text:
NYS Library Core Work Values and Groundrules
This document proposes a set of core values and groundrules for the State Library's Research Library. The document was prepared by the Parallel Organization and is reviewed by the Strategic Planning Management Group (Exec and Associates).
Core Work Values: Core work values are statements that articulate the attitudes and values of the people who work in the Library.
Groundrules: Groundrules are based on the core work values and are meant to express those values in terms of a set of behaviors or actions.
Core Work Value I: We are here to serve the public.
- Kinds of Service provided:
- We will provide the highest quality service possible.
- When we cannot fulfill the requests of Library patrons, we will suggest alternatives.
- Ways in Which Service is Provided:
- We will treat our customers as we would like to be treated.
- We will always provide prompt, friendly, courteous and professional customer service.
- We will try to explain our services in the most positive manner possible (i.e. emphasize what we can do for people, rather than restrictions.)
- We will train staff to provide the best customer service.
- Customer service will take precedence over all other activities.
Core Work Value II: We are all part of one Library, and we work together towards our common goals.
- Library-wide goals and priorities:
- Library-wide goals and priorities will be established and made clear to all staff.
- Library-wide priorities take precedence over Service Area and work unit priorities.
- Service Areas and work units will communicate with each other how their work fits in with the common goals and priorities.
- Services will be re-evaluated at least annually to ensure they are meeting our goals and priorities.
- Deployment of staff (i.e. changing staff assignments within the context of their job titles) will be re-evaluated at least annually based on priorities.
- Once a goal or priority is set, all staff will support and work towards it.
- Commitment to the Whole Library:
- Loyalty to the whole Library is more important than loyalty to your Service Area or work unit.
- Principal Librarians will make decisions based first on what is good for the Library as a whole, and then on what is good for their Service Area.
- Service Areas and work units will cooperate with each other to the extent of sharing staff and resources when necessary.
- More staff will be involved in Library-wide committees in order to contribute to the whole of the Library.
- Managers and staff will maintain a cooperative environment with the Director of the Library as the head of the institution.
- Managers and staff will uphold team principles within their work units and committees, including an understanding that:
- Managers and supervisors need to find a balance between making decisions and delegating work and authority to others.
- Staff need to make suggestions for improvement in a reasonable and courteous manner.
- Managers and supervisors need to listen carefully to their staff's suggestions.
- Staff should have a part in decision making when appropriate.
- After receiving staff input, final decisions are the responsibility of the leadership and management of the Library.
- The Executive Group will work as a team with open and honest communication.
- Managers will communicate information to their staff in an accurate and timely manner.
- Managers will set an example to all staff, by working cooperatively together and putting the Library first.
- Staff with special expertise, knowledge, or experience will pass along what they know to other staff.
Core Work Value III: We are committed to working to the best of our abilities.
- Every person working in the Library will:
- Recognize that each person's work is an important part of the Library.
- Be thorough and accurate in their work.
- Be flexible and willing to pitch in and help where needed.
- Follow the rules and procedures of the Library.
- Managers and Supervisors will:
- Be a model for their staff in terms of how to treat other people.
- Be clear and specific about their expectations of staff.
- Provide honest feedback to staff, both the positive and negative, so that people know how they have performed.
- Give constructive criticism that critiques the work not the person.
- Provide timely, accurate information to staff.
- Provide staff with the right training to do quality work.
- Take every opportunity to recognize staff for work that is well done --
- Insure that all of the people who have done the work get recognized.
- Recognize quality of work, not just quantity.
- Staff will:
- Let supervisors know if there is anything that keeps them from doing quality work (e.g. supplies, equipment, training).
- Let supervisors know if there is anything that keeps them from doing a particular assignment (e.g. work load problems, expertise, physical limitations).
- Recognize that managers and supervisors are human too.
Core Work Value IV: We value and respect each other.
- Behavior of all Library Staff: We will treat each other with respect, courtesy and professionalism. We will:
- Take responsibility for our own actions.
- Treat our colleagues at all grade levels as we wish to be treated.
- Always act in an adult and appropriate manner towards each other.
- Value the work that everyone does in the Library.
- Managers' and Supervisors' Responsibilities: Managers and supervisors have special responsibility to model the Library's core values. Therefore, managers and supervisors will:
- Remember they have a great deal of authority, and therefore should use that authority in a fair, measured way.
- Bring any lapses in professional behavior directly to that staff person's attention.
- Respect confidentiality.


DEV Community
Loading Audio in Node JS
Hugh Rawlinson
Contributor to _USER_.
Originally published at Updated on ・7 min read
Working with audio as a developer can unlock many awesome features, and a lot of fun. You can generate music, analyze audio using machine learning, build audio visualizers, music information retrieval systems, and much more. It's an extremely fun field. But working with audio can be tricky - how is sound represented on a computer? How can we manipulate that sound? And how do we serialize sound data to disk?
Pulse Code Modulation Encoding
This post won't be a deep dive into audio encoding - it's a practical guide for how to load audio in Node JS, into a state that you can work with it. Generally, digital signal processing (which means "working with audio data using code") operates on a kind of audio data called Pulse Code Modulation. There's a lot of fancy theory and maths behind PCM encoding - but until you're ready to dive in to Wikipedia, you can think of it as "a long list of numbers that represent the change in air pressure over time that makes up a sound". This is, after all, what a microphone measures and converts into numbers.
Each number in the list that makes up a sound is called a "sample". The sample can be represented on disk as one of several kinds of numbers - floating point numbers, integers, or other representations. The number of bits that represent the number affect the precision of the number - for example, 16 bit numbers can have much more precision than 8 bit numbers. The number of bits in each sample is referred to as the "bit depth".
Sample Rate
Another important attribute of PCM encoded audio is the "sample rate". This refers to the rate at which samples should be played in order for the sound to be at the right speed. For reasons outside the scope of this post, the sample rate dictates the highest frequency component that can be represented in a sound. For the purposes of most audio intended for human listening, it's important to store audio at a sample rate slightly higher than double the maximum frequencies that humans can hear. Since humans can't really hear audio over 20,000hz, a standard sample rate has emerged at 44,100hz. The "hz" unit here refers to hertz, which means "samples per second". Sometimes you can encounter audio with a higher or lower sample frequency - audio for movies can be up to 192,000hz, and signals representing things that aren't meant for human hearing (for example, geological sonar scans) might not need as many as 44,100 samples per second.
Loading PCM audio from disk
Several audio file formats store PCM encoded audio directly - wav and aiff are examples.
Luckily, other developers have implemented great libraries that handle the complexities of parsing wav files for you. I recommend node-wav, by Andreas Gal. It's got a simple API, and uses the metadata at the start of the wav file to automatically choose the correct sample rate, bit depth, and number encoding. From the readme, here is a code example.
let fs = require('fs');
let wav = require('node-wav');
let buffer = fs.readFileSync('file.wav');
let result = wav.decode(buffer);
console.log(result.channelData); // array of Float32Arrays
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The result.channelData variable contains a list of signals that you can use as standard Javascript Float32Arrays. The result object also exposes the sample rate, which you will likely need to know for many operations.
If you're using Meyda to analyze audio that you load in this way, you will need to make sure that the sample rate of the audio matches the sample rate that Meyda is set to use. Otherwise you'll end up with audio features that are incorrect, and based on a skewed frequency scale. You can either match the Meyda sample rate to the wav sample rate, or you can resample the audio to fit a standard sample rate (i.e. 44,100hz, or 48,000hz). Resampling audio is a complicated topic beyond the scope of this article, but if you have trouble finding information online, let me know and I may find time to write an article.
AIFF files also store PCM audio data, but differ from WAV files in that they have a different header format for storing metadata. node-wav doesn't support AIFF files, and I haven't found a package I would recommend to do so. If you need to analyze AIFF files, I would suggest using a utility like ffmpeg to transcode the audio to wav.
What about non-PCM audio formats?
But what about audio file formats like mp3, ogg, and flac? The difference between these formats and wav is that the audio is compressed on disk. mp3 and ogg are what's called "lossy" compression - that means they change the actual sound in ways that are hopefully imperceptible to most listeners in order to get better compression. flac, meanwhile, is a format that implements lossless compression. This means that it encodes audio on disk in a more efficient format than storing each sample as a full integer or floating point number, but without modifying the audio itself.
Encoding agnostic signal processing code
It's best to write signal processing code that works with one representation of audio, and reuse it by converting the audio - rather than having one implementation of your signal processing code for each audio encoding. We can achieve code reusability by converting all audio to a common format for signal processing, so that your code only has to think about one representation. Libraries that do this are called "codecs" which comes from "enCOding/DECoding". In order to support a particular file format in your program, you will need to make sure that you have the right codec. Luckily, you don't need to understand each audio format and implement a codec yourself - you can use packages to do this. So when you're writing your signal processing code, you should write code that works on raw signals, not encoded or compressed. In many cases, in Javascript, signals are represented as Float32Arrays - and unless you have specific requirements where this causes a limitation for you, I would recommend sticking to writing code that assumes signals are in Float32Arrays.
Loading alternative encodings from disk
While there are some implementations of mp3 encoders in Javascript, I would actually recommend calling out to another technology to do the transcoding. ffmpeg is a long running open source project that excels in media encoding. It can translate between many different media encodings, and I'm confident that it covers a huge portion of transcoding needs. In Node, you can call out to ffmpeg using the child_process API.
import { exec } from "child_process";
import { mkdtemp } from "fs/promises";
import path from "path";
import os from "os";
// Create a temporary directory to store transcoded audio
const TEMP_DIR = await mkdtemp(path.join(os.tmpdir(), "transcoder-storage-"));
async function transcodeToWav(filename) {
 return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
 let output_filename = '${path.join(TEMP_DIR, filename)}.wav';
 // "shell out" to ffmpeg
 'ffmpeg -i ${filename} ${output_filename}',
 (error, stdout, stderr) => {
 if (error) {
 console.log("ERROR: ", error);
 resolve({ filename: output_filename, stdout, stderr });
try {
 let result = await transcodeToWav("./164064__cclaretc__rooster.mp3");
 // result.filename is the new filename of the transcoded audio.
 // We can now use node-wav as described above to read the audio
 let buffer = fs.readFileSync('file.wav');
 let decodedAudio = wav.decode(buffer);
 console.log(decodedAudio.channelData); // array of Float32Arrays
} catch {}
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I'm using a modern version of Nodejs which allows imports, top level await in.mjs files, and exposes the fs/promises interface, but this code refactors back to older versions of node if you need.
One thing to bear in mind is that in order for this to work, you need to have a copy of ffmpeg on the system that you're running the code on. Luckily, there's a package for that - ffmpeg-static is a dependency that you can include in your project that installs a statically linked copy of ffmpeg. You can use it to ensure that ffmpeg is always available to your code. Check it out!
But what about the web?
While in theory it might be possible to run ffmpeg through emscripten and run it in a web worker (I certainly assume someone has done this), it's not necessarily practical to try and use the same technique from node to transcode audio on the web. The good news is that the w3c has chartered a working group to focus on web codecs. While this is at the time of writing still in early stages, the working group is powering ahead on designing and proposing an API to enable media transcoding on the web, and hopefully that will become available to us in the near future.
What did we learn?
In this blog post, I covered the basics of Pulse Code Modulation encoding, how to load wav files from disk, the difference between wav files and other audio encoding file formats, transcoding other file formats to wav for loading in node, and how transcoding might soon work outside of node, but on the web. I hope these explanations have been useful to you. If anything is unclear, or you have more questions, please let me know on Twitter! Thanks for reading.


