunities for pupils to:
UNIT 1 - PUBLISHING ON THE WEB
Students will learn how to produce basic web sites. Starting with HTML and moving on to Macromedia Dreamweaver - professional web design software. They will work in pairs to produce a new school web site.
UNIT 2 - GAMESHOW DESIGNER
In this unit students will produce a game show based around the popular 'Who wants to be a Millionaire?' model. They will need to use the internet to research their gameshow and produce an interactive, standalone application using Microsoft Powerpoint.
UNIT 3 - GLOBAL FILMS
Students take on the role of marketing and advertising executive for Global Film Productions and undertake a variety of tasks in this consolidation project. Students will be expected to produce everything from the televeision advertisement to the invites to the film's premiere.
Students will use all of the Microsoft and Macromedia suite of products to complete the 10 tasks
UNIT 4 - PERSONAL WEBSITE
Students develop the skills learnt in Unit 1 and the graphic design skills acquired in Unit 3 to produce a website on a topic of their choice.
Students will be expected to produce planning documentation to support their designs and will use Macromedia Fireworks and Macromedia Dreamweaver to complete this unit.
Students are continually assessed by the classroom teacher. After every unit students are required to performe a self assessment and are encouraged to critically evaluate their own work - thinking of areas in which they have performed very well and areas where they could make improvements.
Other InformationBefore being allowed to use Internet facilities students and parents must sign the Code of Conduct for Internet use which can be found in their homework diaries. Any students misusing the ICT facilities may have their access to the ICT suite withdrawn


Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server v2.1.1 Deployment Planning Guide
Estimating Bandwidth Requirements
To decide on the desired size and bandwidth of the network, first determine the network traffic and identify its peak. Check if there is a particular hour, day of the week, or day of the month when overall volume peaks, and then determine the duration of that peak.
During peak load times, the number of packets in the network is at its highest level. In general, if you design for peak load, scale your system with the goal of handling 100 percent of peak volume. Bear in mind, however, that any network behaves unpredictably and that despite your scaling efforts, it might not always be able handle 100 percent of peak volume.
For example, assume that at peak load, five percent of users occasionally do not have immediate network access when accessing applications deployed on Enterprise Server. Of that five percent, estimate how many users retry access after the first attempt. Again, not all of those users might get through, and of that unsuccessful portion, another percentage will retry. As a result, the peak appears longer because peak use is spread out over time as users continue to attempt access.


text:
By using new techniques originally developed for the analysis of extreme values of dynamical systems, several long records of temperatures at different locations are analysed by showing that they have the same recurrence time statistics of a chaotic dynamical system perturbed with dynamical noise and by instrument errors. The technique provides a criterion to discriminate whether the recurrence of a certain temperature belongs to the natural climate variability or can be considered as a real extreme event with respect to a specific time scale fixed as parameter. The method gives a self-consistent estimation of the convergence.
If it doesn't, something may have gone wrong with our embedded player.
We'll get it fixed as soon as possible.


text:
ACES' Risk Management Approach
Systematic and Disciplined Approach
ACES encourages a systematic disciplined approach to energy risk management. This approach has two main components: the Energy Risk Management Cycle and Integrated Portfolio Management.
The Energy Risk Management Cycle is an iterative 6-step process that provides a foundation for identifying, understanding, and effectively managing energy risks.
Step 1. Risk Identification and Quantification
Before risks can be effectively managed, they must be identified and measured using either statistical tools or a qualitative approach.
Step 2. Establish Risk Tolerance and Risk Management Policies
After priority risks are identified, Energy Risk Management policies are developed to formalize risk objectives, risk tolerance, a decision making process, and identify authority for individuals or committees to carry out transactions.
Step 3. Develop Hedge Plans and Execution Strategies
ACES develops policies for establishing the boundaries for managing risk and execution strategies for implementation and compliance purposes.
Step 4. Implement Controls and Procedures
Risk Management Policies need to be supported by controls and procedures to ensure an appropriate level of oversight.
