0 or age > 120:
 print("Invalid age: %d" % age)
The interpreter also performs a short-circuit evaluation for or expressions. If it evaluates the first subexpression to be true, it will not bother to evaluate the second, because this is sufficient to determine that the whole expression is true.
The || operator is also binary:
# This is correct:
if x < 3 or x > 300:
 x += 1
# This will give us a syntax error:
if x < 3 or > 300: # > 300 is not a valid expression!
 x += 1
# This may not do what we expect:
if x == 2 or 3:
 print("x is 2 or 3")
The last example won't give us an error, because 3 is a valid subexpression – and since it is a non-zero number it evaluates to True. So the last if body will always execute, regardless of the value of x!
The not operator
The NOT operator, not in Python, is a unary operator: it only requires one operand. It is used to reverse an expression, as shown in the following truth table:
a not a
True False
False True
The not operator can be used to write a less confusing expression. For example, consider the following example in which we want to check whether a string doesn't start with "A":
if name.startswith("A"):
 pass # a statement body can't be empty -- this is an instruction which does nothing.
 print("'%s' doesn't start with A!" % s)
# That's a little clumsy -- let's use "not" instead!
if not name.startswith("A"):
Here are a few other examples:
# Do something if a flag is False:
if not my_flag:
# This...
if not x == 5:
 x += 1
#... is equivalent to this:
if x!= 5:
 x += 1
Precedence rules for boolean expressions
Here is a table indicating the relative level of precedence for all the operators we have seen so far, including the arithmetic, relational and boolean operators.
() (highest)
*, /, %
+, -
<, <=, >, >= ==,!=
is, is not
or (lowest)
It is always a good idea to use brackets to clarify what we mean, even though we can rely on the order of precedence above. Brackets can make complex expressions in our code easier to read and understand, and reduce the opportunity for errors.
DeMorgan's law for manipulating boolean expressions
The not operator can make expressions more difficult to understand, especially if it is used multiple times. Try only to use the not operator where it makes sense to have it. Most people find it easier to read positive statements than negative ones. Sometimes we can use the opposite relational operator to avoid using the not operator, for example:
if not mark < 50:
 print("You passed")
# is the same as
if mark >= 50:
 print("You passed")
This table shows each relational operator and its opposite:
Operator Opposite
==!=
> <=
< >=
There are other ways to rewrite boolean expressions. The 19th-century logician DeMorgan proved two properties of negation that we can use.
Consider this example in English: it is not both cool and rainy today. Does this sentence mean the same thing as it is not cool and not rainy today? No, the first sentence says that both conditions are not true, but either one of them could be true. The correct equivalent sentence is it is not cool or not rainy today.
We have just used DeMorgan's law to distribute NOT over the first sentence. Formally, DeMorgan's laws state:
 1. NOT (a AND b) = (NOT a) OR (NOT b)
 2. NOT (a OR b) = (NOT a) AND (NOT b)
We can use these laws to distribute the not operator over boolean expressions in Python. For example:
if not (age > 0 and age <= 120):
 print("Invalid age")
# can be rewritten as
if age <= 0 or age > 120:
 print("Invalid age")
Instead of negating each operator, we used its opposite, eliminating not altogether.
Exercise 2
 1. For what values of input will this program print "True"?
 if not input > 5:
 2. For what values of absentee_rate and overall_mark will this program print "You have passed the course."?
 if absentee_rate <= 5 and overall_mark >= 50:
 print("You have passed the course.")
 3. For what values of x will this program print "True"?
 if x > 1 or x <= 8:
 4. Eliminate not from each of these boolean expressions:
 not total <= 2
 not count > 40
 not (value > 20.0 and total!= 100.0)
 not (angle > 180 and width == 5)
 not (count == 5 and not (value!= 10) or count > 50)
 not (value > 200 or value < 0 and not total == 0)
The None value
We often initialise a number to zero or a string to an empty string before we give it a more meaningful value. Zero and various "empty" values evaluate to False in boolean expressions, so we can check whether a variable has a meaningful value like this:
if (my_variable):
Sometimes, however, a zero or an empty string is a meaningful value. How can we indicate that a variable isn't set to anything if we can't use zero or an empty string? We can set it to None instead.
In Python, None is a special value which means "nothing". Its type is called NoneType, and only one None value exists at a time – all the None values we use are actually the same object:
print(None is None) # True
None evaluates to False in boolean expressions. If we don't care whether our variable is None or some other value which is also false, we can just check its value like this:
if my_string:
 print("My string is '%s'." % my_string)
If, however, we want to distinguish between the case when our variable is None and when it is empty (or zero, or some other false value) we need to be more specific:
if my_number is not None:
 print(my_number) # could still be zero
if my_string is None:
 print("I haven't got a string at all!")
elif not my_string: # another false value, i.e. an empty string
 print("My string is empty!")
Switch statements and dictionary-based dispatch
if ladders can get unwieldy if they become very long. Many languages have a control statement called a switch, which tests the value of a single variable and makes a decision on the basis of that value. It is similar to an if ladder, but can be a little more readable, and is often optimised to be faster.
Python does not have a switch statement, but we can achieve something similar by using a dictionary. This example will be clearer when we have read more about dictionaries, but all we need to know for now is that a dictionary is a store of key and value pairs – we retrieve a value by its key, the way we would retrieve a list element by its index. Here is how we can rewrite the course code example:
 "CSC": "Computer Science",
 "MAM": "Mathematics and Applied Mathematics",
 "STA": "Statistical Sciences", # Trailing commas like this are allowed in Python!
if course_code in DEPARTMENT_NAMES: # this tests whether the variable is one of the dictionary's keys
 print("Department: %s" % DEPARTMENT_NAMES[course_code])
We are not limited to storing simple values like strings in the dictionary. In Python, functions can be stored in variables just like any other object, so we can even use this dispatch method to execute completely different statements in response to different values:
def reverse(string):
 print("'%s' reversed is '%s'." % (string, string[::-1]))
def capitalise(string):
 print("'%s' capitalised is '%s'." % (string, string.upper()))
 "r": reverse, # use the function name without brackets to refer to the function without calling it
 "c": capitalise,
my_function = ACTIONS[my_action] # now we retrieve the function
my_function(my_string) # and now we call it
The conditional operator
Python has another way to write a selection in a program – the conditional operator. It can be used within an expression (i.e. it can be evaluated) – in contrast to if and if-else, which are just statements and not expressions. It is often called the ternary operator because it has three operands (binary operators have two, and unary operators have one). The syntax is as follows:
true expression if condition else false expression
For example:
result = "Pass" if (score >= 50) else "Fail"
This means that if score is at least 50, result is assigned "Pass", otherwise it is assigned "Fail". This is equivalent to the following if statement:
if (score >= 50):
result = "Pass"
result = "Fail"
The ternary operator can make simple if statements shorter and more legible, but some people may find this code harder to understand. There is no functional or efficiency difference between a normal if-else and


