The Spanish Competition Authority encourages more competition in the medical devices market
Report IPN/CNMC/025/18 issued by the Spanish Competition Authority on the draft of Royal Decree of reimbursement and prices of medical devices
Jordi Faus
Capsulas Nº 197
When the Ministry of Health started working on this Royal Degree, it agreed to request the Spanish Competition Authority to issue a report about it. The Spanish Competition Authority is usually grateful about this sort of requests, because they allow its participation aiming both to improve the functioning of the markets concerned and to reasonably maintain effective competition in such markets. The Spanish Competition Authority understands that this regulation may have a significant impact on competition and issues some recommendations.
Main proposals
The analysis of the Spanish Competition Authority departs from the idea that the market of medical devices is rather complex due to concentration of supply (the first 5 main companies have more than 50% of medical devices reimbursed by the NHS). Also, the medical devices sector is well-known by the Spanish Competition Authority, due to the several cases analysed in the past years, sanctioning many companies for illegal activities.
The Spanish Competition Authority makes, among, others, following recommendations:
1) To review the system for fixing prices and specially margins, pointing out that the system applicable to medicines does not necessarily have to apply to medical devices.
2) To treat in equal terms both reimbursed medical devices and new ones. This may result in a price review of reimbursed medical devices aiming to avoid harming companies who wish to access the market.
3) To reconsider the roll of retail pharmacies when dispensing reimbursed medical devices, opening the door to dispensation at home and in NHS centres.
4) To apply the system of homogeneous groups to reinforce competitive tension. Under this system (applicable to medicines), the pharmacist dispenses the product having the lowest price within its group.
5) To introduce demand and rational use policies. The Spanish Competition Authority supports generic prescription and substitution of products by the pharmacist, but it also encourages providing more information to patients.
6) To improve the reasoning behind decisions. The Spanish Competition Authority has insisted on this matter several times and no steps forward have been taken so far.
Final comment
The recommendations of the Spanish Competition Authority usually come after a strict analysis of the concerned market. However, this report lacks some delicacy. Having excessive competitive tension in a market where the purchaser has so much power, can lead some companies to exit such market. This would result in patients not being able to access some valuable products. This is a delicate matter and it must be handled with prudency.
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List total colorings of series-parallel graphs
Gyo Shu, Yuki Matsuo, Takao Nishizeki
Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review
3 Citations (Scopus)
A total coloring of a graph G is a coloring of all elements of G, i.e. vertices and edges, in such a way that no two adjacent or incident elements receive the same color. Let L(x) be a set of colors assigned to each element x of G. Then a list total coloring of G is a total coloring such that each element x receives a color contained in L(x). The list total coloring problem asks whether G has a list total coloring. In this paper, we first show that the list total coloring problem is NP-complete even for series-parallel graphs. We then give a sufficient condition for a series-parallel graph to have a list total coloring, that is, we prove a theorem that any series-parallel graph G has a list total coloring if |L/(v)| ≥ min{5, Δ + 1} for each vertex v and |L(e)| ≥ max{5, d(v) + 1, d(w) + 1} for each edge e = vw, where Δ is the maximum degree of G and d(v) and d(w) are the degrees of the ends v and w of e, respectively. The theorem implies that any series-parallel graph G has a total coloring with Δ + 1 colors if Δ ≥ 4. We finally present a linear-time algorithm to find a list total coloring of a given series-parallel graph G if G satisfies the sufficient condition.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)172-181
Number of pages10
Publication statusPublished - 2003 Dec 1
ASJC Scopus subject areas
 - Computer Science(all)
 - Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)
 - Theoretical Computer Science
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text:
A kitchen hood, also known as a range hood, is a device that hangs above commercial fryers and other cooking appliances. It has many mechanical fans that remove heat, smoke, and odors from the air. It attracts dirt like a magnet. Read the Simple steps below about Cleaning Hoods in Restaurants.
If you manage a restaurant, it's critical that you take steps to keep your kitchen in good working order at all times to avoid unwelcome difficulties. Issues that arise unexpectedly can pose a safety risk and harm your reputation. One of the most important issues to fix in order to keep your restaurant on track is the kitchen exhaust system. Grease accumulates in the hoods and other components of your ventilation system.
Restaurant hoods must be cleaned:
The following is a typical sequence of events that leads to a kitchen exhaust fire that hasn't been cleaned:
- On the stove top, a hot flame shoots up or is formed.
- The flame ignites the filters in the kitchen hood as it comes into touch with them.
- The flames are driven upward into the ductwork by the exhaust fan pulling in air.
- If there is enough grease residue in the ducts, it can act as a source of fuel, allowing the fire to spread farther into the exhaust system, causing substantial damage and putting the structure and its people in danger.
Reasons for the cleanness of restaurant hoods:
There are various reasons to clean the kitchen hood at your restaurant:
The cleanliness of your kitchen exhaust system has an impact on the air quality in your restaurant's kitchen and throughout the facility. Contaminated particle is allowed to circulate in occupied portions of the building once filters become clogged and ducting is degraded, allowing workers and patrons to breathe it in.
Due to high levels of moisture and heat, your kitchen exhaust system is not only a fire threat, but also a breeding ground for germs, mold, and mildew. With regular, expert kitchen hood cleaning, you can avoid disease as well as potential mechanical failure and damage.
If your restaurant's kitchen is found to be in violation of these or other standards or regulations, it may fail inspection, costing you more time and money while it is brought up to code, or perhaps putting you out of business. Your insurance company may use this information to determine liability and refuse your claim if a fire occurs due to a lack of cleaning.
Method of Cleaning restaurant hoods:
Here is the step by step processes of cleaning restaurant hoods:
Plastic sheeting is used to cover all equipment to prevent it from run-off and degreasing chemicals once all pilot lights and gas valves for the cooking equipment have been switched off.
Baffle Filters Cleaning:
The vent hood's baffle filters are removed and either power washed or soaked in a soaking solution to remove any grease accumulation. The vent hood system can now be accessed completely.
Wrap around the hoods:
The hoods are coated in plastic sheeting and shaped into a funnel, allowing the cleaning process's discharge to be collected in a container.
The Hood fans are degreased and then rinsed with hot water. This procedure is repeated until the fans have been thoroughly cleaned down to the bare metal. The fan's belt is also replaced if necessary.
Scraping the Ducts:
The ducts are scraped to remove any hardened grease deposits before being cleansed and rinsed in the same manner as the fans. This is done in the same way as the fans down to the bare metal.
Getting the Roof Clean:
After the ducts and fans have been thoroughly cleaned and inspected, the roof is lightly power washed to eliminate any debris or grease that may have accumulated during the cleaning process.
Keeping the Hood Clean:
After manually scraping away any hardened oil accumulation, the vent hood is sprayed with a degreasing solution and rinsed with hot water. This procedure is done until all of the vent hoods are clean.
Putting the Baffle Filters Back in Place:
After soaking and/or power washing the baffle filters, they are rinsed with hot water and reinstalled in the vent hood. After that, the vent hood is cleaned off and polished.
After the system is clean, all of the plastic sheeting is removed, and the kitchen floors are mopped. All of the equipment is wiped down.
Tips to keep your restaurant hoods clean:
Use the appropriate filter:
Your vent hood will trap and contain the oils and grease generated from your cooking if you use the proper kind of hood filter and the right number of filters. Check out our hood filter handbook if you're not sure which filter is best for you. It covers everything from fire codes to filter materials to customized hood filters like spark arrestor filters. You must not only use the correct type of filter, but also the correct size to cover the whole aperture of your vent hood. Use our filter sizing calculator if you need assistance measuring to calculate the size and number of hood filters you'll need.
Commercial vent hood cleaning:
Cleaning business vent hoods on a regular basis will ensure that they operate as efficiently and effectively as feasible. The majority of vent hood cleaning in restaurants occurs on a daily basis. Some people, however, can go between cleanings every one to two weeks. The decision should be made based on the amount and sort of cooking you will be doing.
A fast-food restaurant that grills burgers on char broil equipment may need to schedule restaurant vent hood cleaning more frequently than a modest sandwich shop. Most hood filters can be cleaned by hand with hot soapy water or placed in a high-temp commercial dishwasher when it comes to commercial vent hood cleaning. They can also be soaked in a soak tank overnight.
Duct access doors should be installed:
Ducts are notoriously difficult to reach and, as a result, to keep clean. That's why duct access doors, also known as clean-out access doors or panels, must be positioned uniformly along with your ductwork. Duct access doors are simple to install and enable easy cleaning, maintenance, and inspection of your ducts.
Installing access doors makes it easy to remove fats, oils, and grease from your ductwork, reducing the risk of a duct fire and improving the performance of your vent hood. Keeping your ducts clean also improves airflow and reduces the formation of dust, bacteria, and mold.
Panel for accessing the exhaust fan:
Access panels for exhaust fans are similar to duct access panels. They're another quick and easy solution to keep your industrial kitchen ventilation system clean and in good working order.
These clean-out access points, also known as exhaust fan access ports, make it easier to reach the interior of the fan so it may be cleaned and maintained. They are incredibly cost-effective and easy to install. Once fitted, your exhaust fan access port will help keep the blades of your up blast exhaust fan clean and grease-free. This will assist you in avoiding difficulties caused by grease accumulation.
Install a hinge kit for the exhaust fan:
Making it easy to clean your exhaust fan also makes it safer, as it protects your roof, fan, and fan base from harm during routine maintenance, business vent hood cleaning, or inspection. Hinge kits connect the fan bowl to the fan base using a hinge. The hinge keeps the exhaust fan held in an open position, preventing it from opening too far or slamming shut on employees attempting to reach the fan's innards.
For obstinate grease accumulation, contractors can use scrapers and brushes on the hood interior. Otherwise, they'll use the pressure washer system they used to clean the ducting to clean it. The interior and exterior stainless steel of the hood can be manually cleaned with a degreaser or light detergent, wiped down, and dried with clean cloths if necessary. During the cleaning operation, contractors take extra precautions using demand-control hoods to safeguard their heat and effluent sensors.

