Documentary "Dear Santa" showcases the magic of the season and the people who keep it alive for others.
From the director of Batkid Begins (2015) and Pick of the Litter (2018) comes a joyous and heartfelt exploration of Operation Santa, an initiative within the U.S. Postal Service that works to answer letters of children and adults sent to Santa throughout the U.S. When the need to process letters became too much for the team, they expanded to include volunteers, dubbed "elves," who would take responsibility for the letters, electively selecting recipients for whom they will track down the variety of wishes each sender desires. Director Dana Nachman juggles the insights of children, the feeling of the season, and the aspirations of people seeking to do good works in several locations across the country in the three weeks of activity ahead of Christmas. It's a lot to handle in under 90 minutes, but Nachman does it all without ever spoiling the holiday's biggest secret.
Dana Nachman's DEAR SANTA. Courtesy of IFC Films. An IFC Films Release.
Nachman's Dear Santa does more than the standard documentary. It doesn't just explore and explain Operation Santa, an initiative in operation for over 113 years, but learns about the people who make it happen. For many, the holidays are just about our intimate circles, but Operation Santa is about something larger. It makes tangible the notion of "good will toward men" that occupies that time of year. Nachman does this by drawing the audience in with partial talking head interviews with a variety of children, children with their own ideas of who Santa is, of how the magic works, of who appears in the malls, and of what they would do if they capture the Man in Red. These interviews are absolutely delightful, filling the doc with a certain innocence and enchantment.
Once the audience is pulled in, Nachman switches to introducing the various "elves" helping Santa fulfill his annual duties. These are people like the postmaster in Pearce, Arizona, a mailperson in Chico, California, non-profit organizers in the New York area, or even children at an unnamed public school. The layers, if you will, in Dear Santa, come in the stories of both the ones writing letters and the ones seeking to fulfill them. So often the focus of such stories is on the gift and what it means to the recipient, something which should not be discounted at all, but Nachman allows the stories of the "elves" to shine as well, making the act of giving all the more wonderful. It's the mailperson in Chico, Janine, who lost her home in the Paradise Fire of 2018 (the subject of the Ron Howard documentary Rebuilding Paradise) and is given the chance to delivery packages to families similarly displaced. It's Damion, a man who gathers as many toys as he can manage for as many letters as he can because he was once gifted a combination radio-alarm clock that helped remove the burden of waking him from his sole parent. The act of giving itself comes from a deep place of pain and protection equally familiar to those who submit their letters full of wishes. From those desiring something as simple as a pet rabbit due to their love of the animal to those desiring a limo ride so that their family can see New York to those desiring a couch for a family in need, or those desiring all the accoutrements an unexpectedly expectant young mother needs. The wrapping of Dear Santa is the aura of love and joy many connect with Christmas, the gift itself is the way the stories connect us all.
The magic of the holiday, Nachman seems to posit, is all about a series of random strangers taking it upon themselves to see that the magic lives for everyone a bit like the audience clapping for Tinkerbell in the stage play version of Peter Pan. Are the holidays magical? They are if you make them magical through small acts of kindness for others.
In select theaters and on VOD December 4th, 2020.
Head to the official Dear Santa website for more information on the film.
To sign-up as an Elf, head to the Operation Santa website.
Final Score: 4 out of 5.
An alternate iteration of this review was published by the Mountain Xpress on their site on December 1st, 2020.
Categories: In Theaters, Mountain Xpress, Print, Publications, Reviews, streaming
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I'm looking for the Fourier transformation of the (constant) uniform B-Spline $$N_0(x) = \begin{cases}1 & 0 \leqslant x < 1 \\ 0 & otherwise \end{cases}$$
If $N_0(x)$ would also attain value $1$ when $x=1$ (i.e. the $<$ would be $\leqslant$), it would just be a shifted version of the rectangular function R(x), which has (if I'm not mistaken) the following Fourier transform ($T=1$ and shifted $1/2$ to the right):
$$\hat{R}(\omega) = e^{-\tfrac{i\omega}{2}}\, \frac{\sin(\omega/2)}{\omega/2}$$
However, I'm not sure if this is helpful in finding $\hat{N_0}(\omega)$, the Fourier transform of $N_0(x)$...
Once I know $\hat{N_0}(\omega)$, it is easy to find the Fourier transforms of higher order uniform B-Splines, since they are (or can be) defined using convolution. Of course, the Fourier transform of a convolution is just a multiplication of the two Fourier transformed functions, therefore:
$$\hat{N_k}(\omega) = \left( \hat{N_0}(\omega) \right)^{k+1}$$
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up vote 2 down vote accepted
Since the Fourier transform is defined through an integral, the condition $f=g$ almost everywhere implies $\hat{f} = \hat{g}$. So in this case the Fourier transform of $N_0$ is indeed the same as that of $R$, and your formula is correct, assuming you use the convention $\hat{f}(\omega) = \int_{-\infty}^\infty f(x) e^{-i\omega x} \, dx$ for the Fourier transform.
share|improve this answer
Thanks. Somewhere I found stated that $\hat{N_0}(\omega)=\dfrac{1-e^{-i \omega}}{i \omega}$. I'm not quite sure whether this is the same as the function I found -- I'll take a more detailed look at a later time and update my post / add a comment. – Ailurus Oct 21 '12 at 20:11
Yes, that is the same, using the identity $\sin z = \frac{e^{iz} - e^{-iz}}{2i}$ with $z = \omega/2$. – Lukas Geyer Oct 21 '12 at 20:27
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Thursday, 16 March 2017
Executing server side scripts from browser
TACTIC provides a number of mechanism to Python code on the server. We can start with a widget in the Custom Layout Editor with the HTML definition:

In the behaviors:
 var script_path = "my_scripts/press_me";
 var kwargs = {};
 var server = TacticServerStub.get();
 server.execute_python_script(path, kwargs);
In the Script Editor, you can create a script with the folder "my_scripts" and title "press_me".
print "Button is pressed"
This simple example prints "Button is pressed" to the console. Of course, this script can contain any Python code. In this example, the script is blocking. This is not usually desirable because blocking scripts cause the Javascript engine to wait until the full execution of the script. Except for very fast and small scripts, this will negatively influence the user experience. In order to run the script asynchronously, you could run the following call instead:
server.execute_python_script(path, kwargs, {
 on_complete: function() {
 spt.alert("Script Complete");
} )
This works well for simple scripts that need to be executed on the server. It is often desirable to use full python classes to execute scripts on the server side. To execute a class on the server, you need to derive the class from the TACTIC Command class and override the execute function.
from pyasm.command import Command
class MyCmd(Command):
 def exectute(self):
 print "Running...."
 print "kwargs: ", self.kwargs = {
 test: 456
Instead of "server.execute_python_script" in the behavior, you would have:
var cmd = "foo.MyCmd"
var kwargs = {
 test: 123
var server = TacticServerStub.get()
var ret_val = server.execute_cmd(cmd, kwargs);
The kwargs for the command will be the dictionary with key "test" and value "123". The returned value is a dictionary that will contain any error information as well as an "info" dictionary that will contained any returned data from the command itself. In the example above, it would return the dictionary with the key "test" and value "456".
This method allows you to create interface elements and then run custom scripts on the server based on interaction with those interface elements. The HTML code is connected to the behaviors which run Javascript code. The javascript uses the TACTIC API to execute commands directly on the TACTIC Server and provides a clear mechanism to send information to the command as well as receive information from the command.
 Data Science Course in Bangalore


Co-author of Jackson-Vanik amendment dies
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Co-author of Jackson-Vanik amendment dies
Charles Vanik, a former U.S. congressman who co-authored a historic law designed to pressure the former Soviet Union into allowing freer emigration of Jews and other dissidents, died Thursday. He was 94 and living in Jupiter, Fla.
Vanik, an Ohio Democrat, wrote the Jackson-Vanik amendment to a 1974 trade law with Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a Washington Democrat.
Supporters say the legislation eventually spurred huge increases in emigration of Soviet Jews. It requires the United States to assess the human rights records of countries with non-market economies before deciding whether to grant them special trade privileges.
Mark Levin, director of NCSJ, which advocates on behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic states and Eurasia, recalled the many opportunities he had to work with Vanik.
"It was a privilege to have known and worked with an elected official truly committed to the advancement of human rights and Jewish concerns," Levin said. "There are few who could match his compassion and heart."
While the measure's intent was to allow Soviet Jews to emigrate, its reach extended to many other countries, including China and Vietnam.
Critics have called for its elimination, arguing that it is an outdated obstacle to trade and harmed U.S. economic and diplomatic ties abroad.