text:
11.3. Supported Authentication Schemes
Role-Based Access Control works with the standard authentication providers that are included with JBoss EAP 6.2. The standard authentication providers are:
client certificate, and
- Users are authenticated using a username and password combination which is verified against either the
mgmt-users.propertiesfile, or an LDAP server.
- Client Certificate
- Using the Trust Store.
- Local User
jboss-cli.shauthenticates automatically as Local User if the server that is running on the same machine. By default Local User is a member of the
Regardless of which provider is used, JBoss EAP is responsible for the assignment of roles to users. However when authenticating with the
mgmt-users.propertiesfile or an LDAP server, those systems can supply user group information. This information can also be used by JBoss EAP to assign roles to users.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


text:
Comprehensive decision analytical modelling in economic evaluation: a Bayesian approach.
Decision analytical models are widely used in economic evaluation of health care interventions with the objective of generating valuable information to assist health policy decision-makers to allocate scarce health care resources efficiently. The whole decision modelling process can be summarised in four stages: (i) a systematic review of the relevant data (including meta-analyses), (ii) estimation of all inputs into the model (including effectiveness, transition probabilities and costs), (iii) sensitivity analysis for data and model specifications, and (iv) evaluation of the model. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how the individual components of decision modelling, outlined above, may be addressed simultaneously in one coherent Bayesian model (sometimes known as a comprehensive decision analytical model) and evaluated using Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation implemented in the specialist software WinBUGS. To illustrate the method described, it is applied to two illustrative examples: (1) The prophylactic use of neurominidase inhibitors for the prevention of influenza. (2) The use of taxanes for the second-line treatment of advanced breast cancer. The advantages of integrating the four stages outlined into one comprehensive decision analytical model, compared to the conventional 'two-stage' approach, are discussed.
Cooper, NJ; Sutton, AJ; Abrams, KR; Turner, D; Wailoo, A
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text:
Comparing levels of homoplasy in the primate skeleton.
Hard-tissue morphological characters (bones and teeth) are a primary source of information about the evolutionary history of primates. These tissues are commonly found as isolated elements in the fossil record and studied as three separate partitions: the dentition, the cranium, and the postcranium. The relative phylogenetic utility of characters from each partition is often called into question with respect to varying amounts of homoplasy. In this paper, the consistency index (CI) was used to measure levels of homoplasy in each data partition for a sample of fossil and living primates. Sources of bias in the collection and treatment of data and in the internal structure of the data set are addressed. These biases include number of taxa, number of characters, ordering of characters, amounts of polymorphically scored or missing data, and character-state distribution. The results of this study suggest that the levels of homoplasy are very similar, though the postcranial data may be slightly less homoplastic than either the dental or cranial data.
Volume / Issue
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Pubmed Central ID
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
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How does propane compare to other forms of energy?
Propane provides similar performance to natural gas, and anything in your home or business that can run on natural gas can run on propane. However, propane burns less volume per hour than natural gas, which can save you money in the long run. Plus, while natural gas is restricted to a municipal grid, propane can be supplied anywhere.
In addition, propane can cost up to half as much as electricity, saving you 30% on your hot water alone. And, unlike electricity, propane will keep your systems running even in a power outage.
Propane also produces significantly fewer greenhouse gas emissions than diesel, gasoline, and electricity. It's nontoxic and safe for soil and groundwater supplies. And, because propane burns cleaner than other fuels, propane-powered appliances require less maintenance.


text: Brazilian sociologist Marcelo Rosa has published an important critique of social theory (download), comparing the approaches of Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Jean and John Comaroff and Raewyn Connell. Though he singles out Connell as an approach that allows for alternative southern voices, he concludes from their differing uses of theories an inconsistency in the notion of 'southern theory'. In reference to the French sociologists Boltanski and Chiapello, he describes this use of south as a 'circumstantial project'. As such, Rosa is vulnerable to the same critique he has levelled at others in marginalising southern perspectives by contrast to northern theory. Diversity of approaches does not necessarily imply contradictions in the field. They can indicate a dynamic argument that is activating an alternative field of inquiry.


text:
Translation Quote per Word
In this highly competitive global environment, Trusted Translations understands your need to have projects stay within budget. Thus, we have implemented a quote process that is designed to provide you with the greatest amount of accuracy and precision regarding pricing prior to starting any translation project. One way we accomplish this precision is to quote using a price-per-word methodology. This, in our opinion, is the fairest pricing method and provides our clients with lower costs and more transparency.
Quotes per Source Word Count
Nearly all translation projects start with a set of source documents (i.e., the original documents) that need to be translated into another language (target). As only the source documents are available at the start of a project, we firmly believe the most transparent and fair way to price a document is using a source-based word count. Our sophisticated tools are equipped to determine exact word counts of source documents, providing you with the most accurate quote prior to starting a project.
Using a source word count will avoid the hassle and confusion of having only an estimated word count of final translation (target) and eliminate any unpleasant surprises at the time of invoicing. Furthermore, our experience has shown that clients save money when using our pricing methodology as the source documents tend to have fewer words than the final (target) translated documents. Clients can save between 20-30% under our pricing methodology.
Trusted Translations will provide you with a free quote at the budgeting phase to provide you with clear numbers prior to commencing a project and help you assess whether a certain translation project is right for you at this time.
Advantages of Quote per Source Word Count
The following are some advantages of using a Source Word Count pricing methodology:
- Since pricing is based on the source documents (which are available at the beginning of the project), it is firm and will not change based on the number of words of the translated text.
- You will save money. Given the natural text expansion of translated text, you will save up to 30% depending on the language pair.
- No surprises. As the source word count does not change, you will be sure to stay within budget.
Drawbacks of Quote per Target Word Count
The following are some of the drawbacks of using a target-based quoting methodology:
- Target-based quotes are only estimates as no translation company can accurately predict the word count of a translated document.
- You pay more. Target word counts tend to be 20% higher due to text expansion of translated materials.
- The actual price to be invoiced is not known until the end of the process. You will need to wait until all the work is complete to get a final price for your project. This can lead to unpleasant surprises at the time of invoicing.
Quotes per Target Word Count
There are some notable exceptions to the criteria of using the source word count when pricing a translation. There are some cases where the better choice is to set the prices according to the word count of the target language:
- Translation of an audio file without a word count;
- When the source material is not available in an editable electronic format (paper format);
- Translation from an Asian language;
- Proofreading services.
In these instances, we have found that pricing is more accurate when using the target language word count versus the source word count.
Text Contraction and Expansion for Different Language Pairs
Based on statistical industry-wide evidence and our own experience from translating millions of words annually, translating to and from certain languages will result in either text expansion or text contraction. This can have an impact on costs as well as the formatting of the translated document. Translated documents with text expansion may need to be modified to accommodate more text. In the case of legal documents or documents regulated by a government agency, desktop publishing or recreation services may be necessary to ensure that the final document complies with the legal text size and page number requirement.
The following are industry-wide benchmarks with respect to text expansion or contraction.
- English to Spanish: 20% expansion
- English to Portuguese (Brazil): 20 to 30% expansion
- Portuguese (Brazil) to English (U.S.): 10 to 15% contraction
- Spanish to English: 15% contraction
- English to French: 15 to 20% expansion
- English to German: 5 to 20% contraction
- English to Italian: 15% expansion
- English to Portuguese (Eur.): 20 to 30% expansion
- French to English: 10 to 15% contraction
- German to English: 5 to 40% expansion
- Italian to English: 15% contraction
- Portuguese (Eur.) to English: 10 to 15% contraction
- Spanish to English: 15% contraction
Translation Price per Word
At Trusted Translations, we provide our client with the most competitive pricing and the highest quality in the industry. We are proud of our ability to provide high-quality translations while saving your organization money on every project. To take advantage of our free quote tools, please send us the documents you plan to translate. If the project involves a large amount of words and is format sensitive, we will provide you with a free translation test to determine the impact that any potential contraction or expansion may have on the final output.