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


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This Minecraft tutorial explains How to make a Blast Furnace in Minecraft with detailed screenshots and step-by-step instructed process.
When playing Minecraft, one of the tools that every player thinks they must necessarily use right from the start is definitely the blast furnace. In fact, through the use of the blast furnace you will be able to melt different materials such as metals, armor and various tools at twice the speed compared to the normal furnace. Remember that the Blast Furnace is essential for smelting ingots of iron, copper, gold, diamonds, coal, redstone dust, emeralds, coal and more.
These are all resources that you will find essential as you learn to play in Minecraft, because they can serve as a basis for other objects, sometimes as fuel for tools such as the brewing station and therefore their applications are practically endless! Follow this guide to learn about the various steps to take to build a blast furnace. Also remember that you can find a ready-to-use blast furnace by going to a gunsmith's house. Let's start!
Required Materials to create a Blast Furnace in Minecraft:
Creating a Blast Furnace is very simple: you can choose crafting if you are in survival mode, so follow the first option. If you are in creative mode, go directly to the second option.
OPTION ONE: CRAFTING A BLAST FURNACE IN SURVIVAL MODE
1. Open the workbench manufacturing grid
Lay out a workbench along the ground and open the manufacturing grid by right clicking on it. A grid similar to this will appear:
2. Insert the different materials in the grid squares:
Now follow these instructions carefully: insert five iron ingots into the manufacturing grid by placing them in the first three squares at the top and then in the central ones on the right and left. Then proceed by inserting the furnace in the central square. Finally, place three blocks of smooth stones in the remaining squares at the bottom. To better understand how to do this you can follow this image:
A blast furnace will appear as if by magic, ready to be used immediately! Easy right?
ADDITIONAL NOTE: If you don't have a ready-made furnace to be inserted in the grid, you can always create it by first inserting eight blocks of crushed stone into the manufacturing grid, leaving only the central square of the grid empty.
3. Collect the item
Once you have crafted the blast furnace through the workbench crafting grid, all you have to do is click on it and move it to your inventory.
4. Use the blast furnace
To use the blast furnace, just select it from the inventory and right click on any part of the land where you want to place it. Then right-click on it again and the grid will open where you can enter the casting instructions for the materials you want to blend.
OPTION TWO: FIND THE BLAST FURNACE IN CREATIVE MODE
You can easily find the blast furnace, if you are in creative mode, in the "Decorations" section
All screenshots are taken from Dreamtastix YouTube Channel


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Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
SPIHT (Set Partition in Hierarchical Trees) is an image compression algorithm that exploits the inherent similarities across subbands in a wavelet decomposition of an image. It implies uniform quantization and bit allocation applied after wavelet decomposition.
The algorithm codes the most important (in the sense of MSE reduction) wavelet transform coefficients in priority, and transmits the bits so that an increasingly refined copy of the original image is obtained with time.
The order in which coefficients are transmitted is recovered on the decoder using information of comparisons and sets being examined for significance during the sort, sets are created using hierarchical tree structure, i.e. Set Partition in Hierarchical Trees.
One of the advantages with SPIHT is that it produces an (optimal) embedded bitstream. This means that the bitstream can be truncated at any instant, and is then guaranteed to yield the best possible reconstruction.
The contents of this article is licensed from _URL_ under the GNU Free Documentation License. Click here to see the transparent copy and copyright details

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


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Arroyo Quemada
The land the Baron Ranch Trail is on was purchased by the county from Rudolph Schulte in 1991 to serve as a buffer between the Tajiguas landfill and the neighboring properties.
The Baron Ranch Trail is the first new trail to open on the Gaviota Coast in decades. It starts out on an easement through a working avocado and cherimoya ranch, then follows a 6 mile loop trail. It was a project 10 years in the making and relied upon a grant from the Goleta Valley Land Trust plus a lot of volunteer work.
Originally part of the Refugio land grant, the Baron Ranch was previously called Arroyo Quemada, which roughly means burnt creek bed. And how it got that name is interesting…
While we like to think of the Chumash as living idealistic perfect lives of leisure, the reality was they had feuds with their neighbors, and battles happened frequently. In fact, journals from the 1770s describe the Chumash living at Dos Pueblos as "troublemakers" and witnesses describe seeing them with scalps from those they had killed. The Dos Pueblos Chumash were battling the Chumash from the Goleta Slough so regularly, the Spanish military originally considered putting the Santa Barbara Presidio between the two villages to keep the peace!
One night, natives from Dos Pueblos came to the Baron Ranch area, to the Chumash village there called Shishuch'i'. In the dead of night, they silently set fire to all the huts, burning down the whole village and killing many people while they slept. Not long after that, the spot was referred to as La Quemada (the burned place) by Spanish missionary Father Fermin Lasuen and it was recorded as such, so the name was on the "official records" as far back as 1794.
A few years later, the village known as Quemada was resettled by mountain Chumash (people from the Santa Ynez Valley region), and records show the village population to have grown to 250 people!
Rancho Nuestra Señora del Refugio was granted to José Francisco Ortega in honor of his service to the Spanish Crown. The 26,000 acre parcel stretched from Cojo Canyon to Refugio Canyon. After his retirement in 1794, he built his home in Refugio Canyon. When Mexico took over California, the grant was confirmed to the Ortega family. The Quemada name appears on the diseno for the Refugio land grant from Mexico in 1838.
Jose Manuel Ortega, one of the Ortega sons, sold the west half of Quemada Ranch out of the Ortega family in 1863 to Auguste Mougard for $500. This was during the Great Drought, so the Ortegas were probably in need of cash like most of the other cattle ranchers.
In the years that followed, the Arroyo Quemada passed through several hands besides Mougard, including Bruno Orella and Lawrence More. Eventually, it ended up in the possession of Pedro Baron.
This is where the name Baron Ranch comes from. Pedro Baron was Basque, a native of France, born in 1829. He came to the United States via San Francisco around 1860. He first settled in Las Cruces, a small town near Gaviota that no longer exists. There he raised livestock and ran a store. In 1872, he bought the Quemada Ranch and continued his retail business there.
The Quemada Ranch came with an old one bedroom adobe, built by the Ortegas in the 1820s. The one room adobe was conveniently located right on the Camino Real, perfect for a retail operation. Baron added on to the adobe and catered to weary travelers, stage coach passengers and fellow ranchers. This is how it looked in 1883.
Amazingly, this adobe still exists today and is still being used as a private residence by the Meyer family, direct descendants of the Baron family. Please respect private property rights.
Mr. Baron must have been doing pretty well financially, because he also bought a townhouse in Santa Barbara. It was actually an old adobe that had once been a barracks for soldiers at the presidio, known as the Caneda Adobe. He later built a nice Victorian style house in front of it, that stayed in the family until 1945.
This prevented the old Caneda adobe from being demolished, and so it also still exists today, in the restored presidio on East Canon Perdido Street.The Baron family ranch at Quemada was mainly a cattle operation, but they also raised horses and grew walnuts. Pedro and his wife, Altagracia, had 6 children, 3 daughters and 3 sons. The sons, Dominic, born in 1868, Pierre,1874 and Gerard,1877, all worked on the ranch. Pedro passed away in 1914 from old age and in his will he left the Quemada Ranch to his 3 sons, split evenly 3 ways. Pedro was buried at the Calvary Cemetery in Santa Barbara.
This map from 1921 shows how the ranch was split between the 3 Baron brothers. Each of the brothers managed their respective parcels differently. One of the parcels had a granite quarry on it that provided the base for a lot of the roads in town and it was nicknamed "Baron Base".
Today, the ocean front portion of the former Baron Ranch has several private residences on it and it's called Quemada Lane. How did this valuable chunk of real estate get separated from the rest of the Baron Ranch? Several residents of the area told me an interesting story of how this went down…
The oldest Baron brother, Dominic, enjoyed gambling. One evening in 1927, he had a real bad run in a poker game up at Cold Spring Tavern and he fell pretty deep in debt to a fellow named Norman Jensen. Like a lot of ranchers in the area, Baron was most likely land rich and cash poor, so rather than pay Jensen in cash, he deeded him the ocean front land. The amount on the deed was $12,000. A big chunk of change back then, but a bargain for this choice piece of real estate. Today there are 13 residences in a private, gated community, on what's now known as Arroyo Quemada Lane, and the Jensen family still owns a home there!
This is Gerard Baron, the youngest son. He and his brothers all eventually moved into town and leased their land out to others to ranch, like the Allegria family. Gerard sold his share of the ranch in 1931 and retired in Goleta. The other brothers sold their portions of the ranch at different times.
In 1966, the county bought part of the old Baron Ranch to make the Tajiguas Landfill. The portion that is now the Baron Ranch Trail left the Baron family lineage in 1971, when the Meyer family sold it to Rudi Schulte. In 1991, Schulte sold it to the county for the landfill buffer.
What we call the Baron Ranch today is located approximately 25 miles west of Santa Barbara, is just over 1,000 acres and is managed by the County Public Works Department. The beginning of the trail goes through orchards, but eventually you get into the wild, undisturbed native habitats in the northern reaches.
The County hopes to extend the trail through the Los Padres National Forest to West Camino Cielo at the crest of the Santa Ynez Mountains, with connections to Gaviota State Park. It is currently open only to pedestrian users, Saturday through Monday of each week from 8:00 a.m. to dusk.
So thanks to the Baron family for taking good care of this land. Hopefully this will be the first of many public trails in the Gaviota Coast foothills!
Sources: Santa Barbara Historical Museum, Noticias, Michael Redmon, Justin Ruhge,"History All Around US", John Ryan Fischer, Songs of the Wilderness, Santa Barbara Independent, Santa Barbara News Press, History of Santa Barbara CountyThompson and West, Gary Meyer, John Johnson, Santa Barbara Trails Council, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Rick Jensen, SB Genealogical library, Laurie Hannah, Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation, Lael Wageneck, Santa Barbara County, Public Works Department, "Quemada Bob" Drury and special thanks to Mark Wilkinson.
Categories: Goleta History
Tagged as:
Tom Modugno


text:
What is superelevation in railway?
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Superelevation, also called cant, is a term used to describe the amount of banking added to railway tracks in order to counterbalance the effects of centripetal forces. This is done to ensure the lateral stability of a train when it is travelling at high speeds around a curve.
The banking angle increases the centrifugal force, which opposes the centripetal force generated by the turn. This helps prevent the train from capsizing or having its wheels leave the track.


