Manjunath Prabhu: I am a Software Engineer working at Intel as part of Intel Distribution for Apache Hadoop, Professional Services. I've been working in the Hadoop world for a four years on and MapReduce, Hbase Hive, Pig & Sqoop but have enjoyed every bit of it.
During the RDMS days, schema design was the backbone of every project in terms of performance, scalability as well as stability. In today's NoSql world, designing an HBase table in itself is an important task.
In order to successfully design an HBase Table there are multiple factors that come into play:
 - Row key: This is one of the most important factors that should be taken into consideration while designing an HBase table. Most users depending on the use case promote use of static business keys as a row key. Row keys can be divided into the following types:
 1. Sequential key: They are used in the case where data is to be read sequentially from HBase. Let's assume that the key is (country + userID + productID). Here we can do a partial scan on country in order to get products sold per country or (country + userID) to get all the products bought by users in that country.
 2. Random Key: Keys written sequentially might be slower in the case where all keys may go to one region server. This scenario is known as hot spotting where one region might get busy due to extra load while there isn't any load on the others. To overcome this we use random keys where the load is balanced over different region servers. Random keys can be easily generated by hashing the key.
 3. Salted Key: In this case we select random keys from any range (say 1 to 10) and prefix it with salt which are then distributed into n buckets. This also overcomes the issue of hot spotting and at the same time we can make use of n scanners to get the data in parallel.
 - Number of column families: This is also an important factor that needs to be taken into consideration and should be kept as small as possible because of the following reasons:
 1. HBase stores data in HDFS at $HBASE_HOME/TableName/regionId/ColumnFamily/HFiles.
In the case where we might have multiple regions out of which some are sparsely populated while the others have multiple column families, it is possible that the region is split when it exceeds the size of an hdfs block. When this happens even the sparsely populated regions will be split and HBase will have to open multiple handlers to read multiple splits even though the data volume is small.
 - All the table configurations like block size compression, version etc can be set per column family. If we need to store and manage data in different ways we should split it into different column families.
 - 3. Block size: Over here we are not talking about hdfs block size but HFile block size which is by default set to 64kb. Each HFile has a byte offset marking its starting and ending position. Smaller the block size the better it is for random gets. Block size should be determine based on the use case, for example If the use case does random gets we should make the block size small but not too small so that one row spans over multiple blocks. Also there is an overhead involved in creating and maintain block indexes. If the use case involves scans instead of gets then it is advisable to set it to zero such that we have as few as possible blocks.
 - Block Cache: This is what keeps HFile blocks in memory after they are loaded and is helpful when you know that you will be scanning/accessing rows from the same block multiple times. This is not very helpful in the case of random gets and is by default set to true.
 - Compression: Even though HFile file format stores data in a very smart manner and is much better in performance as compared to map-file format, we can still compress these files per column family. Most recommended compression algorithm is snappy because of its low compression and decompression time. There is also an option to use different compression algorithms for different column families in the same table.
 - Bloom filter: This helps in reducing I/O operations and is as simple as asking a question, whether a row or column exists in a file or not. The answer can be yes, no or maybe based on the meta-index maintained in the HFile. HBase will scan the file only in the case of yes or maybe and is helpful / useful in the case where you know the most commonly used filter columns or rows.
 - In memory: This should not be confused with block cache and is by default set to false. This tries to keep the mem-store in memory as long as possible.
 - Time to live (TTL): This specifies the time after which a record is deleted and is by default set to forever. This should be changed if you want HBase to delete rows after certain period of the time. This is useful in the case when you store data in HBase which should be deleted after aggregation.
 - Min Version: As we know HBase maintains multiple version of every record as and when they are inserted. Min Version should always be used along with TTL. For example if the TTL is set to one year and there is no update on the row for that period the row will be deleted. If you don't want the row to be deleted you would have to set a min version for it such that only the files below that version will be deleted.
 - Max version: This is the maximum number of versions of a row that will be stored in HBase and is by default set to three. This value is useful when you are updating the same row over and over again and do not care of older versions. If you are replacing the whole row every single time and do not need row histories at all you can set this value to one.
Here is simple example of table creation in HBase:
{NAME=>'BASIC', VERSIONS => '1', COMPRESSION => 'NONE', TTL =>'_PHONE_', BLOCKSIZE => '65536', IN_MEMORY => 'false', BLOCKCACHE => 'false'}
To find out more about Hadoop @ Intel, please check out the Intel(r) Distribution for Apache Hadoop* (IDH) at


Avoid Common Pitfalls in Greasemonkey
Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Pitfall #1: Auto-eval Strings
In places where you want to set up a callback function (such as window.setTimeout, to run a function after a delay), JavaScript allows you to define the callback as a string. When it's time to execute the callback, Firefox evaluates the string and executes it. This leads to our first pitfall.
Assuming a user script defines a function called my_func, this code looks like it will execute my_func() after a one-second delay:
window.setTimeout("my_func()", 1000);
This doesn't work in a Greasemonkey script; the my_func function will never execute. By the time the callback executes one second later, the user script and its entire sandbox have disappeared. The window.setTimeout function will try to evaluate the JavaScript code in the context of the page as it exists one second later, but the page doesn't include the my_func function. In fact, it never included the my_func function; that function only ever existed within the Greasemonkey sandbox.
This doesn't mean you can never use timeouts, though. You just need to set them up differently. Here is the same code, but written in a way that works in the context of a user script:
window.setTimeout(my_func, 1000);
What's the difference? The my_func function is referenced directly, as an object instead of a string. You are passing a function reference to the window.setTimeout function, which will store the reference until it is time to execute it. When the time comes, it can still call the my_func function, because JavaScript keeps the function's environment alive as long as something, somewhere, is holding a reference to it.
Pitfall #2: Event Handlers
Another common pattern in JavaScript is setting event handlers, such as onclick, onchange, or onsubmit. The most common way to set up an onclick event handler is to assign a string to an element's onclick property:
var elmLink = document.getElementById('somelink');
elmLink.onclick ='my_func(this)';
This technique fails in a user script for the same reason the first window.setTimeout call failed. By the time the user clicks the link, the my_func function defined elsewhere in the user script will no longer exist.
OK, let's try setting the onclick callback directly:
var elmLink = document.getElementById('somelink');
elmLink.onclick = my_func;
This also fails, but for a completely different reason. The document.getElementById function returns an XPCNativeWrapper around an Element object, not the element itself. That means that setting elmLink.onclick to a function reference sets a property not on the element, but on the XPCNativeWrapper. With most properties, such as id or className, the XPCNativeWrapper will turn around and set the corresponding property on the underlying element. But due to limitations of how XPCNativeWrappers are implemented, this pass-through does not work with event handlers such as onclick. This example code will not set the corresponding onclick handler on the actual element, and when you click the link, my_func will not execute.
This doesn't mean you can't set event handlers; just that you can't set them in the obvious way. The only technique that works is the addEventListener method:
var elmLink = document.getElementById('somelink');
elmLink.addEventListener("click", my_func, true);
This technique works with all elements, as well as the window and document objects. It works with all DOM events, including click, change, submit, keypress, mousemove, and so on. It works with existing elements on the page that you find by calling document.getElementsByTagName or document.getElementById, and it works with new elements you create dynamically by calling document.createElement. It is the only way to set event handlers that works in the context in which user scripts operate.
Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
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Jean Foulds is an abstract painter and sculptor living and working in West Cornwall. Raised in Derbyshire, Jean spent many happy times in Cornwall as a child and remembers seeing Barbara Hepworth directing the loading of a sculpture onto a lorry outside the old dance hall in St. Ives. This inspirational memory together with other experiences and artistic influences have drawn her back to Penwith over the years.
Jean's artistic background is in three-dimensional work, but her M.A. research study involved children's emergent drawing, and the measurement of mental age through creativity. She became fascinated by the amazingly articulate symbols used by young children, who reveal their knowledge and concepts through their drawings as they grow towards our culture. She developed a respect for their ability to convey information with the minimum of symbols, which with increasing literacy is lost in children as they begin to draw what they see, rather than what they know.
Working in the abstract is for Jean a similar intellectual journey; it facilitates intense description of aspects of reality which are inaccessible in representational art. It allows her to express the reality of what she knows and feels, rather than merely to represent a perceived picture; and it allows a freedom of imaginative response for the audience in the search for meaning. Much of her work is influenced by the human form, dance, music, the rhythm of the sea, and by the feeling of being at one with the Penwith coastal landscape.
Jean Foulds
Jean Foulds 004lowres Jean Foulds 005 lowres
"All my early memories are of forms and shapes and textures [...] Feelings about ideas and people and the world all about us struggle inside me to find the evocative symbol..."
Barbara Hepworth


August 2015
Minitrucks are sold as off-road vehicles for farms and construction sites and are far smaller than conventional small trucks sold for on-the-road use. These vehicles go by many names, including Japanese minitruck, Kei truck, microtruck, and utility transportation vehicle. Minitrucks have the capacity to reach top speeds of 55 mph or more, but many are sold with devices that limit their speed to 25 mph.
Federal safety standards don't apply to minitrucks because they are sold as off-road vehicles, even though they are permitted on public roads in some states. Twenty-one states now allow minitrucks on specific portions of public roads. In Illinois and Missouri, minitrucks are allowed only by local ordinance. Minitrucks must comply with federal safety standards for low-speed vehicles in five states (Illinois, Kansas, Maine, New Hampshire and Tennessee).
The table and map below describe state laws that specifically address the use of minitrucks on public roads. In states without those laws, there may be provisions in other state laws, such as those permitting incidental use of off-road vehicles on public roads, that allow the limited use of minitrucks on public roads.
Hover over map for more detail.


