text:
How to write plugins
Write a Plugin!
The plugin system for EPrints 3 has been developed to make it easy and share the most common extensions to the code without having to hack the core system (and causing yourself problems with upgrades etc.)
When the system loads, it automatically loads all modules in the perl_lib/EPrints/Plugin/ directory, so for simple plugins you just drop them in that directory and you're done!
When a plugin is loaded it has a registration method which is called which tells the core EPrints system what this plugin does. EPrints then makes it available as appropriate.
Clever plugins can detect features they need and adapt to use the tools available, or disable themselves if they are missing required tools (rather than crash the system). Some specialised plugins are disabled in their default state and must be enabled in the repository configuration.
Another cool thing is that plugins are Perl Objects, which means you can subclass them. Here's an real-world example: We have a research group which uses BibTeX but over the years standardised within the group on an extra field. This is not a valid bibtex field, but are essential to their working because they have ancient and essential scripts which depend on it. To handle this we can subclass the default BibTeX Export plugin and override a single method (the data mapping one). We then just call the original parent plugins mapping method to do all the heavy lifting, then just add our non-standard extra field. Total code required: less than one screen. Number of happy researchers: none (they are never satisfied and will just demand the moon on the stick because you've already given them this nice new feature), but number of researchers able to get their work done: lots. Don't believe me? look here!
- See also Extension Packages for how to add configuration and resource files to plugins.
Types of Plugin
There are a number of different kinds of plugin for EPrints...
These are used to export the data in a variety of formats. A number of tutorials have been created to help you create your own export plugins:
- Export Plugin Tutorial 1: "Hello, World!"
- Export Plugin Tutorial 2: List handling
- Export Plugin Tutorial 3: HTML
- Export Plugin Tutorial 4: Excel
- Export Plugin Tutorial 5: Zip
These are used to import data into a repository. They can take datafiles directly, or they can take an ID of a record that can be retrieved in a known way, or a URL of a file, or... whatever.
These are a bit trickier to write than export plugins as parsing data is harder than just "print"ing it, but they are still reasonably straight forward.
These handle (almost) all the user interface screens. Pages like "Review" and "Profile" are just built-in plugins. You can add your own very easily.
Examples you could create...
- Birds Eye View - a view of various statistics on the database, all in one page.
- Spellchecking Tab - an additional tab in the item control page which checks the spelling on certain fields.
- Bulk Delete tool - a tool which takes a list of eprintid's and deletes them all in a fell swoop.
Look at the existing Screen Plugins for an idea of how they work. They can be very simple.
Input Component Plugin
These handle how the workflow components are rendered. Built in components include the default (one field) component, the multiple fields component, the upload component, the subject component (which does pretty things to a field of type "subject") and the XHTML component. You can add your own or sub-class existing ones.
These are used for two things, currently.
- Converting the full text of documents into utf-8 text for search indexing
- Converting images and pdfs into thumbnails and previews
Some examples you could create:
- RTF to utf-8 to allow rich text documents to be indexed.
- Powerpoint to Thumbnail to allow thumbnail and previews of powerpoint slides
- Video to Thumbnail/Preview to make a still preview of a video file.


Duck TrueMotion 1
From MultimediaWiki
Revision as of 21:36, 29 January 2009 by Compn (talk | contribs)
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Duck TrueMotion 1 (TM1) is the first video codec developed by The Duck Corporation. It uses differential pulse code modulation and interframe differencing. The primary application for which Duck TrueMotion 1 was developed is gaming software, typically on PC or Sega Saturn titles.
Underlying Concepts
TM1 operates on bidirectional delta quantization. The mathematical premise of delta coding is simple addition. For example, take the following sequence of numbers:
 82 84 81 80 86 88 85
All of the numbers are reasonably large (on a scale of 0..255 in this example). However, they are quite similar to each other. Using delta coding, only the differences between successive numbers are stored:
 82 +2 -3 -1 +6 +2 -3
The first number is still large but since the remaining numbers are clustered close to each other, the deltas are relatively small. Thus, the deltas require less information to encode.
TM1 takes this concept and extends it to 2 dimensions. A particular pixel is assumed to have a pixel directly above it and a pixel directly to the left (if neither of these pixels exist in the frame, e.g., for the top-left corner pixel, 0 is used in place of the non-existant pixels). The current pixel is decoded as the sum of the up and left pixels, plus a delta from the encoded video bitstream.
 encoded video bitstream:...D5 D6 D7 D8...
 decoded video frame:
 A B C D
 E F G H
In this example, the encoded video bitstream is sitting at delta D5 when it is time to decode pixel E. A is the pixel above E. There is no pixel to the left of E, so 0 is used as the left value. Thus:
 E = A + 0 + D5
In the case of pixel F, both the up and left pixel values (called the vertical and horizontal predictors, respectively) are available:
 F = B + E + D6
That is the general idea behind decoding TM1 data. The actual decoding algorithm is more involved. The TM1 bytestream actually contains a series of indices that point into tables with the delta values to be applied to the vertical and horizontal predictor pixels. These tables only specify small deltas to be added to pixel predictors. When a larger delta is needed because the delta between 2 numbers is too large, then a special bytestream code indicates that the next delta is to be multiplied by 5 before it is applied.
TM1 operates on 4x4 macroblocks of pixels. Each block in a frame can be broken into 4 2x2 blocks, 2 halves (either 4x2 or 2x4), or encoded as a 4x4 block. The block type is encoded in the frame header.
While the TM1 algorithm operates on RGB colorspace data at the input and output level, it borrows some ideas from YUV colorspaces. For more information of RGB and YUV colorspaces, see the References section.
TM1 uses a modified colorspace that embodies luminance (Y) and chrominance (C) information encoded as RGB deltas. Since Y information is more important to the human eye than C information, the Y data must be updated more frequently than the C data (i.e., more Y predictors than C predictors are applied to the image). For a every pixel within a given block in a macroblock, a Y predictor must be applied. However, only one C predictor is applied for each block in the macroblock.
TrueMotion v1 Frame Format and Header
All multi-byte numbers are stored in little endian format.
An encoded intraframe (keyframe) of TM1 data is laid out as:
 header | predictor indices
An encoded interframe is laid out as:
 header | block change bits | predictor indices
The difference between the 2 types of frames is that an interframe has a section of bits that specify which blocks in the frame are unchanged from the previous frame.
A TM1 header is quasi-encrypted with a logical XOR operation. This is probably done to provide some obfuscation of the header and thwart casual inspection of the data format.
An encoded TM1 frame begins with the one byte that indicates the length of the decrypted header, only with a dummy high bit and rotated left by 5. To obtain the actual length from byte B:
 L = ((B >> 5) | (B << 3)) & 0x7F
Then, decrypt the header by starting with byte 1 in the encoded frame (indexing from 0) and XORing each byte with its successive byte. Assuming the header is of length L bytes as computed above, and that the encoded header starts at buffer[1] (buffer[0] had the rotated length), the decode process is:
 for (i = 1; i < L; i++)
 decoded_header[i - 1] = buffer[i] ^ buffer[i + 1];
The decoded header data structure is laid out as follows:
 byte 0 compression method
 byte 1 delta set
 byte 2 vector set
 bytes 3-4 frame height
 bytes 5-6 frame width
 bytes 7-8 checksum
 byte 9 version
 byte 10 header type
 byte 11 flags
 byte 12 control
 bytes 13-14 x offset
 bytes 15-16 y offset
 bytes 17-18 width
 bytes 19-20 height
The compression method field indicates the type of compression used to encode this frame. There are 2 general types: 16-bit and 24-bit. Further, each has 4 block sizes to select from. The valid compression types are
 0, 9, 11, 13, 15: NOP frames; frame is unchanged from previous frame
 1: 16-bit 4x4 (V)
 2: 16-bit 4x4 (H)
 3: 16-bit 4x2 (V)
 4: 16-bit 4x2 (H)
 5: 16-bit 2x4 (V)
 6: 16-bit 2x4 (H)
 7: 16-bit 2x2 (V)
 8: 16-bit 2x2 (H)
 10: 24-bit 4x4 (H)
 12: 24-bit 4x2 (H)
 14: 24-bit 2x4 (H)
 16: 24-bit 2x2 (H)
>16: invalid compression type
The (H) and (V) designations come from the original Duck source code. It is unclear what they mean, except for the common horizontal and vertical designations common in video terminology.
The delta set and vector set fields are used to generate the set of predictor tables that will be used to decode this frame.
The height and width fields should be the same as those specified in the AVI file that contains the data.
The checksum field appears to contain the frame's sequence number modulo 512. The first frame is 0x0000 and the next frame is 0x0001. Frame #511 has a checksum of 0x01FF while frame #512 wraps around to 0x0000.
If the version field is less than 2, then the frame is intracoded (this may indicate that early versions of the coding method was purely intracoded). If the version field is greater than or equal to 2, then if the header type field is 2 or 3, the flags field has bit 4 set (flags & 0x10) to indicate an intraframe; else if the header type field is greater than 3, then the header is invalid; else the frame is intracoded.
The purpose of the control field is unclear.
The x & y offset, width, and height fields apparently pertain to a sprite mode that is not covered in this document.
16-bit Data
Decoding a 16-bit frame requires 2 tables. The tables can change from one frame to the next and must be rebuilt if the header specified a new table. One table contains the C predictors while the other contains the Y predictors.
Each table consists of 1024 32-bit entries. Each group of 4 entries corresponds to a byte index from 0..255. Each entry contains a double pixel predictor shifted left by one. If the very last bit (bit 0) in the 32-bit entry is 0, then there is another predictor for that index. If the last bit is 1, then this predictor is the last one for this list.
For example...
 A B C D...
 E F G H...
 I J K L...
 M N O P...
24-bit Data
The process of decoding a 24-bit frame is similar to that of decoding a 16-bit frame. However, the frame is decoded into 2 separate planes, a Y plane and a C plane, and recombined into a final RGB map at render time.
Duck TrueMotion v1 Tables
Games Using Duck TrueMotion 1
These software titles are known to use the Duck TrueMotion 1 video codec to encode full motion video:


text:
The ethics of dealing with the provision of nutritional therapies has been complicated by technological advances that have affected all of medical science. As a result, nurses are increasingly confronted with decisions regarding the provision of invasive treatments. Indeed, enormous faith is invested in the ability and wisdom of healthcare professionals to alleviate suffering and accomplish cure through the application of invasive therapeutic interventions such as percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) placement. Such decisions are often complex, present a moral dilemma, and are further complicated by prevailing politico‐economic, social, and cultural influences. The insertion of tubes for artificial nutritional support in those patients who can be defined as "vulnerable" is no exception. This article explores both the clinical and ethical realities of PEG tube placement and use thereafter in vulnerable patients. The ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, and justice are discussed within the context of PEG placement and feeding and recommendations are given for nurses practicing in the area of gastroenterology.
About the author: Sarah Breier Mackie, PhD(c), RN, is Clinical Nurse Specialist, Royal Hobart Hospital, and a PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania, Australia.
Received June 20, 2000; accepted September 25, 2000.
Address correspondence to: Sarah Breier Mackie, PhD(c), c/o Royal Hobart Hospital, Division of Medicine, GPO Box 1061L, Hobart 7001, Tasmania, Australia (e‐mail: _EMAIL_).