text: Our sand calculator will help you estimate how many Cubic Yards of Sand you need for your desired coverage area. Sand Calculator How much sand do I need? The sand calculator offers 4 "Box" area fields and 2 "Circular" area fields for you to calculate multiple areas simultaneously (back yard, front yard, driveway, garden, etc.). Rectangular, Square and Box Areas Enter the width and length of of up to four areas measured in feet and the materials coverage depth for each area in inches Area 2 Square FeetArea 3 Square FeetArea 4 Square FeetArea 1 cubic yardsArea 2 cubic yardsArea 3 cubic yardsArea 4 cubic yards Circular Areas Enter the distance across each circular area measured in feet and the materials coverage depth for each area in inches Circle 1 Square feetCircle 2 Square FeetCircle 1 cubic yardsCircle 2 cubic yardsTotal coverage area in square feet Estimated Cubic Yards RequiredTotal cubic yards of all areas and depths Enter Your Email Address for a Copy of the Calculations NameThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. This iframe contains the logic required to handle Ajax powered Gravity Forms.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


text:
VOID ( VOID ( SOLID ) )
VOID ( POINT ( VOID ) )
Light exhibits behaviour consistent with being both a particle and a wave. The basic quantum unit of light, the photon, is both a particle of zero mass and a transmitter or carrier of the electromagnetic force.
With the appearance of the first photon arose the necessity for the continguent emergence of time and multi-dimensional space. However in accordance with the principles of time dilation, which states that distance shortens and time slows down as one approaches the speed of light, photons bridge the divide between an infinitude of nothingness and an infinitessimally small something. Bursting forth from the singlarity of a point source the photon's discreteness splays out in all directions, first one dimensionally, then two-dimensionally, then three, reaching out to all four quarters of space in its race to be everywhere in one timeless moment only known to itself.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


text:
Colliery checks and tokens
Lamp checks (or 'tokens' or 'tallies') are one of the most popular coal mining objects collected by both museums and the general public. They basically informed colliery management of who was in work but became vital when rescue services needed to know how many men were actually underground during an incident such as a fire or explosion. Colliery check systems apparently became common during the late nineteenth century and became mandatory in 1913 after an amendment to the 1911 Coal Mines Act.
Check systems varied between coal fields and altered over time, by the late 1970s a three check system (safety check system) became common. In this system each underground worker was issued with three checks, often of different shapes and sizes, one to be handed in to the lamp room, one to be handed to the banksman before the man descended the shaft and one was kept on the person during the shift.
A similar system was used by Mines Rescue during incidents. This was similar to the three check system but pre dated it. In this system a red plastic disc was handed into the lamp room, a yellow plastic disc to the banksman and a copper disc was worn around the neck during the time the rescue man was underground.
Other types of checks were also issued in the mining industry such as those used for shotfiring, canteens, pithead baths and bus and train passes. The mining trade unions also issued checks in various forms to show when a member had paid his contributions. Mining institutes and public houses in mining areas also issued beer checks on various occasions.
Amgueddfa Cymru's Industry Department has collected over a thousand examples of these colliery checks and tokens. Some are on display at Big Pit: National Coal Museum and examples can be seen on our online resource Images of Industry
Article by: Ceri Thompson, Curator, Big Pit: National Coal Museum
Lampchecks and tokens
Article Date: 30 January 2013


In recent years, lithium-ion batteries have overtaken lead-acid batteries as the industry-wide standard.
NantEnergy, a US energy company, has announced the development of a zinc-air battery which stores energy and is considerably cheaper than other battery types currently on the market, including the popular lithium-ion battery.
Compared to lithium-ion battery costs estimated to be between $300 and $400 per kilowatt-hour, NantEnergy says its zinc-air battery has cut cost down to less than $100 per kilowatt-hour-a threshold at which power storage is expected to be affordable enough to have more mainstream impact.
Beyond potential pricing points, zinc-air batteries hold other advantages over lithium-ion batteries as they don't pose fire hazards or need to prevent overheating.
Like lithium-ion, the potential applications for zinc-air batteries range from powering electric cars and also homes and businesses.
NantEnergy says its zinc-air batteries have already been successfully tested in 110 villages that previously had no access to electricity in parts of Asia and Africa, including Indonesia and Madagascar.
Like most alternatives to national grids also existing across Africa, zinc-air batteries will be deployed alongside solar panels in micro-grids.


At the Forge - Cassandra
Exploring Your Keyspace
Restart Cassandra, and reconnect via the CLI. Then, type:
cassandra> show keyspaces
Your new keyspace, "People", now should appear in the list:
cassandra> show keyspaces
You can ask for a description of your keyspace:
cassandra> describe keyspace People
Column Family Type: Standard
Columns Sorted By: org.apache.cassandra.db.marshal.BytesType@1b22920
Column Family Type: Standard
Column Sorted By: org.apache.cassandra.db.marshal.BytesType
flush period: null minutes
You now can see that your People keyspace contains a single "Users" column family. With this in place, you can start to set and retrieve data:
cassandra> get People.Users['1']
Returned 0 results.
cassandra> set People.Users['1']['email'] = ''
cassandra> set People.Users['1']['first_name'] = 'Reuven'
cassandra> set People.Users['1']['last_name'] = 'Lerner'
In Cassandra-ese, you would say that you now have set three column values ('email', 'first_name' and 'last_name'), for one key ('1') under a single column family ("Users"), within a single Keyspace ("People"). If you're used to working with a language like Ruby or Python, you might feel a bit underwhelmed—after all, it looks like you just set a multilevel hash. But that makes sense, given that Cassandra is a super-version of a key-value store, right?
Now, let's try to retrieve the data. You can do that with the key:
cassandra> get People.Users['1']
=> (column=6c6173745f6e616d65, value=Lerner,
=> (column=66697273745f6e616d65, value=Reuven,
=> (column=656d61696c,,
Returned 3 results.
Notice how each column has its own unique ID and that the data was stored with a timestamp. Such timestamps are crucial when you are running multiple Cassandra nodes, and they update one another without your knowledge to achieve complete consistency.
You can add additional information too:
cassandra> set People.Users['2']['first_name'] = 'Atara'
cassandra> set People.Users['2']['last_name'] = 'Lerner-Friedman'
cassandra> set People.Users['2']['school'] = 'Yachad'
cassandra> set People.Users['3']['first_name'] = 'Shikma'
cassandra> set People.Users['3']['last_name'] = 'Lerner-Friedman'
cassandra> set People.Users['3']['school'] = 'Yachad'
Now you have information about three users, and as you can see, the columns that you used within the "Users" column family were not determined by the configuration file and can be added on the spot. Moreover, there is no rule saying that you must set a value for the "email" column; such enforcement doesn't exist in Cassandra. But what is perhaps most amazing to relational database veterans is that there isn't any way to retrieve all the values that have a last_name of 'Lerner-Friedman' or a school named 'Yachad'. Everything is based on the key (which I have set to an integer in this case); you can drill down, but not across, as it were.
You can ask Cassandra how many columns were set for a given key, but you won't know what columns those were:
cassandra> count People.Users['1']
3 columns
cassandra> count People.Users['2']
3 columns
However, if you're trying to store information about many users, and those users are going to be updating their information on a regular basis, Cassandra can be quite helpful.
Now that you've got the hang of columns, I'll mention a particularly interesting part of the Cassandra data model. Instead of defining columns, you instead can define "super columns". Each super column is just like a regular column, except it can contain multiple columns within it (rather than a name-value pair). In order to define a super column, set the ColumnType attribute in the storage-conf.xml file to "Super". For example:
Note that if you restart Cassandra with this changed definition, and then try to retrieve People.Users['1'], you'll probably get an error. That's because you effectively have changed the schema without changing the data, which always is a bad idea. Now you can store and retrieve finer-grained information:
cassandra> set People.Users['1']['address']['city'] = 'Modiin'
cassandra> get People.Users['1']['address']['city']
=> (column=63697479, value=Modiin, timestamp=1279026442675000)
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A free-range broiler breeder flock was studied in order to determine the natural patterns of Campylobacter colonization over a period of 63 weeks. Campylobacter sequence types (STs) were not mutually exclusive and on average colonized only 17.7% of the birds tested at any time. Campylobacter STs typically reached a peak in prevalence upon initial detection in the flock before tailing off, although the ST and antigenic flaA short variable region in combination were stable over a number of months. There was evidence that, with a couple of exceptions, the ecology of C. jejuni and C. coli differed, with the latter forming a more stable population. Despite being free range, no newly colonizing STs were detected over a 6-week period in autumn and a 10-week period in winter, towards the end of the study. There was limited evidence that those STs identified among broiler chicken flocks on the same farm site were likely to colonize the breeder flock earlier (R(2) 0.16, P 0.01). These results suggest that there is natural control of Campylobacter dynamics within a flock which could potentially be exploited in designing new intervention strategies, and that the two different species should perhaps be considered separately.
Original publication
Journal article
Environ Microbiol
Publication Date
938 - 946
Animal Husbandry, Animals, Campylobacter, Campylobacter Infections, Chickens, Food Microbiology, Genetic Variation, Multilocus Sequence Typing, Poultry Diseases


text:
Return TRUE if the expression is NULL, otherwise return FALSE.
Syntax IsNull(expression) Key expression A string or numeric expression.
The IsNull() function may be used in VBA or in an SQL query.
MS Access makes a distinction between an empty string "" and a NULL value. If you type something into a field and then delete it, you will be left with a zero length string, in contrast if nothing has ever been entered into a field it will be NULL. IsNull() will only detect NULLs.
Dim boolDemo as Boolean
boolDemo = IsNull(Me!txtDescription)
If boolDemo = True Then Msgbox "A required value is missing!"
"Art is the elimination of the unnecessary" ~ Pablo Picasso
Nz - Detect a NULL value.
© Copyright SS64.com _PHONE_
Some rights reserved


text:
The seven components forming the primary level of education at a university: During the medieval period these seven components were grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.
Related term(s): Quadrivium; Trivium
Category: Universities and Education
Last modified: 08.06.05
Source information: Singman, Jeffrey L. Daily Life in Medieval Europe. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999. 203.


text: The historic range of the Johnny Darter extended throughout most of northern Kansas. Today it is found mostly in small streams in the Flint Hills in the Kansas River basin. The Johnny Darter has also been collected in small streams in the Marais des Cygnes, Little Osage, lower Kansas, and Spring river basins, but these sites probably do not account for a substantial proportion of the overall population in Kansas. The Johnny Darter is seldom numerous, but remains common in many streams within its range. Its habitat is shallow pools with little current, but sometimes is found in adjacent riffles. The Johnny Darter is typically more abundant in streams than rivers, and can tolerate greater turbidity than most darters. The main diet of the Johnny Darter is bloodworms. Spawning occurs in April and May within a nesting territory consisting of sloping stones. Females invert to attach eggs to the underside of the stone. The male remains to guard the nest and young.


text:
Definitions for joints in belts
The Standard Electrical Dictionary
Joints in Belts
Belt-joints for electric plants where the belts drive dynamos should be made with special care. The least inequality affects the electro-motive force. Butt joints are, generally speaking, the best, where the ends of the belt are placed in contact and laced. Lap-joints are made by overlapping the belt, and unless the belt is carefully tapered so as to preserve uniform strength, the speed of the dynamo will vary and also the electromotive force.
Use the citation below to add this definition to your bibliography:
"joints in belts." Definitions.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2013. Web. 24 May 2013. .