Marketing Mix Modelling: What can I learn about how marketing channels work?
7 min read
25 Jun
Hold on a sec! You can now read this and other related blogs in my eBook:
I may have ended my last blog frustrating some people by providing little detail about marketing channels. Here I outline why one of the core outputs from marketing mix models – return on investment – is a useful starting point for marketing spend allocation, a key benefit of the marketing mix modelling approach.
I explain what marketing mix modelling measures about how marketing channels work to show there is lots of detail behind an ROI metric. But I am afraid that I will probably disappoint again. Because this piece will end with the exciting possibility of using the model outputs to plan but stops short of explaining exactly how.
It is worth repeating that my aim is to write from the perspective of business decisions. If you are reading this as a practitioner, you may think that I am missing out information – this is deliberate. If you are interested in techniques, whether you have a technical background or not, please get in touch.
Overall purpose of marketing mix models
If I had to pick one aim of marketing mix modelling from the multiple benefits it is the measurement of return on investment (ROI) of marketing activities. Comparing ROI by media channel provides a starting point for optimizing a media plan. It is an output that makes marketing mix modelling a gold standard approach for marketing optimization.
Key concepts: return on investment (ROI)
ROI is a summary of media channel efficiency, calculated by dividing the incremental revenue (or profit) contributed by a channel by the channel spend over a fixed period. If revenue ROI is 0.5 it means that additional revenue from running the activity is only half of what it cost. An ROI of 1.5 it means that every £ spent on pays back £1.50:
TV revenue ROI = Incremental revenue from TV / Spend on TV
If a marketing mix model measures ROI across channels, comparing channel ROI is an objective way to allocate spend. This is very blunt and assumes that efficiency is the only metric that matters, but if TV ROI = 0.6 and Press ROI = 0.8 the next £ should be spent in Press because it generates 80p revenue (compared to 60p if spent on TV.)
Side notes on the complexities of ROI (can skip without missing out …)
 - If the model metric is volume, it can be converted to revenue using average price
 - Including promotional discounts or not in this price may have a big impact on ROI
 - Apply margins to revenue if profit ROI needed (to compare across products)
 - Costs typically exclude production (this is a sunk cost if copy is repeatedly aired)
 - Measured ROI is short term. Long term is usually derived by applying a multiplier
Stakeholders must buy into ROI definitions and ensure that they are consistently applied across analyses. An easy definition of ROI is more useful for decision-making than a more accurate but complex calculation. Models are meant to simplify reality.
Key concepts: aggregate response
This piece explains how marketing mix modelling works. The modelled metric is aggregated sales. Individuals' purchases are aggregated, and ROI reflects an average response. For strategic decisions this is better than a bottom-up analysis of transactions that tend to vary by individual, making the underlying pattern more difficult to measure.
Key concepts: incremental response
The measured effect of an activity is the incremental impact, the isolated additional sales not including those who would have bought it anyway. Not all media campaigns aim to generate sales though, so low ROI does not necessarily mean a poor campaign.
Consider these three examples:
 1. Campaign for innovation à the main aim is to drive awareness. Initially, awareness may be too low to generate sales. (Marketing mix modelling can also be applied to brand health metrics if they are robust and frequent enough.)
 2. Name-change campaign. Think about when Marathon went to Snickers, Opal Fruits to Starburst, Immac to Veet … à the primary goal is to not lose any existing buyers. A measured sales uplift of zero may signal a strong campaign.
 3. PR campaign. Think about oil spillages or product recalls à the aim is often damage-limitation. Unlikely to manifest as a sales uplift, but success may show up as a quicker recovery to typical "pre-problem" sales levels.
Marketing mix models tend to measure low ROIs for the types of campaign above, but no analyst worth their salt would recommend not spending on them, despite what a model says. This perfectly illustrates why very few analytics experts advocate for the complete automation of marketing mix modelling despite the available tech. It is a tool
The theory bit - what are the drivers of ROI?
I sidestep the question of what makes one brand's marketing yield a higher ROI than another (Spoiler alert: category and brand size in relation to marketing spend are key drivers) and focus on what causes a brand's ROI to vary over time:
 - Scale/Speed of sales response - related to how considered a purchase is. Think of a mortgage versus a morning coffee Considered purchases need more messages to generate a response.
 - How long sales impact lasts - related to memorability of the message. Think of a great TV advert from decades ago. Why can you still recall it? Memorable ads generate more for a given spend - some even years later.
 - Synergy between channels - related to a whole being greater than sum of parts. Think how a campaign with messages on TV & online amplify each other. Synergy between channels should also influence planning decisions.
 - Changes in other factors - related often to making products more accessible..
 Think about the marketing effect if double number of stores are sold in. More available/visible/affordable increases potential marketing effect.
 - Marginal benefit of spend - related to returns to scale. Think - ease of 1st mile on bike vs. effort for 20th. Benefit of 1st cake vs 20th. What you get back for a £ spent changes as your total spend changes.
 - Creative effectiveness - related to all sorts of things from copy wear-out to tone. Think about your reaction to advertising campaigns during covid-19, was it different to before? Even if media conditions are great, how a message resonates plays a part.
 - Share of market - related to how much you can realistically spend. Think of real-world constraints like fixed budgets & presence of competitors.. ROI in a short-term period is limited by a brand's current relative position.
Typically, the first five can be accounted for in marketing mix models to say something about how each contributes to ROI. Creative effect is subjective, but a different ROI between campaigns once quantifiable factors are accounted for may be due to creative. Market share is also an overlay that can explain differences in ROI across longer periods.
The practical bit – how is the marketing response measured in marketing mix models?
Some companies own proprietary advertising models enabling analysts to turn outputs into explicit recommendations quickly. They are great but only measure the same principles above – rooted in marketing theory, not unique to marketing mix modelling. If you are daunted by the term marketing response, do not be. It is simply a shape.
A shape that reveals something about ho marketing works. When a marketing mix model includes the non-media drivers of sales, what is left is the media impact. Analysts test lots of alternative shapes and watch what happens to the quality of the model before selecting the best based on statistical and common-sense criteria.
Scale/speed of sales response
A takeaway coffee is not expensive compared to a mortgage - it may even be an impulse buy. What this means is that if someone is going to be persuaded by coffee advertising at all they probably only need to see one or two messages to be convinced to try, or be reminded that the brand was one they previously liked.
Mortgages are different. Not all potential mortgage buyers are in the market at once. Those who are make long lists of brands, research product needs then make short-lists before doing anything. Mortgage marketers need to be exposing these potential consumers to their messages throughout this longer time-period.
Fig 1: Sales response to different types of purchaseFig 1. Response varies by type of purchase
How does this help plan?
If consumers only need to see one message before they will buy this informs the best channel options, frequency needed within a channel and minimum campaign spend needed. Compared to if they need to see more messages.
How long sales impact lasts
What was that ad you remember from years ago? Whether it is the music, visual content, annoyance quotient, comedic value, or product affinity - the memorability of messages varies. After buying once due to the ad the same consumer may buy again. Or, an ad seen a while ago triggers an initial purchase after the fact.
The impact on aggregate sales is the same; after the marketing stops there continues to be an impact on sales. This is modelled by measuring the speed at which this after-effect dwindles to nothing. The following examples are for 2 weeks of advertising where the effect decays at a) 50% b) 25% each week:
Fig 2. Sales impact after marketing has stoppedFig 2. Impact lasts after marketing stops
How does this help plan?
If the decay is slow it means that campaigns can be more stretched out, for example by going week on/week off to cover a longer period. It also means that once reach has been built, weights can be lowered to avoid wastage.
Synergy between channels
A campaign deploys with TV and online video. The creatives are similar. If you run only TV, there is a measurable sales effect. Ditto for online video. When you run the copies


text:
Wood petrified in spring
Creationist's rapid claims recognized
Secular research at a hot spring in Japan shows that wood can turn into stone much faster than geologists previously thought.1
The belief that fossils and rocks petrify over millions of years is a part of modern culture-like microwave ovens and jumbo jets. We are constantly fed the idea through newspapers, magazines, museums and text books. Like sticks of chalk in coloured water, people have absorbed the notion that fossils are millions of years old.
|Images from ref. 1|
|Silica filled wood tissue (C) from wood samples (F) immersed for several years in steaming lake (A). The mineral deposits resemble those in naturally fallen wood (D) petrified at the lake's edge (E). Opal deposits are composed of tiny spheres of silica (B).|
But the idea is false. And wrong ideas have bad consequences—sometimes serious ones.
Creation magazine often surprises readers with real examples of rocks and fossils that formed rapidly—surprises, because they contradict popular belief. Like removing dye from a stick of chalk, it's not easy to remove a powerful myth that colours someone's perception of Bible history.
Recently, five Japanese scientists published more real examples of rapid petrification, confirming creationist claims.1 Even more unusual, their report to a secular geology journal quoted an article by Dr Andrew Snelling from Creation magazine.2,3
The scientists, led by Hisatada Akahane, studied a small lake cradled in the explosion crater of the Tateyama Volcano in central Japan (fig. A). A mineral-rich solution gushes from the bottom and fills the 15-m pond with steaming acidic water. It cascades over the edge as a waterfall.
The scientists found that the naturally fallen wood in the overflow was hard and heavy because it was petrified with a mineral called silica. Yet the wood was less than 36 years old.
After seven years the wood had turned into stone.
As an experiment, they fastened pieces of fresh wood in the lake with wire. After seven years the wood had turned into stone, again petrified with silica.
Under a powerful microscope, they saw that the silica had deposited like opal, as tiny spheres smaller than the diameter of a human hair (fig. B). It filled the pore spaces in the wood and covered the cell walls. Silica was deposited in the same way in the naturally fallen wood and in some wood found in nearby volcanic ash. Hot mineral-rich water had soaked into the spaces in every case.
Their study confirmed that under suitable conditions, wood can turn to stone in ten years or less. This clears away one powerful objection to believing the Bible. It means that the rocks and fossils we find on the earth could easily have formed in the 4,500 years since Noah's Flood. And conditions would have been favourable for petrification because there was plenty of volcanic activity and mineral-rich water at the time.
Objections about rapid petrification answered
'Geologists already know petrification can happen quickly. It's misleading to say that rapid petrification is a surprise.'
Answer: It may not be surprising to some geologists, but examples of rapid petrification are surprising to most ordinary people. Geologists often avoid mentioning how long it takes when they write about petrification, but they usually imply it was very slow. Anyway, the Japanese researchers considered it surprising.
'The wood was still present so it was just permineralized. Petrification requires the wood itself to be replaced slowly by another mineral.'
Answer: When wood is replaced by another mineral, it is called replacement. When the mineral fills the cell spaces but does not replace the cell walls, it is called permineralization. Petrification is often used to describe both processes.
Even so, it does not need millions of years for wood cellular material to disintegrate and be replaced by mineral. All chemical processes depend simply on the chemical and physical conditions.
'Examples of rapid petrification do not prove the world is young.'
Answer: Agreed. But they do prove that millions of years are not needed (as evolutionary articles so often imply), and so destroy a false objection to accepting biblical history.
- Akahane, H., et al., Rapid wood silicification in hot spring water: an explanation of silicification of wood during the Earth's history. Sedimentary Geology 169(3–4):219–228, 15 July 2004. Return to Text
- Snelling, A.A., 'Instant' petrified wood, Creation 17(4):38–40, 1995; . Return to Text
- Snelling, A.A., Rapid petrification of wood: an unexpected confirmation of creationist research, Impact 379, 2005. Return to Text

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text:
- The number of people reporting up through the organization
- The quantity or amount of product or services produced
- The "bottom line" or income produced by the company
- The number of links, references or accolades to the leader or the organization
- Other methods that focus on things and not people.
These are all valid and important ways to measure leadership, and many others exist. However, the true — and more telling — measure of leadership is long-term and cannot easily be seen. Leadership is best measured by what you leave behind.
Some people become frustrated by the lack of immediate results. The thought of waiting months or years to see the results of their labors is discouraging. However, if you look at the actions and attitudes of people whom you consider true leaders, you will find they focus on building others. They put as their first concern the growth and development of the people with whom they interact. The results of their success carry forward through the people they have influenced over the years.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