Preserving legacy data is the key to a smooth migration
Nearly every business today has some systems they use to store data. It can be as elaborate as a 3rd party specialized application or as simple as an Excel spreadsheet or shared document library. Regardless of the form, that legacy data is what is driving the business today and likely is critical as you transition to a new and more streamlined system. PRESERVING THAT DATA IS CRITICAL!
Question – How do we get the data into the new SharePoint format?
The answers depend on how it's currently stored. Lynch Interactive has migrated a lot of data and it usually involves a few stages.
Analyse Current Data
How is the data stored? Open system or closed? SQL or Excel? Exportable or requires manual copy/paste?
What data will we need to preserver? Everything in the source? Parts of each record? Selected Records? By Date? By Status? How can we clean up the data?
What new data do we need? New columns? Additional sources? Possible to automate or manual entry?
Movement Automation
The most common question is how do we move the data without manually re-entering everything. At Lynch Interactive, our goal is always to minimize the manual labor. There is almost always some level of clean up of the data that could or should be done prior to import but that is a personal choice.
The old saying goes – "Bad Data In – Bad Data Out" so it really comes down to what your tolerance is. We have software to move data, modern pages allow a lot of cut and past and the exact method really depends on the volume and complexity.
We will have a plan that sequentially imports the data into the appropriate storage spot, the amount of work vary but the end result will be usable clean data if we follow the plan and recommendations.


Check scaling of SOS filter
s = scalecheck(hd,pnorm)
s = scalecheck(hs,pnorm)
s = scalecheck(hs,pnorm,Name,Value)
s = scalecheck(hd,pnorm) checks the scaling second-order section (SOS) dfilt filter object hd.
s = scalecheck(hs,pnorm) checks the scaling of the filter System object™ hs.
s = scalecheck(hs,pnorm,Name,Value) checks the scaling of the filter System object hs with additional options specified by one or more Name,Value pair arguments.
Input Arguments
collapse all
Discrete-time dfilt.df1sos, dfilt.df2tsos, dfilt.df2sos, or dfilt.df1tsosfilter object.
dsp.BiquadFilter filter System object.
pnorm — Different types of norm:'l1' | 'l2' | 'linf' | 'L1' | 'L2' | 'Linf'
Discrete-time-domain norm or a frequency-domain norm.
Valid time-domain norm values for pnorm are 'l1', 'l2', and 'linf'. Valid frequency-domain norm values are 'L1', 'L2', and 'Linf'. The 'L2' norm is equal to the 'l2' norm (by Parseval's theorem), but this equivalency does not hold for other norms — 'l1' is not the same as 'L1' and 'Linf' is not the same as 'linf'.
Name-Value Pair Arguments
'Arithmetic' — Value type:'double' |'single' | 'fixed'
For filter System object inputs only, specify the arithmetic used during analysis. When you specify 'double' or'single', the function performs doubleor single-precision analysis. When you specify 'fixed', the arithmetic changes depending on the setting of the CoefficientDataType property and whether the System object is locked or unlocked.
 Details for Fixed-Point Arithmetic
When you do not specify the arithmetic, the function uses double-precision arithmetic if the filter System object is in an unlocked state. If the System object is locked, the function performs analysis based on the locked input data type.
Output Arguments
Filter scaling for a given p-norm. An optimally scaled filter has partial norms equal to one. In such cases, s contains all ones.
For direct-form I (dfilt.df1sos) and direct-form II transposed (dfilt.df2tsos) filters, the function returns the p-norm of the filter computed from the filter input to the output of each second-order section. Therefore, the number of elements in s is one less than the number of sections in the filter. This p-norm computation does not include the trailing scale value of the filter, which you can find by entering hd.scalevalue(end) at the MATLAB prompt.
For direct-form II (dfilt.df2sos) and direct-form I transposed (dfilt.df1tsos) filters, the function returns a row vector whose elements contain the p-norm from the filter input to the input of the recursive part of each second-order section. This computation of the p-norm corresponds to the input to the multipliers in these filter structures. These inputs correspond to the locations in the signal flow where overflow should be avoided.
When hd has nontrivial scale values, that is, if any scale values are not equal to one, s is a two-row matrix, rather than a vector. The first row elements of s report the p-norm of the filter computed from the filter input to the output of each second-order section. The elements of the second row of s contain the p-norm computed from the input of the filter to the input of each scale value between the sections. For df2sos and df1tsos filter structures, the last numerator and the trailing scale value for the filter are not included when scalecheck checks the scaling.
Check the Linf-norm scaling of a filter.
% Create filter design specifications
hs = fdesign.lowpass;
hd = ellip(hs); % Design an elliptic sos filter
s = scalecheck(hd,'Linf')
In another form:
hd =
 FilterStructure: 'Direct-Form I, Second-Order Sections'
 Arithmetic: 'double'
 sosMatrix: [5x6 double]
 ScaleValues: [6x1 double]
 PersistentMemory: false
 States: [1x1 filtstates.dfiir]
1x1 struct array with no fields.
ans =
 0.7631 0.9627 0.9952 0.9994 1.0000
See Also
| | |
Introduced in R2011a
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text:
Cop Watch: Spectators, Social Media, and Police Reform
In Cop Watch: Spectators, Social Media, and Police Reform, renowned social psychologist Hans Toch takes stock of the vast changes in police procedures that have occurred over the last half-century by examining the evolving role of spectators to police-citizen interactions. This sympathetic and informed analysis details the concerns of both disgruntled citizens and unsettled police. Their interactions are played out on a broad stage, from 1960s riots and Kerner Commission findings, to 2011 accusations of police brutality in Seattle. In this unflinching examination of the power of the crowd and society to shape police practice, Toch provides a uniquely compelling look at the struggles and complexities of policing in a volatile world.
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source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


Saturday, November 21, 2009
244. The Baseline Scenarios -- Part 20: Still More Huts
There are many types of "beehive" hut in various parts of the world -- and the question is: are they related or is their shape simply a coincidence. When the designs and methods of construction are extremely similar, and they are found among hunter-gatherers or horticulturalists with traditions similar to those of HBC, then it would be difficult, I think, to argue that they all don't stem from the same ancestral source. When found in more "advanced" societies, in more elaborate forms, or built from different construction materials, then the relationship is not so clear -- but further research is certainly indicated, because the shape itself may have been passed on traditionally, even if other aspects of construction have changed. Once a baseline has been established, it's much easier to trace origins, since each example we find need be compared only with its hypothetical prototype in the baseline culture. For me, the ultimate baseline is HBC, but in many cases it might be necessary to establish intermediate baselines, from which certain "secondary" or "tertiary" traditions might have arisen. If no backward link can be established, and only then, it would be reasonable to consider the possibility of "independent invention."
This hut is clearly more elaborate than the huts we've seen from Pygmy, Bushmen and Hadza sources:
Zulu hut
But when we compare it with a more traditional type of hut from the same culture, it seems reasonable to assume that the more complex design may well have evolved from the simpler*:
Traditional Zulu Hut
This "beehive" hut is from a completely different part of the world, and made of stone rather than wood and grass or leaves:
Stone "Beehive" Hut -- Bronze Age Ireland
It's beehive shape might well be a coincidence. Or it might have evolved from an earlier type much closer to the traditional African design:
"Celtic" Hut (reconstruction) -- Wales
I'm wondering how the stone hut was constructed. If a wooden framework, similar to the framework of the traditional African huts, were constructed first, it would have been easy to position the stones against the wood, which could be easily removed once the stone structure was complete. In this way it might be possible to imagine a single line of evolution from the wood and grass hut pictured above to the stone one. On the other hand, if some other method of placing the stones had been used, then the connection wouldn't be so clear.
The same thinking could be applied to these mud huts, from the Near East:
"Beehive" Mud Huts -- Harran, Turkey
How were they constructed? If built over a wooden framework similar to that of the traditional African huts, that would establish a clear connection with HBC. If not, then one would have to consider independent invention.
[Added 11-22, 5:15 PM:
Speaking of independent invention, the Igloo certainly looks like a good example, despite its beehive shape.
On the other hand, not all Igloos are made of ice. This one appears to be covered with skins and probably had a wooden frame:
Did the ice Igloo evolve from a hut like this one? If so, it too could be traceable to HBC, why not? Skins are a natural subsitute for leaves or grass in an environment without much vegetation. And when there's no wood around to built a framework, then ice might be the only recourse. Nevertheless, the Igloo is definitely one of the more brilliant inventions of the human mind, no question. It's also an excellent example of cultural adaptation to environmental conditions. But where there is adaptation, there must also be something that's been adapted.]
*You'll notice, by the way, that for the first time I am making an assumption, something I've avoided during the entire course of this thread. Once our (hypothetical) baseline is established, on the basis of evidence and not assumptions, we are then in a much better position to make meaningful assumptions regarding associations for which solid evidence may be lacking, at least for now. Indeed, such assumptions are useful as the basis for future research.
Maju said...
The Chalcolithic "beehive hut" you mention is clearly different because:
1. It has no true dome but a false dome: the "domed" conic roof is made like an igloo (roughly) and not with the classical arched pole structure of true domed hutes or true historical domes.
2. These tholoi of Europe were used as burial sites, not homes. Though it is not impossible that they derived from similar ones from Cyprus (Khirokitia) and Kurdistan (Tell Halaf) of a much earlier period, which were used as real homes, it seems.
DocG said...
Maju, is there any evidence of how these stone huts were constructed? It seems to me that the placement of the stones to form the domelike shape would involve an extremely difficult balancing act unless there were some sort of framework already in place to set them against. Are there any records that tell us how this was done?
Maju said...
AFAIK, the tholoi are there for all to be seen. Some have lost their false domes but others are well preserved. So archaeologists have determined this fact by mere structural observation.
Tholos type buildings do have that "extremely difficult balancing act" you say as essence of their construction techniques (each row has a slightly smaller diameter than the previous one). And that is why they can't build a true dome but just a false conical one (this doesn't happen with igloos but that's because of the particular building material they use).
That's why I said before that this type of building evidences (or appears to prove) that there is conceptual discontinuity from the domed hut (which has a true dome, even if made of perishable organic materials) and the architectural dome of Etruscans and successors.
However it is not totally impossible that some domed huts still existed in Etruscan or proto-Etruscan times, inspiring their architects, but these lessons were not applied to Tholoi, maybe because, lacking mortar, they could not build the arches on stone.
I'll see if I can find some online material on this matter but you can take my word that I have read on it several times already and I'm very confident of this fact re. tholoi.
As with your case of the domed huts, there is some debate if tholoi architectural concepts were invented only once (in West Asia then) or several times independently. There are serious issues regarding time and space gaps to allow for a simple continuity model however it is also known that Cyprus in particular was active in the Mediterranean early trade and there is one or two glass beads in Iberia that evidence that there was some W-E transmediterranean trade at the time of the first Western tholoi (which pre-date the Greek ones and are likely to have inspired them).
DocG said...
Maju, take a good look at this stone beehive:
First of all, it looks to me like a true dome -- NOT conical. Second check out the jumble of stones, going every which way. I can't imagine any other way of constructing such a hut other than by piling stones almost randomly against a framework of some sort, most likely wood. The wood could easily have been removed after the stonework was complete, leaving a stable stone structure. I wonder what architects and engineers have written about this type of structure. What do you think?
Manjunatha Vadiarillat said...
Toda, a Dravidian tribe in South India are known for their unique huts. However, the tribe is relatively lighter skinned than surrounding caste population or even other Dravidian tribes (excluding some of the tribes in Nilgiri hills, where they inhabit, like Badaga and Kota). I think they were believed to have migrated from West Asia.
Maju said...
From Wikipedia, Beehive tomb:
"A beehive tomb, also known as a tholos tomb (plural tholoi), is a burial structure characterised by its false dome created by the superposition of successively smaller rings of mudbricks or, more often, stones. The resulting structure resembles a beehive, hence the traditional English name".
The conical top is obviously not any true dome, which should be semi-spherical.
However, I've noticed that some of your conically topped examples have some sort of what looks as outgoing beams, what may indicate a third different type of architecture.
Maju said...
PS. There is also a graphic example in form of section of the "Treasure of Atreus" tholos, where the structure is clearly visible.
German Dziebel said...
Great collection, Victor! Thank you. I'm not sure if the skin-covered dwelling of the Eskimo is an igloo. I think it's called tupiq. They used it once the snow is melted.
So what's adaptational here and what's driven by descent? The type of covering seems to be adaptational (leaves, skin, snow depends on the availability of resources). Is the frame (conical, with several poles leaning against each other or against a mainstay [a "lean-to type"], or round, with poles being bent around and weaved together at the top) driven by common descent? Bushmen skerms are lean-tos just like American Indian tipis or Siberian