text:
Photo: Melissa Trachtenberg
According to a study done by researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, the longer it takes a woman to get pregnant, the greater her chances of having a boy.
See, one reason why some women have trouble conceiving is that the mucous around their cervix is extra thick. That makes it harder for sperm to reach the egg. Now, the Y chromosome, which is the one that makes boys, contains less DNA than the X chromosome, which makes girls. This means that sperm that contain a Y chromosome are a bit lighter than sperm with two X chromosomes.
The lighter, Y chromosome carrying sperm are faster and better at swimming through thick cervical mucous. At least the Y chromosome carrying sperm may have a better shot at getting through the mucous and reaching the egg. So, according to the study, it may be the case that women who take a long time to get pregnant because of thick mucous have a better chance of having a boy.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


Top 5 Superfoods for Sex and Healing
1. Cacao (raw chocolate) [In Shakeology]
2. Goji Berries (Wolfberries)
3. Maca [In Shakeology]
4. Camu Camu Berry [In Shakeology]
Is Shakeology safe while pregnant or nursing?
Is Shakeology safe while pregnant or nursing?A lot of people ask if it's safe to consume Shakeology while they are pregnant or nursing. While I appreciate when moms are careful about what they eat when they're eating for two. I can't help but wonder if they asked the same question about processed foods with preservatives and dyes. Or meat that includes the infamous "pink slime." Eeeeww! And although I'm not a nutritionist or medical professional, the short answer is: Yes! Shakeology is safe for pregnant and nursing moms and their babies–unless the mom has an allergy or sensitivity to an ingredient. So for those who just wanted the short answer, you don't have to read any further, but you should.
It's important to note that only 6% of all physicians in the US receive formal nutrition training (statistic quoted from the film "Food Matters") and many do not learn about breastfeeding, either. Women have told me that their doctor told them Shakeology is not safe for pregnancy due to the amount of vitamin A in it. This tells me that the doctor is only partially educated on the matter. It is true that high amounts of vitamin A in the form of retinol–which is preformed vitamin A from animal sources–have been correlated to birth defects. However, the vitamin A in Shakeology is in the form of plant-based beta carotene, which converts to vitamin A in the body. No studies at all have suggested that beta carotene has any correlation to birth defects. The rate of conversion of beta carotene to vitamin A is drastically reduced when higher amounts are ingested, preventing toxicity and teratogenicity. The Teratology Society concluded that beta carotene is not a teratogen (substance that causes birth defects) according to an excellent article by the Illinois Teratogen Information Service.
Shakeology is made from all natural ingredients, none of which are contraindicated for pregnancy or breastfeeding. Check out this video about where the ingredients come from.
You should always seek advice from a medical care provider, however–based on the fact that most have not had formal nutrition training, it is important to do your own research as well. Ask lots of questions and find out the reasons for any medical advice you receive. It is important to remember that doctors do not always agree on what's best, and they are advisors, not the ultimate decision maker. You are the only one in charge of your body, your baby and the health of both of you!


The cracked chalk connection to learning
World Vision International
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Ordinarily broken chalk never meant much to most children except perhaps for the purpose of pelting one another with the fragmented pieces. While most grade fives dash out of class and head home, eleven year old Amina and a few others linger behind quickly gathering left-over chalk from the day's lessons.
With enough saved up chalk pieces Amina will put it to good use to teach her siblings when she visits them at her father's homestead. Amina is from a polygamist family. During the school term she lives with her mother in Fuwa village in the seaside town of Tanga region. During the school holidays she travels over to Amani village where her father, siblings and stepmother reside.
 "After school hours I go round all classrooms to pick up pieces of chalk left on the floor so that during the holiday I make a blackboard and can teach my siblings what I was taught in school. When I am on my holiday I visit my father and there is where I get the chance to teach my siblings. But I received text books, exercise books from World Vision so I know and I can teach my siblings to read and write", says Amina.
Amina is a sponsored child and her school in Fuwa village was built by World Vision Tanzania (WVT). It is here she gathers the chalk remnants, broken pieces that are giving her younger sisters a glimpse of a brighter future. Through partnerships with local families, community groups, faith-based organisations and governments, World Vision works to break the cycle of poverty, create long-term changes and to ensure that over time, all children in the community benefit from improved access to healthcare, educational opportunities, clean water and sanitation, nutritious food and the chance to participate in decisions affecting their lives.
 "My siblings did not get the chance to go to school because my family faced some challenges. It hurt me a lot so when am in class I listen carefully so that I will help my sisters when I go home on holiday. I see a bright future ahead of me and also I want the same for my siblings", Amina expressed.
"I thank World Vision and my sponsor for enabling me to reach this point, I can now help my younger sisters at home to read and write, and I know that next year they will all be going to school and they will be the best students because they have learnt a lot even before they have started their studies", Amina concluded.
Similarly, in Amani village, where Amina's father lives, World Vision also has development activities through the Mazingara Area Development Programme (ADP). Before WVT's support to the area the community lacked schools and apparatus for their children. Poverty was rife. There was little knowledge of livestock keeping and farming. The dispensaries were few and far-flung; it was risky especially for pregnant who often lost babies either on the way to the health facility or because of the lack of specialized medical attendants.
"We did not have enough schools, classes were few, children walked long distances and it was unsafe for most of the young girls but since World Vision came to our village everything changed. Through the project, children have been sponsored, schools and wells built and training has been given to most of the community so as to pull us out of poverty life", explained Amina's father.
Amina's family was also given a cow. However, this did not work out well and the family sold the cow and bought chickens and goats instead. Amina's father is now a skilled farmer and livestock keeper able to successfully plant crops and rear livestock. He adds, "thanks to World Vision for the seminar that was conducted to help improve the economy of Amani community".
News Source : The cracked chalk connection to learning


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What Moves Swiss Franc Currency Futures?
usdchf price study
Swiss Franc currency futures are widely traded in the currency future markets and Swiss Franc is one of the most stable currency in the world's foreign exchange market
It is the national currency for the European countries of Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The Swiss currency is regulated by the Swiss National Bank (SNB).
For decades, Switzerland has been an international banking and financial center This currency is considered stable because it is strongly backed by the Swiss government's gold reserves. The Swiss economy is also a very strong economy and as a result the currency is not likely to suffer from frequent and sudden spike in value.
Swiss Franc is considered a safe haven currency by countries around the world.
Daily Swiss Franc Prices (CME)
Economic Indicators Affecting Swiss Franc Currency Futures
Switzerland's Unemployment Rate
Recently one of the most important economic indicators that has influenced the Swiss Franc exchange rate has been the rising unemployment rate. Major Swiss companies in the retail sector, travel and banking are worried that a strengthening Swiss Franc might lead to a rise in unemployment.
In addition, the Swiss National Bank expects Swiss GNP growth to fall slightly this year. Clearly these would not help improve the employment rate. The growth of the Swiss economy has been affected and has exerted some downward pressure on the currency.
usdchf point and figure chart
Swiss Franc Currency Futures Strengthening Due To European Problems
Over the past few months, the Swiss currency appreciated in value against the Euro. This was the result of the financial meltdown in European countries like Greece,Spain and Ireland. External trade with other European countries affects the strength of the Swiss Franc. Two thirds of all trade is conducted with Europe.
Investors panicked and there had been a stampede to convert their currencies to Swiss money. The appreciation of Swiss Franc does not help Swiss companies as it causes a fall of exports to other European countries. Conversely, a stronger European economy would lead to a fall in value of their Currency and Swiss companies would be able to increase exports to other European countries.
Government Intervention In Swiss Franc Currency
The recent rise in value of their currency affected the growth of the Swiss economy. To protect their economy the Swiss government warned that they would buy up unlimited amount of foreign currencies in an attempt to protect their own currency.
This strong talk has convinced foreign exchange investors that they should not attempt to continue trading in a manner that would further drive up the value of the Swiss Franc or else the Swiss government could intervene.
Swiss Franc Is Stable
This currency will continue to be regarded as a very stable currency due to the fact that it is backed by the Swiss Government. It is also the world's best inflation-resistant money. It is well-know that Switzerland has a strong workforce, with the banking and insurance industry employing over fifty per cent of the population.
Hence the Swiss Franc currency futures will continue to be regarded as one of the safest bet by investors in times of uncertainty.


Arthur Pequegnat Canadian Time wall clock
Pequegnat wall clock
Canadian Time clock by Arthur Pequegnat
The Canadian Time clock was made by the Arthur Pequegnat Clock company. The Arthur Pequegnat Clock Company (1904–1941) is notable as the longest lasting Canadian-based clock manufacturer.
My particular clock was made after 1917 and was made in Kitchener, Ontario (Canada). Clocks made before 1917 were inscribed "Berlin" on the dial face. Kitchener was known as Berlin prior to and during the first World War. It was the town of Berlin from 1854 until 1912 and the City of Berlin from 1912 until 1916. Because the name Berlin was associated with the war against Germany the decision was made to change the name to Kitchener midway through the First World War. Kitchener is the present seat of the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, Ontario.
Label affixed to back of clock
Unfortunately, the precise year that my clock was manufactured is unknown, however the Canadian Time series was made right up to 1941. By 1941, the demands of World War II armament makers for brass, the essential ingredient in clock movements, pressed the Arthur Pequegnat company to stop production. If my clock was made in 1941, it's age would be 72 years. There are no actual markings on the movement indicating the year it was made.
Checking on condition of the clock
It has Arabic numbers as most were ordered with Roman Numerals. Being a railway clock Arabic numbers would have made it easier to read by common folk in a train station. One could order the clock from the manufacturer with either Arabic or Roman numerals. In addition one could also order a time / strike / calendar version of this clock.
Crossed horseshoes
On prominent display in my home
I have seen only one other clock with the cross horseshoes that you can see in one of the photos so they were likely added after the clock was made.
I am trying to locate a photo of the clock while it was hanging in the Pictou, Nova Scotia train station prior to the station's decommissioning in the early 1990s. If I can locate a photograph it would help me date the clock more accurately.
The clock is quite large measuring 37 inches high, 5 inches deep and 15 inches across and made of quarter-sawn oak that results in boards with the annual rings mostly perpendicular to the face yielding greater stability with less warping.
The Canadian Time clock is a reasonably accurate clock and is indeed a testament to the quality and care that went into the crafting of this fine timepiece.
2 thoughts on "Arthur Pequegnat Canadian Time wall clock
 1. I have the exact same clock. yours is the only other I've seen with Arabic numerals. I always thought it was a school clock for some reason.
 1. Thanks for your email. They were found in offices, schools and rail stations and kept excellent time for a spring driven clock. In fact, they were most commonly used as an office clock. I don't see many with Arabic numerals either but you could order one or the other from the factory at that time.
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The outbreak of war with Germany on 3 September 1939 saw some 500 New Zealanders serving with the Royal Air Force (RAF). Some, like Group Captain Roderick Carr, had continued their World War One service in the RAF, whilst others had come over independently to seek short service commissions as war clouds loomed over Britain. All were keen to do their bit. On the outbreak of war, the RNZAF also began to supply newly trained aircrew for the RAF and a steady stream of New Zealanders was beginning to arrive in Britain by early 1940. Some joined units in France, ready to go to war.
This online exhibition represents their forgotten story and in some cases, their words.