In my earlier post, we saw different ways in which we can use Gomobile. In this post I'll try illustrating how to incorporate Gomobile into a mobile application using the bind command.
 1. Ensure that you've setup Go and Gomobile in your machine
 2. Install NDK (If you are generating a Android library)
Three Step Recipe
Step 1 - Write a Go Package
 1. Create a go package in $GOPATH/src/$username/gomobile_contact
 2. Create the following files
In the above linked files I've made a network request, parsed the response and unmarshalled it into a Contact object and returned the first Contact's name. This is an example of a simple business logic component that can be written in Go and ported as a library.
Step 2 - Generate libraries
Use the following commands to generate libraries for iOS / Android applications
 gomobile bind --target=ios _TAG_
 gomobile bind --target=android _TAG_
Step 3 - Import library into Application
Gomobile generates _URL_ for Android and.Framework for iOS
Import the packages into your application and call the FetchContactName() method which returns the first contact's name.
Voilà! You've succesfully generated a library using Go and integrated into your application :)


Osiedle [ɔˈɕɛdlɛ] (Polish plural: osiedla) is a term used in Poland to denote a designated subdivision of a city or town, or of a dzielnica, with its own council and executive. Like the dzielnica and sołectwo, an osiedle is an auxiliary unit (jednostka pomocnicza) of a gmina. These units are created by decision of the gmina council, and do not have legal personality in their own right. In the case of an urban-rural gmina, it is also possible for a whole town to be designated an auxiliary unit.
Not all Polish cities or towns have osiedles in the above sense. However the word osiedle is also frequently used to denote any housing estate or development. (In this sense it sometimes appears in addresses, where the abbreviation "Os." is commonly used.)
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 3/1/2014. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.


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Global ﬁsheries receive billions of dollars in subsidies each year. Although some of this money, such as that to improve ﬁsheries management, can promote sustainable ﬁshing practices, other funding can lead to overﬁshing in the world's oceans. Capacity-enhancing subsidies, for example for fuel or boat construction, reduce costs for ﬁshers, enabling them to increase their capacity and catch more ﬁsh. The unintended consequence of this kind of assistance is that encouraging ﬁshers to bring in larger catches
contributes to unsustainable ﬁshing practices over the long-term.
Rashid Sumaila of the University of British Columbia and his co-authors improved upon previous estimates of global subsidies using updated data and methodology and calculated global amounts and types of ﬁsheries subsidies for 2003. They found global subsidies totaled roughly $27 billion, 60 percent of which went toward unsustainable capacity-enhancing subsidies. Instead of continuing to invest billions of dollars into activities that aggravate overﬁshing, the authors suggest directing those funds toward ﬁshery conservation and improved management. This Pew Ocean Science Series report is a summary of the scientists' ﬁndings.


8 Francophone countries get new currency
8 Francophone countries get new currency
BERLINAnadolu Agency
8 Francophone countries get new currency
It is official that the Eco will replace the CFA franc as the new currency for the eight Francophone countries that form the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA).
France's Council of Ministers officially passed a bill earlier this month that ratified the reform of the monetary agreement that bound the French government to the eight member states.
Doing so brought to a close 75 years of rule by the French Republic in which the states had been compelled to centralizeto deposittheir foreign exchange reserves in the Banque de France, otherwise known as the French Treasury.
Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo will now pool their reserves entirely within the Central Bank of West African States, or BCEAO.
The Eco will remain pegged to the Euro and will be backed by the French Treasury. The euro will guarantee the Eco's convertibility and stability, with the Treasury remaining as guarantor for all eight UEMOA states.
The Eco will have a fixed exchange rate of 655.957 to the euro.
The CFA franc, or Communaute francaise d'Afrique, has been in use since 1945 and was created in the wake of the weakness of the franc after World War II. Initially tied to the franc, it has been linked to the euro since that currency's inception.
Although adopting their own currency had been West Africa's goal for decades, it was last July 1 the UEMOA member countries announced their strong intent to stop using the CFA franc and start using the Eco.
Oddly enough, the Eco is expected to be adopted by member states July 1.
The French government will also withdraw its presence from all West African governing bodies with whom it had been involved, such as the BCEAO.
The Council of Ministers expressed their role would be more guarantor than anything.
"This new position enables us to support the UEMOA in its commitment to pursuing the single currency project of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)," it said in a statement.
Six other Central African countries who belong to the Central African Economic and Monetary Union (CAEMU) utilize the CFA franc, including the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and the Republic of Congo.
Only the West African CFA will sever its ties to France. The currencies are interchangeable.
Adopting the Eco currency means only good things for UEMOA member states: It will decrease present trade barriers, reduce the cost of doing business and raise the prosperity of an enormous region with a population of more than 380 million.
France does not make money on its regulation of foreign exchange reserves that member states were compelled to keep but in reality pays an annual interest rate with a ceiling of 0.75% to the two central banks of the region. In fact, France has denied having made any investment in the reserves.
Breaking from the Banque de France also means West Africa is making a break with the past: Each UEMOA country, with the exception of Guinea-Bissau, is a former French colony. Establishing the Eco reduces
France's influence and ushers out a time of colonial domination.
President Emmanuel Macron and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire have been open to the discussion for, as they called it, "ambitious avenues" in the past. It was during a joint news conference in the Ivory Coast last
Macron, along with Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara, disclosed in December that UEMOA member countries would no longer use the CFA.
As the former minister for long-term strategy and public policy evaluation of Togo, and former economic and digital director of the International Organization of LaFrancophone, economist Kako Nubukpo sees the vast long term benefit of a single currency that West Africa can call its own.
"The Eco's creation process constitutes a true test of the credibility of West Africa's vision and governance. For France, the process serves instead as a test of its sincerity concerning its willingness to effectively put the CFA franc to rest," he said.


Movie files Up: Model output files Previous: Time-averaged history files Contents
Snapshot history files
If sufficient memory is not available for run-time accumulation of time-averaged history files or if the user simply needs an instantaneous view of the ocean state, snapshot history files can be written at regular intervals. The interval must be short enough that whatever time-averaging interval may be desired in the future, there will be three or more samples (snapshots) per averaging-interval. For monthly averages, snapshots should be collected at intervals of 10 days or less. Only one time-level of the prognostic variables and selected diagnostic variables needs to be saved, since second-moments and correlations can be computed later from these snapshot files, at the cost of retrieving a potentially large number of snapshot files. To choose which fields are written to the history files, a history contents file must be supplied with a list of fields desired. A sample file is included which contains all the currently available fields; the user may edit this file to select the desired fields. If a field is not currently included in the list of available fields, the user must modify the source code to make that field available (see the Reference Manual).
Table: History file namelist
&history_nml Generation of snapshot history files
history_freq_opt ['never'],'nstep', 'nyear', 'nmonth', 'nday', 'nhour', 'nsecond' units of time for history_freq
history_freq [100000] number of units between output of snapshot history files
history_outfile ['unknown'] root filename with path of history file output (suffixes will be added)
history_fmt ['bin'],'nc' format for history files (binary or netCDF)
history_contents ['history_contents'] input file containing names of fields requested to be output
Table: Currently available history fields
Name Units Description
SHGT cm surface height
UBTROP cm/s barotropic 'zonal' velocity
VBTROP cm/s barotropic'meridional' velocity
UVEL cm/s 'zonal' velocity
VVEL cm/s'meridional' velocity
TEMP ° C potential temperature
SALT g/g (msu) salinity
SUF cm2/s2 surface velocity flux in U direction
SVF cm2/s2 surface velocity flux in V direction
SHF W/m2 surface heat flux
SFWF m/year surface fresh water flux
SOLAR W/m2 solar short wave flux at surface


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Bad weather may have depressed turnout among Chicago voters in Illinois' primary elections for governor and the Senate seat once held by Obama. Historically, that's good news for Republicans.
M. Spencer Green / AP
Voters in a closely watched Illinois election primary Tuesday had to stomp through two inches of fresh snow, which may have contributed to a low voter turnout in Chicago – most likely between 30 and 35 percent by the end of the day, according to Chicago election officials.
Despite the predicted low turnout, the election is an important one. The primary for Illinois governor and one of its US senators is seen as a potential indicator of whether the voter revolt that came to a head in the Massachusetts Senate vote last month is likely to continue.
Election day weather can influence political results, according to a study titled "The Republicans Should Pray for Rain: Weather, Turnout, and Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections." The study, compiled by three universities, examined the voting patterns of 3,000 counties between 1948 and 2000.
Among the results: for every one inch of precipitation in each county, overall voter turnout dropped 1 percent. But bad weather is sunshine for Republicans: for every inch of precipitation in each county, there was a 2.5 percent increase in Republican voting.
Democrats are particularly hampered by inclement weather because one of their traditional voting blocs: seniors. "They vote large in numbers and very reliably. But if it's the case older people are less likely to brave the elements, that will have a disproportionate affect on Democrats," says Ivan Kenneally, a political scientist at Rochester Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the study.