text: When grouped together, radiocarbon determinations from heat-retainer hearths from western New South Wales decrease in frequency with age. One interpretation for this pattern is that it reflects an increase in the frequency of occupation, and perhaps ultimately an increase in Aboriginal populations in this region during the late Holocene. An alternative explanation is that the increase in frequency reflects the differential preservation of the land surfaces on which the hearths are found. According to this explanation, the pre-servation of ancient surfaces itself decreases with time, with the destruction of ancient records of occupation accounting for the relatively recent skew in the age distribution of heat-retainer hearths. We test these hypotheses by comparing the distribution of hearth radiocarbon ages against the distribution of ages obtained from samples associated with buried human remains from western New South Wales. Samples obtained by excavating buried deposits should not be subject to the same range of erosion processes that have affected surface deposits. Therefore the samples from buried deposits are able to act as a control against which the distribution of hearth ages can be evaluated. Results indicate that age estimates obtained from human burials have a distribution different from those obtained from hearths, supporting the conclusion that the decrease in hearth frequency with age is a product of geomorphic preservation rather than cultural change.

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum in Berlin, Germany - get details, & find more attractions to visit nearby
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Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum
Königin-Luise-Straße 6-8, 14195 Berlin, Germany
Music Festivals
Botanical Gardens
About Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum
The complex consists of several buildings and glass-houses which features a collection of orchids, carnivorous plants and giant white water lily. The best-known part of the garden is the Great Pavilion (Großes Tropenhaus). The temperature inside is maintained at 30 °C and air humidity is kept high. Among the many tropical plants it hosts a giant bamboo.
Attractions near Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum
Zoo Berlin6.34km from Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum
Oldest and best-known zoo in Germany. It covers 35 hectares (86.5 acres) and has about 1,380 different species and over 20,200 animals, presenting one of the most comprehensive collections of species in the world. It is the most-visited zoo in Europe and one of the most popular worldwide. Regular animal feedings are among its most famous attractions.
German Museum of Technology6.95km from Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum
Exhibits a large collection of historical technical artifacts. The museum's main emphasis originally was on rail transport, but today it also features exhibits of various sorts of industrial technology including maritime and aviation exhibition halls.
Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin7.2km from Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum
Neue Nationalgalerie is a museum of modern art, with a focus on art from early 20th century. The museum owns masterpeices from artists like Pablo Picasso, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Joan Miró, Wassily Kandinsky and Barnett Newman. Despite the large size of the museum, the exhibits are rotated at intervals as the collection of artworks at the museum is very large.
Gemäldegalerie7.32km from Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum
Museum where the main selection of paintings belonging to the Berlin State Museums is displayed. It holds one of the world's leading collections of European paintings from the 13th to the 18th centuries.
Victory Column7.34km from Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum
Designed after 1864 to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian War. When it was inaugurated on 2 September 1873, Prussia had also defeated Austria and its German allies in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), giving the statue a new purpose. These later victories inspired the addition of the bronze sculpture of Victoria, 8.3 metres (27 ft) high and weighing 35 tonnes.
Berlin Story Bunker7.4km from Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum
Housed inside a 6,500-square-metre WWII bunker, the museum recreates the history of Berlin and some of the most infamous events in German history. The exhibition showcases the sequence of events leading up to Hitler's suicide in 1945, and it has a reconstruction of Hitler's personal study.
Where is Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum
Discover more attractions in Berlin, where Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum is located
Berlin33 attractions
Capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Berlin is a world city of culture, politics, media and sciences, and its economy is based on high-tech firms and the service sector, encompassing a diverse range of creative industries, research facilities, media corporations and convention venues.


text:
Published in: International Conference on Psychology in a Changing Europe, Book of abstracts, p. 30, BEEPG, Banska Bistrica
Role of local databases for a peripheral discipline in a peripheral country: trials with SocioFakt
Abstract: Some shortcomings of global databases (SSCI, PsycInfo, etc.) are discussed, and some pros and cons for building local psychological databases in peripheral countries are evaluated. The SocioFakt, a local bibliographic database recently developed to cover national needs for secondary information in psychology and related disciplines, is presented. Various decisions on the structure and the format of the database are argued. BiSA, a separate module of the database and standalone software, specifically designed for the purpose of scientometric analysis, is explained. Possible benefits from regional information exchange are stressed, and some prospects for international cooperation are outlined.