Still, one of the Louvre's own consultants acknowledged that some Muslims could be "shocked" by three images of Muhammad with his face exposed in the new wing. Many Muslims believe the prophet should not be depicted at all — even in a flattering way — because it might encourage idolatry.
The galleries provide a needed showcase one of the West's most extensive Islamic art collections, some 18,000 artifacts that range from the 7th century to the 19th century.
But the wing does not dwell on the old: It is housed under a futuristic, undulating glass roof designed by architects Rudy Ricciotti and Mario Bellini that has garnered comparisons to a dragonfly wing, a flying carpet, even a wind-blown veil. It marks the Louvre's biggest change since I.M. Pei shook up the famed Paris museum with his iconic glass pyramid in 1989.
France, meanwhile, is bracing for possible disruptions at embassies across the Muslim world on Friday after the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo published lewd caricatures of Muhammad on Wednesday. The publication raised concerns that French interests could face violent protests like the ones targeting the United States over a video produced in California that ridiculed the prophet. Those protests, which continued on Thursday, have left at least 30 people dead.
But could the new museum wing actually be good timing?
The Louvre collection's mission is to foster understanding between the West and the Islamic world. Instead of highlighting Islam as one united religion, it celebrates the secular, tolerant and cultural aspects of different Islamic civilizations.
Sophie Makariou, head of the Louvre's Islamic art department, hopes the new wing will teach lessons about tolerance and diversity.
"I like the idea of showing the other side of the coin," said Makariou, standing at a wall decorated with colorful, flower-patterned tiles from the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century. "We are talking about a diverse world that goes from the Atlantic, Spain and Morocco to India. It brings complexity.
"We are suffering from simplistic views on the Islamic world. (Some) would make us believe that there is just one Islam, which is just not true."
Indeed, an intricately engraved bronze lion from 13th century Spain stands proudly alongside a rare modeled-stucco head of a prince from medieval Iran. The works presented were made not just by Muslims, but by Christian and Jewish artists as well.
In a sign of the political importance of the new collection, French President Francois Hollande attended an opening ceremony Tuesday, calling it a "political gesture in the service of respect for peace." Saudi Prince Waleed Bin Talal and the president of Azerbaijan accompanied him.
"The best weapons for fighting fanaticism that claims to be coming from Islam are found in Islam itself," Hollande said. "What more beautiful message than that demonstrated here by these works?"
The Louvre opened a department of Islamic art in 2003, under former President Jacques Chirac, who said he wanted to highlight the contributions of Muslim civilizations to Western culture.
Chirac, who vigorously opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, constantly pushed for the idea of a "dialogue of cultures" to break down misunderstandings between the West and the Muslim world.
The collection's organizer decided to include images of Muhammad to show the evolution of Islamic art. In one instance, he appears as a veiled character in a 16th century manuscript. And in a multimedia projection, Mohammad is shown in three separate images with his face exposed — something almost unheard-of today.
"I think Muslims will be shocked," said Charlotte Maury, a historical consultant for the Louvre. "That's why we put it on the side."
"We felt we had to use them, to illustrate (Islamic) history the way we see it," she said.
Maury said Muhammad's face was only covered up in Islamic art starting in the 15th century, when Muslim scholars decided to interpret the veiled figure as a more respectful image.
The Quran has no direct prohibition against depicting Mohammad, though it does contain verses saying that those who insult him are cursed.


text:
The wintertime is great for shooting photos for your gallery or social media. The winter snow falling on the ground and stacking up on the trees can be a beautiful sight.
However, you have to be lucky to find some snow falling and ensure it doesn't damage your camera's batteries.
If you're an influencer or Instagram model it can be difficult to look your best in the winter season with risks of dried skin and frostbite.
So, how do you add a realistic snowing effect even when it's not actually snowing?
How to add snow to a photo using Bunnypic
Fortunately, we have developed Bunnypic. An online Photoshop tool that has similar features to Photoshop that is free-to-use and requires no sign-up.
In this article, we'll look at how to add a realistic snowing effect to your photos using Bunnypic.
1. Open your image in Bunnypic
Go to the Bunnypic editor and click on Open from computer and select the image you want to add snow to.
2. Create a new layer
Next, we'll create a new layer on which we will add the snow effect.
- Go to Layer > New Layer or press CTRL+SHIFT+N.
- Double-click the layer under the Layers panel and rename it to "snow".
- Next, we'll color it black. Do this by going to Edit > Fill and select Black.
- With the new layer now black, click OK.
3. Add Noise filter
Now that the document is set up we can start adding snow to the image.
To do this we need to add the noise filter:
- With the "snow" layer selected go to Filter > Noise >Add Noise.
- Set the amount around 20-30%, set the distribution to Gaussian and check Monochromatic.
- Once done, click OK.
This will have your document looking like this:
This grain effect is going to act as our snow however, the dots are too small.
4. Scale the noise filter
We will increase the size of the noise filter by using the scale option in Bunnypic.
- Go to Edit > Transform > Scale.
- On the top menu bar change the width (W) and height (H) of the image from 100% to 400%.
- Click the Tick icon to save your changes.
Now, our snow layer is looking much better.
5. Cropping the excess snow
When we scaled up the noise in our snow layer it also increased the size of the layer as well. To see how much excess hidden snow we have:
- Select the Move tool from the left toolbar.
- On the top bar click on Transform controls.
- Zoom out of the image using the Zoom tool or pressing CTRL+ "-" till you see the edges of your selection.
You can see that there is a lot of hidden snow in our document.
All this excess is going to be added to your final document which will increase the file size. To remove this excess we need to crop the layer.
Firstly, deselect the image by unchecking the Transform controls and zooming in on your photo. Zoom in by going to View > Fit on screen or press CTRL+0.
To crop the layer:
- Go to Select > All or press CTRL+A. This will select everything on the layer.
- With everything selected, go to Image > Crop to crop the image.
- Now, deselect the layer by going to Select > Deselect or press CTRL+D.
Your photo is now cropped to normal size. You can confirm this by selecting the Move tool and clicking transform controls. The boundaries of the image should appear on the ends of the snow layer.
6. Convert the layer into a Smart Object
We'll convert the snow layer to a smart object so we can edit it later if needed.
With the snow layer selected, go to Layer > Smart Object > Convert to Smart Object.
7. Blend the layers together
Next, we want to blend the snow layer with the original image.
To do this go to blending mode under the layers panel and set the blending mode to Screen.
This will hide all the black color from the layer and give a snowing effect.
8. Add Motion Blur
Till now our photo is looking great but the snow is not realistic as it doesn't give the falling effect. We need to give the snow some "motion" and to do this we will use the motion blur filter.
To add the motion blur filter:
- Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur.
- Adjust the distance and angle of the blur. The distance increases the amount of blur and the angle determines the direction of the blur.
- Once you're happy with the blur Click OK.
In this image the distance is 14px and the angle is -44 to give it a more realistic effect.
Adding a snow effect to your photos can really brighten them up. However, when it's not snowing it can be difficult to get those beautiful cinematic shots.
Thankfully, our free online editor, Bunnypic is great for adding a realistic snowing effect to your photos without Photoshop.


text:
Scattered Corn with Hoe SHSND# D0566American Indians began raising crops in the region now known as North Dakota about 900 years ago. The seeds and the knowledge for cultivating corn, squash, sunflowers, and beans probably came from the Navajo, Hopi, and Pueblo regions of the Southwest. Over time, the varieties of vegetables were adapted to the cold, dry climate of the northern Great Plains. The tribes primarily engaged in horticulture were the Hidatsa and Mandan and somewhat later the Arikara. (Hidatsa, p. 23)
Each woman was assigned a garden plot for her family in the river bottoms along the Missouri or one of its tributaries. Buffalo Bird Woman recalled that the largest garden her family had was 180 yards by 90 yards. Usually a family began with a smaller plot and expanded it for several years. (Buffalo, p. 24) Garden plots were often fenced to prevent animal (deer, bison, horses) depredation.
Corn cultivation began early in the spring when the Goose Society (an adult women's society) welcomed the corn spirits from the South with a ceremony of song and dance. First the sunflowers were planted, then the corn. (Independence, p. 33)