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Humanity seems to be intent on teaching robots how to destroy us. We've taught them to keep steady when they get knocked and to keep going when they get damaged. Now scientists are teaching them how to stay upright when we jump kick them in the back.
A group of researchers from the Italian Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University have been working on teaching human-shaped robots how to keep their balance when they get hit from behind. As you can see in the video above, researchers hit their robot in the back with a pole, a weight suspended from the ceiling, and then just flat out started jump kicking it in the back. In each instance, the robot interpreted the force of the hit on its back, and braced itself on a wall in front of it.
At some point, researchers for some reason placed what appears to be a figurine of WWE wrestler John Cena atop the weight. Perhaps the researchers had some anger issues they needed to work out. Or they are in the early stages of prepping for a robot fighting league.
The researchers' work addresses one of the hurdles that needs to be overcome if we're ever to have humanoid robots in our lives: These heavy, mobile hunks of steel and complicated circuitry fall over very easily. That was perhaps most obvious at last summer's DARPA Robotics Challenge, where robots competed to finish a obstacle course that featured problems they might face in a disaster situation. The robots fell over a lot, inspiring the research team to try to find a solution.
The researchers said they hope in the long term to have the robot be able to balance without bracing itself against something—a skill that would be useful in disaster response situations, which often involve debris-littered environments.
This isn't the only work being done on robot balance. Researchers at Georgia Tech are also teaching robots how to brace for impact when they get knocked down. The idea behind the research is that when we eventually have humanoid robots in our lives, they'll want to be able to protect themselves from damage in our environment in the same way that we would. But when the robots rise up, this ability to protect themselves could well be our undoing.


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Working, creating and playing with reusable materials helps children acquire skills such as creativity, confidence, problem solving, focus and persistence. Children communicate their understanding of concepts and the world with materials. Our workshops are intended for teachers who would like to incorporate stimulating arts media and open ended materials into the classroom. A certificate with contact hours will be provided upon the conclusion on the workshops. Workshops offered in the past have included:
Introduction to UpCycling with Young Learners -
Using Open Ended Materials With Children
Workshop participants learn how to collect, prepare, store and display a wide array of reusable materials that young children can use to explore and communicate their understanding of the world. The presentation highlights the benefits of including open-ended materials with children and provides innovative, yet practical, ideas for using them with young children. We start by describing core skills that young children develop by experimenting with reuse materials, and then show how these skills lay the foundation for facilitated group and self-directed work in later years. Participants have an opportunity to try out the activities described in the presentation.
Additional Workshop Topics
See below and check our blog for UpCycle's workshop topics. We can customize a workshop to suit your needs!
Materials Workshop - Printmaking and Paper Cloth
Workshop participants explore the possibilities of working with young children to print and make paper cloth From found object printing, to making print plates, to developing a printing process to use with children, many different printing techniques will be shared. We will also make paper cloth, a collage material that is part paper and part fabric. This unique and beautiful product can be used for sewing, book binding and more.


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In 2008, the authors published a review that highlighted an emerging trend for medical schools to change their names to those of wealthy donors. Since 2008, the names of ten benefactors have been added to the medical schools receiving their gifts. Twenty-three of the 141 U.S. medical schools accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education are currently named after donors. Large donations have the potential to positively affect all stakeholders by improving the resources that are available for research, teaching, and clinical care, but the rapid increase in the naming of medical schools after wealthy benefactors raises important concerns for those same stakeholders. In this perspective, the authors explore such concerns and identify mitigating strategies that institutions facing these issues in the future can use to ensure that the benefit associated with a gift outweighs any adverse impact. The authors argue for a strong presumption of impropriety when a donor possesses a conflict of interest with the potential to affect clinicians' judgment. They go on to assess how donors' control of funds may have an impact on institutional mission and research agenda, and analyze the right of an organization to remove a benefactor's name for alleged wrongdoing. The perspective considers how renaming may negatively affect brand recognition and the associated impact on students, residents, faculty, and alumni. Finally, it concludes with an analysis of taxpayer-funded organizations and the concern that educational renaming will lead to a slippery slope in which other public goods are effectively purchased by wealthy donors.
(C) 2014 by the Association of American Medical Colleges


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FEKT-NEICAcad. year: 2019/2020
The main idea of the course is to introduce the students to the procedures of designing and realizing safe, harmless electrical installation in civic utility buildings. The course is oriented towards developing the students' practical skills.
Learning outcomes of the course unit
Upon completion of the course, the students will be able to perform the following tasks:
- describe distribution networks in the Czech Republic
- define the conditions of electricity supply in the Czech Republic
- determine the method for realizing electrical installation in a civic amenities building
- specify the technique of protecting the power line against overcurrent
- determine the method of protection against electric shock
- define the risk of damage by lightning
- select a lightning protection system
- select a system of protective measures against an electromagnetic pulse
- specify a method for the realization of fire-safe electrical installation
Students wishing to enroll in the course are expected to be capable of applying Kirchhoff's and Ohm's laws, and they should be able to analyze the circuits in a three-phase system.
Recommended optional programme components
Recommended or required reading
Soubor norem ČSN 33 2000-1 až 7,ČNI (CS)
IEC 60364: Electrical installations of buildins, set of standards (EN)
DVOŘÁČEK, K. Správná a bezpečná elektroinstalace. ERA Brno 2004, ISBN 80-86517-53-5 (CS)
DVOŘÁČEK, K. Speciální elektroinstalace. ERA Brno 2005, ISBN 80-7366-018-0 (CS)
KUNC, J. Elektroinstalace krok za krokem. GRADA 2003, ISBN 80-_PHONE_-1 (CS)
STEINBAUER, M.; KALÁB, P. Elektrické instalace. Brno: Ing. Zdeněk Novotný, CSc. Ondráčkova 105, 628 00 Brno, 2009. s. 1-130. ISBN: 978-80-_PHONE_- 2. (CS)
BURANT, J. – BRABEC, L.: Požární bezpečnost elektrických instalací. IN-EL Praha 2004 (CS)
BURANT, J.: Blesk a přepětí. FCC Public Praha 2006 (CS)
MACHÁČEK, V.: Elektrické přípojky z vedení distribuční soustavy a připojování konečných zákazníků. IN-EL Praha 2005 (CS)
Hasse, P. Wiesinger, J.::EMV Blitz Schutzzonen Koncept,Pflaum Verlag Mnichov, 1993 (DE)
Planned learning activities and teaching methods
Teaching methods include lectures, seminars and practical laboratory exercises. The course uses eLearning (Moodle) system.
Assesment methods and criteria linked to learning outcomes
The only component subject to assessment consists in the final project, where the applicable classification range is 0 – 100 points (classified credit).
Language of instruction
1. Concepts of lv electrical installation
2. Electrical connections
3. Inlet structures
4. Distribution frames behind electricity meter
5. Dimensioning and protection of power lines
6. Protection against electric shock
7. Electrical installation designs
8. Protection and safety devices; short circuit resistance; selectivity; voltage loss
9. Lightning protection: persons and buildings
10. Protecting electrical and electronic systems against electromagnetic effects of lightning
11. Electrical installation in special structures
12. Fire resistant electrical installation
13. Final revision. How to become a design engineer.
The course has been set up to teach the methods of using up-to-date elements and systems to design electrical installation in tenement or utility buildings according to international standards and Czech regulations in force. The students will be provided with an overview of the currently applied materials, conductors, apparatuses, and electrical fittings.
Specification of controlled education, way of implementation and compensation for absences
The students' participation in laboratory-based instruction is compulsory. Any absence that has been duly communicated to the teacher can be compensated by temporarily joining another study group within the course.
Classification of course in study plans
Type of course unit
26 hours, optionally
Teacher / Lecturer
12 hours, compulsory
Teacher / Lecturer
The other activities
14 hours, compulsory
Teacher / Lecturer
eLearning: currently opened course


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Friedel oscillations in holographic metals
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2012
In this article we study the conditions under which holographic metallic states display Friedel oscillations. We focus on systems where the bulk charge density is not hidden behind a black hole horizon. Understanding holographic Friedel oscillations gives a clean way to characterize the boundary system, complementary to probe fermion calculations. We find that fermions in a "hard wall" AdS geometry unambiguously display Friedel oscillations. However, similar oscillations are washed out for electron stars, suggesting a smeared continuum of Fermi surfaces.
Holography and condensed matter physics (AdS/CMT)