Step 5. Execute the Hedging Strategy
With a clear understanding of the risks being taken, Energy Risk Management policies in place, a hedging strategy developed, and controls and procedures in place, the hedging strategy can be executed.
Step 6. Risk Monitoring, Measuring, and Reporting
Existing risks should be continuously monitored and reported up through the risk management governance structure. As new risks emerge, they should be reported through a systematic process to determine if policies or strategies need to be altered.
Integrated Portfolio Management
Integrated Portfolio Management takes this cycle as a starting point and adds several components to create an approach to managing energy risks, which is complete and consistent across the entire organization.
1. All Commodities, Products, and Resources
All commodities, products, and resources (both physical and financial) need to be included in the Energy Risk Management Process.
2. Sufficiently Long Time Horizon
The time horizon for managing risk needs to be sufficiently long to capture all significant risks and opportunities.
3. Coordinated Strategy Development
Development of risk management strategies should be coordinated across all components of the power supply portfolio and should reflect a structure based on transparency, open exchange, and information sharing.
4. Sophisticated Software Tools
Sophisticated analytical tools are needed to simultaneously evaluate several major risk factors in a probabilistic fashion, allowing "what if" scenarios to be quickly analyzed in the development of risk management strategies.
5. Well-Defined Business Processes
Software tools need to be complemented with well-defined business processes to create a seamless approach to integrated portfolio management.
6. Clear, Accurate, and Timely Reporting
Clear, accurate, and timely risk and performance reporting are critical for tracking risk and risk management performance.


text:
making it more expensive to produce miscanthus. In the absence of risk considerations, the breakeven price of miscanthus grown on cropland is $84 per ton on average while that of switchgrass is $124 per ton. The corresponding values for breakeven prices on marginal land for miscanthus and switchgrass are $42 per ton and $50 per ton, respectively.
The breakeven prices of energy crops vary significantly across regions and even within a region. For both miscanthus and switchgrass grown on cropland, the breakeven prices are the lowest in the Southeast because corn yields in this region are the lowest and the energy grass yields are the highest among the four regions (Table 1). Breakeven prices for energy crops grown on cropland or marginal land are highest in the northern Great Plains because energy crop yields are very low in this area (Figure 2).
Risk-averse landowners require higher prices for energy crop production than those discussed above. We define risk premium as breakeven price with risk aversion minus the breakeven price with risk neutrality. If the risk premium is greater than zero then it indicates that returns with energy crops are riskier than returns with row crops. We find that the risk premium is positive, on average, in the rainfed United States, even though miscanthus has a lower relative yield risk than corn in most counties in the lower Midwest and large tracts of the South. This is because the high fixed costs of producing miscanthus increase the relative variability of profits in response to variability in yields. The risk premium needed to induce conversion of cropland to switchgrass is even higher than for miscanthus due to the larger variability in switchgrass yields and the high opportunity costs of cropland.
Figures 2(d) and 2(h) show the spatial variability in the risk premium for miscanthus and switchgrass grown on cropland, respectively. The risk premium varies considerably across regions, and is lowest in the Southeast and highest in the Great Plains (Table 1). The risk premium ranges from -76% to 152% of the breakeven prices under risk neutrality for miscanthus and -93% to 215% for switchgrass. The risk discount (or negative risk premium) for both energy crops is largely in the Southeast and the Southern Great Plains, which is in part due to the relatively lower yield risk of energy crops in these areas compared to corn. On average, the risk premium required to induce landowners to convert cropland to switchgrass is expected to increase its breakeven price by 15.6% compared to that required under perfect certainty; the corresponding increase in the breakeven price of miscanthus is by 7.6%.