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Mar. 26, 2004 COLUMBUS, Ohio – Carbon dioxide, an environmentally friendly solvent for dyeing and dry cleaning, may become a valuable new tool for making medical implants, according to a study at Ohio State University.
Engineers here used compressed carbon dioxide (CO2) to push chemicals into a plastic that is often used as a bone replacement. With further development, the technology could be used in a wide range of plastics that release medicines -- from antibiotics to anti-tumor agents -– into the body.
The high-pressure, high-temperature CO2 is neither gas nor liquid, but is known as a "supercritical fluid," explained David Tomasko, associate professor of chemical engineering at Ohio State. Supercritical fluids are often used in industry because they penetrate materials like a gas but can dissolve some substances -- such as grease -- and other chemicals like a liquid.
"Though supercritical CO2 has long been developed as a means of extracting molecules, this work shows that it can be used in the opposite way," said David Tomasko, associate professor of chemical engineering at Ohio State.
The study also revealed that engineers can control the pressure of the CO2 to alter the internal structure of the plastic and create voids that may enable the material to hold larger quantities of medicine than might normally be possible.
Tomasko and John Lannutti, associate professor of materials science and engineering, their graduate students Taryn Sproule and Hongbo Li, and undergraduate student J. Alex Lee, published their results in a recent issue of the Journal of Supercritical Fluids.
Supercritical CO2 is gaining popularity as an environmentally friendly dry-cleaning agent and textile-dyeing solvent, but it is the fluid's ability to sterilize surfaces that could prove key for making medically active implants. Currently, implants are sterilized with heat, radiation, or chemicals that can make embedded medicines less effective, Tomasko explained.
The engineers' early tests with a protein solution suggest that supercritical CO2 may leave medicines intact.
They applied a coating of the protein solution onto dime-sized plastic disks with a cotton swab, and placed the disks in a glass tank, which they then filled with supercritical CO2. The proteins contained a fluorescent biomarker, so the researchers were able to track how well the proteins penetrated the plastic by examining cross-sections of the material under a microscope in ultraviolet light.
The microscope showed that the proteins survived the embedding process, and formed a layer 30 micrometers, or millionths of a meter, beneath the surface of the plastic.
Although the plastic -- polymethylmethacrylate, or PMMA -- was undamaged by the procedure, the interior of the disks foamed up into a Swiss cheese-like texture, with voids opening inside. The faster the engineers turned off the high-pressure CO2, the foamier the material became. Lowering the pressure slowly had the opposite effect.
Tomasko envisions that such voids within an implant could come in handy for holding extra quantities of a drug for long-term therapy.
Today, medical implants are used for mechanical support where tissue or bone has been removed. The researchers' vision is to "piggyback" drug delivery onto this mechanical function. The implant may be impregnated with drugs to prevent inflammation or infection following surgery. Or, in cases where a patient has had bone surgically removed as part of a treatment for cancer, doctors may also need to dispense anti-tumor agents from the implant for a longer period, Tomasko explained.
He's been working with David Powell, clinical assistant professor of otolaryngology, to investigate the potential use of such implants for patients who've had facial surgery.
Since completing their initial study, the engineers have begun using a porous glass disk to dispense protein solution onto the PMMA, instead of a cotton swab. Still, they found that the proteins don't penetrate the PMMA evenly, but form clumps instead -- an effect Tomasko suspects is due to the tightly packed polymer chains that make up the plastic.
"We think the CO2 lubricates the polymer chains so the protein molecules can slip in-between," he said.
For the next step in this research, the engineers will be working with biodegradable plastics and determine whether the medicine remains effective after being embedded with the supercritical fluid.
### Douglas Kniss, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Ohio State, provided the protein solution, and Kathy Wolken, senior electron microscopist at the Campus Microscopy and Imaging Facility, assisted with the imaging of the PMMA samples.
This work was sponsored by the American Chemical Society's Petroleum Research Fund and the National Science Foundation, along with internal support from Ohio State. The Wright Laboratory's Materials Directorate at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base provided access to some of the equipment used in the study.
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Volume strain: Due to the application of external force, if the volume of an elastic body is changed without changing its shape, the strain is called volume strain. It is measured by the unit change of volume.
Explanation: It is the ratio of the change in volume of a body to its original volume. If VV is the original volume of a body and V + ΔV is the volume of the body under the action of normal stress, the change in volume is ΔV.
Let the initial volume of an object = V and due to application of external force the change of volume = ΔV.
So, according to definition, volume strain = change of volume / original volume = ΔV /V
So, the volumetric strain is the unit change in volume, i.e. the change in volume divided by the original volume.


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To determine intrasession and intersession repeatability of retinal vessel oxygen saturation from the Oxymap Retinal Oximeter using a whole image–based analysis technique and so determine optimal analysis parameters to reduce variability.
Ten fundus oximetry images were acquired through dilated pupils from 18 healthy participants (aged 22 to 38) using the Oxymap Retinal Oximeter T1. A further 10 images were obtained 1 to 2 weeks later from each individual. Analysis was undertaken for subsets of images to determine the number of images needed to return a stable coefficient of variation (CoV). Intrasession and intersession variability were quantified by evaluating the CoV and establishing the 95% limits of agreement using Bland and Altman analysis. Retinal oxygenation was derived from the distribution of oxygenation values from all vessels of a given width in an image or set of images, as described by Paul et al. in 2013.
Grouped in 10-μm-wide bins, oxygen saturation varied significantly for both arteries and veins (p < 0.01). Between 110 and 150 μm, arteries had the least variability between individuals, with average CoVs less than 5% whose confidence intervals did not overlap with the greater than 10% average CoVs for veins across the same range. Bland and Altman analysis showed that there was no bias within or between recording sessions and that the 95% limits of agreement were generally lower in arteries.
Retinal vessel oxygen saturation measurements show variability within and between clinical sessions when the whole image is used, which we believe more accurately reflects the true variability in Oxymap images than previous studies on select image segments. Averaging data from vessels 100 to 150 μm in width may help to minimize such variability.


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The Netflix error 1011 on the iPhone or other Apple devices is easy to fix. It is usually identified with the following message: There is a problem connecting to Netflix. Please try again later (1011).
What Does The Netflix 1011 Error Mean?
The 1011 error means that a glitch was encountered on one of the interfaces required to establish a connection to Netflix, that is, the Netflix app could not connect to the internet from your device. Now let us look at some of the things that may cause the error 1011 to happen:
- There is a problem with the internet connection on your iPhone.
- The Netflix account information on the iPhone is not correct.
- The Netflix app crashed temporarily.
- There is a problem with the Netflix cache on your device.
How To Fix Netflix Error 1011
There are several things you can do that would clear this error and stop it from showing up on the next try. These pointers or methods are listed below. These are not steps, these are options, you can try all of them though in the order they appear here with the last one being your last resort.
1. Fix The Internet Connection On Your Device
Check to make sure the internet connection on your iPhone or iPad is okay by visiting a webpage from your browser. If your connection is good, then that probably wasn't stopped Netflix. On to the next one.
2. Reset The Netflix Application
To reset the Netflix application, follow the steps below:
- Go to your iPhone home screen, then click on Settings.
- Scroll down until you find Netflix, then click on it.
- Switch the Reset button to On, then go back to your home screen.
- Open up the Netflix app again, then enter your login details to sign in. Now try streaming again to see if the error 1011 would reappear. It shouldn't.
3. Restart Your iPhone or iPad
It is a known fact that restarting a device clears some small surprisingly difficult to fix mobile problems, which is sometimes or even more commonly caused by an overloaded RAM. I remember one time my phone just stopped charging, I thought the charger had gone bad so I went to get a new one; that, and the others I borrowed from friends didn't work until I restarted the phone. Some people that find themselves in this situation may even take the battery out and slam it a few times on the floor, then when the put it back in and it works, they'll go "hey my trick worked, I'm a genius". But in reality, a simply restart would do it.
If you do not know how to restart your iPhone, follow the guide below:
- Press and hold the Sleep button on the top of your iPhone for a few seconds until the red slide to off slider appears.
- Slide the slider to turn off your phone.
- Wait about 10 seconds, then press the Sleep button to turn the phone back on.
- Now, re-open Netflix and try to do what you were trying to do before the error 1011 came up (streaming a movie perhaps).
4. Use Another Internet Connection
Like I said before, the problem could be your network connection. Have you tried opening a webpage from your browser to make sure your connection is good as described in item 1? If you have, it is also possible that your connection speed is not quick enough to stream videos on Netflix, so trying another internet connection (WiFi) would be your best bet to rule out your connection as the cause of the problem.
To change to a WiFi network connection:
- Click on the Settings icon on your home screen.
- Choose Wi-Fi.
- Find your Wi-Fi network and connect to it.
After you have connected successfully, open Netflix and try streaming your video again, it should work this time.
5. Clear Your Netflix Cookies
To eliminate the doubt that this problem may be the result of a corrupt cookie file, clear your netflix cookies by following the instructions below:
- From your browser, go to this web address _URL_
- After typing that address and pressing enter, you netflix cookies would be cleared and you would be logged out of your account.
- Now try to log back in and see if the error remains.
6. Delete and Reinstall the Netflix App
To delete the Netflix app from your iOS device:
- Press and hold the Netflix icon on your home screen until it wiggles.
- Click on the little X on the top of the icon, then choose Delete.
To install the Netflix app:
- Visit the Apple App Store, then search for Netflix (by Netflix Inc). The app is free.
- Click Install. After the app has installed, sign in and try to stream again.


Learn the difference: Uninterested versus Disinterested
Quick question: when your friend keeps telling you a story that you have no interest in, are you uninterested or disinterested?
These two words sound similar but do not mean the same thing i.e. they are not synonyms.
Let's learn their correct usage today!
Uninterested means "have or show no feeling of interest; indifferent."
For example: A person who dislikes watching movies would be uninterested in watching the newly released thriller everyone is talking about.
The above example means that the person has no interest in watching movies and s/he finds it boring.
Disinterested means "impartial; unbiased by personal interest or advantage."
For example: A disinterested observer is best for our competition.
The above example means that a person who has no personal interest or advantage in the competition would be best to observe/judge it.
Uninterested versus Disinterested
To be uninterested means to be indifferent
To be disinterested means to be impartial
Both these words are derived from the word interest which originated from the Latin word interrese. Hence, they are easily confused.
Incorrect: Why do you seem so disinterested?
Correct : Why do you seem so uninterested?
Incorrect: We need an uninterested judge for the game.
Correct : We need a disinterested judge for the game.
So, to answer the question I asked in the beginning, you are uninterested in the story your friend tells you (and not disinterested)as it may be boring or uneventful.
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Using Expert Knowledge for Test Linking
Linking and equating procedures are used to make the results of different test forms comparable. In the cases where no assumption of random equivalent groups can be made some form of linking design is used. In practice the amount of data available to link the two tests is often very limited due to logistic and security reasons, which affects the precision of linking procedures. This study proposes to enhance the quality of linking procedures based on sparse data by using Bayesian methods which combine the information in the linking data with background information captured in informative prior distributions. We propose two methods for the elicitation of prior knowledge about the difference in difficulty of two tests from subject-matter experts and explain how these results can be used in the specification of priors. To illustrate the proposed methods and evaluate the quality of linking with and without informative priors, an empirical example of linking primary school mathematics tests is presented. The results suggest that informative priors can increase the precision of linking without decreasing the accuracy.