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Paradigm Shift in Study of Treatment-Resistant Psychiatric Disorder
Psychiatric patients with many episodes that do not respond satisfactorily to numerous sequential treatment regimens were included in the treatment resistance studies. Most studies have, however, used a post hoc experimental design that failed to determine the association between biomarkers and the initial risk of treatment-resistant psychiatric disorder (TRP). Such post hoc experimental design can be regarded only as a consequence of having treatment resistance, rather than being a causal risk factor for it. Although informative, data derived from such studies often do not allow for a distinction to be made between cause and effect. To deal with this problem, it is most ideal to enroll untreated patients (those who were diagnosed but have not yet undergone treatment) as study subjects. In this chapter, the authors will review methodological considerations to uncover initial biological risk factors for TRP and propose a better study design for future research by discussing the shortcomings of the traditional study design.
KeywordsTreatment resistance Psychiatric disorders Biomarkers Risk factors Experimental study design Nested case-control study design
- 17.Smith DF. Quest for biomarkers of treatment-resistant depression: shifting the paradigm toward risk. Front Psych. 2013;4:57.Google Scholar


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At 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, after the streets were clear of trick-or-treaters and parties were winding down, a group of Caltech students were pushing crates of frozen pumpkins up the elevator in Millikan Library.
There were about 50 pumpkins of various shapes and sizes in all. As part of a Halloween tradition dating back to 1972, five students climbed a ladder to the tallest point of the roof and prepared to launch the pumpkins, frozen in liquid nitrogen, off the side of the nine-story building.
"I don't know anywhere else where you can see a pumpkin drop from a building," said Kelly Douglas, a development research specialist at the campus.
Hosted by Caltech's Dabney House, the tradition began as an experiment to test the theory that dropping a frozen pumpkin from a significant height would produce blue-green sparks, an event called triboluminescence, when it shattered. The pumpkin-drop experiment is a play on the oil-drop experiment conducted in 1909 to measure an electron's charge by Caltech co-founder Robert Millikan.
No one has seen the mythical light in the event's 40-year run, but organizers continue to carry on the tradition. This year, they attached LED light strips to a few pumpkins to parody the theory.
"Primarily, it's just a fun event," said Jade Yang, a 19-year-old computer science sophomore who helped organize this year's pumpkin drop. "We all know that it's just fake science, so it's funny."
A group of trombone players dressed in skeleton costumes — a clever nod to the 'bone' in trombone — offered musical entertainment before the show started Wednesday. Students, some already in pajamas and others still in costume, gathered around the tallest building on campus.
At midnight, "The Final Countdown," a song played in previous years during the annual pumpkin smashing, blared through a set of speakers as the crowd cheered and looked toward the roof.
The first pumpkin hit the ground, covered in plastic, with a loud plop. It broke into several pieces, splattering orange-colored entrails everywhere. The music changed to Tchaikovsky and the pumpkins were dropped occasionally in rhythm to the notes. Organizers said the event has never caused any injuries, but halfway through Wednesday's drop, shards from a large pumpkin flew into the crowd, causing several people to duck and run out of the way.
Aashrita Mangu, an 18-year-old electrical engineering student attending the event for the first time, said some pieces flew right over her head. She wasn't phased.
"It's the Caltech way to do [Halloween]," she said, still dressed in her Aladdin costume.
Alan Smith, of Sherman Oaks, and Mark Jones, of West Hollywood, were some of the only people in the crowd who weren't affiliated with Caltech. They said they like to do something different on Halloween every year. After the last pumpkin fell, they posed for a photo with a couple of broken-off pieces.
"It was absolutely awesome," Smith said. "It makes a school very cool, literally."


Best Video Surveillance System for Winter Weather Theft
Posted by Amy Hite on November 29, 2017
Criminal activity and behavior change with the seasons. During the summer, crime against people rises. In the winter, there is an increased amount of reported property theft, which makes it more critical to have the best video surveillance system in place. Property theft can occur at shopping centers, medical office spaces, flex space properties, multfamily apartments, car dealerships and other types of commercial properties.
According to a study called The Influence of the Seasons of Crime Rate, there are several hypotheses as to why theft goes up during the winter season. One popular theory is that basic human needs increase due to the pressures of finding shelter and reliable transportation during the cold weather. This can lead to car theft, food theft, and other types of property theft.
A second hypothesis is based on the job market. Seasonal unemployment reaches its peak in the winter months. Heat, clothing, and electricity expenses are much higher during the winter and people may have more difficulty paying these bills. Thieves without a stable income may be motivated to commit burglary.
An article by AccuWeather cites a report by Atlanta Crime Stoppers. The report states that people leave their cars unattended while they warm them up during the winter. This gives thieves an opportunity to steal the car. To avoid theft, owners should stay near the car while it warms up. Car owners can use that time to scrape ice or snow off the car and make sure that tires are safe and inflated.
Daylight hours may impact the increase of reported winter weather theft. It gets darker earlier during the winter months and thieves generally use the cover of night to commit crimes. Also, fewer daylight hours mean there will not be as many people out and active and the potential for witnesses will decrease.
Protect Your Property With the Best Video Surveillance System
The best video surveillance system can help protect your property from theft and damage. The best video surveillance system is one that is watched, to effectively deter and reduce crime. Trained operators can look for unusual activity, activate a speaker alert, and call the local police. Stealth Monitoring can watch your existing security cameras or provide a full customized solution with high resolution cameras and live video monitoring.


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Miriam B. Murphy
History Blazer, January 1996
Beginning about 1880 the economy of Cache Valley began to evolve from its pioneer subsistence roots to a commercial economy with highly specialized private enterprises. A leading figure in this transition was Hyrum businessman Soren Hanson. Born in Hyrum on May 2, 1863, he had become the largest egg dealer in the Intermountain West by the turn of the century. In 1897, for example, he sold 120,000 dozen eggs. Cache Valley and southern Idaho consumed a quarter of this output, and the rest was taken by wagon to Corinne or Ogden for shipment throughout Utah and the surrounding states. That same year he also shipped a large amount of grain and 100 rail cars of cattle to markets outside of Utah.
Hanson was also active in local politics, serving as postmaster of Hyrum in the 1890s, as a city councilman from 1898 to 1902, and as mayor during 1906-8. The imposing 2 1/2-story Queen Anne home he built at 166 West Main in Hyrum during 1905-7 reflected not only his business and political success but also the economic power of the lowly egg.
According to his son's account, Hanson began his egg business in the late 1880s. By 1895 it had grown to the point that Hanson needed a modern storage plant to replace the crude cellar he had been using. While traveling in the East he visited several egg storage facilities and upon his return hired Hyrum Hokenson to build a two-story, 50 x 120 foot egg house. Here incoming eggs were processed, including candling to determine which eggs were suitable for storage. The two cold storage rooms could hold about 4,000 cases of eggs. Each room contained two huge ice tanks, 5 feet in diameter and 32 feet high. In the winter Hanson harvested ice from a large pond a mile north of his establishment and stored the sawed cakes of ice in an ice house next to the egg building. An unpleasant chore remembered by Hanson's son was leading a horse to operate the ice-house elevator past the "rotten egg hole" which often "stunk to high heaven" when the children forgot to cover the discarded eggs with a thick layer of dirt.
When Hanson began his business local farmers were still bartering with retail merchants, and eggs were often the medium of exchange. Farmers brought their eggs to merchants all over Cache Valley, and Hanson took them off of the merchants' hands. He paid cash--sometimes as little as 8 cents a dozen--and then resold them for many times that amount. The Hanson boys often took a team and wagon to towns like Paradise, Millville, and Wellsville to collect the eggs that storekeepers there had accumulated. In the early days Hanson hauled the eggs by wagon to the mining camps of Montana. Later the eggs were shipped by rail to places like Butte, Rock Springs, and Winnemucca. Hanson got the names of businesses in these towns from Dunn & Bradstreet's credit listings and then sent postcards to them with his current egg quotations.
Hanson's egg empire extended beyond the Cache Valley. He also bought and stored them in the Midwest. One year, his son recalled, Hanson stored several carloads of eggs at the Beatrice Creamery Company plant in Nebraska. Within three weeks he had resold them at a profit of some $20,000. With that bankroll he fulfilled a promise to his wife to build her a lovely home. The "house that eggs built" cost an estimated $30,000--a small fortune at that time and an appropriate reward for years of log-cabin living.
A late example of the Victorian Queen Anne style in Utah, the asymmetrical brick home has a stone foundation and wood trim. Gable bays project from a central mass, and a circular tower on the southeast corner--which culminates in a 20-foot peak--has three wrap-around windows. Twelve columns support a wrap-around front porch. One of the home's three chimneys is unusually ornate with a carving of a half-nude female figure. Leaded glass, carved oak, beveled mirrors, a 7-foot-wide hallway, and a delicate wrought-iron balustrade are some of the home's outstanding features. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Sources: "Egg Business" in Earle W. Allen, Bessie Brown, and Lila Eliason, Home in the Hills of Bridger Land: The History of Hyrum from 1860 to 1969 (Hyrum: City of Hyrum, 1969); National Register Nomination Form for the Soren Hanson House, Hyrum, by John McCormick and Diana Johnson in Preservation Office, Utah Division of State History, Salt Lake City.