A Conversation for Man-made Satellites
losing speed
Post 1
"If the satellite slows down, then gravity pulls it closer to the earth (experiment with this principle with your ball and rope) and if it speeds up, then it moves farther away"
I'm fairly sure that this isn't the case. I think that something in a orbit losing energy will move closer to the earth but actually speed up.
Low orbits are faster than higher orbits even though they have a lower kinetic energy.
losing speed
Post 2
Ok, I'm thinking about this properly now.
I'm probably wrong..
losing speed
Post 3
Ok, apologies for the triple post.
I've had a think about this now, provided a good distraction from work.
By equating the potential energy and and kinetic energy of a body in a stable orbit it's possible to find that the orbital speed is inversely proportional to the distance from the centre of the planet. As height decreases, speed increases.
It's easy to imagine this if you consider the orbital height becoming very large; at great distances a body does not have to travel very fast to escape from the gravitational pull of a planet. At low altitudes the orbital speed would have to be very high as the gravity is much stronger.
I am wrong, but it's an interesting diversion to say that if a satellite loses energy due to atmospheric friction it will move into a lower altitude orbit and hence move faster.
I suppose this poses problems for satellites. Does anyone know the height of a geostationary orbit and whether this is outside the atmosphere?
Interesting article.
losing speed
Post 4
You are right in your conclusion.
For example the International Space Station has been
experience atmospheric drag during the 9 years or so
of its existence. It is now moving faster than ever before.
losing speed
Post 5
Gnomon [198]
The explanation of orbits in this was completely wrong. I've rewritten it.
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text:
This document describes principles and tools to control a manufacturing process in accordance with a GPS specification. For this purpose a set of one or more complementary, independent characteristics (size, form, orientation, and location characteristics independent to each other) that correlate to the manufacturing process parameters and to the manufacturing process coordinate system established from the manufacturing datum system are used.
This document describes the concept of decomposition of the macro-geometrical part of the GPS specification. It does not cover the micro-geometry, i.e. surface texture.
The objective of the decomposition presented in this document is to define correction values for manufacturing control or to perform a statistical analysis of the process.


text:
LEARNING PROCESS ON PEACE FOR YOUNG ADULTS IN MEKONG REGION YEAR 2011
Mekong Region is rich in ethnic and cultural diversity, natural resources, watersheds and biodiversity. The region is considered a significant biodiversity hotspot by Conservation International and the WWF (Wikipedia).MekongRiver which flow through five countries in the region serves as life blood for over 60 million people and become an intrinsic part of Southeast Asian societies.
Countries in Mekong region do not only share some commonality in culture, food and tradition but they also have painful and unforgettable history and conflict which lead to 'historical bias', 'political distrust', 'cultural prejudice' and 'absence of mutual understanding' among Mekong countries and their peoples. Many problems on labor migration, drug and human trafficking, cross-border conflict/issues, etc result from not the same pace of development in term of social and economic, unstable political situation and no tight relationship/friendship among governments in Mekong region. Some problems have hammered a sense of inferior and superior among countries inMekongregion as well.
In many cases, the conflict along border between Cambodia-Thai, Thai-Myanmar and Cambodia-Vietnam which has continued for years is created as political tool to diverse attention of internal political problem or being used as political game. The nationalism is used to provoke hatred against neighbor countries. Some conflicts were created due to distorted history. The conflicts over natural resource like water management inMekongRiver, that the five countries have shared, become a burning issue. So far, the conflict on water management of countries which are in upstream and downstream has not been seriously discussed at government level.
Without serious reflection and understanding on the root-cause of conflict, people will be easily influenced by one-sided information like media which are mostly controlled by government. The new generation will continue to learn history which promotes hatred and misunderstanding on neighboring countries. Cambodian, Thai and Vietnamese peace practitioners and youth met and discussed the possibilities to develop a joint regional training on peace-building in regional consultation workshop in September2010 inVinh Phuc Province,Vietnam. As part of Learning Process, the meeting came up with an initiative of Scholar Meeting to provide critical insight/perspectives on how to develop effective peace-building in the region in particular betweenCambodia,ThailandandVietnam. A learning process module on regional peace-building was drafted. The Regional Strategic Team (RST) which comprise of representatives fromCambodia,ThailandandVietnamwas formed to carry out the learning process for young adults and promote peace inMekongregion.
The Learning Process on Peace Building in Mekong Region is developed to provide opportunity for young adult leaders fromMekong region to overcome the political, historical and cultural complexes and also to be competent to assume a relevant role and contribute to the development of civil society. Civil societies of theMekong region, in which the young generation plays an active role, need to be able to influence national and regional policies; and to counterbalance the present direction of development and bring forward alternative development that upholds non-violence, equity and sustainable peace. Through peaceful communication and non-violent action with holistic, systematic and critical thinking, the youth can effectively lead theMekong region in peace education, conflict management, collaboration and networking and environmental protection. The young adults are chosen because they are the Agent of Change: the present and the future of the region. Their openness, creativity and energy will bridge people from different backgrounds and countries.
This learning process is not only building young adult peace makers for Mekong region, it is also a process that NGOs and civil society in the region work and collaborate to write a borderless history, condemn all forms of violence and discrimination and promote peoples' cultures of peace. This will be done in the spirit of understanding, love, friendship, and respect for each one's diversity, dignity and identity.
- Develop young adult leaders to take active role as the key agent of change for peace building inMekongregion.
- Strengthen Regional Strategic Team (RST) by developing effective communication, improving a sense of ownership and participation.
- Establish and strengthen trust at individual and cross-border level and deepen and broaden knowledge on
- PeaceBuildingTheories and Practice
- Understand each country situation
- Understand linkages between and amongst the different countries and cultures of region
- Practice non-violent actions, cross-border actions, networking, peaceful dialogue, constructive engagement, positive communication
- Twenty-five committed young adults, who will promote peace in the region, attended the training.
- Young adults who have gone through the learning process become mentor on peace for young people in their country with close collaboration with national strategic team (NST).
- Young adults who have gone through the learning process participate and organize peace building activities at local, national and regional levels.
- The history documentation on identity and nationalism are produced by young adults who have gone through the learning process.
IMPACT STATEMENT: For the first time, a strategicMekong region peace-building movement begins to learn from common roots and living values in order to write a borderless history, condemn all forms of violence and discrimination and promote peoples' cultures of peace. This will be done in the spirit of understanding, love, friendship, and respect for each one's diversity, dignity and identity.
- Young adults fromThailand,CambodiaandVietnamand some fromMyanmarand Lao
- Key committed young adult leaders with at least 2-year experiences from different working background, religions, gender and ethnic groups
- Aged 20-30 year old
- Willingness to collaborate within the country and the region
PROCESS OF LEARNING
This learning process is designed for one year program. The selected 25 young adults who commit to engage in peace building efforts in the region will learn about peace building through various activities such as training, mobile classroom and exchange programs like internship, cultural activities, producing history documentation, etc. The learning process is divided into 4 stages: 1) national process, 2) regional training, 3) exchange program and 4) monitoring and evaluation.
The national process is a platform for national strategic team to build their capacity and understand peace-building concept, conflict and violence in their countries andMekongregion. At the same time, it is a preparation stage for national/regional strategic team members and young adult participants to engage in the learning process.
The Regional training will help regional strategic team and participants to understand the theories, issue on identity and nationalism inMekongregion and to learn practical skills that can be used to promote and build peace. Besides, the training will also provide exposure emersion for RST and participants to learn from real conflict situation and they will have an opportunity to practice the non-violent skills and to take some actions to promote peace during peace journey.
The exchange program will provide opportunity for some young adult participants to learn from other country experiences through internship program.
At the last stage of this learning process, the regional strategic team and representative from young adult participants will have an evaluation of the whole learning process in order to draw lesson learned to improve the learning process for next year. Throughout the learning process, the young adult participants will have to do some tasks according to their willingness and they will be supervised closely and supported by strategic team of each country.
At the end of the learning process, all participants who complete the whole learning process will get the certificate as an award of their commitment and achievement.
 A biodiversity hotspot is a biogeographic region with a significant reservoir of biodiversity that is under threat from humans. The concept of biodiversity hotspots was originated by Norman Myers in two articles in "The Environmentalist" (1988 & 1990), revised after thorough analysis by Myers and others in "Hotspots: Earth's Biologically Richest and Most Endangered Terrestrial Ecoregions".To qualify as a biodiversity hotspot on Myers 2000 edition of the hotspot-map, a region must meet two strict criteria: it must contain at least 0.5% or 1,500 species of vascular plants as endemics, and it has to have lost at least 70% of its primary vegetation. Around the world, at least 25 areas qualify under this definition, with nine others possible candidates. These sites support nearly 60% of the world's plant, bird, mammal, reptile, and amphibian species, with a very high share of endemic species.