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Fetal akinesia deformation sequence (FADS) is a clinically and genetically heterogeneous condition. Pathogenic variants in DOK7 are known to cause myasthenic syndrome, congenital, 10 (MIM#254300) and, rarely (reported in a single family) lethal FADS. Herein, we describe a biallelic variant c.1263dupC in DOK7, known to cause congenital myasthenic syndrome 10, causing lethal FADS in a consanguineous family. The present report illustrates wide phenotypic variability caused by biallelic pathogenic variants in DOK7. We also describe the second family with FADS due to pathogenic variants in DOK7.
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes


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Individual differences |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |
The Great Ape Project, founded by Italian philosopher Paola Cavalieri and Australian philosopher Peter Singer, is campaigning to have the United Nations endorse a Declaration on Great Apes. This would extend what the project calls the "community of equals" to chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans.
Right to lifeEdit
The declaration states that members of the community of equals, which includes humans, may not be killed except in certain strictly defined circumstances such as self-defense.
Protection of individual libertyEdit
Members of the community of equals are not to be deprived of their liberty, and are entitled to immediate release where there has been no form of due process. The detention of great apes who have not been convicted of any crime or who are not criminally liable should be permitted only where it can be shown that the detention is in their own interests or is necessary to protect the public. In such cases there must be a right of appeal, either directly or through an advocate, to a judicial tribunal.
Prohibition of tortureEdit
- Declaration on Great Apes, Great Ape Project
- Animal testing, Vivisection
- Animal rights
- Peter Singer,
- Richard D. Ryder
- Great Ape research ban
- The Mind of an Ape
|This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia (view authors).|


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For Seniors: Print a Web Page in Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer lets you print the web page you are currently displaying in its window. However, the formatting of web pages makes printing difficult, without printing things you don't want, such as ads, sidebars, and so on. Often, web pages offer a printer-friendly page, which displays only the web page's main content, arranged in a simple easy-to-print format.
Navigate to the web page you wish to print.
If a web page includes a link or button that displays a printer-friendly version of a page, click it before proceeding. If the Print dialog box appears as a result, skip the next step.
Click the Print button on the Internet Explorer toolbar.
The Print dialog box appears.
Set options for printing and click Print.
A web page may actually contain several pages worth of print. In the Page Range area, select which pages to print. Click the up arrow in the Number of Copies text box to print multiple copies. If you want multiple copies collated, select the Collate check box.
Unless a web page has a printer-friendly version, it's a good idea to choose File→Print Preview (or click the arrow on the Print button and select Print Preview) and preview how the page will look when printed. Print Preview also helps you pinpoint which page(s) to print, if you don't want to print everything on a web page.


How do you expect the metallic hydrides to be useful for hydrogen storage? Explain
(1) The property of adsorption of hydrogen on tran-sition metals in metallic hydrides is widely used in catalystical reduction/hydrogenation reactions for the preparation of large number of compounds.
(2) Some of the metals like Pd, Pt can accommodate
a very large volume of hydrogen and therefore, can be used as its storage media. This property has high potential for hydrogen storage and as a source of energy.


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Football Boots: Earliest Recorded – King Henry VIII in 1526
Lord Henry VIII's football boots were recorded inside the Great Wardrobe of 1526, a shopping rundown of the day. They were made by his own shoemaker Cornelius Johnson in 1525, at an expense of 4 shillings, the likeness £100 in the present cash. Little is thought about them, as there is no enduring model, yet the illustrious football boots are known to have been made of solid cowhide, lower leg high and heavier than the ordinary shoe of the day.
Football Boots – The 1800's
Pushing ahead 300 years saw football creating and picking up ubiquity all through Britain, yet at the same time staying as an unstructured and casual side interest, with groups speaking to neighborhood production lines and towns in a prospering modern country. Players would wear their hard, calfskin work boots, which were for quite some time bound and steel toe-topped as the primary football boots. These football boots would likewise have metal studs or tacks pounded into them to expand ground grasp and strength.
As laws become incorporated into the game in the late 1800's, so observed the main move in football boots to a shoe (or soccus) style shoe, with players of a similar group beginning to wear similar boots just because. Laws additionally took into consideration studs, which must be adjusted. These cowhide studs, otherwise called spikes, were pounded into the early football boots, which just because moved far from the previous favored work boots. These football boots weighed 500g and were made of thick, hard cowhide going up the lower leg for expanded assurance. The football boots would twofold in weight when wet and had six studs in the underside. The football boot had arrived…
Football Boots – The 1900's to 1940's
Football boot styles remained generally steady all through the 1900's up to the second's end world war. The most critical occasions in the football boot world in the initial segment of the twentieth century were the arrangement of a few football boot makers who are as yet making football boots today, including Gola (1905), Valsport (1920) and Danish football boot producer Hummel (1923). Get More Knowledge about SMS Bong Da
Over in Germany, Dassler siblings Adolf and Rudolf shaped the Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik (Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory) in Herzogenaurach in 1924 and started creating football boots in 1925 which had 6 or 7 replaceable, nailed studs, which could be changed by the climate states of play.


Sunday, 24 January, 2021
Chicken Problems in Poultry and their Solutions
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There are several management problems that are commonly encountered in chicken production.
Some of the common problems with keeping chickens are:
 - Heat stress
 - Cannibalism
 - Egg eating
 - Egg defects
 - Sudden Noise
 - Cage fatigue
 - Rodents
Heat Stress in Poultry
Heat stress is a serious problem in poultry, especially if the house is not constructed properly or the birds are overcrowded in their house.
Heat stress can pose a serious problem for birds if not prevented or controlled early.
The effect could be in the form of reduced feed intake, reduced egg production, egg weight, shell thickness, growth rate, habitability, and fertility.
Management of heat stress in poultry is not technical at all
Heat stress can be prevented or managed in the following ways.
 - Providing an adequate supply of clean, cool water at all times can help to reduce heat stress in poultry.
 - Similarly, you should provide more drinkers during the summer since birds lose water from their bodies more than in the winter due to sunlight.
 - Ensure there's adequate ventilation in the poultry house so they can get fresh air all the time.
 - You can also reduce heat stress by sprinkling water on the roof of the house, especially during the hottest hours of the day.
 - For layers heat management, you should feed them at night when the temperature is very low.
 - If you have a large poultry farm, you can plant canopy trees around your poultry pens, this also helps the heat issue.
Cannibalism in Poultry
Birds pecking one another in poultry can gradually result in cannibalism.
It's always funny that once it starts, it could be disastrous.
Therefore, vent pecking in poultry is nothing to joke with, else, a great loss is beckoning.
Related POST : Swine Management Tips to improve Yield
Birds are regularly seen pecking each other's feathers without any issue.
However, sometimes, this pecking may turn into pulling out and eating feathers, and finally, it leads to cannibalism.
Why do chickens now peck each other to death?
The following are some causes of cannibalism among birds.
 - The poultry house is Poorly ventilated
 - There's a too-low salt level in their feed
 - The poultry environment is extremely humid or warm
 - Overcrowding
 - Inadequate numbers of feeders, drinkers, and laying nests in the poultry house
 - Too much lightning in the poultry house
 - Stress among the birds
 - Prolapsed oviduct in any other flock mate.
 - Having some birds of different age or size, and multiple colors different from others
 - Lack of laying nest or insufficient nesting space
 - High temperatures
 - Over nervousness injury
Treatment of Cannibalism in Poultry
There are a few and simple ways you can control cannibalism in poultry
When cannibalism is noticed, the following measures can be used to curb it.
 - Prompt removal of pecked bird, once the birds noticed blood, vent pecking increases.
 - Lighting should be dim to reduce their activities and activeness.
 - Wounds on any of the birds should be painted with GV (gentian violet) or coal tar to discourage pecking
Other strategic ways you can control cannibalism is to keep the birds busy by providing any of the following
 1. Make available green leafy vegetables for your birds
 2. Allow the birds out of their cage for a few minutes, this can help with stress, which is a trigger of cannibalism.
 3. Change the birds' feed
 4. Some poultry farmers also give a teaspoon of Apple cider vinegar in one liter of water and give it to their birds once a week.
Related POST : How to Make Broiler Starter and Finisher Feed
Egg Eating Habit in Poultry
Egg eating is also a common problem in the poultry business.
Actually, it is not bad for chickens to peck their eggs or that of other birds.
However, it is bad for a chicken to eat her eggs or eggs of other hens.
It's not bad from the perspective of animal nature, but for farmer's profitability, it is highly discouraged.
The reason chickens eat eggs has been found to be a deficiency in calcium or their instinct to make good use of the beak.
There are other triggers of the egg-eating habit in poultry.
The following can lead to the development of egg-eating behavior.
 - Nutritional deficiencies, especially calcium
 - Inadequate nesting facilities for layer chickens
 - The eggs are not picked promptly
 - Accidental breakage of eggs
Egg eating is a habit that is usually started by one or two birds in the pen.
This habit can be imitated by more birds in the flock.
Within a short period, it becomes a serious problem in the flock.
It is thereby important to consider the above-mentioned causes of egg-eating habits so it can be prevented or controlled properly.
And any hen that is identified as a habitual egg eater should be culled immediately.
Egg Defects in Poultry
There are many defects that can be seen on eggs.
These include abnormal egg size, soft-shelled eggs, and a high percentage of eggs with cracks.
An excessive number of cracked eggs may be a result of calcium, vitamins A and D deficiency.
Poor management such as insufficient litter material on the hardy floor, poorly designed nests such as a steep floor that can lead to rapid rolling eggs, inadequate nesting facilities, and infrequent egg collection can also lead to a high incidence of egg cracks.
Related POST : Factors to consider when selecting Pigs for Breeding
Sudden Noise in Poultry
Chickens are sensitive to sound and light. Chicken can start making croaking noises when they notice strange things in their environment.
Chicken can begin to squawk loudly when they become hysterical.
If they are in a cage, they will all attempt to escape from the cage or the pens.
Chicken crying or loud sound means they're afraid.
You should check them immediately once you hear them making a weird noise.
It may be possible they notice predators like snakes or other animals like rodents.
The fear can lead to a loss. The birds may start huddling together out of fright, leading to possible suffocation and death.
Therefore, avoid sudden noise or any form of disturbances such as blasting car horns, alarm, or gunshots.
Poultry Cage fatigue
Poultry cage fatigue is common mostly in layer chickens.
This defect is usually characterized by stress associated with housing birds in cages.
It manifests through the inability of the bird to reach water and feed, leading to starvation.
If this is prolonged and unnoticed, it may lead to their death.
Birds affected should be transferred to deep litter pens and an anti-stress therapy may be prescribed by the veterinarian.
Rodents and Birds
Rats cause economic losses to poultry businesses.
They can be controlled through the use of traps and appropriate poisons.
Wild birds should also be prevented from entering poultry houses.
Chicken Loses
Some chickens will die during the laying period.
Efforts should be made to reduce the incidence of mortality among the flock.