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The scarcity of fossil fuels is affecting the efficiency of established modes of cargo transport within the transportation industry. Efforts have been made to develop innovative modes of transport that can be adopted for economic and environmental friendly operating systems. Solid material, for instance, can be packed in rectangular containers (commonly known as capsules), which can then be transported in different concentrations very effectively using the fluid energy in pipelines. For economical and efficient design of such systems, both the local flow characteristics and the global performance parameters need to be carefully investigated. Published literature is severely limited in establishing the effects of local flow features on system characteristics of Hydraulic Capsule Pipelines (HCPs). The present study focuses on using a well validated Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tool to numerically simulate the solid-liquid mixture flow in both on-shore and off-shore HCPs applications including bends. Discrete Phase Modelling (DPM) has been employed to calculate the velocity of the rectangular capsules. Numerical predictions have been used to develop novel semi-empirical prediction models for pressure drop in HCPs, which have then been embedded into a robust and user-friendly pipeline optimisation methodology based on Least-Cost Principle.
|Number of pages||18|
|Journal||International Journal of Pressure Vessels and Piping|
|Early online date||25 Jul 2016|
|Publication status||Published - Oct 2016|


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Today I want to share my experience how my image appear in Google search result. This is the mechanism of Google Authorship. Before starting this tutorial I want to discus why Google Authorship is so important. 1. By Google author you can more reader.2. Google authorship gives you a brand value. 3. Google Authorship gives you make more click. 4. Google Authorship connect you with your reader. Now I start step by step tutorial how to set up Google authorship.
How to set up Google Authorship?
Before setting up your Google Authorship you must have Google Plus account with your picture. Remember your name should be same at Google Plus account and your blog author name and you should have email address with your domain like _EMAIL_.
Now follow those steps and get your Google Authorship.
Step 1. Submit your email id on Google Authorship and verify it.
Create a link to your Google+ profile from your webpage, like this:
I personally is not comfortable to use this process that 's why I use a WordPress Plugin named Yoast WordPress SEO. And put my Google Plus url on it like this image bellow.
After completing those step you can check your authorship entering your url address.
Now your authorship is ready. It will take two to four week appear your image in Google search result. If you think it is helpful please share it. Thank you.


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Disability is broadly considered as a contributing factor to poverty. Disabled people experience poorer outcomes in education and employment, areas which impact significantly upon poverty.
Recent changes to welfare appear to have disproportionately affected disabled people. In particular, the "bedroom tax" and universal credit have been continually highlighted as overly impacting disabled people. Subsequently, this section should be viewed in conjunction with:
- Accessing the Labour Market, Financial Services, Poverty, Participation and Engagement, Welfare Reform.
Disabled people, like all people discussed within this review, possess numerous personal characteristics. We would therefore suggest viewing this section in conjunction with:
Key Facts and Figures: Glasgow and Scotland
Glasgow reports slightly higher levels (than the national average), of people whose day-to-day activities are limited due to health problems or disability:
- Inverclyde - 23.7%
- West Dumbartonshire - 23.1%
- Glasgow - 22.7%
- North Ayrshire - 22.6%
- Aberdeen - 16.0%
- Edinburgh - 16.1%
- Scottish Average - 19.6%
In 2011/2012, 19% of households containing a disabled adult lived in poverty. The figure for households with no disabled adults was 12%.
People who stated they had a long term, activity limiting health problem or disability were more likely to live in Scotland's most deprived areas.
26.7% of people who reported either being limited a little, or lot, lived in Scotland's 15% most deprived areas.
Whilst 18.4% of these groups lived in Scotland's 85% least deprived areas.
People residing in the countries most deprived decile are twice as likely (26%) to report that they were limited by a long term health problem or disability, than those in the least deprived areas (13%).
In 2012, 45.6% of disabled people were in employment within Scotland, compared to 70.6% of non-disabled people.
In Glasgow, the employment figure for disabled people drops to 33.5%, compared to 59.7% of non-disabled people.
It should be noted that in 2013, the Glasgow employment rate for non-disabled people rose to 63.3%. There is currently no data available for disabled employment rates in 2013.
The Department for Work and Pensions present findings in regards to educational attainment of disabled people within the UK:
- Disabled people are three times as likely (19.2%) than non disabled people (6.2%) to hold no qualifications.
- 14.9% of disabled people hold degree qualifications, in comparison to 28.1% of the non-disabled population.
Rising Cost of Living
Research has continually highlighted the increased financial pressures upon families with disabled children. Increasing costs for specialist equipment, in conjunction with reduced welfare support have been documented as having a negative impact upon family finances.
Contact a Family (2012), the highlighted costs of living for disabled families. They specifically refer to increased prices for:
- Specialist clothes
- Specialist leisure activities
- Specialist toys
- Specialist equipment
- Computer equipment
Further research demonstrates the increasing impact of:
- Rising utility bills
- Increased transport costs
- Below inflation pay increases
- Welfare reform
From this, economic costs have the capacity to impact disabled people through two mediums.
For example, if a child is disabled, parents face additional financial pressures due to the increased costs associated with day-to-day living and specialist equipment. Such expenditure may have a significant impact upon family budgets and act as a more subtle form of poverty.
In this regard, although parents of disabled children may earn slightly more than the 60% threshold, outgoings will be higher, due price of specialist equipment and increase in day to day expenditure.
Alternatively, if a parent is disabled and doesn't have secure, well paid employment, there is a significant chance that this may result in lower earning levels than non-disabled people.
Approximately 46.3% of disabled people are in employment within Scotland and 33.5% in Glasgow, suggesting reduced levels of income and a higher risk of poverty.
Research from the Scottish Government reinforces this suggestion, highlighting that disabled people are significantly more likely to live in both poverty, and in Scotland's poorest areas.
Therefore, it could be argued that disabled children, and children of disabled parents face increased risks of experiencing poverty. Welfare changes, the marginalised position of disabled people within the labour market and more broadly speaking, higher costs of living, may all contribute to increased levels of poverty.
A Human Rights Based Approach
The Children's Commission (2013) provide a rights based analysis of disabled children's and young people's experiences of living within low income families.
Within this, they highlight the impact low income has upon their rights as set out within:
- The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
- The International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
- The United Nations Convetion on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
The research highlights the direct impact low income has upon their rights as children, people and disabled people. This is not to say that low income always equates to reduced rights. Rather, it is a contributing factor, alongside inadequate provision of services, a lack of understanding from service providers and broader structural and institutional inequalities (to name a few).
Adopting a rights based approach provides an interesting perspective to the experience of poverty, particularly amongst disabled people. Research demonstrates that poverty, for all people, has the capacity to impact upon their most basic human rights. In this regard, the institutional and structural inequality experienced by disabled people could be presented as enhancing the consequences of poverty.
Yet, generally, discussions surrounding human rights occur "after the fact", or are viewed as an additional piece of work. Embedding human rights considerations within projects, strategies and policies may allow for innovative and more informed approaches to be adopted. This research offers an insight into the value of such an approach.


Moore's Law
Gamer died after playing games for too long
"A man whose son died after playing computer games is campaigning for greater awareness of the risk posed by their excessive use. Chris Staniforth, 20, who would played his Xbox for up to 12 hours, died in May from deep vein thrombosis (DVT). His dad David believes the condition may have been triggered by long gaming sessions and is caused during long periods of immobility."
Nvidia: Moore's law will die without GPUs
Nvidia's chief scientist, Bill Dally, has warned that the long-established Moore's Law is in danger of joining phlogiston theory on the list of superseded laws, unless the CPU business embraces parallel processing on a much broader scale.
Life After Moore's Law
It's time for the computing industry to take the leap into parallel processing.
For the past four decades explosive gains in computing power have contributed to unprecedented progress in innovation, productivity and human welfare. But that progress is now threatened by the unthinkable: an end to the gains in computing power.
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I am doing a learning seminar on 'Bhargavaology', which is the collection of techniques and results surrounding the recent work of Manjul Bhargava, a Fields Medalist in 2014. The introductory talk is scheduled on Monday, Jan 12 in MC 5413, from 2:30 PM to 3:30 PM. The abstract is indicated below:
Title: Introduction to Bhargavaology
Speaker: Stanley Yao Xiao
Abstract: In this introductory talk I aim to give a sampling of the vast web of important theorems related to Manjul Bhargava, one of the four Fields Medalists of 2014, and describe their importance in the context of modern number theory. There are no technical details in the talk, making it very accessible.


dead fish, south carolina
© Annie O'Brien
"We're still waiting to see if DNR can come up with some kind of a clue as to why this happened." Folly Beach Mayor Tim Goodwin said.
" I came down this morning and right now I came back and saw a bunch of dead bait fish," He said.
Thursday morning's discovery on Folly Beach adds to a nationwide mystery involving similar occurrences of mass fish and bird deaths. The incident joins recent wildlife deaths at Chesapeake Bay and Lebanon, Tennessee -- adding to a steady growing list of similar incident across the nation. In the Chesapeake Bay incident, as many as 2-million fish were found dead in what wildlife experts have attributed to cold water stress. In Lebanon more than 100 birds were discovered dead along a highway.
DNR officials believe the incident at Folly to also be cold related as we are experiencing ocean temperatures off the Carolina coast that are below average.
DNR biologist Phil Maier said the fish generally school in groups of 100,000 or more so the kill was relatively small. The fish are about 6 inches long.
Two weeks ago Isle of Palms beaches were also littered with dead sea life. Dead starfish and jellyfish washed ashore in what experts also attributed to cold weather and cold water temperature.