text:
- EDI files contain large amount of container data and this needs to be imported into application databases.
- Bulk import of data should be done as a background process for efficient performance.
- Importing of EDI data to the application DB should be done pretty fast
- The user should be notified on every batch processed, how the import process is going on, how much it is completed (error and processed)
Concepts in Asynchronous process:
Concurrency vs Parallelism:
Concurrency means that two or more tasks are making progress even though they might not be executing simultaneously. This can for example be realized with time slicing where parts of tasks are executed sequentially and mixed with parts of other tasks.
Parallelism on the other hand means, execution is truly simultaneous.
Blocking vs Non Blocking –
Blocking: if the delay in one thread can indefeinitely delay some of the other threads. A good example is a resource which can be used exclusively by one thread using mutual exclusion. If a thread holds on to the resource for long time (for example waiting for data from external system) other threads waiting on the resource can not progress. IO Operations performed are blocking process.
In contrast, non-blocking means that no thread is able to indefinitely delay others.
Non-blocking operations are preferred to blocking ones, as the overall progress of the system is not trivially guaranteed when it contains blocking operations
1. Java Concurrent Libraries
Since Java 5 – Thread Pools, Future and Promise provide a good handle for performing tasks asynchronously, multi core CPU can be utilised to do the tasks in parallel. Use a simple Worker thread model, create a bunch of threads and have master thread to assign different containers to process it.
Currently this model is used in N4 EDI Upload process.
- Uses JVM Threads
- Thread management is a difficult process – Thread join, notify, creation has to be a manual process
- Developer has to maintain the thread behaviour – Deadlock, thread synchronization
- No process supervision
2. Java 8 Parallel Streams
Introduced as part of Stream API in Lamda Architecture. Parallel streams create a number of CPU core + 1 threads and process the data asynchronously. This can be applied on any Java Collection Stream API (for ex: for). Uses fork/join framework.
- very simple implementation
- No thread management by the developers
- good for immutable data only, no shared state
- containers can be processed parallel, but the update of the EDI process table will become synchronous operation, there is no way you can process the partial data in the next stage (considering insert to unit use is first stage and update process status is second stage)
- No proper supervision strategy, if any one thread hangs it holds the entire process
- Executors to be defined diligently, otherwise all the thread process will be done by one executor can slow down the entire process
3. Spring Batch
Part of the spring.io family, provides a lightweight batch framework. Has the option to schedule a job. Ideal for managing huge volume of Jobs to be processed in different nodes, takes care of scheduling the job, maintaining who executes it and ensures job is executed by a node in the cluster.
- Good for Batch processing workflow designs
- Individual work to be carried out is created as Job and executed parallel
- for EDI processing, it is going to be some list of jobs and these jobs to be processed asynchronously
- EDI Processing doesn't involve too complex batch processing workflows
Uses fork/join thread framework for effectively processing the messages. Works based on message queues(which takes the data for processing), Actors (who performs the task with the help of workers). Akka has a well defined thread scheduling algorithm which helps to compute the data faster and achieve maximum concurrency.
- Part of Play framework, no extra libraries to be added for EDI processing
- Have proven records of processing 10 million messages non blocking operations in 23 sec in a Quad Core processor (_URL_
- Works based on the Reactive manifesto (_URL_)
- No thread level programming, all the programming stuff includes messages and actors. These are boilerplate code to build the system. Business logic will not have any Akka implementation details.
- provides self heal process to reprocess a data, if processing thread is died somehow
- Location Transparency
- Everything in Akka is designed to work in a distributed environment: all interactions of actors use pure message passing and everything is asynchronous
- Learning curve for the developers
- Different patterns and strategies are available, evaluation to be done to pick the right choice
- Long term options for cluster deployment
Proposed Solution – Overview
Let us consider a solution using the Akka framework for EDI import processing.
Akka actors provide:
- Simple and high-level abstractions for concurrency and parallelism.
- Asynchronous, non-blocking and high performance event-driven programming model.
- Very lightweight event-driven processes (several million actors per GB of heap memory).
- Supervisor hierarchies with "let-it-crash" semantics.
- Supervisor hierarchies can span over multiple JVMs to provide truly fault-tolerant systems.
- Excellent for writing highly fault-tolerant systems that self-heal and never stop.
- Akka actor system for EDI processing will be created at the time of application start-up
- EDI Poster get the list of messages to be processed, identifies number of workers needed based on the number of messages
- Actor System creates Master worker, Workers, Result listener actors for that EDI process
- Master worker – Responsible for holding all the messages for processing, will maintain list of registered worker and what message they are processing currently. Will give the work to worker actors
- Workers – Does the actual processing of the message and persist to the database, send the result to Result listener actor for further processing. Once work is done request master worker for work to be done
- Result listener – gets the processed message(success, failures, warnings) from workers, maintains the list of number of messages to be processed and how many are processed. Updates the process and error table on a regular basis. Once all the messages are processed responsible for sending stop messages to actors part of that edi process.
- Fault-tolerant (Supervision) – While processing if any one of the worker actor is died because of exception, actor system gets the notification and it will tell master actor to send the message to another actor for processing and remove that worker for further message flow
Akka & Spring:
- To be able to use the Spring application context to let Spring create and wire up actors, we need to store it away in a place that is easily accessible from within the actor system. Akka extension helps to achieve the same.
- The extension consist of two parts. The SpringExtension class that defines the methods used by Akka to create the extension for an actor system, and the SpringExt class that defines the methods and fields available on the extension.
Above class diagram represents the different classes part of the Akka system to process the EDI messages Asynchronous
5. Further Steps
- Supervision strategy for timeouts
- Spliting the stowplan validation and object creation and DB Transaction as separate actors executitng it parallelism


to three components:
Convective heat flux
simply heat convected from the hot shock layer gas to the cooler aeroshell wall.
Catalytic heat flux
produced by dissociated gas species in the shocklayer gas recombining into less reactive molecules on the aeroshell wall thus releasing heat.
Radiative heat flux
comes from the intense light radiating from the shock layer which is in a state of chemical non-equilibrium due to passing through the shock wave. As a function of time from entry, radiative heat flux normally reaches its peak value before the convective heat flux reaches its peak value (this can be used as a simple test of a heating model's validity).
heat load
time-integrated heat flux. The modern preferred units for heat load are joules per square centimeter (joule/cm²).
heat soak
the component of heat load that actually penetrates the TPS and entry vehicle structure.
when an entry vehicle, RV, or RB has a supersonic free-stream velocity that creates a shock wave processing atmospheric gas into chemical dissociation, e.g. molecular nitrogen breaks down into atomic nitrogen. The term hypersonics can also have a special meaning referring to the engineering of vehicles that cruise or glide at hypersonic velocity or employ a supersonic combustion ramjet or scramjet.
Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)
used to measure a vehicle's acceleration and orientation with respect to inertial space. The Delco Corp. (AC Spark Plug) was an early developer of ICBM IMUs.
lifting entry
occurs when an entry-vehicle has lift and drag. Both American and Russian manned entry vehicles use lifting entry to reduce deceleration loading on the crew and improve crossrange.
lift-over-drag ratio (L/D)
the ratio of the coefficient-of-lift divided by the coefficient-of-drag. The L/D of an entry vehicle undergoing ballistic entry is by definition zero. An entry vehicle's designed geometry is often a consequence of an L/D requirement. L/D is of extreme importance in designing a manned entry vehicle since the peak deceleration is a function of L/D, e.g. an Apollo-CM can not be used for a return from Mars entry because the peak deceleration is too large due to the Apollo-CM having too low of an L/D.
Mach number
a dimensionless number derived from the free stream relative velocity of an object divided by the free stream speed-of-sound of the medium it is traveling through. Speed-of-sound is proportional to the square root of the absolute temperature of the gas. An extremely hot gas hitting an object at high velocity could have a relatively low Mach number, e.g. the gas from a commercial plasma cutter flowing at orbital velocity (7.8 km/s) could have a Mach number less than three. An entry vehicle is probably hypersonic if its Mach number is greater than six and certainly hypersonic if the Mach number is greater than nine (being hypersonic depends upon whether the shock layer has undergone chemical dissociation).
Newtonian impact theory
a method for modelling the aerodynamics of blunt entry vehicles at Mach numbers that are normally hypersonic. Newtonian impact theory assumes the existence of a shockwave and ignores the effects of viscosity (Newtonian impact theory should not be confused with Newtonian viscosity). Newtonian impact theory enables closed form solutions for simple aeroshell geometries and was a preferred modelling method prior to the development of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Newtonian impact theory is still extremely useful for the preliminary design of entry vehicles.
Outer mold line (OML)
an aeroshell's outer surface.
Overshoot angle
the maximum allowed entry angle for an entry-vehicle.
Reaction control system (RCS)
the system of small rocket thrusters that reorient a spacecraft with respect to the inertial frame of reference (inertial space).
Re-entry vehicle (RV)
a munition delivered by an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) of the United States Air Force (USAF) or the military of another country. The photographic film return capsule (now obsolete) for a low earth orbit satellite or military reconnaissance satellite was also called an RV for Recovery Vehicle. In the aerospace industry, the term "reentry vehicle" or "RV" normally refers to an ICBM munition.
Re-entry body (RB)
a munition delivered by a Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) of the United States Navy (USN). An RB or RV could in theory be the same device but never are (the USAF and USN never use the same design). The container inside an RB or RV holding the military payload (thermonuclear explosive) is called a "bomb can" or a "physics package".
Shock layer
the gas layer processed by the hypersonic shock wave located between the shock wave and aeroshell.
Side-slip angle
used with the common form of angle-of-attack (used with airplanes). While pitch roll and yaw are relative to the horizon, angle of attack and side-slip angle are relative to the local wind direction or the velocity vector. Side slip angle is in the plane orthogonal to the pitch plane, but not necessarily in the yaw plane. Side slip angle is often called beta.
Skip reentry
aerocapture to a suborbital ellipse having an apoapsis that is just outside of the atmosphere.
if spallation occurs, TPS failure can be exacerbated. Spallation is where chunks of TPS material are torn away from the outer wall of the TPS. This can happen if the maximum allowed dynamic pressure is exceeded.
a conical aeroshell with a spherical nose. The outer surfaces are tangential along the line of contact (ring) connecting the spherical nose to the cone or frustum.
Stagnation point
a region of stagnant flow on the leading edge of an aeroshell (there is also at least one stagnation point in the vehicle's wake). For a sphere-cone undergoing ballistic entry, the main stagnation point is on the outer surface of the spherical nose that intersects with the sphere-cone's axis-of-symmetry. For an aeroshell undergoing hypersonic heating due to a convection dominated heat flux from a laminar flow, the stagnation point is almost always the hottest point on the entry vehicle's outer wall. Therefore, conservative design for a TPS is normally based upon conditions at the stagnation point. However, for a radiation dominated heat flux or a turbulent flow, the stagnation point might not be the hottest point on the entry vehicle (this situation can occur during high speed return from the Moon or Mars and is difficult to model)
Static aerodynamic stability
occurs when the center-of-mass (also called center-of-gravity) is upstream from its aerodynamic center.
Subsonic cap
the region of high temperature gas near the stagnation point where the local flow is subsonic.
Thermal Protection System (TPS)
the atmospheric entry system or material used to protect an aeroshell's payload from heating due to hypersonic entry into the atmosphere. The outer layer of material on the aeroshell is also called TPS, TPS material or TPS layer. A famous TPS material is Teflon which was originally developed by the DuPont Corp. and used on RVs.
Total angle-of-attack
is the less common form of angle-of-attack typically used with entry vehicles and missiles and not restricted to the pitch plane. Total angle-of-attack is sometimes called resultant angle-of-attack.
TPS failure
occurs when the temperature of the material bonding the TPS layer to the aeroshell's structure exceeds the maximum allowed for the bonding material.
TPS (Monolithic)
a TPS is "monolithic" if it is made from a single slab of material, e.g. silica foam or balsa wood saturated with resin. An alternative to a monolithic TPS is a TPS based upon tiles such as used by the Space Shuttle or the Huygens probe. A TPS method sometimes called "monolithic" is a honeycomb of composite material with each cell injected with an ablating TPS material made of resin mixed with cork dust and other substances (this arguably represents a misuse of the word "monolithic"). Honeycomb based TPS is normally very expensive to manufacture and can have voids in individual cells (this possibility requires expensive inspection methods).
Trim angle-of-attack
is an angle-of-attack where an aircraft or entry vehicle's pitching moment is equal to zero, e.g. a pilot could let go of the control stick and the aircraft's attitude would remain unchanged.
Undershoot angle
the minimum allowed entry angle for an entry-vehicle
Notes and referencesEdit
 1. ^ 1958 February, "Theory of Stagnation Point Heat Transfer in Dissociated Air", (PDF Reprint), Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, volume 25, retrieved on 2009-06-29, pages 73-85:


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Sight Words Snakes & Ladders
Sight Words Snakes & Ladders is a twist on the classic Chutes & Ladders board game, incorporating some reading into the game play. The game gives children many opportunities for sight words repetition, while the board game format keeps it fun and engaging.
This game works best with children that are already familiar with the Snakes & Ladders game. Trying to learn both the game and the words at the same time can be too much, particularly for younger children.
The game is most fun when played in a small group of 2-4 players, but a child can also play the game by himself.
The game requires just a few basic items: a game board, game pieces, and a die.
- Snakes & Ladders Board
- Cardstock paper (approximately 110 lb / 200 gsm)
- Game Pieces (checkers, coins, blocks, etc.)
To make the Snakes & Ladders board, print out a Snakes & Ladders board and print it on four sheets of cardstock paper. Trim the edges off the four sheets and tape them together with clear tape. Using tape allows the board to be folded for easy storage in your sight words file when not in use.
Play the game as you would regularly play Snakes & Ladders. But when the player moves their game piece to a new spot, they must read each word along their path in order to progress. If they are unable to read one of the words, then they stop on that word until their next turn.
The player(s) begin by placing their game pieces on the START square. The first player rolls the die and moves forward that number of spaces. On each space the player needs to say the word written on the space in order to keep moving. If they don't know a word or can't say the word in less than 10 seconds, then their turn stops and we do a quick correction to help them learn the word.
If a player rolls a number that lands them at the bottom of a ladder and they get the word correct, they may "climb" to the square at the top of the ladder. If a player rolls a number that lands them on the head of a snake, then they "slide" down to the square at the snake's tail.
The game finishes when all the players get to the FINISH square, with the first player to the end being declared the winner. You do not have to roll an exact number to finish the game.
4. Printable Snakes & Ladders Templates
You can create your own custom Snakes & Ladders board, or use one of our pre-made boards. As you notice the students start to learn the old board, print out a new board that changes the order of the words to keep them from memorizing the positions of words.
4.1 Custom Sight Words Snakes & Ladders Boards
Use the Sight Words Snakes & Ladders Board Creator to create your own custom set of boards. This generator lets you use select from both existing sight words lists (e.g. Dolch & Fry) as well as allowing you to add custom words (e.g., current vocabulary words, names, etc).
4.2 Blank Snakes & Ladders Board
4.3 Dolch Sight Words Snakes & Ladders Boards
- Pre-K Dolch Words (40 words)
- Kindergarten Dolch Words (52 words)
- 1st Grade Dolch Words (41 words)
- 2nd Grade Dolch Words (46 words)
- 3rd Grade Dolch Words (41 words)
- Noun Dolch Words (95 words)
4.4 Fry Sight Words Snakes & Ladders Boards
- 1st 100 Fry Words (100 words)
- 2nd 100 Fry Words (100 words)
- 3rd 100 Fry Words (100 words)
- 4th 100 Fry Words (100 words)
- 5th 100 Fry Words (100 words)
- 6th 100 Fry Words (100 words)
- 7th 100 Fry Words (100 words)
- 8th 100 Fry Words (100 words)
- 9th 100 Fry Words (100 words)
- 10th 100 Fry Words (100 words)
4.5 Top 150 Written Words Snakes & Ladders Boards
To download a template, right-click and select Save As.
These Snakes & Ladders boards are provided under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Basically, you are permitted complete license to use the resources, provided you leave the attribution hallmark (our logo) on the resources. We would be happy to see the materials used in the classroom, in the home, as part of your tutoring business, or however you see fit. You do not need to contact us for permission to use the materials. We want you to use them!


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SDOF spectral pushover curve (Sd and Sa/g) according to:
that consider a single mode contribution. The formulas for multiple mode contribution, and for the inter-story response evaluations, can be found in Valles et al. (1996a).
Figure 8 presents a comparison of the overall simplified response evaluations versus the time history analysis. Note that the predictions agree fairly well except for the last two intensities, when the pushover curve for k=1 cannot capture the behavior. The pushover curve for k=2 would yield better estimates for the last two response quantities.
A damage index is a parameter that indicates how close the maximum response is to the maximum ultimate capacity of the structure. Often, damage index models are normalized from a value of zero, indicating negligible response quantities as compared to the ultimate capacity, to a value of one, indicating that the ultimate capacity of the structure has been reached. The response quantities determined for the building are first used to calculate damage indices, which are then correlated to probable damage states. The fatigue based damage model, suggested by Reinhorn and Valles (1996), was used in the study. The damage index is defined as:
where a is the maximum experienced deformation; y is the yield deformation capacity; u is the ultimate deformation capacity; Fy is the yield force capacity; and Eh is the cumulative dissipated hysteretic energy.
|Table 2: Overall damage indices and damage states in the NS direction.|
|0.2g||2.79||35016||> 1.0||Loss of Building|
|0.3g||4.01||64760||> 1.0||Loss of Building|
|0.4g||7.10||161793||> 1.0||Loss of Building|
|0.5g||9.93||316212||> 1.0||Loss of Building|
The fatigue based damage index can be used to quantify the performance of structural elements, stories (or subassemblies), and the overall response of a building. Yield and ultimate capacities were determined using the results from the pushover analyses. Table 2 presents the overall building damage in the NS direction for the five earthquake motion intensities considered. Note that the building is only capable of withstanding an earthquake with a PGA of 0.1g. All other intensities of shaking induce collapse of the structure.
The seismic evaluation of an existing low-rise RC building was summarized. Five ground
motion intensities were considered. The evaluation was carried out using nonlinear
time-history analyses, and simplified elastic and inelastic response evaluation methods.
Results for the three methods show fairly good agreement in the prediction of the
response. However, the simplified methods have the advantage that the evaluation process
involves considerably less
computational effort. Damage quantification of the building response indicates that the structure can withstand an earthquake with a PGA of 0.1g with repairable damage, but an earthquake with a PGA of 0.2g or greater will cause the building to collapse. The example shows various evaluation procedures that can be applied to other building types.
Freeman, S.A. (1994), "The Capacity Spectrum Method for Determining the Demand Displacement," ACI Spring Convention.
Iwan, W.D. and Gates, N.C., (1979), "Estimating Earthquake Response of Simple Hysteretic Structures," Journal of Engineering Mechanics, ASCE, Vol. 105, No. EM3, pp. 391-405.
Horton, S.P. (1994), "Simulation of Strong Ground Motion in Eastern North America," Proc. of the Fifth National Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Chicago, Vol. III, published by EERI, pp. 251-260.
Nuttli, O.W. and Hermann, R.B., (1984), "Scaling and Attenuation Relations for Strong Ground Motion in Eastern North America," Proc. of the Eighth World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, pp. 305-309.
Reinhorn, A.M., Valles, R.E., and Lysiak, M., (1996), "Simplified Inelastic Response Evaluation Using Composite Spectra," Earthquake Spectra, in review.
Valles, R.E., Reinhorn, A.M., and Barrón, R., (1996a), "Seismic Evaluation of a Low-Rise Building in the Vicinity of the New Madrid Seismic Zone," NCEER Technical Report, State University of New York at Buffalo, in preparation.
Valles, R.E., Reinhorn, A.M., Kunnath, S.K., Li, C., and Madan, A., (1996b), "IDARC2D Version 4.0: A Computer Program for the Inelastic Damage Analysis of Buildings," Technical Report NCEER-96-0010, National Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, State University of New York at Buffalo.
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Wednesday, July 13, 2011
WNW: Metathesis
You may not know what it is by name, but you've probably done it yourself lots of times, and if you've been around kids, I'm sure you've heard more examples as they learn to talk.
Metathesis is when two sounds get flipped in the pronunciation of a word.
For young children, the most familiar one might be saying pa-sghetti instead of spaghetti, where the child exchanges the places of the S and the P.
A common example among adults is how they say the full word we write as etc. Many people say ex cetera.
That's not technically correct, but a lot of us say it. The term is really et cetera, with a T, not an X. That pronunciation makes a lot more sense when you look back at the shortened version we all use, etc.
When my son was little (and because I'm a total word nerd), I loved watching his language develop. A version of metathesis he came up with was with "granola bar."
He dropped the R altogether, as young kids often do, since it's a hard consonant to say when you're two years old. Then he exchanged place with the N and the G, but kept their accompanying vowels. So GA was swapped with NO. Oh, and two syllables was plenty for this kid.
The result: GRA-NO-LA > (drop the R and last syllable) > GA NO > (add metathesis) > NO GA
He often asked for a "noga" bar.
Below is a short video explaining more about metathesis and how this linguist had students catch her on a word she often says "wrong." She also discusses some unexpected English words that have changed permanently over time through metathesis.
Kristina P. said...
Interesting! I had no idea this was a thing.
And for the record, I actually do say et cetera.
Susan Anderson said...
I didn't know this term before, but I've certainly noticed the phenomenon. Thanks for giving me a name for it!
And like Kristina, I say et cetera.
Scott said...
This IS nerdy...but SO interesting. As I was reading, two words came to mind: "pacific" (see, I almost typed specific) and "nuclear (nukalar).
Lara Neves said...
Love how you explain things like this.
Sophia calls granola bars gorilla bars. I kind of hope she doesn't stop that for a while...
TisforTonya said...
My youngest asked for "Snoot Fracks" for years... I was actually a little sad when she got it all sorted out. No there's no reason to keep fruit snacks in the house.
Summer said...
It is so interesting to learn about how language has evolved and continues to do so. There are some mispronunciations however, that should never become mainstream in my opinion. Sure-burt (Sherbet) *shudder* and Nook-you-lar (Nuclear) *double shudder*. I'm only mostly serious. :) But I cringe when people use those pronunciations.