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Cost: $1,595.00 per student
Duration: 40 Hours
Prerequisites: Minimum of 40 Hours of Phased Array Training
Equipment Needed: All equipment, including scope, is provided for this class. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own personnel scope if they have one but it is not required.
For an ONSITE QUOTE or to REGISTER contact us at: _EMAIL_
This advanced ultrasonic training class is ideally suited for individuals who have already been trained in basic theory and equipment operation in phased array. If you lack understanding of PAUT theory, lack proficiency in equipment operation, or would just like a refresher in these areas, we highly recommend taking our PA-101 class in conjunction with this class.
PA-102 dives into the more advanced applications of phased array. This class mostly focuses on the methodologies of scan planning, advanced grouping, and discontinuity detection and characterization as applied to the inspection of welds. This class, just like all our training classes, blends theoretical training and lab exercises to help maximize the learning potential. We prepare you by training with state of the art equipment and have one of the largest collections of real flawed samples which also helps prepare individuals for the real world. At the end of this course, students can expect to have a thorough understanding of how to apply phased array in all weld inspection applications.
This class is an essential step for individuals seeking certification in PAUT. SNT-TC-1A and CP-189 require 80 total hours of PAUT formal training. This class, in combination with the PA-101, follows and fulfills the Topical Outline for Qualification of Nondestructive Testing Personnel CP-105.
If you have any additional questions please feel free to contact us at any time.
Available Classes: Training Calendar
The following outlines the material to be discussed:
- Advanced Phased Array Theory Uses and Application
- Codes and Standards: UT in Lieu of RT
- PA Probe set ups using the grouping feature
- Combined Linear and Sectorial Scanning
- Phased Array Ultrasonic Data Evaluation
- Phased Array Transducer Applications for Weld Inspection
- Advanced Calibration of a Phased Array System using the Grouping Feature
- Phased Array Scan Planning Methods and Techniques
- Cross Sectional Plotting Views
- Multiple Beam Angle Projections
- Weld and HAZ Volume Coverage per Codes and Standards
- Advanced Weld Examinations
- Flaw Detection
- Flaw Characterization
- Encoded Phased Array Scanning and Weld Examination Applications
- Advanced Phased Array Data Analysis
- Evaluation of A, B C, S Scans for Flaw Characterization
- Sectorial Scans
- Linear Scans
- Electronic Report Preparation
- Hands-on Phased Array Examination Laboratory Exercises
- Weld Flaw Examination
At the conclusion of the Advanced PA Class, a Performance Demonstration Examination will be given for Basic PDQ


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Rare Maud Island Frogs Hatched In New Zealand [ScienceDaily 2008-03-05]
[Photo] Adult Maud Island frog. The thimble-sized frogs are nationally threatened in New Zealand. (Credit: Copyright Karori Sanctuary)
ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2008) — What looks at first to be a slimy mess in a Petri dish represents a highly-significant advance in conservation and restoration ecology.
Ecologists from both the Sanctuary and Victoria are celebrating the arrival of the first Maud Island frogs (Leiopelma pakeka) to hatch on mainland New Zealand for many years.
Clustered together to conserve moisture, the 13 fingernail-sized baby froglets were recently transferred from the Karori Sanctuary to Victoria University where they will be incubated and later released as young frogs.
No larger than a human adult's little fingernail, the Maud Island froglets differ from most frog species in that they hatch from the egg as fully-formed froglets without going through the usual tadpole stage.
13 froglets in total were found during a recent audit of a specially-constructed frog research enclosure at Karori Sanctuary.
"Sixty frogs were released into the special mouse-proof enclosure in 2006 in an effort to re-establish this highly-endangered species on the mainland," Victoria Master's student Kerri Lukis says. Ms Lukis is studying the Sanctuary population for her Master's thesis under the supervision of Associate Professor Ben Bell, Director of the University's Centre for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration.
She says that thirty of frogs released in 2006 were later released outside of the enclosure so that the captive and wild populations could be compared. When it came time to find the frogs again to see how many frogs had survived and whether they had bred she was delighted to find the 13 froglets attached to adult males.
"This is extra special because Maud Island frogs have never been found breeding in their natural habitat before, and certainly not on the mainland.
"It's wonderful timing for 2008 - international Year of the Frog – and a Leap Year. It's rare to get a 'good news' story about frogs – every year around 35 species of frog become extinct and two of New Zealand's remaining native frog species are on the critical list."
While not the rarest species, the thimble-sized Maud Island frogs are nationally threatened. Like all of New Zealand's native frog species, they are endemic (found only here) and belong to the endemic genus Leiopelma.
They have evolved very little over the last 70 million years, resulting in some very distinctive features and behaviours. For example, they don't croak, live in water, have webbed feet, or go through a tadpole stage.
Associate Professor Ben Bell says the University and the Sanctuary have worked closely together on this project.
"It is good to know that the Karori Sanctuary frogs are able to breed in an enclosure there. Whether those frogs released into the wild in Karori survived and bred is less certain at present."
Adapted from materials provided by Victoria University Of Wellington.


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Changing Combinations - The Passback
The challenge lies in the potential for teams to quickly convert a losing combination to a winning one by a simple Passback, slowing an opponent so that a teammate moves ahead. Slowing techniques may be accomplished by luffing or Ragging on an opponent or Pinning her beyond the layline and forcing her to sail a longer distance, helping a team mate to move ahead. Simply described, a passback is a technique used by a competitor to cause an opponent to lose one or more positions and effectively bring a teammate ahead one or more positions.
An upwind passback or is performed by a competitor to weather of an opponent luffing her jib on the leeward opponent so that they both slow down. Meanwhile, a teammate to leeward of both boats goes fast and moves ahead of the opponent to weather. The passback becomes more challenging when the opponent in the middle effectively luffs and slows the third boat to leeward. With all this luffing going on, two team mates are going slowly while only one of the other team is going slowly. This means that the two other opponents may be going fast elsewhere on the race course. Obviously, a passback quickly accomplished is desirable for the team dedicating two boats. This is demonstrated in Figure 1.
At times, with the three boat set up described above, it is more advantageous to execute a Speed Passback. This would be the case when the opponent in the middle has a poor position on your teammate to leeward. With a speed passback, just the bad air from the weather teammate would be enough to slow the opponent in the middle, pass her back, and bring the leeward teammate ahead. A speed passback does not require luffing and would be best utilized when speed is vital and the weather teammate does not want to lose her position in the race by luffing and slowing.
Another form of passback is accomplished when a teammate forces an opponent beyond a layline, making both of them travel a further distance while a teammate who was behind goes the shorter distance and passes a mark ahead of both. A mark passing passback is demonstrated in Figure 11 and Figure 14.