. The multiplexing protocol of the Tx Output Multiplexed for Matlab-Labview block]] adds one byte for each variable sent. Thus, the model should transmit 15 bytes through the UART at each time step. Because the simulink model try to send more than 11 bytes per time-step, some data will not be sent and will be lost. The Intelligent Spreading option will spread the data loss over all channels allowing to view all curves on the graph (If not checked, the two last channels may never be sent).
Because of the lost of some data, this method is easy and great for plotting data. It allows checking that all components are working. It is Not OK to use these data to feed a Simulink model! (You may interpolate the data but it is a bit tricky…)
The data that get out from the Tx Output Multiplexed for Matlab-Labview block are the sensor raw data. It is 16 bits data but only the 12 lower bits contains the measured value.
The dsPIC is connected to the PC COM port (using an equivalent to Max232 component for level translation) and data are logged using the graphical user interface. The following lines are typed at the maltab prompt to save data into a.mat file:
 >> [R T] = padr(Rn,1,t_Rn); % remove NaN values
 >> datas = [T R]';
 >> save mydatafile datas;
padr is a command from the blockset. It allows removing the NaN from the Rn matrix. The resulting R matrix is transposed and time is added in its first line. The time T which is a modified copy of t_Rn is not accurate since it is estimated by the time at which values are received. We know that the data are sent at a 1Khz frequency so we can redefine the time of the AxelX_GyroY_AxelZ matrix before saving the file.
Keep in mind than missing data on columns [2 3 4 5] are stuffed with their previous non missing value. Missing data on column 1 suppressed the time step. In other word, datas are incomplete and should not feed a simulink simulation. If we decided to log 3 data only (2 accelerometers and 1 gyro), all data would be received (9 bytes sent each time step). However, another method described below allows logging all the 5 values at 1kHz without missing any data!
Using the UART Tx Output block
IMU_dsPIC_30f4012_LogData_Raw Simulink model: Once this model is compiled, the dsPIC (30f4012) transmit the raw values from the MEMs sensors. Data are sent to Matlab (or labview) through the UART at 115200bps with the Tx Output block. The UART buffer do not overflow with this mode, because 9 bytes are sent and the 115200bpd UART speed allow to send 11,52 bytes in one 1ms time-step. Thus all data are successfully transmitted to matlab. Logged data can feed a simulink simulation.
fig:RawData - Raw data from the sensor. On this experiment, the IMU box was rotated by 90 degrees with interval of about 5s. File Simulink_Dynamic_Calibration3.mat plotted using the script Caracterisation_Capteurs.m. Theses raw data are used to feed simulink simulation.
The UART at 115200 can transmit only 11,52 data within a 1ms time-step. Thus, the simulink model implemented on the dsPIC must transmit less than 12 data to have all data being sent. The method described is more complex but allow logging all 5 measurement without lost with a sampling rate of 1kHz.
5 values of 12 bits length must be sent. Each data is stored in a 2 data bytes length (16 bits) and the 5 values, thus 10 data byes are concatenated. One signature byte with the fixed 55 is sent first, before the 10 bytes frame and provides the synchronization reference. This signature is may also used to check that no data were lost (checking that 10 bytes are present between every 55 signature values).
From the matlab GUI interface >> rs232gui, data received are no more multiplexed with the Tx Output Multiplexed for Matlab-Labview block. The demultiplexing algorithm is switched off by pushing once the RAW button (bottom left of the graphical interface). The embedded script in the rs232gui interface should be cleared. The R vector contains the raw data stream received by the Serial port of the computer. Once the recording is finished, this R vector is saved (files Rawdatas*.mat). The script Extract_RawDatas.m load the saved R vector and extract the 5 values. The key part of the script is shown below.
R = reshape(R,11,n); % reshape : from vector to a matrix of 11 column
idxError = find(R(1,:) ~= 55) % Check data integrity
if ~isempty(idxError)
 error('Data corrupted')
%% Reconstruct Raw data as received through the SPI bus
RawGyro_Y = R(2,:)*2^8 + R(3,:);
RawAccel_Y = R(4,:)*2^8 + R(5,:);
RawAccel_Z = R(6,:)*2^8 + R(7,:);
RawGyro_X = R(8,:)*2^8 + R(9,:);
RawAccel_X = R(10,:)*2^8 + R(11,:);
T = [0:.001:(length(RawGyro_Y)-1)*.001];
On the embedded simulink model, a mechanism allow to send data during a predefined time: The model embedded on the dsPIC send data only when the value variable60 is different from 0. This variable is changed through the UART using the same rs232gui graphical user interface with the send1 and send2 button. When receiving values [60 x], the embedded simulink model load the value x into the Simulink variable 'variable60'. The Simulink model decreases automatically this variable at a sampling rate of 1 second. This mechanism makes the user able to log data during a predefined time.
Data Analysis
fig:RawDataSpectre - Spectral Analysis of the Raw data from Simulink_Dynamic_Calibration3.mat. The IMU box was rotated by 90 degrees with interval of about 5s. The y-Gyro is perturbed by several high frequency peaks starting at 92Hz. This may due to a soldering problem. Theses high frequency peak have no influence on the angle estimation.
5 files corresponding to 5 different experiments are saved: 2 in static situation (IMU sensor board is keep static on the table) and 3 in dynamic situation while the IMU sensor board orientation is modified by a 90° rotation approximately every 5 seconds. The script Caracterisation_Capteurs.m plot the data previously saved for each different experiments.
The gain of the two rate gyro does not comply with the datasheet value. The datasheet give an angular speed rate of ±80°/s with a resolution of 0.039°/s. In practice, on the electronic sensor board, the Y rate gyro measures a range of ± 524°/s with a resolution of 0.26°/s. The X rate gyro can measure a range of ± 188°/s with a resolution of 0.09°/s.
the gain of the accelerometers is equal on all of the three axes and precise calibration is not necessary. A slight correction aligns the offset of each axis.
Figures RawData and RawDataSpectre show respectively the temporal and frequency analysis plot of the experiment stored in the Simulink_Dynamic_Calibration3.mat file.
This experiment is a dynamic one: with orientation changes. The temporal analysis shows that the rate gyro y axis contains more noise than the rate gyro x axis. This may be due to a soldering problem (It was very hard to sold all these parts with the very basic soldering material I have!), to a problem due to the ADIS16080 part itself or to the use of the y rate gyro ref voltage to power the accelerometer (that need a very low current). Anyway, the frequency analysis shows on the y rate gyro axis that this noise is mostly present within peaks frequency starting at 93Hz. As the gyro is integrated (integration act as a low pass filter) this high frequency noise has no influence on the angle estimation.
The frequency analysis also shows that the accelerometers are perturbed by the 50Hz component that probably comes from the European 50Hz general AC power. As the accelerometers is also low pass filtered, this high frequency noise has also no influence on the estimated angle.
Frequencies above 20Hz are considered as high frequency as the IMU is to be placed onboard a RC model airplane. The angular dynamic of theses aerial vehicle is far below 20Hz.
All files described can be downloaded (see bottom: Download section).
IMU Data fusion algorithms
IMU Simulation - Simulation of an IMU using real data. Several data fusion algorithms are compared including Complementary Filter and Non-adaptative Kalman Filter. The simulink model file IMU_Simulation.mdl can be Downloaded at the bottom of this page.
Simulation with real data
The model IMU_Simulation.mdl uses the logged data stored in.mat files. These data are used to design and simulate IMU algorithms. Using real data, the input of the simulation has the correct properties (noise, bias, nonlinearity


text:
Like many in the corvid family Rooks are attached to many legends, myths, lore and superstitions. In Shropshire, it was believed that rooks never carried sticks to their nests on Sundays or Ascension Day, but simply sat quietly on trees and did not work. It was also believed to be futile to wear new clothes on Easter because the rooks would fly above and poop on them.
Quite the opposite was said to be true as well. Some believed if you were hit by bird poop it was because you did not wear new or nice enough clothes on Easter. It was the Rook that was believed to make the decision if your Easter attire was nice enough. And it was the Rook who would carry out the punishment as well. It was a dirty job but somebody had to keep those English people well dressed on Easter.
Rooks deserting a rookery were (and in some places still are) also thought to be an indication of a death coming. They were also looked to for predicting weather conditions for many. Such was the case in Devon, England where it was assumed that should the Rooks stay in the vicinity of their nests in the middle of the day, or return to the rookery early, then rain would follow, but if they flew far away, then fine weather would follow instead. And in Yorkshire, the saying went that if the rooks congreated on dead branches of trees, rain wuold come before nightfall, but if they perched on live branches it would be fine and dry. ((Tate, Peter (2008). Flights of Fancy: Birds in Myth, Legend and Superstition. New York, NY: Delacorte Press.))
The rook is a predatory bird, cunning and intelligent, it will do most anything to survive. This is true for most corvids. But because of its sneaky nature it has gotten a reputation. The root of its name "rook" means 'to rook' or cheat someone. The distrust for rooks has long since held true in many places. In 19th century London a criminal ladened slums in the East End were referred to as a 'rookery'. This was indicative of the rook's sneaky nature but also a comment on the way they build their nests very close together—crowding in—similar to the slums. The name Rook is descendant of the Latin word frugilegus which means acquisitive. Fitting for the bird as Rooks often like to take objects including twigs and other nesting materials from other nests. ((Tate, Peter (2008). Flights of Fancy: Birds in Myth, Legend and Superstition. New York, NY: Delacorte Press.))