source: openbmb/Ultra-FineWeb


We are accepting bulk orders from all over India, Contact us at +91-_PHONE_.
Why eat more vegetables?
Published on: Feb 1, 2021
Vegetables of all kinds - leafy, roots, beans, flowers from various parts of the plants bring a variety of taste and nutrition to the table. Eat more vegetables is the most common advise you will get from various dieticians when looking for weight management solutions. However it is very important on how you consume vegetables. Eating them as salads is a great option. The typical Indian way of cooking vegetables to the extent that they get really soft tends to reduce the nutrition it brings to the table.
Although salads are really healthy but for many vegetables it is important that they are cooked to some extent so that their nutrients become bio-available to you. For example beta carotenes from red tomatoes are not available to the human body for diegestion till the tomatoes have been at least steamed to some extent. However with prolonged cooking temperatures, various nutrients in the form of bio-molecules like vitamins, plant sterols, anthocyanins, dietary fibres tend to degrade thus leaving little nutrition. Best way to cook vegetables is by stir frying them for short duration so that some crunch is still left to chew on.
If the cooked vegetables are chewy enough, they tend to bring you the bulk which can help you feel full faster. Fibre in your diet will help good bacteria to thrive in your guts. These good bacteria generate secondary metabolites from digestion of the fibre which are known to have immunity enhancing effects. Therfore next time you cook vegetables experimenting with less cooking time and temperatures can give a different taste to the dish.
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Organic Posting
The Trick to Writing a Great Caption
Writing captions is more a science than an art. You might be bad at it right now but it's nothing you can't learn. To use an overused cliché, it's like learning to ride a bike.
Usman Khalil
October 1, 2020
4 min read
Writing captions is more a science than an art. You might be bad at it right now but it's nothing you can't learn. To use a cliché, it's like learning to ride a bike.
Because of the hierarchy of a post, people usually see the caption after they see the image or thumbnail of the link you attached in the post. So it plays a supporting role to the main content that you've posted.
But often you might just upload a text-only post, much like a tweet. The rules stay pretty much the same there.
The basics
In a social media post caption, you should take care of some basic rules which might differ from platform to platform. Here are a few that hold true for all of them.
Hashtag placement
You don't want to _TAG_ your _TAG_ in the middle of the _TAG_ like this. It will definitely irritate your audience. Put your hashtags at the end of your caption where they're not visible and they still fulfil their function. More on how to use hashtags here.
Link placement
Similarly, place your link at the end of your caption after the hashtags. This will cause the ugly url to disappear, leaving only a clean preview image and your caption in the post like this:
linkedin-link placement
The other way to insert a link is to add it in the comments of the post instead of the caption. Experts say that this can increase the reach of your post.
Of course, none of this applies to Instagram. Don't place a link in the caption at all on that platform. If you have to anyway, direct people to your profile with something like "see link in bio" in your post or caption and place the link in your Insta bio.
Alright, let's get to the meaty part; the actual text of the caption.
Note: I know how it feels to get writer's block every time you try to write a good caption. The Willow platform fortunately has a button you can press to generate a caption automatically based on the article that you're sharing. If you need to learn more, you can request a demo.
Now where were we.
Use the first line as a hook
If you've ever listened to marketing giant Seth Godin's podcasts, you'll realize that he hooks you in with the very first sentence. How does he do it every time? From what I've noticed, it's always a peculiar sentence that makes you think. At times it is a very specific example from history. Very rarely does it come across as clickbaity. Here's an example:
Twenty years ago, I was invited to the Big Meeting. Every week on Mondays, at JPMorgan Chase, there was a meeting of the team that was responsible for one-third of the bank's profits. This meeting consisted of 42 people sitting around a long table, 20 on the side – one at the head and one of the foot – surrounded by 30 other people sitting in the second row. That meeting cost the bank more than fifty thousand dollars an hour. And as far as I know, they're still having it.
Right away you feel like you're halfway through a story, you feel involved, and you know right away that this is a high stakes situation. That's what your captions should try to do. Stop with the pleasantries. Dive into the story.
Though this is nothing new, it isn't something people always get right. Common mistakes include overhyping the content or making it too obviously clickbaity.
Don't talk at people
"Here are our achievements as a brand. We have done this for decades. You should choose us." Don't you agree that that sounds a bit obnoxious. Like whoever wrote it is too full of themselves and is talking at you from their high horse. That's exactly what not to do.
Instead, approach them from the same level. Involve them in your narrative and already try to make them answer a question about themselves, even if it is just inside their heads. Like this brilliant example from Harry Dry:
talk to rather than at
Harry Dry's example how to involve the reader with your caption.
Use words that people actually say
Nobody uses words like rambunctious, perfunctory, or obfuscated when they're talking. Complicated language like this can cause you to lose your audience instantly.
Here's a better idea. Try saying your caption out loud to yourself. Better yet, say it to someone else. Does it seem like something someone would actually say? If it doesn't, ditch it. You can do better.
I'll now shamelessly use our own post as an example. Keeping the caption conversational in this post helped us get a 9% engagement rate on this post. (On Linkedin, you want to keep your engagement rates above 2%)
contento caption
Here's a quick recap
 1. Use hashtags after the text, not in it.
 2. Put the link at the end of the caption or in the comments.
 3. Hook your audience with the first sentence. Start with the middle of the story.
 4. Talk to people rather than at them.
 5. Use conversational language
Hope that's a good start. Start nailing these tips every time, and you'll have an audience that engages with you on a more regular basis. I'll leave you with this; never underestimate the power of a good caption. And nobody hammers this point home like the New Yorker cartoons, so here you go.
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How Consultancies Should Do Social Media Marketing
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Consultancies are businesses built on trust, strong relationships with clients, and their expertise. B2B businesses have been successfully using social media to get the attention of their prospects and nurture leads. Here's how.
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The visible outcome of this crisis for businesses has been shutdowns, bankruptcies, and layoffs. But a lot of other companies are in a state of indecision where they've halted hiring and buying processes as a direct result of markets coming to a halt.
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Hi there,
I know that power law decay can be expressed as the combination of multiple single exponential decays (or another way of saying it is that if there are multiple timescales in a decay process, when there is no dominant timescale, then power law behavior emerges). Empirically, it's fairly easy to see that this is the case (and see _URL_ for an example of expressing power law decay as a sum of exponentials). However, I'm trying to understand *why* this is the case. Does anybody have an intuitive explanation for why power law decay contains multiple exponential decays? Thanks!


text:
The University of Maine at Machias
Self-timed circuits present an attractive solution to the problem of process variation. However, implementing self-timed combinational logic is complex and expensive. In particular, mapping large function blocks into cell-libraries is difficult as decomposing gates introduces new signals which may violate indication. This paper presents a novel method for implementing any m-of-n encoded function block using \"Bounded gates\", where any gate may be decomposed without violating indication. This is achieved by successively decomposing the input encoding into smaller m-of-n codes.


text:
Voice Activity Detector
The challenge of power consumption in a voice-activated system
The interaction between humans and devices is increasingly carried out through voice control, be it for plugged or battery-powered devices. This unavoidable trend is made feasible thanks to the emergence of powerful signal processing algorithms capable to convert, with high success rate, the human speech to text but also to understand meaningful information, such as keywords and commands.
Dolphin Integration introduces a breakthrough Voice Activity Detector, the WhisperTrigger™, to provide ultra-low power Always-On Voice Listening for the longest-lasting operation without battery recharge and for environmentally friendly devices.
Demonstration of our innovative Voice Activity Detector
by Cyprien Dumortier, application engineer for Audio IPs
Ultimate power savings
The WhisperTrigger™ is a stand-alone feature. It enables to switch-off the audio DSP and ADC, to divide the power consumption by up to 50 times compared to conventional approaches at system level.
WhisperTrigger™'s self-adjustable algorithm ensures the best detection rate whatever the environment conditions of the user.
Innovative Voice Activity Detector for ultimate power savings
Conventional Always-On Keyword Spotting can not be ultra-low power
To minimize power consumption of a voice-controlled device, the current approach is to handle speech recognition after Keyword Spotting. It involves to keep the voice ADC and the DSP always on.
Breakthrough Voice Activity Detectors for ultimate power savings
The breakthrough WhisperTrigger™ tracks continuously the surrounding sounds to identify
a voice activity so as to awaken the voice processing blocks (audio ADC and DSP) through a trigger
signal as soon as, but not sooner than, a voice is detected.
Two types of WhisperTrigger™ (WT-d and WT-a), are proposed for integration into the SoC to support both analog/electric and digital microphones. WhisperTrigger™ can also be embedded into a DMIC.
WhisperTrigger™–digital (WT-d): The fully synthesizable VAD to switch-off the audio DSP
The WT-d detects the presence of a voice at the output of a DMIC or at the output of a voice ADC embedded on SoC so as to switch-on the DSP, to perform Keyword Spotting, only once a voice is detected.
WhisperTrigger™ –analog (WT-a): The ultimate power saving solution
The WT-a enables to switch-off both ADC and DSP and to awake them only, but as soon as, a voice is detected.
Self-adaptable algorithm (patent-pending): the must-have
Users of wireless smart home, IoT products or Smartphones are exposed to different types of ambient noises all along the day. As a result, the only solution to ensure the best detection rate is to rely on a trigger capable to continuously adapt itself to the environment of the device user.
WhisperTrigger™'s powerful algorithm wakes-up the DSP handling Keyword Spotting with the best success rate, no matter the environment of the user and the distance between the user and the voice-activated device.
Check the self-adaptability to the background noise of WhisperTrigger™
MIWOK™, an objective benchmark for Voice Activity Detector
Dolphin Integration has developed MIWOK™, the first benchmark in the public domain to assess the 3 critical performances characterizing the performance in voice detection, be it in near field or far field condition, whatever the user environment, be it noisy or quiet:
- the capability to detect the beginning of a voice event with fast response
- the capability to avoid the wrong response to a noise event, meaning a high rate of Voice Detected as Voice (VDV) and a low rate of Noise Detected as Voice (NDV)
- the evaluation of the fast Detection Latency (DL) time
The WhisperTrigger™'s performances
|WhisperTrigger™ -d||WhisperTrigger™ -a|
|Detection Latency (DL)||Down to 4.6 ms||Down to 3 ms|
|Voice Detected as Voice (VDV)||Up to 100%||Up to 100%|
|Noise Detected as Voice (NDV)||Down to 7%||Down to 3.6%|
|Power consumption of the WT||25 µA||10 µA|