Study: Men spend if women are few
By Carolyn Y. Johnson
Globe Staff / January 23, 2012
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In the animal world, an overabundance of males can increase competition and skirmishes among would-be suitors seeking scarce partners. Now, a study finds hints that in the human world, too, a male-female imbalance affects complex mating behaviors, causing men to spend their paychecks faster, take on more debt, and increase the amount they would spend to woo a woman.
Economic behavior is clearly complex; it was not heartsick overspending on diamond rings and dinner dates that triggered the global recession. But the new work, published in the January issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, is part of a growing body of research that examines evolutionary factors that contribute to everyday consumer decisions.
"Different numbers of men and women trigger a competitive motive, a desire to compete,'' said Joshua Ackerman, an assistant professor of marketing at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a coauthor of the paper. "The core underlying theme, the evolutionary piece to this, is having different numbers of men and women signals different opportunities for romantic partners,''
Although, he added, "It's not that people are consciously thinking this stuff.''
Sex ratios have been extensively examined by biologists, with studies looking at how different proportions of males and females affect behavior in animals that range from the gray mouse lemur to the European bitterling, a freshwater fish.
Human studies have tended to study gender imbalance and its effect on behaviors such as aggression. But in the new study, the researchers gathered data from 134 US cities, including the sex ratios of unmarried people, average consumer debt, and the number of credit cards per person.
The researchers found that in cities that had more unmarried men than women, there tended to be greater average personal debt and more credit cards per person.
This overall trend, however, was just a correlation and did not suggest a male-female imbalance played a causal role - or rule out other explanations for the differences in debt.
The average debt level and number of credit cards were not broken down by sex, making it impossible to know the specific role single men were playing in the trend. So the researchers conducted a set of laboratory experiments to try and pinpoint the possible origins of the financial differences.
They used various means to prime research participants with the sense they were in an environment dominated by either men or women.
In one experiment, participants were led to believe they were participating in a memory task. They read 500-word news stories about the local community being either maleor female-dominated and then were told they would be asked a series of unrelated financial questions, which were supposedly just to pass enough time to cause their memories to fade.
But researchers were most interested in their answers to a few questions: how much money they would spend from a monthly paycheck and how much they would borrow.
The males who had read the article "Fewer Women for Every Man for Today's Students'' said they would borrow 84 percent more money each month. They also opted to save 42 percent less per month. Sex ratio did not affect women's financial behavior in the experiment.
In another experiment, the researchers tested how much people expected men to spend on "mating-related products.'' They found that in the male-dominated experimental condition, people of both sexes expected men to pay more to woo women. Men were expected to spend $6.01 more on a Valentine's Day present, $1.51 more for a dinner entrée, and $368 more on an engagement ring.
Jill Sundie, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Texas San Antonio, who was not involved in the research, said the results provided fresh insight into an evolutionary force that influences consumer behavior.
"The effects are not enormous, meaning that if we really want to understand why someone decides to run up credit card debt or not,'' you can't just focus on the availability of potential mates, Sundie said.
"Most of the research we do in consumer behavior is not about explaining the whole thing - it's looking at individual factors that might have an effect on certain kinds of circumstances.... It doesn't tell the whole story, but it tells a novel part of the story, that might get people thinking.''
The authors, a team that included researchers from five institutions across the country, also hope to study other cultures - specifically in China, where male-biased imbalances are extreme. There are more men than women in China, and there is more overall saving there. However, the authors suggested that is because the tradition of paying a "bride price'' to the woman's family is important, and so saving might be more beneficial for a man seeking a partner.
Geoffrey Miller, associate professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico, said the study is innovative and that sex ratios have been largely overlooked when thinking about consumer behavior.
He added that he was glad to see the authors draw attention to the important issue of sex imbalances in China, something that he sees as potentially frightening given what is known about male-dominated populations in the animal world, where aggression and fighting become more common.
"The more worrying thing, to me, is that with too many males per female, you could get more aggression,'' Miller said.
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Azure SQL and Managed Identity
Azure SQL has a close relationship with Azure Storage. Features like Polybase, backups, extended events and more make use of Azure Storage.
On Azure SQL Database, probably the most common use is Extended Events. When we create a file target, we need to point to the Azure Storage URL where the file will be stored.
Using Keys
In order to access Azure Storage, we need to control the authentication. The most common way is to use credentials, creating a credential with the storage SAS key
. Graphical user interface, text, application, email
Description automatically generated
Once we generate the SAS key, we create the credential object inside our database. For this we have Database Scoped a new feature introduced exactly for these situations, allowing us to create the credential inside the database, instead of at server level.
The statement to create the credential would be like this:
CREATE DATABASE scoped credential
The Identity value is fixed, to identify the kind of key we are using, a SAS key. The name needs to be the URL to the container, but not always, it depends on what feature will be using this credential.
Some more recent features are prepared to use credentials, receiving the name of the credential as a parameter. In these cases, the credential can have whatever name we would like.
However, older features, such as Extended Events, are not prepared to be linked to a credential. This is solved by ensuring the credential name has the same name of the path used by the feature. In this way, SQL Server identifies which credential should be used for that access.
Avoiding Keys
This method ends up spreading SAS keys all around. We can't really tell this is unsafe, since the credentials are kept encrypted using the SQL Server encryption system, but it would be better if we could make the authentication without directly using a key or password.
That's what we can achieve using Managed Identities. Each service on Azure can have its own identity registered with Azure Active Directory. Once the identity is stablished, we can use Role Based security (RBAC) to set permissions for the service, avoiding the use of passwords or keys.
Azure SQL Database doesn't have a control on the UI to set the managed identity, but we can easily do it using PowerShell in the cloud shell on the portal.
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The statement to set the managed identity is like this:
Setting Identity Permissions
Once we execute this statement, the server gets an identity, and we can use this identity to control the access to the Azure Storage. The next step is to give permission to this identity.
When dealing with RBAC permissions it's important to mind there are two kinds of permissions: Object permissions, for managing the object, and data permission, to access the data within the object. In this case, we need the data permissions, so SQL Server will be able to write the extended events file to the blob storage. We can set the Managed Identity with the permission Storage Blob Data Contributor, which is different than Storage Blob Contributor.
On the storage account, we access the tab Access Control (IAM) and click the Add button. A new window will open, where we configure the identity and permission. The permission is set on Role dropdown, we just choose it. We type on the Select text box to filter the identities. The Manage Identity will have the same name as the SQL Server we created. Once found, we select it and complete the creation of the role assignment.
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Next step is creating a credential in the database to use the managed identity. This time we don't have a secret for the credential, we only define the type of Identity we will use:
CREATE DATABASE scoped credential
= 'Managed Identity';
Creating the XE Session
This is only an example of an Extended Events session pointing to the blob storage. It will use the credential to authenticate and, in our example, will be using the SQL Server Managed Identity.
ADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_completed(
ADD EVENT sqlserver.sql_statement_starting(SET collect_statement=(1)
ADD TARGET package0.event_file(SET filename=N'')
Managed Identities can make our cloud environment safer, removing keys and passwords from our control.


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Murkowski: Stevens Trial Among Justice Department's "Darkest Moments"
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Lisa Murkowski today submitted a statement for the record (attached in its entirety) in a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee focused on the independent investigator Henry Schuelke's report on the prosecutorial misconduct surrounding the trial of Senator Ted Stevens.
Senator Murkowski addressed the misconduct of the Department of Justice prosecution team, her recent legislation that would attempt to eliminate future unethical prosecutions – and the lingering questions surrounding the Justice Department's decision to not pursue charges against key witness Bill Allen.
Some key excerpts from her statement include:
- "Mr. Schuelke's report, released to the public on March 15, 2012, chronicles what I believe will be recorded by history among the darkest moments in the Justice Department's 223 year history. It is important that its conclusions be reviewed and thoroughly considered by legislators, policy makers and judges."
- "It is too late to do justice to Senator Stevens or the people of Alaska. But we must do justice to the Constitution."
- "This affront to our Constitutional system is hardly trivial. If a standing United States Senator can be treated this way, and the Justice Department can nearly get away with it, just think what happens every day to the ordinary citizen – oftentimes a small business person – who finds himself or herself trapped in the federal criminal justice system."
- The term "government overreach" is frequently uttered in Washington and in our home states. We often understand the term to refer to differences regarding the proper role of government in the regulation of businesses and our personal lives. The conduct of Justice Department prosecutors in the trial of Senator Stevens raises the concept of "government overreach" to new heights. For this example of "government overreach" threatened not only the good name of a fine individual but also his freedom."


Label Best Practices
John Harris
Labels are a means for describing and identifying components that make up an application with arbitrary key/value pairs. Labels are attached to Kubernetes API objects at time of creation or can also be added/modified/removed at a later time. Labels are simple pieces of metadata that can help with organization and administration of an application's lifecycle.
Labels are not always arbitrary, and are sometimes applied automatically to some API objects by Kubernetes, typically via the kubelet.
Using Labels
Label Example
Here's an example of some labels attached to a pod manifest:
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
 name: my_app
 namespace: my_app
 app: my_app
 version: 1.0.0
 component: frontend
Labels with Selectors
Selectors enable you to select Kubernetes API objects based on the labels applied to them. This is useful when defining what workloads should be routed to or from a service and their underlying components, such as what pods should be managed by a replica set. A selector achieves this by specifying which key/value pairs to search for within API object metadata (typically, but not limited to pod specifications) to be able to properly perform these tasks, and is one of the main purposes for labels.
Selector Example
Here's an example of using a service to expose pods identified by their applied labels.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
 name: myapp_db_svc
 namespace: my_app
 app: my_app_db
 version: 1.0.0
 component: backend
 app: my_app_db
 version: 1.0.0
 component: backend
 type: ClusterIP
 - protocol: TCP
 port: 3306
 targetPort: 3306
Identifying Application Components with Labels
The Kubernetes API can be queried with the kubectl client to list specific components with specific labels. There are three operators that can be used to perform these queries: =, ==, and!=.
=equal to or is
==equal to or is
!=not equal to or is not
Label Query Examples
Find all components in Kubernetes that are related to running MySQL (app: mysql) and not production (environment: production).
kubectl get all -l name==mysql,environment!=production -A
In the command above:
 - get: lists the API objects
 - all: is equivalent to all component/API object types
 - -l: label(s) to query/filter on
 - name==mysql: label with key name is/equals mysql
 -,: comma separator for multiple label queries
 - environment!=production: label with key environment is not/not equal to production
 - -A: from all namespaces in Kubernetes.
Considerations when Creating Labeling Standards
As you can see from the prior sections, labels have a fairly important place in successful application deployment within Kubernetes. It is important to standardize labels in every component within a Kubernetes environment. These design decisions will make locating and managing components easier in the long run.
Some recommended labels per the Kubernetes documentation include:
nameThe name of the applicationmysql
instanceA unique name identifying the instance of an applicationfrontend-green
versionThe current version of the application (e.g., a semantic version, revision hash, etc.)1.0.0
componentThe component within the architecturedatabase
part-ofThe name of a parent application this application is part ofwordpress
managed-byThe tool being used to manage the operation of an applicationapp-manager
VMware recommends you extend the above labels with the following, where relevant.
tierThe tier in the overall application architecturefrontend
environmentThe environment in reference to the systems development lifecycledev
purposeThe purpose of this particular application componentqueue
ownerThe team or individual responsible for deploying or maintaining the application component"John Doe"
owner-emailThe email address of the responsible team or individual for deploying or maintaining the application _EMAIL_
repositoryA URL to the repository that contains this application's source code"github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes"
managed-byThe tool being used to manage the operation of an applicationhelm
business-unitThe business unit who owns this application"finance"