text:
Pattachitra style of painting is a unique blend of classical and folk elements, but is more bent towards a folk style in the larger sense.Features of each character are defined with clear dark lines which give a definite shape and appeal. Natural dyes and colors are used.The background or landscape of each narrative is simple and not too detailed, since the main focus lies on the characters and their actions. Flower and leaf motifs are the common styling elements used to give a more aesthetic appeal to the art work. Traditional colors such as red, green, yellow, dark blue, white, and orange are used to define each section of the painting. Painters pour their hearts into their work, and it can be difficult to make ends meet in such a labor-intensive and competitive field. Enrich your home and feel good knowing your purchase is helping to support a local artist.
MaterialPaper & Colors
Art/Craft/Technique - Pattachitra Painting


-only prerequisite. For the requirements of this type of prerequisite to be met, the file just has to exist. The timestamp comparison between an order-only prerequisite and target is not made. This is often used for output directories, as is the case here.
3. Generating OBJS List
OBJS itself comprises of various.o files, which can be compiled from various sources. Some of these sources may be.ccp or.s but I'm more interested in the list of.c files originally listed in Makefile as CSRC. These are copied to the variable TCSRC where the T prefix denotes these files are to be compiled to the Thumb instruction set.
TCSRC += $(CSRC)
TSRC := $(TCSRC) $(TCPPSRC)
TCOBJS := $(addprefix $(OBJDIR)/, $(notdir $(TCSRC:.c=.o)))
There is a lot going on in the assignment of TCOBJS:
Working from the most nested parentheses outwards:
This is using a substitution reference. When expanded, any file in TCSRC which ends in.c will have its extension changed to.o.
E.g.../../../os/rt/src/chsys.c becomes../../../os/rt/src/chsys.o
notdir is in fact a function - functions in make have a call syntax similar to variable referencing. notdir is used to remove the directory path from files.
E.g.../../../os/rt/src/chsys.o becomes: chsys.o
The last step uses the addprefix function to prepend the desired output directory onto the front of each file.
E.g chsys.o becomes build/obj/chsys.o.
4. TCOBJS Rule
There is a unique rule for each batch of object files, since each is intended to be compiled slightly differently. For example, TCOBJS are to be compiled to the Thumb instruction set, while ACOBJS are to be compiled to the ARM instruction set. Make has to be aware of the specific target filename so it can determine the appropriate recipe to use.
$(TCOBJS) : $(OBJDIR)/%.o : %.c Makefile
 $(CC) -c $(CFLAGS) $(TOPT) -I. $(IINCDIR) $< -o $@
 _USER_ Compiling $(/dev/null) $(_URL_
Considering the individual parts:
The ChibiOS build system does a lot in relatively few lines of make. I cannot currently think of any significant functionality that is missing. It is definitely an example I will look to in the future when writing a makefile.
After taking time to study it, I have to admit the documentation for GNU Make is pretty good. However, it is likely easier to navigate when using it as a reference for a known command than it would be when searching for an appropriate command.
In the descriptions above I have not always followed the path to build dependencies that make (probably) would. Since the same dependency may occur for more than one target, I have tried to follow a more logical path. E.g. OBJS is a dependency of all and a dependency of.elf. Following the latter seemed like a more appropriate choice.


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Beiträge zur Algebra und Geometrie
Contributions to Algebra and Geometry
Vol. 44, No. 2, pp. 431-440 (2003)
The densest packing of 13 congruent circles in a circle
Ferenc FodorFeherviz u. 26, IV/13, H-2000 Szentendre, Hungary
Abstract: The densest packings of $n$ congruent circles in a circle are known for $n\leq 12$ and $n=19$. In this article we examine the case of $13$ congruent circles. We show that the optimal configurations are identical to Kravitz's conjecture. We use a technique developed from a method of Bateman and Erdos, which proved fruitful in investigating the cases $n=12$ and $19$.
Keywords: circle packing, density, optimal packing
Classification (MSC2000): 52C15
Full text of the article:
Electronic version published on: 1 Aug 2003. This page was last modified: 4 May 2006.


How To Deal With A Basketball With Control
Want to handle basketball with precision?
Coping with basketball is unquestionably hard at first, and additionally may appear strenuous to advance on, but it is an essential part of the bet on basketball. The best way to enhance your ball handling ability would be to train hard.
Manipulating the basketball is essential for your ball handling success. There are lots of basketball players who are able to dribble the basketball perfectly but find it difficult to manage it in tight situations. There are various reasons why someone may have a problem with handling the basketball with control.
Just one reason behind lack of ability of handling the basketball with control might be lack of skill. Experience originates from playing basketball with various competition as well as playing basketball in various environments. You need to find different competition and challenge yourself. For instance in case your local basketball court has got the same competition almost every day, then you need to turn to visit different basketball courts with various competition.
Great to really make it simpler to handle basketball with control would be to dribble the basketball really low and difficult. There's two apparent reasons why this is extremely much important. Should you control the basketball in a low height, your defender will have a hard time snatching the basketball. Should you dribble the ball hard and occasional, it'll end up being difficult for all your competitors to accept basketball.
Once you start to dribble together with your mind up regularly, gain some experience, and dribble with power and dribble low, you will begin to realize reasonable improvement inside your basketball dribbling.
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text:
ANSI Common Lisp 6 Iteration 6.1 The LOOP Facility 6.1.1 Overview of the Loop Facility
188.8.131.52 DestructuringThe d-type-spec argument is used for destructuring. If the d-type-spec argument consists solely of the type fixnum, float, t, or nil, the of-type keyword is optional. The of-type construct is optional in these cases to provide backwards compatibility; thus, the following two expressions are the same:
;;; This expression uses the old syntax for type specifiers. (loop for i fixnum upfrom 3...) ;;; This expression uses the new syntax for type specifiers. (loop for i of-type fixnum upfrom 3...) ;; Declare X and Y to be of type VECTOR and FIXNUM respectively. (loop for (x y) of-type (vector fixnum) in l do...)
Destructuring allows binding of a set of variables to a corresponding set of values anywhere that a value can normally be bound to a single variable. During loop expansion, each variable in the variable list is matched with the values in the values list. If there are more variables in the variable list than there are values in the values list, the remaining variables are given a value of nil. If there are more values than variables listed, the extra values are discarded.
To assign values from a list to the variables a, b, and c, the for clause could be used to bind the variable numlist to the car of the supplied form, and then another for clause could be used to bind the variables a, b, and c sequentially.
;; Collect values by using FOR constructs. (loop for numlist in '((1 2 4.0) (5 6 8.3) (8 9 10.4)) for a of-type integer = (first numlist) and b of-type integer = (second numlist) and c of-type float = (third numlist) collect (list c b a)) ((4.0 2 1) (8.3 6 5) (10.4 9 8))
Destructuring makes this process easier by allowing the variables to be bound in each loop iteration. Types can be declared by using a list of type-spec arguments. If all the types are the same, a shorthand destructuring syntax can be used, as the second example illustrates.
;; Destructuring simplifies the process. (loop for (a b c) of-type (integer integer float) in '((1 2 4.0) (5 6 8.3) (8 9 10.4)) collect (list c b a)) ((4.0 2 1) (8.3 6 5) (10.4 9 8)) ;; If all the types are the same, this way is even simpler. (loop for (a b c) of-type float in '((1.0 2.0 4.0) (5.0 6.0 8.3) (8.0 9.0 10.4)) collect (list c b a)) ((4.0 2.0 1.0) (8.3 6.0 5.0) (10.4 9.0 8.0))
;; Initialize and declare variables in parallel by using the AND construct. (loop with (a b) of-type float = '(1.0 2.0) and (c d) of-type integer = '(3 4) and (e f) return (list a b c d e f)) (1.0 2.0 3 4 NIL NIL)
If nil is used in a destructuring list, no variable is provided for its place.
(loop for (a nil b) = '(1 2 3) do (return (list a b))) (1 3)
Note that dotted lists can specify destructuring.
(loop for (x. y) = '(1. 2) do (return y)) 2 (loop for ((a. b) (c. d)) of-type ((float. float) (integer. integer)) in '(((1.2. 2.4) (3. 4)) ((3.4. 4.6) (5. 6))) collect (list a b c d)) ((1.2 2.4 3 4) (3.4 4.6 5 6))
An error of type program-error is signaled (at macro expansion time) if the same variable is bound twice in any variable-binding clause of a single loop expression. Such variables include local variables, iteration control variables, and variables found by destructuring.