Skip to definition.
Noun: nan nan
 1. [Brit] Your grandmother
 2. [Brit] The mother of your father or mother
 - grandma, grandmother, granny, grannie, gran, nanna [Brit], grandmamma [archaic], nana, nanny [Brit]
 3. Leavened bread baked in a clay oven in India; usually shaped like a teardrop
 - naan, naan bread
Noun: Nan
 1. A river of western Thailand flowing southward to join the Ping River to form the Chao Phraya
 - Nan River
Derived forms: nans
Type of: bread, breadstuff, grandparent, river, staff of life
Part of: Kingdom of Thailand, Siam, Thailand
Encyclopedia: Nan, Thailand


ESL 546
Copy and Paste*
Learning to Highlight Text (Words)
Words are normally black on white background.
Highlighting turns backgrounds into a different color. Like this white sentence with a dark background.
Here is how to highlight:
 1. Place the tip of the arrow in front of the words to highlight.
 It will change to a I beam cursor.
 2. Hold the left mouse button down.
 3. Drag the cursor across the words.
 4. When the background behind words are a different color, they're highlighted.
 1. Try highlighting this word. ----------------->
 1. Try highlighting this sentence. -------------->
Hey, I did it!
 1. Try highlighting this paragraph. ------------>
 You will need to drag the arrow down as well as across.
Hey, I did it. I highlighted this whole paragraph.
But why? What's the point of highlighting?
To see how to use highlighting, click next
This page was originally created by John Avery at
Green River Community College
, Auburn, Washington.


text:
From a Japan Times Editorial:
That Japanese public libraries are thriving may come as no surprise to anyone, but an education ministry report found that the number of books checked out by elementary school children from the 3,274 public libraries nationwide reached an average of 26 per child in fiscal 2010. That is up from 18.8 in 2007, a significant and commendable upswing to the highest level ever. The total number of books checked out by all people was also at a peak of 663.6 million books nationwide.
After the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, libraries in many areas were decimated. Librarians, volunteers and readers of all kinds worked hard to ensure that children and adults had access to books so their reading life could continue even during the middle of the tragedy.
…libraries deserve even more support and use. Their importance will continue as libraries learn to adapt to new forms of reading, such as e-books, while still providing many other functions. Most importantly, books must be presented to young people in fun and meaningful ways until their natural curiosity and reading habits take over to keep them reading on their own. Libraries help do just that.
Read the Complete Editorial

source: HuggingFaceFW/fineweb-edu


Fishermen, farmers, and fiestas continuity in ritual of traditional villages on the northwest coast of Peru /
by Schaeffer, Nancy Ellen.
Abstract (Summary)
This dissertation is an attempt to explain aspects of sacred ceremonial expression of the Peruvian northwest coastal farmers and fishermen in the Moche Valley. The study is informed primarily by sacerdotes andinos (healer-priests), ancianos (elders), and native fishermen and farmers. Specifically, sacerdotes andinos are the teachers of ritualistic dances and myths. Lessons learned from the sacerdotes are not only an intellectual exercise; they are "lived." The myths of fishermen and farmers are initiated and experienced with the sounds of the sacerdote "ancestor" conch trumpet, the maraca (seed) rattle and song-chants in ceremony, but not by everyday language. The initiation ritual of the Diablada dancers takes place on top of the huaca (sacred place) of the Chimú ancestor in Chan Chan from vi midnight to dawn. Then, with the siete ñustas de wiracocha (essence of seven mystical plants) combined with the sounds of the ocean waves breaking on the shore and the constant rattle and chanting of the sacerdote, one travels and learns. These historical-mythological adventure-traditions are repeated frequently, remembered and passed on from one generation to the next through sound. The dances of the Diablada, the Ingas and Ñustas, and the processional journey to the Moche River tell stories about the community, the land, relationships and the culture of the people. For each village, there is a distinct structure and style of expression. Traditional farming and fishing techniques, village relations, ceremonies, rituals, dances, music, and myth continue to exist and orient the people. vii
Bibliographical Information:
School:The University of Texas at Austin
School Location:USA - Texas
Source Type:Master's Thesis
Keywords:folklore mythology peruvian oral tradition fishers farmers religion moche river valley peru
Date of Publication:
© 2009 All Rights Reserved.


text:
Our Third Ear: A Multi-Sensory Experience of Sound
Mills, David Robert
MetadataShow full item record
Our Third Ear aims to create a multi-sensory experience by fusing sight, touch, and sound. By creating a means of physically feeling music, listeners can connect with songs, bands, and individual musicians on a profoundly personal level. The potential for unintended applications like learning to play an instrument, broadening the understanding of music for people with hearing impairments, or providing a means of therapy are also exciting prospects. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the process involved in creating a multi-sensory experience of music from concept to prototype. The culmination of interdisciplinary research and a broad range of creative technologies resulting in a working system. The multi-sensory experience consists of primarily tactile, but also visual responses triggered by music and executed in conjunction with aural music. Tactile investigation involved varied tactile sensations such as vibration, temperature, pressure, proprioception, and touch. Further research questioned the practicality, feasibility, and psychological impacts of using such sensations as well as where on the body such sensations would optimally be received. Visual research involved the visual representation of notes, chords, and sounds, as well as, how music could directly affect visuals in a real time environment. Additional research explored active interaction and passive interaction of visual cues using human computer interfaces.
- Masters Theses


text:
AbstractSugar diffusion studies were performed with sugarcane stem tissues bathed in distilled water, Tris buffer, and aqueous solutions of various chemical additives. Rind-free tissue slices were prepared with mature and immature internodes from field-grown sugarcane, and from plants propagated in the greenhouse with constant water and nitrogen supply. Sucrose diffusion rates were of sufficient magnitude to have physiological, and possibly economic, significance. Sugar movement to the external media conformed with the operation of an active accumulation mechanism as described by workers in Australia. Initial efflux was rapid up to about 4 hours, achieving a maximum external sugar concentration between 8 and 12 hours, followed by depletion of sucrose in the bathing medium. The depletion phase was attributed to reentry of sugar into the tissue slices rather than inversion. Inclusion of cycloheximide and 2,4-dinitrophenol in the bathing medium permitted a continuing efflux of sucrose amounting to 5- to 10-fold increases over that obtained with distilled water. Actinomycin D produced no appreciable effect on initial efflux rate. 6-methyl purine appeared to block reentry of exited sugar without causing leakage of vacuolar sucrose. Diffusion patterns for mature storage tissue suggested that a single mechanism is operative for fieldand greenhouse-reared cane. Tris buffer did not affect sucrose diffusion from mature tissue, but increased diffusion from immature storage tissue owing to an apparent inhibition of acid invertase. In general, sucrose diffusion was of greater magnitude from mature than immature tissue preparations, and reducing sugars diffused at a much lower rate which seldom exceeded 10 percent of the sucrose level. Addition of borate to the bathing medium appreciably increased the quantity of exiting sugar without altering the shape of the diffusion curve. The existence of a sugar-borate carrier system operating in the passage of cellular membranes is suggested. Physiological roles of a diffusible sugar pool in the intercellular spaces or dissolved in cell-wall water are evaluated. The potential significance of diffusion in promoting sucrose losses from stalks mechanically injured during harvest and post-harvest operations is also mentioned.
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A Summary of Using the JSVGCanvas Class to Display a SVG Document
First of all it's important to note the class inheritance hierarchy being used here since several methods called from the JSVGCanvas class are actually implemented by some of the classes it inherits from.
JSVGCanvas : JSVGComponent : JGVTComponent : JComponent
After creating a JSVGCanvas instance the setURI() method is called with a URI of the SVG document to load. If the URI is valid the loadSVGDocument() method of the JSVGComponent class is called with the URI.
In the loadSVGDocument() method all document processing for the current document is stopped, and then a DocumentLoader and SVGDocumentLoader are created. The SVGDocumentLoader handles the firing of document loading events and the DocumentLoader uses a SAXSVGDocumentFactory to create a SVGDocument instance. The SAXSVGDocumentFactory in turn relies on a SAXDocumentFactory to parse the SVG data referenced by the given URI.
The JSVGCanvas relies on the SVGDocumentLoaderListener, GVTTreeBuilderListener, and SVGLoadEventDispatcherListener listeners that are added in the JSVGComponent constructor in order to know what is going on with the loading, building, and rendering of the SVGDocument. The listeners are implemented in the JGVTComponent.Listener and JSVGComponent.SVGListener classes.
When the document has finished being loaded and parsed the setSVGDocument() method of the JSVGComponent class is called, which then calls the installSVGDocument() method in the same class.
The installSVGDocument() method:
1. Gets rid of any resources from the previous document (if any)
2. Create a new BridgeContext to associate the SVG DOM and the GVT tree
3. Configures the component and BridgeContext instance based on the document state (ALWAYS_STATIC, ALWAYS_DYNAMIC, ALWAYS_INTERACTIVE, AUTODETECT)
4. Creates a GVTTreeBuilder with the SVGDocument and BridgeContext
5. Initializes event handling for mouse and keyboard events
When the GVTTreeBuilder is done building the GVT tree the JSVGComponent performs some additional configuration so that dynamic documents work correctly, and then calls the scheduleGVTRendering() method of the JGVTComponent class.
The scheduleGVTRendering() method calls the renderGVTTree() method of the same class and:
1. Sets the size of the visible rect to be the size of the component
2. Creates either a static or dynamic image rendered based on the document state (StaticRenderer or DynamicRenderer)
3. Finds the inverse of the rendering transform, which is set to the identity matrix
4. Creates a shape by transforming the rectangle found in step 1 with the matrix from step 3
5. Creates a GVTTreeRenderer and starts the rendering thread
The GVTTreeRenderer fires GVT tree rendering events and calls the repaint() method of the renderer. Once repainting is complete, the JGVTComponent is notified of the fact by a GVT tree rendering event, and in response repaints the component using the updated image that was rendered offscreen by the renderer.
BatikRenderingSummary (last edited 2009-09-20 23:47:36 by localhost)