We find that not only the breakeven prices of energy crops grown on marginal land are lower than that of energy crops grown on cropland but the risk premium on marginal land is lower too. Energy crop yields have a slightly higher yield risk on marginal land than on cropland. Moreover, energy crop production exposes farmers to risk compared to the riskless rental payments from CRP assumed here. It should be noted, however, that a higher risk of yield does not necessarily imply higher variance of utility, since the latter will also depend on the costs of production and the price of the crop. The risk premium for an energy crop depends on the yield risk and price of corn, as well as on the production costs of both the energy crop and corn. The low risk premium on marginal land is due to the low opportunity costs of growing energy crops on marginal land which require relatively low breakeven prices of energy crops and lower variability in utility with energy crop production on marginal land than on cropland.
Our analysis shows that opportunity costs of land can make a significant difference to the breakeven prices of biomass from energy crops under both risk neutrality and risk aversion. Additionally, the relatively higher yield risks associated with energy crop production as compared to corn/soybeans, particularly in the upper Midwest, can result in higher breakeven prices needed to induce risk-averse landowners to convert cropland to energy crops. However, in some regions, such as the Southeast, energy crops, particularly miscanthus, are less risky than corn/soybean production and the break-even price needed to induce a risk-averse landowner to produce them will be lower than that for a risk neutral landowner. The effects of yield risk on breakeven price are much smaller on land that may currently be under a crop/pasture rotation with a low and relatively constant opportunity cost of production. These findings suggest that landowners are more likely to first convert low-quality marginal land to energy crop production.
Based on data from 2007 Census of Agriculture (_URL_ the aggregate availability of land classified as cropland pasture or idle but not currently enrolled in CRP in the rainfed United States was estimated to be 21 million acres in 2007. However, its potential for conversion to energy crops will depend on its availability as contiguous acres that can be accessed by the equipment needed for planting and harvesting energy crops and transporting biomass. To the extent that production of biofuels will require plantation-style production of energy crops within a limited radius around a biorefinery, reliance solely on marginal land to meet the biomass needs of a refinery might involve trade-offs between costs of transporting biomass from low-cost land at further distances versus high-cost land nearby. Current use of this land for hunting, recreation, or as nature preserves, as well as the small size of individual holdings or ownership by absentee landlords could lead to high amenity values and transaction costs of converting this land for energy crop production. This could lead to much higher opportunity costs of converting marginal or idle land to energy crop production. Refineries may, therefore, have to rely on a mix of marginal land and cropland to meet their needs for biomass supply and the marginal-cost-based price of biomass is likely to be based on highest cost cropland that needs to be induced to produce energy crops in the proximity of the refinery.
The break-even prices estimated above can be interpreted as the terms of a fixed price contract that would need to be offered to landowners over the lifespan of the crop to induce them to convert land for energy crop production. While in some regions these prices are similar or even lower than those under risk neutrality, in other regions, such as Midwest, they can be 12% to 27% higher than under risk neutrality. A fixed price contract would put all the price risks associated with volatile oil prices on the refinery while leaving landowners to bear all the risks associated with the foregone returns from conventional crops.
Other types of contracts that result in alternative arrangements for sharing the yield and price risks between risk-averse landowners and a risk-neutral refinery might emerge to lower the cost of biomass for a refinery than indicated by the break-even prices estimated here. In regions where energy crop production is highly risky relative to conventional crops, a refinery that has a greater capacity to bear risk might prefer to lease land and bear all the yield and price risks rather than paying high risk premiums.
We assumed that all landowners have the same risk preferences. Heterogeneity in risk preferences across landowners would imply differences in the risk premium needed to induce production of energy crops under a fixed price contract across regions. Moreover, risk-loving landowners may even prefer price-indexed contracts that provide an opportunity for high returns. Yang et al. (2014) analyze the mix of contractual arrangements that can result in lower overall feedstock costs for a refinery by optimally sharing risks among landowners with heterogeneous risk preferences and with a risk-neutral refinery.
The breakeven prices estimated here, even under risk aversion, could be underestimated because they disregard the reliance by crop producers on subsidized yield, and revenue crop insurance and disaster relief payments for conventional crops like corn and soybeans. Such programs lower the down-side risk of producing these crops and will further increase the break-even price needed to induce farmers to switch to risky energy crop production without any safety-nets. We leave the analysis of the effects of crop price risks and the presence of instruments for mitigating risks associated with conventional crop production on the riskiness of producing energy crops to future research.