text:
The MEDIQA 2021 shared tasks at the BioNLP 2021 workshop addressed three tasks on summarization for medical text: (i) a question summarization task aimed at exploring new approaches to understanding complex real-world consumer health queries, (ii) a multi-answer summarization task that targeted aggregation of multiple relevant answers to a biomedical question into one concise and relevant answer, and (iii) a radiology report summarization task addressing the development of clinically relevant impressions from radiology report findings. Thirty-five teams participated in these shared tasks with sixteen working notes submitted (fifteen accepted) describing a wide variety of models developed and tested on the shared and external datasets. In this paper, we describe the tasks, the datasets, the models and techniques developed by various teams, the results of the evaluation, and a study of correlations among various summarization evaluation measures. We hope that these shared tasks will bring new research and insights in biomedical text summarization and evaluation.
The task of verifying the truthfulness of claims in textual documents, or fact-checking, has received significant attention in recent years. Many existing evidence-based factchecking datasets contain synthetic claims and the models trained on these data might not be able to verify real-world claims. Particularly few studies addressed evidence-based fact-checking of health-related claims that require medical expertise or evidence from the scientific literature. In this paper, we introduce HEALTHVER, a new dataset for evidence-based fact-checking of health-related claims that allows to study the validity of real-world claims by evaluating their truthfulness against scientific articles. Using a three-step data creation method, we first retrieved real-world claims from snippets returned by a search engine for questions about COVID-19. Then we automatically retrieved and re-ranked relevant scientific papers using a T5 relevance-based model. Finally, the relations between each evidence statement and the associated claim were manually annotated as SUPPORT, REFUTE and NEUTRAL. To validate the created dataset of 14,330 evidence-claim pairs, we developed baseline models based on pretrained language models. Our experiments showed that training deep learning models on real-world medical claims greatly improves performance compared to models trained on synthetic and open-domain claims. Our results and manual analysis suggest that HEALTHVER provides a realistic and challenging dataset for future efforts on evidence-based fact-checking of health-related claims. The dataset, source code, and a leaderboard are available at _URL_
The growth of online consumer health questions has led to the necessity for reliable and accurate question answering systems. A recent study showed that manual summarization of consumer health questions brings significant improvement in retrieving relevant answers. However, the automatic summarization of long questions is a challenging task due to the lack of training data and the complexity of the related subtasks, such as the question focus and type recognition. In this paper, we introduce a reinforcement learning-based framework for abstractive question summarization. We propose two novel rewards obtained from the downstream tasks of (i) question-type identification and (ii) question-focus recognition to regularize the question generation model. These rewards ensure the generation of semantically valid questions and encourage the inclusion of key medical entities/foci in the question summary. We evaluated our proposed method on two benchmark datasets and achieved higher performance over state-of-the-art models. The manual evaluation of the summaries reveals that the generated questions are more diverse and have fewer factual inconsistencies than the baseline summaries. The source code is available here: _URL_
Visual Question Generation (VQG), the task of generating a question based on image contents, is an increasingly important area that combines natural language processing and computer vision. Although there are some recent works that have attempted to generate questions from images in the open domain, the task of VQG in the medical domain has not been explored so far. In this paper, we introduce an approach to generation of visual questions about radiology images called VQGR, i.e. an algorithm that is able to ask a question when shown an image. VQGR first generates new training data from the existing examples, based on contextual word embeddings and image augmentation techniques. It then uses the variational auto-encoders model to encode images into a latent space and decode natural language questions. Experimental automatic evaluations performed on the VQA-RAD dataset of clinical visual questions show that VQGR achieves good performances compared with the baseline system. The source code is available at _URL_
This paper presents the MEDIQA 2019 shared task organized at the ACL-BioNLP workshop. The shared task is motivated by a need to develop relevant methods, techniques and gold standards for inference and entailment in the medical domain, and their application to improve domain specific information retrieval and question answering systems. MEDIQA 2019 includes three tasks: Natural Language Inference (NLI), Recognizing Question Entailment (RQE), and Question Answering (QA) in the medical domain. 72 teams participated in the challenge, achieving an accuracy of 98% in the NLI task, 74.9% in the RQE task, and 78.3% in the QA task. In this paper, we describe the tasks, the datasets, and the participants' approaches and results. We hope that this shared task will attract further research efforts in textual inference, question entailment, and question answering in the medical domain.
Question understanding is one of the main challenges in question answering. In real world applications, users often submit natural language questions that are longer than needed and include peripheral information that increases the complexity of the question, leading to substantially more false positives in answer retrieval. In this paper, we study neural abstractive models for medical question summarization. We introduce the MeQSum corpus of 1,000 summarized consumer health questions. We explore data augmentation methods and evaluate state-of-the-art neural abstractive models on this new task. In particular, we show that semantic augmentation from question datasets improves the overall performance, and that pointer-generator networks outperform sequence-to-sequence attentional models on this task, with a ROUGE-1 score of 44.16%. We also present a detailed error analysis and discuss directions for improvement that are specific to question summarization.
This paper describes our participation in SemEval-2017 Task 3 on Community Question Answering (cQA). The Question Similarity subtask (B) aims to rank a set of related questions retrieved by a search engine according to their similarity to the original question. We adapted our feature-based system for Recognizing Question Entailment (RQE) to the question similarity task. Tested on cQA-B-2016 test data, our RQE system outperformed the best system of the 2016 challenge in all measures with 77.47 MAP and 80.57 Accuracy. On cQA-B-2017 test data, performances of all systems dropped by around 30 points. Our primary system obtained 44.62 MAP, 67.27 Accuracy and 47.25 F1 score. The cQA-B-2017 best system achieved 47.22 MAP and 42.37 F1 score. Our system is ranked sixth in terms of MAP and third in terms of F1 out of 13 participating teams.
We describe a corpus of consumer health questions annotated with named entities. The corpus consists of 1548 de-identified questions about diseases and drugs, written in English. We defined 15 broad categories of biomedical named entities for annotation. A pilot annotation phase in which a small portion of the corpus was double-annotated by four annotators was followed by a main phase in which double annotation was carried out by six annotators, and a reconciliation phase in which all annotations were reconciled by an expert. We conducted the annotation in two modes, manual and assisted, to assess the effect of automatic pre-annotation and calculated inter-annotator agreement. We obtained moderate inter-annotator agreement; assisted annotation yielded slightly better agreement and fewer missed annotations than manual annotation. Due to complex nature of biomedical entities, we paid particular attention to nested entities for which we obtained slightly lower inter-annotator agreement, confirming that annotating nested entities is somewhat more challenging. To our knowledge, the corpus is the first of its kind for consumer health text and is publicly available.
Readers usually rely on abstracts to identify relevant medical information from scientific articles. Abstracts are also essential to advanced information retrieval methods. More than 50 thousand scientific publications in PubMed lack author-generated abstracts, and the relevancy judgements for these papers have to be based on their titles alone. In this paper, we propose a hybrid summarization technique that aims to select the most pertinent sentences from articles to generate an extractive summary in lieu of a missing abstract. We combine i) health outcome detection, ii) keyphrase extraction, and iii) textual entailment recognition between sentences. We evaluate our hybrid approach and analyze the improvements of multi-factor summarization over techniques that rely on a single method, using a collection of 295 manually generated reference summaries. The obtained results show that the hybrid approach outperforms the baseline techniques with an improvement of 13% in recall and 4% in F1 score.
Nous présentons une plate-forme d'annotation sémantique et d'exploration de textes médicaux, appelée « MeTAE ». Le processus d'annotation automatique comporte une première étape de reconnaissance des entités médicales présentes dans les textes suivie d'une étape d'identification des relations sémantiques qui les relient. Cette identification se fonde sur des patrons linguistiques construits manuellement pour chaque type de relation. MeTAE génère des annotations RDF à partir des informations extraites


text:
Please note that this database is a work in progress.
Over 20 New Brunswick newspapers and one Prince Edward Island newspaper published between 1880 and 1940 are currently being digitized for inclusion in the Vocabularies of Identity database. Given the focus of this particular research project on the expression of collective identity in Loyalist and Acadian populations in New Brunswick, only texts containing the key words starting with the characters "Loyalist*" and "Acadi*" have been included, with a few exceptions (when, for example, the term "French" is used to refer to Acadians). All genres have been included, ranging from journalistic articles to poetry. If you would like to contribute to proofreading articles, if you have a correction to add to a document or if you would like to know more about selection criteria or about a specific newspaper, please write to _EMAIL_.
This database is open to all, but we would very much appreciate being informed of projects or papers that make use of it. This will help us continue to provide digitized archival materials to researchers. Digitization update as of 11 May 2017: all newspapers targeted by this research project and published from 1880 to 1900 have been added to the database EXCEPT the following that are incomplete: Le Moniteur Acadien (nearly 50% done), The Moncton Daily Times (11% done), and The Daily Gleaner. If you can help with these papers, please contact _EMAIL_.


What is Extreme Energy?
Extreme Energy (sometimes written Xtreme Energy) is a term used to describe a group of energy extraction methods that have emerged in recent years as the availability of fossil fuel resources has become more constrained. As more usual methods of extracting fossil fuels fail to provide the amounts of energy that civilisation demands governments and corporations are taking increasingly extreme measures to feed these demands. Examples of these extreme methods include Tar Sands, Mountain Top Removal, Deep Water Drilling, Coal Bed Methane and Shale Gas. Other non-fossil fuel energy extraction methods such as agrofuels and a new generation of nuclear power stations, whose introduction is also being driven by the same pressures, are also sometimes considered part of the extreme energy sector.
For more information read this blog post >>


text:
The first switch-on of a Galileo SAR package functions well and marks a major extension of the space-based Cospas-Sarsat network.
The second pair of Galileo satellites is the first of the constellation to host Search and Rescue (SAR) repeaters which can pickup UHF signals from emergency beacons aboard ships or aircrafts and relay them to local authorities for rescue.
The international SAR system is accountable for saving about 31,000 lives over more than three decades.
Further SAR payloads will follow these first two into orbit with the launches of follow-on Galileo Final Operational Capability satellites.
- Galileo is the name of the European Satellite Navigation programme.
- Cospas is a Russian acronym for 'Space System for the Search of Vessels in Distress'.
- Sarsat is an acronym for 'Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking'


text:
Efficient Fault Diagnosis Schemes for Reliable Lightweight Cryptographic ISO/IEC Standard CLEFIA Benchmarked on ASIC and FPGA
reliability, Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), CLEFIA symmetric-key block cipher, efficient error detection, field-programmable gate array (FPGA)
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Lightweight block ciphers are essential for providing low-cost confidentiality to sensitive constrained applications. Nonetheless, this confidentiality does not guarantee their reliability in the presence of natural and malicious faults. In this paper, fault diagnosis schemes for the lightweight internationally standardized block cipher CLEFIA are proposed. This symmetric-key cipher is compatible with yet lighter in hardware than the Advanced Encryption Standard and enables the implementation of cryptographic functionality with low complexity and power consumption. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there has been no fault diagnosis scheme presented in the literature for the CLEFIA to date. In addition to providing fault diagnosis approaches for the linear blocks in the encryption and the decryption of the CLEFIA, error detection approaches are presented for the nonlinear S-boxes, applicable to their composite-field implementations as well as their lookup table realizations. Through fault-injection simulations, the proposed schemes are benchmarked, and it is shown that they achieve error coverage of close to 100%. Finally, both application-specific integrated circuit and field-programmable gate array implementations of the proposed error detection structures are presented to assess their efficiency and overhead. The proposed fault diagnosis architectures make the implementations of the International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission-standardized CLEFIA more reliable.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Citation / Publisher Attribution
IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, v. 60, issue 12, p. 5925-5932
Scholar Commons Citation
Mozaffari Kermani, Mehran and Azarderakhsh, Reza, "Efficient Fault Diagnosis Schemes for Reliable Lightweight Cryptographic ISO/IEC Standard CLEFIA Benchmarked on ASIC and FPGA" (2013). Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications. 12.