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Crossing The Data Drop Chasm-Revit To Excel and Back Again Using Dynamo
It is sometimes desirable or necessary to push data from Revit to Excel, and back again. One such example I can think of is when working with a door hardware consultant.
The door hardware consultant may not have access to Revit, little lone your Revit model. You have a few options. You could export your data to Excel, have him/her populate it, and then re-enter the data once it is back in Revit OR you could export it to excel using Dynamo, and then re-import the data from excel to Revit.
It's worth mentioning that you want to be very intentional about how and when you complete these tasks. For example if you export your data, and add/remove a door, this information will be lost in translation with your door hardware consultant.
Exporting Revit To Excel
All Elements of Category paired with Categories pulls all the elements that exist in your model.
Next, we want to pick which parameters from the elements to export. To do this we will use the "Element.GetParameterValueByName" node. I'm also using the "Element.Id" so I can match the components and their data with the unique Element.Id.
List.Create allows you to take multiple streams of data and combine them. This is important as the Revit to Excel node later will be receiving one stream of data.
List.Transpose flips data. It makes rows columns and columns rows. If you are a grasshopper user, this does the same thing as "Flip Matrix" in grasshopper.
Excel.WriteToFile is AMAZING. This node is where the magic happens. We have a few inputs to match up. Where is the File located? What is the sheet name? Which Row/Column do you want to start with? Overwrite data that exist?
Here is the result! Now to email the hardware consultant! ;)
Push data from Excel to Revit
Here is the full script for importing the data from excel back into Revit.
Importing the data from Excel into Revit begins with the "Excel.ReadFromFile" node. You will use the File Path and File.FromPath nodes to browse to your excel file. Pick which sheet you want to import from. Pick the Sheet name. One of the most important subtle check boxes that I found extremely important was the "ReadAsStrings" input. The reason this input is so important is depending on if your Revit parameter name is a number or not, you will want to be intentional about checking this true or not. Revit text parameter=True. Revit number parameter=False.
We'll be using the List.Transpose again to get convert the rows back to columns and the columns back to rows.
We'll use the List.GetItemAtIndex to choose which Excel column to grab. "0" will be the first column. "1" will be the second columns, and so on.
Finally we will want to pick which elements and parameter(s) to feed our data back into. We will be using the "Element.SetParameterByName node to populate the data. We can pair the "All Elements of Category" with the "Categories" node to grab the doors again. We are using a code block with quotes for the parameter name "Door Hardware Group". It's worth mentioning again that since our excel to revit node imported as string, we do not need to convert the data to a text string for the text parameter "Door Hardware Group". You will need to take into consideration if your parameter is number parameter or an integer parameter instead of a text parameter as you may need to use the string to number node.
And here is the Door Hardware Group populated in the Revit schedule!
Here's the data set I used. Enjoy! _URL_
Interested in growing your Dynamo ninja skills or want to host a dynamo workshop at your office? Reach out to me personally at _EMAIL_
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Indicator glass remodelling
- Checking the sample provided by the client, looking for defects, damages, and deformations that need to be corrected when creating the new CAD model. When re-modelling old, used parts, a comprehensive examination of the samples to list the defects that have developed over time and use is crucial.
- Since the geometry of the glass features no fixed measuring points, the exact dimensions can only be obtained by scanning. Preparing the sample for scanning.
- The shiny surfaces are treated with a matte, so-called scanner spray, which coats the sample surfaces with a white powder 1-2 microns thick, eliminating glaring and providing for successful scanning.
- The scanning creates so-called point clouds, which are used to create the mesh.
- Preparation of a CAD model taking into account the specifications of the selected production process. In this case, the remanufacturing will be done using a 3D resin printing process.
- Comparison of the finished CAD model with the scanned mesh.


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Gerbils And Exercise Wheels
How do you get gerbils to use an exercise wheel?
By Donna Anastasi
Posted: May 17, 2010, 2:40 p.m. EDT
Q: I have three gerbils living together in a 20-gallon long tank setup. None of them ever run on the wheel that I have in their cage. They mostly use it to burrow under. Is there a way to teach them to use a wheel, if it would be beneficial to their health?
A: The best type of wheel for gerbils is an 8-inch diameter, wire mesh (not slatted or plastic) wheel. A gerbil's tail could get caught in an old-style slatted wheel, and gerbils will chew a plastic wheel to bits. Some gerbils like a wheel and others don't.
The best way to get gerbils to run on a wheel is to offer a wheel when they are young, at about 5 weeks old. Wire it to the mesh lid of their tank so it hangs a few inches above the litter. Gerbils like the challenge of jumping and climbing on a wheel, and once inside may run on it. Try wiring the wheel so it holds still until they get used to sitting in it, then unwire it so it moves and they can run in it.
A final tip is that gerbils learn from watching gerbils in other tanks. If you ever go away and have someone with wheel-aholic gerbils babysit yours, you might come back to see your gerbils happily running in their wheel!
If your gerbils never take to the wheel, give them other things for exercise. Some examples are: a metal climbing structure or a branch from the reptile section of the pet store, deep litter to dig and burrow in, a dust bath to roll in, timothy hay, unscented toilet tissue, a PVC pipe as a tunnel, and plenty of cardboard boxes and tubes to gnaw up.
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this was really interesting.
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- CLUSTERO – Romanian Cluster Association
The purpose of the association is to promote, revival and economic development of Romania by supporting the creation, development and cooperation between clusters at regional, national and international level.
iTech Transilvania by ARIES Transilvania joined the association in 2014.
- Cluster Collaboration
It is a networking platform for European clusters (organizations and members) in order to improve their competitiveness and growth by stimulating trans-national and international cooperation.
- The Cluster Observatory
The Cluster Observatory is an online platform, free and easy to use providing a single point of access to information and analysis on clusters, cluster organizations and regional microeconomic framework conditions in Europe. In addition, it offers a library and a classroom for training in clusters.
- THE BALKAN CLUSTER NETWORK
"The Balkan Cluster Network" was founded in November 2012 by the association of over 25 organizations and cluster support institutions. The main objectives of the network are:
- Contribute to the strategic planning of the development of clusters in the Balkans;
- To contribute to the intelligent development in the Balkans;
- Provide support for public-private dialogue in the development of clusters in the Balkan countries;
- Clusters interconnections (C2C), promotion and internationalization of clusters in the Balkans.


Solar Hummingbird: Worse than the Real Thing
The Takaratomy Kotoridayori Humming Bird proves that solar power is not just for calculators and the hopeful/naive who believe it's not too late to stop global warming anymore. Solar technology has found a greater purpose in this world than determining the order of operations or allowing our children to "live" and "eat".
Solar power allows the Humming Bird to sing sporadically through the day, adding a general sense of peace and well-being to co-workers. Plus, the bird senses vibrations from those walking by, and serenades them into tranquility. For a mere $25, you can teach the world to sing, one cubical at a time.
In short, solar technology can torture your coworkers when you are not around.
Product Page
[via shinyshiny]


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Editing Records in an Excel 2007 Table
4 of 12 in Series: The Essentials of Creating and Working with Tables in Excel 2007
As you work with Excel 2007 tables, you will often find the need to edit or delete records and perform routine maintenance on the table. You can edit the records manually in the worksheet or use a data form to make the necessary changes.
For example, you can use the data form to locate a record you want to change and then make the edits to the particular fields. You can also use the data form to find a specific record you want to remove and then delete it from the table.
Click the Form button in the Quick Access toolbar to open the data form.
Remember that this button isn't included on the Excel 2007 Ribbon, but you can add it to the Quick Access toolbar by using the Customize settings in the Excel Options dialog box.
Locate the record you want to edit by displaying it in the data form.
You can scroll through the records or use the Criteria button to search based on criteria you enter in the specified fields.
To edit the fields of the current record, move to that field by pressing Tab or Shift+Tab and replace the entry by typing a new one.
Alternatively, press left-arrow key or right-arrow key or click the I-beam cursor to reposition the insertion point and then make your edits. To clear a field, select it and then press the Delete key.
If you want to delete the entire record from the table, click the Delete button in the data form and then click OK to confirm the deletion.
Keep in mind that you cannot use the Undo feature to bring back a record you removed with the Delete button in a data form. As a precaution, always save a back-up version of the worksheet before you start deleting records.
Click Close to close the data form.
Voilá! Records edited!