The Renewable Fuel Standard mandates the production of cellulosic biofuels and will create market incentives for obligated parties (oil refiners) to cover the costs of cellulosic biofuel production. Additional policy incentives for biomass production include the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) and the Cellulosic Biofuel Production Tax Credit (CBPTC). BCAP provides cost-share payments to cover the costs of establishing energy crops and subsidies for collecting, harvesting, and transporting energy crops while the CBPTC subsidizes the blending of cellulosic biofuels with gasoline. However, none of these policies directly address the downside risks associated with the production of energy crops for landowners in a manner comparable to the safety net provided by subsidized crop insurance for corn and soybeans.
Our analysis has focused on the effects of risk on utility per acre of land. Further research is needed at the whole-farm level to examine the effects of risk preferences on the allocation of land operated by a farmer between energy crops and conventional crops. Moreover, to the extent that energy crop yields have a relatively low or negative correlation with corn/soybeans, their production can diversify the crop portfolio and potentially reduce overall riskiness of crop production. The risk premium needed in that case for growing energy crops will also depend on the share of annual farm income derived from energy crop production. A case study of a representative farm in Tennessee by Larson, English, and Lambert (2007) shows that contracts that shift the risk of switch


text:
- The Rock River Times - _URL_ -
Pet Talk: Precautionary travel tips for pet owners
Posted By Jim Hagerty On May 18, 2011 @ 12:00 am In Online Exclusives | No Comments
From College of Veterinary Medicine, Texas A&M University
Most summer days are filled with outdoor activities and times spent on vacation. As the summer months start to approach, it is necessary to understand the types of diseases that may affect your pets when they travel. So, if you're the outdoor type and you like to take your pet with you, your pet may be bringing home more than memories as you venture through fields and streams.
When traveling, there are some diseases your pet may encounter, says Dr. Leon Russell, professor at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences. If there is a possibility of contact with mosquitoes, ticks or stagnant water during your travels, Russell says to take certain precautions.
If dogs and cats come into contact with mosquitoes, they could be subjected to heartworm disease.
"Heartworm disease poses a threat to pets across the United States because no state is entirely heartworm-free," Russell explains. "In areas where heartworm disease is highly endemic in dogs, up to 20 percent of the cats may also have the disease."
Heartworm preventive medicine is available, but pets should be tested before they receive it.
Possible contact with wild animals could expose your pet to rabies.
"Effective vaccination of dogs and cats to prevent rabies is available, and should always be kept current," says Russell.
Rabies is transmitted by a bite from an infected animal, and The Center for Disease Control (CDC) states that more than 90 percent of all animal cases reported annually to the CDC now occur in wildlife.
Water activities are fun, but certain waters may be infested with bacteria that could cause harm to your pet. According to Russell, mud, muddy water and stagnant water are prime sources for exposure to leptospira. This bacterial organism can enter the body through cuts, mucous membranes, eyes or by ingesting contaminated water. Russell encourages a yearly vaccination with the appropriate strain of leptospirosis vaccine to reduce your pet's chance of contracting this disease.
Giardiasis is another disease that is caused by a waterborne parasite found in untreated water such as creeks and ponds. It also occurs in mountainous areas where water supplies have become contaminated by infected animal feces.
"Chlorination of surface water will not prevent this disease," cautions Russell. "Presently, there are drugs to treat giardiasis, but none to prevent this intestinal disease."
Borreliosis, or Lyme Disease, is an infection caused by a bacteria that is spread by the bite of an infected tick, and the disease is endemic in some areas of the United States, explains Russell. Symptoms include fever, rash, listlessness, muscle stiffness, lack of appetite, and in severe cases, arthritic-type joint pain.
"The best method of prevention is to avoid tick-infested woods, brush and tall grass," Russell believes. "Highly effective tick control products such as sprays, collars and spot-on treatments are available through your veterinarian."