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Click below to read a summary of the Art & film project ideas for Bronze, Silver, and Gold awards; or to go back to project ideas click here.
Make your own animation using a rotating drum and a 'film strip'
Animation is used in all sorts of telly programmes and films. Start by finding out about all the different types; for example, what sort of animation is used in Wallace & Gromit or The Simpsons, or big pictures like Toy Story 3 or Up.
Restoring art work
Every major art gallery has a scientific department, or easy access to scientific knowledge. There are many modern scientific techniques to find out about the sorts of materials and methods artists used – when we look at a painting now it‟s not always the same as when the artist painted it many years ago. Lots of materials change over the years because of chemical changes caused, for example, by interactions with light or oxygen. For this project you can carry different tests on various types of paints (you could even make some paints yourself). You can also look at different ways of restoring old paintings. Contact an analytical chemist from an art gallery, or a university department specialising in art conservation and restoration.
Build a pinhole camera
Pinhole cameras can be made very simply, and they take reasonable pictures. But it‟s a little more complicated to make a pinhole camera that takes a good picture, has an automatic shutter, has a mechanism to wind on commercially-available film, looks like a real camera, etc. In this project you‟ll investigate pinhole cameras and design and build your own.


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Workshop 1: Integrative and Collaborative Strategies in Learning and Teaching
Teaching and the teacher's role in the 21st century is changing. In this session the focus is on varied methods of collaborative and integrative teaching as collaboration is one of the 4Cs. Participants will reflect on and design different ways to collaborate with colleagues. Integrative teaching is seen as a deeper form of collaboration.
Key Learning Points:
· Experiences about collaboration: How have you collaborated in teaching (co-teaching) with your colleagues?
· Co-teaching plan: How could you / how are you going to co-teach during the distance learning period?
· Draft of integrative teaching: How can you teach a chosen topic to enable students grasp a holistic picture?
· Quality of co-teaching
· Methods of integrative strategies


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Wheat Crop is in Tough Shape
MANHATTAN - Heading into Thanksgiving week, the 2013 wheat crop is rated at just 30% good to excellent – the second poorest wheat crop in mid-November that Kansas Agricultural Statistics has ever recorded.
Wheat farmers should be scouting fields to see whether pest, weed or nutrient problems exist, suggests Jim Shroyer, wheat specialist at Kansas State University. Throughout Kansas, the crop is in various stages of growth and conditions. At K-State's Agronomy Farm north of Manhattan, the agronomist sees a couple of issues that could impact the crop.
"The first thing I saw is poor growth of secondary roots, or crown roots," he says. "This lack of crown root development is due to dry topsoils. A wheat plant should ideally have a well-developed crown root system by now to help prepare it to survive the winter."
Shroyer notes that at the Agronomy Farm, the crown root is starting to grow. In a normal year, the crown root system is, or should be, much more extensive than the primary root system. Crown roots take up most of the water and nutrients from the soil, so they are very important for the plant to survive the winter. Also, crown roots anchor the plant to the ground.
"By this point in the season, there should be a much more extensive crown root system than what I found," Shroyer says. "All we need is some moisture in the soil and these roots would quickly begin developing."
Primary roots coming from the seed take up water and nutrients throughout the whole growing season, but there aren't very many of these roots, and they will not support a plant with one or two tillers for very long.
Farmers throughout Kansas agree that the crop is challenged so far.
Scott City farmer Rich Randall says the dryland wheat in Scott County is mostly in fair shape, but just needs precipitation. "About 20% of the dryland wheat is in poor condition. Some of it has been re-planted at least once and is short of moisture," he says.
This fall is unique in that it has stayed warm for so long. "The wheat isn't going into dormancy like it should by this time of the year," he adds. Actively growing wheat, he adds, requires soil moisture, which is in short supply this fall.
Justin Knopf, who farms near Salina, says primary and crown roots are slow to develop. "The crop has not grown actively, mostly due to lack of moisture. Temperatures have been conducive to root development, but we just haven't had any rain," he says. In the last 12 months, Knopf's area of Saline County has received about 12-inches less rain than the average of 29-inches.
Knopf says wheat is a grass and therefore "tillers," to branch out and grow extra plants. This fall, however, very little tillering has taken place. "Overall, the plant doesn't seem to be healthy or vigorous," he explains. "We're not in a big hurry to apply fertilizer on the crop. We just wait and hope for some winter moisture."


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Scientists from Agricultural Research Organization in Israel have developed transgenic banana plants with longer shelf life by reducing expression of two transcription factors, MaMADS1 and MaMADS2. The results are published in Plant Physiology.
Based on previous studies about ripening genes of tomatoes, the researchers characterized similar genes in bananas known as the MADS box genes, MaMADS1 and MaMADS2. When the expression of these genes was repressed using genetic modification, the banana plants exhibited delayed ripening and extended shelf-life characteristics. The delayed ripening characteristic was linked to the production of ripening hormone, ethylene. In fact, the plants where the gene was repressed the most did not produce ethylene and therefore the ripening was the most delayed in these plants. In addition, the researchers found that the taste and quality of the transgenic bananas remained the same.
Fruits of plants in the genus Musa, including bananas and plantains, represent staple foods for millions of people, especially in developing countries, and are an important carbohydrate and nutrient source for billions more. In developing (including many producing) countries, postharvest methodologies to extend shelf-life are minimal and losses are correspondingly high.
The researchers concluded that, "Delayed ripening and extended postharvest shelf life with minimal inputs have great potential to increase banana value, increase effective yield, and promote food security, absent additional environmental pressure (i.e., the need to increase production area). As the Cavendish banana is parthenocarpic and vegetatively propagated, there are limited options for genetic improvement. Identifying key ripening genes to promote genetic modification via gene editing, transgene integration, or breeding (when possible) is a key route to banana improvement."
The researchers are now working on commercializing the results to help farmers and producers.
Looking for more on GMO labeling and consumer expectations? Join us for the GMOs: Today's Challenges, Tomorrow's Opportunities panel discussion on Thursday, Oct. 6, at SupplySide West 2016.


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Adultery in Indiana: Does Cheating Affect Alimony?
Learn whether an extramarital affair can impact spousal support in Indiana.
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Gavel and Scales
Alimony in Indiana
One of the greatest joys of a healthy marriage is that spouses are able to accept each other exactly as they are. If one spouse makes a lot of money and the other spouse matches that effort by providing child care and maintaining the home, then both of them should theoretically be happy with the arrangement—and with each other.
But what about when a marriage begins to crumble? Only then do spouses start to think, in critical terms, about what each of them is bringing to the table financially. The reality can be sobering. For example, a spouse who worked as a waitress for many years to pay for the other spouse's medical schooling may wonder how to become self-supporting on restaurant wages. Or a spouse who suffers from a degenerative physical disease like multiple sclerosis might wonder how to earn enough to cover costs of living.
Alimony (which is technically called "maintenance" in Indiana) is the money that one spouse (the paying spouse or "obligor") pays to the other (the supported spouse or "obligee") as part of the divorce proceedings. The purpose of alimony is to make sure that both spouses are on a similar economic footing after the divorce, and that one spouse isn't enriched by the divorce while the other becomes impoverished.
What Role Does Adultery Play in an Indiana Divorce?
American divorce has historically followed a "fault-based" model, meaning that the court would consider marital misconduct committed by a "guilty spouse" against an "innocent spouse." Examples of marital misconduct included emotional or physical abuse, chemical dependency, abandonment, and adultery.
Over the last 50 years, many American states have opted to follow a modern trend toward eliminating fault-based "grounds" (legal reasons) for divorce and replacing them with "no-fault" language. Generally speaking, "no-fault" only requires that one spouse allege the marriage is "irretrievably broken" (meaning, it's so badly broken that it can't be repaired) or that the couple suffers from "irreconcilable differences" (meaning, they can't resolve their problems).
Indiana has staked out a middle ground by allowing no-fault divorce if one of the spouses claims that the marriage is irretrievably broken, but also by recognizing limited fault-based grounds for divorce. The fault-based grounds are:
 - a felony conviction
 - impotence, and
 - "incurable insanity" for at least two years after the date of marriage.
Adultery is not one of the fault-based grounds for divorce in Indiana. Therefore, the court will not consider evidence or testimony about adultery when it decides whether to grant a divorce.
How Does Adultery Affect Alimony Awards in Indiana?
Just because fault isn't a factor for purposes of getting divorced doesn't mean that it isn't important when it comes to alimony. In fact, Indiana judges can consider marital misconduct like adultery when making decisions about alimony.
In Bartrom v. Adjustment Bureau, 618 N.E.2d 1 (Ind. 1993), the Indiana Supreme Court was faced with the question of whether the elimination of fault-based divorce laws meant that marital misconduct couldn't be considered in alimony cases anymore. The court decided that adultery and other kinds of marital misconduct could be considered by any judge who has the responsibility to decide alimony issues. The only limitation is that judges can't apply the laws unfairly by discriminating on the basis of a person's gender.
Additionally, legal procedures in Indiana prohibit spouses from bringing up the name of a third party who's accused of being involved in the adultery. This prohibition is meant to protect a potentially innocent person from being exposed to extortion and public scandal. Anyone who violates this rule and names a third party who's accused of adultery can be fined up to $500.
Beyond the question of whether adultery occurred, judges have a variety of facts and law to consider when deciding whether to award alimony, what kind of alimony to award, and the amount and duration of payment.
Get more detailed information how alimony is awarded in Indiana, see Understanding and Calculating Alimony in Indiana.
Additional Resources
If you have questions about alimony and adultery in Indiana, please contact an experienced family law attorney for help.
For self-help purposes, you can look at the Indiana Judicial Branch's Self-Service Legal Center and at the official court forms. You can also browse the Indiana Legal Services, Inc. site for resources and assistance geared to help low-income Indiana residents with legal problems. Finally, you can review the Indiana Code to read the laws for yourself.
Talk to a Lawyer
Want to talk to an attorney? Start here.
How It Works
 1. Briefly tell us about your case
 2. Provide your contact information
 3. Connect with local attorneys