Full moon light over Annapurna Sanctuary, 4200 meters, in the Himalayas of Nepal.
The entire sanctuary was held as sacred to the Gurung people, the only people to inhabit it before the 20th century.They believed it was the repository of gold and various treasures left by the Nāgas, the serpent-gods known in India. The sanctuary was believed to be the home of several deities, from Hinduism and Buddhism as well the older animistic gods. The peak of Machapuchare at the entrance was believed to be the home of the god Shiva, and the daily plumes of snow were thought the smoke of his divine incense Until recently, the local Gurang people forbade anyone from bringing eggs or meat into the Annapurna Sanctuary, and women and untouchables were prohibited from going there as well.


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Royal Llama of the Inca
If you are coming to the Museum today, please use one of the following entrances: 79th Street and Central Park West, subway entrance, or Weston Pavilion (Columbus Avenue entrance). The Rose Center for Earth and Space and the 81st Street entrance will be closed today, Friday, May 24.
Most Inca goldwork and silverwork was melted down by the Spanish conquistadors. The Museum's silver llama figurine is a rare example of Inca metalwork. Approximately 500 years old, it is from the Island of the Sun, or Lake Titicaca, Bolivia.
Every morning, an Inca priest presided over the sacrifice of a llama at the temple of the Sun. Anthropologists think that this figurine is a special white llama covered with a red blanket that was kept by the Inca ruler, or Sapa Inca, as a kind of mascot.
Hall of South American Peoples


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java.io.IOException: error=12, Cannot allocate memory
While working on an embedded system with tight memory constraints, I discovered an inefficiency with the way Java executes processes. For this embedded system, it was sometimes necessary to execute bash scripts, which can be done by using Java's ProcessBuilder. In general, when you execute a process, you must first fork() and then exec(). Forking creates a child process by duplicating the current process. Then, you call exec() to change the "process image" to a new "process image", essentially executing different code within the child process. In general, this is how you create new processes to execute other programs / scripts. When attempting to execute these smaller processes from Java, I began receiving "java.io.IOException: error=12, Cannot allocate memory".
The problem lies within fork().
An embedded system has a limited amount of memory; take 512MB for example. When we want to fork a new process, we have to copy the ENTIRE Java JVM… well… almost. What we really are doing is requesting the same amount of memory the JVM been allocated. So we want to execute a new process, and our JVM is taking up 350MB of memory, then our fork will request 350MB of memory. But wait! We only have 512MB! We may not have enough memory to fork our current UI, but all we want to do is execute a command, say… "ls". The "ls" command doesn't require 350MB, but if there isn't at least 350MB, we may not be able to even fork a new child process. Now, the important thing to remember is when we fork, we are just requesting 350MB of memory; we are not going to use it necessarily. If we were to fork(), and the immediately call exec(), we wouldn't use all of the 350MB.
1. A Second JVM
Our first attempt at a solution may involve using a second JVM. This whole mess is a result of our main program being too large in memory to exist twice. We could create a Java process, whose sole purpose is to execute our tasks. Such a JVM would be much smaller than our main program, and therefore fork() would have a better chance at get enough memory allocated to spawn a child process. This solution is really only a workaround, because we did not eliminate the problem. What if our memory eventually gets so full, that our smaller JVM is unable to fork() because there just isn't enough to allocate? What if our second JVM suddenly crashes? A second JVM is a potential solution, but not the only solution. If you're interested, you can find an example of this idea at: _URL_
2. Custom JNI bindings for posix_spawn()
This whole mess began because of fork(), and how it copies one process to another in order to create the child process. Under the covers, Java's ProcessBuilder uses fork/exec, but those are not the only UNIX commands that can be used to spawn processes. posix_spawn() is a different command that allows you to create a new child process, using a specified process image. There is no copying of the parent process. I guess Sun or Oracle never got around to using this implementation, which would certainly solve our dilemma. The only way to implement this in Java is to create a custom JNI binding. The Java Native Interface (JNI) is a way of calling native code (C/C++) from the Java Virtual Machine. You can find a similar implementation at _URL_ Except instead of using posix_spawn(), we implement it ourselves. It turns out that not all Linux distributions implement posix_spawn() using vfork(), so its best just to write our own vfork() and exec() implementation. Instead of allocating memory for the new child process, vfork() allows the child process to share the same memory as the parent. There are both benefits and risks to using vfork(), but for our case, where we want to launch some other type of process, vfork() can be executed safely. Since we call exec() right after vfork(), we don't need to worry about the parent process's memory getting modified. If we were to vfork(), and then do something else besides exec(), we would risk modifying our parent process.
Our last option is the easiest fix, but comes at a cost. Every time we fork, the OS determines if enough memory can be allocated to copy our process to a child process. We can turn that safety-check off, and let the OS allow us to fork a new child process, even if there is not enough memory available to be allocated to make a copy of the parent. For our purposes, our scripts that we want to execute are always going to be much smaller than a 350MB JVM. So we probably will be fine. By enabling over-commit, we solve the problem, but there is a cost.
When you allocate memory in C, malloc() returns either a pointer to the memory address, or null if no memory could be allocated. If the programs on your system were written correctly (and by correctly, I mean with some sanity checking), they should attempt to die gracefully if they receive null from malloc(). When that happens, it means the system's memory completely used up. When over-commit is enabled however, malloc() will NEVER return null. In fact, it will always return some pointer to a memory address, even if that address is in use (or maybe it doesn't even exist). At that point, the OS will release the dreaded OOM killer.Which will began terminate programs as it sees fit, in order to free up the memory. In general, the way in which it picks its victims is at random. Andries Brouwer came up with this analogy:
An aircraft company discovered that it was cheaper to fly its planes with less fuel on board. The planes would be lighter and use less fuel and money was saved. On rare occasions however the amount of fuel was insufficient, and the plane would crash. This problem was solved by the engineers of the company by the development of a special OOF (out-of-fuel) mechanism. In emergency cases a passenger was selected and thrown out of the plane. (When necessary, the procedure was repeated.) A large body of theory was developed and many publications were devoted to the problem of properly selecting the victim to be ejected. Should the victim be chosen at random? Or should one choose the heaviest person? Or the oldest? Should passengers pay in order not to be ejected, so that the victim would be the poorest on board? And if for example the heaviest person was chosen, should there be a special exception in case that was the pilot? Should first class passengers be exempted? Now that the OOF mechanism existed, it would be activated every now and then, and eject passengers even when there was no fuel shortage. The engineers are still studying precisely how this malfunction is caused.
To enable over-commit temporarily:
For a more permeant solution, you will need to edit /etc/sysctl.conf and add the following:
Now just restart your system for the change to take effect.


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Windows Task Scheduler will run applications that do not need human interaction.
- Nothing needs to be clicked,
- there is no text to be entered.
It's perfect for when you want the data to be downloaded before you arrive at work.It can also be used to refresh data without using Excel on your computer.
Windows Task Scheduler lets you choose which programs to run, and when to run them.
You can use a program provided by NEXT Analytics named NXACMD2017 which does two things for you:
- Opens puts fresh data in Excel spreadsheets
- Puts fresh data into Google Sheets
The business benefit is that any reporting system can be assured of having up to date information being reported.
- The advantage of using NXACMD2017 is that it doesn't require human interaction.
- It connects directly to the data service, downloads the data, and then puts the data into the spreadsheet. Because it connects directly from your computer, there is no quota applied by NEXT Analytics. Download as many gigabytes as you want, and you can do that at no extra cost or quota penalty.
- It does all this in background, without tying up your computer or making you have to do anything with a spreadsheet.
To learn the steps how to use this useful program, view this PDF document:


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By Lauren Rodriguez, Long Island Rabbit Rescue Volunteer
Rabbits can be very energetic creatures so it's important to give pet rabbits plenty of opportunities to stimulate both their muscles and their intellect. Toys make rabbits happy, and they help deter them from chewing inappropriate things like carpeting, houseplants and furniture. There are many ideas and resources for your rabbit's entertainment. Some toys can be purchased from pet supply retailers, such as willow sticks and tunnels, lava blocks, and wood chews. Rabbits like to chew, so this satisfies that need and can deter them from chewing on furniture. Certain plastic, human-baby toys can provide entertainment, too. Hard-plastic keys and stackable plastic cups satisfy a rabbit's natural urge to move objects around and manipulate their environments.
Some websites cater to rabbit owners and offer safe toys:
Arguably the most enjoyable toys for your rabbit (and for you!) are the ones you make. Supplies can be found among your everyday household items! Empty toilet paper or paper towel rolls and brown paper bags are lightweight, chewable and tossable! If you would like to create something a little more interesting, you can fill these items with hay, which adds an instinctive foraging aspect to the game.
Cardboard boxes are excellent toys. They can be chewed, ripped and shredded. These "destructive" behaviors are actually natural behaviors in wild rabbits when they dig their warrens and make nests. Boxes can provide a hiding space or be climbed on and used as a deck. For safety, use only brown corrugated cardboard, avoid any with shiny coating, and remove any packing tape.