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NIOSH Analytical Method, Benzene, S311, (Set U).
NIOSH 1976 Dec:8 pages
A method is described for the analysis of benzene (71432) in the air by drawing a known volume of air through a charcoal tube to trap the organic vapor present, followed by desorption of the analyte with carbon-disulfide, injection into a gas chromatograph and comparison of the area of the resulting peak with areas obtained for standards. Data are given on the principle, range and sensitivity, interference, precision, accuracy, advantages and disadvantages of the method. Also described are the apparatus, reagents, and procedures used, analysis of samples; interferences; calibration and standards; and calculations.
NIOSH-Analytical-Method; Standards-Completion-Program; Analytical-Method; Microanalysis; Air-quality-measurement; Aromatic-hydrocarbons; Solvent-extraction; Organic-solvents; Set-U; Standards; Sampling; Chromatography;
Division of Physical Sciences and Engineering, NIOSH, Cincinnati, Ohio, 8 pages, 3 references


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François-André Danican Philidor
Portrait from L'analyze des échecs. London, second edition, 1777.
|Full name||François-André Danican Philidor|
|Born||September 7, 1726
|Died||August 31, 1795
François-André Danican Philidor (September 7, 1726 – August 31, 1795), often referred to as André Danican Philidor during his lifetime, was a French composer and chess player. He contributed to the early development of the opéra comique. He was also regarded as the best chess player of his age; his book Analyse du jeu des Échecs was considered a standard chess manual for at least a century, and a well-known chess opening and a checkmate method are both named after him.
Musical family
François-André Danican Philidor came from a well-known musical family, which included:
- Jean Danican Philidor (c. 1620–79), André Danican Philidor's grandfather, was a musician at the Grande Écurie (literally, the Great Stable; figuratively, the Military Band) in Paris. The original name of his family was Danican (D'Anican) and was of Scottish origin (Duncan). Philidor was a later addition to the family name. Jean Danican Philidor was given the nickname of Philidor by Louis XIII because his oboe playing reminded the king of an Italian virtuoso oboist coming from Siena named Filidori.
- Michel Danican (died c. 1659), André Danican Philidor's great-uncle, was a renowned oboist and, together with Jean Hotteterre, coinvented the oboe by modifying the shawm so that the bore was narrower and the reed near could be held near the end by the player's lips.
- André Danican Philidor (c. 1647–1730), François-André Danican Philidor's father, was also known as Philidor l'ainé (Philidor the Elder). He was an oboist and crumhorn player. He was a member of the Grande Écurie military band and later performed at the Court, at the Royal Chapel, in the employ of Louis XIV.
- Jacques Danican Philidor (1657–1708) was the younger brother of André Danican Philidor (Philidor the Elder) and, being a musician, too, was logically known as Philidor le cadet (Philidor the Younger).
- Pierre Danican Philidor (1681–1731), also a musician, was the son of Jacques Danican Philidor.
- Anne Danican Philidor (1681–1728) was François-André Danican Philidor's oldest brother. Anne Danican Philidor is best remembered today for having founded the Concert Spirituel, an important series of public concerts held in the palace of the Tuileries from 1725 to 1791.
François-André Danican Philidor was born to his father's second wife, Elizabeth Le Roy, whom he wed in 1719 when she was 19 years old and he 72. When François-André was born, his father was 79 years old; he died 4 years later and left his son fatherless.
Music career
Philidor joined the royal choir of Louis XV in 1732 at the age of six, and made his first attempt at the composition of a song at the age of 11. It was said that Louis XV wanted to listen to the choir almost every day, and the singers, while waiting for the king to arrive, played chess to relieve their boredom; this may have sparked Philidor's interest in chess.
From around 1740 he lived and worked in Paris as a performer, teacher and music copyist. He was the teacher of the Bohemian composer and pianist Ludwig Wenzel Lachnith. During this time he met Diderot, who calls him 'Philidor le subtil' in Le neveu de Rameau. He spent much of the period 1745–54 in London after a concert tour of the Netherlands collapsed, and moved in the same circles as Dr Johnson and Dr Burney. He returned to the French capital in 1754, although his music was found by some to be too Italianate (as a result of his travels). However he scored several triumphs at the fair theatres, starting with Blaise le savetier in 1759. His three most successful works were Le sorcier (1764), Tom Jones (after Henry Fielding, 1765), and Ernelinde (1767).
For a time Philidor was among the leading opera composers in France, and during his musical career produced over 20 opéras comiques and two tragédies-lyriques. He also wrote secular cantatas and motets.
Chess career
Philidor started playing regularly around 1740 at the chess Mecca of France, the Café de la Régence. It was also there that he famously played with a friend from 'New England', Mr. Benjamin Franklin. The best player in France at the time, Legall de Kermeur, taught him. At first, Legall could give Philidor rook odds, a handicap in which the stronger player starts without one of his rooks, but in only three years, Philidor was his equal, and then surpassed him. Philidor visited England in 1747 and decisively beat the Syrian Phillip Stamma in a match +8 =1 −1, despite the fact Philidor let Stamma have White in every game, and scored all draws as wins for Stamma. The same year, Philidor played many games with another strong player, Sir Abraham Janssen, who was then the best player in England, and with the exception of M. de Legalle, probably the best player Philidor ever encountered. He could win on an average one game in four off Philidor, at even terms; and Philidor himself declared that he could only give to Janssen the pawn for the move.
In 1754, Philidor returned to France, after nine years of absence spent mostly in Holland and England. He was now a much stronger player, having successfully played with opponents of the calibre of Philip Stamma and Abraham Janssen, but, as G. Allen reports in The life of Philidor, it was not until his match with de Legal in 1755 that he can be considered the strongest player in the world.
When Philidor left Paris, in 1745, although he had for some time been playing even games with M. de Legal... he had not ceased to recognize his old master as still his master and superior. But nine years of practice, with a great variety of players, had authorized him to look for neither superior nor equal; and when, in 1755, a match was arranged between the pupil and his master, who was still at the height of his strength, the result placed the crown firmly and indisputably upon the head of Philidor.
In 1771 and 1773 Philidor made brief stays in London to play at the Salopian coffee-house, Charing Cross and at the St James Chess Club. In 1774 the Parloe's chess club, on St James street, in London, was created and Philidor obtained a remuneration as a chess master every year, for a regular season from February to June. Philidor stayed faithful to this agreement until the end of his life and he was replaced by Verdoni only after his death. It is rightly in this place Philidor encountered Mr. George Atwood, famous mathematician and physician, lecturer at Cambridge University. In an article of J. J. O'Connor and E. F. Robertson, devoted to George Atwood, there is the following passage:
Atwood was a renowned amateur chess-player and among other opponents played games against the famous French player Philidor, who was regarded as the unofficial world champion.
H E Bird records:
Of the players who encountered Philidor, Sir Abraham Janssens, who died in 1775, seems to have been the best, Mr. George Atwood, a mathematician, one of Pitt's secretaries came next, he was of a class which we should call third or two grades of odds below Philidor, a high standard of excellence to which but few amateurs attain. One of most interesting features of Atwood as a chess player is that he recorded and preserved some of his games, an unusual practice at that time. These records have survived, among them the last games that Philidor played which were against Atwood at Parsloe's Club in London on 20 June 1795.
In England, Philidor astounded his peers by playing three blindfold chess games simultaneously in the chess club of St. James Street in London on 9 May 1783. Philidor let all three opponents play white, and gave up a pawn for the third player. Some affidavits were signed, because those persons who were involved doubted that future generations would believe that such a feat was possible. Today, three simultaneous blindfold games would be fairly unremarkable among many chess masters. Even when he was in his late years, when he was 67 years old (1793), he played and won two blindfold games simultaneously in London.
Philidor, both in England and France, was largely recognized in each of his fields and got a lot of admirers, protectors and also friends, like were the French philosophers Vol


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ALFREDO AZCARATE VARELA
THE BAJA POST/EDITOR
A container with radioactive isotope Iridium-192 was stolen from the facilities of Radiografía y Ultrasonido de Veracruz S.A. in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, the serial number of the container is T0431 with an activity of 63.55 Curies, so the National System of Civil Protection issued an Alert for Chihuahua, Sonora and Baja California, three States on the border MEX-USA.
Captain Rene Rosado, Mexicali Civil Protection Director, said that the theft took place in Sonora, there was an immediate alert in the aforementioned Mexican states, it's mainly used in radiology and cancer treatment, and he said that the National System of Civil Protection issued the Alert notice.
Exposure to Iridium-192 can increase the risk for cancer because of its high-energy gamma radiation. External exposure can cause burns, acute radiation sickness, and even death. Internal exposure could occur only if a person were to swallow one of the Ir-192 seeds or pellets, which would obviously be lethal. (SOURCE: _URL_
A dirty bomb or radiological dispersal device, can be manufactured using Iridium-192, it is a speculative radiological weapon that combines radioactive material with conventional explosives, which purpose is to contaminate the area around the dispersal agent/conventional explosion with radioactive material, however, it is not to be confused with blast effects far in excess of what is achievable by the use of conventional explosives. (SOURCE: _URL_