Annual vaccination of your dog against the Lyme Disease is recommended if you live in or plan to visit endemic Lyme Disease areas in the United States. Check with your veterinarian about the need for the vaccination of your pets.
Russell suggests that once you return home, your pet should visit the veterinarian for examination to make sure no internal or external parasites were picked up while traveling.
"An examination is important, because worms can hide and they may not be detected until they cause a clinical disease," Russell adds. "Ticks can be too small to be easily seen by the untrained eye. They must be eliminated before they transmit diseases such as Lyme Disease, tularemia and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
"Also, avoid environments with ticks and mosquitoes (dawn and dusk), and allow your pet to swim only in clear, flowing water such as rivers or lakes," notes Russell. "Be sure to bypass ponds or tanks."
Time spent traveling with loved ones is important, but it is even more important to take the necessary precautions during vacation to avoid any pitfalls when you return home.
Pet Talk is a service of the College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, Texas A&M University. Stories can be viewed on the Web at _URL_. Suggestions for future topics may be directed to _EMAIL_.
From the May 18-24, 2011 issue
Article printed from The Rock River Times: _URL_
URL to article: _URL_
URLs in this post:
 _EMAIL_: _EMAIL_
 Image: _URL_
 Image: _URL_
 Image: _URL_
 Image: _URL_
 Image: _URL_
 Image: _URL_
 Image: _URL_
Copyright © 2009 The Rock River Times. All rights reserved.


text:
Skincare trends are closely related to general wellness trends, and precious stones are no exception. The natural properties of jade are being used to benefit skin in the form of hand-held rollers that are easy to find and use. Curious? Read on to learn more about this hot trend.
The benefits seem endless:
- Aids in product absorption – when used alongside moisturizers and serums, jade rollers can help the products penetrate the skin more easily.
- Helps offset signs of aging – use of a jade roller has been known to improve skin elasticity, tone facial muscles, and decrease wrinkles.
- Promotes healthy bodily functions – blood flow, circulation, lymphatic drainage, and collagen production are all known to get a boost from jade rollers.
- Reduces unwanted issues – using a jade roller can help eliminate inflammation, toxins, and jawline breakouts, as well as sinus pressure and sinus headaches. Stress and tension can also be lessened.
- Makes skincare feel special – incorporating a jade roller into your skincare routine can help it feel like a self-care ritual and less like a chore, allowing a good habit to form easily.
There aren't many downsides:
- Bacteria can grow – if not cleaned regularly, jade rollers can develop bacteria that's harmful to your skin. Clean regularly or after each use to avoid these kinds of issues.
- Too much pressure can be detrimental – jade rollers are intended to be used with light pressure. Anything beyond that can lead to irritation, inflammation, or it can aggravate pre-existing conditions.
Everyone loves insider tips and tricks:
- Use your nose – the bridge of your nose is a great reference point for how and where to use your roller. When in doubt, rolling upwards and out from that central point is a good practice.
- Store your roller in the fridge – the cooler the stone is, the more it will soothe your skin.
- Pair with sheet masks – Using the roller after applying a sheet mask to your face can help the mask adhere and promotes better absorption of the mask's ingredients.
- Choose the type of stone you need – rollers made with jade are very popular, but other stones are being used now as well. Rose quartz and amethyst are common, so do a little research on the properties of each to determine the best stone for you.
Combining healthy skincare practices with beneficial stones seems like a win-win situation! If you're looking at incorporating a jade roller into your routine, feel free to give Dr. Manning and team a call for their insight on the best approach.


Court Properly Refused to Submit an All-Inclusive Proportional Responsibility Issue Across Multiple Causes of Action
 Isaacs complains because attorney Schleier was not part of the percentage of responsibility determination made by the jury. Isaacs asserts that the charge should have directed the jury to determine the percentage of responsibility for all parties (including Schleier) in a single, global finding. He argues that all possible recoveries, on whatever basis, must be combined for a gross determination by the jury.