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Sole survivors: Bacteria build up on shoe bottoms
Rockport's new washable leather shoes will keep the soles of your shoes, and the places they tramp on, cleaner.
Share with others:
Dr. Chuck Gerba, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Arizona, says he doesn't put his shoes up on his desk anymore -- not since completing a study dealing with the accumulation and elimination of E. coli and other nasty fecal-based bacteria on soles.
The study, funded by Rockport in conjunction with introduction of its latest line of washable leather shoes, showed that just one wash cycle could eliminate almost 99 percent of the bacteria, Dr. Gerba said. Some 30 test subjects wore washable shoes for the study, while another group wore more conventional shoes that couldn't be washed.
Besides E. coli, which is known to cause intestinal and urinary tract infections, the soles of the shoes picked up Klebsiella pneumonia bacteria, a source of wound and bloodstream infections as well as pneumonia, and Serratia ficaria, a rare cause of infections in the respiratory tract and wounds.
Those bacteria, Dr. Gerba said, all are found in fecal material, and apparently were picked up from floors in public restrooms and outside from animal excrement. The study also showed the bacteria lived longer than usual "because you're accumulating food [for the bacteria] on the bottom of the shoes," he added.
"[The shoes] look like they're becoming a bacteria cafeteria.... We didn't do a survival time, but they were surviving longer than they would on a desk top."
Dr. Gerba, who studies how diseases are transmitted through the environment, said that once-a-month laundering probably was sufficient to hold down external bacterial contagion.
Also cleaned at 90 percent efficiency in the laundry were a different type of bacteria, those that grow on skin and are transferred to insoles by wearing shoes without socks. "You can get other bacteria from the air and dirt [that] can go in there, too," Dr. Gerba said.
"They grow in a moist, warm environment.... They like to live in saunas and that's basically what your shoe becomes."
Two years ago, Dr. Gerba did a similar study on purses and found that one-third of those tested at random were infected with fecal bacteria. The reason: "probably because [women] put them down on bathroom floors. They are full of bacteria."
Rockport said the scientists washed the shoes in a standard washing machine, using company-suggested conditions: cold water and 12-minute wash cycle with detergent. The shoes should be air-dried for 24 hours.
First Published May 21, 2008 12:00 am


Local elementary school students are turning nickles into homes for people in need.
It's part of the La Crescent-Hokah elementary school Nickles for Nicaragua fundraiser.
The school put collection jars in each classroom for students to drop money in with a goal of being able to build a home for a family in need. They raised more than $2,000.
Along with being able to help a family in Nicaragua, it was also a learning experience for the students.
"They're one of the poorest countries in the world, it would be nice to help them because, with their houses, we're building some so they can have a better life," said students Maya Colby and Alana Andersen.
The teachers hope the project will help the students learn the value of giving early in their lives.


Colouring Culture began in 2016, as the rise of adult colouring books launched into the marketplace. Chaz Fliy, the founder of Colouring Culture, is a designer and wellbeing coach, and realised that there were no inspiring products available that catered for his interests. Chaz began thinking and soon began creating a series of detailed illustration concepts based on a community he knew well - The Sikhs. As the concept illustrations came to life, he began adding to the collection weekly until he had created 20 original and detailed colouring-worthy art pieces. During the process of creating the illustrations, he explored how a mindfulness adult colouring book could help others, those less fortunate and communities struggling with mental health issues. Chaz recalled a visit to Uganda which he embarked on in 2014, where he was fortunate to spend some time teaching at an orphanage school. The memories of the experiences were both joyous and eye-opening, to note that many children in lesser developed countries did not own their own school books, pencils or art supplies. This memory got Chaz thinking and Colouring Culture was formed. This was an initiative to help the mental wellbeing of adults in ethnic and cultured communities. With every one book sold, Colouring Culture provides a free book to an underfunded school or child in communities it supports.
During April 2020, there was an event that would change the course of history as we knew it. Covid-19 created a time of uncertainty, heightening physical illness and the rise of mental health conditions. Chaz took the opportunity to revisit the colouring book project and had time to reflect on an even bigger vision for the project. A book series would be created to help individuals connect to a topic they were interested in, and connect to their own culture. It would also support artists who were struggling to receive work or commissions during and after the global pandemic. Chaz made a decision to make the project a collective one. He contacted talented artists, writers and strategy advisors within the Sikh community to help create a project on a larger scale, and it was launched on Kickstarter as a crowdfunding campaign!
The book was successfully funded by supportive backers and, after several months, we were able to release our first in the series of art therapy colouring-in books, starting with The Sikhs. We hope that you will enjoy the journey.
With EVERY Colouring Book sold,
we will give ONE absolutely FREE
to an underprivileged school.


How do I add contactless key tags?
There are 2 contactless key tags supplied with the Yale Unity Entrance Lock. A contactless key tag can be added to the lock via the Yale Access App. Follow the steps below;
 1. Tap the guest list icon.
 2. Select invite
 3. Select contactless Key Only
 4. Name the contactless key
 5. Select the lock that the contactless key will be paired too.
 6. Wait for the Bluetooth connection to the lock
 7. Have the contactless key ready
 8. Once prompted by the app, tap the contactless key on the contactless key reader on the front of the lock.
Once a contactless key is created the access can be set.
 - 'Always', for unlimited access for kids and family members
 - 'Reoccurring', for someone like a service person; for example, every Monday at 10am
 - 'Temporary access' for a limited date a time period you choose, once the set time ends, keys are automatically deleted so they can never be reused.
All keys can be deleted at any time for any reason.
Click ok when you're done.


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This may look like something captured with Instagram on the newest smartphone, but it's something a bit different indeed. It is the first photograph taken in Finland, ever. The photo dates back to the year 1842, and celebrated its 170th birthday last Saturday, November 3rd.
The photograph is a daguerreotype, one of the earliest photography techniques (check out the Wikipedia link for an interesting read). It was taken in Turku, which coincidentally also is Finland's oldest city, though obviously not the only city at the time. The photographer was Henrik Cajander, a doctor by trade who lived on the very street the photo was taken.
The building in the picture was called the Nobel house, and it was located on the corner of Uudenmaankatu 8 (map). The beautiful building had just been finished when the photo was taken. It was later, after several stages of re-modelling and renovations, demolished by the City of Turku in 1961.
As you can see the photo isn't exactly perfect, technically or aesthetically speaking, but it is a big part of the history in Finnish photography. Some might call the crooked composition an amateur mistake, but the photographer was, in the realest sense, an amateur at what he was doing.
As of right now, the city of Turku publicly displays a "life size enlargement" of the photograph above. It is located at the very spot where the building used to be.


text:
Bangladesh to hold massive cholera vaccine trial
Health officials in Bangladesh are due to launch the world's largest trial of an affordable cholera vaccine which could save tens of thousands of lives.
The study involves nearly 250,000 people near the capital, Dhaka.
If the results are positive, the programme can be replicated in other countries where cholera is a big problem, officials say.
Cholera outbreaks every year during the monsoon season kill hundreds in Bangladesh.
But many oral vaccinations are considered too expensive for millions of people in this impoverished country.
The latest initiative aims to test an affordable version of an oral vaccination, which is one-tenth of the cost of the current available vaccines.
Two-thirds of the 250,000 people involved in the trial will receive two doses of the Indian-made vaccine.'At high risk'
The remainder will not receive the medicine and the two groups will be monitored over the next four years.
"It is a study that will demonstrate that we can deliver the vaccine to the population that needs it the most, the people at high risk of cholera," Firdousi Qadri, one of the scientists involved in the project said.
"At the same time it will be a test of the existing immunisation mechanism that we have in this country," she said.
One of the broader aims of the project is to get a better idea of how many people die each year from cholera.
If the programme proves successful, then the authorities will go for a mass immunisation of the entire country.
The results are likely to trigger interest from other developing countries, like Haiti, which have had outbreaks of cholera.
But critics say that modern-day drugs do not offer long-term protection against every cholera strain.
Some experts say that along with mass vaccination, investments in improved water and sanitation infrastructure can help reduce the impact of cholera.


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PyNLP -- parsing and distributional similarity package for Python
PyNLP is a collection of Python/C/C++ modules that provide a common framework for discriminative parsing and distributional similarity-based clustering.
PyNLP is currently licensed for noncommercial purposes only. Special thanks to Helmut Schmid for allowing the inclusion of parts of BitPar and SFST in this distribution.
This distribution includes (parts of) the following software: BitPar (by Helmut Schmid; noncommercial only) _URL_ SFST (by Helmut Schmid; GPL) _URL_ FlexModule/BisonModule (Tommy McGuire; Pythonesque license) _URL_ Simple C++ wrapper for PCRE (Peter Petersen; BSD-like license) [different versions of this one floating around on the Internet.]
NOTE: the library modules that use BitPar and SFST are based on older versions of these programs and recent versions of these may have different functionality (in the case of BitPar) or use incompatible file formats (SFST). In particular, most of the functionality in the 'bitpar' C++ module that is beyond parsing bit vector charts (i.e., head finding, extraction of forests, discriminative parsing) is not present in BitPar, whereas reranking is present in newer versions of BitPar, but not in the module.
The following language resources can be used with PyNLP: - old SMOR/IMSLex (German morphology; proprietary)
cannot be redistributed
- SMOR with the IDS lexicon (German morphology) -- not done yet Note that this may yield slightly different results from using SMOR with the (non-redistributable) IMSLex lexicon.
- Morph-It (Italian morphology)
The easiest way to install this is by installing the necessary python packages via Debian/Ubuntu's apt-get and then setup the package in a virtualenv (so you can install new versions without having to modify the central python installation).
To actually do useful things, you need to untar the pytree_data.tgz tarball somewhere and point the PYNLP environment variable to that directory: export PYNLP=~/tmp/pytree_data
For building the software, you will need the following packages: gcc g++ python-dev libpcre++-dev python-numpy bison flex python-virtualenv (optional) cython (optional)
You will also need the dti decision tree package from Christian Borgelt: _URL_
To build and setup everything: cd ~/tmp virtualenv parser_env cd ~/sources/pytree-package ~/tmp/parser_env/bin/python setup.py install cd tests ~/tmp/parser_env/bin/python test-all.py
Tu build and setup for a system installation, it's just python setup.py build sudo python setup.py install cd tests python test-all.py
After PyTree is installed, you can run "make html" in the "docs/" subdirectory to build API documentation in nice HTML format if you have installed the Sphinx document formatting suite.
Parsing with an existing grammar
To do lexicalized parsing with an existing grammar, use the script parse_lex.py, for example: python parse_lex.py -l de.tiger -g grammar/full -m grammar/all.model where:
- -l gives the settings bundle for PyNLP (which sets the right
- morphological prediction, head table, etc.)
-g gives the path to the files for the first stage PCFG grammar -m gives the path to the discriminative model parameters
Retraining the parser with an existing grammar
To retrain the parser, several steps are necessary: * Create the annotated trees from the treebank
for Tiger, this is done by the script tiger2mrg.py which will read a Negra export file, transform it including projectivizing the tree, and then write a bracketed file with edge label information.
- create base PCFG grammars for the n-fold crosstraining see scripts/parse_all.sh for how to do this.
- extract the discriminative training data for each fold:
- python train_lex.py -l de.tiger -g fold3 -o fold3/fold.event fold3/heldout.mrg
- (lather, rinse, repeat for fold1..fold5 and full)
- join the discriminative training data and apply frequency threshold:
amis_tools/treelexer -t 5 -l all.in -o all.event fold*/fold.event * run AMIS to estimate model parameters amis all.conf
- reward yourself with a cookie: you should now have - the PCFG grammar in.../full/ - the discriminative model in.../all.model
Adapting to other grammars or languages
basically, you want to have the following: * a script for treebank conversion and annotation
Look at tiger2mrg.py for an example how this could look. Basically, you would want to - have edge labels that (minimally) distinguish betweenmodifiers on one hand, different types of arguments on the other hand and conjuncts as well.
- markovize coordinations (look at the function with that name in tiger2mrg - basically, find coordinations and markovize them so that they are distinct from other phrases with linear markovization
- use generic_markovize to do markovization with GF marking which is head-based (if you have a head table).
- write everything out in VPF format (again, look at tiger2mrg.py how to do this).
- a head table (already used in step 1) look at pynlp/*/*_heads.py for ideas on how to do this.
- a POS prediction component look at pynlp/de/smor_pos.py and pynlp/it/morphit_pos.py for examples.
- a regex list look at data/german-regex.in and data/italian-regex.in for examples.
- one settings bundle to rule them all (or two) modify pynlp/__init__.py so that PyNLP can actually find all those components.