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- Poster presentation
- Open Access
Stopping clinical trials early for futility: retrospective analysis of several randomised clinical studies
© Jitlal et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011
Published: 13 December 2011
Phase III clinical trials are generally large and expensive, so stopping early for futility is a potentially attractive approach. It could avoid using further patients and funds on an ineffective intervention. We aimed to see how well futility performs for clinical trials in practice.
Materials and methods
We retrospectively applied a futility method to ten cancer trials, in which the final hazard ratios (HR) showed a large, moderate, or no treatment benefit. The target sample size was reached in all. The conditional power (CP) is the probability of obtaining a HR of a specified magnitude, which is statistically significant. Futility analyses were applied after 25, 50 and 75% of patients were recruited, or events observed. Two methods were used, assuming future data are consistent with either (i) the target HR, or (ii) the observed interim HR. Low CP suggests futility.
Futility analyses could stop some trials with no overall benefit, but not all, depending on the method used and timepoint. For example, after observing 50% of the target number of events, and assuming that future data is consistent with observed data, 4 out of 5 trials with no benefit could be stopped early (CP≤9%). Among 3 (of these 4) studies, trial duration could be reduced by 4-40 months, saving £44k-£385k. The other trial would have already finished accrual and hence no savings made. Of concern is that all 4 trials with moderate treatment effects could have stopped early at some point. For example, assuming that future data is consistent with the observed data, these trials could have stopped after 25% of patient accrual (CP≤9%). However, the final HRs for all four trials showed clinically worthwhile benefits.
Appropriate application of futility methods can substantially shorten trial duration and reduce costs for trials which ultimately show no benefit. However, studies with moderate treatment effects could be stopped early, whilst some studies with no effect may not have been detected as such. Futility needs to be applied with great care to avoid missing a worthwhile treatment. We suggest several criteria for stopping a trial early: low CP (e.g. ≤15%); sufficient number of events; remaining patient accrual is likely to take several months; and lack of evidence of a benefit for important secondary endpoints and pre-defined subgroups.
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (_URL_ which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


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Cement powder particles of micronic size tend to form agglomerates due to the influence of interparticle forces (Van der Waals forces). The formation of agglomerates results in an increased air-void in the solid structure (aerated powder) requiring an increase in water demand to sustain the feasibility of the structure. Consequently, if the compound formed is not stabilized, it would have low mechanical strength that may result in cracking of hardened cement. In this study, the results of cement powder consolidation and its flow properties show that its behaviour is controlled by internal forces (Van der Waals) and external forces (elastic and plastic). These forces have a direct influence on the powder structure, leading to a variable packing behaviour (void reduction). Consolidated cement powder shows a decrease in the void structure leading to a more efficient material. This study intends to determine the impact of interaction forces between cement particles during consolidation.
- consolidated cement powder
- interaction forces
- cement particles
FingerprintDive into the research topics of 'The impact of consolidation and interparticle forces on cohesive cement powder'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
- Clean Growth and Future Mobility Management and Support - Associate Director of Research and Engagement
Person: Teaching and Research


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A $2.9 million, six-year partnership between the National Alliance for Autism Research (NAAR) and the Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction (INMHA) of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) aims to train the next generation of researchers and uncover the mysteries of autism – a brain disorder with no known cure. The partnership includes $300,000 from the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec (FRSQ).
A Canadian first, the mentor-based programs, principally based at McGill and Queen's universities in Canada, take a multi-disciplinary approach to foster investigations into the genetics underlying autism and the epidemiology of the disorder. They will also address the importance of delivering effective treatment options to those with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and their families.
"Across North America parents and researchers are telling us about the difficulty in finding experts in autism," said Dr. Eric London, NAAR's co-founder and Vice President of Medical Affairs. "There are currently not enough specialists in autism and the situation is much worse than many think. Hopefully we can change this situation with partnerships that pool resources and foster collaborations between governments and the autism community."
This initiative is part of CIHR's 2003 Strategic Training Initiative in Health Research. Competition results were announced this summer by Honorable Anne McLellan, Minister of Health – with a total of $54 million funding for 33 innovative trans-disciplinary research training projects in Canada.
"The government of Canada is committed to ensure that the next generation of researchers have the necessary tools at their disposal to encourage innovation and discovery," said Liz Frulla, member of Parliament for Verdun-Saint-HenriSaint-Paul-Pointe Saint-Charles. "We believe that supporting health research will improve the quality of life for Canadians and those who are affected by autism spectrum disorders."
Two autism training programs will be led by:
- Dr. Jeanette Holden, a professor in the departments of Psychiatry and Physiology at Queen's University with over 21 years experience in the field.
- Dr. Eric Fombonne, the head of Psychiatry at the Montreal Children's Hospital site of the McGill University Health Centre. The McGill component is supported by the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec (FRSQ).
"We have to ensure the future of health research by encouraging and supporting the next generation of researchers," said Dr. Rémi Quirion, INMHA's Scientific Director. "This kind of program allows the best possible research to thrive in Canadian institutions and further develops Canada's expertise. Another exciting element is the partnership with our US neighbors who have invested in Canadian research."
Autism displays a wide spectrum of symptoms and disability affects people of all racial, social and economic backgrounds. Those who suffer from autism are often robbed of the ability to communicate, to form emotional bonds and to engage in social interaction. Trainees will be led by a group of 45 mentors from 17 institutions across Canada and the US. Collectively, their expertise ranges from ASDs to other fields such as neuropathology, imaging and immunology.
This six-year commitment to the Autism Training Programs is one of the latest additions to NAAR's research portfolio focusing on mentor-based fellowships. In just the last two years, NAAR has committed nearly $2 million to fund fellowships for preand post-doctoral candidates who benefit from the mentorship of prominent researchers.
"We believe our investments in autism research training will grow exponentially as many of our fellows later assume teaching roles and join departments around the country and the world, which currently have no representation in autism research," said Dr. London. "And that cannot happen fast enough."


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How To Dice An Onion Like A Chef – Your 30 Second Guide
1. Slice off top
2. Cut in half lengthwise, peel.
3. Slice onion lengthwise – leave the root intact to hold the slices together
4. Make 1-2 horizontal cuts
5. Cut across onion, top to bottom – when you get near the root end, push the onion half on its face and finish cutting
Did you know, the onion plant has been selectively cultivated for 7,000 years?
But which onion do you use?
Yellow – Good for use in everyday cooking dishses
White – Sharp and crunchy, these are ideal for salsas, and often used in Mexican dishes
Red – Milder but present flavor, adds color to a dish,and used raw for dishes like salads and burgers
Sweet – Milder flavor, sweet and crisp. Good for salads and sandwiches
Shallots – Common in French cooking, shallots are sweet with less acidity and retain flavor in reductions


Energy Efficient OSB
If you are a firefighter today you should be well aware that fires fought today are not the same as the fires your father fought in yesterdays. There many great programs, tests, case studies and classes out there that brings this to light. If you care about your family then get out of the recliner and learn about the changes in the modern fire environment that we operate in today. However most of the emphasis has been on modern fuel loading and building construction changes. These are extremely important and should be a major focus of your training. I feel that a part of the modern building construction changes that is often overlooked or not considered is energy efficiency.
Traditional OSB
Our first installment on energy efficiency changes is about OSB.
What is OSB?
Energy Efficient OSB with radiant barrier
Some OSB products today have been married to a radiant barrier.
Studies have shown that radiant barriers can reduce cooling energy consumption by up to 17%, depending on the design of the building, insulation levels and other factors. OSB radiant barrier sheathing can lower peak attic temperatures up to 30°F by reducing summer radiant heat gain in the attic. Since less heat is transferred into living areas through the ceiling, indoor temperatures stay cooler and more comfortable while helping your cooling system operate more efficiently.
 - Ideal for use in hot climates
 - Reflects up to 97% of radiant heat
 - May lower cooling energy consumption by up to 17%*
 - ENERGY STAR® qualified
Why it works so well:
Backed with specially designed aluminum foil/craft paper laminate, this OSB sheathing is installed foil side down facing into the attic space. Since aluminum foil is highly reflective, up to 97% of the radiant heat is reflected from entering the attic space.
REFLECTIVE RADIANT BARRIERS Good for Energy Savings –Bad for Fire Safety
This is an excellent study that was done by MCDOWELL OWENS ENGINEERING, INC.
This is where the real problem shows up. The physical and electrical properties of the radiant barrier foil are such that the material is not only an excellent electrical conductor (Wikipedia); it is also a very viable ignition source. When electrical current flows through it the material not only readily generates heat necessary for ignition, it also becomes the first ignited material!
The primary physical property of the paper we are interested in is the ignition temperature. This value can vary significantly for different types of paper; however, it is virtually always less than 500 degrees F. Measurements in our study showed that the paper ignited when the foil temperature was between 420 and 450 degrees F.
Clearly then, if the radiant barrier foil material is overheated as a result of electrical current flow, the temperature of the material will easily exceed the ignition temperature of the paper backing.
1. CONSTRUCTION: Aluminum Foil bonded to Paper.
2. MELTING TEMPERATURE of the ALUMINUM: >900 degrees F.
3. IGNITION TEMPERATURE of the PAPER: <500 degrees F.
4. SHEET RESISTANCE of the ALUMINUM: 4.50 ohms per square.
5. CURRENT DENSITY for FAST IGNITION: Approx 300 Amps per sq. mm.
This study has shown it is possible to have a fire originate in the radiant barrier if it becomes energized by virtually ANY commonly available electrical source. However, it should also be clear that if there is danger of a fire from "single digit" voltage levels and "tens" of amps, the danger from lightning at
15,000,000 volts and 100,000 amps will be MANY times greater. This is why we feel strongly that the presence of radiant barrier material, as presently manufactured and installed in a structure, greatly increases the risk of a fire in the event that the structure experiences a lightning strike.
Another point to ponder is that if the OSB with radiant barrier keeps out the heat it will also keep in the heat from a fire and cause thermal radiation feedback much faster causing Flashover to happen quicker.
A special thanks to MCDOWELL OWENS ENGINEERING, INC. for all the testing they have done to bring this issue to light for the fire service.
I hope that you have learned of yet another hazard we face in the fire service and that you will share this information to all you know.
Stay Safe
Lt. John Shafer
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Small Worlds: Connections, Collaborations and Conflicts
Australasian Victorian Studies Association Conference
Monash University, Melbourne
17-19 June 2020
Keynote speakers: Associate Professor Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Professor Lisa Surridge (University of Victoria, Canada)
Technological advances, imperial expansion, emigration to the colonies and beyond, and an increase in leisure travel made the nineteenth-century world seem smaller. Fuelled by industrialisation, the population of cities boomed, putting masses of people in closer proximity than ever before. The development of transportation, particularly the railways and steamship, meant culture could be disseminated more widely. The various ways in which ideas and people moved aided by technology such as the telegraph enabled new connections, cultures, and ideas to flourish. However, encounters with the unfamiliar and challenges to accepted ways of being provoked anxieties, injustices, and outright conflict.
The conference invites papers from a range of disciplinary backgrounds including Literature, History, Music, and Art History that interpret any aspect of the nineteenth century in relation to the conference theme of "Small Worlds".
Proposals might address such topics as the following:
- Travelling, tourism and travel writing
- Urbanisation and the city
- Empires, nationalism, colonialism
- Race, ethnicity, indigeneity
- Literature and the periodical press
- Scientific and medical advancement
- Intellectual, artistic, and political communities
- Religion and missionary work
- The Victorian city
- Collaborative research within Victorian Studies
Paper proposals should comprise a one-paragraph abstract of 200-250-words with a title plus a 100-word biographical note. Please avoid the use of in-text references. Proposals should be emailed to conference convenors Dr Michelle Smith and Associate Professor Paul Watt and at _EMAIL_ by 20 January 2020.
All those giving a paper at the AVSA conference are required to be members of the Association.
AVSA aims to promote the activities and research of scholars in Victorian literary, history, and cultural studies and since 1973 has provided a meeting place for Victorian Studies scholars in the southern hemisphere. To find out more about AVSA, visit its website at _URL_