To support that argument, Isaacs relies on the language of the statute, Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem.Code Ann. § 33.003-33.017 (Vernon 1997 & Vernon Supp.2007). Citing no case authority, he correctly posits that the Code attempts to proportion responsibility for tortious acts, so that each individual plaintiff receives the amount due, and each individual defendant pays the amount for which he or she is responsible. Beyond that, however, the language of the statute is the key.
The jury determined the percentages of responsibility for Bishop and Isaacs for fraud. Separate questions asked about other damages caused by Schleier and assessing a percentage of responsibility between Schleier and Bishop on those.
If this issue was preserved,6 the question is whether the statute requires a single jury question to be used to allocate percentage responsibility for all damages alleged in the lawsuit, regardless of whether multiple causes of action or theories of liability are involved.
Isaacs correctly points out that broad-form submission is the preferred method of presentation to the jury. Rule 277 of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure explicitly provides that the court "shall, whenever feasible, submit the cause upon broad-form submission." See Tex.R. Civ. P. 277. But broad-form submission is not always feasible. Romero, 166 S.W.3d at 230.7 Indeed, the failure to adequately divide out various forms of damage can itself result in reversible error. Id. at 226-27.8
The preference for broad-form submission must be balanced against the language of Section 33.003(a) of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code:
The trier of fact, as to each cause of action asserted, shall determine the percentage of responsibility ․ for [each claimant, defendant, settling person, and responsible third party who has been joined under Section 33.004] with respect to each person's causing or contributing to cause in any way the harm for which recovery of damages is sought․
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem.Code Ann. § 33.003(a) (emphasis added); see F.F.P. Operating Ptnrs., L.P. v. Duenez, 237 S.W.3d 680 (Tex.2007).
The standard for our review is whether the trial court abused its discretion in deciding how to submit the charge, in light of the presumption in favor of broad-form submission of questions. Tex. Dep't of Human Servs. v. E.B., 802 S.W.2d 647, 649 (Tex.1990).
The record shows that the trial court attempted to separate the causes of action and their resultant damages and allocate them against the different parties to assure that each section could be separately addressed on appeal. The court's decision is defensible. Damage awards from different causes of action should be separated rather than lumped into a single whole-especially where different, but related, causes of action against different, but related, defendants are involved. Failing to do so, in fact, has been held to be reversible error. See, e.g., Bed, Bath & Beyond v. Urista, 211 S.W.3d 753, 756 (Tex.2006); Casteel, 22 S.W.3d at 388-89; Roberts v. Whitfill, 191 S.W.3d 348, 357 (Tex.App.-Waco 2006, no pet.); First United Bank v. Panhandle Packing & Gasket, Inc., 190 S.W.3d 10, 17 (Tex.App.-Amarillo 2005, no pet.); Tex. Indus. v. Vaughan, 919 S.W.2d 798, 804 (Tex.App.-Houston [14th Dist.] 1996, writ denied). Although related, the actions Bishop brought against Schleier were not the same ones brought against Isaacs. Isaacs does not argue now, and did not argue then, that either Isaacs or Schleier would be liable for the damages caused by the other in those alternative causes of action. The trial court carefully separated the damages to avoid overlap, and each defendant was found liable for damages for the particular causes of action asserted against that party.
We find unfounded Isaacs' argument that Section 33.003 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code absolutely requires a lump submission. The statutory mandate is described as not being discretionary; failing to correctly apply the law is an abuse of discretion. In re Kuntz, 124 S.W.3d 179, 181 (Tex.2003). The statute does not, as Isaacs argues, require damages for all causes of action to be combined in a single unified recovery. The statute explicitly requires proportionate responsibility to be determined as to each cause of action. See Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem.Code Ann. § 33.003.
While a single submission would be simpler, if it can be done fairly and accurately, here such a submission would not be fair or accurate. Merging damages from different causes of action and then requiring percentages be derived for damages not attributable to all defendants would actively create error. The trial court did not abuse its discretion by deciding not to give a single, unified proportional responsibility charge covering all causes of action.