Learn Scuba Diving on Koh Tao
Why learn scuba diving? It may be to explore a new world, to travel to new places or to experience what it is like to be weightless just like an astronaut! If you are still wondering why, below are 5 reasons to visit Koh Tao to try scuba diving on your next trip.
Become an explorer
Descending to the depths of our ocean is a very special feeling. Realising how vast and diverse the ocean's underwater ecosystem is, can be quite humbling. Often people describe scuba diving as exploring a new and unknown world. We still regularly discover new species. Diving Koh Tao is a perfect way to satisfy this need to explore and learn how to scuba dive.
Travel to new places
Once you have completed your PADI Open Water scuba diving course, the world is your oyster! It will open up new travel destinations that you had never considered before. Maybe the quality of transport and accommodation take second place in favor of fantastic diving and exploring new parts of the vast underwater world.
Know what it feels like to defy gravity
We all know what it feels like navigate in a two dimensional way bound by gravity. But what about defying gravity and weightlessly explore in three dimensions? Your scuba diving instructor will teach you about buoyancy and how to remain neutral to gravity no matter what depth you are diving at. The possibilities are endless. Imagine exploring details of a huge war ship at eye level, as opposed to standing at the foot of it in a museum.
Join the scuba diving community
Scuba divers are relaxed people that share a love for our ocean and marine life. Being a scuba diver will undoubtedly change your life and introduce you to a new community of people. You will meet other divers from all over the world with whom you can exchange diving spots. Many divers attribute diving to having changed their lives forever. Especially those of us who become diving professionals and make a career out of diving.
Become an advocate for our ocean
We often think of the ocean as this vast body of water that is invincible. As a PADI scuba diver, you will soon realise how fragile the marine ecosystem is. Every choice you make is somehow connected to our ocean and its marine life. Most scuba divers fall in love with the ocean and become advocates to preserve our ocean for future generations. At Sairee Cottage Diving, we donate to PADI Project AWARE with every Open Water certification.
Can you think of additional reasons? Share them in the comments.
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1 Comment
 1. Get under the water to chill out, empty your head of all the everyday hustle, bustle and stress. So calming down there in the blue, a magical place.
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text:
This article presents research that used ethnographic and sociolinguistic methods to study ways participants learn through reflection when carried out as a "circle talk." The data indicate that participants in the event (a) invoked different contextual frames that (b) implicated them in various identity positions, which (c) affected how they could express their knowledge. These features worked together to generate socially shared meanings that enabled participants to jointly achieve conceptualization—the ideational role "reflection" is presumed to play in the experiential learning process. The analysis supports the claim that participants generate new knowledge in reflection, but challenges individualistic and cognitive assumptions regarding how this occurs. The article builds on situated views of experiential learning by showing how knowledge can be understood as socially shared and how learning and identity formation are mutually entailing processes.
Journal of Experiential Education
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Seaman, J., and Rheingold, A. (2013). Circle talks as situated experiential learning: Context, identity, and knowledgeability in 'learning from reflection'. Journal of Experiential Education, 36(2), 155-174. _URL_


Question: Is A Correlation Of.5 Strong?
Is.6 a strong correlation?
Correlation Coefficient = 0.8: A fairly strong positive relationship.
Correlation Coefficient = 0.6: A moderate positive relationship.
Correlation Coefficient = -0.8: A fairly strong negative relationship.
Correlation Coefficient = -0.6: A moderate negative relationship..
Is 0.3 A strong correlation?
Correlation coefficient values below 0.3 are considered to be weak; 0.3-0.7 are moderate; >0.7 are strong. You also have to compute the statistical significance of the correlation.
How do you interpret a weak negative correlation?
Negative correlation or inverse correlation is a relationship between two variables whereby they move in opposite directions. If variables X and Y have a negative correlation (or are negatively correlated), as X increases in value, Y will decrease; similarly, if X decreases in value, Y will increase.
How do you know if a correlation is strong or weak?
What does a correlation of 0.1 mean?
If the correlation coefficient of two variables is zero, it signifies that there is no linear relationship between the variables. … When the value of ρ is close to zero, generally between -0.1 and +0.1, the variables are said to have no linear relationship (or a very weak linear relationship).
Is 0.2 A weak correlation?
The correlation coefficient of 0.2 before excluding outliers is considered as negligible correlation while 0.3 after excluding outliers may be interpreted as weak positive correlation (Table 1).
What does a correlation of 0.5 mean?
The strength of the relationship between X and Y is sometimes expressed by squaring the correlation coefficient and multiplying by 100. The resulting statistic is known as variance explained (or R2). Example: a correlation of 0.5 means 0.52×100 = 25% of the variance in Y is "explained" or predicted by the X variable.
Is 0.5 A weak correlation?
Correlation coefficients whose magnitude are between 0.5 and 0.7 indicate variables which can be considered moderately correlated. Correlation coefficients whose magnitude are between 0.3 and 0.5 indicate variables which have a low correlation.
Is 0.4 A strong correlation?
Generally, a value of r greater than 0.7 is considered a strong correlation. Anything between 0.5 and 0.7 is a moderate correlation, and anything less than 0.4 is considered a weak or no correlation.
Is 0.25 A strong correlation?
The correlation between two variables is considered to be strong if the absolute value of r is greater than 0.75….What is Considered to Be a "Strong" Correlation?Absolute value of rStrength of relationship0.25 < r < 0.5Weak relationship0.5 < r < 0.75Moderate relationshipr > 0.75Strong relationship1 more row•Jan 22, 2020
Is 0.2 A strong correlation?
The magnitude of the correlation coefficient indicates the strength of the association. For example, a correlation of r = 0.9 suggests a strong, positive association between two variables, whereas a correlation of r = -0.2 suggest a weak, negative association.
What R value is a weak correlation?
r > 0 indicates a positive association. r < 0 indicates a negative association. Values of r near 0 indicate a very weak linear relationship. The strength of the linear relationship increases as r moves away from 0 toward -1 or 1.


SAAS - A Solution for conflict resolution
Workplace conflict costs the American market $450B a year.
At Galaxies we have identified the primary causes of this conflict and developed a unique and easily implementable SaaS solution.
What are the primary forces behind workplace conflict?
Ill-defined Lines of Communication
Ill-defined Roles and Responsibilities
Galaxies' SaaS solution will unlock these internal ambiguities and build a foundation of clearly defined lines of communication, expectations and roles and responsibilities.
We do not utilize archaic methods which are no longer applicable to the challenges of the modern organization. Galaxies' approach uses your data to surface the inherent problems and then helps you revamp your organization so conflicts are taken out of the equation.
We begin by rethinking accountability and job descriptions: rather than a traditional monolithic structure we will help you break them down into smaller, usable and manageable functions. These functions will then be made available to the entire organization creating a transparent infrastructure which encourages communication and dialogue throughout.
Our SaaS solution will redefine how your team see each other through clearly defined roles and responsibilities allowing a free flow of communication resulting in unambiguous expectations.
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text:
Encryption time and performance are much slower for Advanced Format Drives (AFD).
None. Only slow performance.
SEE Full Disk is not fully compatible with Advanced Format Drives. A workaround is needed in order for the drive to encrypt and perform at an acceptable level.
Solution and workaround is provided with SEE Full Disk v8.2.1 MP4 and later versions
Note: Symantec recommends that you back up the Windows Registry before making any changes.
To optimize encryption on these drives, perform the following steps:
1. Open your Windows Registry.
2. Go to the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Encryption Anywhere\Hard Disk\Initial Computer Data] key.
3. Create a new DWORD Value and name it as EnableOptimization.
4. Set the Value data to 1. To disable optimization set the Value data to 0.
5. Restart the computer for the change to take effect.
The solution mentioned above has worked for both Hitachi and Western Digital Advanced Format Drives.


text:
Eclipse Logic has been
theorized by Maurice Allais
as the idea that gravity here on Earth will decrease during a Total Solar
eclipse as just happened in China this July. The assumption being that
the combined gravity of the Moon and Sun offset the gravity of the Earth
slightly. Gravity is less on Mars, so you would weigh less than here
Eclipse Logic as defined
here on EclipseLogic.com (Where you are right now) is that many things that
seem logical, might be the exact opposite of how they appear to be.
During a total eclipse for example, the gravity of the Sun which usually
pulls the Earth towards itself may in fact be blocked by and pulling only on
the Moon causing a change in the balance of the Sun's and Earth's gravity
resulting in a slight increase in the gravity we feel and you might in fact
weigh more during a total eclipse, not less as predicted.
Of course, logic was also
used to prove that the Earth was flat, but that logic got eclipsed as well!
We await the results from China in the coming weeks!


text:
Named in honor of George Washington, Washington County was created in 1799 from Tyrrell County. It lies in the eastern part of North Carolina and is bounded by Bertie, Beaufort, Hyde, Martin and Tyrrell counties, and the Albemarle Sound. The courts were ordered to be held at Lee's Mill until a courthouse could be erected.The town of Plymouth was established in 1787. It started out as a private enterprise much like one of today's subdivisions. An area of 100 acres was set aside and divided into streets and lots.
Being on the Roanoke River and near the Albemarle Sound, Plymouth's prime importance was as a port. During the early 1800′s Plymouth was one of 6 main ports in North Carolina and ranked 9th in population among towns.
Plymouth was incorporated in 1807. In 1823 the Washington County court house was moved from Lee's Mill to Plymouth.The USGenWeb and NCGenWeb projects are maintained by volunteers. We encourage you to interact and share information with your fellow researchers.
Be sure to check the BLOG for the latest site updates!