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Toolbox Emerging tools and techniques that may advance autism research.
News / Toolbox
Method lights up active genes in fruit fly brains
by / 11 August 2017
luorescent probes mark the expression patterns of three genes in a transparent fruit fly brain.
Bright lights: Fluorescent probes mark the expression patterns of three genes in a transparent fruit fly brain.
A new technique combines several established methods to pinpoint the locations of active genes in the brains of fruit flies1.
To observe gene expression, scientists typically label messenger RNA (mRNA) transcripts, which are the intermediary between a gene and its protein product. They often use a technique that attaches fluorescent proteins or dyes to a specific mRNA sequence, illuminating an active gene. But adult fruit fly brains have a high amount of natural florescence that can mask the signal.
The new method decreases that background noise, and also helps fluorescent probes reach cells deep within an intact fruit fly brain. Researchers described the approach in the June issue of Nature Methods.
To help the colorful tags find their targets, the researchers first treat intact, chemically preserved fruit fly brains with acetic acid. The acid swells cells slightly, allowing the tags to slip through the cell membrane and reach the mRNA. A chemical called xylene renders the brains transparent, so that the fluorescence is easy to see.
The researchers tested their method by targeting two different mRNA transcripts involved in regulating circadian cycles, which serve as the body's internal clock. One of the transcripts is more abundant at certain times of the daily cycle.
The researchers detected an appropriate waxing and waning of the fluorescence corresponding to predicted levels of that transcript, demonstrating that their technique works.
They then used a custom-built microscope to illuminate a thin section of the fly brain. This high-resolution imaging allowed them to count mRNA transcripts in single cells and pinpoint where in the cells the genes were being expressed. By refocusing the microscope in different planes, they were able to quantify levels of gene expression across the entire fly brain.
Researchers could use the method to see how mutations associated with autism affect gene expression at different stages of development in the fly brain.
 1. Long X. et al. Nat. Methods 14, 703-706 (2017) PubMed


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The Discovery Center Tot Lot with roof was designed to give infants and toddlers a fun playground fit for their size. This early learning childhood play structure is perfect for your daycare, head start or early head start programs. The Louise tot lot includes many learning activities giving the teachers a fun way outdoors to interact with the children.
- Two deck structure
- Play features are Clock Panel, Shapes and Objects Panel, Window Panel, Gear Panel, Bongo Drums, Rain Wheel, 1-2-3 Step and a slide
- Textured sides to promote sensory development
- Clock Panel: Children practice telling time by manipulating the hands on the Clock Panes
- Shapes & Colors Panel: Teaches key concepts such as shape recognition, colors and numbers
- Bongo Drums & Rain Wheel: Children are provided open-ended opportunities to creatively express themselves
- 1-2-3 Step: Wide design
- commercially compliant to CPSC and ASTM standards and IPEMA certified.
- Available with or without a roof
- Anchoring using a mounting kit is required for structure to be compliant with commercial playground structures. We suggest inground mounting package
Available Model Number:
DC-Seed-Discovery Center Tot Lot without roof
DC-Seedr-Discovery Center Tot Lot with roof


text:
Indian and Himalayan Art
Animal Symbols of the Kings of the Twelve Heavens of the Vaimanika Gods
or Rajasthan, India, Asia
Artist/maker unknown, India
Opaque watercolor and ink on paper
Currently not on view
1935-34-11(26,a)Purchased with the Francis T. S. Darley Fund, 1935
LabelThe complex Jain cosmology expounded in the Sangrahanisutra speaks of four classes of gods, the highest of which are called Vaimanika (flying) because they travel in airborne chariots. Each of the twelve Vaimanika gods has a complete heaven, ruled over by a king. Each king is represented by a different animal, as depicted and named in this painting. They are (left to right, top to bottom): antelope, water buffalo, boar, elephant-lion, ram, swimming spotted animal, horse, elephant, snake, rhinoceros, bull, and gazelle.


BSA calculator
Main page Strat Intro Why Units Metric
Standard Doses BSA Total BSA cal Formulas
Hurldles Difficult Calculators Final Other Exchange
How is BSA calculated?
 In oncology practice doses of chemotherapy drugs are usually expressed as mgs per M2of the body surface area (BSA). This is much more accurate and tailored to each patient compared to dosing on the basis of weight alone which is used in most other specialties of medicine. This means that the dose of that drug is so much of mgs per M2of the body surface area of the patient. The total dose of the chemotherapy is calculated by multiplying the dose of the chemotherapy drug with the BSA. To make it clearer, let me discuss one example. A commonly used dose of Doxorubicin used in the treatment of breast cancer is 60mg/ M2. If your weight is 80 kilograms and your height is 156 centimeters, your BSA would be 1.8 M2. The suggested dose of doxorubicin dose is 60mg/ M2and this means dose is 60 mg for every 1 M2 of your BSA. To calculate your actual dose of doxorubicin you will multiply the 60mg with your BSA. The result is as follows. Total doxorubicin dose is 60mg x 1.8M2 = 108 mg. Once you understand this basic concept everything is very simple, dont you agree with me?
 Now you know how to calculate the total dose of a chemotherapy drug, if you BSA and the dose of the chemotherapy drug. You may be wondering how in the world, I would be calculating the BSA. Let me reassure you that BSA can be calculated if you know the height and weight of a person the BSA can be easily calculated using a specialized formula. Now I am going to give the formula for calculation of BSA, but word of caution before I do this. Dont panic! Dont panic looking at this complex formula. I can promise you that once you finish with this article you will be able to calculate your BSA and total dose of chemotherapy very easily, regardless of your knowledge in mathematics. Please have patience and hang on till we finish this article.


text:
Så här säger Oxford English dictionary (_URL_
) om Tatar:
A native inhabitant of the region of Central Asia extending eastward from the Caspian Sea, and formerly known as Independent and Chinese Tartary. First known in the West as applied to the mingled host of Mongols, Tartars, Turks, etc., which under the leadership of Jenghiz Khan (_PHONE_) overran and devastated much of Asia and Eastern Europe; hence vaguely applied to the descendants of these now dwelling in Asia or Europe; more strictly and ethnologically, to any member of the Tâtar or Turkic branch of the Ural-Altaic or Turanian family, embracing the Turks, Cossacks, and Kirghiz Tartars. (In all these uses, but esp. the last, now often written Tatar, Tâtar.)
The original name (by which the people in question either called themselves or were designated by their neighbours) is generally held to have been, as in Persian, etc., Tātār, as to the language and meaning of which various conjectures have been put forth; but in Western Europe, they appear from the first as Tartari, Tartares, or Tartars, their name being apparently associated with Tartarus, hell. See the saying attributed by many historians to St. Louis of France a 1270, in Littré, s.v. Tartare, and a translation in quot. 1842 below. The form Tâtar and its derivatives are now often used in ethnological works in sense 1, but the long-established Tartar is always used in the derived senses, and is also held by some to have been the original name: see quot. 1885, and its context.
här är det åsyftade citatet:
1885 E. PEARS Fall Constantinople 15 note, I write Tartar instead of Tatar because I agree with Dr. Koelle that the first is the form which the Tartars themselves used until they came into contact with foreigners, like the Chinese and Russians, who had changed the form of the word.
Hellquist anger också att den ursprungliga formen var en utan r, "sedermera med ett av folketymologiska grunder inskjutet r" (Band 2, s. 1169; uppslagsord tattare
"HIST.: sedan yngre fornsvensk tid; fornsv. tartar; ur persiska tatar med samma bet"
Om man väljer att lita på de auktoriteter som finns, har man i detta läge samstämmiga uppgifter. I vilket fall som helst bör man, både på engelska och svenska, använda ordet tatar
och inte något annat.


text:
In ABAP OVERLAY statement is used for overlaying the characters of string on another string. Overlayed string characters will be replaced by the other string characters according to the position.
Dont be confused, you will get more idea after seeing one examples.
- Take two strings,
- Command for OVERLAY is "OVERLAY string1 WITH string2."
- After this, string1 will becomes 12345F.
- The first 5 characters of string1 have replaced by the string2.
- string1=A B C D E F
- string2=12 3 4 5
- After the command OVERLAY string1 WITH string2.
- string1 will becomes 12B3C4D5
- Each character is replaced with the characters of string2 as per the position.
- In this example blank spaces of string1 also replaced.
If we need to replace only characters ( not blank spaces ),we need to used an additional parameter "ONLY str" with OVERLAY statement.
The complete syntax will be :
OVERLAY string1 WITH string2 [ONLY str].