(2) Denying Rescission to Bishop Was Within the Trial Court's Equitable Discretion
 Bishop argues that fraud-which Bishop did not discover until late in the discovery process-justified rescinding the contract and thus undoing the purchase. Bishop argues that the trial court abused its discretion by denying Bishop's right to rescind the purchase.
 Rescission is an equitable remedy that operates to extinguish a contract that is legally valid but must be set aside due to fraud, mistake, or for some other reason to avoid unjust enrichment. Martin v. Cadle Co., 133 S.W.3d 897, 903 (Tex.App.-Dallas 2004, pet. denied); Country Cupboard, Inc. v. Texstar Corp., 570 S.W.2d 70, 73-74 (Tex.Civ.App.-Dallas 1978, writ ref'd n.r.e.); see Humphrey v. Camelot Retirement Cmty., 893 S.W.2d 55, 59 (Tex.App.-Corpus Christi 1994, no writ). Rescission of a contract is an equitable remedy used as a substitute for monetary damages when such damages would not be adequate. Scott v. Sebree, 986 S.W.2d 364, 368 (Tex.App.-Austin 1999, pet. denied). Whether to grant rescission lies within the trial court's discretion. See Gentry v. Squires, 188 S.W.3d 396, 410 (Tex.App.-Dallas 2006, no pet.); Barker v. Roelke, 105 S.W.3d 75, 84 (Tex.App.-Eastland 2003, pet. denied); Tex. Capital Secs., Inc. v. Sandefer, 58 S.W.3d 760, 774 (Tex.App.-Houston [1st Dist.] 2001, pet. denied); Humphrey, 893 S.W.2d at 59; Schenck v. Ebby Halliday Real Estate, Inc., 803 S.W.2d 361, 366 (Tex.App.-Fort Worth 1990, no writ).
 Bishop sought to rescind the contract based on the jury finding that Isaacs engaged in fraud in connection with the purchase. A contract is subject to avoidance on that ground. Williams v. Glash, 789 S.W.2d 261, 264 (Tex.1990). In such a situation, an allegedly defrauded plaintiff has a choice to make, whether to claim the equitable remedy of rescission for fraud and try to get his or her property back or to affirm the transaction and seek damages. Calstar Props., L.L.C. v. City of Fort Worth, 139 S.W.3d 433, 440 (Tex.App.-Fort Worth 2004, no pet.); Scott, 986 S.W.2d at 368.
 To be entitled to rescission, a party must show that (1) he or she and the defrauding party are in the status quo (i.e., there are no retained benefits received under the instrument and not restored to the other party) or (2) there are equitable considerations that obviate the need


text:
This rare example of a medieval yoroi is characterized by a cuirass that wraps around the body and is closed by a separate panel (waidate) on the right side and by a deep four-sided skirt. In use from around the tenth to the fourteenth century, yoroi were generally worn by warriors on horseback.
This armor was originally laced in white silk and had diagonal bands of multicolored lacings at the edges of the skirt and the now-missing sode (shoulder guards). The colored lacings symbolized the rainbow, which represented both good fortune and fleeting beauty. The breastplate is covered with stenciled leather bearing the image of the powerful Buddhist deity Fudo Myo-o, whose fierce mien and attributes of calmness and inner strength were highly prized by samurai. The helmet, long associated with this armor, dates from the mid-fourteenth century.
This yoroi" is traditionally believed to have been donated to the Shinomura Hachimangu, a shrine near Kyoto, by Ashikaga Takauji (1305–1358), founder of the Ashikaga shogunate.


text:
In this paper, we discuss the development of a generic suite of simulation models that can be parameterised to show the performance of general hospitals in England with respect to waiting times. The models can be parameterised to suit particular hospitals using both nationally available data and data collected at each hospital. The models are intended to allow hospital managers to experiment with different approaches to performance improvement and also regulators to assess the likely performance of hospitals. The aim is to add quantitative insights to the qualitative debate in which policy is often formed
To submit an update or takedown request for this paper, please submit an Update/Correction/Removal Request.