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Flagship Pioneering Combines Creativity, Expertise, & More
Researchers believe that there is some relationship between R&D funding, the production of scientific knowledge, and the effects of this knowledge on socioeconomic outcomes.
High-throughput and impactful discoveries require a group of excellent scientific minds and the support of funding. Over the years, it has been observed that funding for scientific discoveries has shaped the kind of ideas or hypotheses proposed by scientists. Funders and investors of science look for projects that are relevant and life-changing for society.
Among the many players in venture capital firms, one of the most popular is Flagship Pioneering.
Flagship Pioneering is an American life science venture capital company located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and founded in 2000 by Noubar Afeyan, Ph.D. He is also the current chief executive officer (CEO) of the company.
Other key players and executives of the venture include Lovisa Afezelius (origination partner), Christopher Austin (CEO-partner), Robert Berendes (Executive partner), Stephen Berenson (Managing partner), David Berry (General partner), and Ara Darzi (Chairman, Preemptive Medicine And Health Security Initiative).
The Flagship lab and team work towards conceiving, resourcing, and building life science companies that invent breakthrough technologies to transform healthcare and sustainability. This article brings you all the information about Flagship Pioneering, its funded companies, and how it works to bring revolutionary solutions to life science and biotech entrepreneurs.
Flagship Pioneering Companies
Flagship Ventures works on eight major principles to create, resource, and build the next generation of life science companies to bring innovative scientific technologies and solve life-threatening health problems.
Flagship Pioneering was actually one of the investors behind the COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer, Moderna. It also recently raised a $3.4 billion capital pool. In an interview with Forbes, it's said that Flagship is likely to create some 20 to 25 new companies during the lifecycle of this capital pool.
Flagship's eight principles include:
- Pioneer through harnessing science and entrepreneurialism to envision alternative futures by developing evolutionary methodology.
- Believe in achieving pioneering by communicating and replicating an idea through a team.
- Attract, develop, and retain top scientific, entrepreneurial, and managerial talents in the world.
- Form top-class companies by combining innovative capacity, entrepreneurial leadership, and professional capital management in a single enterprise.
- Take responsibility for their long-term success by providing them with the full resources of their ecosystem.
- Conceive solutions far beyond what is current in the present market and continuously innovating what people seek.
- Found businesses that own patented platforms, enabling years of products across multiple areas.
- Create world-class innovative and valuable life science companies to deliver exceptional returns to their capital partners.
These eight principles led to the foundation of startups and other new companies that are extraordinary in their efforts to bring innovative solutions for healthcare challenges. The list of such companies are given below:
- Axcella Health
- CiBO Technologies
- Codiak Biosciences
- Cygnal Therapeutics
- Denali Therapeutics
- EcoSense Lighting
- Evelo Biosciences
- Foghorn Therapeutics
- Generate Biomedicines
- Inari Agriculture
- Incredible Foods
- Indigo Agriculture
- Invaio Sciences
- Inzen Therapeutics
- Kaleido Biosciences
- KSQ Therapeutics
- Midori Health
- Omega Therapeutics
- Repertoire Immune Medicines
- Ring Therapeutics
- Rubius Therapeutics
- Sana Biotechnology
- Senda Biosciences
- Seres Therapeutics
- Seventh Sense Biosystems
- Sigilon Therapeutics
- Syros Pharmaceuticals
- Tessera Therapeutics
How Does Flagship Pioneering Work?
In Flagship Pioneering's words:
"Pioneering is being the first to create valuable ideas by directing scientific innovation and entrepreneurship at unknown spaces, far beyond the adjacencies that incumbents pursue."
The company believes pioneering is a process that can be taught, learned, and replicated. They work as a team to create a hypothesis and direct it to a transformational outcome. The whole process involves four phases:
- In this phase, Flagship labs explore the possibility of "what ifs?". The entrepreneurial scientists let the hypothesis evolve until a possible breakthrough hypothesis is created through variation and selection.
- This is done by collaborating with external experts who also determine the strength and weaknesses of these concepts. The company calls the process "explorations". Typically, 80-100 of the imaginative inquiries are explored per year.
- The promising hypothesis or explorations from the previous phase proceed to this stage. These explorations become prototype companies or "ProtoCos" and are assigned a number (FL1, FL2, FL3,…FLn) according to their places in the series of Flagship Lab ventures.
- In this phase, the ProtoCos from the previous stage are tested and discontinued if they can't validate their science in labs. Flagship Pioneering has called the process of conception, iteration, and launch of a new company around a distinct breakthrough, "origination". The company creates 8-10 ProtoCos every year.
- In this phase, a ProtoCo becomes NewCo if it converts the question of "What ifs…" to "It turns out…". The NewCo is given a name and significant capital commitment from Flagship to develop proprietary platforms for breakthroughs and innovations.
- The NewCo then recruits a board of directors, CEO, and leadership team. Flagship Pioneering forms 6-8 NewCos on a yearly basis.
- Once the NewCo is developed, it becomes a growth company called a "GrowthCo". Then, its leaders attract outside investors, forges partnerships, and builds a business that creates extraordinary future value.
- These companies often operate as public companies. Since 2013, twenty of Flagship Pioneering's GrowthCo have completed initial public offerings (IPO).
Image: An illustration of four consecutive phases of Flagship's process for Pioneering.
Source: Flagship Pioneering
If your lab needs high-quality lab equipment but doesn't have the budget to purchase outright, consider leasing through Excedr. We can help you get the lab equipment you need at an affordable rate.
Excedr Helps Labs Procure the Cutting-Edge Equipment They Need
Flagship Pioneering is a venture capital company and a team of pioneering scientists and professionals investing in life sciences and biotech companies. It uses its custom-designed pioneering processes—explorations, ProtoCo, NewCo, and GrowthCo—to build companies that transform human health and sustainability.
Making breakthroughs not only requires a team of talented and knowledge-building people on scientific ground, but it also requires a continuous flow of funds.
To earn funding from different agencies and institutes is meticulous work. It affects labs' studies and can even delay research.
If you are backed by a venture capital company or are currently looking to secure funding from one, an excellent way to extend your cash runway or make your company more of an attractive investment to a prospective investor is to lease your lab equipment through Excedr.
We are a founderand investor-friendly resource that pairs well with venture-backed life science companies or those seeking outside investment in order to operate and grow.
We can help you procure all your required laboratory and analytical equipment through leasing, saving you money for other critical areas of business while keeping depreciating assets off of your balance sheet.
Talk to one of our representatives today to learn more about our custom leasing solutions!


Under review
String functions
Gustav Widén (System support) 4 years ago in IQANdesign updated 4 months ago 3
There are a few different forum questions and feature requests that I think would be possible to solve if we had added some string handling functions, for example comparison of text channel values:
,string concatenation:
and conversion from integer to text
Anyone else who thinks this could be a good idea?
Great ideas,
I also would like the ability to have an Array of text or being able to extract text from a file. This is for primarily for error handling. I have devices with a very large number of possible errors. More than what the state machine can handle (+ it is not very flexible).
I can sort my error or create Error log by number but then customer has to find code in instruction manual.
So the idea would be to be able to display a text based on an index. If the Error file was external then it could be easier to deal with and may not tax the memory? A Spreadsheet could be ideal thus allowing us to maintain the different languages or at least two dimensional array.
Under review
As a comment on this post, in IQANscript does have text compare.


text:
There are tons of little neat tips and tricks scattered throughout iOS just waiting to be discovered. One of these little nuggets is being able to add a direct dial extension number to a Contacts entry to save time when calling someone that can only be reached by dialing an additional extension number. Although this has been possible for quite some time in iOS, the whole process is a lot simpler now than it used to be.
It may not be extremely useful for those who call friends or family members, but for those business users out there who frequently call other companies or colleagues who sit behind a main switchboard, then it could save a lot of time and frustration being able to get to them directly. Follow the simple steps below to get an extension number added to a new or existing contact.
Step 1: Open the Contacts app on the iOS device and select the '+' button in the top right hand corner to add a new contact. Alternatively, if you want to add a dial extension to an existing contact, then select the contact from the list and select the 'Edit' button from the top right hand corner.
Step 2: Tap on the field that allows you to enter a mobile, work or home number for the contact. If you are editing a contact then make sure the cursor is at the end of the already-inputted number before pressing the '+*#' button in the bottom left hand corner. If this is a new contact then enter their number first before selecting the '+*#' button.
Step 3: Select the 'wait' option from the right hand side of the second row of keys that appears. This will append the phone number with a semicolon (;).
Step 4: Add the relevant extension number after the semicolon. For example, if the contact's number is 0192-_PHONE_ and their extension number is 123 then this becomes 0192-_PHONE_;123.
Step 5: Save the information and exit out of the Contacts app.
Step 6: Call the contact in question from the device address book and take note of the new 'Dial' button on the right hand side. This can be tapped to dial the extension at any time.
Rocket science it certainly isn't, but time-saving and beneficial to those who regularly call those behind a switchboard it is. Thanks again to Apple and iOS for adding in these little hidden gems that we come across from time-to-time.