What is P2 HD?
P2 HD is a full production-quality, high-definition recording system that utilizes removable solid-state memory cards. This approach eliminates the mechanical wear and environmental limitations of tape, hard disk and optical-disc-based systems. P2 HD ensures the highest reliability, especially in challenging conditions of extreme temperature, shock and vibration. P2 HD products provide a significant reduction in maintenance costs, longer useful product life and immediate access to recorded video (no need to digitize, ingest or create proxy video files) and metadata. Compatible with PCs and existing file-based IT infrastructures, P2 HD content is recorded as independent frames, can be randomly accessed and easily transferred to, or archived onto, low-cost consumer media such as hard drives or other affordable current IT storage technology and future-based systems. P2 HD systems offer long record times and can be upgraded with higher capacity cards.
How does P2 record?
P2 cards record the same way that digital still cameras record onto memory cards — they store the footage as pre-digitized computer files. Instead of recording the video as "video data," they record the footage as computer data files. These files are instantly editable and can be transferred to other computer storage media directly, without the restrictions of needing proprietary video decks or having to wait for real-time transfers. In fact, you can edit footage directly from a P2 card, without having to transfer to a computer at all. Because P2 cards record in universally interchangeable MXF data files, they are immediately usable by properly configured Windows and Macintosh computers. The P2 cards eliminate the need for VTRs, eliminate the need for proprietary video hardware to read or transfer their contents, and eliminate the need to "capture" or "digitize" your footage.
As for the actual recordings themselves, P2 cards record footage in the MXF (Material eXchange Format), a SMPTE-codified cross-platform universal file format. The MXF files use operational pattern OP-Atom, which means that each element of the footage (the audio tracks, the video footage, an "icon" or thumbnail and the descriptive metadata) gets stored in its own sub-directories. The MXF file format is supported by nearly every major nonlinear editing program, while file conversion utilities exist to convert MXF files into other types of files, if needed.
The P2 card itself uses the FAT32 file system, which makes the card compatible with both Macintosh and Windows systems.
What is DRS (Dynamic Range Stretch)? When should I use this tool?
DRS (Dynamic Range Stretch) is a fully automated dynamic range expansion tool that will compress highlight information, and boost shadow detail. It happens simultaneously, on a sector by sector basis - in realtime - at the push of a button. It is a great tool to use in "Run-and-Gun" situations where controlling lighting and dynamic range is very difficult. Daytime exteriors with rapidly changing conditions are a prime target for this tool. DRS should be avoided when you have all of the right tools (Lighting, Grip) to control and carve out a specific look. Its automated functionality will quickly conflict with your abilities to predict and create a consistent specific look for your scenes (adding shadow detail where you intentionally tried to omit it). This functionality is available on select cameras, including the AJ-HPX2700, and the AJ-HPX3100.
Which codec should I choose? AVC-Intra 100 or DVCPRO HD? What about AVC-Intra 50?
If QUALITY is the defining factor, always shoot in AVC-Intra 100, as long as your Post Production facility is equipped to handle that codec. If CONTENT is more important, and achieving extended record times and bandwidth efficiencies rank higher than absolute picture quality, then AVC-Intra 50 should be explored. DVCPRO HD is a good option for those unable to shoot in the AVC-Intra Codec because of legacy post production issues, but it is an 8 bit Codec, which is inferior to AVC-Intra 100's 10 bit Mastering Quality Codec.
What do the various GAMMA MODES represent? What's the difference between HD, VIDEO-REC, FILMLIKE and FILMREC?
GAMMA Mode selection is akin to picking a film stock for your camera. The GAMMA curve you select will determine the video signal output generated by the camera, for varying degrees of luminance input. HD, VIDEO-REC, and FILMLIKE 1 & 2, are fairly punchy, and contrasty curves that are ideally suited for live broadcast applications (News, Sports, Reality/Contest shows,etc...). They are "Air-Ready" and don't require any post processing to achieve full dynamic levels (0% black to 100% white). FILMLIKE 3 and FILM-REC, provide a wider dynamic range and latitude to the camera as well as a more linear transfer curve, but usually at the cost of a flatter, less punchy image, that needs to be Color Corrected in Post. This setting is ideal for applications that already follow this type of workflow, such as Narrative Features, Episodic Television, Music Videos and Commercials.
P2 Card
What's inside a P2 Card?
P2 cards are high-precision micro-computers with their own processors, firmware, a RAID controller, and gigabytes of the highest-quality zero-fault solid-state memory chips. A P2 card is an intelligent device that manages the data files — and even does a write-verification step for every byte of memory that gets written to the card (thus assuring fault-free operation). Early P2 cards were manufactured using actual SD memory cards in a striped RAID array, thus increasing the performance far beyond any individual memory chip's speed. The newest generation of P2 cards dispenses with using individual SD memory cards and actually uses the core memory components.
What sizes of P2 Cards are available?
P2 card are offered in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB sizes.
Whats the recording capacity of P2 Cards?
To establish a P2 card's recording time, you have to determine two factors: what recording format you will use and what capacity of P2 card you're planning on using. The calculation is quite simple after that.
 - For DVCPRO or DV, the data rate is 4 minutes per gigabyte
 - For DVCPRO50 or AVC-Intra 50, the data rate is 2 minutes per gigabyte
 - For DVCPRO HD or AVC Intra 100, the data rate is 1 minute per gigabyte
A 32GB P2 card is capable of storing more than two hours of DVCPRO footage (32 gigabytes × 4 minutes per GB), more than one hour of DVCPRO50 (32 GB × 2 minutes per GB), or 32 minutes of AVC-Intra 100 or DVCPRO-HD.
Please note, even more storage capacity is available in DVCPRO-HD 720P and AVC-Intra 720P and 1080P modes. Please review the P2 HD FAQs document [pdf] for further information.
What is the transfer speed of the P2 Card?
Today's E-Series P2 cards are capable of a transfer rate of 1.2 Gbps. This makes it fast enough to ooffload a 16GB P2 card with at least 16 minutes of DVCPRO-HD or AVC-Intra content in under 2 mintues, or, an 8 to 1 ratio. Please note, many P2 formats and frame rates offer more storage per card. For example, when shooting 1080/23.98p AVC-Inra 100, a 16GB E Series card will hold up to 22 minutes of content. This means that youcan offload these 22 minutes in under 2 minutes, or, an 11 to 1 offload ratio. E Series P2 cards are super fast. Even first generation P2 cards, with a 640 Mbps offload speed or second generation A Sires P2 cards (with an 800 Mbps offload speed) have the ability to offload at a slighter higher speed, through the use of the Panasonic AJ-PCD35 P2 Drive. As always, transfer speeds of IT storage device are subject to hardware configurations.
And, because there are no moving parts and no read/write heads to move or reposition, there's no "seek time" – switching from one stream to the next is instantaneous. Because of the high-speed design of P2 cards, they can be used as an edit media. In other words, there's no requirement to transfer the footage off of the cards before editing: you can actually edit immediately right from the cards.
Can I put 1080I and 720P AND/OR standard definition footage on the same P2 card?
Yes, you can freely inter-mix any type of footage. You can put high-definition and standard-definition, 625 (PAL) and 525 (NTSC), DVCPRO and AVC-Intra, interlaced or progressive or variable-frame-rate footage, or any combination of formats and frame rates all on the same P2 card. Remember, P2 cards are treated by the system as removable storage devices – they don't care what type of information gets stored on them. This gives you an unprecedented amount of freedom and flexibility to work with any format or media as you see fit.
Can a P2 card be used in all P2 HD and P2 camcorders, recorders and drives?
Yes, the P2 card is interchangeable across the entire P2 HD/P2 lineup of products. Any P2 card can be used in any P2-compatible device


Nearest-neighbor interpolation
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Nearest neighbor interpolation (blue lines) in one dimension on a (uniform) dataset (red points).
Example of nearest neighbor interpolation of a random set of points (black dots) in 2D. Each coloured cell indicates the area in which all the points have the black point in the cell as their nearest black point.
Nearest neighbor interpolation on a uniform 2D grid (black points).
Nearest-neighbor interpolation (also known as proximal interpolation or, in some contexts, point sampling) is a simple method of multivariate interpolation in one or more dimensions.
Interpolation is the problem of approximating the value of a function for a non-given point in some space when given the value of that function in points around (neighboring) that point. The nearest neighbor algorithm selects the value of the nearest point and does not consider the values of neighboring points at all, yielding a piecewise-constant interpolant. The algorithm is very simple to implement and is commonly used (usually along with mipmapping) in real-time 3D rendering to select color values for a textured surface.
Connection to Voronoi diagram[edit]
For a given set of points in space, a Voronoi diagram is a decomposition of space into cells, one for each given point, so that anywhere in space, the closest given point is inside the cell. This is equivalent to nearest neighbour interpolation, by assigning the function value at the given point to all the points inside the cell. The figures on the right side show by colour the shape of the cells.
See also[edit]