Planting a Tree Ceremony.jpg
Planting a Tree Ceremony
The unity tree planting ceremony can be used to symbolize the joining together of two individuals or the joining of two families.
You set up a separate table, on which you will place a potted tree/sapling (something perhaps with special meaning to the couple). If you choose to have the ceremony symbolize the joining together of both families' then upon the entrance of the mothers, each mother goes to the table and scoops in a small amount of dirt. Then they take their seats. During a specific reading or song, the couple will each add the rest of dirt and water the plant together. After the ceremony, the couple should plant the tree in a special location to symbolize the putting down of roots, longevity and strengths in their marriage.


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What is meant by first contact?
Basically it's the start of the eclipse. The point where the eclipsing body first touches the primary star's image and starts a decrease in the primary star's brightness as seen from Earth. But it's not so simple. With epsilon Aurigae, first contact appears to be wavelength dependent. This means that the longer (red and visual bands) wavelengths will start to show an eclipse before the shorter (blue and ultraviolet bands) wavelengths.
In addition, because epsilon Aurigae is known to vary a fair amount out-of-eclipse, knowing exactly when the eclipse is starting (first contact) is not easy. One approach, and the one used for the Campaign predictions, is to determine the average magnitude for a given band out-of-eclipse. Next, after the eclipse is well underway there will be an ingress curve or line showing the system getting fainter with time. This should be a fairly straight line. The slope of that line is important as it can be used along with an intersection with the average out-of-eclipse value to determine the first contact point, also for second contact..
Unlike many eclipsing binary star systems where there are dozen, hundreds or even thousands of eclipse observations, because of epsilon Aurigae's long period of 27.1 years there are only a handful of eclipse observations and most of those were prior to many significant developments in equipment and techniques.
Another variable for predicting first contact is that the precise time between first contacts appears to be changing for each eclipse. The 2009/2011 eclipse will add another layer of data to these predictions.
For this current eclipse the V band prediction for first contact is 30 July 2009. RI and JH bands are most likely to be days or weeks earlier. We have no data from previous eclipses so no predictions for those bands. The B band is predicted for 11 August 2009 and the U band 21 August 2009.
Other contact points and mid-eclipse timing have similar problems. It will be interesting to see how these times compare with current predictions and with past eclipses. Much will be learned from the new data. Perhaps some surprises and enlightenment.


Rongme Ngatra of the Chola Mountains in Garze, Sichuan
Rongme Ngatra is the highest peak of the Chola Mountains in the Kham region of western Sichuan, China. The peak's name in Mandarin Chinese is Que Er Shan or Chola Mountains (Chinese: 雀儿山; pinyin: Què'ér Shān) also the same name as the entire range, which has led to some translations of the mountain peak to Chola Mountain. At 6,168 metres (20,236 ft), the mountain is the highest peak in the Chola Mountains, as well as the second highest in the greater Shaluli Mountains after Ge'nyen.[2]The mountain peak is flanked by glaciers to the north and east. The north glacier terminates at 4,100 metres (13,500 ft) above sea level, just above the nearby lake Yihun Lhatso.[3] Rongme Ngatra can be accessed from the town of Manigangoin Dege County, Garze Prefecture.


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After the computer board runs a complete program, and then power on again, the screen displays the last complete program (not only memorize the program, but also all the parameters of the program. Each program including parameters is memorized separately.)
1. Express wash program (15 minutes) does not memorize washing parameters, but memorize the program number. The washing parameter is the default value.
2. In the program that the default temperature value is less than 60℃, the temperature memorized cannot exceed 60℃.
3. The drying option of the washing program is not memorized (Note: drying procedure, such as single drying, air washing, etc., set the default value).
4. The special stains of the washing program are not memorized.
5. The spinning speed memorized cannot exceed 1000rpm.


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- appellation •
Part of Speech: Noun, proper
Meaning: A name, title, or other designation by which someone or something is called or identified.
Notes: Today's Good Word often trips up spellers because of its double double letters: two Ps and two Ls. In this respect it is like accommodate and millennium. Be careful. Its adjective is appellative "related to names or naming", as an appellative process. This word is related to appeal and, consequently, to appellate as in appellate court in ways discussed in today's Word History.
In Play: Today's word is better than simple name when you wish to point out that a name carries some special meaning: "I am afraid that Prudence is a captive of her own appellation, never driving over 50 miles per hour." This term is often applied to product names, especially wines: "Well, this wine may contain 'Pinot noir' in its appellation, but if you drink it, you may pinot more." However, it is never, never applied to mountains in the eastern United States (as sometimes occurs in college term papers); those are the Appalachian Mountains.
Word History: Today's Good Word comes from French appellation, the descendant of Latin appellatio(n), the noun from the verb appellare "to call, to entreat." This verb is a combination of ad "up to, before" + pellare "to push, beat, propel." An appeal is something pushed before an authority while an appellation is an abstraction applied to some object. The past participle of pellare is pulsus, the source of English pulse, a kind of beating. The root of pellare came directly into Old English via Old Germanic as fealt, which reached us as felt, a material made by pushing or compacting fibers together rather than by weaving them.
Come visit our website at for more Good Words and other language resources!


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203 of 212 people found the following review helpful
This review is from: Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (Hardcover)
Musicophilia is an absolutely phenomenal book, and will be of interest to anyone fascinated by music, mysteries of the mind, and the human condition. Sacks covers 29 different topics, ranging from synesthesia, to musical hallucinations, to savants, and beyond. In each chapter, he introduces the topic through cases (his own and famous ones in the literature--neurological and classic fictional literature, that is!), always maintaining a deep engagement with the humanity of the subjects: what is it like for these individuals? how do they describe their talent or illness or condition? Sacks also speculates on the possible neurological bases for these fascinating scenarios. This is a real page-turner, beautifully and clearly written, and it will give readers a new respect for the special place of music in our psychology, as well as a deeper understanding of the range of what it is to be human. 20 stars!


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India's economy is one of the fastest growing in the world. It has seen an explosion in the increase of foreign business investment, outsourcing and Indian companies venturing overseas. Doing business in India offers immense benefits for international organisations, however there are a number of key cultural challenges that can create misunderstanding and conflict as well as huge direct and indirect costs to the organisation if overlooked.
Navigating the challenges of doing business in India can be difficult without a comprehensive understanding of Indian social and business culture. Going through cultural awareness training like Communicaid's Doing Business in India programme will ensure you and your organisation have the right level of knowledge and skills to successfully deal with some of the following key challenges of doing business in India.
Attitudes towards Authority – Traditionally a caste society with roots in Hinduism, Indian culture places a high importance on authority and status. Communication between levels is relatively closed so valuable insight or suggestions from employees in lower positions will rarely be shared with their superiors. Without understanding the complexity of Indian attitudes to authority and how they impact business, organisations doing business in India will struggle to implement change as quickly as necessary, and fail to harness the experience and value of its employees.
Concepts of Time – India is a polychronic culture, in other words, people tend to change priorities depending on their importance and attitudes towards punctuality are relaxed. Most large global organisations require adherence to strict deadlines and fast decision-making, so they struggle to cope with the idea that when doing business in India, time cannot be controlled and is not absolute. Cultural awareness training can help you better understand Indian concepts of time and develop strategies for dealing with them.
Adherence to Rules – India has a high tolerance to uncertainty and has created a society which runs on the basis of a set of assumptions. It generally accepts social etiquette and norms instead of rules and regulations. Even though rules do exist, the low level of adherence to them creates huge challenges for organisations setting up business in India who are required to follow a set of home-country regulations.
Building Relationships – The Indian business culture focuses a lot on relationship and trust building rather than working hard and quick towards specific business objectives. A Doing Business in India cultural awareness course helps you to develop strategies to avoid the immense frustration, delayed projects, failure to reach tangible results and general clash as a result of different preferences for relationships and tasks and processes.
Levels of English – Most university graduates and Indians residing in major urban centres have a very high level of English. Understanding Indian English can be challenging, however, as a result of the different vocabulary and expressions as well as heavy accents. Many people are unaware of these differences and expect communication with Indians to be simple. Instead, many international organisations incorrectly interpret the Indian English they use to be a result of poor education and language skills. Being aware of Indian English can help you reduce misunderstandings and loss of time.
Communication Style – Indians have a preference for indirect, high context communication. In other words, Indians prefer to see the whole picture, place a high importance on the impact relationships, body language and emotion have on communication and will often avoid saying 'no'. The differences in communication style can cause a large challenge to overcome for someone who is used to communicating in a more direct and low context way.
Understanding the cultural differences which exist when doing business in India is only the first step. International organisations must also understand the what, why and how behind them to develop strategies to effectively cope with these cultural challenges. A Doing Business in Indiacultural awareness training programme will help organisations maximise the immense opportunities and benefits of doing business in India while it will also help develop an interculturally competent workforce, giving the organisation a huge advantage in this fiercely competitive global world.
© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2010