The stupid question is the question not asked
Fabric calculator - a better way to do it?
by ailie (Friar)
on Dec 06, 2001 at 04:04 UTC ( #129813=perlquestion: print w/ replies, xml ) Need Help??
This is a script I wrote to calculate how much fabric I need when making various quilt blocks. At the moment it's run from the command line, but I'd like to eventually get it so it can be run from a web page. That's where I really started to get frustrated. Alternately, a GUI might be sort of neat.
Anyway, I would be interested in receiving feedback on the script as it stands now. I have a vague feeling that perhaps there are better, cleaner ways to do much of what I've got, and I'd like to learn them.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; # How many fabrics are you using? my $j; my $number_of_fabrics; print "How many fabrics are you using? \n"; chomp($number_of_fabrics = ); for ($j = 1; $j <= $number_of_fabrics; $j++) { # How wide is the fabric you are using? my %fabric_width; my $fab_width; print "How wide is fabric $j? \n"; chomp($fab_width = ); $fabric_width{$j} = $fab_width - 2; print "To be safe, we'll use a width of $fabric_width{$j} for fabri +c $j. \n"; # How many different shapes is a block made of? my $number_of_shapes; print "How many different shapes of fabric $j is a block made of? \ +n"; chomp($number_of_shapes = ); # What are the dimensions of the shapes? my $i; my %width; my %height; my %shape; my $piece; for ($i = 1; $i <= $number_of_shapes; $i++) { my $shape_width; print "What is the width of shape $i? \n"; chomp($shape_width = ); $width{$i} = $shape_width; my $shape_height; print "What is the height of shape $i? \n"; chomp($shape_height = ); $height{$i} = $shape_height; $shape{$i} = $shape_width. "x". $shape_height; } print "Shape dimensions: \n"; foreach $i (keys (%shape)) { print "The dimensions of shape $i are $shape{$i}\n"; } # For each shape, how many can be made per yard of fabric? my $number_per_fabric_width_strip; my $strips_per_yard; my $number_per_yard; my $number_of_pieces; my %pieces; my $number_of_strips; my $strip_yardage; my $remainder; my $fabric_yardage; my $number_of_blocks; my $total_pieces; foreach $i (keys (%height)) { $number_per_fabric_width_strip = $fabric_width{$j} / ($height{$i +}); $number_per_fabric_width_strip = int $number_per_fabric_width_st +rip; print "You can get $number_per_fabric_width_strip piece(s) of sh +ape $i per $width{$i}\" strip of fabric $j.\n"; $strips_per_yard = 36 / ($width{$i}); $strips_per_yard = int $strips_per_yard; print "You can get $strips_per_yard $width{$i}\" strips per yard +. \n"; $number_per_yard = $number_per_fabric_width_strip * $strips_per_ +yard; print "You can get $number_per_yard of shape $i per yard of $fabric_width{$j}\" of fabric $j. \n"; print "How many of shape $i do you need per block? \n"; chomp($number_of_pieces = ); $pieces{$i} = "$number_of_pieces"; print "You need $number_of_pieces per block. \n"; print "How many blocks are you making? \n"; chomp($number_of_blocks = ); print "You are making $number_of_blocks blocks. \n"; $total_pieces = $number_of_pieces * $number_of_blocks; print "You need $total_pieces of shape $i. \n"; if ($total_pieces <= $number_per_fabric_width_strip) { print "You will need one $width{$i}\" strip of fabric $j. \n" +; } else { $number_of_strips = $total_pieces / $number_per_fabric_width_ +strip; $number_of_strips = int $number_of_strips; $remainder = $total_pieces % $number_per_fabric_width_strip; $strip_yardage= $number_of_strips * $width{$i}; if ($remainder == 0) { print "You will need exactly $strip_yardage\". \n"; } else { $fabric_yardage = $strip_yardage + $width{$i}; print "You will need $fabric_yardage\" of fabric $j. The last +$width{$i}\" strip will have only $remainder pieces cut from it. \n"; } } } }
Thanks for any advice.
Comment on Fabric calculator - a better way to do it?
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Re: Fabric calculator - a better way to do it?
by jynx (Priest) on Dec 06, 2001 at 09:36 UTC
 A few suggestions,
 Most of these are rather cosmetic, but they should help readability.
 Considering how many times you read from STDIN you may want to farm that part out to a subroutine. It would remove clutter from the rest of the code and should be a bit more maintainable later.
 For structures like %width an array seems to make more sense than a hash. It works either way, but it's probably a good idea to try and use more appropriate tools when possible.
 Also you can reduce the number of variables you have to keep track of by using a hash for multiple things. For example, your $number_of_* variables in the last section could probably be written as (using a subroutine for getting STDIN):
 my %number; $number{blocks} = get_input("How many blocks are you making?"); $number{strips} = int( $total_pieces / $number_per_fabric_width_strip) +; etc...
(crazyinsomniac:) Re: Fabric calculator - a better way to do it?
by crazyinsomniac (Prior) on Dec 06, 2001 at 11:42 UTC
 This is me just being a monkey and testing the script out:
 F:\dev>perl How many fabrics are you using? 2 How wide is fabric 1? 1 To be safe, we'll use a width of -1 for fabric 1. How many different shapes of fabric 1 is a block made of? 1 What is the width of shape 1? 1 What is the height of shape 1? 2 Shape dimensions: The dimensions of shape 1 are 1x2 You can get 0 piece(s) of shape 1 per 1" strip of fabric 1. You can get 36 1" strips per yard. You can get 0 of shape 1 per yard of -1" of fabric 1. How many of shape 1 do you need per block? 23 You need 23 per block. How many blocks are you making? 2 You are making 2 blocks. You need 46 of shape 1. Illegal division by zero at line 88, line 7. F:\dev>
 I'll update this node after I've messed with the code.
 My monkeying around immediately proves insightful into how you can improve this (at least it appears so to me).
 A good strategy might be to turn this into a module, and then, write "interfaces" for it, like commandline, CGI, GUI. All I have to say at this point is, not bad quiltmaker (some of your math may be funny, but useful to real people and immensly perlmonkish -- no prog/perl bg, good practices at the beginning). I see sanity checks, units of measurement conversions, price estimation.... ;D
 #!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; # How many fabrics are you using? my $number_of_fabrics; print "How many fabrics are you using? \n"; chomp($number_of_fabrics = ); $number_of_fabrics =~ s/\D//; # only allow number input ## $number_of_fabrics ||= 3; # assume default quietly unless($number_of_fabrics and $number_of_fabrics >=3 ) { warn "Ahem!!! You must enter a NUMBER >= 3, but that's ok, default + is 3"; $number_of_fabrics = 3; } #... more to come... ;D
 Disclaimer: Don't blame. It came from inside the void
 Wow. It never even occurred to me to put in widths like that, since quilting fabric is


Charles Darwin egg leaves Cambridge museum thrilled after cracking code
Darwin egg from Beagle voyage found
The egg in question. Photograph: University of Cambridge/PA
Just in time for Easter, a cracked brown egg, believed to be the last of a batch personally collected and then cackhandedly packed by Charles Darwin during his voyage on the Beagle, has turned up in the collection of Cambridge University's zoology museum.
The egg was found by a volunteer, Liz Wetton, who has been helping to catalogue the museum's gigantic collection of birds' eggs for ten years. She sorted, labelled and carefully repacked the egg, recording the fact that it bore the handwritten inscription C Darwin, and then moved on to the next drawer.
It was only when collections manager Mathew Lowe was reviewing her work that he realised the specimen was unique. With Mike Brooke, curator of ornithology, he traced the acquisition of the egg back to the notebook of a late 19th century zoology professor, Alfred Newton, a friend of Darwin and his son Frank.
The notebook also proved, lest anyone doubt her, that Wetton's handling of the egg was blameless, the damage was done over 150 years earlier.
Newton recorded: "One egg, received through Frank Darwin, having been sent to me by his father who said he got it at Maldonado and that it belonged to the Common Tinamou of those parts."
"The great man put it into too small a box, and hence its unhappy state."
Tinamous are related to rheas and ostriches, though they can fly. They are now more commonly known as Nothura, and one is named in the naturalist's honour, Nothura darwinii. Darwin would have stolen his specimens from a male bird, which incubate the eggs and raise the chicks.
It was the extraordinary variety of adaptations of species to their surroundings which fascinated the young naturalist on his five-year journey around the world on the Beagle. He brooded over his observations for years - until he finally published On The Origin of Species in 1859.
"To have discovered a Beagle specimen in the 200th year of Darwin's birth is special enough, but to have evidence that Darwin himself broke it is a wonderful twist," Lowe said.
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text:
Richard Owen created the Natural History Museum, and was the first superintendent. The year the Museum opened, this portrait was painted by William Holman Hunt, one of the most significant artists of his time.
Drawing of a human skeleton (left) and a gorilla skeleton by Richard Owen, 1866.
Richard Owen's teachers would not have predicted that the schoolboy prankster would become the eminent scientist shown in this portrait. But while training to be a surgeon he was taught to compare the body structures of humans with other animals, and his attention finally focused. He had found the vocation that would drive him to the top of the scientific ranks.
Owen led the science of comparative anatomy for almost 60 years, naming and describing hundreds of species.
He rose to fame in 1832 by publishing Memoir on the Pearly Nautilus, which is still in print today.
Owen was hugely respected by his peers, but also feared and resented. He guarded his professional reputation aggressively, challenging anyone who stood in his way. He clashed with Charles Darwin over opposing theories of evolution, and their friendship never recovered.
In contrast, Owen's family relationships were warm and loving.
Design for the main entrance of the Natural History Museum, sketched by architect Alfred Waterhouse in about 1872. © RIBA Library Drawings Collection
In 1856, the role of superintendent of natural history was created for Owen at the British Museum.
By now the most powerful scientist in the country, he lobbied for the natural history specimens to be moved to a separate museum.
Owen was determined to create a building that would do justice to the amazing diversity of nature and enable both scientists and the public to learn more about the national collections.
The first stones of our building at South Kensington in London were laid in 1873. Owen's ambitious plan was finally realised when this museum opened to the public in 1881.
That same year, William Holman Hunt painted Owen's portrait. A founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Hunt was one of the most famous artists of his day.
The Pre-Raphaelites' vibrant new approach to art reflected the dynamic and changing Victorian society. They painted often controversial social, religious and natural themes. The portrait of Owen is 1 of only 3 known portraits by Hunt - a fitting tribute to a remarkable, complex man.


text:
The average cost of shipping coal by railroad to power plants increased almost 50 percent in the United States from 2001 to 2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration Power Plant Operations Report (EIA-923) and U.S. Surface Transportation Board's Confidential Waybill Sample.
Railroad transport accounts for more than 70 percent of U.S. coal destined to the electric power sector, so changes in rail rates can have an important impact on the cost of coal delivered to power plants, the report said.
"Though they vary significantly, transportation costs accounted for 40 percent of the average overall cost of coal delivered at electric power plants in 2010," it was stated in the report.
On average, nominal U.S. rail rates for shipping coal grew from $11.83 to $17.25 per short ton from 2001 to 2010.
Rates grew slowly in the beginning of the decade before increasing almost 11 percent in 2005, then continuing to grow at a relatively robust pace until the recession, the report said.
"However, the impact of the recession on transportation rates was short-lived as rates grew more than 9 percent in 2010," it said.
National numbers can be misleading, however, as regional dynamics tend to vary considerably among the six major coal basins, the report added.
"For example, Southern Appalachian coal costs increased more than 10 percent annually in 2001-10, while Powder River Basin (PRB) rates grew 1.5 percent over the same period. For a few PRB destination states, rates fell during this period," the report stated. "The wide range in minemouth coal prices and transportation distances across the United States create significant variation in the impact of transportation rates on overall coal costs, with different basins affected to significantly differing degrees."
While rail transportation costs for Appalachian and Illinois Basin coals as a percent of total delivered cost fall in the low 20 percent range, the relatively low commodity cost of PRB coal, and the long distances it travels, results in transportation costs that averaged almost 60 percent of the total delivered cost in 2010—more than the commodity itself, according to the report.
State-level data show further variation in rate changes over 2001-2010. At the high and low ends, Virginia-to-Tennessee rates grew 83 percent, while Wyoming-to-Kansas rates fell 23 percent — a 106 percentage point swing, the report concluded.