© 2015 Shmoop University, Inc. All rights reserved.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
For Whom the Bell Tolls
by Ernest Hemingway
 Table of Contents
For Whom the Bell Tolls Theme of Friendship
For Whom the Bell Tolls revolves around the idea of communion between human beings expressed in its epigraph. Connecting to others is the only way to overcome the emptiness and loneliness at the heart of each individual, especially in the hopelessness of war. It's their camaraderie which keeps many of the characters afloat. The most everyday activities and expressions of friendliness – being humorous, telling stories, touching, even swearing together – preserve some sense of normality, of humanity in the midst of "barbarism." The protagonist is transformed by the bonds he forms with the people around him over the course of only a few days.
Questions About Friendship
 1. Why do you think Robert Jordan is able to feel so close to the guerillas in so short a time? How is it that they begin to bond?
 2. You've heard our two cents about Pablo in the character section, but what do you think of him? Is he motivated by his concern for his friends from the start? Or is it really something which dawns on him at the end?
 3. Do you think Robert Jordan ultimately dies for his friends rather than for the Republic? Does friendship prevail over duty?
Chew on This
It is seeing his sacrifice as something he does for his friends that gives Robert Jordan's death a purpose, and that serves as his ultimate consolation.
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with code first
Diagram of tab order, with design first
Diagram of tab order, with design content as placeholder?
Distinct approaches varying what content is prioritized: Code (in Examples) first, Design first, or a sensitizing example above tabs altogether
IBM Carbon values examples revealing Code first and foremost, leaving design details for Usage and Style to subsequent tabs. Hudl's Uniform system reverses priority, telling the Design before Code, relegated to a second tab with a content taxonomy that's similar but not exactly the same. Salesforce's Lightning Design System presents a sensitizing example as a component explorer above a default Developer Guidelines tab, yet Implementation Notes and Design Guidelines tabs remain curiously empty.
Depending on an organization, additional sections — often, Accessibility — also emerge as a peer, perhaps before or after a Design tab.
Takeaway: Start with an Introduction and position Examples prominently. Beyond that, prioritizing Design or Code guidance varies by organization and how they value their audiences and storytelling.
For Longer Pages, Anchor Readers with Persistent Local Navigation
The longer your page, the more important it is to signal what's there and where you are. Vertical local navigation in a right rail works effectively: ever present, tracking page location as you scroll, and expanding to reveal sub-headers along the way.
Screenshot of Morningstar component page content
Morningstar Design System organizes local navigation along a page's right rail with two levels of hierarchy.
Takeaway: The UI — across tabs or in a single scrollable view — can be a matter of taste, although many sites trend towards a vertical navigation that sticks. Ask your audience, know your content, maximize usability, and no matter what: keep section names and order consistent across the library.
Showing Design OR Code Or Both?
The more design and code thread together, the more audiences interested predominantly in one over the other will ask to refine the page's interface to suit what they want to see.
Consider a toggle to hide design or code concerns. This requires classifying each content type as relevant to one, the other, or both audiences, such as:
In a similar vein, Hudl's Uniform implemented a page toggle to distinguish design and code, serving as a defacto tab to orient users one way or the other:
Hudl Uniform screenshot of design page
Hudl Uniform screenshot of code page
Hudl's Uniform design system distinguishes guidance for Design and Code via a page-level toggle (upper right).
The implementation is smooth and yet comes with a cost: build the UI and manage content effectively. Other clients I've served have sought a similar breakdown, finding my heart with acknowledging the separate yet open borders between design and engineering.
Takeaway: Filtering based on content types is a content management challenge more than a technical one. The stricter your IA, the better chance you've got, but it depends on an effective authoring workflow and separation of concerns that may challenge the notion of content relevant for both sides.
So, you have a strong sense of your audiences, know the kinds of content to produce, and agree on a high-level page structure. It's time to get to work.
Next → #2. Introductions
Need help with your system?


Tugela Cache
From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki
Jump to: navigation, search
As large MediaWiki deployments may gain performance using Memcached, at some level cost of RAM to store all objects becomes too high. In order to balance resource usage and make more use of our Apache server disks, Tugela, the distributed cached on-disk hash database, has arrived.
Sources can be found at Mediawiki CVS repository as a module tugelacache.
Tugela Cache is derived from Memcached. Much of the code remains the same, but notably, these changes:
 - Internal slab allocator replaced by BerkeleyDB B-Tree database.
 - Expiry policy management moved to external program tugela-expire
 - Much statistics code made obsolete.
Make sure you've got libevent (a memcached dependency as well) installed, and try running make. In case of failure, take a look at DBLIB variable in Makefile and tune it to your system (RedHat-like systems may have just 'db').
command line parameters are quite same as memcached's and can be found with -h switch. Though, two things, that differ are:
-m mbytes - specifies not total store size,
 but in-memory cache, used by BerkeleyDB
-f file - specifies a database file
-s secs - force database sync this often
The cache expiration program does not have any network interface yet, but its output can be sent with external commands like telnet or netcat to listening socket of cache daemon. Telnet might need some more tricks, like:
(tugela-expire;sleep 1) | telnet localhost 11211
Available parameters are:
-f file - database file
-o days - purge all entries older than specified days
-p prefix - touch only keys, starting with prefix
Database management[edit]
As on-disk file is a regular BerkeleyDB database, standard suite programs may be used for data management, statistics and analysis:
 - db_stat
 - db_verify
 - db_dump
 - db_restore
Questions & Answers[edit]
Q: Currently isn't there a MySQL cluster backing the existing memcached system. It seems like in both the cases of hitting the mysql cluster or the Tugela-file-store you'd be pretty much doing a search on a b[+*]-tree index.
A: We still can allow losing data on Tugelas, which means that every node can have different portion. There's no replication so it's much more lightweight protocol. MySQL query cache can't be efficient at our rates of updates and use of transactions.
Q: Another option for having a file-backed Memcached is to simply set the Memcached server processes to a size *larger* than physical ram. The OS will swap out the infrequently used pages. How does this approach compare to BDB?
A: bad bad bad approach. swap overhead is too high compared to how it can be handled by proper library. the issue with memcached is that is not designed to be swapped out, it's memory access patterns are quite different from BDB access patterns. [This doesn't seem true. A few memcached articles suggest 2G caches on 1G machines; and hash-lookups are actually quite friendly data access for swapping (O(1) lookups that directly find the disk block to be swapped in). In contrast, walking a B-tree (like BDB) requires O(log(n)) pages to be swapped in; so the current memcached's slab+hash is probably more swap-friendly than BDB.]
Q: What about using an approach like Varnish where it "allocate[s] some virtual memory, it tells the operating system to back this memory with space from a disk file."?
A: mmap is actually used by BDB, but as files can grow beyond 32-bit limits, it becomes slightly problematic. It doesn't usually add too much performance, and having own LRU policies often works well too. At least it works for BDB. -- domas
Q: Above, you state that much of the statistics code that came in Memcached is made obsolete. Which statistics are obsolete and, more importantly, which statistics are still applicable?
A: there're no slabs in Tugela - so anything relating item counts in slabs doesn't work. General statistics might still work though, but we don't have anything about data itself. -- domas
Q: Does placing Tugelas DB file in a Linux tmpfs partition improve, damage or make no difference in cache performance? (added on 20071120)
A: This will not make any difference to performance (I am assuming that you want to put the DB on the /dev/shm partition). Linux tries to keep the tmpfs partition in memory when possible, but it will be spun out to swap if memory is needed for other uses. Linux will cache data in the file cache if you put the DB file on a normal partition. Either way, data will be in memory when there is memory available and be removed from memory when memory is needed for other things. My recommendation would be to put the DB on a normal partition and avoid using the machine for other things so that Linux can maximize the use of memory for file caching. Another thing to note is that the /dev/shm partition is size constrained and needs to be smaller that the swap space configured on the machine.
Q: Does the -m switch affect the maximum size of the DB file? (added on 20071120)
A: It affects just memory cache. File can grow forever. -- domas
Q: Are you OK? Hey, guys, check if he has a MedAlert bracelet.
A: We are. We are not using Tugela though, so it is in abandon-ware state, where other people pick it up and improve (like memcachedb folks). Or just people find it useful and use it as is. Generally, the most of magic happens in BDB, and it is in active development. -- domas
Q: Is this project still alive? MediaWiki shows 2 years old code. (added on 20071207)
A: You can still access source. Wikipedia itself due to extreme performance requirements is using memory-only stores. -- domas
Q: What version of memcached has been forked, is the code base synchronized? The current memcached release is 1.2.4 (20071205). (added on 20071207)
A: It is not. It was one-time fork. 1.2 was major rewriting of storage code (different slabs allocator), and it doesn't affect Tugela - as it has its own storage backend. Here again, I left it at current state (and it kind of works, probably). -- domas
All questions can be directed to Domas Mituzas or standard developer contact methods.


text:
PhD Candidate in Civil/Geotechnical Engineering at University of Texas at Austin, USA
Risk management process to deal with natural hazards (e.g. storm, landslide, earthquake, etc.) involves decision making to find an optimal loss-mitigation approach. A good, representative decision analysis process relies on reasonably capturing all possible scenarios that would happen in a natural hazard event and assessing the probabilities. This requirement for the evaluation of possible scenarios exists while there are multiple sources of uncertainties in such a problem and our knowledge of extreme events is limited. In our research, we showed that using the historical data and extending past knowledge to predict a future event is not completely applicable and reliable. Thus, it is important to consider the possibility of irrelevancy of historical data to the problem. The research shows that to consider extreme and rare events, it is required to use a non-informative prior probability in the Bayesian analysis. Such non-informative prior probability distribution is obtained by maximizing the entropy of possible events, which maximize the lack of information. This presentation discusses the motivation of our research to develop a new decision-based framework in order to reasonably capture sources of uncertainties in the natural hazard risk management decision analysis.
Azadeh Mostofi is a PhD Candidate (soon to graduate) in Civil/Geotechnical
Engineering at University of Texas at Austin. She has done her PhD research on risk assessment and management of landslides by introducing a new probability theory. She holds a M.S. in Civil Engineering/Marine Structures Engineering from University of Tehran and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from K.N.Toosi University of Technology. She plans to continue her career in the area of Risk Management of Natural Hazards.