text:
Temperate Deciduous Forest
An Amazing Ecosystem
Deciduous forests can be found in the eastern half of North America, and the middle of Europe. There are many deciduous forests in Asia. Some of the major areas that they are in are southwest Russia, Japan, and eastern China. South America has two big areas of deciduous forests in southern Chile and Middle East coast of Paraguay. There are deciduous forests located in New Zealand, and southeastern Australia also.
One thing that is interesting about this biome and its climate is that it has four distinct seasons; spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Most deciduous forests have mild summers averaging about 70 °F. Summer months usually begin in early June and end in late August. Winter months don't begin until December. Winter temperatures are fairly cool with an average temperature of a little below freezing. Almost all of the world's deciduous forest is located by an ocean. The ocean and the wind are two big factors of why the temperature and climate change so much in this biome.


text:
Seeing Inside Your Container Media
When you buy a good-quality root substrate, you are mostly purchasing holes. Solid particles from peat, bark, perlite, wood fiber and other components typically make up only about 20 to 30% of volume when a pot is filled with root substrate. The rest is made up of spaces, termed pores, which are filled with either air or water.
If we can match our irrigation practices with a substrate with adequate components and particle sizes, it results in a suitable balance of waterand air-filled pores for healthy root growth. It is difficult to visualize substrate physical properties such as porosity, but pores have a major effect on plant performance. In this article, we will try to help you see pores in a new light.
GOLDILOCKS SUBSTRATE – NOT TOO FINE, NOT TOO COARSE
If you have ever received a shipment of fine, dusty container substrate, then you may have experienced that the substrate is hard to dry down and holds excess water. This is because fine particles lead to small pores that are easily water-logged by irrigation, thereby starving plant roots of oxygen and promoting disease. For example, if a fine and compacted substrate is used in hydroponics where the substrate is continually saturated, root growth will decrease (Figure 1).
In contrast, if the substrate is very chunky, the resulting pores are large and filled with air rather than water. Use of large particles, such as the coarse perlite in Figure 2, means we can pour on water during propagation without starving roots of air, but the resulting transplant may fall apart or dry out quickly when shipped.
When we fully irrigate and drain a substrate in a pot, we refer to this level of moisture as "container capacity." High-quality greenhouse substrates typically have water-holding capacity around 60 to 75% in a 1-liter or 1-quart container at container capacity, and air porosity in the range of 10 to 20%. To test for water and air porosity in your own substrate, go to our website (_URL_) and select "Training" and "Root Substrates." You will find porosity testing and other protocols in English and Spanish (Figure 3).
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SMALL PORES AND LARGE PORES
Water adheres to the substrate particles that surround pores, because of attractive forces between both water molecules themselves, and between water and the particle surfaces (Figure 4).
At the micro-level, a root substrate contains a whole world of pores that are both large and small. You can see larger pores between peat particles in the scanning electron microscope image in Figure 5. The larger pores are likely to be filled with air. Within a peat particle, there are "internal" pores that will quickly fill with water. Internal pores may hold onto water so tightly that plant roots cannot extract it as the substrate dries ("plant-unavailable" water).
IRRIGATION'S IMPACT ON PORES
If a substrate is frequently irrigated, such as under mist propagation, it can be possible to completely saturate all pores and fill them with water. When pores are water-logged, there is no air available for root growth. That affects root growth and plant health. For example, callus can form on unrooted cuttings under high moisture conditions, as shown in the scaevola in Figure 6. However, (oxygen) to respire and grow and allowing the substrate to dry at least to container capacity is essential or rooting will be delayed.
We have used X-ray computed tomography (CT) scans of mixes to see how the balance between water and air change depending on our irrigation methods and substrate choices. For example, Figure 7 shows a 50-count propagation cell of Oasis foam (bottom) with different moisture levels. We typically want at least 10% volumetric air content to provide enough gas exchange for roots to "breathe" and get the oxygen they need for growth and functioning, which means allowing the substrate to dry to less than container capacity between irrigation events.
Figure 7 shows that as the substrate dries, the pores are no longer isolated holes but form a connected pipeline which allows air exchange and oxygen supply. You can see that the bottom of the substrate is the most saturated at container capacity, because gravity pulls water down whereas capillary action draws water up against gravity. This has practical implications. For example, the water/air balance at the base of a plant cutting will depend on how deeply the sticking is placed into the propagation cell.
You can clearly see the effect of pore size on capillary action in Figure 8, where finer pores draw up water to a greater height.
DIFFERENT PARTICLE AND PORE STRUCTURES
A scanning electron image highlights the different structure of foam and rockwool (Figure 9) compared with peat in Figure 5. Oasis and rockwool do not have as many small pores as peat, have a more even range of pore sizes, and water is easily available for root uptake because water is not held as tightly as peat. This means that water and air is more evenly distributed in peat from the bottom to top of a container, whereas Oasis and rockwool have a saturated zone at the bottom of a container but have less water and more air at the top of the container.
PARTICLE AND PORE SIZE WITHIN A SUBSTRATE TYPE
Within any component, such as peat, there can be a wide range in particle and resulting pore size (Figure 10). You may ask if adding a component such as wood fiber to your peat substrate will make it a "wetter" or "drier" mix. Figure 10 clearly shows the answer will depend on the particle size and porosity of the wood component compared with the specific peat source. Each component is like an ingredient in a pie, and you can achieve similar air and water porosity characteristics by understanding and blending the correct materials.
Acknowledgements: We thank our industry partners in the Floriculture Research Alliance (floriculturealliance.org), Specialty Crops Research Initiative, and Clean WateR3 from NIFA-USDA ARSfor supporting this research and extension program. Imaging instrumentation was provided by the University of Florida Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering's Research Service Centers (RSC).


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Maloti-Drakensberg Transfrontier Park
Did you know?
The Drakensberg is home to the oldest fossilised dinosaur eggs in the world.
On the lower slopes of the Maloti-Drakensberg Transfrontier Park, which straddles the border between South Africa and Lesotho, you will spot small herds of eland that seasonally migrate between the higher slopes of the berg and the sweeter grasses of the plains.
This is just one of Lesotho and South Africa's transfrontier park success stories. Through the collaboration between the two countries, animal populations in this mountain paradise have rallied and today large troops of baboons roam the mountainside and there are regular sightings of blesbok, oribi, duiker and, occasionally, the elusive leopard.
The wildlife is just one of the attractions of this Drakensberg transfrontier nature reserve. For many, the main feature is the mountain range itself - one of the most important water catchments in southern Africa. The Maloti-Drakensberg Transfrontier Park boasts some of the most spectacular mountain scenery in the world.
This distinctive landscape is not only home to many species of animals and birds, it is also home to the highest concentrations of rock-art south of the Sahara. There are approximately 600 known sites and almost 40 000 individual images, painted by the indigenous inhabitants of the area over a period of at least 4 000 years
The transfrontier commitment between South Africa and Lesotho is more than a decade old and continuous efforts are being made to improve access to the area, known for its fabulous hiking trails and endless views.
Other attractions in the area include important palaeontological sites, such as the site where the oldest fossilised dinosaur eggs in the world were found, and key sites of late Iron Age settlements that define Basotho origins. South Africa and Lesotho are currently working on a 20-year strategy to guide their partnership.
Travel tips & Planning info
Who to contact
Mr Chaba Mokuku, Project Coordinator
Tel: +266 (22)312 662


text:
Chasmer, L, McCaughey, H, Barr, A, Black, A, Shashkov, A, Treitz, P, Zha, T (2008). Investigating light-use efficiency across a jack pine chronosequence during dry and wet years. TREE PHYSIOLOGY, 28(9), _PHONE_.
Light-use efficiency (LUE) is the ability of vegetated canopies to use light for photosynthesis. Together with remote sensing estimates of canopy cover and meteorological inputs, LUE provides a physical basis for scaling carbon uptake processes from the stand to the global scale. A better understanding of the factors that control LUE will result in improved global estimates of carbon uptake from the terrestrial biosphere. To examine factors that control variability in LUE in stands of different ages during dry and wet conditions, we measured LUE in a chronosequence of four jack pine stands (recent clearcut (age 1-3), regenerating (age 8-9), immature (age 29-30) and mature (similar to 90 years old)) during one normal (2002), one very dry (2003) and two very wet (2004, 2005) growing seasons in Saskatchewan, Canada. Cumulative CO2 fluxes decreased significantly at all sites during the drought year of 2003, as did mean LUE. Canopy foliage at the recently regenerating Jack pine site increased by 19% between 2002 and 2003. Foliage growth rate was reduced by 6% between 2003 and 2004, and foliage biomass decreased by 6% from 2004 to 2005. Over the four years studied, LUE was greatest at the mature,jack pine site and lower, but similar, at the other three sites. Mean growing-season LUE varied with mean soil water content at each site, except at that of the newly regenerating stand where soil water had little influence. Mean daily vapor pressure deficit typically had the greatest influence on variability in LUE at all sites. Diffuse versus direct radiation also had significant but varying effects on LUE in jack pine stands of different ages.