How far would you go for a gameshow host?
Gameshow hosts are powerful people.
Photo / Thinkstock
Gameshow hosts are powerful people. Photo / Thinkstock
Gameshow hosts have so much power over people that contestants are willing to do anything they're told, including torture each other to death, research suggests.
Psychologists from the University of Paris simulated the recording of a new programme in a real TV studio with an audience and a well-known weather girl as the host.
Recruiters found 80 contestants to take part in what they thought was a show called Zone Xtreme. They were introduced to another contestant called 'Jean Paul', played by an actor, who was sent to a separate part of the studio where he could be heard but not seen.
Each of the contestants was told by the host to ask 'Jean Paul' a series of 27 questions and apply what they thought was an electric shock of increasing strength for each wrong answer.
More than eight in ten - 64 contestants - administered the maximum 460 volts, which could cause death, despite hearing 'Jean Paul' cry out, scream and beg to stop the game.
If they wavered, Miss Young intervened with lines such as "Don't let yourself get upset" and "Go on, we are taking all the responsibility for this".
Only 16 of the 80 contestants refused to continue with the programme.
The experiment was broadcast as part of a documentary entitled Game of Death for French network, France 2, in 2010, but the analysis and findings have just been published in the European Review of Applied Psychology.
"It has long been known that television and television hosts had influence on viewers," the researchers said.
"We suspected they could also have prescriptive powers to [influence] people's behaviour, including cruel and immoral behaviours. Until now this had never been shown."
The experiment was a twist on the 1960s research by US academic Stanley Milgram, who examined why ordinary people were prepared to commit horrific atrocities in Nazi Germany.
He found 80 per cent of his subjects inflicted pain on a stranger when ordered to do so by a figure in authority such as a scientist.
The French experiment reveals that this "authority figure" is far broader than previously realised.
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Vitamins & Minerals
What is a Bro Split Workout Routine?
A "bro split" refers to any workout routine (or "split") that trains different body parts (or muscle groups) on different days. For instance, training arms one day, chest another, shoulders another, and so on.
The bro split workout routine is commonly associated with bodybuilding magazines and dubious (and often fake natty) fitness "gurus." As such, it's often disparaged by the evidence-based fitness community for being scientifically unsound and thus ineffective for gaining muscle and strength.
Is this scorn deserved, though?
In truth, the efficacy of a bro split routine largely comes down to how it's programmed. Plan your exercises, sets, and reps wisely, and you can make excellent progress following a bro split, especially if you're new to lifting weights.
Plan your workouts poorly, though, and you'll likely hit a plateau and spend months spinning your wheels with little to show for it. This is hardly unique to the body-part split, however—every other option can fail when incorrectly implemented.
So, in this article, you'll learn everything you need to know to make a bro-split work for you, including answers to questions like...
 - What is a bro split?
 - Do bro splits work?
 - What is the best bro split workout routine for building muscle?
 - How does the bro split stack up against other routines?
What Is a Bro Split?
A bro split—also known as a body-part split—is a workout routine that trains each major muscle group (or body part) on different days of the week.
Each muscle group is typically trained once per week, so a 5-day bro split workout routine normally looks something like this:
Generally speaking, bro splits also involve doing a lot of sets and reps in each workout, leaving the target muscle group swollen, sore, and pumped
In fact, this is one of the reasons bro splits are popular. Many people are under the (false) impression that the more you train a muscle group in a single workout, the more it grows afterward.
As you'll learn in a moment, however, hammering a single muscle group with six or ten or more exercises in a row isn't a smart way to program a bro split.
Want a free custom meal planning tool?
Do Bro Splits Work?
Despite what many fitness experts say, bro-splits can be very effective for gaining muscle and strength... if they're programmed correctly (and that's a big if). And especially if you're in your first year or so of weightlifting.
To fully answer the question, "do bro splits work?" however, you have to weigh the pros and cons of following a bro split workout routine.
Let's look at the pros first.
Bro Split Routine Pros
Perhaps the biggest benefit of the bro split routine is that it's simple.
Each of your workouts has a very specific goal (to train your chest, for example), so you know exactly what you're doing every time you set foot in the gym.
Many people also enjoy bro splits, and we tend to push ourselves harder when we enjoy our training.
Dedicating an entire session to a single muscle group means you can train it with enough volume (sets and reps) in each workout to get a big pump, which isn't necessary for muscle growth, but which has also been famously likened to having an orgasm.
Another reason many guys like bro splits is they typically emphasize upper-body training. If you follow a 5-day bro split routine like the example I shared earlier, for instance, then you're spending four out of five days in the gym training your upper body muscles.
This cuts both ways, though, because bro splits are often lousy for people who want to emphasize their lower bodies, which includes many women. That said, you can set up a bro split in a way that includes more lower-body training.
Bro Split Routine Cons
The biggest criticism leveled at the bro-split is that it doesn't provide the optimal training frequency or volume for all of your muscle groups.
Research shows that if you want to build muscle as quickly and effectively as possible, you should train each of your major muscle groups at least twice per week (particularly if you've been training for more than a year or so) with a total of 10-to-20 sets.
However, when you follow a bro split workout routine, you'll generally only train each major muscle group once per week.
Some people try to work around this issue by just doing more sets in each workout, but this can cause two problems:
 - You'll probably have to reduce your weights as your workout drags on and your muscles become fatigued.
 - You may get so sore and fatigued from a workout that it interferes with subsequent workouts later in the week. For example, "blasting" your chest on Monday will likely cut into your shoulder workout on Wednesday.
While you may not notice these effects at first, they'll hinder your ability to gain muscle and strength over time.
Another reason people carp at bro-split routines has to do with muscle protein synthesis (MPS), the process your body uses to repair, grow, and strengthen muscle fibers.
Research shows that rates of muscle protein synthesis are elevated immediately following a workout and return to normal 10-to-48 hours later, depending on how experienced you are (the more experienced you are, the faster MPS declines after a workout).
This means that after two-to-three days, your muscles are done growing in response to the previous workout, and if you want them to get bigger and stronger, you'll have to train them again.
A typical bro split has you training each muscle group just once per week, which means you're waiting a full seven days before training a muscle again. That's a lot of time spent not building muscle each week.
That said, there are two reasons this isn't as problematic as many people make it out to be:
First, when people say that bro splits only train each major muscle group once per week, they're talking about badly-designed bro split routines. Which, in fairness, includes most of the programs you're likely to find floating around the Internet.
If you follow a half-decent bro split workout routine that includes plenty of compound exercises, though, you'll likely train each muscle group more than once per week.
That's because there's a lot of muscular carryover between compound exercises. For example, the bench press trains your chest but also your shoulders and triceps. The one-arm dumbbell row trains your lats but also your biceps and shoulders. And the squat and deadlift train your legs and back.
Thus, if you use the right exercises, you'll probably train each muscle group 1.5 to 2 times per week. And if you do those exercises in the right order for the right number of sets and reps, you'll have no problem making progress following a bro split routine.
Second, if you've been lifting weights for less than a year, you can still grow like gangbusters training each muscle group once per week. People who are new to weightlifting experience a much more prolonged increase in muscle protein synthesis and thus don't need to train as often as more mature weightlifters.
The Best Bro Split Workout Routine
As I mentioned a moment ago, when it comes to how well a bro split will work for you, the devil is in the details. So long as the bro split you follow is based around compound exercises, you're pushing for progressive overload in every workout, and, if you've been training for a year or longer, you train each muscle group at least twice per week, you can make excellent progress.
Let's take a look at a bro split workout routine that checks all of these boxes...
Day 1: Chest
 - Flat Barbell Bench Press: 3 sets of 4-to-6 reps with 2-to-3 min rest
 - Flat Dumbbell Bench Press: 3 sets of 8-to-10 reps with 2-to-3 min rest
 - Dumbbell Chest Fly: 3 sets of 10-to-12 reps with 2-to-3 min rest
Day 2: Back
Day 3: Shoulders
 - Barbell Overhead Press: 3 sets of 4-to-6 reps with 2-to-3 min rest
 - Arnold Press: 3 sets of 8-to-10 reps with 2-to-3 min rest
 - Dumbbell Side Lateral Raise: 3 sets of 10-to-12 reps with 2-to-3 min rest
 - Dumbbell Rear Lateral Raise: 3 sets of 10-to-12 reps with 2-to-3 min rest
Day 4: Legs
 - Barbell Back Squat: 3 sets of 4-to-6 reps with 2-to-3 min rest
 - Romanian Deadlift: 3 sets of 6-to-8 reps with 2-to-3 min rest
 - Leg Press: 3 sets of 8-to-10 reps with 2-to-3 min rest
 - Seated Calf Raise: 3 sets of 10-to-12 reps with 2-to-3 min rest
Day 5: Arms
 - Close-grip Bench Press: 3 sets of 4-to-6 reps with 2-to-3 min rest
 - Barbell Biceps Curl: 3 sets of 8-to-10 reps with 2-to-3 min rest
 - Overhead Triceps Extension: 3 sets of 8-to-10 reps with


text: OBJECTIVES: Structured mentor-led training programmes permit the safe introduction of novice trainees to robotic-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy (RALP). We outline the first description of parallel learning curves for individual surgical steps and quantify the relative difficulty of each step to propose an order of training in our structured mentoring programme. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A prospective ethically approved database was used to evaluate the operating times of each individual surgical step, in the first 150 RALP cases performed independently by a robotic-naive laparoscopic surgeon. Linear regression analysis was used to quantify the effect of surgeon experience on the operating time for each individual surgical step. RESULTS: Univariate linear regression analysis revealed significant reductions in operating time over the first 150 cases for all of the RALP steps, with the exception of the Rocco stitch. Multivariate linear regression analysis compensated for confounding variables and led to the identification of five surgical steps in which the operating time of each was significantly influenced by experience of the procedure. The most substantial improvement in operating time was seen in the bladder take down step. After taking into account the multivariate regression model, standardized univariate coefficients allowed an order of training to be identified for future RALP novices, of increasing complexity rather than order of surgery, beginning with the bladder take down step and ending with the vesico-urethral anastomosis. CONCLUSIONS: We can begin the training of new robotic-naive surgeons at simpler surgical steps, in which the greatest gains in expediency are made. We anticipate that identifying the more challenging surgical steps from this study and targeting training towards them may expedite our future trainees' proficiency at RALP.


text:
This report, commissioned by the Stanford Planning Office, documents the original interior paint colors used in the Museum.
Included in the report are photographs and colored sketches.
The Stanford Museum was built in memory of Leland Stanford Jr., son of Leland and Jane Stanford. It was one of the first structures
in the United States to be built completely of reinforced concrete, engineered by Ernest Ransome. Construction was begun in
1891; the Museum opened its doors in 1894.
All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from, or otherwise use collection materials must be submitted in writing to the
Head of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, California 94304-6064. Consent
is given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission
from the copyright owner. Such permission must be obtained from the copyright owner, heir(s) or assigns. See: _URL_


text:
Earthenware with relief decoration under olive-green glaze
H. 13 7/8 in. (35.2 cm)
Purchase, Stanley Herzmann Gift, 1996 (1996.15)
This splendid jar is a mingqi, an object made especially for burial with the dead, and was used for ritual offering of food in the tomb. The relatively inexpensive earthenware would have been a substitute for more costly silver or bronze, and the vessel copies metalware in both form and ornamentation.
This fascinating object is one of an extremely small group of flambuoyant stoneware or earthenware jars manufactured in northern China during the second half of the sixth century. Many of the applied decorative elements on this group of elaborate vessels are taken from Buddhist ornamental grammer, and some of the motifs here evidence a Buddhist connection.
The decorative style shows a definite Western derivation, particularly in the singular motif of pearl roundels containing heads with frontal Central Asian faces. These naturalistic fleshy faces have been sculpted in exquisite detail. This design, which clearly exhibits a Central Asian Khotanese influence, apparently has not been found on any other Chinese ceramics.
The Central Asian motif and the extremely high quality of the jar lead to the theory that it was manufactured for the tomb of an important member of the large community of foreigners living in the northern Chinese capitals during the late sixth century.


text:
Turtle can be the most important and popular element in Polynesian culture. It's connected to many meanings and the most common ones are long life (eternity), wellness, fertility, union, family and harmony. It also symbolizes the navigator.
Turtle plays an essential role in Polynesian culture. The sea is regarded as the source of food and Polynesian people believe that it's also the world beyond, in which they will rest after death. And because turtles can freely move between the sea and lands, Polynesian people believe that they will bring them to their destination, the rest place.
Turtle are often designed with many complex patterns and symbols to express plenty of meanings. We will list one complex turtle design below.
Two "enatas" combined are one form of turtle. Other forms are turtle shells combined together, like the ones represented in the picture below the header.
Below are several samples that include turtles.