What are Atomic Swaps?
What are Atomic Swaps?
Atomic swaps, an innovation considered competent enough to transform modern-day trading systems, take cryptocurrency or token trading to a new level by eliminating the need for trade fees while conducting a transaction that is safe and secure. A smart contract technology powered by cryptography, atomic swap helps in conducting trade while ensuring that no party involved in the trade cheats or defaults.
Atomic swaps eliminate the need for a third party firm or escrow mediating the trade, hence saving the fees that are usually charged per trade. Atomic swaps are highly noted for the blow they have brought about for centralized exchanges. They are also known as cross chain atomic swaps for facilitating trading between different cryptocurrencies.
In more precise terms, atomic swaps allow one cryptocurrency to be traded for another, for example, some bitcoins in exchange of lite coins. This can be carried out in a safe and secure manner without the mediation of any third parties. Atomic swaps make use of Hash Time Lock Contracts (HTLC) to protect the transactions occurring through it.
Hash Time Lock Contracts
Hash time lock contract, the prime attribute of atomic swap is the one that imparts authenticity and integrity to the application. The well-constructed algorithm ensures that both the parties involved in the transaction hold their end of the bargain with integrity. The contract works on the basis of multi-signature transaction system where both the parties involved in the transaction are accountable for the successful closure of the swap process.
HTLC makes use of a cryptographic algorithm to ensure that the transfer or swap of cryptocurrency actually occurs only after both the parties involved have signed off. The time lock feature acts as an insurance policy, ensuring that the funds are returned to the respective parties in the event that the transaction is not completed within the specified timeframe.
The working of Atomic Swaps
Atomic swaps
Take in the scenario where A has 1 BTC but is in need of 50 LTC, while another person B has 50 LTC but is in need of 1 BTC. They arrange for a trade using atomic swaps. To initiate the transaction they open up payment channels for the transfer of funds to each other. Now, one of them should act as the instigator of the transaction and create a contract address.
Let's say, A is in urgent need of the LTC and hence acts as the instigator and opens a contract address. Now, this contract address functions like a safe for the tokens to be transacted. While making the address, A also deposits his BTC in them, along with a value or secret string that basically acts like a key. Now the cryptographic hash acts like the lock to the safe (contract address) and the secret value acts as the key.
The facilitation of the transaction begins when A sends the hash to B. After B receives the hash, he creates a contract address with it which is similar to the one created by A. While doing this, B deposits his part of transaction, which is the LTC, in the safe. The key of both the contract addresses created by A and B are the same. So, for A to retrieve the LTC A has to sign the transaction towards B's contract address and vice versa.
The signing of transaction takes place when A signs B's contract address with the key that was used to produce. When this is done, A can retrieve his funds and the key gets revealed to B, who can also do the same. This completes the transaction. The insurance policy included Atomic Swap's HTLC, holds the transaction for some time to ensure integrity. Also, if the procedures of transaction are not completed within a stipulated timeframe, the transaction gets automatically aborted and the funds are released back to the owner.
Types of Atomic Swaps
Atomic Swaps can be classified into two types depending on where the procedure takes place. They are as follows: –
On-chain atomic swaps – here the swapping process and transaction are executed on the blockchains of the respective crypto currency used. As of now, this type of atomic swap is only possible if both of the currencies makes use of the same hashing algorithm. They should also support and be compatible with HTLC.
Off-chain atomic swaps – off-chain atomic swaps occur off the blockchain, at secondary layers or nodes. At present these swaps are considered as an extension of Bitcoin Lightning Network.
The significance of Atomic Swaps
It is indisputable that the arrival of cryptocurrency, blockchain technology and so on have created quite a ripple in our financial market. However, they have not been able to percolate the market to the best of their capability. Centralized exchanges and trading are predominant than their decentralized counterparts, despite the security and other prime features they offer. Why?
One of the main reasons is the fear of getting cheated. Decentralized exchanges and cryptocurrency trading are notorious for their lack of regulatory norms and laws that govern them, unlike the centralized ones. Naturally, people feel reluctant to initiate the transaction in such a riskful environment.
Atomic swaps aim to eliminate this concern of the traders. It creates a better environment for trading that is free of risks, hacking attacks or fund misallocation. They also help in streamlining transactions according to the convenience of the parties involved in the transaction. Atomic swaps are also built with the capability of wallet integration which enables trading directly from web wallets, software, mobiles and so on.
If the recent responses are anything to go by, atomic swaps are expected to change the way an average trader goes about his business! It could bring about a high dose of efficiency, security and speed to decentralized exchanges. Off-chain atomic swaps with proper tweaks towards the right direction could help make trading exchanges automatic and not dependent on the blockchain processing times.
Further reading
Want to know more about atomic swaps? Here's a list of some extra reading material that might interest you
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Ordained (or Company) Space
Space controlled by the Ordained, or Company depending on who you ask. Planets include Saddat, Chibbink, and Locostwa. Tupra is not under the control of the Ordained.
A planet nearly unknown to those near Ordained Space, known for such numerous metal deposits that the mountains are gray from the metal. It is home to the bird-like Derbs and a colony of Earth Humans. The Derbs live on one continent, where the mountains are mostly sandstone, while the Humans took the steel mountains. There is some trading between the Derbis Humans and the Company Space, but most of this is done through smugglers and pirates.
The native planet of the Gorkam and Torfs. It's very barren and dry. The season differences are minimal, with slightly warmer summers and cold winters. The moisture comes regularly, but is still very little.
The home planet of the Ordained. Scallan are the native species.
Most vegetation on the planet is grass-based and there are very few trees. Saddat also has very little in the way of metals, but it makes up for this in agricultural productivity. Most of the planet is farmland or desert, with a few oceans. Days are 23 hours long and years are 380 days long. The Company uses Saddat years and days for telling time.
An independent planet near Ordained Space. Tupra repelled the Ordained when they invaded. It is home to Elbas and Varsillians. The humid but cold planet is mountainous and has huge corral trees covering it. The clouds rarely lift enough to see the stars, or even the sun. The planet is orbited by an asteroid field, which aids it during wars because the defending ships can use the asteroids as cover.


We can approximate sufficiently differentiable functions by polynomials.
Previously, we have seen that if a function is differentiable on an open interval containing a point, we can approximate the function near by the tangent line at. Visually, we recall that as we "zoom in" on the graph around, it becomes less distinguishable from the graph of a line (which is the tangent line at ).
When is given by an explicit formula in terms of, the point is found by evaluating the at, and the slope is found by evaluating the derivative at. By taking advantage of the point-slope form of a line
an equation for the tangent line is found. Let's explore this in the context of an example.
Suppose that we want to approximate near. We pick as the point off of which our approximation will be based, and find the equation of the tangent line to at.
 -, so the point is on the line.
 -, so the slope is found by noting.
Thus, the equation of the tangent line is
If we "zoom in" on the graphs of the function and its tangent line at, denoted by, we see the following picture.
From tangent line approximation, we can approximate values of near. Visually, we can see this since the graphs are quite close. Computationally, we obtain the approximations by plugging -values into the equation of the tangent line; for instance, we can approximate by noting
The actual value of to three decimal places is, so the simple arithmetic needed to estimate using the tangent line produces a reasonable approximation. As we "zoom out" to a larger viewing window, however, the graphs start to become quite different.
Since evaluating polynomials involves only arithmetic operations, we would like to be able to use them to give better results than the tangent line approximation. Also, polynomials are easy to integrate and differentiate, so it would be nice to use polynomial approximations in applications that involve these operations. This will require that we try to extract the idea from the tangent line approximation in a way that allows us to generalize it.
Revisiting the Tangent Line Approximation
Let's look for a first degree polynomial of the form
where and are constants that must be determined.
What do we want out of our approximation?
A Quadratic Approximation
While this should not be too surprising, it does allow for us to think of conditions that will allow for higher degree polynomial approximations. Suppose that we want to use a quadratic polynomial of the form
for making estimates. Note that is clearly not linear; in fact, it is concave-up on its domain. Note that by drawing tangent lines at different points near, the slopes are different, which is roughly what concavity quantifies. Slopes of tangent lines are found from the first derivative, so in order to measure how these slopes are changing, we should look at the derivative of the first derivative. This is really nothing new; we know already that concavity is measured using the second derivative.
We'll keep the previous two conditions - that and - and also require that. We thus look for look for a polynomial whose coefficients are found by the requirements
By following the previous example, the reader can (and should) verify that we still have and. To find, note that
 -, so.
 -, so and thus.
Thus, the requirement gives us that, or.
The quadratic approximation is thus
Let's now explore our approximations. Geometrically, we can interpret the effectiveness of the approximations by looking at their graphs.
We can also explore the approximations quantitatively for a given -value. For instance, if we want to approximate, we note that, so. We thus approximate by evaluating the polynomials at.
By noting that the actual value to three decimal place is, we can see that the quadratic approximation is better!
Higher Order Approximations
We can continue to look for higher degree polynomial approximations. Note that our approximations above require that the function be sufficiently differentiable at the point at which we wish to base the approximation.
We will develop a more computationally efficient method for computing Taylor Polynomials in the next section, but we conclude this section with a question that explores the ideas put forth so far.
Suppose that is a function for which.
Which of the following that could be the second degree Taylor polynomial centered at for?
Let.
Is there enough information to determine what is?
Yes No
We find that.
Is there enough information to determine what is?
Yes No