text:
New Ultrasound and Artificial Insemination
Techniques Improve Sheep Breeding
Ewes and lambs on a pasture at the University of Wyoming Livestock Farm in Laramie. Recent research by ARS may make artificial insemination of sheep easy enough for producers to tackle on their own.
Bred for meat as well as wool, sheep have been part of the American landscape since colonial times. Now, advances in genetic research are changing breeding procedures, leading to faster, cheaper, and more accurate techniques.
Using Ultrasound for Selective Breeding
New research is making it easier to predict the future—at least as far as lamb products are concerned. At the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station in Dubois, Idaho, research leader Greg Lewis and his colleagues have shown that ultrasound can be used to accurately predict characteristics that indicate carcass yield and value in live sheep.
This could significantly improve the speed and accuracy of selective-breeding methods. Since carcass data is difficult for producers to obtain, many of them currently rely on visual appraisals to predict carcass traits before choosing which sheep to breed. Ultrasound provides a faster, more accurate alternative.
To assess the reliability of the technology, scientists captured ultrasound images of 172 lambs before slaughter. At Ohio State University, assistant professor Henry Zerby coordinated the collection of carcass-trait data for the lambs. Lewis collaborated with ARS scientists and Dave Notter, a geneticist at Virginia Tech, to analyze the data.
Western white-face ewes and lambs on a pasture at the University of Wyoming Livestock Farm, Laramie, with university student Kalli Koepke in the background.
Results showed that a trained technician can capture an ultrasound image in about 30 seconds with reasonable accuracy. Scientists can use the images to estimate traits that influence the carcass value of market lambs—such as loin muscle area, loin muscle depth, and back-fat thickness.
Ultrasound is initially more expensive than visual appraisals, but the technique's superior accuracy may translate into better economic returns through improved evaluation and selection of breeding stock.
"Ultrasound is a great way for breeding-stock producers to get the data they need to make selection decisions," Lewis says.
Reliable predictions are timesavers for breeders because they enable them to make educated decisions about an animal's offspring without waiting for the offspring to mature. While the technology is used routinely for cattle and swine, this study demonstrates that it can also be applied to sheep.
Animal physiologist Phillip Purdy uses a water bath to thaw frozen semen for use in an insemination procedure.
Improving Surgical Artificial Insemination
Artificial insemination (AI) is an important tool for modern livestock breeding—particularly for cattle and swine. But for most sheep producers, AI isn't a viable option. The ovine cervix is relatively difficult to traverse with traditional AI tools, so techniques that work easily with cattle have been less successful with sheep. Surgical AI has a higher success rate, but is prohibitively complicated and expensive.
But help is on the way, thanks to research conducted by ARS animal scientists at the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation (NCGRP) in Fort Collins, Colorado. Researchers there are collaborating with scientists at the University of Wyoming (UW) to improve semen handling and artificial insemination on sheep farms. The work is being led by NCGRP animal physiologist Phillip Purdy in collaboration with animal geneticist Harvey Blackburn and UW colleagues Robert Stobart and Brent Larson.
"Effective AI has two components: the ability to collect and transport semen—either fresh or frozen—to producers around the country and the ability to economically inseminate the ewes," Blackburn says.
The scientists first focused on semen collection, storage, and transport. They found that sheep semen can be collected and shipped—in cooled liquid form—overnight before freezing without harming its in vitro quality. They also found that semen could be cryopreserved—or frozen for later use—after shipping without reducing its success in surgical AI.
At the University of Wyoming livestock farm in Laramie, professor Robert Stobart (left) and Phillip Purdy prepare to artificially inseminate a Suffolk ewe using an insemination gun and spiral catheter.
Further studies compared semen that had been cryopreserved immediately after collection to semen cryopreserved after 48 hours—about the time required to ship samples across the country. The scientists observed no difference in quality or fertilization ability nor in the average number of lambs born to the ewes surgically inseminated with those samples.
"These results show that there are many options available to producers to help them select for desirable traits," Purdy says. Producers could, for example, use samples from around the world, thereby expanding and improving their breeding options, increasing the quality of their flocks, and providing a better return on their investment.
This work also has benefits for conservators of genetic resources, like the NCGRP, that gather and store genetic materials.
"An efficient insemination method is important for our conservation efforts," says Blackburn, who heads NCGRP's National Animal Germplasm Program. "If we can do it more efficiently, we can reduce the number of semen samples we collect for preserving sheep genetic diversity."
Better Nonsurgical AI
The scientists have developed a rapid, economical alternative to existing surgical AI methods. The technique is an adaptation of the method used in swine. The researchers used a spiral insemination catheter to traverse the ewe's cervix and deposit thawed semen directly into the uterus. The method is easy to learn and easy to perform. Each sheep takes about 2 minutes to inseminate at a cost of $1.29, making it significantly faster and less expensive than laparoscopic surgical insemination. And it's easy enough for producers to do independently.
Though quick and economical, the technique is less reliable than existing AI methods. Early tests have had success rates of about 55 percent when using fresh semen and about 10 percent when using frozen semen.
"This difference was not observed in the previous experiments, because surgical inseminations deposit the AI dose at the site of fertilization, so minimal stress is placed on the thawed sperm," Purdy explains. "Sperm are generally weakened by the freezing and thawing processes, and this impaired function in thawed samples becomes more noticeable when using the nonsurgical method because the sperm have to travel farther to the site of fertilization."
The scientists are investigating how to hone the technique and improve its success rate by improving the timing of estrus and insemination.—By Laura McGinnis, formerly with ARS.
This research is part of Food Animal Production (#101), an ARS national program described on the World Wide Web at _URL_.
Phillip H. Purdy is with the USDA-ARS National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation, 1111 South Mason St., Fort Collins, CO 80521-4500; phone _PHONE_, fax _PHONE_.
Gregory S. Lewis is with the USDA-ARS U.S. Sheep Experiment Station, 19 Office Loop, Dubois, ID 83423-5032; phone _PHONE_, fax _PHONE_.
"New Ultrasound and Artificial Insemination Techniques Improve Sheep Breeding" was published in the October 2009 issue of Agricultural Research magazine.


text:
Creating awareness and understanding
Enhanced public awareness and understanding of race discrimination and cultural sensitivity are essential to the elimination of racial discrimination and promotion of racial equality. Hence, Hong Kong Unison offers talks and workshops to the general public, schools, vocational training institutes and universities while staging public education campaigns to raise awareness.
- Talks and Workshops
- Public Education Campaigns


Re: binary vs non-binary ports
Bradd W. Szonye wrote:
Per Bothner wrote:
Well, yes. The points I'm making are:
* One layers text i/o on top of binary i/o.
Not in general. That's the easiest way to do it on the "all files are
streams of bytes" used by Unix and Windows, but those aren't the only
operating systems in the worlds. Many systems still use record-based
files and other oddities where you usually implement "binary" I/O on top
of the text or record interface to create the illusion of a byte stream.
You'd still not layer binary i/o on top of text i/o. You can layer
binary i/o on top of record i/o.
 --Per Bothner
per@xxxxxxxxxxx _URL_


The Best Alternative For Tampons When Swimming on Your Period
It's summertime! You might be planning to hit the beach or the swimming pool soon but what if Aunt Flo suddenly makes a visit?
Swimming during your period might make you queasy and worried. What if you leak in the pool? What if you leak on your new white bathing suit? What if you shouldn't swim during your period?
Relax, it's safe! You can swim during your period! Contrary to popular belief, swimming doesn't make your period stop sooner than it should and swimming during your period is also absolutely safe for you. ""
How so? Swimming just pushes a pause button on your period. It doesn't make it stop completely. When you're in the water, the water pressure keeps your body from releasing menstruation blood. That means you don't have to worry about leaking in the water. You only have to worry about leaking when you leave the water. But why?
When you step out of the water, you're also stepping out of the water pressure, so your period starts right back up again. This is why you should still wear menstrual products even when you're swimming on your period. Unless you're cool rushing to the nearest changing room or bathroom, you shouldn't stop wearing your tampons or pads even when swimming. But this poses a lot of questions, like which is better for swimming, tampons or pads?
Here are the pros and cons of using a tampon and a pad when swimming on your period. First of all, for tampons and pads, both give you the added assurance that you won't leak in public. Using tampons and/or pads during swimming gives you major relief knowing that you won't have to worry about making a mad dash to the bathrooms once you step out of the water.
The problem is, not all ladies use tampons. But even for those who do use tampons, the worry that your string might be showing or the tampon even absorb more than just period blood can be a constant source of stress. As for pads, they lose their adhesive backing because the water dissolves it. The pad then ends up separating from your swimsuit, which can be a humiliating situation in itself. Also pads, because they're made of highly absorbent material, can absorb not only period blood, but also water. The end result? You get a soggy pad between your legs that may or may not slip from your underwear at anytime. Ugh.
Worried? There's an alternative you should start to consider, which is using period swimwear. They are the types of swimwear that have built-in absorbent material particularly designed for ladies swimming during their period. For the ladies who use pads during their period, period swimwear have a discreet, "pocket"-like gusset for your pads, making sure that they remain in place in the bottom of your swimwear.
Period swimwear are making waves these days. They come in pretty colors and designs too! Plus, you don't have to worry about having to wear shorts over them, since this leak-proof swimwear is enough to back you up.
So the next time you go for a swim on your period, it will help a lot if you're prepared. Grab one or two pieces of period swimwear and whether you use a tampon or a pad, remember to change them before you swim and right after you leave the water to stay hygienic. Happy summer, girls!
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