11 things we learned from the Scottish 2011 census
 - 17 December 2012
 - From the section Scotland
The first results released from Scotland's 2011 Census are not as detailed as the data from England and Wales last week. We will have to wait until next year for such a breakdown of Scotland's figures. However, there is much of interest in the first results.
Scotland's population is the highest ever
Scotland's population decline has reversed quickly
From an estimated 1.6 million in 1801, the population increased at a steady rate throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, reaching 4.9 million in 1921. A dip in the population was recorded in the 1931 Census, in part reflecting the impact of the First World War, the 1918-19 influenza epidemic and net out-migration. It then went up and reached its previous high of 5.2 million in 1971. In the next three censuses the population struggled to stay above five million. But the 2011 survey saw it rise rapidly above the 1971 figure. The drivers for this latest period of population increase are attributed to natural growth (more births than deaths in the most recent years) and net in-migration.
There are more over-65s than under 15s for the first time ever.
The number of people aged 65 and over increased by 85,000 (11%) since 2001. The 854,000 children aged under 15 accounted for 16% of the population whereas those aged 65 and over (890,000 people) accounted for 17%.
There are more females than males
The number of males was 2,567,000 (48%) and there were 2,728,000 (52%) females.
The age group 15 to 39 saw a fall in numbers
The population aged 15 to 64 increased by 200,000 (6%) between 2001 and 2011 but those aged 15 to 39 decreased 2% from 1,734,000 to 1,702,800. Those aged 40 to 64 increased by 14%, from 1,616,000 to 1,849,000.
Scotland is 8.38% of the UK population
The Census Day population in the United Kingdom was almost 63.2 million. Of this, 83.9% were resident in England, 8.38% in Scotland, 4.84% in Wales and 2.86% in Northern Ireland. The resident population of England and Wales on the 27 March 2011 was 56.1 million, a 7% (3.7 million). The Scottish population rose almost 5% over the decade.
The number of children has halved in 100 years
Despite the overall growth in the total population in the past 100 years, the 2011 Census confirmed the pronounced change that has taken place in the age structure of Scotland's population.
The number of children in Scotland has generally fallen since 1911. The census in that year recorded 1,537,000 children aged under 15 (32% of the population).
Apart from increases in the 1961 and 1971 censuses, mainly reflecting the impact of the baby boom years of the 1960s, the number of children in this age group generally fell, reaching a low of 854,000 in 2011, 16% of the population.
In 2011, there were 293,000 children aged under five, an increase of 6% from 2001. However, the number of children aged five to 14 saw a decrease of 69,000 (11%) in the past 10 years.
There are eight times as many people over 80 as 1911
There were nearly eight times as many people aged 80 and over in 2011 (230,000, 4% of the population) than were recorded in 1911 (30,000, 0.6% of the population). In 2011, almost two-thirds (64%) of people aged 80 and over were female.
Scotland's population density is among lowest in Europe
The average number of people per square kilometre in Scotland is 68, among the lowest of the EU countries. It is similar to Ireland and Bulgaria, with only the Baltic and Scandinavian countries having lower population densities. However, there are huge variations across the country. The Western Isles and the Highlands have just nine people per square kilometre whereas Glasgow city has 3,395. The only places outside the Central Belt which have a density greater than 500 are Aberdeen city and Dundee city. The average population density figure for England is over 400.
The population of Scotland is moving around
Highland and Aberdeenshire saw the biggest increases in their population over the past 10 years - up 11%. East Lothian (10%), West Lothian (10%) and Orkney (10%) also saw rises. The number of people in Scotland's big cities also rose but Inverclyde (-4%) and Argyll and Bute (-4%) as well as East Dunbartonshire (-3%) and West Dunbartonshire (-3%) saw a drop.
The census is not absolutely accurate
The statistics provide estimates (rounded to the nearest thousand) of the usually resident population of Scotland on Census Day. It achieved an overall response rate of 94% and the National Record of Scotland says the population is estimated with 95% confidence to be accurate to within +/- 23,000 (0.44%). The figure for England and Wales was broadly similar.
More on this story
Related Internet links
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites


text:
using colors like blue
You simply must
I can paint – how about you?
In celebrating Dr. Seuss' birthday and all the fun his books bring to our lives, we pulled out the paint brushes. The wonderful thing about Seuss art is that you can create a Cat in the Hat, fish or Thing 1 or Thing 2 any way you'd like. There's really no wrong way.
For this project you will need:
- 1 5×7 canvas for each painting you plan to do
- acrylic paints
- black, permanent marker
- colored markers (optional, for drawing activity)
- For the characters, we had a Cat in the Hat book close by for reference. If you don't have a Dr. Seuss book handy, you can click over to Suessville for inspiration.
*Details on canvas, paints and brushes are explained in Acrylics Plus Links to Tutorials
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. ~ Dr. Seuss
Instructions: For both characters, we sketched off the basic outline. Here are the steps we followed:
1. Taking a plain piece of printer paper, trace the outline of the canvas. This will help you determine the size of your Seuss character. For example, Middle Girl ended up just drawing Cat in the Hat from the waist up because that is all that would fit to scale on the 5×7 canvas. The fish, however, was just a simple shape. He and his bowl fit easily into the 5×7 space.
2. Sketch the basic outline of your character onto your printer paper – into the 5×7 space you sketched off. This gives you practice in sketching your character. You could also trace the shape onto your paper.
3. Using a pastel chalk stick (or a pencil is fine – just use it very lightly), sketch the outline of your character onto the 5×7 canvas.
- Sketch the outline of your fish bowl onto your canvas.
- Sketch the outline of your fish.
- Mix a touch of blue paint into about a tablespoon of white paint. Paint your bowl. You can add some touches around the outer part of your bowl to give it depth, like above.
- Paint your fish the brilliant yellow of Dr. Suess style.
- Next, paint your background red.
- Once your painting dries, use a black permanent marker to outline the fish and your bowl.
- Sketch the outline of your Cat in the Hat onto your canvas.
- Leaving the cat white, paint stripes on his body, face and tail.
- Add in the eyes, nose, mouth and whiskers with black paint. Outline the stripes on the cat's hat in black paint as well.
- Paint some of the stripes on your hat red. Then paint your cat's bow tie red.
- Using brilliant blue, paint your background.
- You might want to mix in some white with your blue and add some modern art looking touches to your background. (Middle Girl mixed in a bit of blue-gray to her background).
With both of these characters, feel free to make them your own. Add touches of your favorite color to the background. The background ended up being my favorite part. Just look at the modern art look of the blue brush strokes.
The children enjoyed the acrylic art so much, they then pulled out the colored markers. Copying, free-hand from illustrations. Nana points out to the children that copying from drawings is a great exercise in concentration. It is good to see how others have drawn the scene or figure in the past. Of course we always give credit to the real artist and say that we drew this "in the manner of…" Nana says she, "learned how to draw cartoon figures in the fourth grade (probably when a math lesson was being taught) and I found it to be an exercise similar to the teachings of the book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain."
Today you are you. That is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you. ~ Dr. Seuss
For more ways to celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday, visit my Sooo Seuss Pinterest board.
- A note on acrylics: Just like pastels, acrylics will wash off your hands easily. But if the paint gets on any fabric – it is permanent! We wear a smock and cover our painting surface.
- Supplies needed: All details on paint, brushes, canvases and palettes are listed in Acrylics Plus Links to Tutorials.
- Print this lesson: Just click the green, 'print-friendly' button at the top, left of this post. You can choose to print the lesson with or without photos. By clicking the 'remove photos' box, you may print the text directions only.
- Looking for more free art lessons? All of Nana's tutorials are contained in Pastels Plus Links to Tutorials (over 35) and Acrylics Plus Links to Tutorials
- Ami from Walking by the Way
- Amy from Milk and Cookies
- Cindy from Our Journey Westward
- Jenn from Daze of Adventure
- Jimmie from Jimmie's Collage
- Karin from Passport Academy
- Kendra from Preschoolers and Peace
How about you? Are you enjoying a Seussville sort of day?


text:
Heart & Cardiology/Pericardial window
QUESTION: How long after a pericardial window/ biopsy would you expect an otherwise healthy person to return to full time work
ANSWER: Hi Amy,
The operation is a relatively minor procedure. Recovery in an otherwise healthy person should be uneventful (full recovery in <4-6 weeks). However, it is not the operation but the illness for which it is being done that will determine how quickly a patient is back to normal. Thus the real question is why is this type of surgery necessary?
Hope this helps,
---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------
QUESTION: I have had chronic sinus inflammation for 8 months. Two months ago I started getting work ups from an ID doctor,rheumatologist and immunologists. About 16 vials of blood latter, all bloodwork was normal except measures of inflammation which were high but non specific. I was getting increasingly fatigued, winded and had a few occasions where I woke not being able to breathe, pacing, anxious and tried to lean forward to take a breath. The following day I had a ct of the
Chest which showed a large pericardial effusion. I was admitted the I spiral that evening and had a liter of bloody fluid drained. I went home the following day. The fluid was tested and negative for infection, cancer, TB but positive doe Inflammation. I was re admitted three days later with a moderator to large effusion reforming which was causing the aortic chamber to collapse. The immunologist wanted me to have a biopsy to see it would provide a reason for the inflammation so I was transferred to a hospital with cardio thoractic surgeons who could do a biopsy and window. So far the test results. Are negative except for Inflammation. The tissue biopsy is still pending. If the tissue biopsy is also inconclusive what is the next step?
The surgery accomplishes two goals:
1. Diversion of the accumulated fluid to the pleural space around your lungs where repeat drainage is easier to perform.
2. A biopsy may render a diagnosis if this is pericardial disease. If not positive for a definite diagnosis, it may mean the effusions are caused by a problem yet to be discovered.
Biopsies often show inflammation, but unfortunately not necessarily a cause. Often, no cause can be identified. Sometimes this means an understanding that the disease will "burn itself out", and anti-inflammatory therapy and steroids are used to facilitate that period.
Hope this helps,